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Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

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Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#411

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The last point is the big one. Almost no one would have carried on through the last 3 bitcoin bubbles if they did buy at the start.

I know several people personally that did. Among people who have worked in the cryptocurrency industry it's not unusual that they've cashed out small portions of their stash in each bubble but still hold some today.

Yeah, this is the “safe” way to do speculative investing: when the asset price goes up, at one point or another you can take out your original investment, and the rest becomes “pure profit”. At that point the worst case scenario is that you break even.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#412

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Haha, yes. In 2011, a guy on my team was all about bitcoin and dogecoin and such. I think bitcoin was like 11 cents a coin, or maybe a dollar by that point. I just plain didn't get it. Still barely do. I could have easily picked up a few hundred dollars of coin or, if I was a believer, a grand or two. Had I held onto it, I would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. However, if I got in at 10 cents, I would have…

The last point is the big one. Almost no one would have carried on through the last 3 bitcoin bubbles if they did buy at the start.

I agree, I would not have either. But my present financial philosophy for such things is to always sell half (and only half).

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#413

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I am, in fact, very disappointed in Elon Musk.

Why? Because an application thats important to people uses mostly renewable energy?

The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more, even if that means giving up things some people consider important. I thought that was the purpose of Tesla. Sure, maybe waiting for an electric car to charge isn't as convenient as filling up at a gas station, but it's worth doing for the planet.

Personally, I have purposefully chosen to live in a tiny apartment, in one of the few parts of the US where I'm not required to own a car at all. My iPhone 6S is six years old and I have no plans to replace it, and just yesterday I wrote an email to my building imploring them to turn down our heat, because opening windows in the middle of winter to stay cool is a terrible waste of energy.

I'm not perfect. I'm not a vegetarian, I don't buy carbon offsets, and I make use of Amazon's inefficient two-day shipping. And I'm not asking anyone else to go sell their cars. But would giving up Bitcoin really decrease your quality of life so much?

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#414

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You didn't answer the question. In a situation where both have equal demand, how does unconstrained supply make it a better store of value?

Your question is not very meaningful/vacuously true for two reasons. 1. The premise is false. Bitcoin does not have the same demand as the USD. 2. The whole point of my original comment is that value is a result of demand. So your question is circular. " If Bitcoin had equal demand to the USD, then it would be a better store of value" is as logical a statement as "if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a wagon, i…

So value is only a result of demand for USD but when it comes to BTC that doesn't apply?

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#415

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no, a car for example devaluates over time.

Ok. Every investment. Bonds, real estate, stocks, metals. Magic cards probably don't count. The point is that "use BTC as a hedge against inflation" is obviously not a thing since people are chasing 10x growth.

Maybe many under-informed retail investors are chasing 10x growth, sure, but it feels like the larger institutions mentioned here are doing it likely the same reason they invest in any other asset: diversification.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because an application thats important to people uses mostly renewable energy?

The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more, even if that means giving up things some people consider important. I thought that was the purpose of Tesla. Sure, maybe waiting for an electric car to charge isn't as convenient as filling up at a gas station, but it's worth doing for the planet. Personally, I have purposefully chosen to live in a tiny apartment, in one of the few parts of the US…

"The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more"

That is literally never going to happen through the nature of technological and human advancement. The solution is where you source your energy from, not reverting to the stone age or jogging in place as a society.

Being forced to save in a currency the central banks treat as toilette paper would indeed decrease my life quality specifically through the purchasing power decrease of my lifetime labor.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#417
post #122

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Do you ever think that you losing out on tens of millions of dollars might have affected your desire to challenge your believes that "bitcoin is something that cannot work"? I know I'd probably cope in a similar manner

Sorta it does make me slight more bitter about bitcoin in general, and if I made millions of dollars off of it I would likely thing it's the best thing in the world. However, I do try to self adjust for that bias. When I mined the coins it was a neat concept, but bitcoin wasn't at all practical then and it isn't at all practical now. I sold it all back then for a few reasons. - I believed other tech nerds would come…

Agree 100% with you. Almost same scenario here, I sold my Bitcoin in 2017.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#418

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Econ 101: the value of ordinary goods are determined both by supply and demand. Bitcoin-fanatic-USD-bears claim that Bitcoin is a good store of value because it has constrained supply. But they miss the demand side of the equation. Similarly, they claim that the USD is a bad source of value because it has "unlimited" supply. That also misses the demand side. The demand for USD is robust because people need USD to pay…

"The demand for USD is robust because people need USD to pay taxes..." You cite this a priori - but it's so much more complicated than this. Demand is intimately connected with supply in many cases. Soemtimes this can be because demand is latent. If production of food goes through the roof - and people were previously starving because the price of food was too high, then that latent demand will be released when suppl…

The demand for USD, as with most things, does fluctuate regularly. The value of USD is stable because there is a more-or-less omnipotent central bank that can alter the money supply to match demand and target 2% annual inflation. The way we pay taxes does not matter nearly as much as the Fed. By design, BTC can never have such a central entity that ensures price stability, so its price is practically doomed to swing wildly with speculative booms and busts.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#419

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>"Does anyone really think the person buying crypto $100 at a time in their Robinhood account wants to pay $18 (current average transaction fee) every time they want to move that BTC into their wallet?" I'm curious is this the transaction per $100 or is $18 a flat fee regardless of transfer amount?

The average transaction fee is a bit disingenuous. Many people are not even using segwit and thats on them. You can also use lightning at this point in time but people dont know how to do it and wallets have not implemented yet. High fees usually prod people and services to adapt to the current tech to get costs down. I expect this to happen soon as high fees are somewhat recent. Also you can send a 50 cent tx fee an…

>One other thing - you cant even move BTC in or out of Robinhood. Robinhood for crypto is a complete scam right now.

I definitely would not call that a scam. I have no reason to move my BTC.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#420
post #311

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Gold is not in price discovery because its been around for so long and already had its ETF moment (which is why its stagnated since that massive run). But gold has always performed cyclically. Long term (very long term) its done quite well. Not my cup of tea but it had its place. Going forward I expect btc will disrupt it and flip its value (JPM making the same call).

Over the last 100 years, you'd have done significantly better by putting your money into an index fund -- and had less volatility. As far as I can tell, gold is just a lousy place to keep your money. What kind of long term are you talking about?

Did index funds exist 100 years ago? I'm pretty sure passive investing is a more recent phenomenon.
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