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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

#801

Post by adhoc32 »

incrudible wrote: post #365
adhoc32 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inflation may be constant each year but over the years it accumulates. Check yourself the inflation impact on your savings: https://www.rl360.com/row/tools/inflation-calculator.htm With inflation rate 2% after 25 years you lose about 40% of your savings value.

I'm fully aware of that, but there's many financial instruments to hedge against inflation. To that end, I'd sooner put my money into Rolex watches or sneakers than cryptocurrency.

Friendly advice, buy 20$ of Bitcoin to feel how it works before judging it. It might change your mind.

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

#802

Post by mrpopo »

adhoc32 wrote: post #768
mrpopo wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the vast majority of Bitcoin owners are HODLing and not using it, it's behaving as a Ponzi. Bitcoin has a few uses, but getting rich speculating on it isn't one.

Bitcoin bubbles burst all the time. Everyone have the opportunity to buy "cheap". Why do you care if some people take the risk to "hodl"? You can still get in (and take the same risk) without buying _their_ coins.

That's not what I meant, and that you're thinking this kinda proves my point. People holding onto Bitcoin hoping to get rich don't contribute to Bitcoin as a technology. They're making Bitcoin a speculative asset.

Bitcoin is supposed to be used as currency. The vast majority of Bitcoin owners don't do that.

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

#803

Post by incrudible »

adhoc32 wrote: post #801
incrudible wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fully aware of that, but there's many financial instruments to hedge against inflation. To that end, I'd sooner put my money into Rolex watches or sneakers than cryptocurrency.

Friendly advice, buy 20$ of Bitcoin to feel how it works before judging it. It might change your mind.

I do know how it feels, because I do hold some Bitcoin for "fun". Most of the time, it's down 80% from the previous high. Then it randomly appreciates 10x before cratering again. With any meaningful amount of money, that doesn't feel good at all.

The purchasing power I might lose from a mere $20 is of course irrelevant. If I put it into Bitcoin it might turn into $100 or $200 at an off-chance, but that has nothing to do with inflation. Bitcoin just isn't that correlated with cash. If I wanted to make a $20 bet that the dollar inflates dramatically, I would buy an option to buy gold at $5000.

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

#804

Post by incrudible »

tradertef wrote: post #789
incrudible wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modest change, considering that M1 has almost doubled.

What? Is 25% change in total money a modest change?

In perspective, yes it is. In a normal year you might expect M2 increase by 5%. Last year was special, of course. People are acting as if hyperinflation was right around the corner because M1 just doubled, ignoring that M1 quadrupled in the ten years before 2020 and that it didn't cause hyperinflation then either.

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

#805

Post by Geee »

graeme wrote: post #601
Geee wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money has to be first established as a store of value, before it can be used as a medium of exchange. As Bitcoin finds a more stable price point, it will become more interesting as a medium of exchange and an unit of account.

Rubbish. This is a misreading of Jevons being passed around as myth in the bitcoin world. There is no “four stages of value of currency adoption” and in Jevons’ framing gold was an exception in that it was a store of value first.

What's the correct idea then?

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

#806

Post by fwiwm2c »

jb775 wrote: post #546
fwiwm2c wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say - have fun staying poor. Think about it - if you had invested at any point in Bitcoin before today, you would have made money. But keep on resisting.

You could have said the same thing in December 2017 before it tanked and was lower for 3 years...with no one knowing if it would ever go back up. And give us one historic example of it being a good time to buy when the recent price chart looks like an exponential growth curve.

For sure. But look at long term trends. Since 2008, the trend has just been up and towards the right.

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

#807

Post by nly »

phamilton wrote: post #631
bluecalm wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stunning to me. Wire transfers are free and fast in my country. I mean maybe some banks charge some people like 10c per transfer but they are mostly free. They are also very common way to transfer money to friends, paying someone, moving money around accounts etc.

A wire transfer is not the same as an ACH transfer. I can send you money for free via ACH, but it takes a few days to clear. A wire transfer is a realtime transfer between banks. The only time I've used it was while buying a house. I've never done a wire transfer under $20k.

The standard in the UK is "Faster Payments" for domestic transfers and are near instant up to £10K ($14K). For higher amounts you can use BACs (the automatic fallback for FP) which is typically next day.

All free

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

#808

Post by nly »

rohitb91 wrote: post #564
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So it sounds like lemming group think. It seems like someone one should hold “just in case,” but no real valid reason to do so yet (that I’ve heard). Honestly what more do most people have? You could work your entire life but even all the earnings and scrimping and saving isn't even be a tiny fraction to what you would have if you had been the one to fulfil the order for the bitcoin pizza and just held. Think a lot…

But that’s not even remotely true. People’s standard of living is better than ever before and their chances of success higher than ever. The narratives we craft define how we move in this world. This is a toxic way of thinking. It takes about $500/month throughout a working life to retire comfortably investing in just VTSAX.

$500/mo for 40 years is only $500K at 5%/yr ROI. Good luck retiring on that. At 4% drawdown that's only $20K/year

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

#809

Post by ad31mar »

georgyo wrote: post #205
sperma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the end the only thing I kick myself for was looking at it objectively. Bitcoin wasting untold amount of energy, low transaction rate, high wait times for confirmation, high transaction fees, ever growing public transaction history, long cryptographic identifiers for receiving and sending, and so on do not actually matter.

As if there's a better alternative.

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

#810

Post by jsutton »

MrPowers wrote: post #579
kerng wrote: post #336

Bitcoin has been around for a while now and it has been down talked quite a bit on HN whenever it comes up. It now has a larger market cap as Facebook - so the market sees more value in Bitcoin than Facebook. The sentiment on HN seem still be mostly against it whenever it comes up. I wonder why that is? I'd imagine 10 years from now Bitcoin will still be around and likely much larger than today - I'm less positive ab…

I don't know if Bitcoin will outperform Facebook, but can explain why they're fundamentally different assets. Facebook is a "productive asset". It's a business that sells to customers and generated 29 billion in profit in 2020. Bitcoin, like gold, is not a productive asset. It doesn't pay interest (like bonds), dividends (like stocks), or rental income (like real estate). Warren Buffett has a good explanation: https:…

What about growth stocks that don't pay a dividend. Not a productive asset?
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