Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

popular.info

131–140 of 167 posts

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#131
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you expect people to cash out their life's savings every 12 months, I don't see why anyone should care if an asset's price is correlated to the last 18 months of the M2 So you're saying that your "inflation hedge" has no appreciable correlation to inflation or monetary supply over 18-month periods? > And "Inflation hedge" has been redefined to be something that isn't very useful for investing. "Inflation Hed…

I'm specifically not calling anything an inflation hedge [0]. I don't consider anything you'd accept as inflation in my investing. I'm looking at money creation. And you are correct that I also disregard correlations over 18 month periods. I suspect most small-timers do. It isn't clear to me why that would matter. [0] To clarify what I meant a few comments ago, I meant what most other people would call an inflation h…

> I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance

In 2021, "Inflation Hedge" meant that if inflation would happen, BTC would protect you from it. Inflation then happened, and BTC failed to protect anyone. Now that its been disproven, people are changing the term "inflation hedge" to mean things that they never meant before.

-------------------

If it takes over 18-months for an "Inflation Hedge" to protect you from inflation, I think I can safely say it fails at its job. (A hedge is supposed to protect you from the event, so that you can reallocate your money from the hedge into all the assets that drop during said event).

Now if you want to argue to me that "inflation hedge" never meant anything with regards to inflation or hedging, then sure, we're both in agreement there. Its a meaningless term inside of the cryptocoin community.

--------

Meanwhile, the people who actually were worried about Inflation bought TIPS, and then sold TIPS during their height (making money, that they could use to purchase other assets). That's what a hedge actually looks like.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#132
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RemindMe! 5 years

Or you could just look at the last 15 years and stop pretending that BTC is anything new. If BTC were a person, it'd be entering high school and thinking about a student-driver license. We've got an extensive history to draw upon now.

I’m not pretending Bitcoin is new. My comment was because of that fact. It’s the same old tired song and dance. Bitcoin goes up: “these idiot kids got lucky.” Bitcoin goes down: “about time those idiots learn their lesson! Bitcoin’s a scam!”

Bitcoin is undeniably volatile, but it is becoming less volatile over time and it continues to (on an investment period longer than a year or so) be a fantastic hedge against inflation.

Even if you buy stocks, the general consensus is that you should be looking at a longer timeframe to ensure you can handle any short-term losses.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A history of bitcoin capturing orders of magnitude more value over basically any 4 year period, yea, the records pretty good for an emerging money.

That doesn’t mean it will continue to rise in the future. It also isn’t tied to anything outside of these very expensive exchanges. I can’t use bitcoin to buy a candy bar or pay someone to fix my toilet. Nor is there intrinsic worth to it.

Why not? You could open a store and accept it as a method of payment.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value is subjective, not intrinsic. It is guarenteed to rise like everything else of limited supply; the value of fiat currencies must necessarily decrease over time in their operation, because the base monetary unit can only be issued as credit which must be paid back at interest. Were the value of fiat currencies to increase in any meaningful sense, it will result in widespread defaults in the banking sector.

> It is guarenteed to rise like everything else of limited supply They aren't making any more VHS copies of Toy Story, which IIRC was estimated to be ~21 Million copies of tape.

I believe Bitcoin is a bit more durable than a VHS, but this is a fun comparison nonetheless.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created.

> Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created. I'll bite, because I struggle to find people who think this. What value is created?

Personally, the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system.

For other people I’ve seen a wide variety of things they consider valuable that I don’t care for. Trading, community, loans, art, gaming for examples.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#136
post #101
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, I know friends who lost all their savings to cryptocurrency. Don't know anyone who lost all their savings due to inflationary monetary policy.

1) Are you sure? Inflationary monetary policy is literally "people who try to hold cash will lose all their savings over 50 years". You must know someone who tried that; it's an easy mistake to make and most people are really bad at understanding investment. 2) The Bitcoin price is currently comparable to its all-time highs. So someone who lost all their money on crypto was doing something more exotic than just buyin…

Most savings accounts pay 5%+ now, I agree that holding your cash under your mattress is not the play, but that's very different than gambling on risky options or even riskier cryptocurrencies.

Your second point makes zero sense - BTC is 40% lower than it's all-time-high, I just looked it up. Other cryptos are much worse.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#137
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm specifically not calling anything an inflation hedge [0]. I don't consider anything you'd accept as inflation in my investing. I'm looking at money creation. And you are correct that I also disregard correlations over 18 month periods. I suspect most small-timers do. It isn't clear to me why that would matter. [0] To clarify what I meant a few comments ago, I meant what most other people would call an inflation h…

> I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance In 2021, "Inflation Hedge" meant that if inflation would happen, BTC would protect you from it. Inflation then happened, and BTC failed to protect anyone. Now that its been disproven, people are changing the term "inflation hedge" to mean things that they never meant before. ------------------- If it takes over 18-months for an "Inflati…

I mean, we (probably) do agree and this is an exercise in talking past each other - but the issue here is that Bitcoin appears to be preserving its value and, all else equal, something that preserves it's value is going to appreciate in price faster than the inflation rate [0].

So if someone is worried about monetary creation devaluing the currency, based on what we've seen so far, they'd be doing well to buy Bitcoin. Now you are correct that that isn't an inflation hedge. But typing out all that is a lot of words so unless someone invents a new short phrase to describe "monetary creation devaluing the currency" people are going to keep misusing the word "inflation" to mean that. And, frankly, that is what the word should mean in monetary contexts; the technocrats can go hang. Hopefully not literally, but they seem on a mission to upset people.

[0] Assuming the situation snaps back to pre-COVID trends, anyway. At the moment there is a lot of excitement and the M2 is going down.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#138
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just look at the last 15 years and stop pretending that BTC is anything new. If BTC were a person, it'd be entering high school and thinking about a student-driver license. We've got an extensive history to draw upon now.

I’m not pretending Bitcoin is new. My comment was because of that fact. It’s the same old tired song and dance. Bitcoin goes up: “these idiot kids got lucky.” Bitcoin goes down: “about time those idiots learn their lesson! Bitcoin’s a scam!” Bitcoin is undeniably volatile, but it is becoming less volatile over time and it continues to (on an investment period longer than a year or so) be a fantastic hedge against inf…

> It’s the same old tired song and dance.

Yeah. "BTC Is an inflation hedge". Then BTC doesn't protect you from inflation. Then "Inflation hedge doesn't mean inflation or hedge, it really means..."

I'm tired of BTC community defining terms, and then redefining them when the statistics don't work out in their favor. I recognize that BTC community wants "number goes up", but just stick with that and be honest with yourself. Don't invent new bullshit terms for bullshit reasons that are discarded almost immediately.

> be a fantastic hedge against inflation.

Holy crap here we go again.

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created. I'll bite, because I struggle to find people who think this. What value is created?

Personally, the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system. For other people I’ve seen a wide variety of things they consider valuable that I don’t care for. Trading, community, loans, art, gaming for examples.

> Personally, the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system.

Doesn't cash also fulfil these? I'd have thought bitcoin is more fickle than cash.

> For other people I’ve seen a wide variety of things they consider valuable that I don’t care for. Trading, community, loans, art, gaming for examples.

Sorry - is this crypto related? Or just examples of things people like?

Re: Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

#140

Of all the antagonisms for young adults, I would say an easy method to buy cryptocurrency and hedge against inflation is not one of them. The much more significant antagonist for financially vulnerable young adults is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that has priced many out of ever owning a home. Furthermore, the elite's industrial policy of offshoring manufacturing to China, deindustrializin…

I think you're on to something! If you want to each the young folks how banks are going to screw them long into the future, you could instead encourage them to get into crypto today so they can get screwed immediately.
Post reply on HN