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Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

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Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#21

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

> Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al. Yes, that was before Gregory Maxwell, Luke-jr, Adam Back et. Al hijacked the project with the help from "theymos". They derailed the whole project by doubling down on keeping the block size at 1mb, with the ulterior motive of providing their ow…

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Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#22

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

There are very few unbanked people in western countries, and so its natural that it would be unusual to come across those use cases there. There are in fact services that will act as a glue between the bitcoin ecosystem and "fiat", such as bitrefill which allows you to buy gift cards for many different stores using bitcoin. However for most people and every day payments there isn't really a compelling reason to try to use bitcoin. In fact, if you have both bitcoin and national currency, with rising prices it makes more sense to hold onto the bitcoin and spend the national currency.

There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.

The downside with stablecoins is that they rely on trusted entities to maintain the peg, whereas bitcoin enforces its own scarcity and trades at its own value.

I don't really think its responsible to go around telling people that bitcoin will gain in value, but there are certainly many people who believe this to be the case, and the pool is growing. I think the key value for this community is that we have something which is easier to transfer globally than a hard asset like gold, while being independent from particular jurisdictions such as the US, EU or China.

And yes I see the lack of awareness in bitcoin community about the extent to which it has become the defacto standard for internet scammers, who trick vulnerable people into depositing their life savings into a bitcoin ATM using various methods. You can see many examples of this on kitboga's youtube channel. At least, he has been able to work with some bitcoin exchanges to fight back against this in a small way.

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#23
post #13

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

Thanks for sharing your story. I too frequently think back on "what could have been." Back in 2013, I bought and sold a bitcoin, and every time I see a crypto headline I remember my mistake of spending it. Maybe we should not be so hard on ourselves. Afterall, we still have a heartbeat. Did we truly make a mistake, or did we narrowly avoid getting consumed by avarice?

It was NOT a mistake. Do you consider not buying the winning lottery ticket a mistake? No. You don't know which ticket is going to win in advance, and buying a random ticket is ill-advised because the odds are against it being the winning one.

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#24

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

> But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. It doesn't sound like a mistake to me at all. You paid off debts and invested in something that has delivered value to you for almost 15 years now. A mistake would have been to spend it on blow and hookers.

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Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#25

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

I followed around the same time and came to the same conclusions, except I didn't buy or mine any because I 1) hugely underestimated how much that illegal activity was worth. 2) didn't appreciate the potential scale of the pump n dump

Saying an investment will at some point drop in value is not hard, saying exactly when and how high it’ll get first is.

-my biggest learning from the first half of the 2020s

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#26

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

It seems the same as gold to me, gold having a nonzero physical value isn't meaningful when its price is so out of whack with that.

I think bitcoin has a culture that fortified itself against wild price swings and has lots of people on HODL / to the moon. It's their long term plan, they're not selling it just like you probably aren't selling your retirement account.

I'm not really convinced the stock market is that different to be honest. It's good that it gives companies a way to raise money with some basis in who people think will do well. But from my perspective as an individual with a 401k I'm just buying and holding. One day you look at your retirement account and it's a lot more than you ever put in, you didn't do any work beyond putting it in and I guess paying whoever runs the index fund or whatever. What are we doing here except pooling our money with the richest folks and watching money concentrate, holding until we retire and hoping it doesn't all come crashing down?

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#27

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

> But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. Maybe a tiresome pedantic response, but this is only a "mistake" to the same extent that it was a mistake for [everyone in the world who had the required funds] not to buy 100 BTC in 2015. If you can overcome the cognitive biases (endowment effect, loss aversion, etc.), the fact that you previously owned the 100 BTC has no real bear…

It was also a mistake for me to not buy a lottery ticket with the numbers 4 11 17 25 41 51.

There's a slow drip feed of stories of people who did buy BTC and have lost it, either to human error, lack of backups, crime, or failure of institutions. Remember MtGox collapse in 2014? The whole fad was obviously over by then, wasn't it?

We're going to have another 2008-style bubble collapse eventually. But it's not clear what the radius of effect will be.

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#28

I have reason to believe my country's fiat will be inflated in the coming 12 months. Not hyper inflation, but a 50% to 100% increase in consumer prices over the next 12 months. My country is small and not connected to anything American related. Still wondering if it is a good idea to buy more crypto now as a further hedge against my fears. The article makes me think it may be unwise to do so given the massive specula…

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Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#29

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012. Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up act…

Don't feel bad. I sold my coins and now I'm glad I don't have the headache of securing it now.

Re: Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

#30

I have reason to believe my country's fiat will be inflated in the coming 12 months. Not hyper inflation, but a 50% to 100% increase in consumer prices over the next 12 months. My country is small and not connected to anything American related. Still wondering if it is a good idea to buy more crypto now as a further hedge against my fears. The article makes me think it may be unwise to do so given the massive specula…

You could just buy dollars, Euros, or (absurdly) the stablecoins which let non-US persons more easily hold USD-equivalent assets than having a US bank account.
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