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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#361

Post by bloppe »

dist-epoch wrote: post #345
bloppe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the initial arguments, look no further than the Genesis block, which includes this text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks In many rich countries, all signs point to nasty inflation for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is inflation-proof because there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin. Having a secure system with that property means accepting some tradeoff…

If you only care about inflation, real-estate in desirable locations is also inflation-proof. You can't print more land in San Francisco, London or Hong Kong.

Way less liquidity and way more administrative overhead, but sure

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#362

Post by ttoinou »

FabHK wrote: post #357
pas wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but there's no compounding interest. no dividend based on future cashflows. holding stocks of a diverse index seems better on the long run, no?

Indeed. The crypto crowd seems to assume that the options for your savings are cash or bank deposits, or crypto. That's nonsense. A balanced portfolio of stocks (with some bonds maybe to reduce vol and improve your Sharpe Ratio) handily beats inflation. Heck, even bonds alone have mostly had positive real yields. This also supports and funds the productive economy, unlike crypto.

Not using your cash also helps the economy. More exchange of money means more velocity means decrease of value of the money.

By not using your cash (by for example holding crypto) you’re making the money that circulates higher value

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#363

Post by phplovesong »

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago.

Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people.

Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is not it.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#364

Post by virgilp »

dist-epoch wrote: post #345
bloppe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the initial arguments, look no further than the Genesis block, which includes this text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks In many rich countries, all signs point to nasty inflation for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is inflation-proof because there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin. Having a secure system with that property means accepting some tradeoff…

If you only care about inflation, real-estate in desirable locations is also inflation-proof. You can't print more land in San Francisco, London or Hong Kong.

Yeah but you can also have a disaster strike in that place (say, a nuclear accident) that will obliterate your real-estate value. Or general society changes that will make a city much less desirable (see the "rust belt"). Of course, nothing is without risk - so in that sense, it's not surprising that real-estate has risks. But that's what I wanted to underline, nothing is "inflation-proof". There's no guaranteed way to preserve wealth (much less increase it). None.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#365

Post by bloppe »

pas wrote: post #334
bloppe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the initial arguments, look no further than the Genesis block, which includes this text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks In many rich countries, all signs point to nasty inflation for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is inflation-proof because there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin. Having a secure system with that property means accepting some tradeoff…

but there's no compounding interest. no dividend based on future cashflows. holding stocks of a diverse index seems better on the long run, no?

Usually, yes. But the government can still tank the economy in all sorts of ways. It happens more frequently in some countries than others, but it can happen anywhere.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#366

Post by phplovesong »

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Simply put:

Bitcoin was to be an alternative to FIAT, but it ended up being nothing more then a meme-stock that consumes more energy than Poland or Argentina.

Its sad really. But the greed in people turned it into shit.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#367

Post by atwrk »

cherryteastain wrote: post #341
pas wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but there's no compounding interest. no dividend based on future cashflows. holding stocks of a diverse index seems better on the long run, no?

Check out how $100 put in bank deposits or S&P500 have done versus gold over the last 50 years. You will find that these do not generate real returns when measured against sound currency either.

$100 put into S&P 500 in 1975 would be about $7500 today, or about $1250 in 1975 dollars.

$100 put into gold in 1975 would be about $2600 today, or about $440 in 1975 dollars.

S&P 500 would have had 3x the returns of gold.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#368

Post by titanomachy »

joejohnson wrote: post #326

Guy who was "enamored by the whole idea of Bitcoin being a private bank for wealthy individuals" is shocked to learn that the system "will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility for the younger generation". He's now wiser than the average Randian acolyte, but still seems to think this structural feature of capitalism is somehow unique to cryptocurrency.

“Surely allowing the world’s wealthiest people to shelter their capital from the greedy clutches of democratically elected governments will naturally lead to a more equitable and humanistic world order”

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#369

Post by npoc »

tsimionescu wrote: post #348
copirate wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the Lightning network, L2 is basically a database between only 2 parties that are required to be online during the transaction. It's not possible to double spend in that situation. There's the possibility of double spending by committing to the bitcoin blockchain an old version of your "database", but then you would face the penalty of having your entire balance confiscated by the other party. More details here:…

> but then you would face the penalty of having your entire balance confiscated by the other party. Only if the other party notices in time that you did this. You are reliant on active monitoring of the blockchain to know that your transactions actually happened. And the more you want to scale (i.e. the more transactions you do on a single Lightning channel without settling it on the BTC blockchain), the bigger the r…

If monitoring really is a problem isn't simple automation the solution?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#370

Post by npoc »

ryandvm wrote: post #110
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Crypto makes perfect sense if you just understand it's for doing illegal stuff. No moral judgement, but the only viable use case for the blockchain is doing things with money that the authorities don't want you to do. Other than that, no, there is no use for a distributed database because doing financial transactions with people you can't even trust to abide by the law is generally a bad idea.

You're clearly someone who doesn't agree with the quantitive theory of money.
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