I was going to buy a bitcoin at 6K but thought it risky. Now I feel dumb.
I sold my bitcoin at 6k when I lost my job. IDK how I feel.
It last hit 5k in March. It hit 5k three years before. Wait a bit, it will drop before raising again.
Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
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Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#32I find this hilarious when many European banks have lost 98% of their market caps and individual stocks have just as much volatility in many cases. Maybe the investor warnings should be more even.
Bitcoin has essentially no intrinsic value. If people only used it as a currency, not as a speculative "investment", the price would be orders of magnitude lower. Stocks are much "safer" because the intrinsic value is often similar to the market price. Gold and some stocks (Tesla) are somewhere in between. They have intrinsic value but people also buy it speculatively so the price is way higher than the intrinsic val…
People use Bitcoin as a form of gold 2.0. Thats why the MC is where it is. Nobody in their right mind is making a cash flow case for btc unless you include lending which actually makes a decent return.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#33This is just: "Don't invest what you aren't prepared to lose," which has been the advice for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for a decade at this point. The headline makes it sound like they're threatening legal action or some sort of regulation, at least to me.
That's good advice for investing in general.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not wrong about stock volatility, but I think the point that there aren't any mechanisms for safety at all are fairly valid still: "Investors who are out of pocket will not be able to rely on the Financial Ombudsman Service to settle complaints or order compensation from offending firms. Consumers are also unlikely to be covered under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which covers losses up to £85,00…
I see what you're saying but this is still a bit ridiculous. You sue a company when malpractice occurs, that is not possible with btc. It simply exists. Its like saying you dont have investor protections when you buy oil or corn (unless we are talking about the exchange, and by the article I'm not sure what they're getting at).
Here are some possibilities for malpractice with Bitcoin: Exchanges lying about transactions, pricing, Exchanges refusing to allow or unable to allow extracting wealth stored in bitcoin, Exchanges front-running, Exchanges stealing money, 51% attack by miners, Governments expropriating wealth 10 years later claiming back taxes for undeclared earnings, Developers changing the rules of the currency (which are encoded in the client) and persuading enough to go along with it, Currencies which the price of Bitcoin is closely tethered to lying about their reserves... I could go on, but the entire edifice is built on confidence, and once that confidence evaporates for a second time, it's going to be very hard to recover.
There is a lot of risk investing in bitcoin, it is nothing like commodities, that's just the latest identity have dreamed up for it after it completely failed to live up to the hype of the previous identities first as a currency outwith government control, then as a distributed trust-free database, then as a foundational layer for myriad apps, and finally as a 'commodity' which nobody actually uses (unlike other speculative commodities like oil or corn which usually have a use value which the current value fluctuates around).
You do in fact have lots of protection when you buy other commodities, in the form of rules against cornering the market, rules against fraud, insurance, regulators etc. Look up the silver corner or similar episodes for what happens when markets in commodities are completely unregulated, as we see in the Bitcoin market at the moment.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#35This is just: "Don't invest what you aren't prepared to lose," which has been the advice for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for a decade at this point. The headline makes it sound like they're threatening legal action or some sort of regulation, at least to me.
Yeah that was my reading of the title, and I highly doubt this nothingburger article would be upvoted to one of the top spots without the clickbait title. Flagged for waste of time.
(I’m not a cryptocurrency fan, and have a grand total of a couple hundred bucks in crypto. Well, maybe a grand now, I don’t know.)
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#36I find this hilarious when many European banks have lost 98% of their market caps and individual stocks have just as much volatility in many cases. Maybe the investor warnings should be more even.
In Europe one got MIFID II and MiFIR a few years back that makes it so that everyone wishing to buy certain investment stuff have to pass a small knowledge test beforehand or show that they have understand the risks etc. So here this goes for most financial instruments and not just Bitcoin. I'm allowed to buy mutual funds at my trader, but in order to buy options I have to complete this tutorial to unlock that, for instance.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#37I was going to buy a bitcoin at 6K but thought it risky. Now I feel dumb.
I was trying to buy at 3K from a bitcoin machine last winter. There are several machines in Helsinki from different companies. They did not work. I decided this not a "free open market". These "banks" are only buying cheap and selling only when they themselves make a profit.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#38I find this hilarious when many European banks have lost 98% of their market caps and individual stocks have just as much volatility in many cases. Maybe the investor warnings should be more even.
Why are you comparing individual stocks to a currency?
Because this ‘currency’ is volatile like a small cap stock. This is the thing I always get a runaround about from Bitcoin advocates. Some say it’s a great currency, some say it’s a great investment. Well, by definition if it’s good at one thing, it’s bad a the other. Investments should provide good long term appreciation, and currency should be stable ideally not fluctuating in the double digit percentages in a given year. Bitcoin, you’re a fun experiment, but what’s the point of your existence?
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#39I find this hilarious when many European banks have lost 98% of their market caps and individual stocks have just as much volatility in many cases. Maybe the investor warnings should be more even.
Why are you comparing individual stocks to a currency?
Bitcoin hopes to be a currency, but isn't one.
People who have bought e.g. a pizza with bitcoin are examples of what NOT to do with Bitcoin. The very fact that Bitcoin holders expect it to rise in value makes it unsuitable as a medium of exchange.
Re: Bitcoin: Be prepared to lose all your money, FCA warns consumers
#40In London they are advertising bitcoin on the side of buses and in the Underground with the slogan 'when you see bitcoin on the side of a bus, it's time to buy'.
I thought that was outrageous and actually was a sign to sell. I mentioned this to a foreign exchange trader friend and we even finished each other's sentence with the above!