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One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

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Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#41

Post by jimcsharp »

smcl wrote: post #40
simple-thoughts wrote: post #36

Prediction: El Salvador will look genius in the next Bitcoin cycle. Other emerging market central banks will proceed to copy their model creating the next cycle’s peak. Once they stop buying, the market will crash again creating either a global depression or a bailout of the btc economy by USG, causing a repeat of the bank bailout that spawned btc in the first place.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

People talk about crypto cycles like they talk about metal cycles and I'm not sure how to distinguish the two (and that's why I'm not invested in either).

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#42

Post by SkipperCat »

wikfwikf wrote: post #21
n4r9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin as a primary currency is: where do I go when it goes wrong? If the system holding my money is hacked, or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? Legal recourse is typically something provided by a state. But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency. I'm not up to scratch on the…

That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now. Firstly by evangelists who tried to establish a BTC economy, and secondly in the illicit economy. Bitcoin miners and devs took the project in a specific direction a few years later, optimizing it for use as digital gold, while making it much harder and more expensive to use as a currency.

100% agree. The early days of Silk Road showed the true value of Bitcoin. It was a great untraceable currency. Perfect for buying drugs (no moral judgement, just saying what happened). Then, around 2016, CNBC “discovered” crypto and so much investor money and mania jumped in. Now it’s just a value store for dreamers. The fact that the word HODL exists kinda proves that point.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#43

Post by mattmanser »

smcl wrote: post #40
simple-thoughts wrote: post #36

Prediction: El Salvador will look genius in the next Bitcoin cycle. Other emerging market central banks will proceed to copy their model creating the next cycle’s peak. Once they stop buying, the market will crash again creating either a global depression or a bailout of the btc economy by USG, causing a repeat of the bank bailout that spawned btc in the first place.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

Unfortunately I don't think the public will stay turned against it.

Pyramid and MLM schemes exist and thrive today despite widespread knowledge of them and how they work.

So I think shitcoins will have their day again, they'll just have new branding.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#44

Post by donatj »

ceejayoz wrote: post #35
donatj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the dollar’s buying power recently? I went from living very comfortably to living paycheck-to-paycheck in about 6 months. Holding my value in USD has become a significant risk.

Now imagine you had half as much USD for your groceries, because you decided to put it in BTC a year ago instead.

Quite literally what happened. My groceries cost over twice as much.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#45

Post by px43 »

smcl wrote: post #40
simple-thoughts wrote: post #36

Prediction: El Salvador will look genius in the next Bitcoin cycle. Other emerging market central banks will proceed to copy their model creating the next cycle’s peak. Once they stop buying, the market will crash again creating either a global depression or a bailout of the btc economy by USG, causing a repeat of the bank bailout that spawned btc in the first place.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

Recognize that every two years for the past 10 years someone has posted basically the exact same thing as what you just posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#46

Post by strangescript »

jimcsharp wrote: post #41
smcl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

People talk about crypto cycles like they talk about metal cycles and I'm not sure how to distinguish the two (and that's why I'm not invested in either).

It's almost as if all publicly traded markets are ponzi-schemes on some level, but with better regulation.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#47

Post by theplumber »

afterburner wrote: post #14
croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

It's worse than a lottery for some. It rewarded incorrect thinking on how the financial industry works. Speculative spikes can happen for a lot of reasons, but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons.

>> but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons.

Bitcoin was not bought because people believed it will replace all currencies. They bought bitcoin to get rich fast and cash out BEFORE the expected crash.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#48

Post by osigurdson »

What I don't like about this article is it is almost entirely focused on price. If bitcoin would have went up, it would have been a wise move according to the premise of the article. I think a longer timescale is needed.

I'd like to see an analysis of the situation, assuming that the value goes neither up or down, but simply holds a constant value in an inflation indexed manner. Would it still be a bad idea in that situation?

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#49

Post by smcl »

px43 wrote: post #45
smcl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

Recognize that every two years for the past 10 years someone has posted basically the exact same thing as what you just posted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg

If a snarky YouTuber doing the “this one time at bandcamp” voice is the best argument, I dunno what to tell you. To borrow his condescending tone, he is making the argument “you think line go down, but line go up!” the latter half of which is the title of Dan Olsen’s high-profile video of the cryptocurrency boom.

Unless it becomes practical to pay for something with cryptocurrencies (which for me should be the primary use case of any currency) they basically seem used by people who want to time buys and sells according to the current boom/bust or pump/dump cycle.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#50

Post by benj111 »

strangescript wrote: post #46
jimcsharp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People talk about crypto cycles like they talk about metal cycles and I'm not sure how to distinguish the two (and that's why I'm not invested in either).

It's almost as if all publicly traded markets are ponzi-schemes on some level, but with better regulation.

On some level yes. If you're day trading.

But you are actually buying a slice of a company and its future earnings. With bitcoin what are you actually buying?

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