701–710 of 1001 posts
For the Gary Genler's comment (and the opinion of a lot of commenters on Hacker News): > Though we’re merit neutral, I’d note that the underlying assets in the metals ETPs have consumer and industrial uses, while in contrast bitcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware,[4] money laundering,[5] sanction evasion,[6] and terrorist financing.[7] You can fin…
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What does it means that a society "wins"? Gold isn't money - it's a commodity. It isn't even a great store of value over that last thousand years or so.
> What does it means that a society "wins"? It grows stronger/more efficient compared to others. > Gold isn't money - it's a commodity. It isn't even a great store of value over that last thousand years or so. I don't want to argue semantics, but yes gold certainly isn't great at storing value - its supply doubles every 40 years and over the last 100+ years has been slowly demonetised as economic value moved into fia…
There is a lot more to societies than money. Can you do huge damage to societies from hyperinflation - for sure, but outside of catastrophic failures of money, not so sure there is a strong link.
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But they are not theoretical, users who have their own crypto wallets have been unaffected by all the failed exchanges (MtGox, FTX, etc.) There are other actual advantages that some people today benefit from, like avoiding confiscation and uncensorable transactions ( which would have been appreciated by the Canadian truckers when they were debanked), or protection against high inflation (like many Venezuelans and Arg…
You're absolutely right, though I took the parent's main point to be that it's incredible how little people seem to care about these actually-very-practical advantages. (The advantages must seem purely theoretical to people so willing to throw them away.)
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There is no underlying value. No intrinsic value. The value is purely a function of speculative demand. And while previously people anticipated the demand would go up "organically" because of actual real-world usage, you know to pay for stuff and such, that hasn't really materialized in the way we hoped. How many actually use BTC for things like that? At its BEST it has usage to purchase other coins - but that's abou…
The IRL usage is as a savings account. As more people understand its fundamental qualities (or even just see number go up) and save their wealth in it, it's value will become less volatile and it will become more useful as a unit of account and day-to-day medium of exchange. It will be >$10M/BTC before that'll start to happen though.
I don't know about you, but close to 100% of everyone I know that have bought BTC (and other coins, for that matter) the past 5-10 years have done it in hopes of it going to the moon. The bitcoin maxis are at this point a fringe movement, a distant past, really.
If you put all your savings on index funds, there is some predictability and underlying assets to reason for. What is the best predictor for whether crypto goes up or down? How can you possibly predict what triggers its price, if there's little to none real-life usage?
Unless we see widespread adaption of some sort, for actual concrete applications, it is just going to be pure speculation.
But I agree on volatility - ETFs can certainly reduce volatility if there's enough growth.
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Bitcoin equalises this. USD is going to hyper-inflate to 0 relative to bitcoin, and bitcoin will ultimately be the world reserve asset.
> world reserve asset. Except it's extremely unsuited for this purpose despite of what some delusional people might be thinking. No (at at least semi stable) country ever will use bitcoin as their primary reserve asset...
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It's sad people are so financially illiterate. Buying partial ownership (shares) in a real company that makes a product or service profitably, or loaning money to a person or business that will be paid back with interest, are both ways to invest capital which can increase in value with no "greater fool". Apple stock isn't worth more today than in 1990 because people arbitrarily agreed upon a bigger number, it's worth…
you missed the point. yeah some numbers to up because company sold products. but everyone who bet on coke instead got richer. go diabetes!
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It has survived by changing the narrative and getting people to buy the stories. It was going to replace money, but then it didn't because the network slowed down to the point where it was unusable. Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete. So then the message was flipped and Bitcoin was now 'an asset', not a currency, further supported by IRS's decision to tax it like an asset, so it was adverti…
> Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete Depends on the transaction. To buy coffee? Of course not, but there are transactions that can take hours or days to clear.
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There's a difference between being bearish and being fully anti crypto and just spreading conjecture. Being bearish is very normal, being rabidly anti crypto on every crypto thread on HN like a couple folks who are in this very thread is being in a bubble.
Some people are just like that. The same thing happens on the other side of the fence alarmingly often, where someone will claim Bitcoin is the second coming of Christ and sell their home before knowing basic technical details about the network. Or people who fully understand the system, and deliberately lie about a coin's functionality for petty gain. On either side there are people promoting altruistic regulation a…
But the amount of hubris and preoccupation about this here on HN is really something else. I've long learned not to try to engage in any kind of serious discussion about possible interesting aspects.
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The difference is that they can never stop you custodying the bitcoin yourself. Bitcoin won't become "quaint" - it will always sit there as the hardest money mankind has ever seen (and likely ever will). If they try and create tokens that don't represent bitcoin i.e. creating them out of thin air, then they will go down in value relative to bitcoin, just as we are seeing with fiat currencies and people will move thei…
> hardest money mankind has ever seen Except it's not really money is it? It's a speculative asset. > The difference is that they can never stop you custodying the bitcoin yourself. Except if you can no longer convert it to real money ($/€/etc.) it becomes effectively worthless or at least start trading at massive discount. Also the delusional/quasi-religious rhetoric is getting old. Can't you actually try to think o…
With bitcoin you don't need "real money", you can exchange it directly person to person. In any case other countries that embrace bitcoin will always exist.
It sounds like you need to learn what money really is. Try and figure out why mankind chose shells and beads as money, then gold and then fiat. It will help you understand why it will choose bitcoin next.