BITCOIN

tebbins

adindas said:

bugbyte_2 said:

Thank you. You managed to find one post from 30th July from one poster 50 pages ago, where you completely and quite spectacularly missed the point they were making. Clearly not a liar then.

Thank you also for the Matt Damon clip, however I prefer to take my financial advice from Wil Wheaton. 

You do know that Matt Damon was making an advert for a crypto company and being paid to do this? They are not necessarily his personal views. You do know this? 

Higly insensible comment like

"I prefer to take my financial advice from Wil Wheaton" ,

"They are not necessarily his personal views. You do know this? "

Sensible people and even children should have noticed from the beginning that this video clip is an advertisement. Do you really think that the people would take financial advice from Matt Damon??

Also are you even aware that this video clip has been posted on this thread before??

It is it the message that he conveys “Fortune Favour the brave” that is the  reason why some people are making <1% a year while other people are making that in kess than a week. BTC provides a return of  (+7,734.91%) within five years. I know the feeling of missing the gravy train, missing the boat ...

"Provides" and "making that in less than a week" implies you believe this is continuous, which is also inconsistent with the whole point of BTC as its own currency, in which case the return is 0.

Malthusian

adindas said:

The dialogue between Malthusian vs Cornucopian vs has been going on and on and has never ended.

Similarly, the dialogue between flat earther and round earther.

Very true. But the world has always been round, even when the flat earthers had conviningly won the argument, and always will be. Similarly punters' money in always == punters' money out.

Malthusianism vs Cornucopianism works slightly differently in that Malthusians have the advantage of an unfalsifiable argument - "disaster may not have happened yet but it will one day, just you wait". Another example of an unfalsifiable argument is "Bitcoin may not have gone to $100,000 when I said it would, or the time I said it would before that, but it will eventually".

You believe what you want to believe.  There are a lot of evidence retailer traders who actively investing/trading making return of 30%+  in the last couples of years. You will need to find out yourself, but do not call me a liar. The reason why you do not know this because you might keep living in your own compound and do not want to see or learn what the other people are doing.

Yes, I've seen the Instagram videos. It's a case of don't care, not don't know. It is not impressive that if millions of bros worldwide try to get rich quick by playing the stockmarket or the crypto market, some of them will generate a return of 30% in a year, or even two years running. If you get a thousand rats and wire their cages up to a stockmarket ticker and a button that buys and sells shares, many of them will generate over 30% in a year, and a handful will do it two years running.

There is no evidence that anyone can consistently beat the market, let alone generate 30%pa.

Has the proliferation of near zero platform such as eToro, Trading 212, Robinhood, Freetrade, WeBull, Stake, MooMoo, been started about 20-30 years ago.

If you're generating 30%pa why would you use a kiddies' trading platform like Robinhood? Don't you remember when the Gamestop pump-and-dump was going on, and bros were complaining that they missed out on the chance to get rich because Robinhood crashed and they couldn't hit the "buy" button when they intended to? There was talk of class action lawsuits (which went nowhere).

If you're serious about generating 30%pa from share trading you would pay for a proper trading platform with up-to-the-nanosecond capability like those used by City and Wall Street traders. Not one run on a shoestring that can be expected to crash the moment there is actually an opportunity for the man on the street to fill his boots (as it did last time). The fees would be irrelevant to someone generating 30%pa.

Using Robinhood to try to generate returns of 30%pa is like joining the California gold rush with a plastic bucket and spade.

If all this stuff started 20-30 years ago, but 2-3 decades later most of the world's wealth is still in the hands of established capitalists, oligarchs and the handful of entrepreneurs who got rich by bringing a rare and valuable product to market, same as it has been for the last 500 years, then I think it is fair to say that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has had its chance to make the little guy rich and bring down Wall Street, and comprehensively failed.

MATT DAMON!

HCIMbtw

Couple of challenges I have with the way you frame your argument malthusian, you refer to claims other media shills make about BTC projections, but apply these as a generality for all people who invest 

Media has always been at the more extreme end to geenrate clicks and there is room for moderate thinking and modelling as well, while backing crypto. 

There are legitimate ways for people to regularly return rates close to 30% with little risk (aside from the lack of regulation/platform) primarily related to arbitrage. They are just a pain in the backside to understand and set up, and over the coming years the spread related to these opportunities will narrow. Darren covered a number of them pretty comprehensively in the crypto dabble thread. 

On GME, that show is not completely over, sure some courts have thrown out class actions on the basis citing that message exchanges between citadel and RH were suspicious but not enough to prosecute. But there is no denying the impact of closing down buying ability on the main retail investor exchanges and I think the retail investors involved have some right to feel aggrieved by the manipulation.

On your point around speed of exchanges, I actually think there is where some layer one blockchain technology has some interesting potential, around speed of payment and potential integration for exchange services, maybe not even for retailers but for institutions or the exchanges themselves. 

On your point about wealth accumulation among a few, i'd like to put forward a suggestion that this is not all 'rare' 'valuable' product, but a big part of at least part of it of the back of global developed world fiscal policy. 

Thrugelmir

HCIMbtw said:

On your point about wealth accumulation among a few, i'd like to put forward a suggestion that this is not all 'rare' 'valuable' product, but a big part of at least part of it of the back of global developed world fiscal policy. 

Nah. Boils down to personal greed and wanting the biggest share of the pie possible for oneself. Two takes to trade. Not a onesided bet that many assume it to be. 

adindas

If you're serious about generating 30%pa from share trading you would pay for a proper trading platform with up-to-the-nanosecond capability like those used by City and Wall Street traders. Not one run on a shoestring that can be expected to crash the moment there is actually an opportunity for the man on the street to fill his boots (as it did last time). The fees would be irrelevant to someone generating 30%pa.

Another dialogue of the deaf.
That comment shows very little understanding of the reality on the ground.

The hedgies get multi  billion US$ in their custodies, not all necceseraliy their own money. Majority of the active retailer traders/investors have less than a  hundred  thousand usd; in rare case  a million and they are using their own money. Also keep in mind the hedgies get a special deal with brokers, market makers as they buy shares in bulk quantities.Only clueless will say you need up-to-the-nanosecond execution. Even profesional, hedgies hardly ever need such an lightning speed execution. Unless of course if they are using robot to trade on a special even, occasions.

Regarding the fees, do you even know how the fees work in active investing/trading ?? The fees for share dealing, and how many times the people are doing share dealing in a month ?

The fees for share dealing with Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) for instance is $11.95 per deal, not to mention the currency fees, exchange rate, the spread.  You get charged on both ways when you open and when you close your position so you will need to double that. Is $11.95 per share dealing + other fees is insignificant when you  are doing multiple share dealing in a week / day ???? Now  Do your own math !!!!  Are you still saying insignificant ???

Only the clueless can not see this elephant on the room than you will need to understand this first before making decision of doing an active investing / trading. You pay almost nothing and you could do share dealing as many as you want and you do not get or very little charge with near zero trading platform.

It is only when you doe the Passive investing, invest and forget style like investing in index funds, multi diversified multi assets fund the fees are less irrelevant.
Regarding Robinhood many retail traders especially those affiliated with WSB have now moved their platform to another near zero fee platform. Some of them are even shorting the HOOD stock. In the past you do not have much option but nowadays more option are available. Many major platforms such as IBKR recently start revising theirs fee structure to be more friendly to retail traders. Some traders who used to use RH has moved from RH to IBKR.

The near zero fee trading platforms are making, the wealth distribution more even. Just see what happen with reasonable number of short squeeze case like GME, AMC, to Citadel, Melvin Capital. Michael Burry for trying shorting Tesla.

This is just an example:

https://libredd.it/r/amcstock/comments/o9izc1/heggies_lost_12b_since_the_staring_of_this_year/

Malthusian

HCIMbtw said:

Couple of challenges I have with the way you frame your argument malthusian, you refer to claims other media shills make about BTC projections, but apply these as a generality for all people who invest

I was responding to a specific claim that anyone can make 30%pa by trading shares and crypto.

Arbitrage is an entirely different kettle of fish. This is a thread about investment, i.e. passive returns. It is never unbelievable that someone could eke out a return of 30% on their capital by sitting in front of a screen for hours looking for mispricing opportunities, but not very interesting. Most people aren't going to be capable of it and if most people were capable of it, the opportunities wouldn't exist.

There's a reason Savings and Investment threads don't all end with "just go to the Matched Betting forum and find out how to make money from arbitrage".

On GME, that show is not completely over, sure some courts have thrown out class actions on the basis citing that message exchanges between citadel and RH were suspicious but not enough to prosecute. But there is no denying the impact of closing down buying ability on the main retail investor exchanges and I think the retail investors involved have some right to feel aggrieved by the manipulation.

No they don't, as most of them would have lost money if they'd got the shares they were stopped from buying. That's not a judgment on their trading ability but simple mathematics. Punters' money in == punters' money out and the smart money had already been taken off the table when RH crashed. That isn't going to stop them feeling aggrieved, of course.

The cases have been tossed out but the show is not over? Sounds like over to me unless there's other cases you're not mentioning.

It's over, regardless of whether the losing bros are happy to let lawyers milk them for a bit more.

HCIMbtw

Malthusian said:

HCIMbtw said:

Couple of challenges I have with the way you frame your argument malthusian, you refer to claims other media shills make about BTC projections, but apply these as a generality for all people who invest

I was responding to a specific claim that anyone can make 30%pa by trading shares and crypto.

Arbitrage is an entirely different kettle of fish. This is a thread about investment, i.e. passive returns. It is never unbelievable that someone could eke out a return of 30% on their capital by sitting in front of a screen for hours looking for mispricing opportunities, but not very interesting. Most people aren't going to be capable of it and if most people were capable of it, the opportunities wouldn't exist.

There's a reason Savings and Investment threads don't all end with "just go to the Matched Betting forum and find out how to make money from arbitrage".

On GME, that show is not completely over, sure some courts have thrown out class actions on the basis citing that message exchanges between citadel and RH were suspicious but not enough to prosecute. But there is no denying the impact of closing down buying ability on the main retail investor exchanges and I think the retail investors involved have some right to feel aggrieved by the manipulation.

No they don't, as most of them would have lost money if they'd got the shares they were stopped from buying. That's not a judgment on their trading ability but simple mathematics. Punters' money in == punters' money out and the smart money had already been taken off the table when RH crashed. That isn't going to stop them feeling aggrieved, of course.

The cases have been tossed out but the show is not over? Sounds like over to me unless there's other cases you're not mentioning.

It's over, regardless of whether the losing bros are happy to let lawyers milk them for a bit more.

First para,

Agree, saying 'anyone' can make 30% is like saying anyone can get an A in GCSE maths.. there are some pretty simple ways to get double digit returns, but I don't use them myself (even though I could), would rather have money in an ISA wrapper than bother taking it out for reasonable cash equivalent returns on some unregulated platform 

But that said, it is possible.. and I don't dismiss it.

Second para, 

I don't think the money in money out mantra is the best to use in this example where big funds have taken out short positions exceeding the total float of the stock. Essentially putting themselves in the position where if the stock is bought up and not traded they become liable for infinity losses. Yes it wouldn't happen because people would take their profits, but theoretically the hedge funds had screwed themselves into a corner they were paying ongoing fee's to hold and taking massive risk.

I'm not particularly up to date on GME but I believe the funds holding short positions have largely been able to close many of them throguh the use of synthetic shares of the past year, which is a point that makes me sympathise with investors as they've been playing on a completely lopsided pitch. But I don't believe the show is over, one because there is still short interest and this will always be a target for squeezing (yes no moon, but still pump opportunities), but more importantly because of a lot of the planned gamestop development, all this talk about zkrollups on the loopring protocol to establish an NFT platform for gaming. This might sound like nonsense, but even with a basic understanding I can see possibility of the largest retail gaming institution reinventing themselves as the online platform for game trading, probably a little bit harder for a company that has such a high cost base associated with physical retail, but they have made some really interesting management changes, and if they pull it off.... There is much more to play out here in my opinion, behind the memes, some real industry leading ideas. 

Frequentlyhere

I try not to be drawn in to this, and fail every time. The reason why this debate goes around and around is not because of the envy of nocoiners, its because they have some very good points to make about some outrageous statements.

To be clear, there could be a potential future for crypto. There are certainly big returns to be made and have been made in the short term. It's an exciting place that's currently a wild west and has some potential of arguable size.

Where crypto bros really need to hold up and listen is when they make arguments like this:

"There are legitimate ways for people to regularly return rates close to 30% with little risk (aside from the lack of regulation/platform) primarily related to arbitrage"

This is horse manure. Have people been making these returns? No doubt. Might they still for a while? Sure.
With little risk and regularly going foward in the medium/long term? No.

At present, there are little/no intrinsic returns to crypto. The only 'profits' generated are by others entering and carrying some heavy baggage. It's a way to make some big money, but if you believe there's little risk in that then you really need to take a reality check. Also, if you think crypto staking represents low risk, you also need to read up on some counters to that.

Bottom line, you can't earn 10%+ in a zero rate environment with little risk, no matter what the asset type or market environment.

For what it's worth, after many discussions I do know that there is a breed of crypto enthusiast who has it right and will find little argument here. Their views usually are some/all of:

1) Recognition that Crypto is highly speculative, and as such have an appropriately low % of their portfolio allocated
2) Recognise that much of the crypto space is closer to gambling than investing, and avoid those areas.
3) Act humbly whilst they are making money, and don't make ridiculous claims like 'guaranteed returns' 'low risk' and insults towards the intelligence and education of others.

These people I have time for. What I shall loosely call Crypto Bros YOLO'ing, pumping, flexing, talking nonsense about inflation hedging and pristine assets, I don't. 

Frequentlyhere

If you'd like a good centrist take by the way that neither dismisses or worships crypto, I can recommend this one (and the blog in general is excelllent too).

https://ofdollarsanddata.com/fear-and-loathing-in-cryptoland/

Zola.

Anyone who is serious should recognise "cryptocurrencies" are pretty much the riskiest things you can invest in right now. But with that high volatility comes the potential for high returns. History has shown thus far that Bitcoin has returned A LOT of money for those who are patient. 

Anyone who bets the farm on Bitcoin (and especially other cryptos), is a mug, likewise, I think anyone who shuts down this financial technological revolution completely and just doesn't get it, may later deeply regret it..

Time will tell.