BITCOIN

HansOndabush

Scottex99 said:

HansOndabush said:

Onestepcloser said:

I personally don't own bitcoin but have invested about 4.5k in alt coins since December and as of today I'm up 500% probably more if I was to calculate the interest from staking.  Crypto for the most part is definitely not a scam , although volatile if you choose projects with solid technology  gains should continue just the same way it would with the stock market.

That is so completely not true. You don't seem to realise that stock markets go up due to the work done by companies to produce goods and services which increases the value of the companies such that they can pay larger dividends and investors are therefore willing to pay more for the shares. That is completely different to crypto currencies that produce nothing and have limited use and which cannot increase value on their own. Crypto price might be increasing for now but that is only due to other punters betting a higher stake on it. If you are making 500% then someone else is or will be losing it as Malthusian has tried to explain and which you clearly fail to grasp.

Crypto is like the stock market on steroids, fine.
But does it really make sense that Tesla is worth more than all the other US car companies combined? How many cars do they sell? Or that Apple is worth more than some countries? How good are their products really?

Trying to claim that the share price is exactly correlated to the profits and output of certain companies, and then use that as a reason why crypto somehow produces nothing in comparison, is just incredibly short-sighted. 

Malthusian's point also doesn't do it for me. How is it any different to the stock market? The market(s) determine the price for everything. Are we crying about how much the other people are losing when we sell stocks at a 5x profit too? I don't see how it's relevant at all.

I'll try again as you don't seem to understand the difference between shares in the stock market and a cryto currency token.

A share is what it says an actual share in a company that works and produces goods and services. The goods and services increase the value of the company, the company can pay dividends, and the shares rise and fall on the merits of the company; not just as wild speculation.

I admit that Apple and Tesla are arguably in a bubble too right now and buyers of their shares are possibly being over-optimistic about their future prospects. That however is totally different to speculating on Bitcoin in the hope that someone will pay a higher price for it sometime in the future. Bitcoin is not going to produce any clever smartphones or electric cars; it is never going to pay a dividend; in fact it is nothing but a number on a blockchain. Once governments bring out their official digital currency that actually has a purpose, i.e. you can buy things with it and pay bills, then what is the purpose of Bitcoin apart from trying to move funds around out of sight of the authorities?

When the crash comes, crypto will be the biggest casualty and probably never recover.

User232002

Malthusian said:

Punters' money in == punters' money out.

Just because you keep saying this does not make it true. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work.

Malthusian said:

It is mathematically impossible for everyone to sell their Bitcoin for more than they paid.

It really isn't. I'm not an art buff, but I imagine there are countless Picassos, Van Goghs and Monets that have continually sold for more than the previous buyer paid for going on a few hundred years now.

Malthusian said:

For someone to make a million pounds out of Bitcoin other people have to lose a million pounds.

Trade is a non zero sum game. 

Malthusian said:

A hell of a lot of people bought Bitcoin in that supposedly short three week window and are now sitting on losses, that's why the price was at $60k+.

In a stochastic system, prices at local peaks are always going to be unstable. This is hardly newsworthy. 

HansOndabush said:

I'll try again as you don't seem to understand the difference between shares in the stock market and a cryto currency token.

Laughable really. Especially because I have tried to avoid replying to you because you post consistently terrible takes and I genuinely believe you lack the intellectual ability and integrity to ever actually understand something that provides abstract value. 

HansOndabush said:

A share is what it says an actual share in a company that works and produces goods and services. The goods and services increase the value of the company, the company can pay dividends, and the shares rise and fall on the merits of the company; not just as wild speculation.

This might be how you want the world to work, but it isn't how it actually works.

Gamestop; "I just like the stock." Or, lets just highlight zombie companies with outrageous valuations that haven't made a profit for some time. 

HansOndabush said:

I admit that Apple and Tesla are arguably in a bubble too right now and buyers of their shares are possibly being over-optimistic about their future prospects. 

Actually, they aren't. Take the S&P500 and divide it by the fed balance sheet and you actually have a flat stock market. Nominally its going up, but it isn't outpacing the increase in the broad money supply. In other words, its broadly at the same price as it was a few years ago. It wasn't a bubble then, so I have no reason to think it is a bubble now; the explanation is not what you think it is.

HansOndabush said:

Once governments bring out their official digital currency that actually has a purpose, i.e. you can buy things with it and pay bills, then what is the purpose of Bitcoin apart from trying to move funds around out of sight of the authorities?

CBDC's will be terrible. State-programmable money will lead to monetary policy on a micro scale that will undoubtedly be inequitable. They will onboard people in to decentralised crypto faster than any advertising campaign would and I think they will effectively be the final nail in the coffin for fiat currencies (absent strong centralised government control ie. China). 

HansOndabush said:

When the crash comes, crypto will be the biggest casualty and probably never recover.

What crash? Didn't you get the memo? Markets haven't been allowed to crash since 2008.

User232002

[Deleted User] said:

Gary Gensler, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) admitted that Bitcoin was a “store of value”.

What now? 🧐 World renowned experts on MSE forums said, that it has no intrinsic value and it's not good store of value. We should reach SEC chairman as soon as possible, he can't possibly be right about this. It's been fact checked by forum experts. 🤨

Gensler taught a course at MIT on cryptocurrency. The lectures are on YouTube and are a very good exploration of the subject. Him being appointed SEC chair has always been a good thing for Bitcoin, despite countless people on here still insisting that the government will ban it (which as already mentioned is impossible due to technical considerations and game theory implications anyway).

P1 said:

Remember Capital Gains Tax!  Its going to suck this year.  And the student loans

You only pay CGT when you sell or create a taxable event (trading it in for another asset). If you don't sell, you don't pay CGT. I have already stated on here that there are plenty of defi apps that will give you a 1% APR loan against your BTC if you need liquidity (At 25% LTV). My understanding is that this is not a taxable event.

The one thing I agree with Donald Trump on is that not paying taxes makes you smart. Sure, rich people pay nominally more tax; but as you go up the income ladder the average tax rate declines because people are more incentivised to find (legal) ways to reduce their tax bill.

If you have a considerable amount of BTC I would now be looking in to ways to minimise your tax liability on a time frame appropriate to your investment horizon. Personally, I am lucky to be able to have a job that I can do more or less anywhere in the world, so I will become tax resident in another country before disposing of significant chunks of my digital assets.

Onestepcloser

[Deleted User] said:

Onestepcloser said:

[Deleted User] said:

Onestepcloser said:

HansOndabush said:

Onestepcloser said:

I personally don't own bitcoin but have invested about 4.5k in alt coins since December and as of today I'm up 500% probably more if I was to calculate the interest from staking.  Crypto for the most part is definitely not a scam , although volatile if you choose projects with solid technology  gains should continue just the same way it would with the stock market.

That is so completely not true. You don't seem to realise that stock markets go up due to the work done by companies to produce goods and services which increases the value of the companies such that they can pay larger dividends and investors are therefore willing to pay more for the shares. That is completely different to crypto currencies that produce nothing and have limited use and which cannot increase value on their own. Crypto price might be increasing for now but that is only due to other punters betting a higher stake on it. If you are making 500% then someone else is or will be losing it as Malthusian has tried to explain and which you clearly fail to grasp.

Are you for real! Go and look up Theta and the companies invested in it such as Sony, Samsung and Google. Then read up on the deal that Cardano has just finalized with the Ethiopian government to give every student a verifiable identification not mention another deal with world mobile that is changing lives daily for many people.  May I also point out I'm earning a a minimum of 5% - 15% interest on some projects I'm invested in.  So for you to say they don't provide a service it's you that can't grasp what crypto is about.

How is Theta providing billions in value to people? In reality aren't just a few streaming sites that barely anyone uses running on it? And by "invest", don't you just mean that someone at some big firms run nodes with some tokens staked on it? Not really an investment in the technology imo.

These examples are sideshows anyway. The vast majority of money poured into crypto isn't being put to work in any productive way, nor used for their stated purposes e.g. currency, store of value, identification or whatever. They are vehicles for speculation.

You are so far out if you think theta is about just a few streaming services running on it and in regards to those companies investing, to run a validator node they must own 10million theta, granted not a lot of money with those companies finances but to ordinary people it's more than " someone at some big firms run nodes with some tokens staked on it".  There is No point in arguing anymore if you're not interested in crypto that's fine but to assume there aren't proper companies behind the majority of crpypo projects that provide a valuable service is naive at best.

If you can explain where it is providing ~$10 billion in value as a distributed CDN, or whatever you say the purpose of it is, then make the case. If the big companies with validator nodes were also dropping existing solutions and adopting Theta, that would be an argument. For now, their reference website Theta.tv didn't even work properly when I visited it, and the featured videos had dozens of viewers... dozens!

You think the true value of theta comes from theta tv??
They are a lot more than video delivery, what about the sharing of computing and bandwidth and storage when and where it is needed making it much quicker, cheaper and use les energy After the launch of mainnet 3 theta will do  it all smart contracts, nft's, DEX and up 1000+ tps with low fees.

As I say I'm not arguing with you,  I've invested less than 3k and its done a 5x with a lot higher returns expected after mainnet 3.  That's will do for me.

Scottex99

HansOndabush said:

Scottex99 said:

HansOndabush said:

Onestepcloser said:

I personally don't own bitcoin but have invested about 4.5k in alt coins since December and as of today I'm up 500% probably more if I was to calculate the interest from staking.  Crypto for the most part is definitely not a scam , although volatile if you choose projects with solid technology  gains should continue just the same way it would with the stock market.

That is so completely not true. You don't seem to realise that stock markets go up due to the work done by companies to produce goods and services which increases the value of the companies such that they can pay larger dividends and investors are therefore willing to pay more for the shares. That is completely different to crypto currencies that produce nothing and have limited use and which cannot increase value on their own. Crypto price might be increasing for now but that is only due to other punters betting a higher stake on it. If you are making 500% then someone else is or will be losing it as Malthusian has tried to explain and which you clearly fail to grasp.

Crypto is like the stock market on steroids, fine.
But does it really make sense that Tesla is worth more than all the other US car companies combined? How many cars do they sell? Or that Apple is worth more than some countries? How good are their products really?

Trying to claim that the share price is exactly correlated to the profits and output of certain companies, and then use that as a reason why crypto somehow produces nothing in comparison, is just incredibly short-sighted. 

Malthusian's point also doesn't do it for me. How is it any different to the stock market? The market(s) determine the price for everything. Are we crying about how much the other people are losing when we sell stocks at a 5x profit too? I don't see how it's relevant at all.

I'll try again as you don't seem to understand the difference between shares in the stock market and a cryto currency token.

A share is what it says an actual share in a company that works and produces goods and services. The goods and services increase the value of the company, the company can pay dividends, and the shares rise and fall on the merits of the company; not just as wild speculation.

I admit that Apple and Tesla are arguably in a bubble too right now and buyers of their shares are possibly being over-optimistic about their future prospects. That however is totally different to speculating on Bitcoin in the hope that someone will pay a higher price for it sometime in the future. Bitcoin is not going to produce any clever smartphones or electric cars; it is never going to pay a dividend; in fact it is nothing but a number on a blockchain. Once governments bring out their official digital currency that actually has a purpose, i.e. you can buy things with it and pay bills, then what is the purpose of Bitcoin apart from trying to move funds around out of sight of the authorities?

When the crash comes, crypto will be the biggest casualty and probably never recover.

Imagine thinking you need to get paid a dividend for something to have value. CBDCs are the complete opposite of decentralised hard money. The more you say nonsense like that, they more I know you either don't get it or have done next to no research.

Crypto winter decimated most coins by 90%, the start of Covid put BTC down to $4k and ETH down to $100. There's been multiple crashes in the last 10 years. Yet more people (and big corps) are buying BTC and ETH than ever before.
Hence BTC is $58k and ETH is the highest it's ever been, today. $3650.

Nobody took me up on this before, lets have a bet. BTC is closer to $100k than $0. You pick the timeframe and the amount. £1/£10/£100/£1000, whatever you want. Loser pays the other's charity.

Let's at least make it fun for me to prove you wrong, which I will. Or better yet, Bitcoin will 

Notepad_Phil

darren232002 said:

...  despite countless people on here still insisting that the government will ban it (which as already mentioned is impossible due to technical considerations and game theory implications anyway). ...

I'd be interested to know why you think this is impossible.

The US Government can lever a lot (and I mean a lot) of power over non-US companies so could essentially ban any financial company from allowing access to it - so without those banks etc how do you put your money into crypto or get it out again?

Theoretically you could keep it in crypto and e.g. buy a tesla, but what happens when tesla's bank says sorry but you can't accept crypto anymore or the stock market regulator says we'll have to delist you if you continue to accept crypto.

And yes there might be a very small percentage of trade that continues, but I'd say that this is going to be much closer to a real ban than what happened with the ban on alcholhol during Prohibition.

Whether the US government would ever want to do this I've no idea, but the idea that it would be impervious to a concerted US government action does not tally with the facts.

Scottex99

Notepad_Phil said:

darren232002 said:

...  despite countless people on here still insisting that the government will ban it (which as already mentioned is impossible due to technical considerations and game theory implications anyway). ...

I'd be interested to know why you think this is impossible.

The US Government can lever a lot (and I mean a lot) of power over non-US companies so could essentially ban any financial company from allowing access to it - so without those banks etc how do you put your money into crypto or get it out again?

Theoretically you could keep it in crypto and e.g. buy a tesla, but what happens when tesla's bank says sorry but you can't accept crypto anymore or the stock market regulator says we'll have to delist you if you continue to accept crypto.

And yes there might be a very small percentage of trade that continues, but I'd say that this is going to be much closer to a real ban than what happened with the ban on alcholhol during Prohibition.

Whether the US government would ever want to do this I've no idea, but the idea that it would be impervious to a concerted US government action does not tally with the facts.

I'd never say never but at this stage with big corps getting in and JPM, Citi etc etc all having a look I'd say highly unlikely now.

Fair point though. There are regs in a few jurisdictions now, quite a few in Europe. My firm is regulated out of Gibraltar, actually very strict and expensive to get a DLT licence there, and we're pretty cautious whenever being approached by US nationals/companies purely because of the SEC.

Maybe a potential ban could come in but I think there would be too much backlash now

steampowered

Scottex99 said:

Nobody took me up on this before, lets have a bet. BTC is closer to $100k than $0. You pick the timeframe and the amount. £1/£10/£100/£1000, whatever you want. Loser pays the other's charity.

Let's at least make it fun for me to prove you wrong, which I will. Or better yet, Bitcoin will 

If you are so confident that you know what will happen to the price of bitcoin, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and short it? 

HansOndabush

Bitcoin could go to any price $100K, $1m, anything which still would not prove it isn't just a bubble and might go to $0

benbay001

Scottex99 said:

I'd never say never but at this stage with big corps getting in and JPM, Citi etc etc all having a look I'd say highly unlikely now.

Wait, what? JPM and Citi are holding crypto?