BITCOIN

Frequentlyhere

That is quite possibly the most back to front statement I have read on this forum.

I purposely have stopped trying to debate the pro's and con's of Bitcoin here as I find it to be the most closed minded forum I have come across in regard to anything Bitcoin related.

Can you show me another personal finance forum or any sort of grouping that is still showing widespread interest in bitcoin that isn't either hinging off a bitcoin website or a forum about bitcoin?

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

That is quite possibly the most back to front statement I have read on this forum.

I purposely have stopped trying to debate the pro's and con's of Bitcoin here as I find it to be the most closed minded forum I have come across in regard to anything Bitcoin related.

Can you show me another personal finance forum or any sort of grouping that is still showing widespread interest in bitcoin that isn't either hinging off a bitcoin website or a forum about bitcoin?

You need to realise these are precisely the conditions where it pays to enter into exposure to bitcoin. 

Else people complain after buying at near tops when all and sundry talk about it. 

User232002

Frequentlyhere said:

It has the reverse of any sort of traction. People were open-minded and gave it lots of leeway with the run up in price, but it's been many years, people lost lots of money, they found no good use for it, and the jig is up.

Now you are just making stuff up.

Hash rate up. Active addresses up. Institution use up. What evidence do you have that 'it has the reverse of any sort of traction'?

A recent JPM report found that the use of crypto currencies amongst younger generations was pushing 20%. That the amount of money invested in crypto, as a percentage of net worth / salary, increased with average income and education. A recent CB survey of fund managers with $2.6T under management found that the overwhelming majority expected crypto to be here to stay, expected prices to increase and expected to increase allocations in the future.

Malthusian

It would be pretty difficult for the vast majority of institutional investors to decrease allocation to cryptocurrency, given that for over 99.9% of the investment funds and pension schemes in the world, their allocation to cryptocurrency is zero, and any allocation to magic Internet money would be in violation of their fund's objective.
(Unless we're talking funds having a small percentage in Tesla or MicroStrategy which in turn gives them a microscopic allocation to BTC... which let's face it we probably are, given all that "BlackRock is on teh blockchain!" excitement a few dozen pages back which turned out to mean that BlackRock was passively investing in blockchain companies in proportion to the index.)
If the bros could figure out a way to off-ramp an opinion poll they'd all have Made It by now. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

Adyinvestment

Malthusian said:

It would be pretty difficult for the vast majority of institutional investors to decrease allocation to cryptocurrency, given that for over 99.9% of the investment funds and pension schemes in the world, their allocation to cryptocurrency is zero

Thats the most bullish thing I have heard you say about Bitcoin bro   

User232002

Malthusian said:

It would be pretty difficult for the vast majority of institutional investors to decrease allocation to cryptocurrency, given that for over 99.9% of the investment funds and pension schemes in the world, their allocation to cryptocurrency is zero, and any allocation to magic Internet money would be in violation of their fund's objective.

Which is why the image I posted, that you are referring to, contains this caption underneath; "data shown among current investors only."

Congratulations for, yet again, demonstrating your ability to post before engaging some critical thinking.

Frequentlyhere

"What evidence do you have that 'it has the reverse of any sort of traction'?"

To be honest, it seems a bit nuts to have to give any, is it not just common knowledge that crypto is a fad of the past alongside NFT's and meme stonks? 

The small slice of people who were interested have mostly been put off by the various bombs going off in the scene and the loss of their cash. This is hardly a controversial view, and even when fraud is not involved, it's also just the mathematics of a less than zero sum game.

But ok, here's some regular polling done by YouGov about investments in general. It shows that interest in crypto peaked in the UK in about April 2021, when a heady 7% of people thought it was becoming more appealing. That has now more than halved to 3%. The last date of the tracker was a few days ago, and no the price going up hasn't sparked interest.

Stateside, the story is similar and there's no "except bitcoin" caveat.

Other things - Well, Eth seems to have at least some traction in changing from PoW to PoS. Bitcoin meanwhile has been mocked by that progressive tech institution the US Government for not doing so, amongst many other attacks many of which we've described in these pages (e.g basically its use is limited to a speculative token). 

More than that, functionally it hasn't really made any progress at all. It's all but failed in El Salvador, there is no bitcoin city, there are still no particularly interesting use cases, it still can't handle being used as a currency for various reasons and lightning network doesn't help. It remains in the most charitable interpretation 'Art' . 

Re: price, I'm no longer sure what the point is. If we're just in it to make £, then it's just a day trading speculation game whatever the price. Fair enough if people do that, some can make good money. I'm sure it'll remain volatile. Dangerous waters though, and you're likely playing in a rigged casino

Any other bright future where you just hold on to it would require it to have some sort of actual use eventually, which doesn't seem to be on the horizon. It could have perhaps just about landed as digital gold maybe, but I think SBF, Do Kwon & co have blown that one  (yes I know, that's crypto not specifically bitcoin etc - still) .

As a result, the one area where it most definitely has gained traction as I'm sure you've noticed is in being progressively strangled with regulation out of any mainstream existence. How that can be good for bitcoin I'm not sure, but there's always an answer!

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

"What evidence do you have that 'it has the reverse of any sort of traction'?"

To be honest, it seems a bit nuts to have to give any, is it not just common knowledge that crypto is a fad of the past alongside NFT's and meme stonks? 

The small slice of people who were interested have mostly been put off by the various bombs going off in the scene and the loss of their cash. This is hardly a controversial view, and even when fraud is not involved, it's also just the mathematics of a less than zero sum game.

But ok, here's some regular polling done by YouGov about investments in general. It shows that interest in crypto peaked in the UK in about April 2021, when a heady 7% of people thought it was becoming more appealing. That has now more than halved to 3%. The last date of the tracker was a few days ago, and no the price going up hasn't sparked interest.

Stateside, the story is similar and there's no "except bitcoin" caveat.

Other things - Well, Eth seems to have at least some traction in changing from PoW to PoS. Bitcoin meanwhile has been mocked by that progressive tech institution the US Government for not doing so, amongst many other attacks many of which we've described in these pages (e.g basically its use is limited to a speculative token). 

More than that, functionally it hasn't really made any progress at all. It's all but failed in El Salvador, there is no bitcoin city, there are still no particularly interesting use cases, it still can't handle being used as a currency for various reasons and lightning network doesn't help. It remains in the most charitable interpretation 'Art' . 

Re: price, I'm no longer sure what the point is. If we're just in it to make £, then it's just a day trading speculation game whatever the price. Fair enough if people do that, some can make good money. I'm sure it'll remain volatile. Dangerous waters though, and you're likely playing in a rigged casino

Any other bright future where you just hold on to it would require it to have some sort of actual use eventually, which doesn't seem to be on the horizon. It could have perhaps just about landed as digital gold maybe, but I think SBF, Do Kwon & co have blown that one  (yes I know, that's crypto not specifically bitcoin etc - still) .

As a result, the one area where it most definitely has gained traction as I'm sure you've noticed is in being progressively strangled with regulation out of any mainstream existence. How that can be good for bitcoin I'm not sure, but there's always an answer!

The whole idea of bitcoin being strangled by regulation is borne out of lazy journalism that jumps to conclusions that they wanted to make and were predisposed to. The real situation is that the crypto ecosystem is on the path to sensible regulation which will make the asset class more attractive. Most Joe public just can't tell the difference between crypto ecosystem and crypto and one ought to ask why you would call a driver to greater transparency of the ecosystem to be called 'strangling of bitcoin'.

All above said, I will only reiterate that periods when such misconceptions gain traction are the ones where the astute make entries and later get called 'lucky' to have bought the cycle bottoms. Such luck... 

Frequentlyhere

"and one ought to ask why you would call a driver to greater transparency of the ecosystem to be called 'strangling of bitcoin'."

Because 'transparency' is one of the euphemisms that Brian Armstrong & co choose to use for trying to avoid having the securities they deal in treated and regulated as securities.

They'd like the existing rules that actually are perfectly clear 'clarified' for them in a way that makes them kind of 'go away'. A battle they are clearly losing with the recent Wells notice.

Now, this sort of thing isn't a problem for bitcoin in theory, but it is in practice because anything that makes it less simple to onboard more fresh meat to buy bitcoin is a problem for bitcoin.  

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

"and one ought to ask why you would call a driver to greater transparency of the ecosystem to be called 'strangling of bitcoin'."

Because 'transparency' is one of the euphemisms that Brian Armstrong & co choose to use for trying to avoid having the securities they deal in treated and regulated as securities.

They'd like the existing rules that actually are perfectly clear 'clarified' for them in a way that makes them kind of 'go away'. A battle they are clearly losing with the recent Wells notice.

Now, this sort of thing isn't a problem for bitcoin in theory, but it is in practice because anything that makes it less simple to onboard more fresh meat to buy bitcoin is a problem for bitcoin.  

Now as you correctly point out, several hints have been provided by the SEC that Bitcoin is not considered as a security so the debate around securities regulation pertains to other coins that are not the topic for this thread. Secondly, regardless of SEC's stance, it is a well subscribed to view that the coins likely to be deemed securities are because there is a big element of investors depending on work carried out by certain influential parties to their benefit (Howey test) and its this reason why already many such coins are called 'shitcoins' because they embody nothing of the decentralisation that something like Bitcoin calls its USP.

So considering this thread is dedicated to Bitcoin, I don't see how you extrapolate the current regulatory tussle to conclude bearishness for Bitcoin. If at all you think that 'new meat' is getting confused by the goings on and staying away from Bitcoin, then you ought to be bullish since as an informed investor, you get it at a time of irrational [pessimism for Bitcoin.