BITCOIN

mooneysaver

Anyone heard any updates? Last mesage I saw was the LP was compromised and then radio silence.

Frequentlyhere

mooneysaver said:

Anyone heard any updates? Last mesage I saw was the LP was compromised and then radio silence.

I don't know why I bothered but I googled this rather cryptic (ba-boosh) message. I think @mooneysaver is referring to a "hack" of Safemoon's liquidity pool.

To be blunt, I think the update probably is that this is not a thread about Safemoon and that Bitcoin fanatic or cynic alike, no-one cares about Safemoon.

aaj123

Are people surprised that Bitcoin continues to be buoyant despite supposed bad news of Coinbase getting a Well's notice and Binance being accused of breaking laws and supposed regulatory strangling attempts?

Its actually simple - people who buy Bitcoin during periods of fear like now are not speculators but rather the ones who buy in after research and understand the antifragile nature of Bitcoin and also the distinction between Bitcoin and participants of the crypto ecosystem.

Yup - very few understand.

Cus

I'm more intrigued as to what happened to @Pearce7630 who started this thread with his/her one and only post.  

Frequentlyhere

aaj123 said:

Are people surprised that Bitcoin continues to be buoyant despite supposed bad news of Coinbase getting a Well's notice and Binance being accused of breaking laws and supposed regulatory strangling attempts?

Its actually simple - people who buy Bitcoin during periods of fear like now are not speculators but rather the ones who buy in after research and understand the antifragile nature of Bitcoin and also the distinction between Bitcoin and participants of the crypto ecosystem.

Yup - very few understand.

Were people surprised by the 75% sell off beforehand?

Simple really - people selling who understand the fragile nature of Bitcoin, and the distinction between a highly volatile speculative zero yield token and a productive asset in a world of non-zero interest rates.

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

aaj123 said:

Are people surprised that Bitcoin continues to be buoyant despite supposed bad news of Coinbase getting a Well's notice and Binance being accused of breaking laws and supposed regulatory strangling attempts?

Its actually simple - people who buy Bitcoin during periods of fear like now are not speculators but rather the ones who buy in after research and understand the antifragile nature of Bitcoin and also the distinction between Bitcoin and participants of the crypto ecosystem.

Yup - very few understand.

Were people surprised by the 75% sell off beforehand?

Simple really - people selling who understand the fragile nature of Bitcoin, and the distinction between a highly volatile speculative zero yield token and a productive asset in a world of non-zero interest rates.

The problem is that during bull cycles, a lot of people jump on to the bandwagon of quick gains while honestly not having any idea at all about why the thing they bought should be going up. So when these chaps get caught in a bear, every day they are underwater makes them feel worse as they never had any reasons in the first place to expect it to go up. So capitulate they do in the absence of any conviction and being underwater long.

Will this happen again? Most definitely.

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

aaj123 said:

Are people surprised that Bitcoin continues to be buoyant despite supposed bad news of Coinbase getting a Well's notice and Binance being accused of breaking laws and supposed regulatory strangling attempts?

Its actually simple - people who buy Bitcoin during periods of fear like now are not speculators but rather the ones who buy in after research and understand the antifragile nature of Bitcoin and also the distinction between Bitcoin and participants of the crypto ecosystem.

Yup - very few understand.

Were people surprised by the 75% sell off beforehand?

Simple really - people selling who understand the fragile nature of Bitcoin, and the distinction between a highly volatile speculative zero yield token and a productive asset in a world of non-zero interest rates.

It's a highly misused term this - 'productive asset'. Sorry you might feel nice and warm about buying a stock but the reality is that just buying the stock on an exchange in no way made you suddenly contribute to productivity. If you care about being productive, go out and do work but don't pretend that buying a stock made you do something productive. From this perspective, stocks are just something one hopes to make money / preserve wealth through and not fundamentally different to what one buys Bitcoin for. Sugarcoating one as 'productive asset' is just a way for stock owners to feel good about themselves and imply themselves as productive rather than those who do work within the business. 

Frequentlyhere

aaj123 said:

It's a highly misused term this - 'productive asset'. Sorry you might feel nice and warm about buying a stock ...

I don't know if others use the term that way, but I certainly don't mean it like that. All I mean is that the asset itself is productive in terms of it being a share of a company that is producing something of value to people and (hopefully) financial value to its shareholders.

One might buy Bitcoin to make money too, and one might indeed succeed potentially, but:

1)  Bitcoin isn't going out and producing any good or service for people, so isn't generating profits/dividends.
2) It does however generate costs (miners)
3) Therefore one's success (where success is a +ve fiat cashout) is contingent on someone else's failure (-ve cashout).

To be honest though, if people want to play that game and are self-aware that that's what they're doing, then fair play in my book. 

I only really take issue with Bitcoin when people start saying  "future of money" and the like. Especially when it veers towards "It's the one true saviour in economic collapse - oh and that's coming real soon" territory.

aaj123

Frequentlyhere said:

aaj123 said:

It's a highly misused term this - 'productive asset'. Sorry you might feel nice and warm about buying a stock ...

I don't know if others use the term that way, but I certainly don't mean it like that. All I mean is that the asset itself is productive in terms of it being a share of a company that is producing something of value to people and (hopefully) financial value to its shareholders.

One might buy Bitcoin to make money too, and one might indeed succeed potentially, but:

1)  Bitcoin isn't going out and producing any good or service for people, so isn't generating profits/dividends.
2) It does however generate costs (miners)
3) Therefore one's success (where success is a +ve fiat cashout) is contingent on someone else's failure (-ve cashout).

To be honest though, if people want to play that game and are self-aware that that's what they're doing, then fair play in my book. 

I only really take issue with Bitcoin when people start saying  "future of money" and the like. Especially when it veers towards "It's the one true saviour in economic collapse - oh and that's coming real soon" territory.

Where do you always end up getting point 3) from? Why is one person's gain another's loss in Bitcoin when anyone who is in Bitcoin does get a certain benefit that they otherwise don't? And that's of holding a hard supply capped digital asset that is stored and transported easily. Your point 3) is entirely contingent on you not acknowledging this benefit of bitcoin and isn't some self evident truth like you try to make out. 

Let's try an analogy. How about an argument that all restaurants are negative sum games and they only use resources like space,  labour and power for simply feeding people who otherwise would have eaten anyway. Now you'd be quick to point out this argument is ludicrous but why? What's tangibly different here that isn't in Bitcoin in terms of 'productivity'? Just the fact that a good meal is easy to think of as a benefit but possessing hard money is too fuzzy a concept?

Frequentlyhere

I'm not actually trying to state there that there are no benefits to holding bitcoin, I was only saying that when it comes to redeeming for cash, then it's a (less than) zero sum game. If we're talking about investing, surely making money is overwhelmingly the point? 

In terms of the benefits you've stated, part of the difficulty here in this debate is that you're flipping at will between seeing Bitcoin as a good cash alternative and a lucrative investment depending which seems an easier thing to argue at the time.

You've said Bitcoin offers "holding a hard supply capped digital asset that is stored and transported easily" but why would I need to store and transport my investment asset? I have a share ISA that I've not had any problem with, why do I need to take it with me? I can access it on my phone anyway and take that with me, is that not sufficient?

That it has a fixed supply, as I've pointed out earlier, is not a magic wand to an increased price. You are making an implicit assumption that demand will keep increasing for bitcoin, and that is a highly arguable assumption.  

To cover your restaurant example -  the customers don't have to cook and have a treat, the owners make profits, the staff get wages, the freeholder gets rent and nobody loses unless they ordered the week old mussels. It's the consumer economy in action.

It's really not a great scenario to compare against, but I suppose in this scenario Bitcoin would be the plate of mussels. You can buy it, you can look at it, there's a fixed supply of them, they're portable, no-one wants to eat them and you can only make money from them if you can find someone else who wants to pay more for them than you did.