BITCOIN

RichTips

Sorry, are you honestly saying Apple was "small" in 2008? It was something like the 33rd largest company by market cap in the world in 2007 and 18th in 2008. If that's small, Lord knows what qualifies as big. Perhaps $6 to $197 is indicative of something other than just its growth from "small" to "big".

As for volatility among national currencies, how about the Argentinian Peso? The new president has just devalued the currency by 50%. I hope people in the 22nd largest economy in the world didn't have all their money hidden at the bottom of any barrels.

Regarding the benefit of hindsight, not much else I've advocated a "gamble" on at very risk-adjusted levels in this forum other the Bitcoin. Thanks, mods, for allowing me to delete all those posts I made recommending buying shares in Credit Suisse

Taking a break for real this time, promise.

silvercue

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

MeteredOut

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

TLDR; HODL!

Scottex99

Cus said:

Scottex99 said:

boingy said:

Comparing Bitcoin with shares is not a sensible approach.
You should compare Bitcoin with other, more traditional, currencies. People invest in Dollars, Pounds and Euros. Just like Bitcoin, none of those things are real.

Anyhow, I'm just glad to get my Bitcoin money back. Too volatile for my liking.

I don't know why crypto triggers such strong responses in people. 

Good for you, everyone is here to try to make money from their investments.

It creates such strong responses because it’s nascent, the White Paper for Bitcoin is 15 years old.

Typically older people don’t trust it as they can’t understand it and younger people see it as a type of digital gold: store of value, democratised hardest form of money that cannot be inflated away like fiat money can (and has).

We all know big bankers can’t be trusted to look after the average person, the same as the majority of politicians. Jamie Dimon just came out this week saying he hates Bitcoin and no doubt gave some Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering reason for it, ironic given what his bank has paid in fines for doing the exact same thing.

It is very volatile and speculative, I personally find it fun.

If you want to hold bonds or very low risk funds, then go ahead. If you want to throw £500 at some super risky altcoin then do that too. We all know to max out our ISAs, invest in sensible baskets of stocks that return 10-12% per year and over decades we can retire comfortably - but

A lot of young people today don’t have that choice and they are looking for alternatives. If there is some great reset coming in whatever form, crypto MAY be a way to front run it.

Your comment on young people is interesting.  The feeling of a lack of choice. Why can't a young person invest in sensible stocks for 30/40 years and then retire?

Good question.

I'll have a crack.

Because they are not taught how money and investing and savings and interest works at school.
They don't have any spare cash (They make £25k, have to pay rent and a box of Shreddies is now 6 quid)
They are lazy
They are looking for some shortcut or get rich quick scheme, which I have to remind my friends looking to get into crypto, that's not what it is
Maybe a few others, mainly the lack of money i'd say 

Aegis

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

Someone who bought a winning lottery ticket would be showing gains that dwarf your crypto gains. Doesn't make it a good investment, just means that they got lucky. And in fact, it's a very similar concept, in that both are zero sum games at best, so any gains that one person sees must eventually be offset by losses incurred by someone else (or multiple someone elses).

Scottex99

Aegis said:

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

Someone who bought a winning lottery ticket would be showing gains that dwarf your crypto gains. Doesn't make it a good investment, just means that they got lucky. And in fact, it's a very similar concept, in that both are zero sum games at best, so any gains that one person sees must eventually be offset by losses incurred by someone else (or multiple someone elses).

Why does the losses by someone else pop up every 20 posts?

If you were selling your Apple stock at a 1000% gain would you be worried about the poor soul on the other end?

Scottex99

I probably mentioned it many many pages ago but we work with FPS, SEPA, SEPA Instant and SWIFT every day.

An interesting anecdote is my Grandad, still alive at 95 years old, was a Director at RBS in the 70s/80s and was part of the team that helped create the Swift Network. He can't believe it's still being used and how slow it is.

I'll tell him I'm helping to get rid of it when I see him Xmas day 

Aegis

Scottex99 said:

Aegis said:

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

Someone who bought a winning lottery ticket would be showing gains that dwarf your crypto gains. Doesn't make it a good investment, just means that they got lucky. And in fact, it's a very similar concept, in that both are zero sum games at best, so any gains that one person sees must eventually be offset by losses incurred by someone else (or multiple someone elses).

Why does the losses by someone else pop up every 20 posts?

If you were selling your Apple stock at a 1000% gain would you be worried about the poor soul on the other end?

Because that's literally the entire point of a zero-sum game. One person's gains have to be offset by someone else's losses over the lifespan of the investment. Basically the money has to come from somewhere, and if it's not coming from economic activity as with companies or bonds, then it must be coming from other asset holders.

With Apple shares, if I bought them 10 years ago, the company would have had 10 years of economic activity, buying in basic goods and selling products and services.  My share would have participated in that growth because of how share ownership works.  If we only look at the capital value and nothing else, then the game becomes zero sum, but that ignores the effect of a company operating in a market.  If that operation is profitable, then it becomes a positive-sum game.

Scottex99

Aegis said:

Scottex99 said:

Aegis said:

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

Someone who bought a winning lottery ticket would be showing gains that dwarf your crypto gains. Doesn't make it a good investment, just means that they got lucky. And in fact, it's a very similar concept, in that both are zero sum games at best, so any gains that one person sees must eventually be offset by losses incurred by someone else (or multiple someone elses).

Why does the losses by someone else pop up every 20 posts?

If you were selling your Apple stock at a 1000% gain would you be worried about the poor soul on the other end?

Because that's literally the entire point of a zero-sum game. One person's gains have to be offset by someone else's losses over the lifespan of the investment. Basically the money has to come from somewhere, and if it's not coming from economic activity as with companies or bonds, then it must be coming from other asset holders.

With Apple shares, if I bought them 10 years ago, the company would have had 10 years of economic activity, buying in basic goods and selling products and services.  My share would have participated in that growth because of how share ownership works.  If we only look at the capital value and nothing else, then the game becomes zero sum, but that ignores the effect of a company operating in a market.  If that operation is profitable, then it becomes a positive-sum game.

Yet someone can still buy at the top of the market, sell at the bottom and lose money, am I supposed to feel bad for them?


I bought COIN at IPO $340 ish I think. I also bought it at $54 and a few others, I'm in profit now.

I get the point about companies economic activity and "use" to the world but early adopters dumping BTC on to new entrants into the market is not an anti-bitcoin argument that is valid imo.

VCs dump on retail in every financial trading market anyway

Aegis

Scottex99 said:

Aegis said:

Scottex99 said:

Aegis said:

silvercue said:

2024 is gearing up to be a great year for crypto.  FED Dovish, interest rate drops expected, halving, Spot ETFs

Bitcoin up 150% already this year and only just starting to gear up.  My biggest bag, ADA, is up 150% in last 3 months.

On top of the ludicrous APRs I am getting yield farming.   Looking good.

My stock portfolio is up 49% YTD, but dwarfed by my Crypto gains.

Funny to see the crypto bashers still spend all of their time in a thread for a product they are not interested in investing in!   

Someone who bought a winning lottery ticket would be showing gains that dwarf your crypto gains. Doesn't make it a good investment, just means that they got lucky. And in fact, it's a very similar concept, in that both are zero sum games at best, so any gains that one person sees must eventually be offset by losses incurred by someone else (or multiple someone elses).

Why does the losses by someone else pop up every 20 posts?

If you were selling your Apple stock at a 1000% gain would you be worried about the poor soul on the other end?

Because that's literally the entire point of a zero-sum game. One person's gains have to be offset by someone else's losses over the lifespan of the investment. Basically the money has to come from somewhere, and if it's not coming from economic activity as with companies or bonds, then it must be coming from other asset holders.

With Apple shares, if I bought them 10 years ago, the company would have had 10 years of economic activity, buying in basic goods and selling products and services.  My share would have participated in that growth because of how share ownership works.  If we only look at the capital value and nothing else, then the game becomes zero sum, but that ignores the effect of a company operating in a market.  If that operation is profitable, then it becomes a positive-sum game.

Yet someone can still buy at the top of the market, sell at the bottom and lose money, am I supposed to feel bad for them?


I bought COIN at IPO $340 ish I think. I also bought it at $54 and a few others, I'm in profit now.

I get the point about companies economic activity and "use" to the world but early adopters dumping BTC on to new entrants into the market is not an anti-bitcoin argument that is valid imo.

VCs dump on retail in every financial trading market anyway

Yep, someone can buy high and sell low. They can do exactly the same with their house, their car, their clothes, but most of those are not perceived as investments that someone makes and expects to generate returns. We don't start saying that someone is a brilliant investor because they bought a really comfy pair of shoes for £50 that would now cost £150. Instead we say they're a savvy buyer who now has a comfortable pair of shoes to wear and get some use out of.  In fact, someone in that position is likely to expect that after some period of time, the shoes will completely wear out beyond economic repair, at which point they will be worthless. As such, if they managed to get less than £50 of use value out of the shoes during their lifetime, they may well see that as a bad use of money (or a bad product).

The question then is "how much value can someone get out of their bitcoin holding?"  I am still waiting to see any real value from the scheme that I don't already have available to me using fiat currency, but I guess as the value of a pair of shoes will vary from person to person, so might someone's enjoyment of bitcoin. I don't personally see how, but if someone thinks they will get some personal value out of the ownership, then that ultimately is their business.