BITCOIN

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.

zagfles

RichTips said:

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".

Well it would have been less than 1% of something like VLS100 then. So "small" relatively.

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.

Nah, 65% down in a year, that's really the bottom of the barrel. Who'd invest in anything like that

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.

Enjoy your break. Never a good idea to recommend any investment, however subtle people think they're being

Scottex99

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.

Valid.

Potential BTC values:
Monetary gain being one (and loss ofc)
Store of value - similar to Gold in the long term (not right now when its too volatile)
Democratised money - Your bank, Visa/MC or any other middle man cant stop you sending it to anyone
Hard money - Inflation hedge possibly like point 2

Something else to mention which I've done before, and not specific to BTC, is stablecoins.

BTC i'd agree isn't a currency right now although of course you can pay for goods and services with it.

USDT/C can be used just like fiat, and in some cases better. I see this through my company 20 times a day.

If I owe you £500 but only have JPY in a Bank of Tokyo account. You bank with Barclays in London. I'll set up the payment (much like the SEPA example above but even worse). It'll take ages putting in all the beneficiary details, then probably go through two clearing banks, take about a week to arrive and cost £50-100 to do so.

If I send USDT/C, I can send it to your wallet in about 2 minutes flat for the cost of $1-10. I can also send 100k-10m in the same timeframe for the same cost.

 

Scottex99

Yep how many times does it have to survive death before people take notice?

I don't track all of my trades but I did notice a good one on eToro.

Open - $17,065.39
04/01/2023 20:19
Current P/L - 147.43%

I'm trying to figure out if its lack of interest, lack of willingness to learn, being skeptical or perhaps being incredulous that the tried and tested TradFi stocks and bonds in a Pension for 40 years system, could possibly have a rival in terms of wealth generation.

Obviously I wouldn't take notice if my friend made a quick $50k in a week trading meme coins like $PEPE or $BONK. But if he had been talking about BTC/ETH for 4-5 years and now Blackrock etc have filed ETFs, I'd probably have a little look.

Not sure what the metrics should be for how the pro camp prove that this is not an internet forum ponzi....

zagfles

Scottex99 said:

Yep how many times does it have to survive death before people take notice?

I don't track all of my trades but I did notice a good one on eToro.

Open - $17,065.39
04/01/2023 20:19
Current P/L - 147.43%

I'm trying to figure out if its lack of interest, lack of willingness to learn, being skeptical or perhaps being incredulous that the tried and tested TradFi stocks and bonds in a Pension for 40 years system, could possibly have a rival in terms of wealth generation.

Obviously I wouldn't take notice if my friend made a quick $50k in a week trading meme coins like $PEPE or $BONK. But if he had been talking about BTC/ETH for 4-5 years and now Blackrock etc have filed ETFs, I'd probably have a little look.

Not sure what the metrics should be for how the pro camp prove that this is not an internet forum ponzi....

Quite a lot of strawmen there. Is anyone predicting the death of Bitcoin? Or that it's a ponzi? Maybe I missed it, it's a long thread. Personally I don't think either. The reason I won't touch it with a bargepole is it's just far too volatile to be considered as anything other than a gamble IMO.

And if I did want a gamble, I think the very worst time to buy anything is after a massive rise in price over a short period. I remember a discussion here about how BG American was the best selling fund on II in Feb 2021, just after it had tripled in price in less than a year. Since then it halved in price. Chasing yesterday's winner is rarely a good investment strategy IMO.

Scottex99

300 pages, congrats to all, haha.

Not you for sure but plenty have people have said its both dead and scam/ponzi.

If I was 20 years older it may be too volatile for me (not assuming your age) but I'm a gambler at heart so maybe not.

That's a point though and why the young team start throwing out the Boomer chat. If you'd worked hard, accumulated wealth in the more traditional ways, you have no reason to be looking at a new and risky asset class.

But if you're young, this kind of volatility is nothing. And also why a lot of them blow up their trading accounts.

But it also feels to me like the older successful really dont want it to work either.

There's much much more to it than the price of BTC or any other coin anyway