BITCOIN

flaneurs_lobster

Malthusian said:

$3 billion, pah. Dogecoin has a "market cap" of "$22 billion" despite being explicitly created as a joke.

But it also has a manifesto don'tchaknow:

We are developing a currency for the people, and we strive to do only good everyday. Through this work we have come to value:

Being useful, we value utility over technical brilliance.
Being personable, we value individuals and interactions over profit-driven economics.
Being welcoming, we value collaboration and trust over competition and exclusivity.
Being reliable, we value working solutions over speed of delivery.

As a reminder, this is a distributed spreadsheet entry that (like all crypto tokens) does absolutely nothing except record the ownership of the spreadsheet entry by a given key. Its ringleaders collaborate on absolutely nothing except maintaining the spreadsheet. It solves nothing, and delivers nothing, at a speed of infinity years per thing delivered. But so much real money and so many man-hours have been expended on buying and selling it that somebody felt they had to spend an afternoon cobbling together a "manifesto" to make the punters feel better about it. 

It's a wonderful thing, and quite ridiculous.

The only crypto I have ever "owned", all [consults app] £32.13's worth of it. 

MeteredOut

Malthusian said:

$3 billion, pah. Dogecoin has a "market cap" of "$22 billion" despite being explicitly created as a joke.

But it also has a manifesto don'tchaknow:

We are developing a currency for the people, and we strive to do only good everyday. Through this work we have come to value:

Being useful, we value utility over technical brilliance.
Being personable, we value individuals and interactions over profit-driven economics.
Being welcoming, we value collaboration and trust over competition and exclusivity.
Being reliable, we value working solutions over speed of delivery.

As a reminder, this is a distributed spreadsheet entry that (like all crypto tokens) does absolutely nothing except record the ownership of the spreadsheet entry by a given key. Its ringleaders collaborate on absolutely nothing except maintaining the spreadsheet. It solves nothing, and delivers nothing, at a speed of infinity years per thing delivered. But so much real money and so many man-hours have been expended on buying and selling it that somebody felt they had to spend an afternoon cobbling together a "manifesto" to make the punters feel better about it. 

If its not clear why someone is doing something, follow the money, and you'll find the answer.

(their manifesto is pretty much a variation of the agile manifesto)

Scottex99

Malthusian said:

$3 billion, pah. Dogecoin has a "market cap" of "$22 billion" despite being explicitly created as a joke.

But it also has a manifesto don'tchaknow:

We are developing a currency for the people, and we strive to do only good everyday. Through this work we have come to value:

Being useful, we value utility over technical brilliance.
Being personable, we value individuals and interactions over profit-driven economics.
Being welcoming, we value collaboration and trust over competition and exclusivity.
Being reliable, we value working solutions over speed of delivery.

As a reminder, this is a distributed spreadsheet entry that (like all crypto tokens) does absolutely nothing except record the ownership of the spreadsheet entry by a given key. Its ringleaders collaborate on absolutely nothing except maintaining the spreadsheet. It solves nothing, and delivers nothing, at a speed of infinity years per thing delivered. But so much real money and so many man-hours have been expended on buying and selling it that somebody felt they had to spend an afternoon cobbling together a "manifesto" to make the punters feel better about it. 

Raoul Pal’s latest podcast episode covered this quite recently in a way I found interesting.

Why do people still play the lottery in their millions? Because it gives them a tiny chance of that perceived luxurious material goal.

For the older people here with 6 or 7 figures in property or bonds or index funds it’s unlikely to make sense, you/they understand the system and most people agree that if you start putting money into these things early enough, after 3 or 4 decades the compound interest will be enough for you to enjoy your retirement. It works and it’s safe.

But for many of the newer generation this is out of reach, everything is too expensive, they can’t get on the property ladder, wages are stagnant etc. The world of the man out doing his post office job and the woman at home yet they have a house, a car, and holidays is long gone.

So people look for another way. Is it lottery, is it gambling…. Is it crypto?

Plus no asset manager from traditional finance is going to have a model that includes “community”.

Some of this is more cult than community but these kids grew up on the internet, they see the power of memes. Everyone saw what happened with GameStop.

And likely this is the reason behind Bored Apes, behind DOGE and SHIB and WIF etc. People want to be part of something different, Probably they are not gonna make it but who knows. Maybe you don’t need to go to business school and work your way up to
board level of some financial institution, maybe you just get early into a memecoin and it does 1000000x.

But this is also the reason for the pricing/decimal bias, almost all memes have some price of 0.000007 USD because the youngsters have that dream of, if this just goes to $1 then I’ll have a boat or a super car. For WIF it actually happened.

I dabble in a few memes here and there, I don’t really have the capacity and right now there are 20,000 new ones a day on Solana, but that reasoning makes a lot of sense to me 

HHarry

After 334 pages are we finally seeing some consensus?!  For us dinosaurs, some recognition that crypto has similarities to the lottery / gambling / speculation is important.  It’s not an investment.

Good luck (and I genuinely mean it) to everyone who dreams of, or who has, made it rich based on the whimsical nature of whatever crypto you hold.

slinger2

HHarry said:

After 334 pages are we finally seeing some consensus?!  For us dinosaurs, some recognition that crypto has similarities to the lottery / gambling / speculation is important.  It’s not an investment.

Good luck (and I genuinely mean it) to everyone who dreams of, or who has, made it rich based on the whimsical nature of whatever crypto you hold.

and it's also not a currency. In fact, over the years it's got less and less like one.

MeteredOut

It's good to see some refreshing honesty from a crypto advocate that tells it like it is - completely different from what you see on most social media.

I still maintain that anyone believing "investing in crypto" in anything other than a version of the greater fool theory is not being honest with themselves.

The TikTik algorithms have started showing me a "$10K to $100K in Crypto" poster. I think he started soon after BTC took off at the end of Feb and he's put his $10K into that and a dozen or so alt coins. He's currently at $8K value (or was a day or two back, he may be back at $10K today given the volatility )

Most other posts I see on TT are still telling everyone that BTC is going to $100K (typically based on some VERY crude technical/chart analysis) and the meme coins will be dragged along, with a final "have a look at this new project, it's got utility". Very rarely do this latter lot declare any hodlings.

MeteredOut

HHarry said:

After 334 pages are we finally seeing some consensus?!  For us dinosaurs, some recognition that crypto has similarities to the lottery / gambling / speculation is important.  It’s not an investment.

Good luck (and I genuinely mean it) to everyone who dreams of, or who has, made it rich based on the whimsical nature of whatever crypto you hold.

I don't think this  "dinosaur - does't understand crypto, Gen Z - to the moon!" differentiation is helpful or accurate, other than as a gross generalisation.

It's financial acumen, wanting to understand, understanding risk versus wanting it today, following the crowd, lack of critical thinking, and those are not strictly generational traits (again, unless you want to align people to stereotypes).

One thing is clear - plenty of people are making money from crypto, but at the expense of those who are not willing/able to fully appreciate what they're getting involved with.

Malthusian

HHarry said:

After 334 pages are we finally seeing some consensus?!  For us dinosaurs, some recognition that crypto has similarities to the lottery / gambling / speculation is important.  It’s not an investment.

Yes, after 14 years it's now either a lottery or the new gold (i.e. an asset that fluctuates at random and underperforms diversified stocks over the long term). Future of money!

Scottex99 said:
Plus no asset manager from traditional finance is going to have a model that includes “community”.

Actually... If you're a St James's Place or Coutts customer you get invited to community events all the time. "Coutts customer" has been a badge of prestige for decades (hence the Farridge farrago when he lost his), and they host seminars and regattas so their customers can enjoy their shared sense of community with other "people rich enough to have a NatWest account with a shiny grey Coutts account". If you sell enough shovels to the gold miners you may well join them one day.

Nobody who joins a forum called MoneySavingExpert is likely to pay extra to be a NatCoutts customer, just as none of us are likely to chuck money in a bin to be part of the Dogwifhat community or the monkey Himmler club, but the niche is there.  

Some of this is more cult than community but these kids grew up on the internet, they see the power of memes. Everyone saw what happened with GameStop.

Indeed. We saw most retail investors lose their money.

Scottex99

Yeah they did lose money, but the average retail investor always did, they are going to buy the top of every market with more money than they can afford, that's the way it is.

A few other replies, cba to do the quotes but:

It's a form of currency if you can use to exchange for goods of services, it could also be store of value or digital gold, or rat poison ponzi

Social media you can ignore, if instagram was around when stock trading started it would be the same. Here's a video of me in front of a lambo talking about my trading course "super algorithm" I'm sure you could find them for carbon trading or ticket sales or a million other things.  

From my point of view, buying BTC or ETH as a long term hold is very different to buy random meme coins that were created yesterday. The latter being much more gambling than the former. I can see why people do both. Could it be comparable to buying Global Trackers and penny stocks?

I'd still determine my larger cap cryptos as investments, some i've held for years. I don't really care either way, call it gambling if you like. 

My almost sole aim is to make profit (although I like the industry and mainly love my job in the industry too). 

I am gambling man anyway and if I really want to punt on crypto I'll buy meme coins or open up 50x leverage trades. I can stomach the risk.

Boomer/Dinosaur vs GenZ/kid, I agree not overly helpful but there are explicit reasons why the older and younger generations likely have such different thoughts on the subject (and holdings). I personally know a lot of ex city guys that have moved from TradFi to crypto and the podcasts I follow where these pro-bitcoin guys seem to exhibit deep knowledge of macro, bonds, interest rates lead me to think that they are very capable. It could be I dont know enough about traditional markets but when I see smart people giving in depth reasoning, I pay attention. Mainly in the pro camp as I have a certain bias but I follow crypto critics too.

Future of money, whatever. The current money system doesn't appear to be working all that well. I don't propose that BTC or crypto solves all the problems either. But it's interesting to me. I'm here to comment my take not to convince people to buy. In fact, I probably do more to discourage buying, from people I meet in real life. The standard question I'll get in the pub or from noobs is what can I buy and how rich can I get. 

"BTC and you can be richer than your wildest dreams" Lol

thegentleway

Scottex99 said:

  
From my point of view, buying BTC or ETH as a long term hold is very different to buy random meme coins that were created yesterday. The latter being much more gambling than the former. I can see why people do both. Could it be comparable to buying Global Trackers and penny stocks?

Absolutely not, bitcoin has no underlying asset.