BITCOIN

HHarry

RichTips said:

A brief article in the FT today that seems very reflective of the current discourse in this thread: https://www.ft.com/content/8533f856-57f1-4765-a3dc-d866543092be

Please note that I am aware of an important and telling line regarding the opinion of the writers:
"We stand by every single one of those [sceptical] posts." They have been and remain sceptical of Bitcoin and are still convinced it is a negative-sum game.

The actual image that accompanies it:

I appreciate that they do at least have a sense of humor.

 I like the post-script where they admit to not liking traditional money either!

MeteredOut

RichTips said:

MeteredOut said:

RichTips said:

Scottex99 said:

100k tulips haha.

Was just a matter of time, will be interesting how it does H1 next year.

Looks like this pump was linked to new SEC boss being pro-crypto, a new dawn for US crypto firms perhaps...

Congrats to those with bags

Jerome Powell (the Chair of the Federal Reserve) suggesting Bitcoin is a competitor to gold (and not USD) yesterday also seems to have been optimisitcally interpreted as having granted it greater legitimacy. Here's the quote:
"People use bitcoin as a speculative asset. It's like gold, it's just like gold — only it's digital. People are not using it as a form of payment or a store of value," he said. "It's highly volatile. It's not a competitor for the dollar; it's really a competitor for gold. That's really how I think about it" (Powell, Jerome. New York Times DealBook Summit. 04/12/2024).

That's not a new opinion. It has been discussed on this thread previously. 

BTC is significantly more volatile that Gold, however.

I didn't state it was a new opinion. It's an existing opinion stated yesterday by the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell. Rings a little different than when floated by, say, the bloke down the pub with grease stains on his creased shirt and a distinct smell of petrol on his breath.

I didn't state you said it was a new opinion (I can play that game too).

But, its hardly an epiphany, is it?  I'd also disagree with his remark about both not being used as a store of value; I'd strongly suggest that gold is used a store of value, and some (if not many) are using BTC for the same. But, I'm just a bloke down the pub.

MeteredOut

RichTips said:

MeteredOut said:

RichTips said:

I wonder if the buzz this news generates will encourage the detractors here to reconsider their opinions or just entrench themselves further in the position that Bitcoin is just "useless numbers". How big does it need to get, or rather, how much do fiat currencies need to devalue before a programatically secure, finite and non-sovereign exchange asset starts to have merit?

Why should something passing what is purely a psychologic level change anyones opinion about something? The underlying thing has not changed.

Likewise, its size does not alter its utility. It either has merit or it does not.

I didn't state something passing a psychologic(al) level should change anyone('s) opinion about something. I referred to the buzz generated by it, as it will undoubtedly receive reportage in mainstream media and it's this that I pose could prompt a reconsideration. Can you please save me having to correct each of your misinterpretations in individual posts, by the way. Collect your misreadings of mine in one, or maybe just consider the words more carefully so you don't misread them.

Why would additional reporting prompt a reconsideration, just because that reporting is on the back of BTC passing a psychological threshold? There's absolutely no logic in that. I'd certainly not trust the opinion of someone that changes their thinking so readily, just on the back of some media noise (which generally exists to increase clicks/eyeballs, not educate).

Maybe I should have just responded "No, I don't think the buzz this news generates will encourage the detractors here to reconsider their opinions"

But, the fact that you call BTC passing $100K as "news" is telling.

(I think you should collect your misspellings)

Scottex99

Cheers all, maybe I’ll read through all the comments from the start again, one day. I’ve not dropped the HFSP line for a while…

We did it, whatever “it”is.

In my head I thought 80-120k this cycle, maybe breaking the 100k sell wall was actually the hardest part. 150k would be great at some point this year.

And there will be another crypto winter and more black swans to come. There will be more crashes but there should be higher lows. I was wrong that it wouldn’t go sub $20k again, I think it hit 16k, I found a buy recently on eToro from Jan 2023 at $17,050, about 450% profit, in fact every single BTC buy ive ever done in my life is now green, which is nice.

Could $40-50k be the new future bottom?

Alt season is coming, crazy retail are back and even weirder a load of Dino/boomer coins like XRP/ADA/LTC are also pumping. The non savvy new retail investors aren’t too different from 2017 to 2024.

Can XRP get to $10,000? No.

ive started to consolidate wallets, protocols and recover assets that I had lying around all over the crypto world. Starting to load some cash into my bank too.

Next year I’ll buy a place in Gibraltar, maybe in Spain too and the chunky deposits will come from magic internet money.

Not sure if allowed but here’s me being professional on another platform too:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scott-mckim-a3b4a2b1_!!!!!!-it-995k-is-good-enough-gm-we-made-activity-7265642536453480449-Pb4d?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

Cus

I don't get the significance of the $100k sorry.  Bitcoin is one of an asset class that is 2/3rds the market cap of Apple, but no one I recall made a big deal about that share price going above a $ number.
To me it appears as a speculative asset that has made significant paper profit  compared to some devaluing fiat currency, but I don't see anything more in it than just fiat currency profiting from a zero sum game. I must be too old

Edit: @Pearce7630 has visited MSE once, created this one thread with it's only message, that now has 343 pages.. mysterious 

RichTips

MeteredOut said:

RichTips said:

MeteredOut said:

RichTips said:

I wonder if the buzz this news generates will encourage the detractors here to reconsider their opinions or just entrench themselves further in the position that Bitcoin is just "useless numbers". How big does it need to get, or rather, how much do fiat currencies need to devalue before a programatically secure, finite and non-sovereign exchange asset starts to have merit?

Why should something passing what is purely a psychologic level change anyones opinion about something? The underlying thing has not changed.

Likewise, its size does not alter its utility. It either has merit or it does not.

I didn't state something passing a psychologic(al) level should change anyone('s) opinion about something. I referred to the buzz generated by it, as it will undoubtedly receive reportage in mainstream media and it's this that I pose could prompt a reconsideration. Can you please save me having to correct each of your misinterpretations in individual posts, by the way. Collect your misreadings of mine in one, or maybe just consider the words more carefully so you don't misread them.

Why would additional reporting prompt a reconsideration, just because that reporting is on the back of BTC passing a psychological threshold? There's absolutely no logic in that. I'd certainly not trust the opinion of someone that changes their thinking so readily, just on the back of some media noise (which generally exists to increase clicks/eyeballs, not educate).

Maybe I should have just responded "No, I don't think the buzz this news generates will encourage the detractors here to reconsider their opinions"

But, the fact that you call BTC passing $100K as "news" is telling.

(I think you should collect your misspellings)

The fact that I call BTC passing $100K "news" is telling? Eh? How's that? You serious? What event that has sparked articles from all major and innumerable minor news outlets doesn't objectively qualify as news?

Please dm me my misspellings. I do actually like to learn and will take them on board and try not to repeat them.

Moose1960

Never mind gents, it's already back down to $99k. Dropping like a stone. Plummeting I tells ya. Time for us hodlers to hodl our hands up and admit that we were wrong.

Scottex99

Cus said:

I don't get the significance of the $100k sorry.  Bitcoin is one of an asset class that is 2/3rds the market cap of Apple, but no one I recall made a big deal about that share price going above a $ number.
To me it appears as a speculative asset that has made significant paper profit  compared to some devaluing fiat currency, but I don't see anything more in it than just fiat currency profiting from a zero sum game. I must be too old

Edit: @Pearce7630 has visited MSE once, created this one thread with it's only message, that now has 343 pages.. mysterious 

I hope he comes back one day and reads through the 5000 responses to help facilitate his decision haha. BTC was ~$18k when he asked the question.

It's just an arbitrary round number, it was supposedly never going to $1k, $10k or $100k. The next one will be $1m.

It's speculative for sure and very volatile.

I don't think it's zero sum though, you could argue that about a lot of assets, minus companies creating "value" in their products or gold being nice and shiny.

With major players and large liquidity, plus nation states potentially getting involved, it's not like i'm waiting for John from Wigan to finally buy some so that I can dump on him 

thegentleway

Scottex99 said:

Cus said:

I don't get the significance of the $100k sorry.  Bitcoin is one of an asset class that is 2/3rds the market cap of Apple, but no one I recall made a big deal about that share price going above a $ number.
To me it appears as a speculative asset that has made significant paper profit  compared to some devaluing fiat currency, but I don't see anything more in it than just fiat currency profiting from a zero sum game. I must be too old

Edit: @Pearce7630 has visited MSE once, created this one thread with it's only message, that now has 343 pages.. mysterious 

I don't think it's zero sum though, you could argue that about a lot of assets, minus companies creating "value" in their products or gold being nice and shiny.

This is incorrect. Let's make it as simple as possible:
A stock with one share, I own the share, I receive dividends and therefore "win". I don't need anybody "lose" to make money. Obviously not zero sum.
Now imagine there is only one bitcoin. You own it. The only way you can make money is to sell it to someone else. You "win", they "lose". Obviously zero sum.

Zero sum doesn't make it bad. Poker and chess are zero sum games and they are great. So are futures contracts and options. Plenty of financial instruments are zero sum. Nothing wrong in principle with being zero sum. It's just silly/misguided to claim BTC is anything but zero sum. The supply is fixed and it doesn't produce anything. It's zero sum by definition. There's one cake, if you have a bigger slice then I have less cake.

Scottex99

I get that, and I play a lot of poker. Is it still zero some sum if the platform/casino rakes the cash pots/tournament buy ins and makes profits, pays staff, even pays a dividend if they are a listed company? Genuine question.

And it's been discussed before on here.

I "win" because I make profit. They don't just "lose" instantly because I "won".. They have control over the asset that they bought and may "win" in future.

It's not me saying defensively that it's not zero-sum, as you stated above it probably is. It's the insinuation (not from you) that its some evil enterprise because it's ZS.