BITCOIN

HansOndabush

Exactly; most investors here understand bitcoin, blockchain, crypto exchanges etc. We have looked into it and concluded 'nah'.

Bitcoin has:

1) Failed as a currency to buy goods and services

2) At 7 transactions per second is far too slow to be used in everyday transactions

3) Consumes a disgraceful amount of energy; more than many countries use

4) Is far to volatile to be a 'store of wealth'

5) Can be usurped anytime by a 'superior' crypto thus wiping out its price

6) Is after all just a number and has no value other than what gamblers assign to it; just like money put on a number on a roulette table.

7) All points to it being another bubble just like previous ones where only the 'smart' guys were in it.

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements.

onthebench

benbay001 said:

darren232002 said:

But I would strongly encourage people to look in to this space because it will be the greatest wealth creation event of my generation. Its literally the internet version 2.0.

If you had stuck to the "great store of value" line then yes, i could understand you keeping some of your wealth in crypto, but you didnt, you claimed its going to generate wealth.

How can crypto generate wealth? The only thing it enables that cannot be done with a credit card is the untraceable purchase of things that are illegal. Fantastic.

I agree, it doesn't create wealth. What it might (or might not) be able to do is preserve wealth. If (and it is a big if) enough people see value in the fact that bitcoin is transparent, easily transferred and has a limited supply, then you would expect that more and more people would want to own some, which would tend to ensure that the value of bitcoin outpaces inflation.


The problem with technology is that it moves fast. 13 years ago bitcoin didn't even exist. Who would bet on it existing in another 13 years? For investors thinking of long-term security it is hard to count on crypto.

Having said all that, the small amount that I invested in bitcoin and Cardano has grown by about 500% in six months. That doesn't mean I'm an investment genius, nor does it mean that bitcoin is the future. But I do think it's worth holding onto a bit (especially if you can take out your original investment and get a "free bet".)

But the point remains that buying bitcoin for $10,000 and selling it for $60,000 is not creating wealth. It is transferring it from the buyer to me. They might also make money on it by selling it to someone else at $100,000, but again it is just kicking the can down the road. It is not making value and wealth in the same way that a company that turns raw materials into useful products and sells them does.

Langtang

EdGasketTheSecond said:

fwor said:

bowlhead99 said:

Doomed!

Bitcoin has been in existence for well over a decade now, and in the whole of that time I have never come across a situation where I wished I owned some Bitcoin in order to buy something.

You never hired a hit man then?

and bought a Tesla as the getaway car...

Scottex99

onthebench said:

benbay001 said:

darren232002 said:

But I would strongly encourage people to look in to this space because it will be the greatest wealth creation event of my generation. Its literally the internet version 2.0.

If you had stuck to the "great store of value" line then yes, i could understand you keeping some of your wealth in crypto, but you didnt, you claimed its going to generate wealth.

How can crypto generate wealth? The only thing it enables that cannot be done with a credit card is the untraceable purchase of things that are illegal. Fantastic.

But the point remains that buying bitcoin for $10,000 and selling it for $60,000 is not creating wealth. It is transferring it from the buyer to me. They might also make money on it by selling it to someone else at $100,000, but again it is just kicking the can down the road. It is not making value and wealth in the same way that a company that turns raw materials into useful products and sells them does.

And neither is an FX trade, or a derivatives trade or me "buying" gold and silver on Revolut. I don't see how that is a crypto specific argument?

There's hundreds of thousands of projects in the space outside of Bitcoin that are building stuff on a daily basis, some of which is going to revolutionise many different aspects of the world, imo.

Scottex99

HansOndabush said:

Exactly; most investors here understand bitcoin, blockchain, crypto exchanges etc. We have looked into it and concluded 'nah'.

Bitcoin has:

1) Failed as a currency to buy goods and services

2) At 7 transactions per second is far too slow to be used in everyday transactions

3) Consumes a disgraceful amount of energy; more than many countries use

4) Is far to volatile to be a 'store of wealth'

5) Can be usurped anytime by a 'superior' crypto thus wiping out its price

6) Is after all just a number and has no value other than what gamblers assign to it; just like money put on a number on a roulette table.

7) All points to it being another bubble just like previous ones where only the 'smart' guys were in it.

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements.

Lol, good for you. ATH incoming, I'll come back and @ you at $100k.

1 - False, I bought something with it earlier this year
2 - Possible but there's thousands of other coins and multiple other chains for that
3- Valid, as far as I know people are using hydro, green, excess flare energy where possible, makes sense to make money from excess energy regardless
4- Nah, if your house price crashes 30% because of the economy does that means nobody should buy houses ever again as an investment?
5 - Actual lol, showing zero understanding here, why hasn't it already happened then?
6 - False, $61k today, determined by the market, scarcity, block rewards, etc etc
7 - Smart or not, irrelevant 

HFSP

RichTips

Scottex99 said:

HansOndabush said:

Exactly; most investors here understand bitcoin, blockchain, crypto exchanges etc. We have looked into it and concluded 'nah'.

Bitcoin has:

1) Failed as a currency to buy goods and services

2) At 7 transactions per second is far too slow to be used in everyday transactions

3) Consumes a disgraceful amount of energy; more than many countries use

4) Is far to volatile to be a 'store of wealth'

5) Can be usurped anytime by a 'superior' crypto thus wiping out its price

6) Is after all just a number and has no value other than what gamblers assign to it; just like money put on a number on a roulette table.

7) All points to it being another bubble just like previous ones where only the 'smart' guys were in it.

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements.

Lol, good for you. ATH incoming, I'll come back and @ you at $100k.

1 - False, I bought something with it earlier this year
2 - Possible but there's thousands of other coins and multiple other chains for that
3- Valid, as far as I know people are using hydro, green, excess flare energy where possible, makes sense to make money from excess energy regardless
4- Nah, if your house price crashes 30% because of the economy does that means nobody should buy houses ever again as an investment?
5 - Actual lol, showing zero understanding here, why hasn't it already happened then?
6 - False, $61k today, determined by the market, scarcity, block rewards, etc etc
7 - Smart or not, irrelevant 

HFSP

Seems it only took 3 hours for your "ATH incoming" to be proved correct. 

User232002

HansOndabush said:

Exactly; most investors here understand bitcoin, blockchain, crypto exchanges etc. We have looked into it and concluded 'nah'.

Bitcoin has:

1) Failed as a currency to buy goods and services

2) At 7 transactions per second is far too slow to be used in everyday transactions

3) Consumes a disgraceful amount of energy; more than many countries use

4) Is far to volatile to be a 'store of wealth'

5) Can be usurped anytime by a 'superior' crypto thus wiping out its price

6) Is after all just a number and has no value other than what gamblers assign to it; just like money put on a number on a roulette table.

7) All points to it being another bubble just like previous ones where only the 'smart' guys were in it.

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements.

Looking into it and concluding nah is tantamount to saying you don't get it. People (well, prosperous people) don't look at the internet in its current form and go 'nah, I'll live my life without it.'

1. Currency =/= Money. Bitcoin is not a currency. It is money though. 
2. Bitcoin is not a payment network; it is a settlement layer. Again, sit down and understand the difference between the two. 
3. I know every awful technology reporter has loved to roll this story out over the last 3 months, but its just lazy thinking. Firstly, the technology to transfer large amounts of energy over large distances isn't efficient, so producers of renewable energy have an incentive to sell off their excess energy locally at a reduced price. Game theory incentivises participants (miners) to seek out cheap energy given that it affects their bottom line and mining is location independent. The result? Large mining operations exist in a symbiotic way with a local producers of renewable energy and are almost universally located around these (ie. Iceland/China/USA) and 70%+ of their energy is renewable. Secondly, the absolute emissions are considerably lower than the legacy banking system uses, its even considerably less than the amount of emissions used in mining gold. You need to think comparatively, not absolutely.
4. Volatility is not a bug, its an intrinsic feature of a new asset class. Volatility brings traders, traders bring liquidity, liquidity brings stability. Gold didn't just birth in to a $10 trillion dollar low vol asset overnight. By the way, volatility is a mathematical value based on standard deviation; volatility of BTC is less than oil and gold and is approaching the level of US real estate. Its trending down over time. You can wait until the volatility is low when BTC is $1m/coin if you want. Lastly, BTC has the best sharpe ratio (risk adjusted returns) of any asset out there, which is why every hedge fund manager is currently falling over themselves to get BTC on their books.
5. Just no. There are technically superior crypto's already out there, they have been out there for many years, and none of them are close to Bitcoin. Normies who have hot takes like 'blockchain is great technology, but bitcoin will not win' have a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes bitcoin valuable. Money needs a network; BTC has the biggest.
6. This is the 'no intrinsic value' argument and again is just bad normie logic. I'll point out that fiat (£/$) has nothing backing it and therefore no intrinsic value and you'll, ironically and unashamedly, say that it has value because we, the people, all believe it has value...
7. Are the previous bubbles actually bubbles if we are currently at ATHs? Not sure that makes sense.

Any more hot takes there champ?

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements

fwor

darren232002 said:

2. Bitcoin is not a payment network; it is a settlement layer. Again, sit down and understand the difference between the two. 

That's a great example of "making a problem go away by calling it something different", isn't it?

Realistically Bitcoin can deal with around 7 "settlements" (or whatever you call them) a second.

It's not what you call them that matters. It's the fact that the system cannot scale up to work in the real world.

YellowStarling

Genuine question:  for those knocking Bitcoin, do they (consciously or not) substitute "cryptocurrency" (as a whole) with it, or not?  In other words, are those not in favour of Bitcoin also not in favour of other cryptocurrency projects, or just Bitcoin?  I know the title of this thread is specific but some posts appear more aimed at the crypto space in general, hence my question.

Just wondering whether any anti-BTC are more bullish on alternative projects, perhaps those that are aiming for the scalability/TPS targets more akin to fiat monetary systems, or smart contract/app networks, or something else.  E.g. Proof-of-Stake projects like Ethereum 2.0, Cardano, Polkadot, or hashgraph projects like Hedera, etc.

HansOndabush

darren232002 said:

HansOndabush said:

Exactly; most investors here understand bitcoin, blockchain, crypto exchanges etc. We have looked into it and concluded 'nah'.

Bitcoin has:

1) Failed as a currency to buy goods and services

2) At 7 transactions per second is far too slow to be used in everyday transactions

3) Consumes a disgraceful amount of energy; more than many countries use

4) Is far to volatile to be a 'store of wealth'

5) Can be usurped anytime by a 'superior' crypto thus wiping out its price

6) Is after all just a number and has no value other than what gamblers assign to it; just like money put on a number on a roulette table.

7) All points to it being another bubble just like previous ones where only the 'smart' guys were in it.

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements.

Looking into it and concluding nah is tantamount to saying you don't get it. People (well, prosperous people) don't look at the internet in its current form and go 'nah, I'll live my life without it.'

1. Currency =/= Money. Bitcoin is not a currency. It is money though. 
2. Bitcoin is not a payment network; it is a settlement layer. Again, sit down and understand the difference between the two. 
3. I know every awful technology reporter has loved to roll this story out over the last 3 months, but its just lazy thinking. Firstly, the technology to transfer large amounts of energy over large distances isn't efficient, so producers of renewable energy have an incentive to sell off their excess energy locally at a reduced price. Game theory incentivises participants (miners) to seek out cheap energy given that it affects their bottom line and mining is location independent. The result? Large mining operations exist in a symbiotic way with a local producers of renewable energy and are almost universally located around these (ie. Iceland/China/USA) and 70%+ of their energy is renewable. Secondly, the absolute emissions are considerably lower than the legacy banking system uses, its even considerably less than the amount of emissions used in mining gold. You need to think comparatively, not absolutely.
4. Volatility is not a bug, its an intrinsic feature of a new asset class. Volatility brings traders, traders bring liquidity, liquidity brings stability. Gold didn't just birth in to a $10 trillion dollar low vol asset overnight. By the way, volatility is a mathematical value based on standard deviation; volatility of BTC is less than oil and gold and is approaching the level of US real estate. Its trending down over time. You can wait until the volatility is low when BTC is $1m/coin if you want. Lastly, BTC has the best sharpe ratio (risk adjusted returns) of any asset out there, which is why every hedge fund manager is currently falling over themselves to get BTC on their books.
5. Just no. There are technically superior crypto's already out there, they have been out there for many years, and none of them are close to Bitcoin. Normies who have hot takes like 'blockchain is great technology, but bitcoin will not win' have a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes bitcoin valuable. Money needs a network; BTC has the biggest.
6. This is the 'no intrinsic value' argument and again is just bad normie logic. I'll point out that fiat (£/$) has nothing backing it and therefore no intrinsic value and you'll, ironically and unashamedly, say that it has value because we, the people, all believe it has value...
7. Are the previous bubbles actually bubbles if we are currently at ATHs? Not sure that makes sense.

Any more hot takes there champ?

You can research all the above and conclude they are true statements

1) Bitcoin is clearly not money as it fails the 'Stable' attribute:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/money.asp

Bitcoin failed as a currency and is now being pushed as a 'store of value' which it clearly isn't but lets see in 10 years shall we?

2) Visa handles 10000 transactions in the same time that bitcoin manages 7

3) The banking system does something useful unlike bitcoin which is just wasting energy so speculators can gamble

4) Gold and silver have been money for thousands of years

5) VHS was worse than Betamax but still reigned supreme until it died a death with the invention of video disks

6) £/$ used to be backed by gold but now only belief however that belief is reinforced by the fact that you can go to the shop and buy something with it which you can't with bitcoin

7) Meanwhile some history for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEoIyLA9IE

Compare the different crypto coins to the different tulip bulbs; should be edifying.