On Bitcoin...
Posted by CaptainKirk 4 months, 3 weeks ago to Economics
I said BTC would hit $100K long before it hit ZERO.
The link I am referencing to is worth watching. Michael Saylor says it best.
When you spend little to no time looking into BTC, you know it's a ponzi scheme.
Then after a good 10-20 hrs of actually studying what BTC is. you start to realize...
BTC is the digitization of MONEY. Just like Digital Cameras destroyed Kodak.
Digital Money will destroy paper currency.
He goes on to say, nobody who spends 100hrs actually researching/studying BTC,
Walks away a critic of BTC.
I know the Gulch is stock full of older patrons who shall not believe.
And I am okay with that. If I can get a few of you to LIKEN this "concept" to
the concepts of Harnessing Fire, or Electricity, or the Internal Combustion Engine.
You might wake up that part of you that realize that this "creates future opportunities",
that can be done without MIDDLEMEN (bankers, or government). [Okay, the reality
is that the middlemen are the many miners who make the network work... But they are 100% decentralized. And they are not going to take lightly to being asked to steal from someone like them, to help a central government somewhere].
Anyways. Flame me all you want. There were CROWDS admonishing Tesla/Edison for electricity. For 20yrs, everyone thought automobiles were STUPID and unreliable.
But getting someone from the Gulch to dig in, and ask... What will this change?
Because, as Mr. Saylor says... Nobody who spends the 100hrs researching this is still a skeptic.
Personally, MSTR (his stock) is booming because of him converting his cash holdings into BTC.
Also, the "bankers" told him "cash is trash" and that "you need to carry lots of debt to get better valuations". I mention this, because MANY of you naysayers are fully invested in the stock/bond market, a system that is PROVABLY a ponzi scheme with Counter-Party Risks, and subject to the Great Taking... (your deposits in your bank... COME LAST to the borrowing the bank has done at the Fed Window or with other banking institutions. Yes, the FDIC protects you).
Now, I am not saying it will be SMOOTH sailing for BTC. it will continue to chop around.
But if we are at $100K / BTC now. And the USA starts to accumulate, And 50 other companies are starting to do what MSTR did, so that they can hold BTC instead of depreciating cash.
You owe it to yourself to consider having some as a hedge against the coming inflation.
If you want to play around. Consider using IBIT. I have this in an IRA. For months, I traded it (long bias only), on the swings up and down. When it broke out, I bought a bunch and I will hold until I think we switch to sideways action. Probably 100-200 days from now. These are LONG SLOW Cycles. Don't try to get rich quick.
But IBIT makes it easy to play with. With very low fees if you do trade it.
(FWIW, I won't trade my BTC, never have). I just use IBIT to capture the volatility.
Because I am CONFIDENT that 3,5,9, 15 years from now. It will be higher than it is today!
From a market guessing standpoint. I could be 100% wrong. But I assume they will push this to about 125K and then we will get a big correction. At least down to 100K. And then the market will go sideways for 180+ days, maybe longer.
Does it require Electricity and Internet? Yeah... That's why it's not for the Mad Max Future.
That's what gives it a downside risk to $0.
But quite frankly, in the Mad Max future... I am not sure how much your gold will buy you when you run out of ammo to protect it.
The link I am referencing to is worth watching. Michael Saylor says it best.
When you spend little to no time looking into BTC, you know it's a ponzi scheme.
Then after a good 10-20 hrs of actually studying what BTC is. you start to realize...
BTC is the digitization of MONEY. Just like Digital Cameras destroyed Kodak.
Digital Money will destroy paper currency.
He goes on to say, nobody who spends 100hrs actually researching/studying BTC,
Walks away a critic of BTC.
I know the Gulch is stock full of older patrons who shall not believe.
And I am okay with that. If I can get a few of you to LIKEN this "concept" to
the concepts of Harnessing Fire, or Electricity, or the Internal Combustion Engine.
You might wake up that part of you that realize that this "creates future opportunities",
that can be done without MIDDLEMEN (bankers, or government). [Okay, the reality
is that the middlemen are the many miners who make the network work... But they are 100% decentralized. And they are not going to take lightly to being asked to steal from someone like them, to help a central government somewhere].
Anyways. Flame me all you want. There were CROWDS admonishing Tesla/Edison for electricity. For 20yrs, everyone thought automobiles were STUPID and unreliable.
But getting someone from the Gulch to dig in, and ask... What will this change?
Because, as Mr. Saylor says... Nobody who spends the 100hrs researching this is still a skeptic.
Personally, MSTR (his stock) is booming because of him converting his cash holdings into BTC.
Also, the "bankers" told him "cash is trash" and that "you need to carry lots of debt to get better valuations". I mention this, because MANY of you naysayers are fully invested in the stock/bond market, a system that is PROVABLY a ponzi scheme with Counter-Party Risks, and subject to the Great Taking... (your deposits in your bank... COME LAST to the borrowing the bank has done at the Fed Window or with other banking institutions. Yes, the FDIC protects you).
Now, I am not saying it will be SMOOTH sailing for BTC. it will continue to chop around.
But if we are at $100K / BTC now. And the USA starts to accumulate, And 50 other companies are starting to do what MSTR did, so that they can hold BTC instead of depreciating cash.
You owe it to yourself to consider having some as a hedge against the coming inflation.
If you want to play around. Consider using IBIT. I have this in an IRA. For months, I traded it (long bias only), on the swings up and down. When it broke out, I bought a bunch and I will hold until I think we switch to sideways action. Probably 100-200 days from now. These are LONG SLOW Cycles. Don't try to get rich quick.
But IBIT makes it easy to play with. With very low fees if you do trade it.
(FWIW, I won't trade my BTC, never have). I just use IBIT to capture the volatility.
Because I am CONFIDENT that 3,5,9, 15 years from now. It will be higher than it is today!
From a market guessing standpoint. I could be 100% wrong. But I assume they will push this to about 125K and then we will get a big correction. At least down to 100K. And then the market will go sideways for 180+ days, maybe longer.
Does it require Electricity and Internet? Yeah... That's why it's not for the Mad Max Future.
That's what gives it a downside risk to $0.
But quite frankly, in the Mad Max future... I am not sure how much your gold will buy you when you run out of ammo to protect it.
Previous comments... You are currently on page 3.
Anyway, my point was that the cost of energy and hardware didn't affect the price of bitcoin. That cost is only important to the miners. The sellers and buyers don't care what it costs to mine.
So, I guess what I am saying is that nothing of value is produced by mining btc (other than btc itself which can only be sold for monetary use). Mining gold, on the other hand, creates raw material that is an input for other industries. So, there are alternative uses.
If I knew about every price move of bitcoin going into the future I would buy as much as I could at every low point and sell everything at every high point as fast as I could with every single move that was greater than spread plus some additional amount. That would make me infinitely rich. Also, I would do the same thing for any other tradable thing I knew price moves for.
No, I would not hodl it. That would be stupid. Hodling only makes sense for stuff that generates a dividend and doesn't have too much risk. Bitcoin has too much risk and doesn't generate a dividend. I guess if something doesn't generate a dividend but has zero risk might be good to hodl but only in some limited amount. Liquidity is important too.
I did have some btc from way back left over from a transaction in a wallet and it increased by some 300 times in price. At some point I donated it. I have zero regrets about not leaving more in there or not keeping it some more. This clown world shit needs to stop. The only way one should be making money is by producing something of value to somebody else. Anything else means that somebody produced something of value but didn't get paid. That is very anti-gulch.
Well, if you believe BTC is like an IBM PC, and you can just buy a CLONE. You would be right.
But BTC has Mindshare, and Market share.
It is a BRAND (like Michael Jordan).
LTC is effectively a clone of BTC. As you describe it. But it is NOT considered the same by the SEC.
As Trump brings in people who will DEFINE this class of investment more as Real Estate.
And yes, having some intrinsic value. Like the "network" that allows you to go throughout the world and trade it? Exchange it for local cash or local goods?
I can appreciate that you are thinking about it.
Notice that El Salvador started buying into BTC because the IMF/World Bank had them in a stranglehold of lifetime debt (what bankers do).
Pretty soon, they are going to be able to pay off all of their debts... That's pretty amazing.
As for improving on the idea. Yes, the Model A sucked.
It takes a while to change the world forever.
Could you imagine a modern Lambo back when the Model-T came out? It would look like a spaceship.
Yes, BTC is early. Yes, it's first. Yes, it's risky.
But this will be LIFE CHANGING, IMHO...
Imagine when NOBODY uses a currency/money that is controlled by some bankers or some government??? When every government payment is TRACEABLE.
If you had actual wealth that exists in reality tied to it, maybe then you would have a guarantee that the price will not go below the cost of the good.
I know you bitcoin proponents like to equate bitcoin to gold and say that gold might also go to zero, but it wouldn't. Gold would likely never go to zero, unless some very unlikely thing happens, such as somebody inventing a method for making gold out of led at near zero cost. Even then, they wouldn't make that invention public and wouldn't flood the market with gold. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a pretty high chance of losing value quickly and being replaced by some other coin that becomes popular.
BTC is a competitor to GOLD (storehouse/inflation hedge) and NOT the dollar.
https://app.screencast.com/mthbok0042...
For example, there is a limited supply of turds that I can produce. That doesn't mean they are valuable.
What makes gold valuable is limited supply PLUS its usefulness to somebody.
For example, air is valuable to everybody. However, there is a lot of it everywhere so it is free.
Gold is useful in certain situations, plus it is limited. It's usefulness as money though is due to its ability to not rust. It doesn't depreciate, which is needed for store of value. Copper is not so good for this, it eventually rusts away.
Bitcoin is not limited though, it has direct competition from other cryptocurrencies and traditional currencies.
I do think bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have some value. I just don't think its value comes from what you think it comes from. It is useful to send money and not have to deal with banks.
More importantly, I think bitcoin is a rather crappy system. I would improve on the idea before betting on anything like this.
I guess maybe you can claim the minted bitcoin itself can be sold but that's self-referential and doesn't count.
First, BTC only comes into existence with "Work" is done. The concept of mining requires CPUs + Electricity. It builds a FLOOR into the price. As the price goes up, the cost of mining goes up.
Again, I hear you screaming at electricity. I am challenging you to study it a bit more.
A limited supply is what makes Gold Valuable vs. Copper, vs. Sand.
The value is the trust it has, plus that nobody can create them for free. And people WILLINGLY Choose to work with them. Eventually an ecosystem exists (like now), where Governments and Corporations are willing to use it as a STORE OF VALUE. And they will accumulate it, to hold it. INSTEAD of holding dollars.
Knowing what you know now. Would you have invested $5,000 in BTC any time in the last 10yrs? And if you did... Would you still have any or would you have sold them along the way and held zero? (and would owning them cause you to research them differently?)
I've been UP and DOWN in my BTC position. I consider it a hedge, like Gold/Silver.
And I've been UP and DOWN in my Gold and Silver positions. And I've taken my share of losses in the stock markets. There are risks everywhere. Most people simply don't know them.
The other problem with bitcoin is that the supply is limited. You don't want the supply limited. You want the money supply to exactly match the general level of supply of goods and services in the economy, otherwise there will be undesireable changes in the price level. This creates economic inefficiency, and that is bad.
You don't want a buch of dipshits suddenly becoming rich at the expense of productive people, but this is exactly what bitcoin does.
If I was to design a 'coin', I would only allow minting of tokens when some value (wealth) comes into existence and I would require tokens to be destroyed upon destruction of that value.
Try using Dollar Cost Averaging.
And you can buy a SINGLE Satoshi.
Start small. My best recommendation.
Every down day (big Down, etc).
Just buy your allotment.
But watching it move around is 1/2 the fun.
Mo ammo is what the silver is for.
Even so, better have too much ammo and be very sure of your aim.
(My next available income goes to BTC.)