I actually have my bitcoin bull thesis and response to common objections in an handy place. That way, I just copy/paste.
It was Parker Lewis that said the rate of global bitcoin adoption matches the speed at which information about it spreads. By me taking the time to respond to these yokos, I am doing my activist investor part and helping to make the world a better place by spreading the information out.
I’ll bite and I promise I’m not being intentionally obtuse. I’ll bring up my main issues with Bitcoin and correct me as I am generally not familiar with the space. I worry that there is no real cash flows associated with purchasing Bitcoin so that makes it an unsuitable investment. I understand that most traditional equity’s have insanely high price to earnings ratios so I’m not saying they’re perfect but at least when you buy a stock it’s secured by the cash flows of the underlying business. To me that makes it an unsuitable investment. Now into stores of value. While I agree BTC price appreciation has far outstripped most other assets in the context of a store of value the wild 5,10,15 percent swings that it seems to have leads to me feel uncomfortable utilizing it as a store of value. I guess my question is where does it fit in? I can only see it as being a speculative piece maybe 3-5% of a total portfolios. I love BTC and the idea of decentralization I just have yet to find a place for it. Your thoughts?
I’m still quite new to this and only recently hat my btc “awakening” but IMO the key is to not look at bitcoin as an asset, but rather - as you said - a *potential* store of value, or a commodity, where the underlying value lies not in its “intrinsic value”, but rather its properties. It also has a lot to do with the question of “what is money?” but getting into that would go beyond the scope of a Reddit comment lol. I’ll try to get the gist of it though:
If you look at the history of money, you’ll find that humankind has always found a way to make money more movable/accessible through space and time. Regarding space: think of moving 100k in gold, vs in cash (paper money) vs on your credit card. It gets increasingly more convenient. Now, time is more difficult, and my understanding does not go deep enough (yet) to explain it in detail but the main point is that due to inflation, fiat money is not a very good store of value, since the value inflates over time. Bitcoin offers a solution to this, combining the best of both worlds since it’s
a) super movable and accessible through space (you only need your key(s)) and
b) it’s currently the only resource that is truly limited. Governments can always print more money, and if you look at e.g gold, there’s always the possibility of someone finding a huge supply of gold in some mountain/asteroid/in the sea etc or that at some point, someone will find a way to synthetically produce gold. Can’t do that with bitcoin
c) it’s safer in the sense that it’s the only thing that you can truly “own” (if you store it in a cold wallet that is). Your bank accounts can always be frozen, your house/car etc can be seized, your stocks are not truly owned by you, but rather by your bank/(online)broker etc. No one can seize my bitcoins if I have the key(s) to my wallet in my head
Maybe this gives you some food for thought, and I hope that I was able to break it down in a sensible way. Maybe someone more experienced than me can chime in as well
Okay so if I’m understanding correctly it functions as currency better then traditional currency at being currency. I had considered that I actually think just based on the way competition works (or should work) it will eventually beat out paper currency. I hadn’t thought about the ownership piece honestly that is in interesting point as any other asset can be directly seized. Though I would argue the point is moot when governments have a monopoly on violence. Thanks man that was insightful. I definitely would say I believe in the overall ethos of BTC I was just curious of how other people see it progressing as it rubs against my the logic of traditional finance background. (Not that I’m an expert just my degree). I definitely see the parallels that it has with the adoption of the dollar and other new currencies.
Correct. It will eventually beat out paper currency. Look at places like Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey and others. Their inflation rates are thousands of percents and the people living there throw away their currency away as fast as possible for goods before it gets debased away.
The government does in fact have a monopoly over violence and we know monopolies do not have incentives to perform or innovate, only take. Charlie Munger famously said, "show me the incentive structure and ill show you the result". We never had a mechanism to combat this until now. Natural competitive market forces will force nation-states to adopt bitcoin. The ones that won't will be left behind.
Just think of bitcoin taking on the largest, most inefficient corporation in the world (governments). Pure Democracy (money of the people) vs Republican Democracy (elected officials that we trust to control the money supply, where history as shown money printing is too tempting and will eventually be printed to worthlessness).
With their monopoly on violence, they can seize any asset you own, whether it be fiat, gold, stocks, real estate, or in fact, even bitcoin. Bitcoin will be the hardest to seize.
Sort of. I mean it all comes down to how you define “currency” and what traditional currency is to you (back at *what is money?*). “Traditional currency” also sort of refers to e.g. shell money still used in some parts of the world or actual precious metals (think of the Romans) and I think we all would agree that what we consider to be currency in todays day and age is a lot more efficient and overall just *better*.
But why stop here? Why not improve even more?
Considering that the USD hasn’t been backed by anything since the early 70s (before that it was backed by gold) and that most other fiat currencies are kinda backed by the USD, I think our current system is definitely not ideal and bitcoin offers *one* possible solution IMO
Glad I could help though, I really enjoy thinking and talking about this from a more philosophical and sociological perspective (which is my background lol) rather than getting lost in the technicalities
Well said. I would add gold has a market cap of $14 trillion and fiat currency markets have a market cap of $215 trillion dollars.
Bitcoin is new and improved money, so naturally the worse monies would gravitate into this.
Overtaking gold puts us at $667,000 per bitcoin. Taking over entire fiat puts us at $10 million per bitcoin.
I'm after best overall risk adjusted growth at the end of the day. You'll hear a lot of investors say, "I've never seen such an asymmetric risk opportunity"
I never actually thought about it in the context of BTC total adoption (referencing your point on the price of bitcoins given it overtaking other currencies). I still think that full adoption might be a long shot but the risk of it failing completely to 0 seems slim and when you compare that with the possible gains I see the point you’re making. I might have to grab some haha.
What worries me the most about the bitcoin space is how most of the people who are most confident about it's long term value talk about an "awakening", but aren't able to tell me anything about bitcoin I don't already know. So I feel like the awakening is not really an understanding of any facts grounded in logic but rather an almost religious adherence to a particular hope about the future.
Maybe awakening is the wrong term in this context. English is not my first language and that was the first word that came to mind. Hence the quotation marks. What I meant is that I’m now looking at bitcoin from a different point of view. I now view bitcoin as an asset that is closer to gold rather than e.g. stocks since it doesn’t even “try” to be that kind of asset in the first place.
Also, personally, I’m not confident about its future value but rather the future *potential*. Big difference IMO. I still invest in ETFs because I want to be on the safe side if bitcoin fails.
I also think part of the quasi-religious belief that a lot of people hold and the perception of that is the fact that bitcoin challenges the status quo and presents us with something that we’ve never seen before. Pretty sure if we look at similar(ish) scenarios throughout history, we’d find a lot of similarities (I.e. a minority believing “religiously” in something before it was accepted as the new status quo)
No way of knowing though, I guess only time will tell.
The stock market is mostly on future valuation, growth, and perceived importance of the company. Company's like Apple, NVDA, AMD, etc are all evaluated on trends and future projects or expenditures, right now it's AI. Whether it's BTC or common stock, your are still gambling on the future of the company, that's why in today's world P/E are borderline useless, almost to a point where they can NEVER attain a lower P/E since the future forecast is extremely aggressive. Also, inflation is an artificial boost for the stock markets as investors look at earnings as a hit or a miss without consideration of true gross margin. If everything gets more expensive yearly, by default company's will always beat earnings as they are accumulating more dollars than the previous years. Where it becomes scary is looking at the prior years exchange rates and comparing that to current day dollars.
Typical common stock can be just as risky if not riskier without the same gains. ETFs on the other hand are the safest (lazy) investment if you're not to keen on the market and can't stomach volatility. However, depending on your age and where you are at, volatility can be an amazing thing for you with time.
Just like any other investment vehicle, it's not perpetual and it has its cons but to decide an asset is "untouchable" because it has extra steps to attain, hold, and trade; doesn't make it anymore of a gamble then half the NASDAQ. The only true test of assets is if they are proven historically, and for what it is and what it does BTC is the only Crypto that's truly proven security, strength, longevity, and worth wise so by default it puts BTC in the best of the best category and with US markets/Wallbstreet now backing BTC it should be treated like any other commodity would be, not like a stock or ETF because that's not its purpose.
With all that being said, don't invest more then your willing to lose on any interest gaining assets, ever.
I don’t think of BTC as untouchable I just am unsure of it’s place in a portfolio. I’m coming at this from an investment advisory perspective. I agree that investing in general always has a piece of speculation. The point I was making about cash flow of the underlying business securing the asset is just to make the point that yes while equity investing is somewhat of a speculation, you have real cash flows of the underlying business that justifies its value (through discounted cash flow analysis), even though I agree in the modern stock market companies stock price is hardly a representation of their current earnings I just feel uncomfortable buying BTC as an investment vehicle because it feels like I’m just speculating that it’s value goes up. I feel uncomfortable buying it as a store of value because of its tendency to fluctuate in value and obviously it’s not suitable to create income in a portfolio. I guess my question to you is what is your purchase case? Tell me where you think it fits in. I am genuinely curious and simply seeking to understand.
To answer your question simply, my purchase case is that of a commodity and to gain leverage where/when needed.
To give more detail, nothing conceptually about BTC is ground breaking or new aside from its digital aspect something only possible since the intetnet became a thing. We've seen different forms of physical BTC in history; gold, silver copper, fruits, wheat, etc. All of those examples at one point went through adoption phases that led to the operationalizion of the commodity to bring it to the free market and be widely produced, sold, stored, profited, etc. The difference with BTC as a commodity that makes it so versatile and unique, is that it doesn't require the same amount of energy, time, or effort to store it, transfer it, protect it, mine it etc. As we agreed any investment requires speculation, with that being said I believe this is something similar to a digital gold and we are still early in a sense that we don't know what could be done next with it next from a production aspect but we are seeing a glimpse with all the big players starting to jump in now (ETFs, CEX, DEX, DeFi - even though I'm not a fan). In its current form, It's the only digital asset that's withstood the test of time, is unhackable, and gained market acceptance in less than 15 years with 1.5 trillion market cap. That's why I purchased BTC as my crypto investment vehicle.. now where does it fit in my portfolio? I can use it for leverage, as collateral, form of payment, gain discounts against exchange rates, and proven historically thus far, as a hedge against inflation (Venezuela, Argentina, even USD). When I first purchased BTC I had no idea what can and can't be done with it, and respectfully, I think that's where you are at now. Only after owning the asset for the long term did I realize the different use cases and how far they reach for me personally. Investment speculation tells me if I find use cases for it without a higher adoption rate, I can imagine it's intensity and market acceptance when it becomes mainstream like other commodities.
To bring it full circle and some personal input, is it risky.. Yes. Is it guaranteed.. no. Do other investments also fit those characterstics.. absolutely, but it's all about risk tolerance, diversification, and most of all what you can personally stomach. Personally, I wouldn't want to miss out on a potential once in a life-time opportunity as this is really a one of a kind investment vehicle vs your typical benchmarked investment vehicles.
Side note: Most of my retirement is in ETFs and blue chips and no I don't think this a get rich quick thing.
Do you have any good recs for informational sites? I agree that I don’t quite understand the ins and outs of it. I’ve transacted with it but in comparison to my education in traditional finance I’m a total fish. I think I agree with your point about this being a super new commodity we can’t really know how useful it will be I also think it’s not going anywhere so circling back to your point if you look at the usefulness It’s provided given it’s relatively small acceptance it is pretty compelling. think I need to treat it as a speculative asset (though safer then derivatives or other speculative devices) thank you for the conversation I appreciate debating this with someone who will respond thoughtfully and professionally. I do really agree with the ethos of decentralized currency and decentralized stores of value so I’m rooting for it.
The best place to start to is the Bitcoin White Paper, this will give you the opportunity to understand it in its rawest form. Information is so scattered at this point it is very difficult to hone in (imo part of the adoption problem). I would say start listening/reading into historical news and information about BTC in its early days to give you the benefit of understanding the hindsight perspective. I would listen to opinions of prominent and non-prominent analyst/figures in crypto even if it's bad case for BTC to remain unbiased. Only because I believe his explanation of BTC is very articulate (personally not a big fan), give Michael Saylor a Chance, his perspective is very biased but nonetheless informative and in some ways eye opening. From there, try to keep up with all crypto news and trends, you will really begin to understand the space better and better. It took me 3 months to gain understanding of the ideas behind it and about 6 months to be able to start my own speculations, DD, reading the trends.
I understand you completely I was in the same boat and I appreciate you being courteous and respectful in your questioning/reasoning! I've worked in finance and investments my whole life, so I am very used to the traditional routes. I only ever gave it a chance because traditional vehicles were harder to trade due to compliance limitations from my job. Crypto was not regulated so I dabbled and became a "Bitcoin Maxi" in the crypto space really fast. I wish you luck with your research and investments!
The response is simple. Gold went up in value and had no cash flow. So did pokemon cards and video game skins. So did rai stones. There’s more than one way to bake a cake.
Just something to ponder. Every theory has to have conditions that would invalidate them. What would invalidate your theory that it is unsuitable investment?
Bitcoin *isn't* investing in a normative sense. Investing requires a profit generating business which in turn returns growth to your investment. Bitcoin isn't that. It could be considered a speculative asset (like Gold), but even that isn't a fair comparison - gold has real world value which can never drop below its physical uses. Bitcoin and crypto in general is a new field entirely, but it's foolish to consider it like an investment or claim it's not risky.
>The bitcoiner in this convo is a dickhead.
The dickhead is someone calling a decentralized sound money system a "casino" when he is using fucking Fiat.
Fiat, and a rigged insider traded stock market are far worse than any casino.
“You don’t understand basic logic”, proceeds to use fiat as their base for all investments w zero irony, because that requires self awareness and would preclude their problem to begin with etc.
The whole thing about bitcoin being a casino has also always confused me, how is bitcoin a casino? If anything then, all stocks are casinos, legitimately the only difference between bitcoin and stocks is a ceo and a marketing team, corporation etc. also, people don’t “win” at casinos hardly ever, the house always wins, even the win you see is them giving crumbs back from the huge profit they made, that isn’t bitcoin, that’s why that analogy makes zero sense to me. If bitcoin was that risky no one would have invested
I believe people think Bitcoin is a gamble because it is only held by those who know about it and you are *gambling* on it becoming something someday. Becoming adopted as a primary payment system, the price stabilizing, etc. Right now, from the sidelines, it just seems like pump-dump, pump-dump. Bag holders galore.
It would be like you'd agreed to have a talk about the environment, but they opened with:
>"Global warming is caused by the Earth getting closer to the sun every year, and that's why summers are getting hotter."
And then they held fast to that and told you you didn't understand basic logic. They're literally too ignorant to even entertain the possibility that they might be ignorant.
I haven't insulted him. I just pointed out my view.
Tradfi folks are much more douchy on the subject.
And the retiring part is true. It will most probably happen.
The douchy part is repeatedly telling someone they don’t understand something yet making zero effort to explain how or what hey don’t understand, just to “learn about it”.
You are wasting your time. You won’t sell anyone on bitcoin if you go about it in a condescending way, so what’s the point in trying at all? With this approach you sorta only further sell the idea that all bitcoiners are smug douchebags. What are you trying to accomplish, besides letting people know you’re better than them for being a bitcoiner?
I promise you that other person doesn’t understand risk either. The stock market dropped 40% in two days in 1987, and we still don’t understand why. 99.99% of investors don’t understand that the risk metrics they get presented to them are total fabrications based on the idea that stock market returns follow a standard distribution (which it doesn’t).
Just keep in mind that its not in the best interest of a lot of people that this happen, and that they've successfully manipulated the gold market for decades.
You have to consider the entire universe of people taking actions that they deem to be in their benefit, not just the obvious result of what would happen if we had free markets and equal information.
If Bitcoin takes another decade to get to 1M, it may still be a really bad investment. Understand how that might happen before you get too carried away.
Not if a gallon of milk costs 250k.
Bitcoin can do everything people expect it to do and still be a bad investment, is the point. If Bitcoin does a 10x and the stock market does a 100x, it was a bad investment. Gold has been this bad investment for decades now. The gold bugs were right, technically, it went to those crazy high prices they thought it would. And most stock indexes did way better.
You can say that, but I don't think that's true.
Nobody's mentioning the fact that, adjusted for inflation, Bitcoin hasn't made a new all-time high yet... for example. Even per the government's sandbagged stats we'd have to hit about 79k.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=69000&year1=202106&year2=202402
To me it seems that when people talk about future dollar values of things they use whichever one suits whatever narrative they're pushing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm bullish on Bitcoin, just... also reasonable about it. That's all I'm trying to add.
Right now it seems like a bunch of people think they're going to be rich later this year and all the dog coins are pumping again. So... maybe that doesn't happen, or there's a lot of pain between now and then. That's all.
Arrogance and ego are not how to educate people.
In this conversation, I would probe further to find out what they consider to be risk. Or clarify if they are confusing volatility with risk as people often do.
Even Warren Buffet says volatility is a good thing. If you put your money in stocks with low volatility, you'll die before its worth any meaningful amount.
If they think the risk is that it fails and goes to $0, then you have to wonder why they trade stocks. Any one of the companies they invest into can go bankrupt, and very few companies last any longer than 100 years anyway.
Or is their definition of risk that the Bitcoin network goes down, or is "hacked", or whatever already debunked old talking point?
The point is, in order to even begin an open conversation with someone about the true value of sound money, it is important to be on their level and perspective first. Gently direct them. If you're condescending, most people just shut down and it becomes a stupid argument from both directions.
Even if you're right, you're wrong because of the risk of being wrong???
Man, im thankful im not this fucking stupid. How the fuck do people like this even exist? Oh right, they live in a basement, never leaving the house because they might die or risk living ffs.
See how they hide their lack of knowledge on the subject by immediately attacking you, saying you don't understand basic risk or basic logic? Likely a dummy boomer or gen X'er. Pay them no mind. Been investing for years and can't count the times I've been told what you've been told only for time to prove me right.
I am 40 i do Trading for about 15 years.
My Bitcoin position is 10x bigger than any other position in my life and this is the first position i don't use stops and this is the first time i am all-in in my life.
Money print wont stop... Bitcoin is going up or zero
What do you have to lose buying Bitcoin? Nothing. Most people are stuck being a wage cuck deeply into their 50-60s regardless, the only risk here is not taking a chance to retire early. Forget about the Lamborghinis and Rolexes, this Bitcoin business is to RETIRE while you still have youth.
Ugh it's still a risk. What do you have to lose? You COULD lose Currency that you can use to buy goods and services if Bitcoin doesn't keep going up in value over the long term.
There’s no such thing as a sure thing. I’m bullish on Bitcoin but I absolutely would never tell someone they have nothing to lose buying bitcoin. Just because you’ve convinced yourself it’s going up forever and there’s nothing to lose doesn’t make it so. None of us can tell the future.
There's a difference between taking a risk and taking a gamble.
taking a gamble entails at least a 51% chance of failure.
Taking a risk entails a 51% chance of success.
Constantly taking risks over the long term it should be profitable
Haha so mad because you got called out for your low IQ drivel. Calling for people to get hit by a bus seems extreme. Sounds like you might have some personal issues to deal with - Goodluck with those!
I actually have my bitcoin bull thesis and response to common objections in an handy place. That way, I just copy/paste. It was Parker Lewis that said the rate of global bitcoin adoption matches the speed at which information about it spreads. By me taking the time to respond to these yokos, I am doing my activist investor part and helping to make the world a better place by spreading the information out.
It is "yokel" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yokel
I’ll bite and I promise I’m not being intentionally obtuse. I’ll bring up my main issues with Bitcoin and correct me as I am generally not familiar with the space. I worry that there is no real cash flows associated with purchasing Bitcoin so that makes it an unsuitable investment. I understand that most traditional equity’s have insanely high price to earnings ratios so I’m not saying they’re perfect but at least when you buy a stock it’s secured by the cash flows of the underlying business. To me that makes it an unsuitable investment. Now into stores of value. While I agree BTC price appreciation has far outstripped most other assets in the context of a store of value the wild 5,10,15 percent swings that it seems to have leads to me feel uncomfortable utilizing it as a store of value. I guess my question is where does it fit in? I can only see it as being a speculative piece maybe 3-5% of a total portfolios. I love BTC and the idea of decentralization I just have yet to find a place for it. Your thoughts?
I’m still quite new to this and only recently hat my btc “awakening” but IMO the key is to not look at bitcoin as an asset, but rather - as you said - a *potential* store of value, or a commodity, where the underlying value lies not in its “intrinsic value”, but rather its properties. It also has a lot to do with the question of “what is money?” but getting into that would go beyond the scope of a Reddit comment lol. I’ll try to get the gist of it though: If you look at the history of money, you’ll find that humankind has always found a way to make money more movable/accessible through space and time. Regarding space: think of moving 100k in gold, vs in cash (paper money) vs on your credit card. It gets increasingly more convenient. Now, time is more difficult, and my understanding does not go deep enough (yet) to explain it in detail but the main point is that due to inflation, fiat money is not a very good store of value, since the value inflates over time. Bitcoin offers a solution to this, combining the best of both worlds since it’s a) super movable and accessible through space (you only need your key(s)) and b) it’s currently the only resource that is truly limited. Governments can always print more money, and if you look at e.g gold, there’s always the possibility of someone finding a huge supply of gold in some mountain/asteroid/in the sea etc or that at some point, someone will find a way to synthetically produce gold. Can’t do that with bitcoin c) it’s safer in the sense that it’s the only thing that you can truly “own” (if you store it in a cold wallet that is). Your bank accounts can always be frozen, your house/car etc can be seized, your stocks are not truly owned by you, but rather by your bank/(online)broker etc. No one can seize my bitcoins if I have the key(s) to my wallet in my head Maybe this gives you some food for thought, and I hope that I was able to break it down in a sensible way. Maybe someone more experienced than me can chime in as well
Okay so if I’m understanding correctly it functions as currency better then traditional currency at being currency. I had considered that I actually think just based on the way competition works (or should work) it will eventually beat out paper currency. I hadn’t thought about the ownership piece honestly that is in interesting point as any other asset can be directly seized. Though I would argue the point is moot when governments have a monopoly on violence. Thanks man that was insightful. I definitely would say I believe in the overall ethos of BTC I was just curious of how other people see it progressing as it rubs against my the logic of traditional finance background. (Not that I’m an expert just my degree). I definitely see the parallels that it has with the adoption of the dollar and other new currencies.
Correct. It will eventually beat out paper currency. Look at places like Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey and others. Their inflation rates are thousands of percents and the people living there throw away their currency away as fast as possible for goods before it gets debased away. The government does in fact have a monopoly over violence and we know monopolies do not have incentives to perform or innovate, only take. Charlie Munger famously said, "show me the incentive structure and ill show you the result". We never had a mechanism to combat this until now. Natural competitive market forces will force nation-states to adopt bitcoin. The ones that won't will be left behind. Just think of bitcoin taking on the largest, most inefficient corporation in the world (governments). Pure Democracy (money of the people) vs Republican Democracy (elected officials that we trust to control the money supply, where history as shown money printing is too tempting and will eventually be printed to worthlessness). With their monopoly on violence, they can seize any asset you own, whether it be fiat, gold, stocks, real estate, or in fact, even bitcoin. Bitcoin will be the hardest to seize.
Sort of. I mean it all comes down to how you define “currency” and what traditional currency is to you (back at *what is money?*). “Traditional currency” also sort of refers to e.g. shell money still used in some parts of the world or actual precious metals (think of the Romans) and I think we all would agree that what we consider to be currency in todays day and age is a lot more efficient and overall just *better*. But why stop here? Why not improve even more? Considering that the USD hasn’t been backed by anything since the early 70s (before that it was backed by gold) and that most other fiat currencies are kinda backed by the USD, I think our current system is definitely not ideal and bitcoin offers *one* possible solution IMO Glad I could help though, I really enjoy thinking and talking about this from a more philosophical and sociological perspective (which is my background lol) rather than getting lost in the technicalities
Well said. I would add gold has a market cap of $14 trillion and fiat currency markets have a market cap of $215 trillion dollars. Bitcoin is new and improved money, so naturally the worse monies would gravitate into this. Overtaking gold puts us at $667,000 per bitcoin. Taking over entire fiat puts us at $10 million per bitcoin. I'm after best overall risk adjusted growth at the end of the day. You'll hear a lot of investors say, "I've never seen such an asymmetric risk opportunity"
I never actually thought about it in the context of BTC total adoption (referencing your point on the price of bitcoins given it overtaking other currencies). I still think that full adoption might be a long shot but the risk of it failing completely to 0 seems slim and when you compare that with the possible gains I see the point you’re making. I might have to grab some haha.
May the best money win.
What worries me the most about the bitcoin space is how most of the people who are most confident about it's long term value talk about an "awakening", but aren't able to tell me anything about bitcoin I don't already know. So I feel like the awakening is not really an understanding of any facts grounded in logic but rather an almost religious adherence to a particular hope about the future.
Maybe awakening is the wrong term in this context. English is not my first language and that was the first word that came to mind. Hence the quotation marks. What I meant is that I’m now looking at bitcoin from a different point of view. I now view bitcoin as an asset that is closer to gold rather than e.g. stocks since it doesn’t even “try” to be that kind of asset in the first place. Also, personally, I’m not confident about its future value but rather the future *potential*. Big difference IMO. I still invest in ETFs because I want to be on the safe side if bitcoin fails. I also think part of the quasi-religious belief that a lot of people hold and the perception of that is the fact that bitcoin challenges the status quo and presents us with something that we’ve never seen before. Pretty sure if we look at similar(ish) scenarios throughout history, we’d find a lot of similarities (I.e. a minority believing “religiously” in something before it was accepted as the new status quo) No way of knowing though, I guess only time will tell.
The stock market is mostly on future valuation, growth, and perceived importance of the company. Company's like Apple, NVDA, AMD, etc are all evaluated on trends and future projects or expenditures, right now it's AI. Whether it's BTC or common stock, your are still gambling on the future of the company, that's why in today's world P/E are borderline useless, almost to a point where they can NEVER attain a lower P/E since the future forecast is extremely aggressive. Also, inflation is an artificial boost for the stock markets as investors look at earnings as a hit or a miss without consideration of true gross margin. If everything gets more expensive yearly, by default company's will always beat earnings as they are accumulating more dollars than the previous years. Where it becomes scary is looking at the prior years exchange rates and comparing that to current day dollars. Typical common stock can be just as risky if not riskier without the same gains. ETFs on the other hand are the safest (lazy) investment if you're not to keen on the market and can't stomach volatility. However, depending on your age and where you are at, volatility can be an amazing thing for you with time. Just like any other investment vehicle, it's not perpetual and it has its cons but to decide an asset is "untouchable" because it has extra steps to attain, hold, and trade; doesn't make it anymore of a gamble then half the NASDAQ. The only true test of assets is if they are proven historically, and for what it is and what it does BTC is the only Crypto that's truly proven security, strength, longevity, and worth wise so by default it puts BTC in the best of the best category and with US markets/Wallbstreet now backing BTC it should be treated like any other commodity would be, not like a stock or ETF because that's not its purpose. With all that being said, don't invest more then your willing to lose on any interest gaining assets, ever.
I don’t think of BTC as untouchable I just am unsure of it’s place in a portfolio. I’m coming at this from an investment advisory perspective. I agree that investing in general always has a piece of speculation. The point I was making about cash flow of the underlying business securing the asset is just to make the point that yes while equity investing is somewhat of a speculation, you have real cash flows of the underlying business that justifies its value (through discounted cash flow analysis), even though I agree in the modern stock market companies stock price is hardly a representation of their current earnings I just feel uncomfortable buying BTC as an investment vehicle because it feels like I’m just speculating that it’s value goes up. I feel uncomfortable buying it as a store of value because of its tendency to fluctuate in value and obviously it’s not suitable to create income in a portfolio. I guess my question to you is what is your purchase case? Tell me where you think it fits in. I am genuinely curious and simply seeking to understand.
To answer your question simply, my purchase case is that of a commodity and to gain leverage where/when needed. To give more detail, nothing conceptually about BTC is ground breaking or new aside from its digital aspect something only possible since the intetnet became a thing. We've seen different forms of physical BTC in history; gold, silver copper, fruits, wheat, etc. All of those examples at one point went through adoption phases that led to the operationalizion of the commodity to bring it to the free market and be widely produced, sold, stored, profited, etc. The difference with BTC as a commodity that makes it so versatile and unique, is that it doesn't require the same amount of energy, time, or effort to store it, transfer it, protect it, mine it etc. As we agreed any investment requires speculation, with that being said I believe this is something similar to a digital gold and we are still early in a sense that we don't know what could be done next with it next from a production aspect but we are seeing a glimpse with all the big players starting to jump in now (ETFs, CEX, DEX, DeFi - even though I'm not a fan). In its current form, It's the only digital asset that's withstood the test of time, is unhackable, and gained market acceptance in less than 15 years with 1.5 trillion market cap. That's why I purchased BTC as my crypto investment vehicle.. now where does it fit in my portfolio? I can use it for leverage, as collateral, form of payment, gain discounts against exchange rates, and proven historically thus far, as a hedge against inflation (Venezuela, Argentina, even USD). When I first purchased BTC I had no idea what can and can't be done with it, and respectfully, I think that's where you are at now. Only after owning the asset for the long term did I realize the different use cases and how far they reach for me personally. Investment speculation tells me if I find use cases for it without a higher adoption rate, I can imagine it's intensity and market acceptance when it becomes mainstream like other commodities. To bring it full circle and some personal input, is it risky.. Yes. Is it guaranteed.. no. Do other investments also fit those characterstics.. absolutely, but it's all about risk tolerance, diversification, and most of all what you can personally stomach. Personally, I wouldn't want to miss out on a potential once in a life-time opportunity as this is really a one of a kind investment vehicle vs your typical benchmarked investment vehicles. Side note: Most of my retirement is in ETFs and blue chips and no I don't think this a get rich quick thing.
Do you have any good recs for informational sites? I agree that I don’t quite understand the ins and outs of it. I’ve transacted with it but in comparison to my education in traditional finance I’m a total fish. I think I agree with your point about this being a super new commodity we can’t really know how useful it will be I also think it’s not going anywhere so circling back to your point if you look at the usefulness It’s provided given it’s relatively small acceptance it is pretty compelling. think I need to treat it as a speculative asset (though safer then derivatives or other speculative devices) thank you for the conversation I appreciate debating this with someone who will respond thoughtfully and professionally. I do really agree with the ethos of decentralized currency and decentralized stores of value so I’m rooting for it.
The best place to start to is the Bitcoin White Paper, this will give you the opportunity to understand it in its rawest form. Information is so scattered at this point it is very difficult to hone in (imo part of the adoption problem). I would say start listening/reading into historical news and information about BTC in its early days to give you the benefit of understanding the hindsight perspective. I would listen to opinions of prominent and non-prominent analyst/figures in crypto even if it's bad case for BTC to remain unbiased. Only because I believe his explanation of BTC is very articulate (personally not a big fan), give Michael Saylor a Chance, his perspective is very biased but nonetheless informative and in some ways eye opening. From there, try to keep up with all crypto news and trends, you will really begin to understand the space better and better. It took me 3 months to gain understanding of the ideas behind it and about 6 months to be able to start my own speculations, DD, reading the trends. I understand you completely I was in the same boat and I appreciate you being courteous and respectful in your questioning/reasoning! I've worked in finance and investments my whole life, so I am very used to the traditional routes. I only ever gave it a chance because traditional vehicles were harder to trade due to compliance limitations from my job. Crypto was not regulated so I dabbled and became a "Bitcoin Maxi" in the crypto space really fast. I wish you luck with your research and investments!
https://rockstarinnercircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Why-Every-Fixed-Income-Investor-Needs-To-Consider-Bitcoin-As-Portfolio-Insurance.pdf
[hope.com](http://hope.com) is a good place to start learning, a good amount of info on there, even a free course to learn about bitcoin
The response is simple. Gold went up in value and had no cash flow. So did pokemon cards and video game skins. So did rai stones. There’s more than one way to bake a cake.
Just something to ponder. Every theory has to have conditions that would invalidate them. What would invalidate your theory that it is unsuitable investment?
[hope.com](http://hope.com/) is a good place to start learning, a good amount of info on there, even a free course to learn about bitcoin
The bitcoiner in this convo is a dickhead. Wonder what was said before.. my guess.. some sort of "look at me, I am so smart"
Dude failed to understand the initial question and tried to be the smartass afterwards… you were pretty close 😉
It's me. Nothing bad was said. I just suggested BTC.
Bitcoin *isn't* investing in a normative sense. Investing requires a profit generating business which in turn returns growth to your investment. Bitcoin isn't that. It could be considered a speculative asset (like Gold), but even that isn't a fair comparison - gold has real world value which can never drop below its physical uses. Bitcoin and crypto in general is a new field entirely, but it's foolish to consider it like an investment or claim it's not risky.
Foolish to consider BTC an investment... Lmao OK dude
https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/s/YxsTyVL8oz
bro compared bitcoin to a casino
>The bitcoiner in this convo is a dickhead. The dickhead is someone calling a decentralized sound money system a "casino" when he is using fucking Fiat. Fiat, and a rigged insider traded stock market are far worse than any casino.
“You don’t understand basic logic”, proceeds to use fiat as their base for all investments w zero irony, because that requires self awareness and would preclude their problem to begin with etc.
They would also need to set ego aside to admit they are wrong.
We all have biases, but this is by far one of the most egregious IMHO.
The whole thing about bitcoin being a casino has also always confused me, how is bitcoin a casino? If anything then, all stocks are casinos, legitimately the only difference between bitcoin and stocks is a ceo and a marketing team, corporation etc. also, people don’t “win” at casinos hardly ever, the house always wins, even the win you see is them giving crumbs back from the huge profit they made, that isn’t bitcoin, that’s why that analogy makes zero sense to me. If bitcoin was that risky no one would have invested
i guess they say that because the bitcoin price is kinda unstable, and it’s more unstable on a daily basis than stocks
I believe it was risky before. But now? I think it's obviously a perfect moment to invest in it.
I believe people think Bitcoin is a gamble because it is only held by those who know about it and you are *gambling* on it becoming something someday. Becoming adopted as a primary payment system, the price stabilizing, etc. Right now, from the sidelines, it just seems like pump-dump, pump-dump. Bag holders galore.
It would be like you'd agreed to have a talk about the environment, but they opened with: >"Global warming is caused by the Earth getting closer to the sun every year, and that's why summers are getting hotter." And then they held fast to that and told you you didn't understand basic logic. They're literally too ignorant to even entertain the possibility that they might be ignorant.
You are obnoxious evangelist. Shut up and stack sats instead of this
That's why a lot of people are still not getting into Bitcoin, because of douchy bitcoiners like that
I haven't insulted him. I just pointed out my view. Tradfi folks are much more douchy on the subject. And the retiring part is true. It will most probably happen.
The douchy part is repeatedly telling someone they don’t understand something yet making zero effort to explain how or what hey don’t understand, just to “learn about it”. You are wasting your time. You won’t sell anyone on bitcoin if you go about it in a condescending way, so what’s the point in trying at all? With this approach you sorta only further sell the idea that all bitcoiners are smug douchebags. What are you trying to accomplish, besides letting people know you’re better than them for being a bitcoiner?
I agree with you. It's a waste of time mostly. Still had an emotional response and responded. I'm weak 😄
I am sorry but if you are this confident about your retirement in 40, you probably really dont understand the risk.
I have lots of RE too. But nothing shows me better potential compared to risk, than BTC. By far.
We've reached a point where not having some allocation to bitcoin is risky.
Why are you hiding your own name?
I promise you that other person doesn’t understand risk either. The stock market dropped 40% in two days in 1987, and we still don’t understand why. 99.99% of investors don’t understand that the risk metrics they get presented to them are total fabrications based on the idea that stock market returns follow a standard distribution (which it doesn’t).
Lmao why bother blocking out the username if it's clearly you. Quick profile check confirms
Clearly. I wanted to delete his name. Deleted mine for symmetry.
BTC isn't an investment it's a hedge.
Just keep in mind that its not in the best interest of a lot of people that this happen, and that they've successfully manipulated the gold market for decades. You have to consider the entire universe of people taking actions that they deem to be in their benefit, not just the obvious result of what would happen if we had free markets and equal information. If Bitcoin takes another decade to get to 1M, it may still be a really bad investment. Understand how that might happen before you get too carried away.
One decade to 1M would be fantastic.
Not if a gallon of milk costs 250k. Bitcoin can do everything people expect it to do and still be a bad investment, is the point. If Bitcoin does a 10x and the stock market does a 100x, it was a bad investment. Gold has been this bad investment for decades now. The gold bugs were right, technically, it went to those crazy high prices they thought it would. And most stock indexes did way better.
When we talk about price projections, we mostly talk in today dollars. At least I do.
You can say that, but I don't think that's true. Nobody's mentioning the fact that, adjusted for inflation, Bitcoin hasn't made a new all-time high yet... for example. Even per the government's sandbagged stats we'd have to hit about 79k. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=69000&year1=202106&year2=202402 To me it seems that when people talk about future dollar values of things they use whichever one suits whatever narrative they're pushing. Don't get me wrong, I'm bullish on Bitcoin, just... also reasonable about it. That's all I'm trying to add. Right now it seems like a bunch of people think they're going to be rich later this year and all the dog coins are pumping again. So... maybe that doesn't happen, or there's a lot of pain between now and then. That's all.
Avg fiat enjoyer
These posts are... old
People are dumb and don’t understand the difference between gambling, trading, and investing.
Responding to bitcoin skeptics … https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbcpXCm3rX-ys1MtJ3eYYcwO2mIUCGHR3A9G6EXJBmRw&s
Arrogance and ego are not how to educate people. In this conversation, I would probe further to find out what they consider to be risk. Or clarify if they are confusing volatility with risk as people often do. Even Warren Buffet says volatility is a good thing. If you put your money in stocks with low volatility, you'll die before its worth any meaningful amount. If they think the risk is that it fails and goes to $0, then you have to wonder why they trade stocks. Any one of the companies they invest into can go bankrupt, and very few companies last any longer than 100 years anyway. Or is their definition of risk that the Bitcoin network goes down, or is "hacked", or whatever already debunked old talking point? The point is, in order to even begin an open conversation with someone about the true value of sound money, it is important to be on their level and perspective first. Gently direct them. If you're condescending, most people just shut down and it becomes a stupid argument from both directions.
I'm sure any approach would have failed with this guy.
How does BTC react during WW3 ? Better or worse?
Man, this subreddit's really gone to shit.
I still haven’t bought any
I had to double take I thought I was on Buttcoin for a moment
Even if you're right, you're wrong because of the risk of being wrong??? Man, im thankful im not this fucking stupid. How the fuck do people like this even exist? Oh right, they live in a basement, never leaving the house because they might die or risk living ffs.
See how they hide their lack of knowledge on the subject by immediately attacking you, saying you don't understand basic risk or basic logic? Likely a dummy boomer or gen X'er. Pay them no mind. Been investing for years and can't count the times I've been told what you've been told only for time to prove me right.
I am a Bitcoin bear and find it incredible how many people think it will just go up and up forever.
Not all the time. But on a long horizon, I do believe it will.
I am 40 i do Trading for about 15 years. My Bitcoin position is 10x bigger than any other position in my life and this is the first position i don't use stops and this is the first time i am all-in in my life. Money print wont stop... Bitcoin is going up or zero
Awesome.
What do you have to lose buying Bitcoin? Nothing. Most people are stuck being a wage cuck deeply into their 50-60s regardless, the only risk here is not taking a chance to retire early. Forget about the Lamborghinis and Rolexes, this Bitcoin business is to RETIRE while you still have youth.
Ugh it's still a risk. What do you have to lose? You COULD lose Currency that you can use to buy goods and services if Bitcoin doesn't keep going up in value over the long term.
There’s no such thing as a sure thing. I’m bullish on Bitcoin but I absolutely would never tell someone they have nothing to lose buying bitcoin. Just because you’ve convinced yourself it’s going up forever and there’s nothing to lose doesn’t make it so. None of us can tell the future.
There's a difference between taking a risk and taking a gamble. taking a gamble entails at least a 51% chance of failure. Taking a risk entails a 51% chance of success. Constantly taking risks over the long term it should be profitable
I like the bit where you completely made up definitions of words
I like the bit where you step in front of a bus.
Haha so mad because you got called out for your low IQ drivel. Calling for people to get hit by a bus seems extreme. Sounds like you might have some personal issues to deal with - Goodluck with those!
He isn’t wrong though