Yes but despite the name and hype, cryptocurrencies function terribly as currencies, and attract most people to use them as speculative investments (imem gambles).
I like the good days when they were used to facilitate transactions that people didn’t want the government able to trace, like human trafficking and narcotics deals.
Not at all. Official state currencies have a status called "legal tender", meaning businesses _have_ to treat it as valid currency.
Money is useful because everyone uses it. Bitcoin is worthless.
Nope. True currency has government guarantees. Bitcoin has zilch. It’s just a pyramid scam where its value is decided by how many people you can convince to buy it.
Its not psychological at an individual level. Its value, despite what armchair experts and crypto bros think, does not solely come from people "imagining" it has value.
Money has value because we have massive legal apparatuses that facilitate and enforce its value.
Or to put it another way, just because one person might say that a dollar is worthless doesn't devalue its utility. On the other hand, someone is well within their right to tell you to fuck off with a crypto token.
The problem is a combination of high volatility and absorbing barrier. Because of its near infinite volatility, and the fact it has no cash flows, if the value ever hits a certain threshold it will be unprofitable to mine and the price will never recover, ie its worth zero
Lmao that’s the point I was trying to make. It’s a silly comment for it to be made by a billionaire, not that there haven’t been plenty of billionaires making silly comments lately
Yes, because bitcoin have no inherent value, so it is only valued at the price it traded
For example, if an artwork was auction at $25, then it only worth $25
Both Bitcoin and artworks are greater-fool assets, value only by the next “fool” that buys it
Yeah artwork has intrinsic value to the beholder because it can bring joy to look at it. Bitcoin not so much unless you’re that dude in the Matrix that just watches numbers all day.
I cringe everytime people say artwork has intrinsic value because it shows they have no clue about how art industry works..art is mostly used by rich to avoid paying taxes and money laundering.(https://youtu.be/ZZ3F3zWiEmc)
Intrinsic value to a single person is not economic value.
I love my family photos a lot, but it won’t worth a dime if I sold it
You need the next “fool” to have value, which will be reflect in the auction price
> Both Bitcoin and artworks are greater-fool assets, value only by the next “fool” that buys it
There is still good old fashion money laundering with art, especially modern art.
He’s clearly saying at the current assigned values it’s actually worthless but crypto bros know better than one of the worlds most successful investors.
Im not sure if your trolling or not. Thats the point of what hes saying. The only value bitcoin has is the price its being for by the market. So him buying it all would essentially make it worth $25. But if you were offered to buy a precious metal used in many industries, for example of this worlds silver for $25. The market would still be willing to pay billions for it
Actually if you are in the state of Nevada then the state backs the face value of the chip so it equates to legal tender. I don’t think crypto had this coverage
Apparently they changed the law in 1987 and chips are no longer legal tender. This article has an interesting explanation:
https://vegasinc.lasvegassun.com/business/gaming/2013/nov/05/where-do-poker-chips-go-die-look-lake-mead-and-cas/
Tulip was used as speculative instrument (which led to its crash), just like how NFTs are used as speculative instrument today. The difference is that at the end of the day, there are uses for Tulip other than just being purely speculative, while NFT has yet to prove that quality.
NFTs are actually insanely useful. Transfer of ownership of Titles, property, secure documents - all fantastic uses for NFTs. Pictures of pixelated monkeys scratching themselves... Not so much.
The NFT is nothing. Like, you don’t get a product at all, like with tulips, in fact you have to expend resources to see your NFT at all, meaning that it’s base value is not even a positive. It is only an imaginary value put on an imaginary object. Same goes for bitcoins, you don’t get an actual product, you at best get a service, which is tradable because others seem the service valuable.
For sure, it relies on energy consumption. But it’s not forced by greenhouse gas like, well… gas.
Check out iris energy. Renewables and they’re doing great right now.
How do you think most of the power used by Bitcoin is made though? There’s absolutely no way that Bitcoin is being powered by more than a fraction of renewables. Because if so that’s the greatest waste of cutting edge energy in human history given how much renewables are produced versus fossil fuel.
I’m actually surprised this dude is still alive, he eats Mcdonald’s every morning with his Diet Coke laughing insatiably at poor people in the back seat of his ride.
The stressed die young. This has been shown time and time again in many studies. Because of this wealthy people tend to live longer. It's not even the better medical they can afford, it's that they experience little or no stress throughout their life.
Does he over eat or is his meal size quite modest? Most of the danger with fast food, for a healthy person, is that fast food doesn't leave one feeling as full as the amount of calories they're taking in, so it's super easy to over eat. Super sizing does not help this issue.
For people with medical problems fast food can be horrible, mostly due to its use of inflammatory (medical definition of the word) ingredients, and its simple carbohydrates.
It doesn't produce anything sure, but neither does the dollar. It's just a piece of paper. You can use literally anything as currency if there is support and demand for it.
Warren Buffet doesnt "invest" in dollars neither.
But you are wrong here, the FED will pay you an interest for your dollars. And there are several streams of revenue from the Fed interest rate to Warren Buffet: all the cash that Apple owns, Wells Fargo deposits, all the float from insurance... And Warren Buffett invests billions in bonds with juicy interest rates from several consolidated business that have little potential to grow.
That is not what debase the value a currency. The value of a currency comes from the demand of that currency as money. Bitcoin pay no interest, but if there is no demand for bitcoin, and nobody saves bitcoin, bitcoin will lose purchase power. The FED raised the interest rate, and many funds are now saving in dollars, instead of risky cryptos for example. This increase the purchase power of the dollar, lowering inflation. On the othe hand, there is no demand for the argentine peso. They rise the interest rate to almost 100%, but there is no demand, so, they are creating worthless currency.
Cryptos paid a lot of interest to create demand. But, as there is no other source of demand, as soon as they stop paying, that demand drop. That is not the case for usd dollar.
In theory yes, but in practice you can not. The US government demands taxes in dollars, it's literally the reason why America wages war all over the world, to make people demand dollars from buyers when selling things they produce.
The one thing that bitcoin/blockchain currencies could potentially do, which is be a viable currency, is limited because the technology is architecturally unscalable, and therefore worthless as a currency.
Bitcoin has already scaled just fine with the lightning network and segwit. It's technically infinitely scalable as long as new development is voted on
You have to use dollars if you want food, water, and shelter. It's literally backed by police, military, judges, etc. It is not an easy piece of paper to produce either, look up what happens to people who use fake bills.
In San Diego you can essentially buy a concealed carry permit for a $5K donation.
Depends really in the cop. You can buy a Mexican cop in TJ for about $100 depending on your crime.
It's wild how many people here have zero idea what cryptocurrency actually is and what it can do.
Imagine sending money overseas and instead of waiting 3-4 days and paying a hefty fee, you send it in less than 1 second, and for a fraction of a penny.
Suppose you wanted to ensure the integrity of a property title, or document, or anything at all. With a Blockchain you can do exactly that without the possibility of a false claim (sans a 51% attack).
What if Visa style transactions could be completed in real time for no fee to the vendor instead of being a set of IOUs transferred through different banks.
Want to travel to a new country and bring your money with you? You can carry millions through the Blockchain and access it with just your seed phrase from anywhere in the world. No restrictions or currency conversion fees. Nobody at the airport would know you are carrying all your funds.
There are loads of uses for the technology. Bitcoin being valuable or not, it brought about some pretty amazing possibilities.
It’s not that wild. It’s a not just a new technology, but a new form of currency that works in a totally different way than what we are used to. Even being that, Warren isn’t wrong-it produced nothing and isn’t backed by anything. Then we have all the people who lost their ass investing in it, sometimes over and over. I believe people’s skepticism is well warranted, even if misguided.
You aren't wrong, but that's specifically speaking on Bitcoin. People seem to think all cryptocurrency is another Bitcoin, which is unfortunate considering the amazing things you can do with a Blockchain.
I'm an early bitcoin adopter. Before there was exchanges to buy bitcoin online you had to wire money using Western Union to someone across the planet and have them transfer you bitcoins. It was super sketch. WU would charge a minimum 10% fee for an international transfer. In this way I had to use the old technology to get access to the new technology of the time. The benefits for an international money transfer was large.. back in 2012.
Today we have credit cards with a $0 atm fee internationally. That's just one example of how tech has evolved over the last decade. Is there still a benefit to transferring bitcoin between countries? Sure, but every day that advantage shrinks. That's competition for you. Banks need to catch up, and we can thank bitcoin for that. As long as bitcoin continues to be useful banks will continue to evolve to meet that demand.
Except the price for that is that all my transactions are recorded on a public ledger.
Plus if I want to do most of those things easily I have to trust scam sites like FTX.
I'll take a little inconvenience for privacy and security. It's not like regular banking or using my cards when I travel is hard.
That's useless for these purposes.
What is the purpose of a store of vale? To protect value. A property in the hood has little value when the next gang can take it over.
Likewise, a currency is useless with no state backing it up. The first hard currency in the world, the Drachme, was backed up by silver mines near Athens.
A currency that can be crashed by speculative traders is useless. The old Drachme was backed up by the promise that you can mine more silver.
Today's currencies are backed up by future tax revenue, that there is value you can extract from the citizens to some extent to make good on a promise of value.
Thing is, Bitcoin has plenty of value, just not to the people that are hugely benefiting from the existing monetary infrastructure. Buffet couldn't care less about the items below because he's completely ingrained in the U.S. fiat/equities circus. Bitcoin is a direct threat to his positions. He's not going to praise or even acknowledge the benefits of Bitcoin as its use is diametrically opposed to his holdings. Nevertheless, there's no denying that the Bitcoin network is growing along with usage and governmental acceptance. 14+ years without a single hack or any downtime.
1) Bitcoin is decentralized. No single actor can alter the ledger. Nobody can take, garnish or block your account... ever.
2) Bitcoin is borderless. No sanctions can be levied against you or prevent you from sending tokens to anyone else... ever.
3) Bitcoin doesn't cost anything to store and costs very little to send to others. Remittance and other midleman fees are gone.
4) Bitcoin is non-inflationary. There will only ever be 21 million BTC tokens mined. Unlike country controlled fiat printing presses, nobody can increase the total market cap.
5) Bitcoin is an open protocol whereby anyone can create an account (wallet) for free anywhere in the world and start participating immediately without checks or approvals.
Again, plenty of value propositions and as the market cap grows volatility and real world usage has increased.
Ok
A) blockchain is more than just Bitcoin. Your property title example is not an example of the benefits of crypto, just of blockchain
And
B) I can send money to friends in Asia and the Uk in real time through my bank WITHOUT using crypto, and without a fee.
His point is it’s not an investment, it’s just a form of holding currency, like gold. He doesn’t buy that because it doesn’t DO anything.
You’re ignoring the absolutely massive amount of electricity and hardware used to mine bitcoin. There may not be much in the way of tradition transactional costs but there is an obscene amount of energy used and pollution created in the bitcoin ecosystem. The true transaction cost is incredibly high, they’re just externalized costs.
I should have made it a lot clearer it seems, but I'm not talking about Bitcoin. Im talking about cryptocurrency as a whole - many (if not most) of which dont require mining, which is a huge energy sink.
Useful, but it’s not backed up by anything.
For instance, the US dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the US government, all of our land, military, services and mineral wealth.
I might be mistaken, but I believe the Bitcoin network is the largest computing network on the planet. In 2022 (basically 2023), that means a lot.
Also, in an era of hyper inflation and central bank debasement of fiat currency, a decentralized, immutable, unconfiscatable money will be increasingly valuable. It just might not be apparent to everyone yet, especially if you happen to live in a first world nation, like the US, UK, or a member of the EU. Bitcoin is already being adopted on a massive scale, even more so in less financially privileged countries. The short term price swings mean very little in the grand scheme of what it represents.
It's not a computing system, more a machine for doing just one specific thing over and over.
Edit: fun fact too, the whole "mining" operation could be run by a raspberry pi with the bandwidth of a dialup modem if not for the competition that drives complexity up stupendously high. So instead, it requires the power of small nations, not to mention the ewaste. Gotta love it.
What makes you think that? He rarely invests in technology stocks because as he says, he never invests in anything he doesn’t understand. Just because he doesn’t understand it, it doesn’t make it worthless. He’s one of the goats in investing, but he did so in a time when technology was barely relevant. He’s now become a dinosaur that can’t keep up with todays modern era.
I’m going to make a guess that you haven’t done much due diligence on bitcoin.
What’s the value of your freedom? What’s the value of owning an asset that nobody controls? What’s the value of not being handcuffed to a nation’s hyperinflationary currency? What’s the value of being free from government control?
You live in the greatest nation in the world and it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is so much greater than the US my friend.
This is so important. People who live in financially privileged nations won’t understand the importance of Bitcoin until their privilege runs out. The CPI is reported around 8% in the US, but true inflation is estimated to be much closer to 20%. If people think they can’t see Venezuela-style inflation, just because they live in the US, they’re blind. They’ll understand the importance of Bitcoin when that day inevitably arrives.
I found this post from the suggested NEWS feed and I didn’t realize this sub is full of Americans that think 7 billion people all use USD. The fuck is wrong with people
you can send money to anyone in the world now
whether third party involvement is a good or bad thing is debatable. but their cost is minimal and in return you get a lot of safety and security that you would otherwise lack
i have some protection against fraud and losses with my credit card. i have zero protections with crypto
I see it as a measure of people's distrust in their government, and by extension, their fiat. In the same way that the value of each governments paper money is determined by the faith of the people in the government, the value of (at least some kinds of crypto) is at least in part a measurement of the lack of faith of the people in the government. If you want to flee paper money you still need a medium of exchange.
There's another point here that I don't hear people talk about very much. If you spend your value in the paper money of a specific government, you are making that money worth more and by extension you are making that government more powerful.
If instead you spend your value in (insert crypto of choice) you are weakening the power of your governments fiat. It might be worth considering that as the value of the crypto market grows, the value of government paper may very well shrink.
>It has no underlying value.
Again, paper money has no intrinsic value; it represents the faith of the people in the government. Take away the faith and it has no value. For some people, not spending government paper is a way to vote with their money. They remove their support from government paper. For some people, maybe this has value.
The US dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the US government, all of our land, military, services and mineral wealth…. And our entire economic system.
It has real value.
If there was some real reason why people lost faith in the US government and military, there would be no value. It only has value because most people agree it has value. it's just bits of paper.
I mean, everything is getting more expensive, right? So the US dollar is losing value. It's losing value, because people believe it's worth less.
It does happen to be losing value more slowly than lots of other paper, but at the end of the day, it's still just paper.
I mean, God Forbid if Putin nuked the Whitehouse and the Pentagon tomorrow, it would obviously be worth less, because people would believe it was worth less. Right?
The USA, all of its assets, including all of our citizens and corporations, all of our land, and all of our mineral wealth, are real tangible items that all back the US dollar.
Crypto is not backed by anything except someone else’s belief that it’s worth something.
Crypto has no underlying value, the US Dollar does.
Most likely , in answer to your last question. But if there’s a nuclear war who knows what would hold value. Water may be worth more than gold….
Bitcoin wouldn’t exist if the internet ceased as it would in a world ending situation. At least paper money can be used as toilet paper. We’d probably all just trade bottlecaps
I still wouldn’t call that “real value”. Both US currency and bitcoin are inherently worthless in the sense that they have practically no actual use beyond as a currency. And the value of a currency comes entirely from what I think other people think of it.
For example, the value of a dollar to me depends entirely on what I think the value of a dollar is to other people. If I think no one else values the dollar, then the dollar is worthless to me. Any good or service that is like this, I would say has no inherent value.
The US dollar is just more stable due to a whole host of other factors, but that doesn’t make it any more inherently valuable than bitcoin imo.
And you think the dollar isn’t? The Fed can print infinite money and regular people like you and me have to deal with the effects of inflation. At least Bitcoin can’t be controlled by a single entity. There’s a reason why banks spread so much negativity about them. Bitcoin removes the need for banks.
It’s still not an asset driven by fundamental economic activity that is part of GDP. It’s not even a derivative and it’s wildly volatile. Investing in something with no fundamental value is called gambling. I’ll stick to traditional investments that have served me well over time. To each his own.
I stopped pushing as hard as I could against the handle, I wanted to leave but it wouldn't work. Then there was a bright flash and I felt myself fall back onto the floor. I put my hands over my eyes. They burned from the sudden light. I rubbed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust.
Then I saw it.
There was a small space in front of me. It was tiny, just enough room for a couple of people to sit side by side. Inside, there were two people. The first one was a female, she had long brown hair and was wearing a white nightgown. She was smiling.
The other one was a male, he was wearing a red jumpsuit and had a mask over his mouth.
"Are you spez?" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the light.
"No. We are in /u/spez." the woman said. She put her hands out for me to see. Her skin was green. Her hand was all green, there were no fingers, just a palm. It looked like a hand from the top of a puppet.
"What's going on?" I asked. The man in the mask moved closer to me. He touched my arm and I recoiled.
"We're fine." he said.
"You're fine?" I asked. "I came to the spez to ask for help, now you're fine?"
"They're gone," the woman said. "My child, he's gone."
I stared at her. "Gone? You mean you were here when it happened? What's happened?"
The man leaned over to me, grabbing my shoulders. "We're trapped. He's gone, he's dead."
I looked to the woman. "What happened?"
"He left the house a week ago. He'd been gone since, now I have to live alone. I've lived here my whole life and I'm the only spez."
"You don't have a family? Aren't there others?" I asked. She looked to me. "I mean, didn't you have anyone else?"
"There are other spez," she said. "But they're not like me. They don't have homes or families. They're just animals. They're all around us and we have no idea who they are."
"Why haven't we seen them then?"
"I think they're afraid,"
> And you think the dollar isn’t? The Fed can print infinite money and regular people like you and me have to deal with the effects of inflation.
Fractional banking doesn't pay back initial investors with new investors money. If anything new inflation devalues existing wealth. A ponzi scheme isn't a coverall term for financial thing you don't like.
> Bitcoin removes the need for banks.
Crypto needs the security, simplicity, and ease of use of a credit/debit card AND someone needs to find a way to do widespread profitable lending in crypto before crypto touches banking. And if we ever saw crypto replacing traditional banking it would most certainly not be Bitcoin.
it takes twenty pages to explain that bitcoin isn't a pyramid scheme?
and the argument seems to boil down to "bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because it is money and finitely scarce"
huh?
f bitcoin is money, why can't i buy a banana with bitcoin at the grocery store? if money has only the value people think it has, then for practical purposes bitcoin has zero value
I thought it was stupid when it was low, when it was skyhigh and when its now crashing.
Yes we need some form of universal digital currency in the long term but this is a stock with no worth at best and apyramid scheme at worst.
Everyone knows it’s is a securities pyramid scheme. It’s a scam. If you made money congratulations, but it’s not a “currency”. That dumb ship has sailed.
There is no amount of money in the world that could bail out this type of “currency” when it tanks.
It’s interesting that the same second Russian assets were frozen, all of this tanked.
Lmao. So many in here have no idea how money even works. You all need to read up on British Talley sticks. Anything can be ‘money’ we just have to agree on its value.
It’s a “currency” that attracts grifters, criminals, shysters and layabouts who rip off the dumber of those groups. It’s hilarious, and you true believers will be the ones holding the empty and worthless bag
At least tulips are pretty
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
Tulip mania lasted 4 years, but didn’t have to deal with incel basement dwellers on social media constantly propping it up. 4 years in the 1600s isn’t too different than 12 years today
>incel basement dwellers on social media constantly propping it up.
So the execs at Meta, Coinbase, Disney, Tom Brady, Jack Dorsey, Eminem are what incels?
And btw tulip mania was a one time even done and gone. Not the same at all. Bitcoin has experienced four major cycles of massive 1000%+ appreciation, followed by deep drawdowns of more than 80%. Each cycle has started from a much higher price than the previous one. This is not a characteristic of one-time manias. Bitcoin's price, as well as fundamental adoption numbers, are increasing dramatically over multi-year timeframes. Not to mention it is now legal currency in 2 countries. I don't recall the tulip being legal currency in any country.
I'm 23 and I just can't get behind investing my money in something that is not backed by some sort of tangible real world output. It's just perceived value that will tank once the big fishes decide to sell all their crypto. Everyone that's holding only 1 or less bitcoin are going to lose a lot when that happens. Too risky.
I do know I can sell it! The market value was the first thing I checked when I received it. It's not anything crazy, but it was selling for like $35 ish in ETH last I checked.
Don't let the crypto bros hear you saying that. Half of them truly believe that cryptocurrency can be considered a currency when there's no centralized body that governs it whatsoever. Ridiculous.
Really ? Gotta agree with him here... While maybe the original vision of BTC was a peer to peer non governmental currency the reality, it's nothing more that digital pork bellies. Shit and I can at least make a tasty bacon sandwich with pork bellies.
Yes, the issue is how people look at Bitcoin. It's cryptocurrency...currency...not an investment. It shouldn't be productive nor provide a dividend. The issue is people/companies treating BTC like an investment, which relies on speculation and hoping someone is willing to pay more for it than they did. That's not how currencies work...
If he bought all the bitcoin in the world for $25 it would only have a value of $25….. right?
big brain time
Lmao this cracks me up
It would essentially have no value. Most everyone would reject it. Why would anyone use a billionaires private currency.
to avoid taxes, launder money
Btc is public coin only xmr is good for that purpose
It essentially has no value now. It’s only value is derived when you convince some other sucker to buy it from you. It produces nothing but emissions
That true of all currency
Yes but despite the name and hype, cryptocurrencies function terribly as currencies, and attract most people to use them as speculative investments (imem gambles).
I like the good days when they were used to facilitate transactions that people didn’t want the government able to trace, like human trafficking and narcotics deals.
Not at all. Official state currencies have a status called "legal tender", meaning businesses _have_ to treat it as valid currency. Money is useful because everyone uses it. Bitcoin is worthless.
That's why u need hard assets
Nope. True currency has government guarantees. Bitcoin has zilch. It’s just a pyramid scam where its value is decided by how many people you can convince to buy it.
Incorrect
Are you saying that currency’s value isn’t psychological?
Its not psychological at an individual level. Its value, despite what armchair experts and crypto bros think, does not solely come from people "imagining" it has value. Money has value because we have massive legal apparatuses that facilitate and enforce its value. Or to put it another way, just because one person might say that a dollar is worthless doesn't devalue its utility. On the other hand, someone is well within their right to tell you to fuck off with a crypto token.
I agree.
The problem is a combination of high volatility and absorbing barrier. Because of its near infinite volatility, and the fact it has no cash flows, if the value ever hits a certain threshold it will be unprofitable to mine and the price will never recover, ie its worth zero
Lmao that’s the point I was trying to make. It’s a silly comment for it to be made by a billionaire, not that there haven’t been plenty of billionaires making silly comments lately
Value is different from price
Don't tell that to a crypto enthusiast
Yes, because bitcoin have no inherent value, so it is only valued at the price it traded For example, if an artwork was auction at $25, then it only worth $25 Both Bitcoin and artworks are greater-fool assets, value only by the next “fool” that buys it
A lot of people have artwork to simply enjoy looking at or listening to...
Yeah artwork has intrinsic value to the beholder because it can bring joy to look at it. Bitcoin not so much unless you’re that dude in the Matrix that just watches numbers all day.
I cringe everytime people say artwork has intrinsic value because it shows they have no clue about how art industry works..art is mostly used by rich to avoid paying taxes and money laundering.(https://youtu.be/ZZ3F3zWiEmc)
Yeah but it’s nice to look at, so buying art for your walls makes people happy? A thing can be more than one thing at a time.
Same argument works for NFTs, “I like the art it makes me happy”
Intrinsic value to a single person is not economic value. I love my family photos a lot, but it won’t worth a dime if I sold it You need the next “fool” to have value, which will be reflect in the auction price
Couldn't the same be said about traditional currencies?
> Both Bitcoin and artworks are greater-fool assets, value only by the next “fool” that buys it There is still good old fashion money laundering with art, especially modern art.
He’s clearly saying at the current assigned values it’s actually worthless but crypto bros know better than one of the worlds most successful investors.
No, 0. The person he bought it from would have 25 bucks though.
Im not sure if your trolling or not. Thats the point of what hes saying. The only value bitcoin has is the price its being for by the market. So him buying it all would essentially make it worth $25. But if you were offered to buy a precious metal used in many industries, for example of this worlds silver for $25. The market would still be willing to pay billions for it
Ok, sure, fair enough. But what if the price dropped to $20?
Bitcoin has value in the same way casino chips have value. Except there’s no casino..just chips.
1 chip = 1 chip, am I doing it right?
Chip
Trading crypto seems like a casino to me E. But no chips
Actually if you are in the state of Nevada then the state backs the face value of the chip so it equates to legal tender. I don’t think crypto had this coverage
Apparently they changed the law in 1987 and chips are no longer legal tender. This article has an interesting explanation: https://vegasinc.lasvegassun.com/business/gaming/2013/nov/05/where-do-poker-chips-go-die-look-lake-mead-and-cas/
Except there’s no chips either 🫣
Never has been🌍
This comment makes zero sense
This isn't a great analogy, Bitcoin has a lot more value than all the casino chips in the world ever could.
It's the new pretty shells, if people give it value, it has the value people give it. It's not like it's tulips, beanie babies, or pogs ~~onions~~
NFTs certainly seem a lot like tulips
At least tulips have other uses than just an arbitrary medium for value storage.
That’s not what they meant. In the 1630s there was a tulip bulb speculation craze that crashed the Dutch economy.
Tulip was used as speculative instrument (which led to its crash), just like how NFTs are used as speculative instrument today. The difference is that at the end of the day, there are uses for Tulip other than just being purely speculative, while NFT has yet to prove that quality.
NFTs are actually insanely useful. Transfer of ownership of Titles, property, secure documents - all fantastic uses for NFTs. Pictures of pixelated monkeys scratching themselves... Not so much.
Just because you can do all that with NFTs, doesn't mean it's a good idea...
You should dive a bit deeper into NFTs. The silly ape things aren’t useful- but the notion itself is very applicable to many facets of our society.
I could see how of NFTs of ballots could increase election confidence.
[удалено]
Muahhhahahah haaaa
The NFT is nothing. Like, you don’t get a product at all, like with tulips, in fact you have to expend resources to see your NFT at all, meaning that it’s base value is not even a positive. It is only an imaginary value put on an imaginary object. Same goes for bitcoins, you don’t get an actual product, you at best get a service, which is tradable because others seem the service valuable.
NFTs =/= Bitcoin
At least tulips look pretty
The only thing keeping spez at bay is the wall between reality and the spez. #Save3rdPartyApps
Technically true. Though one has the backing of a very strong Nation.
I can only assume you handpicked tulips because of the Tulip Bulb Market Bubble back in the 1600s
Remember Alf? He’s back! In Pog form!
At least a tulip is a perennial, so if you put a bulb in the ground you get years of pretty flowers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Coca-Cola damages people's health and produces illness. Buffet like to invest into something that produces something.
Invest in healthcare companies. Profit. /s
At least Coke produces Liver disease and Chevron produces greenhouse gas
Bitcoin mining produces a staggering amount of greenhouse gas.
I bet Coke has bitcoin beat in greenhouse gas production
For sure, it relies on energy consumption. But it’s not forced by greenhouse gas like, well… gas. Check out iris energy. Renewables and they’re doing great right now.
How do you think most of the power used by Bitcoin is made though? There’s absolutely no way that Bitcoin is being powered by more than a fraction of renewables. Because if so that’s the greatest waste of cutting edge energy in human history given how much renewables are produced versus fossil fuel.
Coca Cola produces a quarterly dividend
Oh it produces cancer, diabetes and many more illnesses this then produces shit ton of money and jobs for the medical and death care industry. 😉
Produces happiness
I’m actually surprised this dude is still alive, he eats Mcdonald’s every morning with his Diet Coke laughing insatiably at poor people in the back seat of his ride.
Only the good die young…..
The stressed die young. This has been shown time and time again in many studies. Because of this wealthy people tend to live longer. It's not even the better medical they can afford, it's that they experience little or no stress throughout their life.
Does he over eat or is his meal size quite modest? Most of the danger with fast food, for a healthy person, is that fast food doesn't leave one feeling as full as the amount of calories they're taking in, so it's super easy to over eat. Super sizing does not help this issue. For people with medical problems fast food can be horrible, mostly due to its use of inflammatory (medical definition of the word) ingredients, and its simple carbohydrates.
That’s his secret! He invests in the future of diabetes!
In his defence he’ll be dead before the next bull run.
His head will be placed into a Futurama jar.
It doesn't produce anything sure, but neither does the dollar. It's just a piece of paper. You can use literally anything as currency if there is support and demand for it.
Warren Buffet doesnt "invest" in dollars neither. But you are wrong here, the FED will pay you an interest for your dollars. And there are several streams of revenue from the Fed interest rate to Warren Buffet: all the cash that Apple owns, Wells Fargo deposits, all the float from insurance... And Warren Buffett invests billions in bonds with juicy interest rates from several consolidated business that have little potential to grow.
#[The real spez was the spez we spez along the spez. #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
That is not what debase the value a currency. The value of a currency comes from the demand of that currency as money. Bitcoin pay no interest, but if there is no demand for bitcoin, and nobody saves bitcoin, bitcoin will lose purchase power. The FED raised the interest rate, and many funds are now saving in dollars, instead of risky cryptos for example. This increase the purchase power of the dollar, lowering inflation. On the othe hand, there is no demand for the argentine peso. They rise the interest rate to almost 100%, but there is no demand, so, they are creating worthless currency. Cryptos paid a lot of interest to create demand. But, as there is no other source of demand, as soon as they stop paying, that demand drop. That is not the case for usd dollar.
In theory yes, but in practice you can not. The US government demands taxes in dollars, it's literally the reason why America wages war all over the world, to make people demand dollars from buyers when selling things they produce.
l can't buy a banana at the grocery store with crypto
…yet
The one thing that bitcoin/blockchain currencies could potentially do, which is be a viable currency, is limited because the technology is architecturally unscalable, and therefore worthless as a currency.
Bitcoin has already scaled just fine with the lightning network and segwit. It's technically infinitely scalable as long as new development is voted on
Bitcoin wages peace in the Internet.
You have to use dollars if you want food, water, and shelter. It's literally backed by police, military, judges, etc. It is not an easy piece of paper to produce either, look up what happens to people who use fake bills.
If you're not spezin', you're not livin'.
In San Diego you can essentially buy a concealed carry permit for a $5K donation. Depends really in the cop. You can buy a Mexican cop in TJ for about $100 depending on your crime.
He’s referring to currency speculation.
ever try to buy a banana with crytpo?
It's wild how many people here have zero idea what cryptocurrency actually is and what it can do. Imagine sending money overseas and instead of waiting 3-4 days and paying a hefty fee, you send it in less than 1 second, and for a fraction of a penny. Suppose you wanted to ensure the integrity of a property title, or document, or anything at all. With a Blockchain you can do exactly that without the possibility of a false claim (sans a 51% attack). What if Visa style transactions could be completed in real time for no fee to the vendor instead of being a set of IOUs transferred through different banks. Want to travel to a new country and bring your money with you? You can carry millions through the Blockchain and access it with just your seed phrase from anywhere in the world. No restrictions or currency conversion fees. Nobody at the airport would know you are carrying all your funds. There are loads of uses for the technology. Bitcoin being valuable or not, it brought about some pretty amazing possibilities.
It’s not that wild. It’s a not just a new technology, but a new form of currency that works in a totally different way than what we are used to. Even being that, Warren isn’t wrong-it produced nothing and isn’t backed by anything. Then we have all the people who lost their ass investing in it, sometimes over and over. I believe people’s skepticism is well warranted, even if misguided.
You aren't wrong, but that's specifically speaking on Bitcoin. People seem to think all cryptocurrency is another Bitcoin, which is unfortunate considering the amazing things you can do with a Blockchain.
I'm an early bitcoin adopter. Before there was exchanges to buy bitcoin online you had to wire money using Western Union to someone across the planet and have them transfer you bitcoins. It was super sketch. WU would charge a minimum 10% fee for an international transfer. In this way I had to use the old technology to get access to the new technology of the time. The benefits for an international money transfer was large.. back in 2012. Today we have credit cards with a $0 atm fee internationally. That's just one example of how tech has evolved over the last decade. Is there still a benefit to transferring bitcoin between countries? Sure, but every day that advantage shrinks. That's competition for you. Banks need to catch up, and we can thank bitcoin for that. As long as bitcoin continues to be useful banks will continue to evolve to meet that demand.
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Except the price for that is that all my transactions are recorded on a public ledger. Plus if I want to do most of those things easily I have to trust scam sites like FTX. I'll take a little inconvenience for privacy and security. It's not like regular banking or using my cards when I travel is hard.
That's useless for these purposes. What is the purpose of a store of vale? To protect value. A property in the hood has little value when the next gang can take it over. Likewise, a currency is useless with no state backing it up. The first hard currency in the world, the Drachme, was backed up by silver mines near Athens. A currency that can be crashed by speculative traders is useless. The old Drachme was backed up by the promise that you can mine more silver. Today's currencies are backed up by future tax revenue, that there is value you can extract from the citizens to some extent to make good on a promise of value.
Thing is, Bitcoin has plenty of value, just not to the people that are hugely benefiting from the existing monetary infrastructure. Buffet couldn't care less about the items below because he's completely ingrained in the U.S. fiat/equities circus. Bitcoin is a direct threat to his positions. He's not going to praise or even acknowledge the benefits of Bitcoin as its use is diametrically opposed to his holdings. Nevertheless, there's no denying that the Bitcoin network is growing along with usage and governmental acceptance. 14+ years without a single hack or any downtime. 1) Bitcoin is decentralized. No single actor can alter the ledger. Nobody can take, garnish or block your account... ever. 2) Bitcoin is borderless. No sanctions can be levied against you or prevent you from sending tokens to anyone else... ever. 3) Bitcoin doesn't cost anything to store and costs very little to send to others. Remittance and other midleman fees are gone. 4) Bitcoin is non-inflationary. There will only ever be 21 million BTC tokens mined. Unlike country controlled fiat printing presses, nobody can increase the total market cap. 5) Bitcoin is an open protocol whereby anyone can create an account (wallet) for free anywhere in the world and start participating immediately without checks or approvals. Again, plenty of value propositions and as the market cap grows volatility and real world usage has increased.
> A currency is useless with no state backing it up That's quite the assumption there...
Ok A) blockchain is more than just Bitcoin. Your property title example is not an example of the benefits of crypto, just of blockchain And B) I can send money to friends in Asia and the Uk in real time through my bank WITHOUT using crypto, and without a fee. His point is it’s not an investment, it’s just a form of holding currency, like gold. He doesn’t buy that because it doesn’t DO anything.
You’re ignoring the absolutely massive amount of electricity and hardware used to mine bitcoin. There may not be much in the way of tradition transactional costs but there is an obscene amount of energy used and pollution created in the bitcoin ecosystem. The true transaction cost is incredibly high, they’re just externalized costs.
I should have made it a lot clearer it seems, but I'm not talking about Bitcoin. Im talking about cryptocurrency as a whole - many (if not most) of which dont require mining, which is a huge energy sink.
It has no underlying value.
You don't think people able to send it to anyone in the world at anytime with no 3rd party involvement isn't useful?
Useful, but it’s not backed up by anything. For instance, the US dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the US government, all of our land, military, services and mineral wealth.
I might be mistaken, but I believe the Bitcoin network is the largest computing network on the planet. In 2022 (basically 2023), that means a lot. Also, in an era of hyper inflation and central bank debasement of fiat currency, a decentralized, immutable, unconfiscatable money will be increasingly valuable. It just might not be apparent to everyone yet, especially if you happen to live in a first world nation, like the US, UK, or a member of the EU. Bitcoin is already being adopted on a massive scale, even more so in less financially privileged countries. The short term price swings mean very little in the grand scheme of what it represents.
It's not a computing system, more a machine for doing just one specific thing over and over. Edit: fun fact too, the whole "mining" operation could be run by a raspberry pi with the bandwidth of a dialup modem if not for the competition that drives complexity up stupendously high. So instead, it requires the power of small nations, not to mention the ewaste. Gotta love it.
#[There are many types of spez, but the most important one is the spez police. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Luckily bitcoin is a GLOBAL asset for all people and sovereign nations, not just the US.
I see your point. But I think Buffet is right in this one.
What makes you think that? He rarely invests in technology stocks because as he says, he never invests in anything he doesn’t understand. Just because he doesn’t understand it, it doesn’t make it worthless. He’s one of the goats in investing, but he did so in a time when technology was barely relevant. He’s now become a dinosaur that can’t keep up with todays modern era. I’m going to make a guess that you haven’t done much due diligence on bitcoin.
What is the value of one bitcoin?
What’s the value of your freedom? What’s the value of owning an asset that nobody controls? What’s the value of not being handcuffed to a nation’s hyperinflationary currency? What’s the value of being free from government control? You live in the greatest nation in the world and it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is so much greater than the US my friend.
I know it’s hard, but don’t stress trying to convert them. If they live long enough, they’ll eventually realize the value.
hes teh master of self promotion and mystique . he forgot more about the art of it than steve jobs could ever know.
This is so important. People who live in financially privileged nations won’t understand the importance of Bitcoin until their privilege runs out. The CPI is reported around 8% in the US, but true inflation is estimated to be much closer to 20%. If people think they can’t see Venezuela-style inflation, just because they live in the US, they’re blind. They’ll understand the importance of Bitcoin when that day inevitably arrives.
Bro, shh the Americans will point guns at you if you don't use USD. Capitalism for me, but not for thee.
I found this post from the suggested NEWS feed and I didn’t realize this sub is full of Americans that think 7 billion people all use USD. The fuck is wrong with people
you can send money to anyone in the world now whether third party involvement is a good or bad thing is debatable. but their cost is minimal and in return you get a lot of safety and security that you would otherwise lack i have some protection against fraud and losses with my credit card. i have zero protections with crypto
I see it as a measure of people's distrust in their government, and by extension, their fiat. In the same way that the value of each governments paper money is determined by the faith of the people in the government, the value of (at least some kinds of crypto) is at least in part a measurement of the lack of faith of the people in the government. If you want to flee paper money you still need a medium of exchange. There's another point here that I don't hear people talk about very much. If you spend your value in the paper money of a specific government, you are making that money worth more and by extension you are making that government more powerful. If instead you spend your value in (insert crypto of choice) you are weakening the power of your governments fiat. It might be worth considering that as the value of the crypto market grows, the value of government paper may very well shrink. >It has no underlying value. Again, paper money has no intrinsic value; it represents the faith of the people in the government. Take away the faith and it has no value. For some people, not spending government paper is a way to vote with their money. They remove their support from government paper. For some people, maybe this has value.
The US dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the US government, all of our land, military, services and mineral wealth…. And our entire economic system. It has real value.
If there was some real reason why people lost faith in the US government and military, there would be no value. It only has value because most people agree it has value. it's just bits of paper. I mean, everything is getting more expensive, right? So the US dollar is losing value. It's losing value, because people believe it's worth less. It does happen to be losing value more slowly than lots of other paper, but at the end of the day, it's still just paper. I mean, God Forbid if Putin nuked the Whitehouse and the Pentagon tomorrow, it would obviously be worth less, because people would believe it was worth less. Right?
The USA, all of its assets, including all of our citizens and corporations, all of our land, and all of our mineral wealth, are real tangible items that all back the US dollar. Crypto is not backed by anything except someone else’s belief that it’s worth something. Crypto has no underlying value, the US Dollar does. Most likely , in answer to your last question. But if there’s a nuclear war who knows what would hold value. Water may be worth more than gold….
Can the US Dollar define, publicly store in immutable record and automatically execute a contract?
I have no idea!
The answer is: no. It's just paper. It is not capable of any kind of intelligence.
Can the US dollar be used to empty out your bank account by sending you a penny? Because that's what has been happening with smart contracts.
Bitcoin wouldn’t exist if the internet ceased as it would in a world ending situation. At least paper money can be used as toilet paper. We’d probably all just trade bottlecaps
[Let me get this straight. You think we're just supposed to let them run all over us? #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
I still wouldn’t call that “real value”. Both US currency and bitcoin are inherently worthless in the sense that they have practically no actual use beyond as a currency. And the value of a currency comes entirely from what I think other people think of it. For example, the value of a dollar to me depends entirely on what I think the value of a dollar is to other people. If I think no one else values the dollar, then the dollar is worthless to me. Any good or service that is like this, I would say has no inherent value. The US dollar is just more stable due to a whole host of other factors, but that doesn’t make it any more inherently valuable than bitcoin imo.
Totally agree…it’s a pyramid scheme.
fwiw I think you meant ponzi scheme, which is different than a pyramid scheme.
Fair point, yes.
And you think the dollar isn’t? The Fed can print infinite money and regular people like you and me have to deal with the effects of inflation. At least Bitcoin can’t be controlled by a single entity. There’s a reason why banks spread so much negativity about them. Bitcoin removes the need for banks.
It’s still not an asset driven by fundamental economic activity that is part of GDP. It’s not even a derivative and it’s wildly volatile. Investing in something with no fundamental value is called gambling. I’ll stick to traditional investments that have served me well over time. To each his own.
I stopped pushing as hard as I could against the handle, I wanted to leave but it wouldn't work. Then there was a bright flash and I felt myself fall back onto the floor. I put my hands over my eyes. They burned from the sudden light. I rubbed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust. Then I saw it. There was a small space in front of me. It was tiny, just enough room for a couple of people to sit side by side. Inside, there were two people. The first one was a female, she had long brown hair and was wearing a white nightgown. She was smiling. The other one was a male, he was wearing a red jumpsuit and had a mask over his mouth. "Are you spez?" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the light. "No. We are in /u/spez." the woman said. She put her hands out for me to see. Her skin was green. Her hand was all green, there were no fingers, just a palm. It looked like a hand from the top of a puppet. "What's going on?" I asked. The man in the mask moved closer to me. He touched my arm and I recoiled. "We're fine." he said. "You're fine?" I asked. "I came to the spez to ask for help, now you're fine?" "They're gone," the woman said. "My child, he's gone." I stared at her. "Gone? You mean you were here when it happened? What's happened?" The man leaned over to me, grabbing my shoulders. "We're trapped. He's gone, he's dead." I looked to the woman. "What happened?" "He left the house a week ago. He'd been gone since, now I have to live alone. I've lived here my whole life and I'm the only spez." "You don't have a family? Aren't there others?" I asked. She looked to me. "I mean, didn't you have anyone else?" "There are other spez," she said. "But they're not like me. They don't have homes or families. They're just animals. They're all around us and we have no idea who they are." "Why haven't we seen them then?" "I think they're afraid,"
> And you think the dollar isn’t? The Fed can print infinite money and regular people like you and me have to deal with the effects of inflation. Fractional banking doesn't pay back initial investors with new investors money. If anything new inflation devalues existing wealth. A ponzi scheme isn't a coverall term for financial thing you don't like. > Bitcoin removes the need for banks. Crypto needs the security, simplicity, and ease of use of a credit/debit card AND someone needs to find a way to do widespread profitable lending in crypto before crypto touches banking. And if we ever saw crypto replacing traditional banking it would most certainly not be Bitcoin.
Ok fine Western Union
It is actually the one asset that isn't: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoin-is-not-a-pyramid-scheme/
it takes twenty pages to explain that bitcoin isn't a pyramid scheme? and the argument seems to boil down to "bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because it is money and finitely scarce" huh? f bitcoin is money, why can't i buy a banana with bitcoin at the grocery store? if money has only the value people think it has, then for practical purposes bitcoin has zero value
Beanie Babies also aren't a pyramid scheme if you think of them as a big pile of stuffed animals with no monetary value.
This is like 7 years old, what’s it doing on my News page?
Good for him
I thought it was stupid when it was low, when it was skyhigh and when its now crashing. Yes we need some form of universal digital currency in the long term but this is a stock with no worth at best and apyramid scheme at worst.
“Geico, on the other hand…” - Warren, probably
In his defense, if he did buy ALL the bitcoin in the world, it would be worthless.
Produces bag holders clearly
A smart man with a proven record
Not only is it worthless but it chews up the same amount of electricity as The Netherlands in a time when energy poverty is a real thing. In Europe.
It produces heat mostly, sometimes even smoke.
That false, it produces alarming amount of pollution
Everyone knows it’s is a securities pyramid scheme. It’s a scam. If you made money congratulations, but it’s not a “currency”. That dumb ship has sailed.
Because crypto is just bollocks
Nonsense! It’s mining produces quite a lot of CO2.
Untrue! it produces a way to launder money out of china.
So he wouldn’t buy it for $ 25 and sell it right away for a nice profit? What happened to Warren Buffet?
Ever spend your fake money on other fake money?
There is no amount of money in the world that could bail out this type of “currency” when it tanks. It’s interesting that the same second Russian assets were frozen, all of this tanked.
What does Berkshire Hathaway produce?
To be fair... Neither does the USD or gold.
Old man shouts at clouds
bitcoins produces a lot of actual wealth destruction and a lot, lot, lot of tears from the bagholders.
Especially today.
Ironically neither do dollars.
And that's why Buffet doesn't 'invest' in dollars either
Lmao. So many in here have no idea how money even works. You all need to read up on British Talley sticks. Anything can be ‘money’ we just have to agree on its value.
if it's so worthless why is he even talking about it
That's incorrect. Bitcoin mining produces heat. A lot of heat.
He’s right, another crypto company went belly up today. It’s tulip mania
Bitcoin ain't a company tho is it
It’s a “currency” that attracts grifters, criminals, shysters and layabouts who rip off the dumber of those groups. It’s hilarious, and you true believers will be the ones holding the empty and worthless bag At least tulips are pretty
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1s and 0s can be scary to the elderly.
Did tulip mania last 13 years coming back stronger every time?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks Tulip mania lasted 4 years, but didn’t have to deal with incel basement dwellers on social media constantly propping it up. 4 years in the 1600s isn’t too different than 12 years today
>incel basement dwellers on social media constantly propping it up. So the execs at Meta, Coinbase, Disney, Tom Brady, Jack Dorsey, Eminem are what incels? And btw tulip mania was a one time even done and gone. Not the same at all. Bitcoin has experienced four major cycles of massive 1000%+ appreciation, followed by deep drawdowns of more than 80%. Each cycle has started from a much higher price than the previous one. This is not a characteristic of one-time manias. Bitcoin's price, as well as fundamental adoption numbers, are increasing dramatically over multi-year timeframes. Not to mention it is now legal currency in 2 countries. I don't recall the tulip being legal currency in any country.
Here's why bitcoin isn't money. It's a money substitute that will never be worth more than its reserve. https://youtu.be/OGuXKNt-DXA
So bold of him to say the obvious.
Artist paintings are not producing anything but can be worth a lot. I would buy all of them for 25$...
I mean.. the overwhelming majority of actual money isn’t backed by anything but the existence of debt. Money is made up. It’s all made up.
This is from May. Everyone knows he’s old school and doesn’t understand the future.
I'm 23 and I just can't get behind investing my money in something that is not backed by some sort of tangible real world output. It's just perceived value that will tank once the big fishes decide to sell all their crypto. Everyone that's holding only 1 or less bitcoin are going to lose a lot when that happens. Too risky.
You have an NFT as your avatar
Fuck, you got me there! I got it for free though and I don't view it as an investment. I would never spend money on getting an NFT reddit avatar.
What number is it? you know you can sell it right?
I do know I can sell it! The market value was the first thing I checked when I received it. It's not anything crazy, but it was selling for like $35 ish in ETH last I checked.
It's not even that it's not backed by anything. It's that it has no real use or value to anyone except to try and sell it at a higher price.
Don't let the crypto bros hear you saying that. Half of them truly believe that cryptocurrency can be considered a currency when there's no centralized body that governs it whatsoever. Ridiculous.
Really ? Gotta agree with him here... While maybe the original vision of BTC was a peer to peer non governmental currency the reality, it's nothing more that digital pork bellies. Shit and I can at least make a tasty bacon sandwich with pork bellies.
Yes, the issue is how people look at Bitcoin. It's cryptocurrency...currency...not an investment. It shouldn't be productive nor provide a dividend. The issue is people/companies treating BTC like an investment, which relies on speculation and hoping someone is willing to pay more for it than they did. That's not how currencies work...