“There aren’t really any positives to Ponzi and Pyramid schemes” …without going into too much detail, me and my bank account would politely disagree with you. 
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I think that it’s more like “banning Beanie Babies.” Or “banning Baseball Cards.” Not going to happen but as an “investment” they’re all going to the same pile of obscurity.
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Wow. Phrases like that are slappable enough when they aren’t coming from someone who’s locking you out of your financial assets through incompetence as you helplessly watch them collapse in value.
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I love all the true believers. It sure sounds the same as 1929, which was a “minor correction” which would surely lead to a “big bounce back,” yada yada yada. The original Ponzi scheme true believers kept on sending money, even as it all went down in flames.
If it follows the pattern of most bursting market balloons, yeah it will rally, maybe two or three times, before the final implosion. You know, like the Titanic lying there listing a little for a loong time, before the high speed dash into the inky depths
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Strangely “I made a lot of money” isn’t really an argument for positive uses.
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Well technically the stock market did bounce back. You just had to ride it out … until 1959.
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I first learned about BTC in an article on BoingBoing in either 2010 or 2011. I was a graduate student at the time. I bought $1,000 worth (it wasn’t an easy process at the time). I used these BTC to buy a considerable amount of ETH in 2016. I retired in 2017 at the age of 40.
I went and looked up the article in question: Bitcoin: a new "peer-to-peer currency" | Boing Boing
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Good for you! And they said nobody ever got rich from reading BoingBoing.
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“There are no positive uses for {blockchain currency du jour}” is exactly equivalent to, “there are no positive uses for money.” Guess what? Money is just as “imaginary” as Bitcoin, re: actual value, considering no global currency is backed by actual precious materials, any more.
Money has value merely because we decide it does, no more, no less. If we decide Bitcoin is the next medium of exchange, or human teeth, or pretty seashells, or what-have-you, it’s just as valid as the current forms of exchange, of itself.
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I should say that I read the article, thought about acquiring BTC, saw how hard it would be, decided against, then BTC went from $1.00 to $1,000.00, I regretted my failure to acquire, I learned how to acquire BTC, then BTC crashed (as it always does before each bull run), and I finally procured my BTC. So, a bit more complicated than it might appear.
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whatever is good for me, is good
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I remember going to a trade show where one of the vendors was a Swiss company, with a data center underneath a mountain and/or a glacier.
Yep, found out the hard way when building management shut off the A/C on weekends, which meant the plenum air above the ceiling just sat there all weekend. Then the Derecho hit and there was no power all week. (And this was in Maryland, not even Texas.) Good times…
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Cowrie shells are one of the oldest forms of currency in existence. Would you say they are therefore exactly as useful as US dollars? I wouldn’t, because you can buy things with US dollars, whereas right now you can’t with cowrie shells…unless you pawn them for dollars first.
It’s true currency has no intrinisic value, just what people agree to treat it has having…but the thing is, people agree to treat it as having value. If nothing else there is a government that promises to honor it for taxes for the foreseeable future, making it useful for that. Blockchain currency du jour has no such promise, as the very fact that it’s du jour would indicate.
In other words, what you’re saying would only be true if you believe social constructs can’t be more or less useful, which is a very nonsense position for anyone who lives in a society.
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I picked up one bitcoin back when that was like £70, meaning to buy drugs with it. However, I forgot about it (thanks to drugs) until suddenly it was worth £700, so I thought ‘great!’ and bought a graphics card. Then a few years later, I remembered that I still had some left over from that graphics card, so I checked, and there was enough to buy another new graphics card.
So far I’ve got three graphics cards and a new monitor out of my “investment”, and the fragment I have left is enough to get a graphics card even at today’s prices…if there was any stock anywhere (I’m not giving a scalper anything). Oh well, I’ve done ok out of it, mostly by doing the opposite of what the crypto-bros say (“hodle!”“just as planned!”).
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Good historical joke, ha ha.
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£ has value because the UK Gov insists that I pay my taxes in £.
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And just as importantly pays wages in it.
Collects and issues debts in it.
Has the power to mandate it’s exclusive use as the daily use currency in a sizable economy.
Currency has value because states will it. And to the extent that they have the weight to do so.
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It’s slightly backwards: I accept wages in £ because I owe taxes in £. It has near exclusive use in UK because everyone owes taxes in £.
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Bitcoin is not going anywhere.
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