Yes, a great people have sold bitcoin at a profit. Here’s a fun realtime visualization of bitcoin transactions.
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Over 90% of US currency is digital and is backed by nothing. At least Bitcoin is backed by using up frightening amounts of electricity for no other reason than to prevent double-spending.
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No important currency in the world is backed by gold anymore. That idea basically went out of the window a century or so ago, and in spite of efforts to the contrary hasn’t been re-established.
Bitcoin is basically an attempt by crazy people to come up with a “virtual” gold standard. It is usually touted as a “currency” but it doesn’t quite work out that way. It’s really more like a commodity but without the inconvenient rules and regulations that otherwise protect the people who trade with commodities (for the time being anyway). Right now the idea behind Bitcoin is for the suckers currently holding Bitcoin to find bigger suckers to sell their Bitcoin to. Bitcoin is pretty easy to buy but difficult to convert back to real money if you want to get rid of a lot of it.
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[quote=“Anselm, post:23, topic:185737”]
difficult to convert back to real money if you want to get rid of a lot of it
[/quote] How much is “a lot?” I see sales of over $100k a lot on Coinbase.
I also would never recommend anyone investing in BTC unless they are willing to lose a lot of money.
And for anyone certain bitcoin is going to plummet, you can short it and make a fortune. Godspeed.
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hahahaha you’re like that guy who bought a pizza with bitcoin.
The ‘street use’ for this stuff is to buy lots of currency with it, a couple years after you bought it. THEN you buy the comic book (store).
Of course nobody knew that at the time. And of course nobody knows what’s gonna happen in the next couple years with it as well. All we know is - there’s only so many of them.
I don’t think that the governance committee are going to keep the high electricity bill up. This high burn rate to mine bitcoin is only temporary. Mining will be distributed to the lesser coins eventually as BTC backs up a lot of the alt-coins for their perceived “value”
When I bought the comics 1 BTC was about $400. Please don’t do the math for me.
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I wouldn’t dare. I could help you track the coin down and see if the comic shop spent it though, and where the coin is today.
Again, the point I was making was more about the shadowy figures that run the US Federal Reserve / Treasury.
US Treasury has $11bn of gold listed as an asset. So I’m not exactly sure what you meant.
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/gold-report/current.html
Thanks for sharing!
Hopefully Proof of Stake will take over in the next “crypto-era”. They are intrinsically centralized, but there are a few promising projects which should be able to grow and adapt.
Everyone who is into BTC or against it, can agree that the energy use is not sustainable.
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I completely agree for the transactional use of cash/debit/credit. I am actually pretty far left fiscally and socially, however after 2008 and Fannie Mae, Lehman, etc. I don’t trust global financial systems and monetary policy. I think, recovering from this crisis, we’ll see inflation of assets and (as I don’t own real estate) I’ve invested in the one that has the perks of deflationary supply, durability, divisibility and fungibility.
Alternate headline:
Bitcoin 0% growth over last three years; S&P 36% growth over same time.
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A little cryptocurrency arbitrage is fine as a portfolio sideshow in the alternatives allocation, but making it the main attraction is a bad idea. Bitcoin and other non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies are very risky speculative vehicles that appeal to the same obsessive collector’s mentality and/or Libertarian paranoia that used to turn people into goldbugs (with added utility for criminals).
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As has been stated- the dollar isn’t backed by gold. And the assumption that inflation is always a negative thing is wrong headed.
Inflation has an inverse relationship with unemployment- lower inflation- higher unemployment. Inflation increases demand. Inflation let’s you pay back debt with dollars of lower value.
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Ok. I’m going to ignore this and previous edits.
obviously bitcoin is not superior to gold
for one, gold is far more divisible
and also, gold is much shinier
what has gone wrong with people that they would be so confused?
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It makes much better jewelry.
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More like Godspend.
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Your prerogative, of course. If one’s savings strategy is predicated to start with on the complete collapse of the global financial system (which is apparently run by “shadowy figures” and is secretly gold-backed even though the gold isn’t there/debased), I suppose cryptocurrencies might make sense to one as a basket in which to place all one’s eggs. Good luck with that.
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One very important piece of information that consistently gets overlooked whenever bitcoin pops up in the mainstream news is that while there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins created, there are only about 2.5 million left… and then factor in the reality that the smart money, institutional money is buying up massive amounts of bitcoin, well just do the math.
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Right, that’s what’s being discussed in re: the built-in deflation. In that situation, unless you got in very early and held for years or are an instution with the fiat capital to buy and then market Bitcoin then investing in it is a mug’s game. This is something that the big banks buying up BTC are very aware of, and they’ll take advantage of the pikers every time they can. Then, once they’re done with BTC, they’ll move on to other non-stablecoins.
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