Not really- there’s an underlying asset to an index fund that supports its value.
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Consumers will be able to instantly convert their selected cryptocurrency balance to fiat currency, with certainty of value and no incremental fees. There will be no additional costs imposed on merchants either, as all transactions will be settled with fiat currency at their current PayPal rates.
Tells us quite a bit about Bitcoin’s utility as a currency, I’d say.
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Also, there are a lot of people here who are interested in and knowledgeable about investing, economics, and money in general, who are not impressed by this energy-wasting, GPU-hogging boondoggle.
Only it lacks the fundamental point of commodities, namely that you can use them for something. You can take gold and make electronics or gold leaf or pretty shiny jewelry from it. You can burn oil or drink frozen orange juice or make cans out of aluminium and so on. But you can’t do anything with bitcoin except trade it to someone else at a higher price than you paid for it – because the other guy expects he will be able to do the same to with some other sucker at a latter date.
It’s also nothing like stocks, digital or otherwise, because those represent an actual ownership slice of a company, if an ever so small one, and which historically have paid dividends from the company’s profits. Bitcoin doesn’t do anything of the sort.
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and the real kicker that most people miss when talking about bitcoin is of those 21 M that will ever be created, there’s only about 2 1/2 M left…
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But it’s an ownership of bitcoin. Stocks do sometimes pay dividends, and issue more shares, or buy back shares. You can buy 1% of a company, then by dilution you could have 0.5%. While stocks have a tangible association, there are financial risks to holding stocks outside of just the price going up or down. What you hold with bitcoin is a guaranteed portion of all bitcoin that will ever be made, with a definite and decreasing S2F over time.
Would it be fair to make the claim that bitcoin is an asset that is backed by the amount of work (energy) to create and secure it?
Proof of Stake is likely the long-term successor to Bitcoin, for the enormous energy costs that you have mentioned, and also that almost all of them pay 5-35% annually to holders as a reward for securing the network. At some point a fully decentralized PoS network will emerge.
Yes. But I won’t buy a coffee with Apple stock.
Yes, and what is a bitcoin? It’s a thing with absolutely no earthly use, that you can only sell to someone else, hopefully at a higher price. It’s not a currency, because it’s not backed by any economy; it’s not a commodity, because it doesn’t represent something that can be used for an economic purpose; it’s not a share in a business or a fund that does / owns something real.
It’s got all the bad qualities of a fiat currency, combined with the worst qualities of a commodity-backed currency. It’s a boondoggle, a bad solution to a problem nobody has.
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Of course not - you’ll use a debit card. Or even cash.
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No, no, no…you’re missing all the utility here. First you sell your bitcoin for USD, and depending on the particular day, you can either buy a car or that cup of coffee. It’s a very practical system.
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So, that’s just Forex, which does legitimize bitcoin as a currency. This is like buying a German-built Liebherr model crane, buying it in Euros when I have USD. Paypal does the conversion for me. For tax reasons, Vendors will accept their native currency and there’s a strong incentive for them to only deal with one currency.
OP is not wrong … hard to avoid a fact. Fact - people paid a certain price for the thing on a certain date, and on a certain date in the near future, odds are people will pay a much higher price for the thing. The price of stuff changes, why would people think BTC is any different? The fun part about BTC is you don’t have to be in the wall street cabal to play the game well and you don’t need a lot of money to play the game. You should play the game - bet as much as you’d be willing to lose to prove everyone wrong.
technically it’s your responsibility to report your purchases and sales of valuable assets on your taxes. it’s just another form like the 1040 form. There’s only 21 million BTC in existence, if you bought say - 5 of them - you’d have 0.000023% of all of them - a truly “valuable asset” according to supply and demand.
technically the SEC or IRS could review any BTC transaction they wanted - and they have on many occasions. All BTC transactions are transparent.
If you buy some and then sell some and make a profit or a loss, that goes on the IRS form as far as I understand it. What do you own? That’s intangible - but I assure you it’s something other folks want to buy from you or would trade you for stuff.
It’s a Ponzi scheme waiting for the last greater fool to be found.
Sure - you can make actual money - if you sell before the grift crashes.
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That doesn’t sound like a great description of a useful currency.
And since bitcoin isn’t even a currency, that makes the decision easier as well.
I wouldn’t call that different from buying Tesla stock at this point.
I’m not sure it’s a ponzi scheme either … you have the “belief” part right - any good ponzi scheme requires people to “believe” but BTC wasn’t/isn’t really about a quick return on the investment. however in order for it to work it requires participants to “believe” - just like the dollar. I mean you “believe” the dollar is “worth” a 1/3 of a gallon of gasoline right?
If I had to define it I wouldn’t call it a currency either. It’s more like an opportunity. A new fancy playground where new stuff is possible. Most of the fun stuff hasn’t even been invented yet in my opinion. Bitcoin is more like an “app” where people “store value over time”
You own assets when you own a stock.
As far as the time horizon and Ponzi schemes - Bernie Madoff kept those balls juggling and plates spinning for decades.
You can believe you can fly as hard as you want - gravity gets the last laugh.
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I believe the decentralization of financial markets (viz a viz bitcoin) might attempt to leave people in the dust, what with it being so hard to understand … but with adoption from folks like Paypal / Venmo, the use of decentralized “currency” and “dApps” will be transparent to the user.
You’ll probably end up using it and not even know it.
Money is already decentralized- there are tons of currencies out there to choose from. I can give anyone a dollar anywhere.
Using blockchain is not the same as using bitcoin or its equivalents. People use blockchain in the cargo world- but it’s actually not proving to provide efficiency or savings yet.
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Holy fucking shit, what did I just say? Your ponzi scheme is tired and you’re a shill, and when called on it, you STILL can’t resist being a shill.
The price of stuff changes, why would people think BTC is any different
You don’t say. Sometimes it can even become worthless! Bitcoin is based on nothing but wasting energy to prove you played a worthless random guessing game. Good job! Changing the world one fraction of a degree centigrade at a time.
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