The truth about Bitcoin (I think this is accurate)

if you want a safe haven maybe start with putting money into something that's real and not a delusion

Buttcoin wrote:

https://capx.co/the-crypto-con-why-bitcoin-is-nothing-but-a-ponzi-scheme/

I agree with the initial video that it's a Ponzi scheme. However, there are lots of suckers in this world. And as bitcoin has this momentum swings, it can keep going higher and possibly make you lots of money. If enough people "believe" it will go higher, and more people buy, price will go up.

Many people have made lots of money in Ponzi scheme if you get in early. Is it still considered early at today's price? I have no idea.

The last time we had a new currency model was 1200AD when Cinghis Khan made Europe and Asia turn over Gold, . Silver, diamonds, etc. for paper money.

Those who refused has molten silver poured down their ears.

Bitcoin is the currency of the internet and will replace paper fiat currency.

Yes, this.

If you "do the work" and really dig into what bitcoin is (fixed supply store of value with ultra cheap transaction costs on the lightning network, inflation proof, etc.), you see that it is the best money we've ever had at transferring value over space and time.

Bitcoinz wrote:

Buttcoin wrote:

https://capx.co/the-crypto-con-why-bitcoin-is-nothing-but-a-ponzi-scheme/

I agree with the initial video that it's a Ponzi scheme. However, there are lots of suckers in this world. And as bitcoin has this momentum swings, it can keep going higher and possibly make you lots of money. If enough people "believe" it will go higher, and more people buy, price will go up.

Many people have made lots of money in Ponzi scheme if you get in early. Is it still considered early at today's price? I have no idea.

A Ponzi scheme implies people are expecting guaranteed future returns of which basis has been hidden. The crypto world isn't that. Everyone tells you it flutuates, you can lose it all, don't risk what you can't afford to lose. It's far from a Ponzi scheme.

All trading out there is based on people expecting the price of something to fluctuate. There is nothing new here. There are many companies making a loss every year that people put money into thinking it will go up. I don't particularly see the difference here. It's based on "something", where we can certainly argue about the true value, which is very difficult.

Is there a lot of overvalued garbage in the crypto world, that inflates the price, making it riskier than normal ? For sure, but that's not all it is.

Its already a wildly effective currency. It even beats the dollar in a number of key metrics when looking at the efficacy of currency.

It will become an important store of value for investors and will actually be an important currency for 3rd world countries.

The FOMO in this thread is real XD they really can't believe so many of us are getting rich off crypto. reminds me how my grandma would never put her money in the stock market.

Thinking of cryptocurrency as a traditional currency is the problem with understanding it. A traditional currency, either a fiat currency or a currency backed by something like gold is intended to be a relatively stable medium of exchange. A loaf of bread shouldn't be $2 one day and $100 the next day if the regulating authority is doing a good job.

Cryptocurrency is much closer in practice to tradable commodities like precious metals. Combine that with high levels of speculation in the market and you'll find the major fluctuations that we currently see.

The creation of bitcoin as an experiment with blockchain is a fascinating step forward in technology and and innovation that may eventually prove useful for future currencies or for secure mediums of exchange. Ultimately, some form of this technology will be regulated to help formalize the rules around its use and promote confidence among the general public that it is a secure means to transact by.

As it stands now though investing in these "currencies" is nothing more than speculation. Assuming governments continue to exist with the ability to regulate monetary policy and commerce, cryptocurrency will not become a mainstream means of transaction without government regulation and price stability.

I think that's a fair post overall. Don't forget though, some of the crypto currencies are in use day to day, i.e it's not "all" speculation.

used to run in college wrote:

Thinking of cryptocurrency as a traditional currency is the problem with understanding it. A traditional currency, either a fiat currency or a currency backed by something like gold is intended to be a relatively stable medium of exchange. A loaf of bread shouldn't be $2 one day and $100 the next day if the regulating authority is doing a good job.

Cryptocurrency is much closer in practice to tradable commodities like precious metals. Combine that with high levels of speculation in the market and you'll find the major fluctuations that we currently see.

I'm starting to see this now. But with precious metals there's an inherent value in that the product is useful - gold particularly is malleable, conductive and attractive, combined with its rarity gives it its value.

What do you do with a Bitcoin?

Already in and out. Made 65% in 30 days. On to something else. Just put in spare change. Don’t mortgage the house.

Tatar... wrote:

used to run in college wrote:

Thinking of cryptocurrency as a traditional currency is the problem with understanding it. A traditional currency, either a fiat currency or a currency backed by something like gold is intended to be a relatively stable medium of exchange. A loaf of bread shouldn't be $2 one day and $100 the next day if the regulating authority is doing a good job.

Cryptocurrency is much closer in practice to tradable commodities like precious metals. Combine that with high levels of speculation in the market and you'll find the major fluctuations that we currently see.

I'm starting to see this now. But with precious metals there's an inherent value in that the product is useful - gold particularly is malleable, conductive and attractive, combined with its rarity gives it its value.

What do you do with a Bitcoin?

What do you do with Gold...lets say you buy some, what are you going to do with it ?

This is specious logic. You basically admit there's no intrinsic value with cryptocurrency (bitcoin, et al are not even currencies) and you didn't expand upon what the greater crypto 'ecosystem' is, how it is tied together, what gives it value or legitimacy. The El Salvador case is interesting but worrisome that a relatively unstable sovereign entity is accepting payment in cryptocurrency.

I'm not against the concept of cryptocurrency or even blockchain, but until this is regulated I am skeptical.

Maybe...... wrote:

Tatar... wrote:

I'm starting to see this now. But with precious metals there's an inherent value in that the product is useful - gold particularly is malleable, conductive and attractive, combined with its rarity gives it its value.

What do you do with a Bitcoin?

What do you do with Gold...lets say you buy some, what are you going to do with it ?

There's a market for gold because there are people who use it to make jewellery and use in electronics. Different precious metals are used in dentistry, soldering and for ornaments. Other commodities like oil is used for energy.

You make money by investing in commodities because if there's demand in the market you are the person that's owns the supply.

For anyone asking about things you can buy with it, you can rent a track light pacing system.

The developer guide to bitcoin (

https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/block_chain.html

)

I like gold and bitcoin as a medium of exchange (also silver or even ammo). I agree that gold has unique properties to make it valuable for many uses. I call bitcoin a medium of exchange rather than a store of value because the original bitcoin whitepaper (

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

) released in 2008 is titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." Many other cryptocurrencies have been developed because they feel that bitcoin no longer meets this basic requirement and this resulting in Bitcoin Cash forking from Bitcoin to allow for more transactions in each block and thus lower transaction fees.

While I believe that bitcoin can exist without the internet as we know it, it would basically be unusable. Without access to electricity, I don't see how it would be possible. If I Am Legend happens, I would rather have gold than bitcoin. Since I consider I Am Legend to be a very unlikely scenario, I think owning some bitcoin makes sense.

For people looking for what you can do with a bitcoin that isn't trading or spending, I suggest researching the Bitcoin scripting language. I can write anything I want to the Bitcoin blockchain (and most other blockchains) and it can never be erased. This can be a powerful weapon against censorship of the biggest tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and the overzealous moderators of the Letsrun forums (who I expect to see testifying before Congress very soon).

That being said, I think it has huge downside risk up to 95%+ loss of purchasing power in short, medium, and long term.

And to argue against my own point, you may ask whether miners would continue to process transactions for the same amount of bitcoin if the price were to fall by that much.

Credit card companies and most major US banks do not share any of my values and probably don't like me very much. I would prefer not to give them 2.5% of every transaction. I would like to send my transaction fees to pretty much anyone but them. If I can deprive them of transaction fees, I can ruin their businesses. They have been censoring people with businesses that I consider to be legitimate such as Defense Distributed and Gab for many years. Bitcoin makes this financial censorship much more difficult, and I don't see any tool that can combat censhorship of online payments besides cryptocurrency. And because it is an open platform, you do not have to rely on services like Coinbase, Crypto dot com, Robinhood, Strike (Twitter-backed), or Bitpay to hold your bitcoin and decide whether or not to allow you access to it. You can use the open source BTC Pay Server to handle your own payments and run it on your own server. One of my main complaints about the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador is that most people and businesses seem to be using custodial solutions.

Some more useful information:

Fees are paid to miners and fluctuate based on supply and demand. The current market fee can be used to send $1 or $1 billion for the same amount of bitcoin. So if it costs 8 cents to send $1, you can send $1 billion for 8 cents.. And as others have pointed out, the main bitcoin network has minimum fees that are roughly 1.3 one-millionths of the price of a bitcoin, which at the current price of $58,000 USD equates to 8 cents minimum. If bitcoin rises or falls by some factor, minimum fees will rise or fall back that factor as well. Confirmation times can take 20 minutes if you're willing to pay a high fee to have your transaction confirmed quickly. The lightning network allows for lower fees and instant transactions by basically creating a side ledger that doesn't incur the transaction fee until the user wants to withdraw into another bitcoin address. Lightning is still considered beta. FYI, a good site to check fees on the bitcoin main network is

https://mempool.space

Seed phrases were introduced to allow users to remember 12 words that are generated by computers or dice randomly. These 12 words can be input into a wallet application like Blue Wallet (a great app) and can allow the user access to their bitcoin. Since this seed phrase is required to access the bitcoin, the user must keep it secret or their bitcoin can be stolen. If the user loses their device where the seed phrase is stored, they must remember the seed phrase or the bitcoin will be lost. But this is a very powerful concept that I can create a bitcoin wallet in the US on my computer, fly to another country with nothing but my passport, and use another device that I obtained in that country to access my bitcoin. And if that country is El Salvador, I can spend the bitcoin at most businesses. You can setup a 12 word phrase using this site which you can even download to an offline computer and use things like dice rolls to generate the words randomly -

https://iancoleman.io/bip39/

oldguy1 wrote:

Already in and out. Made 65% in 30 days. On to something else. Just put in spare change. Don’t mortgage the house.

Good job.

yargle wrote:

Theres nothing to fall for. If you've held Bitcoin for any amount of time >= 1 year you are much richer because of it.

If you haven't, you just have fomo.

If you got in and out at the right time during Tulip Mania you made a boatload. Just because you can make money speculating on something does not make it valuable.

Bitcoin relies 100% on greater fool concept. It is not a commodity that you has a real-world use such as oil, food, or gold. It is not a business with capital that will ever pay shareholders a dividend. The only value is what the next guy will pay you to own it. Historically anything with that makeup eventually collapses in value.

Another red flag should be the way bitcoin proponents have constantly changed their tune over time to what bitcoin is. First bitcoin was an alternate form of currency, unfortunately, it is extremely unwieldy for transactions. Then it was an unregulated untrackable asset, except then governments regulated it and somehow ransom money in bitcoin was recovered so its now regulated and can be tracked. Then it was a store of value, even though it can't actually do anything. Fortunately for the people who continue to propagate the crypto nonsense, there are a lot of fools and Americans' financial education is so bad that there are a lot of suckers to bring into the Ponzi scheme.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Another red flag should be the way bitcoin proponents have constantly changed their tune over time to what bitcoin is. First bitcoin was an alternate form of currency, unfortunately, it is extremely unwieldy for transactions. Then it was an unregulated untrackable asset, except then governments regulated it and somehow ransom money in bitcoin was recovered so its now regulated and can be tracked. Then it was a store of value, even though it can't actually do anything. Fortunately for the people who continue to propagate the crypto nonsense, there are a lot of fools and Americans' financial education is so bad that there are a lot of suckers to bring into the Ponzi scheme.

TOXICITY:

As a bitcoin proponent, I agree with most of this sentiment. Concepts like "bitcoin maximalism" and "perpetual growth asset" are a huge problem and not at all realistic.

PRIVACY:

While I believe bitcoin can be used pseudonymously and protect your real world identity, that functionality is not default. Edward Snowden has commented on this problem and recommended zCash for its shielded transactions. If crypto ever becomes a medium of exchange, Bitcoin will probably be all that the general public has the mental capacity for. However, smaller exchanges and decentralized exchanges (such as Bisq for Bitcoin or Uniswap for ethereum-based tokens) may provide help for knowledgable users to swap in and out of bitcoin when necessary so they can keep most of their holdings in more privacy-focused coins. While it's still a long way from allowing people like my parents from accessing that level of privacy, I expect the tools to evolve and eventually at least get closer to supporting those folks.