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I think the main issue with Bitcoin is the fact that it is completely outdated in its own domain and just living of its brand value. If feels like you were trying to invest in AOL these days, only because they once were a big name.
Imho it is difficult to discard all those issues people have with FIATs and ignore the potential of cryptos. The core problem is just that: Bitcoin isn't the answer.
It is already overtaken by a ton of other cryptos that solve those issues better and with less negative side effects. If we look at topics like transaction speed, transaction cost, energy consumption etc. there are way better cryptos out there to solve the problems crypto fans are always harping on. And lets not talk about all those early bitcoins where nobody knows if those are really frozen dead or if they could somehow wake up at some point. This would quickly ruin a lot of the finite supply argument, because the current assumption of what the finite supply is would then be completely off.
If you had to pick a crypto as a transaction medium or store of value replacement and start from a clean slate, nobody would ever pick Bitcoin. It is simply awful and outdated with too many downsides to ever make it properly usable.
So the appeal to invest in Bitcoin either stems from FOMO or from people believing in the crypto bull case, but having simply no clue where to put their money and just throwing it at the big name, because to many people "Bitcoin = crypto" is the full extent of their research into the topic.
And with the current state of the crypto world, there are indeed a bunch of promising candidates (and Bitcoin isn't one of them)... But all of them are so far from any serious adoption, that these would be just 1:10000 dart throws, which I wouldn't consider unreasonable investments, but they are not really aligned with my investment strategy. And there is a decent likelihood of the final "winner" of the crypto as transaction medium/store of value replacement race is not even created yet or it will in the end be created by the very same controlling parties that we already have right now with the old FIATs.
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Northern Ireland26177 Posts
On March 14 2024 19:10 KingzTig wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2024 18:29 WombaT wrote:On March 14 2024 18:24 PoulsenB wrote:
You can buy things for bitcoin in the same way you can buy things for MTG cards, you can sell them and get a proper currency that is accepted by vendors. I once knew a guy who did exactly that, whenever he went on a trip he took a bunch of MTG cards and sold them in local MTG stores to get local currency. Are MTG cards currency then?
As things stand now, Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are functionally just highly volatile speculative financial assets, with vast amounts held by early adopters. And while the traditional banking system can be inefficient, one has to remember that it handles financial transactions for essentionally the entire world, billions of people. Given the amount of transactions processed every day by banks, credit card companies etc, i would say they still get things done pretty fast. By comparison, crypto blockchains process an infinitely smaller amount of transactions and can still be susceptible to slowdowns during peak hours or to volatile gas fees that can unpredicably increase the cost of making the transaction. This basically. It’s the real fundamental problem with a prospective currency with a finite supply, and it’s that fundamental nature that sees it generally end up functioning as a speculative investment vehicle as opposed to a stable currency primarily used to purchase other things. I don’t personally think the tech or potential other applications are without value, but crypto bros will sit and hum when it’s pointed out before sidestepping into complaining about fiat currencies and government banks. Nope, it's not a fundamental problem. 99% small cap stocks are volatile, it's the nature of smaller market cap, immature of market and the type of holders. And crypto market is essentially a mini FX market, volatility is what brings in trading profit, which is why it has such a large trading volume even for small altconis at the moment. But over time more institutions adoption, more companies holding it as reserve, including ETF will make this less volatile, which have been happening as volatility for bitcoin has been going down every cycle. In fact bitcoin supply has been halved every halvening, but volatility has been decreasing proves my point. Take a look at the second largest market cap crypto, Ethereum that has self-tuning money supply, with an infinite max supply, has more volatility than bitcoin should highlight how wrong that assumption is. Or going back to gold, that has highly fixed issue rate, and "max" supply are extremely stable. On the other hand, oil is insanely volatile, precisely because it is mostly about its demand use case, instead of monetary store of value premium that gold has. There's no side stepping with fiat currencies and gov banks. It's just a matter of understanding the thesis and value proposal of bitcoin.
But yet you haven’t discussed your counter-argument to the early adopter issue in multiple posts?
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On March 14 2024 19:14 mahrgell wrote:
I think the main issue with Bitcoin is the fact that it is completely outdated in its own domain and just living of its brand value. If feels like you were trying to invest in AOL these days, only because they once were a big name.
Imho it is difficult to discard all those issues people have with FIATs and ignore the potential of cryptos. The core problem is just that: Bitcoin isn't the answer.
It is already overtaken by a ton of other cryptos that solve those issues better and with less negative side effects. If we look at topics like transaction speed, transaction cost, energy consumption etc. there are way better cryptos out there to solve the problems crypto fans are always harping on. And lets not talk about all those early bitcoins where nobody knows if those are really frozen dead or if they could somehow wake up at some point. This would quickly ruin a lot of the finite supply argument, because the current assumption of what the finite supply is would then be completely off.
If you had to pick a crypto as a transaction medium or store of value replacement and start from a clean slate, nobody would ever pick Bitcoin. It is simply awful and outdated with too many downsides to ever make it properly usable.
So the appeal to invest in Bitcoin either stems from FOMO or from people believing in the crypto bull case, but having simply no clue where to put their money and just throwing it at the big name, because to many people "Bitcoin = crypto" is the full extent of their research into the topic.
And with the current state of the crypto world, there are indeed a bunch of promising candidates (and Bitcoin isn't one of them)... But all of them are so far from any serious adoption, that these would be just 1:10000 dart throws, which I wouldn't consider unreasonable investments, but they are not really aligned with my investment strategy. And there is a decent likelihood of the final "winner" of the crypto as transaction medium/store of value replacement race is not even created yet or it will in the end be created by the very same controlling parties that we already have right now with the old FIATs.
Not true, because POW is the real innovation, not moving the traditional finance onchain, each with their own special token etc.
Most POS projects are funded by VC/bankers and will always not be as decentralised.
There is no seperation of power. Most nodes are running off AWS.
Some have foundation team with special reserve pool for development (imagine inventing special paper coin A in nation A, and the state has reserved a pool, just so it can profit off it).
Almost all major ones will always have a public team/face.
And they don't need to be as decentralised, because they want to have traditional finance onchain but more efficient.
That's also why they moved to POS, they don't have the same ethos as "old" tech coins.
BTC (and Monero) are the coins that work to compete as money, and money is the biggest issue problem to solve.
And making it "easy" (or energy efficient) is just not part of its ethos. Money is meant to be hard, POW makes sure energy/time are direct input to ensure the network is secure AND every coin is tied to a completely different resource to issue.
Make changes hard because money should be risk averse etc.
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On March 14 2024 19:15 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2024 19:10 KingzTig wrote:On March 14 2024 18:29 WombaT wrote:On March 14 2024 18:24 PoulsenB wrote:
You can buy things for bitcoin in the same way you can buy things for MTG cards, you can sell them and get a proper currency that is accepted by vendors. I once knew a guy who did exactly that, whenever he went on a trip he took a bunch of MTG cards and sold them in local MTG stores to get local currency. Are MTG cards currency then?
As things stand now, Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are functionally just highly volatile speculative financial assets, with vast amounts held by early adopters. And while the traditional banking system can be inefficient, one has to remember that it handles financial transactions for essentionally the entire world, billions of people. Given the amount of transactions processed every day by banks, credit card companies etc, i would say they still get things done pretty fast. By comparison, crypto blockchains process an infinitely smaller amount of transactions and can still be susceptible to slowdowns during peak hours or to volatile gas fees that can unpredicably increase the cost of making the transaction. This basically. It’s the real fundamental problem with a prospective currency with a finite supply, and it’s that fundamental nature that sees it generally end up functioning as a speculative investment vehicle as opposed to a stable currency primarily used to purchase other things. I don’t personally think the tech or potential other applications are without value, but crypto bros will sit and hum when it’s pointed out before sidestepping into complaining about fiat currencies and government banks. Nope, it's not a fundamental problem. 99% small cap stocks are volatile, it's the nature of smaller market cap, immature of market and the type of holders. And crypto market is essentially a mini FX market, volatility is what brings in trading profit, which is why it has such a large trading volume even for small altconis at the moment. But over time more institutions adoption, more companies holding it as reserve, including ETF will make this less volatile, which have been happening as volatility for bitcoin has been going down every cycle. In fact bitcoin supply has been halved every halvening, but volatility has been decreasing proves my point. Take a look at the second largest market cap crypto, Ethereum that has self-tuning money supply, with an infinite max supply, has more volatility than bitcoin should highlight how wrong that assumption is. Or going back to gold, that has highly fixed issue rate, and "max" supply are extremely stable. On the other hand, oil is insanely volatile, precisely because it is mostly about its demand use case, instead of monetary store of value premium that gold has. There's no side stepping with fiat currencies and gov banks. It's just a matter of understanding the thesis and value proposal of bitcoin. But yet you haven’t discussed your counter-argument to the early adopter issue in multiple posts?
what early adopter issue, volatility?
Look at Japanese yen dropping 20-30% in a year against all currencies, I don't see how that is better with Yen having very little hope ever recovering now that it is an inflationary currency.
And I don't see it's an issue when no one is forced to have bitcoin by their country through using tax, nor majority of us would have it 100% bitcoin like most of citizens would have in their portfolio.
also: wow I still got my main account somehow, thought I got it wiped when what happened in hong kong in 2019.
Then I will give you a bit of background.
Hong Kong Dollar is a pseudo USD system with foreign reserve that is rapidly drying out.
Hong Kong had like 3 - 4 currencies during different colonial stages.
There's crisis on HKD during 1997 currency collapse in Asia.
And we simply love travelling (so we got tonnes of other currencies: yen, taiwan dollar, malaysia dollar, aussie dollar)
So no one really is going to tell me HKD is safer than Bitcoin, even before I have to move out due to all the China cracking down.
Also does anyone who can delete my profile completely?
Hong Kong passed this security law that pretty much apply to everyone even oversea, not that I have a warrant on me but it's a risk I don't want to take.
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On March 14 2024 19:10 KingzTig wrote:
99% small cap stocks are volatile, it's the nature of smaller market cap, immature of market and the type of holders.
And crypto market is essentially a mini FX market, volatility is what brings in trading profit, which is why it has such a large trading volume even for small altconis at the moment.
Here you say crypto has a large trading volume because of "a mini FX market" but you previously used "most fiat currency movement is just FX stuff" as a negative against fiat.
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On March 15 2024 09:13 Turbovolver wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2024 19:10 KingzTig wrote:
99% small cap stocks are volatile, it's the nature of smaller market cap, immature of market and the type of holders.
And crypto market is essentially a mini FX market, volatility is what brings in trading profit, which is why it has such a large trading volume even for small altconis at the moment. Here you say crypto has a large trading volume because of "a mini FX market" but you previously used "most fiat currency movement is just FX stuff" as a negative against fiat.
I am not really using any of them as positive or negative, just stating them what they are.
fiat currency exchange rate is largely affected by FX market (and the bond market) speculation trading, and 97.5% of transaction is FX trading. So the argument that fiat is stable in value because there's less speculative trading is just wrong.
I don't really have a problem with it, the more trading volume, the better the thing can land its true value of the time through price discovery.
A market that is more volatile will have more speculative trading to profit off.
A larger market size, different types of holders would make it less volatile overall.
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Bitcoin just surpassed 100,000 USD.
Could see further gains if Trump goes ahead with the US bitcoin reserve?
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Technology has advanced, so are we.
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You don’t need BTC to be the cash register for crypto to matter. Treat BTC as settlement/savings, and let consumer UX ride custodial wallets + stables. Real-world example (not an endorsement): Prestmit lets users swap gift cards>USDT/BTC, pay bills, or cash out locally and the point is the workflow, not the badge on the chain
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Then it's like a precious metal, only it takes the electricity of a medium sized country to maintain.
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On March 14 2024 19:14 mahrgell wrote:
I think the main issue with Bitcoin is the fact that it is completely outdated in its own domain and just living of its brand value. If feels like you were trying to invest in AOL these days, only because they once were a big name.
Imho it is difficult to discard all those issues people have with FIATs and ignore the potential of cryptos. The core problem is just that: Bitcoin isn't the answer.
It is already overtaken by a ton of other cryptos that solve those issues better and with less negative side effects. If we look at topics like transaction speed, transaction cost, energy consumption etc. there are way better cryptos out there to solve the problems crypto fans are always harping on. And lets not talk about all those early bitcoins where nobody knows if those are really frozen dead or if they could somehow wake up at some point. This would quickly ruin a lot of the finite supply argument, because the current assumption of what the finite supply is would then be completely off.
If you had to pick a crypto as a transaction medium or store of value replacement and start from a clean slate, nobody would ever pick Bitcoin. It is simply awful and outdated with too many downsides to ever make it properly usable.
So the appeal to invest in Bitcoin either stems from FOMO or from people believing in the crypto bull case, but having simply no clue where to put their money and just throwing it at the big name, because to many people "Bitcoin = crypto" is the full extent of their research into the topic.
And with the current state of the crypto world, there are indeed a bunch of promising candidates (and Bitcoin isn't one of them)... But all of them are so far from any serious adoption, that these would be just 1:10000 dart throws, which I wouldn't consider unreasonable investments, but they are not really aligned with my investment strategy. And there is a decent likelihood of the final "winner" of the crypto as transaction medium/store of value replacement race is not even created yet or it will in the end be created by the very same controlling parties that we already have right now with the old FIATs.
Actually you are more align with early crypto investors than anything else.
Crypto nowadays are largely just tokens in a casino. And every casino have their own token issuing rules.
Thats why tokens are largely restricted in their own web3.
But the challenge for something to become money isn't just what it can do, it's more about what it is.
Gold is exceptionally useful for conducting electricity but that's about it.
Majority of its value is from what it is, rare and valuable resource.
The latter is like anything else, a subjective perceived value.
Fndamentally, it is a neutral asset.
And there are very few crypto that can replicate it neutral status, given its all man made.
Bitcoin has its purist mindset, everything build on bitcoin is made valuable for bitcoin network.
Compare that to ETH that switch from POW to POS (which takes away its power balance between miners, owners and node runners), infinitely changing issue rate, and thousands of crypto that build for their own playground token on top.
In short, 99% of crypto investors think fintech is why crypto is important.
But the largest use case for money, is that it is money, and bitcoin is exceptional at being immutable, and valuable because of it.
And money itself is significantly bigger and more revolutionary than NFT or something along those lines.
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Crypto nowadays are largely just tokens in a casino
I do not like that analogy. Casinos can indeed issue them, but players know exactly what they get for them when they choose to cash out. My main reason for staying away was all the hoops a friend of mine had to jump through to cash out his half bitcoin.
Casino chips only work within the casino, but your quantity of chips will fluctuate, not the value of the chip itself.
I think video games with deflationry and inflationary objects are more accurate. BitCoin is very deflationry in nature, but very limited in how much in how many transactions it can handle.
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On August 13 2025 14:11 Slydie wrote:I do not like that analogy. Casinos can indeed issue them, but players know exactly what they get for them when they choose to cash out. My main reason for staying away was all the hoops a friend of mine had to jump through to cash out his half bitcoin. Casino chips only work within the casino, but your quantity of chips will fluctuate, not the value of the chip itself. I think video games with deflationry and inflationary objects are more accurate. BitCoin is very deflationry in nature, but very limited in how much in how many transactions it can handle.
the problem is "cash out". You don't cash out a currency, you exchange it for some other currency.
Bitcoin in a high level concept is that money shouldn't be easily created or manipulated, require hard value i.e. physical energy and time.
yet you see thousands of tokens are being created on a blockchain, and majority are just duping one and another, how many exchange tokens are there.
Transaction is not an issue, there is lightning network, or liquid BTC that has transaction speed and fee like solana.
The most important is the asset being desirable, not transaction speed.
If something is desirable, tools will be build upon or around it. that's why BTC and USDT are in 99% of altcoin network, even if they are a proxy version of what they are.
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EPT
