I think asymmetric risk to reward. If markets crash, bitcoin might as well. But I think Bitcoin will have an explosive event to the upside.
Thanks in advance for your perspective. I still see its future as a P2P currency in the way that it was intended.I also alluded to the fact that its in its infancy and may indeed not be ready for mainstream transacting. Importantly,there is a lot more going on than 'price go up'.It has the potential to rehabilitate a number of societies woes. Im saying you would need to combat fraud in your business regardless of your transacting method.I was discarding it as a non pertinent argument. Avoiding these 'hotbeds' may indeed be prudent but,again,thats not a Bitcoin thing.You would need to be wary of any payment form and not release goods till payment secure. Obviously,Bitcoin has found itself to be a polarising entity. Those that hate the idea and scoffed at it in passing now really hate the idea and long for its downfall.Its success has made people 'wrong' and people hate that. I think the main source of frustration is the feeling that the train has left the station without them.This is incorrect.We are still very early on in the evolution. No one who has done the research and begun to understand has then turned their back on Bitcoin. Ask yourself,if Bitcoin is around in 10 years,what will it look like? Then it becomes simply a bet on longevity and adoption model forecasting.You can leave the idealism to the rest of us.
People are really giving Bitcoin too much credit here. They think it's going to force the governments of the world to get their house in order instead of becoming even more involved in micromanaging your life. The basic argument is "inflation is a stealth tax and if we had Bitcoin instead of USD they wouldn't spend that money." They fail to think from an opposition point of view. If you switch to Bitcoin, the government is STILL going to tax and spend, but now it's going to pick from various nasty options such as: Raising taxes and adding new taxes insist on monitoring all your online transactions including Bitcoin. Establish an official Bitcoin exchange rate and anybody who doesn't accept USD in lieu of Bitcoin at the required rate goes to jail Hunt down and disable servers that clear transactions. (Imagine a modern day analogue to the Vatican wiping out the knights Templar.) Straight up ban on Bitcoin Active or passive acts of sabotage (think stuxnet) Lawfare Targeted assassinations Get the picture? I know people will think "that's too extreme." I really encourage you to look at historical examples of when a country's currency has failed. Right now Bitcoin is a useful blow off valve for inflation. Money that goes to buy Bitcoin is not going to buy goods. If it were to become an actual threat to the size and power of government, I would expect a rapid change in policy. This IS a special Bitcoin problem. By design. Traditional finance has know your customer requirements. Bitcoin was explicitly designed not to have that. I can understand why, having been on the cypherpunks mailing list way back when the feds were trying to put Philip Zimmerman in jail. But it's still a problem. If you're going to engage in real word business, you need a way to know that you're not about to transact with QUDS force and spend the rest of your life in prison. This is one of the services that SWIFT and credit card processing networks provide. They don't just move money, they give you reasonable confidence as to who the sending and receiving parties are. Holding out for payment before you ship isn't enough. It can still land you in the middle of a criminal enterprise that you do not want to be associated with. Even innuendo can be deadly. Look what happened with Peter Schiff's bank even though they never proved wrongdoing. I expect some new crypto will eventually address this problem, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin's success so far is no skin off my back. I've invested in other things. As someone who's seen a few bubbles come and go, I have learned to trust myself. I remember watching the crazy stuff supposed professionals were investing in back during the dot com era and thinking "these people have no idea what they're doing." In some ways, I hope for Bitcoin's success as I generally support economic freedom and privacy. But I think they went too hard towards the "you can't tell me what to do" side of things and it's doomed to eventually have the same level of relevance as the libertarian party. The feature set problem plus the lack of a guarantor are major problems for me, among others. In other ways, I have serious concerns about the way it makes things like ransomware, kidnapping and extortion easier. I hope that in 10 years, no one has built a quantum computer capable of cracking "medium" sized crypto keys. A major breakthrough in quantum computing would essentially make Bitcoin worthless instantly. I have my doubts that such a thing is possible, but I have to consider even a tiny possibility that someone makes it work. It's one of those low likelihood, high severity problems. More likely scenario (although I don't consider this one probable): Bitcoin has succeeded and has become the world reserve currency. Having reached market saturation the are no more crazy gains to be made by holding Bitcoin, since everyone is now invested. It is now doomed to appreciate at that rate of global GDP. Eventually, someone realizes that they have a choice between an index fund and Bitcoin. They can expect the same rate of return for each. But only one is backed by actual assets and income. So they sell. Then more people sell. Then there's an economic crash the likes of which the world has never seen as everyone runs for the exit and there's nothing to stop them. No circuit breakers. No underlying book value. Just a billion people watching their life savings evaporate.
You aren't wrong with many of your objections and I grant that any of these are possible. But you also need to consider what this type of behaviour would mean to the future of the USA? Think about what principles allowed the US to become what it is today. If it goes down the wrong path, people with the means will simply leave and go to a different country that treats them better. The US will end up like North Korea. There are far too many people in the US that are willing to fight and will do so. Look at the recent shooting of the Healthcare Company CEO. No matter what you think about the morality of what the shooter did, I see tons of support by lots of people. I read an excellent thread on X where a prominent poster said something along the lines of how we are comparing the death of one man to the deaths of 68,000 Americans every year who lose their life directly because of the actions of these health insurers. There were countless examples shared of the struggle by both people dying, who are denied healthcare, and posts of the relatives left behind. So I think in general, governments can only push people so far. If the government pushes too far, I can easily see a revolution that will not end well for the authoritative class.
What will they sell into? Fiat? Fiat will be dead once bitcoin is the reserve currency. Yes, investing might reap more rewards than holding bitcoin, but it will also be risky because you can lose your investment. You will be buying shares with sats after all. There will be no selling, although I'm sure this is many decades away. The world will be deflationary, so things will get cheaper, and you will only exchange your sats for things you need or things that truly give you joy. People will be happy to take your bitcoin in exchange for whatever you want from them if they can produce it.
BTC crossing $100k is wild! Personally, I think it’s hard to say if it’ll stay above that mark or dip again. Crypto’s always unpredictable. But it’s definitely an exciting time to watch!
Bitcoin is already a global reserve asset, we already won, bitcoin family, bitcoin is the best global store of value asset The bitcoin price should be over $2M in today's fiat conversion, but it may take 5-10 years to get there so in the mean time we just hodl and wait From individuals, to small businesses, to corporations, to sovereign wealth funds, to family offices, to institutional investors to nation states, all of these types are already buying bitcoin and treating it as a savings account, or treasury asset Goldman Sachs and Blackrock, mstr and metaplanet and smlr, have it as a treasury asset Currencies? that's like a $10-200T market cap, who knows how much fiat paper is printed since difficult to account, why should bitcoin try to be a medium of exchange asset? Gold and silver have not been used as currency moe for hundreds of years Bitcoin will capture 5-10% of the global store of value, as it's the best money in the history of the world
And what country would that be? What other countries even have a first and second amendment? The US are the people stopping a global government from taking over (similar to the EU) and making voting irrelevant. If you look at history, it's much more likely that millions of people die than some other countries accepts them and provides them with a better life. And what kind of citizens would these be that didn't stand up for their first home country? I'm not saying all is lost, but assuming a premenant trillion dollar bureaucracy is going to give up just because people start using Bitcoin it going to far. You would need a massive shift in voting habits, a major change in expectations as to the role of government and willingness to face some very hard truths regarding SS, gov't pensions, etc. Stocks, bonds, real estate. The stuff that people have been buying for hundreds of years. Let's say that while the whole world is going nuts and buying Bitcoin at ever appreciating prices, instead I use my money to buy Valero and Exxon. Once people catch on and realize that they can't get rich off Bitcoin anymore, they'll be falling over each other asking for my stock. But I'll only sell very dearly as it pays a dividend and I could sit on it forever and be happy. But meanwhile your Bitcoin is in freefall and you're desperate for something that actually has a backstop behind it's value. No. That's not a sustainable state of affairs. It places a negative on the time value on money. Say I own a lumber company. I have no incentive to hold any inventory because it's constantly going down in price. My incentives are to wait as long as possible to deliver after we agree on a price and the to wait as long as possible to cash the check. It would be absurd. Imagine trying to complete any reasonably complicated large-scale project where all the vendors are incentivized to take as long as possible. It would be bonkers. People are too used to thinking about prices for things like microprocessors and not oil, lumber, wheat, etc. What happens to farming when your seed corn is worth more this year as food that it will fetch next year, turned into whole plants? Perversely, you'd see an explosion in lending at very low rates. If deflation is 3% and you loan at 3% you're making 6% in real terms. Deflation is more a symptom of a society in collapse that a workable plan for an economy. So how many Bitcoin are you willing to buy from me for $2 million each? Last time I looked, somewhere in the 1 to 10 mil price range people are selling of their productive assets at a discount to buy Bitcoin. Just do the basic math on the total number of Bitcoin and the value of other worldwide saleable assets. At some point you rear a level where so much capital is tied up speculating on Bitcoin's price that you could buy stocks in productive companies at a firesale price. If I can buy companies at a P/E of 5, then in some ways I don't care about Bitcoin at all because to quote Hans Grueber "we’ll be sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent."
None, bitcoin is very much undervalued on sale from any major exchanges for only $100k per bitcoin Bitcoin is already more than 50% of our family's net worth as a life savings account No they will not, 99% of the people in the whole world are afraid to buy bitcoin at any price because they think it's going to crash or even go to $0 or get banned That is the reason 99% of the people on ET did not buy bitcoin when it was much lower 2 years ago at $15,000/bitcoin
Well anyways, I'm sorry it went the way it did for you but that does not mean it will be the same experience for everybody else, the opportunity is out there and it's your responsibility to take it and manage it well.