Look dude, I think you are mixing the fundamental reason for a market (aka people exchange goods) with your own made up arguments. I'm buying and selling futures on a daily basis and I'm making good money with it. At the same time I can guarantee you that 90% of all the people who dabble in the crypto market lose money, even when there is a historical bull run. So your argument is completely void. You need to decide weither you want to view the markets from a professional or from a gamblers point of view.
That's what is happening all the time in crypto's. Almost on a daily basis exchanges get hacked, accounts get hacked, wallets get lost... And if that happens you even have no possibility to sue anybody as you don't even know who stole your coins. But if you are not an idiot, you can mitigate that risk. PS: your alias fits your personality.
So why on earth are you posting a chart of BTC and tell me that last year no buyer made money in crypto as an argument that stocks are better than crypto?! What the hell? That doesn't make any sense I can see that you have no idea how that "dubious" crypto market works. And it's ok that way. Fortune favours the brave and the swiss guys always have been a little slow and conservative Before this ends up in a pissing contest that I will win in the end, let's just agree to disagree^^. You keep trading your futures and I keep trading my cryptos.
I don't see how this can happen. What do you do when the company that issues the ETF has their bitcoins stolen? If it can happen to so many exchanges, which it has, it can happen to an ETF issuing company. You cannot steal stocks in the same way without a paper trail. At this moment, I fail to see how the regulatory agencies can approve an ETF based on bitcoin given the security risks.
I'm smart enough to know not to predict if bitcoin will go up or down, but I do have trouble with seeing how cryptos can mature. My above post with regards to security is one major issue. But along with this, once you hammer out all the problems with bitcoin, I'm not sure what you have left. If you have a way to transmit huge sums of money without the government knowing, then you can bet the authorities will crack down on it. If all these transactions are traceable, then I have to wonder why even go the bitcoin route in the first place. The more mature it is, the more it starts to look and act like real money issued by any country. About the only thing I see happening is blockchain technology being used by banks in some form, but this won't be a benefit to bitcoin. The success of bitcoin is directly at odds with the success of fiat currency, and in my opinion can only exit in places where fiat currency is a shit show (Venezuela??). But for Bitcoin specifically to mature would mean the governments accept an alternative form of payment, which I never see happening unless it can be traced and taxed. Clearly this invalidates all the benefits of Bitcoin.
All of your arguments show indeed why bitcoin is not needed. We have more then enough other valid options with more safety and more transparancy, and less manipulation. Bitcoin is just a manipulated story where the greed of the (stupid) herd dream of becoming a billionaire. There is not 1 single reason why you need bitcoins. Unless you work fin the criminal sector.
Guys, you need to understand that nobody gives a shit about bitcoin. Please. It's a trading market. You buy it when it goes up, you sell it when it goes down and you make money with it. I do not understand why somebody like Schweiz who - probably - trades futures doesn't get that. You don't invest in futures either. As an investing market, crypto sucks just like any other market out there, because it is - more than any other market - bugged by manipulation, lack of transparency and insider trading. But as a trading market it is far superior to anything else out there because there is zero competition and your customers have no idea what they are doing. So please, please, please with a cherry on top. Stop arguing why Bitcoin is bad, why it will go down, why it makes no sense jada, jada, jada. From a trading perspective that doesn't make sense. Apple iPhones are also overpriced and useless trash without any real advantage over other phones. But people think they are so valuable that they fucking camped in front of the stores. People want it, it has value and it does not matter what you think. The market does not give a flying fuck about your opinion. When it goes up, you either can buy it and make money or you stand on the sidelines mumbling how it does not make sense that it goes up. Your choice.
You are funny! You just wrote to me a longer wall of text. You have a good writing style, thanks for your thoughts. I'm not really a very clever mouse, but somehow seem to keep ahead of market returns. However of late not travelling too well, for every stock rising, one will fall. I'll get days one stock I hold will smack up maybe 20% then another stock will smash down 20% on the same day. It's a great life this gambling addiction we have, or maybe it's a mouse wheel.
Cost and ease of use are a big factor. Right now international funds transfers are very expensive as the banks mostly operate on stone age technology (relatively speaking). Right now my bank charges $15 just to receive money in a foreign currency despite costs being fully paid by the sender. While the amount isn't huge, considering it's just a few kb of data moving around, it's actually overcharging. Never mind that many people pay $30-$40 for any size funds transfer across borders. You might say that the cross border market isn't big but millions use it daily and the market is growing. Bitcoin has the capacity to put the likes of Western Union, Transferwise etc out of business and take a large chunk out of traditional banks. I personally would use bitcoin for perfectly legal transactions if it was convenient, fast, reliable and cheaper.
That's the problem: IF. The average citizen of any country almost never uses international payments, so for them bitcoins have no use at all. Inland payments are for free, in Europe international payments within the IBAN zone are also completely free. So the potential market is maybe not so big at all, especially not in Europe. Most people who have bitcoins have it purely for speculation, they will never do any international payment. What if banks would lower their rates to compete with bitcoin when needed?