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The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin
- pdog 9y ago> How do you know when to get out of a bitcoin investment? That's the thing. When Bitcoin succeeds, you won't have to get out of the investment.
- imustbeevil 9y agoIf the best case scenario is Bitcoin hits $1,000,000 per coin and never moves again, why would anyone ever put more money into it? The only value Bitcoin has is appreciation. If it ever becomes stable it will necessarily be worthless.
- dxhdr 9y agoPresumably at 1 mil per coin it has become our defacto medium of exchange. Actual bitcoins become the new gold bars, sitting untouched in vaults and used as a reserve backing other more efficient means of crypto exchange.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoWhy would they be used to back anything? Why not just use a crypto-currency that isn't clogged by developers trying to make people use their proprietary service?
- johnvonneumann 9y agoPlease explain your statement in detail with sources and facts please, I'm sure I know what you're trying to insinuate so I'm going to ask you to back your claims up with some truth.
- johnvonneumann 9y agoHow is it right that I get downvoted for asking for someone to back their bullshit opinions up with facts? Enjoy your hyperbole.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoMaybe because CyberDildonics asked a couple of questions, and you're asking him/her for facts and sources. People don't need facts to ask questions. That's kind of why you ask - to get facts. You read CyberDildonics' questions as being an attempt to push an opinion (which seems unjustified to me). You might try not assuming the worst about people in the absence of better evidence...
- johnvonneumann 9y agoI'm asking him to back his opinion up because his question was a loaded question: Question: "Why not just use another crypto-currency?" Load Question: "Why not just use a crypto-currency that isn't clogged by developers trying to make people use their proprietary service?" He is applying bias to it from the get go, your comment is a bit strange, asking a question doesn't exempt you from asking honest questions that aren't loaded, you don't enter some realm of sanctity just because you're asking a question. You can ask for further clarity as to what the person is asking before answering it.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoBut the question was about using Bitcoin to back something else. What's the "something else"? It's not Bitcoin. Is it something proprietary? dxhdr (whose post triggered this conversation) doesn't say, but it would almost certainly be more proprietary than Bitcoin. Why "almost certainly more proprietary than Bitcoin"? Because somebody's using their bitcoin to back something else. That "somebody" creates (and therefore to some degree controls) that "something else". At that point, CyberDildonics' question isn't loaded. It's a perfectly reasonable question in response to the proposed idea. And, after all this back and forth, the question remains: Why would I want to use something backed by Bitcoin, when I could just use Bitcoin?
- johnvonneumann 9y agoYeah after re-reading this thread I think I've properly gone off the deep end with this one, I've probably misread your initial comment, I think, sorry if I did.
- corporateslave6 9y agothis isnt true, when countries have massive instability and currency manipulation (see Zimbabwe), people can buy bitcoin as an alternative store of value.
- grandalf 9y agoTo some extent, even stable currencies suffer from significant manipulation by governments. This is not a tinfoil hat idea, it's generally why non-corrupt central banking helps achieve social stability. But central banking is a large hammer, and so even in the US there are many uses of currency where Bitcoin shines. Also, over time no central bank has managed to avoid some form of corruption (this is concerning both for fiat and centralization-prone cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin). But the factors that lead to corrupt central banks are not primarily monetary, they are social/societal, causing those banks to bend to the whims of some interests while ignoring others. The interesting thing to observe will be how/whether Bitcoin can adapt its broader organizational structure to make it less vulnerable to these forces of "bad" centralization. Also, if trends continue, the risk-takers of today who own Bitcoin may well be the wealthy influencers of tomorrow and may not take kindly to some of the sensible changes. There are many, many ways in which Bitcoin is far superior to the typical fiat + central bank system, though, most notably its international nature. Even if Bitcoin's ability to avoid problems is only 90% as effective as the most effective fiat systems, that is a tremendous improvement for most of the people living on Earth.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoOne of the things the better fiat currencies have is stability of value. Bitcoin (at least so far) has failed rather dramatically at that. It's been mostly up so far, which makes many people willing (even eager) to accept the lack of stability, but it definitely hasn't been stable.
- grandalf 9y agoVery true. It's interesting to think of what you describe as a side-effect of the design decision (by Satoshi) to "bootstrap" the currency by strongly incentivizing speculative mining.
- biot 9y agoIf Bitcoin hits $1M per coin, then Satoshi Nakamoto will be the world’s first trillionaire. Not a bad return for 10 days of mining.
- oleganza 9y ago10 days of mining alone = 1440 blocks = 72K BTC at 50 BTC/block. $1M per coin gives $72B, not $1000B.
- biot 9y ago"Nakamoto is believed to own up to roughly one million bitcoins..." "As the sole, predominant early miner the inventor was awarded bitcoin at genesis and for 10 days afterwards." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto
- googletazer 9y agoSounds almost like a creation myth, doesn't it? Wonder if the world will ever find out with certainty who, or what organization is Satoshi.
- nyolfen 9y agoit's great for drugs and money laundering
- pdog 9y agoSchrödinger's bitcoin will simultaneously be worth $1M and zero.
- googletazer 9y agoYou're being heavily downvoted but thats the ideal endgame for cryptocurrencies - you'll be able to just "use" them for your use cases, instead of cashing out first.
- Snackchez 9y ago>“All it would take would be one terrorist incident in the U.S. funded by bitcoin for the U.S. regulator to much more seriously step in and take action, he said. “That’s a risk, an unquantifiable risk, bitcoin has that another currency doesn’t." You can't make this up... or maybe I'm not understanding something. So, what's currently funding terrorist attacks?
- nxsynonym 9y agoI don't understand the comment either. It's not like terrorist groups are currently un-funded. Cash is still king around illegal activities of all kinds. Why is using bitcoin for illegal activity any different than untraceable cash?
- zitterbewegung 9y agoOne of the big pluses to bitcoin is the fact that you can move large amounts of money relatively quickly instead of relying on banks.
- iamthirsty 9y agoIllegal operations would obviously not rely on banks.
- infecto 9y agoI think you would surprise yourself with that comment. Illegal operations do indeed rely heavily on banks.
- knz 9y ago> Illegal operations do indeed rely heavily on banks. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-became-bank-to-drug-cartels-pays-big-for-lapses-idUSBRE8BA05M20121212 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-became-ba... As an example for anyone not familiar with these types of stories.
- jwilliams 9y agoI'm glad to see this, but I don't think the content is particularly on point (or compelling really). A large amount of Bitcoin reporting at the moment is grossly irresponsible. This "Bitcoin will be $1M each" is fueling bad decision making on the part of the ordinary punter. Right now there is a major civil war in the Bitcoin camp (BTC vs BCH). It's playing out as we speak. Whatever your horse in that race, it's extremely volatile. Not only that, there are other tokens, shady ICOs, exchanges with suspect resilience. It's also impossible that your on-the-street investor can be informed enough to make a good choice. This is really concerning.
- Kiro 9y ago> Still, CME Group Inc., the world’s largest exchange owner, has said it plans to introduce bitcoin futures by the end of the year, citing pent-up demand from clients. That pushes bitcoin closer to the mainstream by making it easier to trade without the hassles of owning the currency directly. What's the difference between that and CFDs on eToro?
- tomelders 9y agoIf you want some sort of idea about how little UBS understands modern banking and wealth management, take a look at UBS Smart Wealth.
- PatientTrades 9y agoThe key aspect of Bitcoin is that buyers/sellers can operate anonymously. Once governments regulate Bitcoin and makes the anonymous nature illegal, Bitcoin will crash and be essentially useless.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoNo, it will just be illegal. It will still be useful for those who are willing to be illegal. The trick for the government will not be creating regulations or prohibitions. The trick will be enforcement.
- PatientTrades 9y agoThe only reason cryptocurrencies are valuable is because buyers/sellers can remain anonymous. Once that aspect is taken away there is literally no use for the currency other than being a hedge against government backed money. Even governments can shut down servers making the currencies useless similar to what china did.
- kown223 9y agoIt is a fair point but you can't buy bitcoin these days without kyc, not to say the IP trace, if they can break tor/proxies and access exchanges records they can "follow the bitcoins", but then again how much funding you need, in EU recently there were quite a few attacks where they just rented a big truck and ran over people, also the bomb in the airport, they made it from some cheap chemicals, and then took a cab.
- sebleon 9y agoMakes sense - government could instantly prevent BTC from gaining mainstream adoption as a currency. Unclear how price would move if BTC was only used for store-of-value only. In Venezuela, people go to jail under treason laws if they get caught mining. [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/venezuela-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-dangerous-places-to-mine-bitcoin.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/venezuela-is-one-of-the-worl...
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago> Bitcoin has also not reached the critical mass to be considered a viable currency to invest in, UBS’s Mark Haefele said in an interview. The total sum of all cryptocurrencies is “not even the size of some of the smaller currencies" that UBS would allocate to, he said. > “All it would take would be one terrorist incident in the U.S. funded by bitcoin for the U.S. regulator to much more seriously step in and take action, he said. “That’s a risk, an unquantifiable risk, bitcoin has that another currency doesn’t." These two taken together seem to paint two very different pictures for bitcoin. 1) Bitcoin makes it past the point where a couple singular bad acts pushes governments to crush it. Bitcoin sheds almost all of the value that was there as speculation. Value potentially crashes all the way down to ~1USD, prices before mtgox trading really started. Bitcoin continues to run, more and more over encrypted channels or TOR. Mining is prosecuted and only done in some states, or clandestinely (see mining in Venezuela). Bitcoin continues to be used on the dark markets of the internet. 2) Bitcoin is adopted by wallstreet, action against bitcoin is prevented and tempered by lobbyists with deep pockets. Price increases dramatically. Either future is amazing to me. Either gritty cyberpunk or vanilla sci-fi. Glad to see this happen in my lifetime.