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> but if you view it as a savings technology then it's the best one that's ever been created. I am sorry but this is just silly and reckless. Although bitcoin

> but if you view it as a savings technology then it's the best one that's ever been created. I am sorry but this is just silly and reckless. Although bitcoin is somewhat less noisy than it used to be, it is still a volatile and extremely high-risk investment. Whatever merit bitcoin might have on the long-term economic fundamentals, right now bitcoin is mostly a speculative instrument, or an investment on computing technology. You do not want to put your savings into something where the price has repeatedly dropped > 60% in a single week. It can be part of a larger strategy: I could see x treasury bonds, (1 - x) bitcoin as a sensible high-risk tactic. But putting all your savings in bitcoin is dangerous.

rusk 6y ago
The price has continuously gone up overall at a rate greater than inflation. Yes if you had bought at a peak you would have lost out alright,but overall it has been steady. That said, yeah it’s probs not a good idea putting all your money in it. Black swans abound with any new technology.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  > The price has continuously gone up overall at a rate greater than inflation. This is true but a) there's no reason to think this will be true for another 10 years, and b) if you had invested in November 2013, you wouldn't have seen a profit until 2017. 4 years of being in the red is a hard pill to swallow if you're not diversified. Things that might look really bad for months, but work out in the end are better investments than savings. I think it's just silly to pretend Bitcoin is anything but a) an interesting technology that enables a lot of cool internet finance tech and helps people who live in countries with profoundly unstable economies b) a risky speculative investment on something that's correlated with the price of CPUs, graphics cards, and electricity, and is prone to major supply shocks
  - qes 6y ago
    > if you had invested in November 2013 Cherry picking the singularly worst point. > 4 years of being in the red is a hard pill to swallow For which you would've been rewarded with nearly all of the months since 2017 with 500%+ gain, and as of now and also for quite a number of months since 2017, 1000%+ gain. > there's no reason to think this will be true for another 10 years Just one more bull run like those previous is going to put Nov '13 buyers at 10,000% gains, and if history comes close to repeating itself that will occur within 2 years. > if you're not diversified then you disregarded the single most repeated quip of investing advice in the bitcoin community - no more than you can afford to lose.
    - doopy1 6y ago
      >if history comes close to repeating itself History didn't come close to repeating itself with Tulips, Beanie Babies, or Pokemon Cards.
  - noch 6y ago
    > b) a risky speculative investment on something that's correlated with the price of CPUs, graphics cards, and electricity, and is prone to major supply shocks You're exposing an understandable lack of familiarity with recent history when you make such statements. Bitcoin mining hasn't been dependent on CPUs or gpus for a very long time. ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) dominate bitcoin mining to the extent that it's long been unprofitable to bother using a GPU.[0] But even if we assume that bitcoin's price is correlated with the price of CPUs and electricity, what is the nature of the correlation? Naively assuming an ill-defined correlation, we would nonetheless expect bitcoin's value proposition to be deflationary, as all technology is, that is bitcoin makes cost of securely holding and transferring value cheaper as technology continues to improve, which would increase the value of bitcoin, not reduce it. That is, while fiat currency is subject to debasement (money printing makes you lose money the longer you hold it), bitcoin is not. So the value and utility of bitcoin increases, yet the supply of bitcoin is constant. Supply and demand easily implies price increase. Right now, holding cash is a very costly activity, which is why everyone is constantly looking for investment opportunities. Bitcoin fixes that and becomes even better at, and more suited to, fixing that as technology improves. > and electricity Bitcoin dominance as money actually improves the security, efficiency, and competitiveness of energy production. Recall that once upon a time, countries that could produce energy cheaply couldn't export it because transporting energy long distances is expensive and in some cases impossible. Instead, they used their surplus energy to process aluminium[2]. They then exported the processed aluminium. Aluminium served as a means of exporting energy! It's the same with Bitcoin. Reliance on a bitcoin standard forces energy producers to compete for efficiency and reliability of energy supply in order to secure the bitcoin network and guarantee their own profitability.(Goodbye to blackouts due to incompetence?[3][4]) In places where energy that is produced can't be stored or exported it has to be burned (e.g. in oil fields through flaring) Bitcoin mining can make use of the otherwise wasted energy and thus improve the efficiency of energy production.[1] This will also plausibly lead to profitable energy production/extraction with new technologies in places that might otherwise be too remote to be useful but that can connect to the bitcoin network via satellite. (undersea hydrothermal vents? volcanoes? the sahara?) Hypothetical, but the potential is massive and exciting. Bitcoin gives us reason to be optimistic about humanity's energy production and consumption. [0]: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf [1]: https://newmoneyreview.com/index.php/2019/10/18/peter-thiels-contrarian-bitcoin-bet/ https://newmoneyreview.com/index.php/2019/10/18/peter-thiels... [2]: https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/19086-ambitious-plans-for-icelands-surplus-energy https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/19086-ambitious-plans-fo... [3]: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/california-rolling-blackouts-climate-change-poor-planning https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/califor... [4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/eskom-extends-south-africa-power-cuts-amid-worst-year-of-outages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/eskom-ext...

rusk 6y ago

The price has continuously gone up overall at a rate greater than inflation. Yes if you had bought at a peak you would have lost out alright,but overall it has been steady. That said, yeah it’s probs not a good idea putting all your money in it. Black swans abound with any new technology.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
> The price has continuously gone up overall at a rate greater than inflation. This is true but a) there's no reason to think this will be true for another 10 years, and b) if you had invested in November 2013, you wouldn't have seen a profit until 2017. 4 years of being in the red is a hard pill to swallow if you're not diversified. Things that might look really bad for months, but work out in the end are better investments than savings. I think it's just silly to pretend Bitcoin is anything but a) an interesting technology that enables a lot of cool internet finance tech and helps people who live in countries with profoundly unstable economies b) a risky speculative investment on something that's correlated with the price of CPUs, graphics cards, and electricity, and is prone to major supply shocks
- qes 6y ago
  > if you had invested in November 2013 Cherry picking the singularly worst point. > 4 years of being in the red is a hard pill to swallow For which you would've been rewarded with nearly all of the months since 2017 with 500%+ gain, and as of now and also for quite a number of months since 2017, 1000%+ gain. > there's no reason to think this will be true for another 10 years Just one more bull run like those previous is going to put Nov '13 buyers at 10,000% gains, and if history comes close to repeating itself that will occur within 2 years. > if you're not diversified then you disregarded the single most repeated quip of investing advice in the bitcoin community - no more than you can afford to lose.
  - doopy1 6y ago
    >if history comes close to repeating itself History didn't come close to repeating itself with Tulips, Beanie Babies, or Pokemon Cards.
- noch 6y ago
  > b) a risky speculative investment on something that's correlated with the price of CPUs, graphics cards, and electricity, and is prone to major supply shocks You're exposing an understandable lack of familiarity with recent history when you make such statements. Bitcoin mining hasn't been dependent on CPUs or gpus for a very long time. ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) dominate bitcoin mining to the extent that it's long been unprofitable to bother using a GPU.[0] But even if we assume that bitcoin's price is correlated with the price of CPUs and electricity, what is the nature of the correlation? Naively assuming an ill-defined correlation, we would nonetheless expect bitcoin's value proposition to be deflationary, as all technology is, that is bitcoin makes cost of securely holding and transferring value cheaper as technology continues to improve, which would increase the value of bitcoin, not reduce it. That is, while fiat currency is subject to debasement (money printing makes you lose money the longer you hold it), bitcoin is not. So the value and utility of bitcoin increases, yet the supply of bitcoin is constant. Supply and demand easily implies price increase. Right now, holding cash is a very costly activity, which is why everyone is constantly looking for investment opportunities. Bitcoin fixes that and becomes even better at, and more suited to, fixing that as technology improves. > and electricity Bitcoin dominance as money actually improves the security, efficiency, and competitiveness of energy production. Recall that once upon a time, countries that could produce energy cheaply couldn't export it because transporting energy long distances is expensive and in some cases impossible. Instead, they used their surplus energy to process aluminium[2]. They then exported the processed aluminium. Aluminium served as a means of exporting energy! It's the same with Bitcoin. Reliance on a bitcoin standard forces energy producers to compete for efficiency and reliability of energy supply in order to secure the bitcoin network and guarantee their own profitability.(Goodbye to blackouts due to incompetence?[3][4]) In places where energy that is produced can't be stored or exported it has to be burned (e.g. in oil fields through flaring) Bitcoin mining can make use of the otherwise wasted energy and thus improve the efficiency of energy production.[1] This will also plausibly lead to profitable energy production/extraction with new technologies in places that might otherwise be too remote to be useful but that can connect to the bitcoin network via satellite. (undersea hydrothermal vents? volcanoes? the sahara?) Hypothetical, but the potential is massive and exciting. Bitcoin gives us reason to be optimistic about humanity's energy production and consumption. [0]: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf [1]: https://newmoneyreview.com/index.php/2019/10/18/peter-thiels-contrarian-bitcoin-bet/ https://newmoneyreview.com/index.php/2019/10/18/peter-thiels... [2]: https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/19086-ambitious-plans-for-icelands-surplus-energy https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/19086-ambitious-plans-fo... [3]: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/california-rolling-blackouts-climate-change-poor-planning https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/califor... [4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/eskom-extends-south-africa-power-cuts-amid-worst-year-of-outages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/eskom-ext...