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Follow the big money. Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B. Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B. GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitc
by Rallerbabs 6y ago
Follow the big money.
Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B.
Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B.
GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitcoins.
Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value.
Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange.
And later on, a unit of account.
By that time, you won't be asking yourself what 1 bitcoin is worth anymore.
Things will be priced in bitcoin. And those who have it, have it good.
- janvanbergen 6y agoBitcoin will never become a standard currency, it's slow, it has zero privacy (if I send you money once you can see ALL my transactions), it is EXTREMELY energy inefficient. Even if you believe crypto will one day become the standard (which I dont), it won't be bitcoin because there are better alternatives; proof of work is dumb, bitcoin has a finite supply of bitcoins, etc.
- mnx 6y agoThe finite supply is a feature, not a bug. I agree there are many aspects of bitcoin that suck, but not this one. We are right now witnessing many governments printing more and more money, which makes it less and less valuable. Bitcoin avoids that.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoThere is absolutely nothing about bitcoin that sucks. It is exactly what it needs to be: the world's hardest store of value. Every design decision comes with trade offs. All the right trade offs have been made. If you'd reinvent it from scratch, you'd end up with the exact same thing. The only thing about bitcoin that sucks, is that nocoiners don't have any. And they won't have any until it's $1M. Nobody wants to be the first. But everybody wants to be second.
- totalZero 6y agoCentral banking does have some benefits. Printing money can make a currency more valuable if it reduces volatility, because that draws more participants into the currency. > The finite supply is a feature, not a bug. Finite supply means that a guy who mined a bunch of bitcoin in his dorm room in 2011 because the university gave him free electricity can move the price when he decides to sell.
- Ekaros 6y agoFeature that can be changed. Specially if armies come to play... After all whole feature set is consensus of miners, not the users... State actors have good handle on violence. And then you better be on the same chain as they are, or it's jail time...
- Rallerbabs 6y agoFeatures that can't be changed. Certainly not when armies come to play. You can change the bitcoin source code to have more coins and deal out half to yourself first. That's the easy part. But then comes the part where you have to convince the whole world that your chain is the one, true bitcoin. Good luck with that.
- Grustaf 6y agoLimited supply does not make things valuable per se.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoIt does if there's demand for it. And there's been growing demand for bitcoin for 12 years and counting. It's deflationary by design. But by all means, stick to your government money. Printer goes brrrrrrrrr.
- bccdee 6y agoYou realize deflation is bad, right? There's a reason why the central bank deliberately keeps inflation at a steady 2%. Slow, steady inflation is the ideal.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoStore your value in fiat then, if you enjoy watching icecubes melt so much.
- bccdee 6y agoNah, I keep it in a mutual fund. That's the point of inflation — spend or invest, but don't just sit on it.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoI invested my inflationary fiat in deflationary bitcoin. I sit on it while it appreciates. Number go up.
- Grustaf 6y agoThe value of bitcoin increases because people speculate, not because the number of them is fixed. I bet there are hundreds of crypto currencies that have fixed or decreasing stock that keep losing value, or are already worthless.
- colinmhayes 6y agoIt's a shitty feaure advocated for by people who are proud of being ignorant. Fiat currency and monetary policy is largely responsible for the economic success of the last century.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoThere will be greater economic success in the current century, due to better money: bitcoin.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoThese are all the same uninformed arguments that every newcomer thinks of. It's all incorrect, and if you'd want to learn correct info, then you'd be able to do so. It's important that you do it yourself. Because when I tell you it, it isn't going to land. Your ideologies don't matter. The world won't let you force them onto it. The reality of the situation, is that all the big money believes bitcoin has a large role to play in the future of the world economy. And this is true. Screenshot this. Message me in 2030. Let's reevaluate.
- nprz 6y agoOther comments in this thread are claiming bitcoin makes it much easier to launder money. So which is it? Zero privacy or increased privacy and anonymity?
- NickM 6y agoDecreased privacy for everyday users. Increased privacy for those with the time, resources, and incentives to find ways to orchestrate transfers that can't be tied back to them. In other words, the worst of both worlds.
- nprz 6y agoHow come so few Silk Road market place vendors were arrested if it decreased privacy? Many people on the SR were just everyday users. I don't think the argument that it's a step down in privacy is valid at all.
- colinmhayes 6y agoIt's completely possible to remain anonymous with btc, but a big enough pain in the ass that only people who are committing crimes will do it. Everyone else will at some point link their identity to their wallet and all of their transaction and transaction amounts are then public record.
- nprz 6y agoYes, but the option is there. How does one protect their identity with a credit card transaction? The argument that BTC is not private doesn't seem to hold up.
- renewiltord 6y agoI guess we could go through a challenge. You set up a Stripe page or some such thing and someone else can set up a BTC wallet. I will spend a dollar with my CC on your Stripe site and I will spend a dollar equivalent to that BTC wallet. Then I will make two other secret transactions with the CC and the BTC wallet. You can each then try to identify the targets and the sums spent in the secret transactions. Whoever identifies gets some sum of money from the other. I'm happy to escrow for you.
- scottLobster 6y agoBig money can write it off as a business expense on their taxes if it goes down. The average individual doesn't have that upside.
- derwiki 6y agoWhy wouldn’t an individual be able to claim a capital loss?
- kingaillas 6y agoIndividuals can, but those are subject to a cap of $3000 against income. I'm no tax expert but I think the point the OP was making is businesses have more options for writing off lossess - they can drum up other things to apply a loss towards. Thus, a business can effectively write off more of the loss than an individual can.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Grustaf 6y agoUnlike other investment decisions you mean?
- scottLobster 6y agoMy point is it's easier to gamble when you have corporate tax advantages. These are rich people/companies putting non-existential amounts of money into something new in the off chance it pays off. Best case scenario they get even richer, worse case scenario they pay a lot less in taxes. Either way their lifestyle/needs will be met and the business will continue. For the average individual: Best case scenario they get rich. Worst case scenario their investment goes to zero or close to it and they get a max 3k tax deduction on their taxable income. Their lifestyle/future savings could be greatly impacted by the loss, certainly far more than the businesses/rich people in question would suffer.
- 6y ago
- k2enemy 6y agoFollow the big money? The total "market value" of bitcoin is a rounding error in the global economy. Many individual companies have a larger market cap.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoThe total market cap of crypto is now larger than Google. Thanks for playing.
- peanut_worm 6y agoBitcoin has a market cap of something like 1 trillion dollars right now I would hardly call that a rounding error
- majewsky 6y ago> Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. By that same logic, I should be able to pay for my groceries with Apple stocks by now.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoNope. That's what a medium of exchange is for. Bitcoin isn't at that phase yet. For any new money, it goes like this: 1. Store of value. 2. Medium of exchange. 3. Unit of account. In that order. Cumulatively.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> For any new money, it goes like this: 1. Store of value. 2. Medium of exchange. 3. Unit of account. I’m struggling to think of a currency that started as a store of value and then became a medium of exchange. Most currencies [1] started out worthless for good theoretical reasons. If they started valuable, they’d be subject to Gresham’s law and not transacted. [1] The U.S. dollar, pounds Sterling, the Euro, the Swiss franc, money in the free banking era, Song Dynasty jiaozi, et cetera
- Rallerbabs 6y agoRead "The Bitcoin Standard" if you want that problem solved.
- Grustaf 6y agoIt's a fun book and it accurately describes some of the flaws with fiat money, at least as it is used now. But the part where it tries to explain why Bitcoin is the answer is laughable. Almost as laughable as the part where he blames every societal ill from the degeneration of art and onwards on fiat currencies.
- Rallerbabs 6y ago
- meowface 6y agoI wouldn't be shocked if one bitcoin is worth $1 million in ten years, but I would honestly be shocked if it were being used as a medium of exchange. I see it as less probable than people mailing gold bars back and forth to each other. I unironically think Dogecoin has a much higher chance than Bitcoin of being a legitimate and popular medium of exchange in the future, in part because the supply isn't capped. I think cryptocurrency may drive a lot of commerce in the coming decades as an actual payment mechanism rather than a speculative security, but, if so, I don't think it'll be Bitcoin that wins that race. I suspect the value will still be fluctuating frequently and violently in ten years.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoDon't see how you can compare a virtual asset to a physical one and then somehow think the virtual asset is harder to manage then the physical one?
- kybernetikos 6y ago> Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. It is impossible for BTC to become a medium of exchange without significant technical upgrades that the core developers have so far been hostile to. Although it was a goal of the original bitcoin project (and continues to be for BCH and others), it is not a goal of the BTC community and it is incredibly unlikely that it will ever happen.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoUtter baloney. Lightning Network will deliver. As for BTC vs BCH... the market has spoken: BTC is the one, true bitcoin.
- kybernetikos 6y agoMarkets discover prices, not truth.
- Rallerbabs 6y agoThe truth is that BCH fanbois are REKT.
- NickM 6y agoThings will be priced in bitcoin. You mean like how things are priced in gold now? Oh wait, we got off the gold standard specifically because of its high short-run volatility. Hmm....
- Rallerbabs 6y agoGold never even moved to medium of exchange. It couldn't. Bitcoin can. And then it can move on to unit of account.
- kybernetikos 6y ago> Follow the big money I worry that companies like PayPal are interested in btc precisely because they know it won't ever threaten them.