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> Don't be the last sucker Any native English speakers who can translate this idiom? I always thought of this idiom as the "last bagholder" in ponzi schemes, r

> Don't be the last sucker Any native English speakers who can translate this idiom? I always thought of this idiom as the "last bagholder" in ponzi schemes, rigged pump+dump stocks and alike, but would be weird to apply that to Bitcoin here so not sure if I understand it correctly.

Ekaros 6y ago
If you take Bitcoin as speculative asset and nothing else it's perfectly logical advice. Entirely depends on viewpoint. There is likely still some money to be made from trading it. But some of us believe that it will end one day. And some people are the last ones who paid for it.
- crecker 6y ago
  I do totally agree. In my point of view, Bitcoin was intended to be a currency, not a tool to invest with. It's important to remind that to all the newbies that see Bitcoin as a "magic technology."
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
The future of Bitcoin is still up in the air. In 10 years, maybe it goes to $0 or maybe it goes to $100k. People who say things like this assume that Bitcoin is going to $0 at some point.
throw0101a 6y ago
> I always thought of this idiom as the "last bagholder" in ponzi schemes, rigged pump+dump stocks and alike, but would be weird to apply that to Bitcoin here so not sure if I understand it correctly. That is the correct understanding. Because Bitcoin has no inherent value, the only way to profit from it is to sell it to someone else. But if you're the "last sucker", then you are going to sell it to? If there's no one next, you have a bunch of bits that aren't useful for anything. Bitcoin has (so far?) failed as a payment system, as a currency, as a reserve currency, a remittance channel, a timestamping service, a settlement layer, a bank for the "unbanked", a cypherpunk liberator, a money laundering tool, a drugs-by-mail tool, a unit of accounting, a store of value, and as a "disruptive" fintech technology. So if you purchase it, what exactly are you expecting to achieve by that ownership, except to sell it to someone else in the future? When I think of crypto/Bitcoin, I am reminded of Warren Buffett's view on gold: > Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A. > Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B? […] > A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond. * https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf

Ekaros 6y ago

If you take Bitcoin as speculative asset and nothing else it's perfectly logical advice. Entirely depends on viewpoint. There is likely still some money to be made from trading it. But some of us believe that it will end one day. And some people are the last ones who paid for it.

crecker 6y ago
I do totally agree. In my point of view, Bitcoin was intended to be a currency, not a tool to invest with. It's important to remind that to all the newbies that see Bitcoin as a "magic technology."

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

The future of Bitcoin is still up in the air. In 10 years, maybe it goes to $0 or maybe it goes to $100k. People who say things like this assume that Bitcoin is going to $0 at some point.

throw0101a 6y ago

> I always thought of this idiom as the "last bagholder" in ponzi schemes, rigged pump+dump stocks and alike, but would be weird to apply that to Bitcoin here so not sure if I understand it correctly. That is the correct understanding. Because Bitcoin has no inherent value, the only way to profit from it is to sell it to someone else. But if you're the "last sucker", then you are going to sell it to? If there's no one next, you have a bunch of bits that aren't useful for anything. Bitcoin has (so far?) failed as a payment system, as a currency, as a reserve currency, a remittance channel, a timestamping service, a settlement layer, a bank for the "unbanked", a cypherpunk liberator, a money laundering tool, a drugs-by-mail tool, a unit of accounting, a store of value, and as a "disruptive" fintech technology. So if you purchase it, what exactly are you expecting to achieve by that ownership, except to sell it to someone else in the future? When I think of crypto/Bitcoin, I am reminded of Warren Buffett's view on gold: > Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A. > Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B? […] > A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond. * https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf