4 ms·

It's just pure speculation. No one is in Bitcoin for Bitcoins, everyone I've ever spoken to with Bitcoin is in it to make more USD which really says it all. Arg

by kypro 5y ago

It's just pure speculation. No one is in Bitcoin for Bitcoins, everyone I've ever spoken to with Bitcoin is in it to make more USD which really says it all. Arguebly anyone who's holding Bitcoin and is more concerned about the risk inflation than the risk of Elon tweeting something stupid doesn't understand the investment they've made. To me it seems like the inflation hedge arguement is little more than mental gynastics to justify their gambling.

tristanj 5y ago
Everyone I’ve ever spoken to who is in equities is in it to make more USD which really says it all.
- khamba 5y ago
  Equities are not (marketed as) a USD alternative? This is a bad faith argument.
  - tristanj 5y ago
    Disagree. Equities, specifically index funds, are marketed as an asset that will increase in USD price over time. There is an entire movement founded on this belief (FIRE).
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Well yes, but that's because of profit from the capital they represent. Bitcoin is not a means of production.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    They are marketed as a savings account / CD alternative..
- imtringued 5y ago
  Even special cases like Venezuela where people are fleeing from hyperinflation, they mostly benefiting from the exposure to the USD. The only benefit is evading capital controls and price is irrelevant for that usecase. Capital controls (blocking foreign exchange) are stupid because for every person selling a hyperinflationary currency, there is someone on the other side paying with a stable currency who is partially relieving some of the inflation pressure. There are Venezuelans in Miami that send their paychecks back home to support the local economy yet capital controls prevent something like this from happening.
  - kemonocode 5y ago
    Capital controls, evading economic sanctions, as well as draconian KYC/AML measures that for Venezuelans can be very difficult to fulfill as you're asked for things like existing bank accounts (there's only a tiny handful of international banks that allow Venezuelans to open accounts with them at the moment) or a valid passport (can go upwards to hundreds of dollars and with waiting times in months and sometimes years) not to mention the chance you're just silently dropped only because you are Venezuelan. True, having USD would be vastly preferred for most, but it's just plainly not possible in some cases as local cash supply is very restricted and risky. Just because most people in first world countries only see cryptocurrencies as speculative toys it doesn't mean they're without uses for the rest of the world, even if those uses can be seen as immoral or against the spirit of the law from a western point of view.
Geee 5y ago
That's quite a broad statement. I'd say that most bitcoiners are in it for bitcoin.
simias 5y ago
Most alt-coins created these days are designed as pure pyramid schemes (coin burned to artificially reduce the supply, n% of every transaction is spread among existing wallets etc...). Blatant scams like SafeMoon have hundreds of thousand of "holders". Beyond that one of the most successful cryptocurrencies over the past few months was DogeCoin, which has absolutely no value proposition besides using a meme dog as a mascot. This shows pretty clearly that behind all the posturing and deflecting we've seen over the past decade, the crypto world is really embracing its profound pyramid scheme nature. Any supposed "tech" is only valuable if it can be used to pump the price. Projects like Monero or Ethereum that actually attempted to improve the tech fare no better than LiteCoin clone #25156. Projects like Iota and Nano who once aimed to revolutionize cryptocurrencies have faded into irrelevancy and are now largely ignored. At this point there's usually somebody who replies "but I actually use Bitcoin for grocery shopping, it works" and I'm sure that you do, but you have to be aware that you're part of a vanishingly small minority.
- atweiden 5y ago
  “Digital gold” is just a euphemism for speculative store of value. Unlike most altcoins including several of the ones you mentioned, Bitcoin never (mis)represented itself as anything but that. Bitcoin never tried to say its use case was anything but the safest safe haven asset. Every other coin had to invent a reason for its existence which without fail never differs from “speculative store of value” underneath all the sophistry and buzzwords.
  - ChainOfFools 5y ago
    "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system" is the title of the original whitepaper.
- xvector 5y ago
  Just because “good” crypto isn’t the most successful today doesn’t mean it’s not successful. XMR for example already gets plenty of use on Darknet markets. Widespread adoption takes time. In the meantime you have volatility and people trying to cash in on volatility. It’s not a big deal, just ignore it, what matters is the tech - which, as XMR has proven, is what matters when push comes to shove.
pdpi 5y ago
Some of us were in crypto for principled reasons around using it as a tool for social change. I gave up on it when it became an investment toy.

by kypro 5y ago

tristanj 5y ago

Everyone I’ve ever spoken to who is in equities is in it to make more USD which really says it all.

khamba 5y ago
Equities are not (marketed as) a USD alternative? This is a bad faith argument.
- tristanj 5y ago
  Disagree. Equities, specifically index funds, are marketed as an asset that will increase in USD price over time. There is an entire movement founded on this belief (FIRE).
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Well yes, but that's because of profit from the capital they represent. Bitcoin is not a means of production.
- thebean11 5y ago
  They are marketed as a savings account / CD alternative..
imtringued 5y ago
Even special cases like Venezuela where people are fleeing from hyperinflation, they mostly benefiting from the exposure to the USD. The only benefit is evading capital controls and price is irrelevant for that usecase. Capital controls (blocking foreign exchange) are stupid because for every person selling a hyperinflationary currency, there is someone on the other side paying with a stable currency who is partially relieving some of the inflation pressure. There are Venezuelans in Miami that send their paychecks back home to support the local economy yet capital controls prevent something like this from happening.
- kemonocode 5y ago
  Capital controls, evading economic sanctions, as well as draconian KYC/AML measures that for Venezuelans can be very difficult to fulfill as you're asked for things like existing bank accounts (there's only a tiny handful of international banks that allow Venezuelans to open accounts with them at the moment) or a valid passport (can go upwards to hundreds of dollars and with waiting times in months and sometimes years) not to mention the chance you're just silently dropped only because you are Venezuelan. True, having USD would be vastly preferred for most, but it's just plainly not possible in some cases as local cash supply is very restricted and risky. Just because most people in first world countries only see cryptocurrencies as speculative toys it doesn't mean they're without uses for the rest of the world, even if those uses can be seen as immoral or against the spirit of the law from a western point of view.

Geee 5y ago

That's quite a broad statement. I'd say that most bitcoiners are in it for bitcoin.

simias 5y ago

Most alt-coins created these days are designed as pure pyramid schemes (coin burned to artificially reduce the supply, n% of every transaction is spread among existing wallets etc...). Blatant scams like SafeMoon have hundreds of thousand of "holders". Beyond that one of the most successful cryptocurrencies over the past few months was DogeCoin, which has absolutely no value proposition besides using a meme dog as a mascot. This shows pretty clearly that behind all the posturing and deflecting we've seen over the past decade, the crypto world is really embracing its profound pyramid scheme nature. Any supposed "tech" is only valuable if it can be used to pump the price. Projects like Monero or Ethereum that actually attempted to improve the tech fare no better than LiteCoin clone #25156. Projects like Iota and Nano who once aimed to revolutionize cryptocurrencies have faded into irrelevancy and are now largely ignored. At this point there's usually somebody who replies "but I actually use Bitcoin for grocery shopping, it works" and I'm sure that you do, but you have to be aware that you're part of a vanishingly small minority.

atweiden 5y ago
“Digital gold” is just a euphemism for speculative store of value. Unlike most altcoins including several of the ones you mentioned, Bitcoin never (mis)represented itself as anything but that. Bitcoin never tried to say its use case was anything but the safest safe haven asset. Every other coin had to invent a reason for its existence which without fail never differs from “speculative store of value” underneath all the sophistry and buzzwords.
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system" is the title of the original whitepaper.
xvector 5y ago
Just because “good” crypto isn’t the most successful today doesn’t mean it’s not successful. XMR for example already gets plenty of use on Darknet markets. Widespread adoption takes time. In the meantime you have volatility and people trying to cash in on volatility. It’s not a big deal, just ignore it, what matters is the tech - which, as XMR has proven, is what matters when push comes to shove.

pdpi 5y ago

Some of us were in crypto for principled reasons around using it as a tool for social change. I gave up on it when it became an investment toy.