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I did the same thing for many years, until in 2013 the Cyprus bailouts woke me up...at that point I went all in on Bitcoin out of anger of the banking system, a

I did the same thing for many years, until in 2013 the Cyprus bailouts woke me up...at that point I went all in on Bitcoin out of anger of the banking system, and haven't changed anything since.

shadowgovt 5y ago
I hope this works out for you in the long term; BTC isn't the most stable platform, but it could certainly be more stable than some national currencies.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  In fact it is „more stable than some national currencies“
- xiphias2 5y ago
  If you don't look at the price, it's the most stable and predictable service and protocol in the existence of the internet (maybe after the internet / IPv4). It's uptime is 99.987%, last time it was down in 2013, and the cool thing is that even if it gets down, it has self healing property in the case of network separation / sybil attack. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-uptime/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-uptime/ I dare you to find another internet service (or even banking service) with the same stability. Also the same software that I downloaded in 2013 still works (although I'm not using it, I have the option to not upgrade). There was a bail in last month in my country (Hungary) as well: all people who stored their money in Russian banks lost their money over $100000, just like in Cyprus in 2013. They did't even know that their bank was Russian owned. I'm not playing the game of russian roulette with my money anymore.
  - kkdaemas 5y ago
    The problem is Bitcoin Core may have (will have) unknown vulnerabilities and those might not get patched correctly once discovered.
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      Yes, this is true, I'm mostly worried about the elliptic curve signature part, as everything else could be fixed with an emergency hard fork (except SHA256). Sadly OP_CAT operation is disabled (or substring equality operation), which would make lamport signatures available again for high value transactions. I would love it if lamport signatures would be enabled again (it would be quite easy to do), but I'm afraid that there isn't enough concensus to do it at this point, because some people would think that it's wasteful, and also lamport signatures are dangerous, as they can be used only once.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Well, I've had BTC transactions drop out of the mempool (so, they were not executed, but you don't know that immediately, you only know days later), and transactions that worked took between a few minutes and more than half a day. The fees ranged from virtually nothing to around 50 USD. I certainly would not call that predictable and stable. I mean, you don't even know when the next block will arrive.
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      I would be suprised if a valid normal transaction with 50 USD would drop out of a mempool. What was the transaction weight? If you send the transaction data, I would be interested to look at it. I'm usually overpaying (20 satoshis/byte, usually under $1 for a $2000 transaction), and I always get into the first block, but I never pay $50 fee.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    > If you don't look at the price, it's the most stable and predictable service and protocol in the existence of the internet Well, when you put it like that you just convinced me to put my savings into SMTP. Obviously you've identified the key features of a store of value.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  According to legendary quant Nassim Nicholas Taleb so called cryptocurrencies are so fundamentally volatile that they cannot be considered currencies: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14204 https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14204
  - ttoinou 5y ago
    Parents didnt call it a currency..
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Bitcoin is an unbelievably stable platform with an uptime of 99.98% with only 13 years to draw from. It's been sticking with it's algorithmically defined inflation rate with perfect predictability, unlike any other currency or scarce asset like gold, which depends heavily on incentives to mine and accessible reserves. Don't mistake the volatility of the USD price of bitcoin (which is based on the erratic, unpredictability of human emotions and massively distrusted market decision making) with the complete and utter lack of volatility of the actual underlying system.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    The mathematical certainty of the issuance of BTC won't really mean much if nobody wants to trade it for goods. BTC's volatility is not just volatility w.r.t. USD.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      The value of anything as a medium of exchange and store of value always depends entirely on whether or not a critical mass of people want to use it as such. Once you establish that a thing satisfies all the properties of money, or close enough, then the only question is network effect. Even if minor theoretical improvements could be made, it has to be 10-100x better to overcome runaway network effect. Sea shells and bags of salt were drastically better money than mentally keeping track of favors owed in a small tribe, because we could expand our exchange of favors beyond dunbar's number to cooperate with people we don't intimately know. Gold was much better than sea shells and salt because it's globally scarce and durable. Paper backed by gold was much better than raw gold, namely because it is drastically easier to trade, transport, and fractionalized. The technical nature of bitcoin isn't special and it can be trivially forked, modified, and a new network started for near zero cost. That's exactly what coins like litecoin and dogecoin did. Copy paste bitcoin code, change the name and some constants, and boom, new money. What makes bitcoin special, and why there can only be one dominant cryptocurrency long term, is network effect. I don't care about litecoin and dogecoin, because barely anyone uses them relative bitcoin. Barely anyone is developing and building on them as a foundational layer. The only reason anyone cares about dogecoin these days is because one eccentric billionaire has a hard on for it, and that's way too small of a bus number to store a significant amount of my wealth in. The same holds true for any network protocol. I can copy paste libraries for TCP and make modifications that I think will make it far superior to the current form and release it to the world! And nobody except hobbyists will use it because standard TCP has an unassailable network effect. You have to have an extraordinarily compelling reason to change, and even then it will take decades (see IPv4 to v6 transition for example). The thing about bitcoin, is that it is the first truly digital money. Fiat currencies like the USD have been trying for decades to pretend to be digital, and they'll probably try harder to use blockchains to make it better, but ultimately it's still fundamentally stuck with an analog foundation defended by guns and tight cliques of trusted human gangs, which makes it globally weak relative to bitcoin. That's why bitcoin has a 10-100x advantage over dollars long term. It's natively digital, open, and permissionless from day one.
throwawaybsd 5y ago
Pff tell me about it. I made the choice of buying real estate instead. My tenant has everything serviced for them. They lost half on the stock market, but fortunately own crypto. Also lost a bit on crypto but they earn plenty. My estate doubled in 10 years and the rent they pay paid for two more properties, but i have to deal with the hassle of fixing pipes and such - all in all i pay in maintenance a month worth of rent, but the stress of calling contractors is too much - sometimes i need to get my arse out of the pool to dial people. Also have to spent few hours total a year. I just cant. Should sell everything and invest in crypto. My Porsche is too boring - need a lambo so it loses value sooner. After all what else can you do other than keep money in the bank. Buy estates and turn highly paid tech serfs into tenants? Hah. Best chase nfts.

I did the same thing for many years, until in 2013 the Cyprus bailouts woke me up...at that point I went all in on Bitcoin out of anger of the banking system, and haven't changed anything since.

shadowgovt 5y ago

I hope this works out for you in the long term; BTC isn't the most stable platform, but it could certainly be more stable than some national currencies.

WanderPanda 5y ago
In fact it is „more stable than some national currencies“
xiphias2 5y ago
If you don't look at the price, it's the most stable and predictable service and protocol in the existence of the internet (maybe after the internet / IPv4). It's uptime is 99.987%, last time it was down in 2013, and the cool thing is that even if it gets down, it has self healing property in the case of network separation / sybil attack. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-uptime/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-uptime/ I dare you to find another internet service (or even banking service) with the same stability. Also the same software that I downloaded in 2013 still works (although I'm not using it, I have the option to not upgrade). There was a bail in last month in my country (Hungary) as well: all people who stored their money in Russian banks lost their money over $100000, just like in Cyprus in 2013. They did't even know that their bank was Russian owned. I'm not playing the game of russian roulette with my money anymore.
- kkdaemas 5y ago
  The problem is Bitcoin Core may have (will have) unknown vulnerabilities and those might not get patched correctly once discovered.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    Yes, this is true, I'm mostly worried about the elliptic curve signature part, as everything else could be fixed with an emergency hard fork (except SHA256). Sadly OP_CAT operation is disabled (or substring equality operation), which would make lamport signatures available again for high value transactions. I would love it if lamport signatures would be enabled again (it would be quite easy to do), but I'm afraid that there isn't enough concensus to do it at this point, because some people would think that it's wasteful, and also lamport signatures are dangerous, as they can be used only once.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Well, I've had BTC transactions drop out of the mempool (so, they were not executed, but you don't know that immediately, you only know days later), and transactions that worked took between a few minutes and more than half a day. The fees ranged from virtually nothing to around 50 USD. I certainly would not call that predictable and stable. I mean, you don't even know when the next block will arrive.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    I would be suprised if a valid normal transaction with 50 USD would drop out of a mempool. What was the transaction weight? If you send the transaction data, I would be interested to look at it. I'm usually overpaying (20 satoshis/byte, usually under $1 for a $2000 transaction), and I always get into the first block, but I never pay $50 fee.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SahAssar 5y ago
  > If you don't look at the price, it's the most stable and predictable service and protocol in the existence of the internet Well, when you put it like that you just convinced me to put my savings into SMTP. Obviously you've identified the key features of a store of value.
m0llusk 5y ago
According to legendary quant Nassim Nicholas Taleb so called cryptocurrencies are so fundamentally volatile that they cannot be considered currencies: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14204 https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14204
- ttoinou 5y ago
  Parents didnt call it a currency..
anonporridge 5y ago
Bitcoin is an unbelievably stable platform with an uptime of 99.98% with only 13 years to draw from. It's been sticking with it's algorithmically defined inflation rate with perfect predictability, unlike any other currency or scarce asset like gold, which depends heavily on incentives to mine and accessible reserves. Don't mistake the volatility of the USD price of bitcoin (which is based on the erratic, unpredictability of human emotions and massively distrusted market decision making) with the complete and utter lack of volatility of the actual underlying system.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  The mathematical certainty of the issuance of BTC won't really mean much if nobody wants to trade it for goods. BTC's volatility is not just volatility w.r.t. USD.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    The value of anything as a medium of exchange and store of value always depends entirely on whether or not a critical mass of people want to use it as such. Once you establish that a thing satisfies all the properties of money, or close enough, then the only question is network effect. Even if minor theoretical improvements could be made, it has to be 10-100x better to overcome runaway network effect. Sea shells and bags of salt were drastically better money than mentally keeping track of favors owed in a small tribe, because we could expand our exchange of favors beyond dunbar's number to cooperate with people we don't intimately know. Gold was much better than sea shells and salt because it's globally scarce and durable. Paper backed by gold was much better than raw gold, namely because it is drastically easier to trade, transport, and fractionalized. The technical nature of bitcoin isn't special and it can be trivially forked, modified, and a new network started for near zero cost. That's exactly what coins like litecoin and dogecoin did. Copy paste bitcoin code, change the name and some constants, and boom, new money. What makes bitcoin special, and why there can only be one dominant cryptocurrency long term, is network effect. I don't care about litecoin and dogecoin, because barely anyone uses them relative bitcoin. Barely anyone is developing and building on them as a foundational layer. The only reason anyone cares about dogecoin these days is because one eccentric billionaire has a hard on for it, and that's way too small of a bus number to store a significant amount of my wealth in. The same holds true for any network protocol. I can copy paste libraries for TCP and make modifications that I think will make it far superior to the current form and release it to the world! And nobody except hobbyists will use it because standard TCP has an unassailable network effect. You have to have an extraordinarily compelling reason to change, and even then it will take decades (see IPv4 to v6 transition for example). The thing about bitcoin, is that it is the first truly digital money. Fiat currencies like the USD have been trying for decades to pretend to be digital, and they'll probably try harder to use blockchains to make it better, but ultimately it's still fundamentally stuck with an analog foundation defended by guns and tight cliques of trusted human gangs, which makes it globally weak relative to bitcoin. That's why bitcoin has a 10-100x advantage over dollars long term. It's natively digital, open, and permissionless from day one.

throwawaybsd 5y ago

Pff tell me about it. I made the choice of buying real estate instead. My tenant has everything serviced for them. They lost half on the stock market, but fortunately own crypto. Also lost a bit on crypto but they earn plenty. My estate doubled in 10 years and the rent they pay paid for two more properties, but i have to deal with the hassle of fixing pipes and such - all in all i pay in maintenance a month worth of rent, but the stress of calling contractors is too much - sometimes i need to get my arse out of the pool to dial people. Also have to spent few hours total a year. I just cant. Should sell everything and invest in crypto. My Porsche is too boring - need a lambo so it loses value sooner. After all what else can you do other than keep money in the bank. Buy estates and turn highly paid tech serfs into tenants? Hah. Best chase nfts.