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ETFs make it easier for people to put money into bitcoins. Why anybody should actually want to, still not clear.
by Finnucane 3y ago
ETFs make it easier for people to put money into bitcoins. Why anybody should actually want to, still not clear.
- barbazoo 3y agoSame reason maybe people buy gold?
- dmitrygr 3y agoGold has a limited supply and has an industrial use, where it is irreplaceable, creating a floor to its price. Bitcoin has no use where it is irreplaceable and thus has no price floor. They are incomparable.
- smithcoin 3y agoBitcoin has no use? My company works with franchise restaurants in countries with hyper inflation and they use it to hedge their local currency when buying hard goods.
- lxgr 3y agoYou're misquoting GP: No use where it is irreplaceable. It's definitely being used by people for various purposes, but Bitcoin forks are much easier to spin up than alternate scarce chemical elements.
- not2b 3y agoYou dropped "where it is irreplaceable". The traditional hedge in such places has been to use a more stable currency, like dollars or euros, as a hedge if the national currency is subject to hyperinflation.
- bcrosby95 3y agoIf the price of gold dropped to its industrial use demand it may as well go to zero. Hell, if it did this maybe we would have more uses for it. That would be cool.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoOnly genuine use I can imagine (In like todays real world, not the Bitcoin maximalist fantasy world) is it's a way to escape a warzone with some of your wealth in tact.
- dsco 3y agoGold, like other heavy elements, can be found on other planets and asteroids.
- lxgr 3y agoAccess to which is currently very limited as well.
- wubrr 3y agoBitcoin obviously has uses (arguably better served by other cryptocurrencies), and gold is far from irreplaceable in the vast majority of its uses.
- mrb 3y agoOnly 10% of global gold production is used industrially. Most of gold's price is sustained by pure speculation.
- lxgr 3y agoAround half of the global demand is apparently for jewellery: https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data#demand-and-supply https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data#demand-and-supply
- mrb 3y agoYup. 10% industrial, ~45% jewelry, and ~45% bullion. Jewelry's use of gold is speculation just like bullion. People want gold or other precious metals in jewelry not because they provide the best physical properties at a given price-point (there are many superior alternatives), but only because such materials are expensive, ie. they speculatively assume the high prices will stay high and/or continue to appreciate.
- _ZeD_ 3y agodo they do bitcoin necklaces??
- darnfish 3y agoActually they do: https://multi.inc/key/ https://multi.inc/key/
- Finnucane 3y agoBecause they are manufacturing high-end audio cables?
- prasadjoglekar 3y agoIt'll also make it easier to short this asset class.
- alwillis 3y ago> Why anybody should actually want to, still not clear. Including the recent drop, if you bought bitcoin a year ago, you'd be up 71.77%; the 5-year return is 995.26%.
- antiframe 3y agoYes but that is in the past. Why would someone want to put money in today is a more relevant discussion.
- symfoniq 3y agoThis isn’t actionable, though. If I’d bought Beanie Babies or Stanley Cups at a very particular point in time, I might be up 1,000% at another very particular point in time. If I’d bought Bitcoin in 2021, I might still be down almost 50%. None of this answers the question “Why would I want to buy Bitcoin?”
- animex 3y agoSo, then, why buy Gold?
- symfoniq 3y agoPersonally, I don’t, for some (though not all) of the same reasons I don’t buy BitCoin.
- alwillis 3y ago> This isn’t actionable, though. Of course it is. If you bought Bitcoin five years ago, you'd be up about 1000% and could sell. That's actionable. Long term Bitcoin investors believe it'll be significantly higher in the years to come. If you bought $1000 worth of bitcoin in 2013, it would be valued at over $2 million at the end of 2023 [1]. [1]: https://www.goodfinancialcents.com/bitcoin-annual-returns/#bitcoin-performance-milestones https://www.goodfinancialcents.com/bitcoin-annual-returns/#b...
- paulpauper 3y agoummm what about 2022 2023 gains already being erased fast after such a huge loss in 2022. Including the recent drop, if you bought bitcoin a year ago, you'd be up 71.77%; the 5-year return is 995.26%. BTC post 2017 returns are worse than QQQ including dividends.
- paulpauper 3y agoit has always been generally easy to buy bitcoin. this is not 2012. Any American who can open up a brokerage account can also open a Coinbase account. Or Robinhood. Or BITO. Tons of ways to do it.