I was trying to summarize, for an employee who got caught in “Elon Musk shouldn’t have manipulated the BTC” (!) (obviously the employee lost 25% of his savings), I was trying to summarize the list of dangers of having savings in BTC.
- Laws of any big country could change and trigger the sale for a lot of sellers of a country,
- Especially given BTC is used by Iran to bypass petrol restrictions, used by ransomware and all sort of dealers, as well as Chinese who want to flee,
- Currencies are in theory regalian = only emitted by the central bank;
- Once any country gets upset with this, they could blame terrorism on BTC and ask owners to prove their origin of wealth, which would be a major hurdle if the law was strict.
I’m adding this to the list. Volatility is desired because “you can make it big”, but the rest is only dangers.
As anyone who was around to see the advent of “crypto TA” c. 2012 can attest, TA in the Bitcoin space started out as quantitative-themed narrative pumping, and it remains so to this very day. Crypto TA chartists self-promote and advertise coins in a furtive attempt to bolster speculation. They can then point to “trading volume” and speculation-fueled transactions to further boost perceptions of credibility — “$X zillion dollars were settled on this blockchain I’m invested in”.
Clearly. Watch the price after Musk's announcements.
> fleece unsophisticated investors
Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade.
> Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade.
And yet some people dump their life savings into it.
Crypto adherents generally don't study history. I remember when in the late 90s everyone was investing in the stock market bubble. Some people made big but most were left holding the bag. None of this is new.
I suspect they are following sentiment analysis on social media and also have demand details on the exchanges.
I assume that soon they will let it drop to 9k and leave it there for a few years and the start the whole thing over again, with the next round of "investors". These "Maximalists" are unintentionally helping them set a floor.
The first part of point #2 is interesting because it's a blessing or a curse depending on which side of the hegemony you're on. Hypothetically speaking, if the Soviet Union were the current dominant superpower, or if China were the dominant superpower 15 years from now, and the US were under sanctions, wouldn't point 2 be a blessing? Being able to circumvent the wishes of the superpower du jour, for better or worse, does give an inherent value to the network regardless of whether the energy used is green or not.
I think @laurent92 didn't say something like: Bitcoin is bad, because bad countries use it.
I think it was more like: There's a risk _for Bitcoin_ if the US brings out the ban hammer, because bad countries use it.
Nowadays a lot of people are not libertarians that would see the US opposing it as a proof it's valuable, but more speculators whom would have nothing left if Coinbase and co. were to shut down.
-Since it is a non productive investment without dividends or interests, making a profit entails someone else making a loss. It's a zero sum game. On average no money is made.
-If you follow the herd, if you buy when people are talking it up positively, you are probably buying high and making less than average (less than zero).
-Covid 19 probably made crypto investment frothy because of unprecedented amount of government stimulus and fewer places than normal to spend money. The government benefits are going to taper over the summer so crypto prices will lose an important support, and the gradual reopening of everything will give people more places to spend their money instead of bidding up digital coins. There could be a third downward force if high inflation takes hold and central banks starts fighting it. They do this by raising interest rates which literally means banks are paying people to hold fiat or government debt instead of other assets. Gold and stocks usually have lower than normal prices during periods of high interest rates, crypto could do the same. At least stocks should have accelerating dividends with higher inflation, not so for gold and crypto.
So if you really want to buy cryptocoins, wait to see what the economic conditions look like in the fall or next year, if the economy is near done working through the above dynamics, prices could be near their lows and it should be a less terrible time to buy.
you can literally flip every single one of your arguments with a few words.
>[big purchases] of any big country could change and trigger the [purchase] for a lot of [buyers] of a country.
>Especially given BTC is used by Iran to bypass petrol restrictions, used by ransomware and all sort of dealers, as well as Chinese who want to flee.
[Didn't actually have to change this one, seems like buying pressure to me]
>Currencies are in theory regalian = only emitted by the central bank; [New world currency outside of central banks is the whole vision for crypto, so i don't see how this conflicts.]
>Once any country gets upset with this, they could blame terrorism on BTC and ask owners to prove their origin of wealth, which would be a major hurdle if the law was strict.[ Don't actually understand this one, how could you make me prove ownership of coins in a cold-wallet?]
Yeah savings vs investment. Crypto is a very high risk investment and should be used as the high risk cherry on top of any portfolio pie! Unless you are minted and don't mind losing a tonne in which case go all in on eth :p
No one is saying that fiat money is perfect. This is a logical fallacy to jump to "Fiat has issues, therefore I will only own bitcoin". That is like saying "McDonalds is unhealthy, therefore I will only eat sand"
Yeah - I had alot of friends that lost faith in Elon over alot of his crypto hype/ Sold alot of Tesla stock. He seemed to busy to actually research anything, flip-flopped alot on his rhetoric but had outsized influence on something he really didn't understand just because he's rich.
