Never owned any BITCOIN or the like- but BTC in the high 18k this morning

[PWMDMD]

I have about $100k in cash right now as an emergency fund and with inflation, it was tempting to put it into one of the "stablecoins" which were returning 8% at the end of 2021. I've read a few books on crypto, the blockchain, NFTs, etc to familiarize myself with the topic. As "safe" as people say stablecoins are my gut still said no and wouldn't you know it, even some stablecoins have had serious issues in 2022. There is nothing predictable about crypto.

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

There's a believe that in order to completely replace cash / gold you need to keep transaction anonymous, like real cash and gold. So the criminals and tax dodgers will trust them. The dilemma is if you want this you have to take the risk of losing them to carelessness or criminal activities.

The thing is, most people do not really care about the anonymous part of it unless they live in some dictatorship, like trying to smuggle money out of China, launder cartel drug money, spy agencies sending money to arm dealers to buy money for terrorists, etc.

Most people like me just want to buy a happy meal without holding a bunch of dirty paper or metal coins, we already have ways to get it done with credit card, alipay, octopus card, etc without using blockchain.

Just tap the phone lol. (To the payment terminal)

 

[KrisZ]

Crypto, not necessary bitcoin, will be worth something once it becomes the digital currency backed by various government and banking bodies. It's coming.

 

[LDM]

I'm sure the first person who thought of using seashells or gold as a currency was being told the same thing until a governing body officially recognized seashells or gold as a "currency". Then as soon as they see you need everyone to agree it is a currency, it becomes a currency.

With the government controlling currency and bitcoin being the antigovernment currency, it becomes a dilemma.

Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency isn't even close to actual currency. Its the exact opposite. You may be able to claim its a commodity or similar to stocks but even that is a tenuous leap. All cryptocurrency will ever be is a scam for people who somehow believe that it will replace government issued currency when it never will.

 

[PandaBear]

Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency isn't even close to actual currency. Its the exact opposite. You may be able to claim its a commodity or similar to stocks but even that is a tenuous leap. All cryptocurrency will ever be is a scam for people who somehow believe that it will replace government issued currency when it never will.

So, it is basically silver (not a government holding in the vault as some pseudo backing of a currency, but holder of silver believe it is a currency which it no longer is).

 

[eljefino]

I have about $100k in cash right now as an emergency fund and with inflation, it was tempting to put it into one of the "stablecoins" which were returning 8% at the end of 2021. I've read a few books on crypto, the blockchain, NFTs, etc to familiarize myself with the topic. As "safe" as people say stablecoins are my gut still said no and wouldn't you know it, even some stablecoins have had serious issues in 2022. There is nothing predictable about crypto.

US treasury I-bonds are paying 9.62% right now. Great place to park your cash.

 

[Wolf359]

I can totally see how Bitcoin was created by the CIA.

If it was.. would you know? lol

It's open source. You can use the source to create your own bitcoin. You get a fork if a bunch of folks go off in a different direction. That's why there's lots of crypto coins out there. Not all of them are based on Bitcoin. Some don't require the computing power than bitcoin does.

 

[Wolf359]

I do agree with this viewpoint because honestly, the temptation to resist being so rich by cashing out Satoshi's holding, means Satoshi has to be even richer to just hold it. This has to be a government arm and it has to be so powerful, it owns the government, the biggest government, on earth. To not have the US gov going after Satoshi with all its power means, likely it is the Satoshi.

The #2 to want the same thing would probably be Russia, and they are probably trying to do the same with ETH.

The only other alternative I can think of other than big gov is, Satoshi is the Holy See.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Total speculation based on no facts. What crime did Satoshi commit for the government to go after them?

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

 

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

Well it's unknown which is all you can really say. To say one specific group did it is total speculation. Not that hard to do things anonymously these days and not be able to trace it back. Open source just means you release the source code and people can use it and make changes to it if they want to. That's so you can fix bugs that might crop up or make modifications to it. And if you can examine the whole thing, then you know there's no viruses or other malicious code hiding in it.

All fair points. Hey, I'm not claiming anything I am saying is correct. Just that, if I had had money at the time, let's say $5000 and I bought hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin for pennies or dollars. the first time it went to like $6000 ($3000?) I'd have cashed out and become RICH, (I still don't get Bitcoin. Sell to who? You spend bitcoins? All makes no sense to me but. Okay) ... I would have not been one of those to just hold onto it forever, because then it turns into the thing you have and you never use and then something happens to it before that one time you decide you will use it, like a classic car burning to the ground inside a garage that you were fine just to know it was there but not actually use. Such is Bitcoin to me.

And I'd probably have lost money, also.

So when I hear people saying the future of money is digital and that you'd be a fool not to invest in Bitcoin because it has been down before but will be like $30,000 a coin because it has to be because it is only 1-2% of the market of currency and when it expands......................................

 

[PandaBear]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Total speculation based on no facts. What crime did Satoshi commit for the government to go after them?

By being a threat to the main world currency of the world. Oil-producing nations got bombed their brains out for accepting something else instead.

The monarchy of Hawaii got overthrown for doing absolutely nothing other than not selling their lands to the wealthy plantation owners, just because Hawaii is a good place and a lot of money is at stack. By refusing to cash out 29B worth of something, Satoshi is a threat to the market, and being a major risk to the stability of BTC.

 

[PandaBear]

All fair points. Hey, I'm not claiming anything I am saying is correct. Just that, if I had had money at the time, let's say $5000 and I bought hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin for pennies or dollars. the first time it went to like $6000 ($3000?) I'd have cashed out and become RICH, (I still don't get Bitcoin. Sell to who? You spend bitcoins? All makes no sense to me but. Okay) ... I would have not been one of those to just hold onto it forever, because then it turns into the thing you have and you never use and then something happens to it before that one time you decide you will use it, like a classic car burning to the ground inside a garage that you were fine just to know it was there but not actually use. Such is Bitcoin to me.

And I'd probably have lost money, also.

So when I hear people saying the future of money is digital and that you'd be a fool not to invest in Bitcoin because it has been down before but will be like $30,000 a coin because it has to be because it is only 1-2% of the market of currency and when it expands......................................

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/... Satoshi Nakamoto,value would be $29 billion.

Everyone can resist the urge to cash out $10k, some people can resist the urge to cash out $10M, and very few people (almost no one) can resist cashing out $1B, let alone $29B.

To resist the urge to cash out 29B, you probably need to have about 100B. How many software engineers you know would be doing open source projects if they have that much and still be able to resist the urge to cash out 29B? I remember the silk road guy was offered like 1B or so but resist the urge to sell, ended up getting caught and shut down.

If it is an org to resist the urge to cash out 29B, not even put it on the book to let everyone knows, that org probably controls 290B or more. What kind of org has that much influence? That's bigger than most investment bank, and most likely have to be a government of some sort.

 

[Wolf359]

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/... Satoshi Nakamoto,value would be $29 billion.

Everyone can resist the urge to cash out $10k, some people can resist the urge to cash out $10M, and very few people (almost no one) can resist cashing out $1B, let alone $29B.

To resist the urge to cash out 29B, you probably need to have about 100B. How many software engineers you know would be doing open source projects if they have that much and still be able to resist the urge to cash out 29B? I remember the silk road guy was offered like 1B or so but resist the urge to sell, ended up getting caught and shut down.

If it is an org to resist the urge to cash out 29B, not even put it on the book to let everyone knows, that org probably controls 290B or more. What kind of org has that much influence? That's bigger than most investment bank, and most likely have to be a government of some sort.

You're making a lot of assumptions there. One is that the guy is still even alive. And if you cash out, you may become hunted because they can see if there's any activity on the coins in question. Some people might just value privacy over money.

 

[mk378]

Why aren't there opportunities to gamble with Bitcoin? Someone in Vegas could set up a blackjack table where the players bet Bitcoins, and if they win they are paid off in Bitcoins. The casino wouldn't care that the value of the coins is fluctuating minute by minute as the cards are being dealt. There's also no product being sold for a fixed price in Bitcoin. Any seller willing to take Bitcoin is going to convert their price in regular currency to Bitcoin and that's what the buyer must pay. If Bitcoin were a real currency there would be products where the raw materials were bought with Bitcoin, the factory workers were paid in Bitcoin, and the retail price of the finished product is a definite number of Bitcoin.

 

[Wolf359]

Why aren't there opportunities to gamble with Bitcoin? Someone in Vegas could set up a blackjack table where the players bet Bitcoins, and if they win they are paid off in Bitcoins. The casino wouldn't care that the value of the coins is fluctuating minute by minute as the cards are being dealt. There's also no product being sold for a fixed price in Bitcoin. Any seller willing to take Bitcoin is going to convert their price in regular currency to Bitcoin and that's what the buyer must pay. If Bitcoin were a real currency there would be products where the raw materials were bought with Bitcoin, the factory workers were paid in Bitcoin, and the retail price of the finished product is a definite number of Bitcoin.

The real problem with bitcoin is that it can only handle about 4.6 transactions per second and the entire transaction takes 10 minutes whereas Visa can handle 1700 transaction per second and each transaction only takes seconds and it's geared so that it works fine on busy days like Black Friday.

https://www.makeuseof.com/visa-vs-crypto

 

[PWMDMD]

There's a believe that in order to completely replace cash / gold you need to keep transaction anonymous, like real cash and gold. So the criminals and tax dodgers will trust them. The dilemma is if you want this you have to take the risk of losing them to carelessness or criminal activities.

The thing is, most people do not really care about the anonymous part of it unless they live in some dictatorship, like trying to smuggle money out of China, launder cartel drug money, spy agencies sending money to arm dealers to buy money for terrorists, etc.

Most people like me just want to buy a happy meal without holding a bunch of dirty paper or metal coins, we already have ways to get it done with credit card, alipay, octopus card, etc without using blockchain.

Gold is the best performing investment this year - only down ~1.5%.

 

[PWMDMD]

US treasury I-bonds are paying 9.62% right now. Great place to park your cash.

Great? Hardly. The $10k limit per person and forfeiture of some interest if you need liquidity is still less than ideal.

 

[MotorFan]

Great? Hardly. The $10k limit per person and forfeiture of some interest if you need liquidity is still less than ideal.

given the insultingly low rates money market funds, savings accounts and CD's pay, those rates are pretty awesome given their super low risk guaranteed nature! Also, the $10K limit is only an annual limit and over time you can build it up buying $ 10K per year, moreover the VAST majority of people can only dream of saving $ 10K per year so the $10K annual limit is really only a limit for the top 1% demographic.

 

[PandaBear]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/29/crypto-hedge-fund-three-arrows-capital-plunges-into-liquidation.html

 

[Lubener]

Worked with a young guy that knew everything a few years ago, he bought a BTC for about $15k back in 2018 or so.

It dropped $5k or more, he sold it.

Then he headed to the metaverse and bought some virtual real estate.