Bitcoin Price Thread

NoahA said:
Exactly right. The immutable ledger is a kickass property. The good thing of course about gold is that if you have pure gold then you have it. But lots of people have either fake gold that they don't know, or they think they own gold because they have a piece of paper. They're also isn't a very good account of where all the gold is out there so it's difficult to verify.
More...

But you can hold gold cheaply in fiat. Cash in your paper and buy Eagles. $2600/oz. Guess how much XAU/USD has gained since March of 2021? Hmmm.
 
So BTC has been mainstream for years and peak to peak (over 40 months) it's flat. As a USD-pair, gold has appreeshed 45%. Whoa. Empirically you're dead wrong.
 
NoahA said:
Patience grasshopper
More...


Dude, you really need to try harder.

And that's against the monster post-COVID return of USD. Imagine the returns on FX that performed poorly. The benefit of a shitty sovereign. Fiat!

Gold more than doubled against Yen.
 
NoahA said:
I do agree that people struggle with the idea that the Bitcoin doesn't exist anywhere. They much rather hold a piece of gold. But the limitations on gold are actually quite severe. When it comes time to use in that gold you need to actually transport it. And so then what you get is a derivative of gold that is easier to transfer and then you hope that that derivative is backed by the gold. And so of course now you introduce all of the issues surrounding rehypothecation and verifiability of the actual gold. The fact that Bitcoin exists in the digital world and the fact that you want to use it in the digital world is I think a huge benefit.

The fear of the network going down is I think overblown at this point. Nothing functions without the internet today. Look at what happened with the crowd strike fiasco. Hospitals had to cancel procedures and airplanes didn't fly simply because Windows machines didn't boot up properly. Even if the entire internet goes down for a few days, the blockchain will just pick up where it left off. At most the worst that happens is maybe some transactions are rolled back if there are multiple forks of the network that eventually get resolved.

The thing that really opened my eyes was a bunch of videos that talked about how everything going forward is digital now. The internet couldn't be what it is if there wasn't one protocol that everybody used. Cell phone technology also wouldn't work if every country used a different network. It is true that different frequencies are necessary for different regions and so the manufacturers have to make region specific cell phones, but this is still much better than the 200 currencies or so that there are out there. The amount of friction that is introduced in order to convert between multiple currencies is so inefficient and very expensive that it's a system that needs to be fixed. Using one global currency that everyone has access to is clearly the way forward.

The proof of work concept is essential. We understand how well it works for gold, so now how do we ensure that creating bitcoins is only possible in the same way. You have to put a lot of work into it in order for it to have value. But this has the dual purpose of protecting the network. When you learn that nobody can source enough hardware or enough electricity to make a dent into the hash rate, you learn that this is what makes the network so secure. The fact that all of this hashing is so distributed is actually a benefit to the system. One might say that the mining pools are centralized, and I think that's true to an extent, but it's also incredibly easy to switch mining pools and I think this is happening with Ocean mining.

We can also contrast this with the current system. Add up all of the resources that every bank uses and then add up all of the resources that government agencies use simply to set the interest rate. All of this is unnecessary and a huge waste. The market can set the interest rate based on what people are willing to accept for lending out Bitcoin. I am sure that more resources currently go into upholding the current financial system than all the resources used to run the Bitcoin network.

You lost me with your last point about a hybrid system though. I'm not exactly sure I understand what you're getting at here.
More...
We currently have a hybrid system. You could currently have all your wealth in BTC but you almost certainly would have to convert it to fiat to buy a car, a house, or a beer. Of course today you could run across a situation where you could purchase a particular physical asset directly with BTC, but it might not be the house you want. It’ll be the one that accepts BTC.

I’m a bull at the moment because of the other factors but the adoption of BTC by the masses is what it will take to hit the moonshot numbers the talking heads are predicting. That or BRK and friends deciding to shake up the crypto market with all that cash on hand.

When I first heard of bitcoin it was being pitched as a replacement for fiat and first impressions tend to stick for better or worse. Now it’s being pushed as a replacement for gold, bonds, and real estate but not as a cash replacement. I believe the biggest tailwind BTC could hope to get is being used by average people for daily transactions. Don’t get me wrong, institutional investors and nation states will have a dramatic effect if they keep at it. But…. 8 billion people using BTC for morning coffee would likely mean they have all their wealth in BTC. Not just 3% of it like me. I have only met one person in real life that said they had any BTC and it’s been a while since I met them. I haven’t come across anyone in my place in the world that has any. Sometimes I wonder how many people have some but don’t tell anyone. It’s hard for me to believe stats that say 1 in 4 Americans are bitcoin holders. But I’m in the middle of nowhere and anyone here with excess wealth wants land. Not gold, not bonds, not stocks, or anything else just land.

Take all of my opinions with a grain of salt. I focus on the agriculture markets and BTC has been a needed distraction for me this year. I don’t put much time into it, just what I read here and I listen to a couple talking heads. It’s scratching my gambling itch a little as I have zero ideas how to estimate the demand side. The supply side is the opposite of what I’m used to…..it’s completely known and I don’t have to track weather, acreage reports, etc
 
NoahA said:
I don't think I have ever made arguments for NFTs because I personally didn't believe in them. So you might be thinking about John.
More...

I'm definitely one of the NFT speculators on ET

I lost over $200k (fiat value on eth-converstion) on Bored Ape as I mentioned on at least a post from 2 years ago

Which is why I stopped calling myself a Bitcoin maxi as a maxi won't gamble with NFT's or meme coins or other altcoins

Bitcoin is a savings account store of value asset. It's the best form of money, in my humble opinion
 
johnarb said:
I'm definitely one of the NFT speculators on ET

I lost over $200k (fiat value on eth-converstion) on Bored Ape as I mentioned on at least a post from 2 years ago

Which is why I stopped calling myself a Bitcoin maxi as a maxi won't gamble with NFT's or meme coins or other altcoins

Bitcoin is a savings account store of value asset. It's the best form of money, in my humble opinion
More...

That is a manly admission.
 
long said:
We currently have a hybrid system. You could currently have all your wealth in BTC but you almost certainly would have to convert it to fiat to buy a car, a house, or a beer
More...

No, like any valuable collateral pristine asset, you can borrow against bitcoin to buy a car, a house, or a beer,

This is true for the real bitcoin as of today

It's the best form of asset for the lenders as it has global deep liquidity 24/7/365, their risk is very small compared to real estate or other forms of collateral asset

I'm not sure if the bitcoin spot etf's from Blackrock and Fidelity allow this now, but I don't see a reason they wouldn't offer this in the future
 
long said:
Sometimes I wonder how many people have some but don’t tell anyone. It’s hard for me to believe stats that say 1 in 4 Americans are bitcoin holders.
More...

There are (only) about 53 million BTC addresses globally, as of today.
And about 98% of those have a balance of less than 1 BTC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top