Warren Buffett Predicts 'Bad Ending' for Cryptocurrencies (cnbc.com) 326
"97% of all bitcoins are held by 4% of addresses," reports Credit Suisse (in an article cited by Slashdot reader CaptainDork). And elsewhere this week, Warren Buffett told CNBC that speculation in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies "will have a bad ending," adding that looking out five years he'd gladly bet against all of the cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, CNBC senior analyst Ron Insana has his own skepticism: I am predisposed to view them as just speculative tokens in a cryptocurrency bubble that has inflated more quickly than any other in financial market history. Admittedly I'm green with envy for failing to foresee the explosive rally in the price of bitcoin when it was first brought to my attention several years ago. Having said that, there are many things I find quite ironic about how bitcoin and other "cryptos" are described. First, they are largely denominated, or discussed, in U.S. dollar terms... If the dollar is archaic, as the crypto-enthusiasts believe, why not speak only in crypto-terms...?
It's much easier to buy and sell dollars, stocks or commodities than it is to trade bitcoin and its brethren. The conversion of one crypto to another is relatively easy on these embryonic exchanges. But getting your digital wealth converted into cold hard cash is more problematic... And while the growth has been impressive, it remains very difficult to walk into any establishment and exchange a digital token for goods or services.
The article notes that the U.S. dollar still accounts for 65% of all global economic transactions, due to its status as the world's reserve currency, and concludes that "The adoption of cryptocurrencies as a global source of funds has a long way to go before staking a claim to the world's economy."
Meanwhile, CNBC senior analyst Ron Insana has his own skepticism: I am predisposed to view them as just speculative tokens in a cryptocurrency bubble that has inflated more quickly than any other in financial market history. Admittedly I'm green with envy for failing to foresee the explosive rally in the price of bitcoin when it was first brought to my attention several years ago. Having said that, there are many things I find quite ironic about how bitcoin and other "cryptos" are described. First, they are largely denominated, or discussed, in U.S. dollar terms... If the dollar is archaic, as the crypto-enthusiasts believe, why not speak only in crypto-terms...?
It's much easier to buy and sell dollars, stocks or commodities than it is to trade bitcoin and its brethren. The conversion of one crypto to another is relatively easy on these embryonic exchanges. But getting your digital wealth converted into cold hard cash is more problematic... And while the growth has been impressive, it remains very difficult to walk into any establishment and exchange a digital token for goods or services.
The article notes that the U.S. dollar still accounts for 65% of all global economic transactions, due to its status as the world's reserve currency, and concludes that "The adoption of cryptocurrencies as a global source of funds has a long way to go before staking a claim to the world's economy."
Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
He's right in the fact that this is likely a bubble. It will likely correct. I highly doubt bitcoin will ever return to zero (unless there is a nuclear war and then so will the dollar). Every market corrects, even the stock market.
He's wrong in the fact that he thinks of bitcoin as a fiat currency. Its not and never will be. Bitcoin will be like diamonds in the regard that it will carry a constantly changing value. Bitcoin although called a crypto-"currency" should be considered a crypto-"stock".
Re:Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I would point out that Bitcoin has popped, quite a few times by now.
Indeed. It peaked at $19.5k on Dec 18th, and it now trading at $14.1k. That is about a 28% drop. Bitcoin has dropped by more than that many many times, and has always recovered.
Many people, right here on Slashdot, were saying Bitcoin was in a bubble when it reached the "ridiculous" valuation of $1 back in 2011.
Also, I take issue with this statement from the summary: "looking out five years he'd gladly bet against all of the cryptocurrencies." Bitcoin is traded on futures markets, so it is absurd to say
Re:Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin has dropped by more than that many many times, and has always recovered.
This is the exact characteristic of a bubble. And for every bubble there have been people claiming exactly what you claim.
It always recovers, until it doesn't.
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This is the exact characteristic of a bubble.
It is also the characteristic of every market for every commodity ever. Markets fluctuate.
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There is an inherent cost in maintaining bitcoin that does need to be funded. It isn't so small that the network can be maintained at any price point nor will its stable value sustain it. It needs to continue transactions at a good enough volume to justify its network. In this regard, Bitcoin is similar to ETFs but much more expensive to maintain and conduct transactions in.
Many ETFs have been dismantled for less reasons. But then again, Bitcoin doesn't have a central authority like ETFs to make an auth
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Just because you have an idiot willing to pay $1000 for something doesn't mean it's not overvalued at $1. Bitcoin is one of those things.
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Just because you have an idiot willing to pay $1000 for something doesn't mean it's not overvalued at $1.
Just because you predicted a bubble when it was at $1, doesn't mean you get to say "I told you so" because now it is worth "only" $14,000.
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You are assuming, incorrectly, that it costs the same to bet in either direction. That is not how futures markets work. If someone makes a big bet in one direction, it becomes much cheaper to bet in the other direction.
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Take a look at https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/deadcoins/ [bitcoinexchangeguide.com]. I tried to post the list here, but I keep getting "Filter error: Lameness filter encountered"
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Many people realize it's in the hyped up investment stage, with hordes of uneducated "investors" buying into anything crypto related without even reading the white papers or understanding blockchain technology and transactional logistics.
The Kodak currency and blockchain juice are just two cases in point, everyone thinks they will make out good if they can speculate and stay ahead of the curve, everyone thinks they can cash out first before bubbles burst.
Re:Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Something something due diligence mutter mutter...
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...is there a single crypto where I can buy a stick of gum with it, and not incur a $30 transaction fee? No? Then these things are worthless.
Is there any way to buy a stick of gum with gold bullion, and not incur a hefty transaction fee? No? Then gold is worthless.
Buy Gum with Gold (Score:2)
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long trail and tail (Score:2)
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A fiat currency with only 21 million units issued is still a fucking fiat currency. There's no inherit value to bitcoin. That's a fiat currency.
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I am amazed how much the Bitcoin evangelists harp on the 21M limit, given the infinite supply of altcoins that are not any worse, and sometimes better (faster transactions/lower power consumption per transaction/etc).
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If the gold standard, which BTC is supposedly modeled after, was such a great thing, the majority of the world would still be doing it. We left the gold standard as fast as a viable option was finally available that we could keep stabilized. The Chinese tried a fiat system much earlier but, wasn't able to keep it stable due to a combination of lack of checks and balances and mismanagement. The world has enough checks and balances to mostly keep the mismanagement at bay now. Nothing is perfect, of course
Re: Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that a hybrid system such as BTC is superior (although it may be, especially if you don't trust the government or its deficit spending), just that there was a somewhat legitimate reason for switching from a gold standard to fiat money (commodity limitation), and that BTC doesn't just replicate a commodity-backed money system.
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If the gold standard, which BTC is supposedly modeled after, was such a great thing, the majority of the world would still be doing it
Central banks still keep gold reserves in their vaults. If gold was such a useless thing, why don't they sell it to the greater fools ?
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Furthermore, it also has an inherent cost to produce (electricity) which prevents the arbitrary addition of currency into the system (banker loans, government printing, counterfeiter printing), which then is then a very valuable feature for those who desire a currency as a long term store of wealth.
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No, you have misunderstood what fiat means: backed by force. If you dick around with a country’s currency enough they have an army to stop you.
It is more accurate to say bitcoin is not even a fiat currency.
Re:Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is going to accept transaction costs of more than a few percent for small transactions and nobody is going to sell anything more expensive than a cup of coffee without using an escrow and waiting until the transfer to that escrow clears before they hand over the product or service. That pretty much kills it as a means of value exchange except as a last resort.
The final nail in the coffin, it is just as traceable as a credit card or bank transfer. The people who touted it as being as anonymous as cash have been proven wrong.
Given that, what is the new theory for it retaining any value at all? It IS a fiat currency. The bit of digital data and the whole blockchain carry no intrinsic value outside of the value exchange, just like any fiat currency. If that bit of data represents anything at all, it represents the burned coal that produced the power to run the mining machine. How valuable do you suppose already burned coal is?
Like most modern financial instruments, when the music stops, a very few will make some money and a bunch of people will find no chair.
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The thing about pyramid schemes and bubbles is that many people do not realize how many participants are aware that they are participating in pyramid schemes and bubbles. I would not be surprised if the MOST COMMON reason for participation would be "This will end soon, I'd better participate right now before it ends".
And that, and not gullibility, is probably the main reason why the bubbles and pyramids are so pervasive. Interest-based economy where money is commodity gives rise to "get rich fast" hopes - t
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The people who touted it as being as anonymous as cash have been proven wrong.
Traceability and anonymity are two different things. The problem is that people didn't know the difference between the two and thus were "proven wrong" simply because they used the wrong word, and you're falling into the same trap.
Bitcoin is traceable.
Bitcoin is anonymous.
Compare it to this slashdot post. It is traceable. You can click my name and compare it to the other posts I made. You can build a complete history of what I said. That said it is also anonymous. Without me providing some 3rd party hint at
Re:Warren is right and wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, stall out the economy.
You want to know why every country moved away from the gold standard? Because it turns out, your economy is limited by how much gold you can find. Find no gold? Well, you economy will stagnate (not a good thing). Find a ton of gold? Well, your economy booms (again, not a good thing).
Say you were paid 1 oz of gold a month for your work. Well, what happens if the company can't get you 1oz of gold? Let's say they can get half an ounce. So you work half the month. But you still have to pay for all your stuff - do you buy half a month's worth of food and starve half a month? Or do you have to search for short term work to make up the missing half an ounce? Perhaps next month, they have an ounce and a half, and let you work 50% more to get it - do you? This uncertainty is what screws up economies.
Going from boom to bust dependent on how much you can mine turns out to destabilize economies. That's why every economy floats their currency (i.e., fiat). Economies in the past were fine - there was lots of gold easily available, and thus the economic output of a country wasn't really limited.
Bitcoin with its fixed supply seems like a great idea, but you then realize it's a static economy. It cannot grow. And economies need to grow. If you have a baby, you need money to pay for its needs. But in a static economy, you can't - you're stuck with what you're earning. You cannot earn more because the economy cannot support your added output - i.e., you work more, and are thus paid less per unit to keep your income the same, keeping the economy static.
As people join the economy (after all, there are people who don't use bitcoin), demand for bitcoins go up, creating an even worse situation - a deflationary one, where a bitcoin today is worth more tomorrow because more people want it. Or, put another way, you can put 8 hours of work today for me, but I won't ask you do that, because tomorrow, it will cost me less bitcoin for those same 8 hours because they're worth more. Deflationary economies can lead to complete economic stall - if you're getting richer by the day, why would you buy today what is cheaper tomorrow? (This is partly the reason why the Great Depression was as long and as hard as it was - yes, being on gold also hurts).
So inflation it is. But not too much - you destabilize the economy if there's too much - what was affordable today, is out of reach tomorrow (see hyperinflaction). You want to add just enough to match growth in the economy. In a trading world, you can benefit as well - print a bit more cash and devalue your currency making your country cheaper to buy from, hopefully increasing economic output (people are buying your stuff!), but don't grow too fast because then your currency goes up and people stop buying.
Bitcoin is like Wikipedia. Both are experiments that have or are going to show what everyone already knows, just taught to the next generation who always never sees history repeat itself. (Wikipedia is a great example of communism as government, and the whole "every animal is equal, but some are more equal than others" conclusion of Animal Farm).
The only good news is that Bitcoin is at least unlikely to affect the economy too badly, so it's only those heavily leveraged on it will suffer. So unlike the lessons we all had to learn during the Great Depression about economic growth, the actual scope of losses will likely just be a blip.
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Bitcoin with its fixed supply seems like a great idea, but you then realize it's a static economy. It cannot grow.
Right. We don't run the economy on gold either. Does that mean it's stupid to own some gold ?
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He's right in the fact that this is likely a bubble. It will likely correct. I highly doubt bitcoin will ever return to zero
Bitcoin is fucked within a half decade, but not for the reason Buffett thinks (standard market forces alone likely won't do it.) Quantum computers are progressing at a rate akin to Moore's law when viewed in qubit densities, they're currently at just over 40 qubits. When they hit about 1,048 qubits Shor's algorithm becomes practical for cracking public key cryptosystems like ECDSA and RSA - so that's right around a half decade until Bitcoin security is worthless.
There are plenty of shills saying that Bitc
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Bitcoin will be like diamonds in the regard that it will carry a constantly changing value. Bitcoin although called a crypto-"currency" should be considered a crypto-"stock".
That's good way to think about it. After all, Bitcoin can't be considered a substitute for currency before it becomes so stable that you can pay salaries or make other reasonable contracts based on it. And before that link to economic output is established, it has only speculative value, or no value at all (to put my neighbor's Marxist hat on).
I'm not sure how Bitcoin gets there.
If people are going to use a currency as cash they need to be paid in it, which means it needs to be a national currency. Even if it's easily convertible you want to be paid in the same dollars as the surrounding goods so you don't get hurt by the volatility.
But no country is going to adopt an existing crypto-currency as their dollar since acquiring the necessary currency would jack up the value and bankrupt them.
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The Wall Street Journal pointed out that people in underdeveloped countries are now using it as a store of value since their own countries' currencies are so unstable.
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The Wall Street Journal pointed out that people in underdeveloped countries are now using it as a store of value since their own countries' currencies are so unstable.
I'm not sure it's useful there either.
One big problem with Bitcoins, they're very easy to lose and very easy to steal.
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Transaction volume of physical gold is also low. That's why people leave it in a vault, and transact the ownership on paper.
Lightning Network (which is being tested right now) allows a similar mechanism with Bitcoin. You move ownership around, and then after a while, you make a settlement to move the real bitcoin, which then combines an arbitrary number of small transactions into one big one.
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A few bits of data that you can lose or have stolen remotely.
The Bitcoin challenge (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I have the bitcoin challenge. Take every cent you have, the retirement accounts, banking accounts, refi the house, and put it all into bitcoin. It's a no brainer, and you can't lose.
And watch how quickly I'll get modded as troll, and no one takes the challenge.
Re:The Bitcoin challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Bitcoin challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you were sane, you'd have cashed out by now. Or if it took nothing to get, you'd ride it until after it crashes. Basically, there's no alternate universe that proves you made X dollars by doing the other thing, so why bother? The only people I've known who've held alt coins told me how much they've made while they were still holding. I've yet to meet a single person who can show me the tens of thousands they made sitting in their bank accounts right now. (Not to say they don't exist, but people also win lotteries, doesn't mean I feel bad for not playing.)
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But if you were sane, you'd have cashed out by now. Or if it took nothing to get, you'd ride it until after it crashes.
More likely cashed out part of it. You don't need to cash out all of it. That's a normal strategy for handling these risky trades.
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But if you were sane, you'd have cashed out by now
Would you also have recommended cashing out at $1000 or $100 ?
Re: The Bitcoin challenge (Score:2)
Yes this is exactly the thing I say. I had many bitcoins once upon a time. I sold them for a few hundred. I think omg what if I had them still, well I wouldnâ(TM)t, for the exact reason I sold them then. I would have sold them at 100, 500, 1000, how on earth could I have not sold them at 10000? As the stat states 97% of them are being infinitely held by people who will never sell them! The rest are speculators...
Seriously (Score:2)
If I bought 100 bitcoins back when they were worth pennies I'd have $1.3 million right now. I could be cashing out $50k a week on the exchanges. But oh no Slashdot said and still says they are worthless...
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Here's the thing though: The naysayers were right.
I know that'll be hard for a lot of people to understand, because they're operating in hindsight. In hindsight, yes, you can say, "I should have bought into bitcoin with everything I had as soon as possible, and then sold out when bitcoin was at its peak." However, that doesn't mean they were wrong at the time to say, "You shouldn't bother with bitcoin. It's nonsense."
It's sort of like... Imagine you're playing blackjack, and you have 20. Some idiot te
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it's hard to understand why they aren't the most wealthy people in the world, and pikers like Buffet need to be schooled by them.
Buffett himself is doing quite well. But the ordinary people who agree with his views are not any wealthier than the ordinary people who invested in bitcoin.
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Buffett himself is doing quite well. But the ordinary people who agree with his views are not any wealthier than the ordinary people who invested in bitcoin.
The ordinary people who are Berkshire shareholders are doing just fine, thanks. I don't know if all of us "agree with his views" but most of us rather appreciate his investing and business performance.
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The ordinary people who are Berkshire shareholders are doing just fine, thanks
Ordinary investors in Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple did a lot better.
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Yeah, you would think with all that financial savvy they wouldn't be concerned about age discrimination and Indians taking their IT jobs.
Re: The Bitcoin challenge (Score:2)
Outside of bubbles, which gains and losses are entirely unpredictable, growth from investments typically do not happen overnight. Which means that a person has to be able to hold onto their job long enough to win big in the stock market. Which is essentially what a 401k plan is.
Bitcoin only has one thing going for it, and that is low and limited supply. In 2020 the supply of Bitcoins is expected to be cut
Inconceivable! (Score:3, Funny)
Crypto currencies are fantastic investments, with their value pegged to the price of Dutch Tulip Bulbs [thefreedictionary.com]...
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You're wrong. Where do you think Etherium, dogecoin, Litecoin, Ripple, etc., etc. came from? Anyone can take the bitcoin app, change a few bytes, and grow unlimited tokens at very low cost. No different than tulips.
" a non-debase-able currency where people control their money instead of a government/banker"
The mining cartels are the new government/ban
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Anyone can take the bitcoin app, change a few bytes, and grow unlimited tokens at very low cost. No different than tulips.
Sure, but the value of Bitcoin is not the the token. It's the network.
The mining cartels are the new government/banker. Transaction fees, collusion to prevent an increase in block size.
The mining cartels were in favor of increasing block size. It's the bitcoin developers and owners that were against it.
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Uh, no. It's the miners who control whether the blockchain forks to support larger blocks (or some other method of more transactions per block) are successful. It's the miners who have kept that from happening.
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I knew we couldn't have a bitcoin story without someone on the spectrum yelling about Tulips. They are not alike.
Tulips... (Score:5, Informative)
Bitcoin is another tulips. Some cryptocurrency will always have value, just as tulips still sell for as much as $10. But they once sold for literally 10x the annual income of a skilled craftsmen.
My personal favorite is the wikipedia's page list of what was exchanged once for a single tulip bulb, which included (among other things) four tun of beer and two hogshead of wine AND a silver cup to drink it (1 hogshead = 79 gallons, 4 hogshead = 1 tun, so clearly a beer lover).
A mania is basically when non-professionals enter the market for speculative purposes, rather than because they want/need the core item.
This is clearly happening with the cryptocurrencies. The only question is, what will their real value end up after the mania has ended.
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By your definition the entire stock system is of no value. I'm sure the S&P 500 "mania" will die down any day now.
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By your definition the entire stock system is of no value.
It's actually of negative value, because its success is predicated upon the destruction of our biosphere — that is after all how companies operate. If you made corporations responsible for their waste tomorrow, the stock market would crash on the same day because most of those entities would be unable to turn a profit while complying, and they would therefore go rapidly out of business.
We all pay, with our health and lifespans, for the maintenance of the corporate beast.
Re: Tulips... (Score:2)
As long as we focus on growing our economy to raise the quality of life for all, and not reducing the livelihood of our fellow man to generate a difference in economic value, our economy will bounce back from becoming sustainable and environmentally friendly. Such requires a long term foc
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1) My entire POST was about how mania does not mean it has no value.
2) I should have clarified that mania is not when a few amateurs enter, but instead when the market is dominated by the amateurs. The stock market is in fact dominated by professionals that look at a lot of information with only a few amateurs chasing the instant get rich. But in a huge market of hundreds of millions, 'a few' = millions. But by far most shares traded are done by machines, then by major institutional investors, with indi
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Some cryptocurrency will always have value, just as tulips still sell for as much as $10.
I'm not so sure about that. When the mania fades, there's nothing to keep it from becoming totally worthless. I think it's entirely possible that, in 20 years, we'll be looking at it as a weird fad, like tulips or beanie babies. However, at least tulips are pretty flowers and beanie babies are stuffed animals, and some use can be made of them. The same can't really be said of a string of essentially random bits.
Now I think it's entirely possible that there will be some form of cryptocurrency in everyda
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You are making a unfounded statement.
1) They are not trading 'string of essentially random bits'. I
2) There is and always has been a real need for MONEY. Money being a means of exchange.
3) There is and always has been a real need for money that is NOT controlled by any government. Hence the original money was metal that the government could not declare worthless because people always needed metal.
Please remember that bitcoin et. al. was not intended to be a huge mania, it was created to fill a real nee
This just in... (Score:2)
Old man yells at cloud
potlatch (Score:2)
Utter misinformation (Score:2)
The fundamental premise of cryptocurrency is nuts (Score:2)
Why should a certain string of digits have a special value because it satisfies some arbitrary mathematical equation, even a fancy one? There in an infinite supply of digit strings and also an infinite supply of equations. The notion of "mining" is that there is some sort of scarcity involved, but infinite is infinite, NOT scarcity.
The fundamental premise of cryptocurrency is fatally flawed. Just a speculative bubble on the theory that someone will pay a higher price in the future.
Of course that's also the
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Why should a certain string of digits have a special value just because it sits on a harddisk platter of a bank, even a fancy one ? There is an infinite supply of digit strings, and also an infinite supply of harddisks. The notion of "printing money" is that there is some sort of scarcity involved, but infinite is infinite, NOT scarcity.
The fundamental premise of fiat money is fatally flawed. Just a speculative bubble on the theory that someone will pay a higher price in the future.
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So have you (and the other responder) invested any real money in cryptocurrency? If so, you're welcome to your gold rush. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I actually think there is still time to profit from the foolishness. However I do NOT think I am smart enough to know when the bubble is going to burst. Once you start gambling, it's just too easy to play one more more hand and put down one more bet.
As regards your "substantive" reply, please tell me what function you think is performed by a bitcoin or any oth
Cryptocurrencies will evolve into something better (Score:2, Informative)
Volatility in trading is a major problem. Classically, gamblers (investors) have creatively attempted to carve out niches that have had devastating impacts on society. For example, the price of grain isn't driven by supply and demand. The price of grain is driven by commodity trading. This means that if the gamblers on the stock markets who actuall
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OK... where to start. A lot of what you said about Bitcoin, is alrightish. Everything you said about the stock market is pretty much dead wrong.
Warren Buffet isn't a regular trader. He is a hybrid between a lender and trader. His funding doesn't come from purchasing the same shares as you or I would. He gets special control, walkout clauses, and schedules. He also has restrictions like not being able to do shareholder control, or having to hold the shares for X time (similar to CEOs). So he might giv
Hard to predict (Score:2)
"97% of all bitcoins are held by 4% of addresses,"
And how is this different from stocks or bonds? An enormous fraction of all wealth is owned by the wealthiest 4%, like Warren Buffet.
I think the staying power and value of bitcoin will be continue to be due to people in nations like South Sudan and Venezuela with high inflation rates and limited access to trading in other currencies.
Solve for Greed. (Score:2)
"97% of all bitcoins are held by 4% of addresses"
Oh, so concentration of wealth is a stability concern with cryptocurrencies? Warren Buffet is one of the top eight people who hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the human population. Didn't seem to stop him from becoming a billionaire, which is a level of wealth concentration that serves nothing more than Bigger Dick syndrome.
All of this doesn't really matter anyway. Obscene Greed will continue to drive automation and AI to replace the concept of human employment. The justification of higher educ
The BitCoin Religion? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure -- did people behave like this when the beanie baby craze was going on in the 90s? Did they react with insults and call you stupid if you tried to point out that it's a bubble? I knew lots of people who were in that bubble, and none of them are rich now -- do YOU know any beanie baby millionaires? Possibly the CEO of Ty...
So Bitcoin is obviously a pure speculation market and has no intrinsic value -- what scares me more is how defensive people get when you say that. Look at the above comments for examples, there are plenty!
My advice to BTC prospectors: Get out now. If you got into BTC early, great -- you should be able to turn that into a ton of spendable/investable cash! "But won't it cause a crash if everyone gets out now?" you ask -- possibly, but first of all it's better to be the cause of the crash by protecting yourself than the victim of the crash by waiting too long. Also, since 97% of BTC are held by a few people, the crash isn't likely unless those 4% start selling off, too...
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>What is it about Bitcoin that makes people throw logic completely out the window?
Greed, willful stupidity, and pretty much the same mental processes that lead to people forming and being loyal to cults.
> Did they react with insults and call you stupid if you tried to point out that it's a bubble?
You don't argue with a Bitcoin nut to save the Bitcoin nut. You argue with a Bitcoin nut to save the next susceptible person from being dragged into the mess.
> I knew lots of people who were in that bubbl
The stable price of bitcoin is.. (Score:2)
$600 per BTC
If you're paying more than that, you're giving your money to some rich dude or some BOFH.
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That's the nature of existence.
You just won the internet.
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Whoa, dude, the universe will end at some point. That's like, deep, dude. (And useless.)
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Why should we listen to Warren Buffett? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, if he's so smart, why ain't he rich?
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Please let that be (/sarcasm). I'm sure it is but, flat Earthers exist so, there you have it.
Re:The guy is a moron. (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm. Whose investment advice should I take, Warren Buffet's or Anonymous Coward's?
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I don't know, that Cheeseburger in Paradise song kind of sucks.
Re: The guy is a moron. (Score:2)
Re: The guy is a moron. (Score:5, Funny)
So that's his father?
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Buffet is notoriously conservative. He refused to invest in data and software for decades. Conservative investors have better long term returns. Doesn't mean that an alternative approach would not have worked though.
Bitcoin was predicted by Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon around 2000, but he assumed it would need to be backed by gold. He as wrong, and in fact, too conservative.
Re:The guy is a moron. (Score:4, Insightful)
That fact that it isn't backed by gold makes bitcoin the worst combination of the gold standard (inflexible and prone to volatility) and a fiat currency (essentially worthless, you're buying on faith alone and that's all you have if it goes south) with the added bonuses of design flaws and easy theft and permanent loss.
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Cryptocurrencies have purpose and the technology will be useful in multiple fields. Bitcoin no longer has purpose or use and is worthless.
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If bitcoin is worthless why can I sell one for nearly $14,000 right now?
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Worth can mean two things: Market value and value to society.
$14K is the market value. TheReaperD was referring to its value to society.
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I mean, he has inso far as he isn't participating. But between you and an insanely rich dude, I pick the insanely rich dude for smarts. I the like "oligarchy dollar rich" euphemism for "actually rich".
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The line "97% of all bitcoins are held by 4% of addresses," is completely uninformed.
And how many of USD are held by how many of owners.?
A great deal of that 97% is bitcoins held on exchanges
or banks.
Hmm, I wonder if Warren Buffett should have an idea about either of these.
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Yeah, but how often do you see new currencies springing up on a daily basis?
Cryptos on the other hand....
Re: bitcoin address is not equal person (Score:2)