You must log in or register to comment.
Once, I almost bought four whole bitcoins.
But then I thought “Man, $100 is a lot of money.”
It may not help much, but remember that it was the rational decision at the time. There is really no reason (other than hype) for the value of Bitcoin to move the way it does.
If you don’t play the lottery and the numbers that you would have picked win big, then not playing the lottery was still the rational thing to do at the time, because the chances of winning are so astronomically slim.
I could have gotten $10k if I held doge coin. But, if I had gotten lucky, I would have immediately made 3 more stupid financial decisions that would have canceled out my gains.
Imagine if everyone who played the lottery wound up richer, at most, 2 years later. Imagine this kept happening for nearly 20 years while everyone kept saying playing the lottery was stupid and you could never win. Oh, but I’m sure THIS TIME the people saying that are right; THIS TIME it’ll be different and THIS TIME you’d really have to be a fool to buy any. Just like all the LAST TIMES, right?
This comic came out in 2017. Name a better investment that you could have made at that time.
EDIT: Lol, lots of people upset that they didn’t buy in 2017. Too bad, so sad. Everyone will buy Bitcoin at the price they deserve.
How many people lost fortunes since then? Was it a net positive?
If they lost their fortunes through Bitcoin, that means they sold their Bitcoin for less than they bought it, that’s literally the only way they could have lost money. And they would have had to have held it for a fairly short time for that to happen given the historical price of Bitcoin.
If I pull all the money out of my 401k early and have to pay enough of a penalty that I lose money, does that mean 401k’s are a scam? Other than the obvious part about them shifting the retirement burden onto individuals and killing pensions, of course.
That’s not true. People have been robbed of their cryptocurrencies or lost access to a hard drive / wallet with the necessary information.
These aren’t exactly analogous to other dangers with other valuable things, but quite similar.
How many people lost fortunes in the 2000 crash? What about the 2008 crash?
Market go up, market go down. Bitcoin go up, Bitcoin go down. You don’t have to believe in it, it’ll happen.
A whole lot less than the ones using crypto.
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
The only thing you can be sure will happen is that you will get scammed if you stay too long.
Ah yes, because Bitcoin and all crypto are totally the same thing. If people want to lose money on shit coins, they’re free to do so. They can regret not keeping it in just Bitcoin later.
The website referenced is talking about hacks and exploits which the companies should be held accountable for and will in most cases reimburse those that have taken the loss unless stated otherwise and in that case it’s idiots taking the losses because you should not be investing yourself with something you’re not educated on. I’ve been around crypto for a while now and acting like exploits for the stock market never existed is wild. Relative to life, the Bitcoin market has been around for a shorter period of time and will continue to be around because its inception is that unique. Also I’m not stating the whole crypto economy is wonderful; just bitcoin.
It’s not investments, it’s gambling
There is really no reason (other than hype) for the value of Bitcoin to move the way it does.
Sure there is. It is a limited resource which can be exchanged for other things of value (goods, services, currency).
A limited resource? You mean like beanie babies?
TY can’t make more Beanie Babies? You sure about that?
Well, if it is not a limited resource, why don’t you make a few and cash out?
Let me know how that goes 👍
Despite it being limited, you can still make a few and cash out.
Do you even know what the topic of the conversation is?
There’s no need to be condescending. Which part is unclear?
How do you make them?
By mining!
It is a limited resource
Bad joke
Your Mom is too. Yet I’m still seeing her for free
(BTW, you’re just wrong. If something being a limited resource that can be exchanged for services and goods means it is unstable, why aren’t we seeing that with Euros? Dollars? HUF? insert currency here?
which can be exchanged for other things of value
…yet if we look at the triangle of investment, it neither has stability, nor has it got good liquidity, leaving only profitability. And since the job of a currency is being stable and liquidible, it fails at those completely.
Dollars and Euros and other currencies are not a limited resource, nor are they based off of any kind of limited resource. They literally just print more whenever they want.
There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. There can never be more than that. Of that 21mil, 19.8 million have been mined. Of those mined, it is estimated that 2-4 million coins are lost. More can not be created, more can not be found in an asteroid, more can not be wished into existence. It is a limited resource.
That doesn’t help with the buying things part though.
Why would anyone buy anything with it when tomorrow they could have bought ten of the thing they bought today?
Why would anyone buy anything with it when tomorrow they could have bought ten of the thing they bought today?
Because people need things and to get them they have to buy them?
They’d be insane or desperate in extremis to use bitcoin though, given the volatility of the “currency”.
Dollars and Euros and other currencies are not a limited resource, nor are they based off of any kind of limited resource.
They are limited by an authority which you can trust will not try to kill it off. So I kinda see it as more of a feature than a bug.
Also, dosent answer all the other arguments I just posted
I don’t trust the Trump administration to not try and kill off the dollar. Bitcoin exists because issuers couldn’t be trusted during the Great Recession.
They are limited by an authority which you can trust will not try to kill it off.
So they’re artificially limited, so long as that trust exists.
where can you go and buy a burger and a sodie pop with Bitcoin?
On Yelp you can search for burgers and check the “accepts cryptocurrency” filter.
Where can you do the same with gold?
Gold is a physical good with intrinsic value and real uses beyond it being valuable.
ETA - gold is also generally bought as an investment (or jewellery/decorative purposes, or for industrial use), not for use as a currency.
What intrinsic value is that supposed to be? Who talks about using Bitcoin as a currency?
Just about everywhere
God, I’d love to watch you attempt to buy a Big Mac with gold nuggets.
Have you ever heard of anyone using bitcoin for anything other than speculation? I haven’t, and I often spend time in those circles. If you send btc you have to pay a lot on transaction fees
Lemmy needs a “living on bitcoin” community like Reddit had.
Have you ever heard of anyone using bitcoin for anything other than speculation?
Yup.
Cool
Have you heard of anyone using any financial instruments for anything other than speculation?
I mean, you literally have to go through tons of warnings and accept various things when opening trading account, all of which basically inform you that there are no guarantees for anything and that majority of people lose money in margin trading.
You don’t spend any time in any circles, you are talking out of your ass, you could right now send few billion worth of BTC for less than a dollar. Or you could do it for 5 bucks, just to be absolutely sure. But you wouldn’t know that since you are unlikely to be a human.
Stupid AI bots rehashing old shit they were trained on, from years ago. Sigh.
Just say that everyone who disagrees is a bot that way You can never be wrong.
I and most of the world literally use cash and banking everyday for gas and groceries. Literally not speculation. If you mean trading stocks, then I 100% agree. But they are made to be speculative, they don’t pretend to be something else (which I absolutely hate)
I’m not talking out of my ass. I’ve literally triede every crypto that has caught my eye. Including btc. However, I like self custody, and in the case of btc, just moving from binance to self custody was really expensive and took forever. Go to nostr, and you will see thousands of people using lightning just to avoid paying the huge fees. However using lightning for like 10 USD (which is what I would be willing to try) is not worth it since you have to do a lot of transactions and pay a lot of fees.
Just keep telling yourself that everyone who disagrees with you is a bot and treating bitcoin as a core part of you personality if it makes you feel smart
You should move some more goalposts and change some more topics.
I responded to your initial post which very clearly talked about very specific things and now you decided to talk about completely unrelated nonsense. Just stop.
It’s ok to be wrong about something and learn/improve.
It’s bad to just keep talking nonsense.
But hey, you do you. Not my problem.
As long as the transaction fees are less than the value you’re transferring, there’s still value left to exchange. This is part of what drives the price.
Whether people do use it beyond speculation is not relevant. Another part of its value is that you can use it beyond speculation.
That is the thing. The person you replied to didn’t say “bitcoin can only be used for speculation” they said “there is no reason for the value to move as it does (beyond speculation)”. which means that it IS relevant. Otherwise you are saying both " yes there are other reasons" and “it’s not relevant if there are other reasons”
No, they said
There is really no reason (other than hype) for the value of Bitcoin to move the way it does.
Which I responded to appropriately. There are other reasons.
In my previous response to you, I said
Whether people do use it beyond speculation is not relevant. Another part of its value is that you can use it beyond speculation.
I didn’t say that speculation wasn’t relevant. I said that whether people use it beyond speculation isn’t relevant. It remains true that it can be exchanged for other things of value. As a counter-example, it turns out that NFTs attached to random JPGs are pure speculation, mainly because they are not a limited resource, and because the things they are attached to are also not a limited resource. If holding an NFT represented ownership of something which was a limited resource - like a piece of real estate, or a car, or a share of a business - then such an NFT would have value. That would require a common public agreement on such a system, which does not currently exist, but it’s not impossible.
Now, if we’re talking about BTC specifically, its use case outside being a store of value is now pretty limited, mainly because of the way it was designed. Other coins and tokens have greater use cases, but there hasn’t really been a “breakout” moment for anything yet.
ENIAC was completed in 1945, and it took many decades for digital computers to become ubiquitous. Now we take them for granted. Someone, at some point, will have a useful practical application for blockchain.
I upgraded my PC with my Bitcoin. Making $800 off a $20 investment was a great deal IMO.
I wish I’d forgotten to check on it…
My brother decided that Bitcoin was likely to steadily increase in value (in the long term) and spent about a thousand bucks to buy three of 'em. Then he got hit with some surprise money trouble and had to liquidate, losing about a third of his investment.
He was not amused when BTC became an investment hype.
I discovered I sold my old PC with the HDD with mined BTC when compusa announced you could buy components with bitcoins, but tbh I think I would have used all of them when their value was still very low
2017-12-11: $16936/BTC
2025-06-20: $103043/BTC
If it was worth one thought at the last panel, then it’s worth six thoughts today.
I’m not a fan of participating in money laundering schemes
Just saying that, by far, the most common ways to launder money have nothing to do with btc. It can be taken advantage of by criminals just like usd or any currency. Go to a casino, exchange usd for chips, cash out chips…laundered. Apparently it’s very easy no matter what currency you want to use so not liking btc is fine but it can’t be because is laundering.
“While casinos and junkets have for years served as vehicles for regional underground banking and money laundering, the proliferation of … underregulated cryptocurrency exchanges has changed the game, allowing for faster anonymized movement of funds"
From a 2024 UN report on money-laundering in casinos in South East Asia
Money laundering with casinos and with crypto aren’t necessarily separate issues, particularly with the rise of online and digital gambling.
Casinos can be and often are fined if regulators suspect money laundering - the majority have systems in place to crack down on it. Crypto is part of this arms race between casinos and criminals.
Yes, crypto is rising to the level of corruption of the usd but isn’t there yet. One big difference, you can print more usd(and do all the time at a heafty rate). You can’t print more btc. Ever.
This guy launders money
To be fair, USD is used for things that aren’t crimes as well. Bitcoin has no utilities other than crime and speculation
So email hosting, VPN, domain names, supporting content creators, buying PC parts – are these crimes?
Those things can be used for stuff other than crimes. Holding Bitcoin itself isn’t a crime, but there’s not really any use cases for it outside of crime.
there’s not really any use cases for it outside of crime
I just listed 5…
You oppose the US dollar backed global banking cartel?
I’m sure that Bitcoin is eventually going to crash back down to 0, but it might take anywhere from a decade to 50 years.
I had a few bitcoins back in the day, I remember trying to mine some, but I think someone just gave a bunch.
Either way, I long ago wiped the disks that they were on and I know for sure I would have sold them as soon as they would have been worth a nice pizza or similar anyway.
There is no way I would have believed it would ever become valuable, let alone this insane.
Post this on Nostr and wait for the backlash.
Some people understand bitcoin, others draw cartoons. 👍
Well yeah it’s hard to draw while you’re jerking yourself off
