Can we have a thread about what the hell to do right now?
🗣️ DISCUSSION 💬
First of all, I'm an idiot when it comes to anything financial. I know many of you aren't. What is the safest thing to do with the money (fiat) that we do have right now? Leave it in our local bank? Credit union? Keep it as cash in my sock drawer? Also, the money in my 401k? Switch it over to bonds or something else I don't fully understand? Any thoughts from someone who's been paying better attention to these things than I?
Every currency not backed by a real asset has always failed, and it must always fail. They fail because they are based on faith, on belief. Once faith or belief are shaken, the currency automatically falls. Once there is any reasonable alternative it fails completely.
Bitcoin et al are destined for failure. The moment a real cryptocurrency comes along, one that is backed by real assets, with the infrastructure for exchange between real <--> crypto, it will be adopted. Once it is adopted all others will immediately poof into oblivion, only ever mentioned again in bars with a laugh over beers.
I suggest that will happen as soon as the current standard fiat currencies fail (Federal Reserve note, Euro, Pound, etc.), and people see what money (in the not backed by a real asset sense) really is; an asset transfer vehicle.
Again. Bitcoin IS the asset. dollars were backed by gold was to make them limited to the amount of gold that existed. This prevents inflating the hell out of it. What makes gold valuable? For the most part because its rare and doesnt tarnish. More recently we have found uses for gold in electronics but for thousands of years it was valuable because it was rare and people agreed that it was valuable and liked to think of value in terms of gold. Bitcoin solves all of these issues. Its limited and cant be inflated. There will only ever be a max of 21,000,000 and each can be split Into 100,000,000 satoshis. It doesnt need to be backed to limit its production because it is itself already limited. It is valuable because it is rare (there arent enough bitcoins for every millionaire in the world to own just one) and because people have started to agree that it is. It is a more perfect form of money. Read the bitcoin white paper get educated.
You are missing a few pieces of its value. Gold has been used for adornment for countless millennia because it is beautiful. It being easily malleable or it's thermal or electric properties may provide more recent uses (though it is debatable that it wasn't used for those purposes in the distant past), but it just being used for jewelry can't be downplayed, and everyone who suggests "gold has no intrinsic value" is straight up lying by ignoring that fact. Some of the most ancient artifacts found are gold jewelry. That isn't just because it was rare, but because it had use (value). It has, and was always appreciated for, it's intrinsic beauty (color, lustre, sheen, reflectivity, weight, etc.).
Beauty is a non-trivial quality. A daughter that is beautiful, for example, fetches a much higher value when uniting houses (or kingdoms) than one that is ugly. Far from being "meaningless," beauty is one of humanities most important sought after qualities, and gold has it more than any other metal (by some people's measure, though not by mine).
Regardless, you just named, and thus admitted that gold has intrinsic value. The case I am making is that without that intrinsic value, a currency (intermediary of exchange for barter) must fail. Gold would be a commodity (and indeed it is) without it's use as a currency. Bitcoin, without it's use as a currency, has no use whatsoever.
As shown with gold, "rarity" is insufficient to provide value. It must have intrinsic value. If something has only extrinsic value (value added from the outside) it will cease to have value as soon as it can be replaced with something that has intrinsic value.
And once people stop agreeing it has value, when something comes along with intrinsic value to replace it, it will cease to have any value at all. You are making my case for me.
I have. Why do people assume that because arguments are made against Bitcoin, that means people don't understand it. I understand it perfectly BECAUSE I have studied the issue. We are making the same case, except I am showing you the flaws in believing your stated advantages are sufficient. They are insufficient because the moment something that fulfills the same advantages as bitcoin comes along that also has intrinsic value, it will be tossed aside like the red-headed stepchild that it is.
You dont get it. You will eventually. I hope you have at least some Bitcoin in your portfolio. I hope everyone does.
If I don't get it, enlighten me. I'm fairly certain I can address anything you have to say. I have written a great deal about this and studied it extensively.