Can Someone Explain Crypto
I have always been bearish on crypto, looking for some pushback / counterarguments. also curious to hear if anyone who's more fundamentally inclined is a genuine bull
No intrinsic value: how to value an asset = PV of future cash flow
- Eg. DCF on company, using gold as an industrial input / jewelry —> theres no direct use case of bitcoin that would enable it to produce cash flows in the future; TV = 0
- BTC Gold analogy ("crypto is a 'store of value'") is flawed because 1) Gold has use case in consumer / industrials & 2) 1000s of yr. of precedent
US Reg Risk; seems like a lot of crypto bulls frame it as some sort of protest to monetary policy / US$ / Fed / centralization of power
- If the bulls are right and the $ is a 0, wldnt that completely destroy the US economy & geopolitical positioning? Why wld government be forthcoming to give up monetary policy and international influence?
- This also drives a significant risk in my view, think the government has gone to the furthest extent to protect the position of the $ as a dominant currency, don’t see why that stops with crypto. Trump crypto actions IMO are more populist and his admin doesn’t sincerely view BTC as anything outside of populist protest against centralization (not a real threat to $)
- Finally, if crypto does grow, why won’t US gov. just release their own digital currency? Can just regulate away all competition
1000+ diff. coins, winner takes all; how to choose the correct coin?
- If crypto becomes a real “currency” like it’s supposed to, wld assume there would be one universal currency that everyone uses (w/ the 1000s of others being 0s). How do we know which coin that’s going to be? Why ethereum vs. BTC vs. Solana vs. Fartcoin?
Inflation hedge - can use crypto as an inflation hedge to $
- Isn’t it a better idea to buy a % of a company (stocks). Regardless of how currency evolves ie. whether its $, BTC, Eth, or pencils, 1% of apple is always going to be 1% of apple. Underwrite less “currency” risk
- Same goes for literally any other asset (commods, RE, etc.)
No institutional ownership
- Lots of bulls cite some crypto . com articles or tweets and say look HFs are buying crypto
- From my understanding most of the big market makers have started doing market making on crypto ETFs and the like, this isn’t “holding” the asset per say but doing HFT on spreads / providing liquidity (holding for <seconds?)
- No fundamental investors (to my knowledge) are crypto bulls - lmk if im wrong here
Boomers have been making these same arguments for the last decade while BTC is up like 40,000%. At some point you have to admit you are wrong. Only point I will comment on is your last point. Bill Miller has been bullish on BTC since 2014. He was the main reason I started buying it years ago.
Does the increase in the price imply the guy is wrong?
wrong on what assumptions exactly? every bubble is up like crazy before it bursts. open to a convincing argument but an increase in its price ≠ proof of intrinsic value. Speculation is quite big in crypto
Bump, I'm also trying to wrap my head around the bull case for it, otherwise I'll happily continue believing it's just for degenerate people who spent too much time on the internet.
bump
This is the worst place to ask about it. Everyone on here is just going to cope to justify their poor choices and the fact that they "missed out"
Of course they keep themselves comfortable at night and away from comparisons or whatever because of their "top 1% salary" not knowing there are thousands of people on CT who are a lot dumber and less motivated than them making multiples of the average high-finance bro salary - all the while wearing pajamas or sitting on the beach and "working" a few hours a day max.
Or you can just cope and think what I'm saying isn't true. It really doesn't affect me lol. Enjoy work tomorrow morning guys :)
Haha. Truth.
Crypto in general is just a monetary liquidity dump just like stocks gold and other financial assets are. The more the FED prints and puts into the markets the more it will go up.
There is no bull case for crypto other than it acts as a bulwark against monetary malfeasance rippling into the gen pops beloved CPI. The only reason the US governments finally went pro bitcoin and crypto in 2022-2023 is because it was a useful tool to drain money from the available liquidity that would otherwise cause CPI inflation. By labelling it a commodity and not a security they can paper trade it to manipulate the market in the future to keep the prices down as necessary (like Gold and Silver). It will never be deemed a security or a currency by the US government. The only reason the powers that be have not manipulated it down yet is because its in their benefit to let HODLrs HODL, as them doing so absorbs liquidity that would otherwise cause rampant CPI price increases which would then lead to politicians heads on pikes and the end of the Fed.
Anyone who says its a hedge against CPI inflation has been drinking from a poisoned well. Its the exact opposite. Its value is purely intangable as a tool to soak up monetary liquidity and fiscal malfeasance. Nothing more. Nothing less.
When its usefulness in that regard ends it will crash and burn via paper trading ETF manipulation same as every other threat to the dollar world reserve hedgemony.
Toilet paper has more tangible value.
Before anyone calls me a hater. Ive been in crypto since Bitcoin was a little over $1000, way back when it was first recognized as a currency by Japan.
Bitcoin was created by the US government, uses SHA 256... also created and crackable by the government (especially now with quantum computing) and you can find proof of its conception by the powers that be as far back as 1989 in The Economist's issue on FEDCOIN
I'm retarded so can you please confirm if over the long run GDP growth absorbs all this trapped consumption?
Also can u show us ur rooster and say how much u have in Bitcoin ?
This will be long due to common misconceptions about GDP. First. I usually refrain from focusing on GDP growth by itself as any sort of realistic indicator of future benefit. I could take a shit on the floor in a public bathroom like a basic ape and some other simple chimp would then have to buy cleaning products and hire a cleaner to pick it up and make things sanitary.
Did me aping around shitting on the floor increase GDP... surely there was an immediate benefit to GDP growth.
But is there any real social or economic benefit or value added to the economy related to encouraging everyone to start shitting on the floor to increase GDP? No, the opposite is true.
Am I also saying people should just leave stinking shit lie? No People will get sick and require medication or they will die, leading to less people and thus workers and their labor productivity.
This is why its well known historically that plumbers, proper diet and consistent good exercise save more lives than doctors. This is also the same reason why one could argue easily that preventative fitness and healthy eating and plumbing, while having no immediate effect on GDP growth, has a higher economic multiple than doctors that inevitably leads to greater longterm future GDP growth than doctors. A good environment, proper diet and consistent exercise leads to good health and a healthy workforce is more productive. Good health also encourages that money saved from not going to the doctor to be put to better use in areas with higher economic multiplers. Its all about cost vs benefits over the longterm. The only thing about GDP that really matters is how it relates to a social benefit multiplier and economic multipliers that lead to further "real value added". Theres no value proposal in piles of shit, only value deterioration. But GDP cannot faithfully represent that truth.
Right now America has a high GDP growth. Right up with China. But our economic multipler is very low because our GDP growth has no real value added in its production. In the grand scheme, China is beating us and we are in decline Why? Because China is best known for manufacturing goods (which has a high economic multiplier) meanwhile we are best known for giving old people social security and the poor welfare which they then gamble with and use on prescription drugs and doctor visits. Our GDP may be high but we are pillaging all the nutrients/food and oil and other resources out of our soil (low economic multipler, basically no different than future third world countries like post soviet Russia) which is why its going to be really hard to get out of a budget deficit long enough to lower the national debt without all the things that the President Tangerine Palpatine is doing to curb government spending, waste, and malfeasance in government. Pumping oil is unfortunately very necessary to get manufacturing back here and other friendly democratic nations, far away from our soon to be geopolitical rival China.
Last, I also dont know what you mean by trapped consumption.
There are some really good stuffs you can dig up in YouTube to be your guide. Only experiment with the money you are okay with loosing. Never buy a coin or token with your rent ⚠️
Bitcoin is really the only cryptocurrency that has grown significantly in value over a respectable period of time, and will continue to. Others, like Ethereum, are growing because of their contractual/platforming attributes. Not because they're going to be dominant currencies or stores of value.
The rest of the thousands of cryptocurrencies are just Bitcoin copycats in one way or another. They will all die, aside from maybe a few (SOL, XRP, etc. (which also have defining characterists outside of being a currency, like Ethereum)). So let's stick to Bitcoin here.
Coinage, tender, MoE, money, whatever you want to call it. Any of this stuff ever, throughout history... the ONLY thing that gives it value is mass agreement and recognition of its value. That's it. The only reason gold is valuable is because a long time ago, people liked that it was pretty and heavy and durable. And they all agreed they would pay each other with it, for stuff.
And actually, gold is probably finite in supply. Which I doubt people in Ancient Mesopatomia, or wherever, actually knew. They just knew that it was pretty. But it's a nice bonus.
What
makesoops, sorry, MADE the dollar valuable? Well, nothing. It's cheap paper. BUT, it was backed by gold. It represented a lighter, more convenient version of gold. You could now carry around your monetary assets in your pocket. So objectively speaking, for centuries in the United States, you had people drooling over worthless paper, backed by a worthless rock. But it wasn't worthless at all. Why? Because we all agreed it had worth. That's it. Ok got it? Cool.I'm not gonna go on a tirade about the FED, inflation, printing, and so on. But you can see where this is going. We ran out of gold and kept printing dollars. That's a major no-no. I don't think I have to explain why this is. It should be common sense.
So yes, the dollar has been dying for decades. Actually, let me rephrase that. It's been dead for decades. There is no saving this economy. Prices across the board will continue to go up. The dollar will continue to lose value. And wages will continue to stagnate and/or fall.
Now...
Technology is, by all appearances and accounts, the future. Would anyone argue this? I would love to see us go back to the 90s, but the toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. 9 billion people will not come to some consensus about halting technological progress.
So we have 2 loose facts. But I'll call them facts:
So why would a currency/commodity/store of value (Bitcoin) that is digital and finite in supply, and is being adopted by every major corporation, government, and wealthy family in the world, not succeed?
The US government has created a Strategic Bitcoin Reseve. Nepal is mining Bitcoin in the Himalayas. Blackrock's Bitcoin ETF was the most successful in history. The President of the United States and his family just went public with a Bitcoin Treasury company. Bitcoin's market cap has surpassed that of Saudi Aramco, Meta, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan, and Tesla. And it's about to pass silver. Yes, silver. And this is all in just 15 years.
I will not get into the Bitcoin code, or its halving, or the mining, or whatever else. But it is utterly genius. It's creation was a true Black Swan event. It IS the future. It is limited and its value will continue to increase for that simple reason alone. Everyone has already AGREED UPON ITS VALUE. There's no question about it and there's no going back. Read about it, learn about it, and invest in it. Do not sell it. I promise you'll be very happy in 10 years.
USD is backed by the biggest economy in the world and is the no1 currency used for trade
Euro is backed by the biggest single market and several massive economies.
How is fiat dead?
And if technology is the future, shouldent eth be outperforming btc as its simply a better/ more efficient currency?
No clue why you believe that mentioning dt is in any way positive.
He/his family literally rugpulled several crypto projects lol
Quickly on use case:
Use case would be the corresponding blockchain, right?
A certain percentage of humans are hard wired to get addicted to speculation - or “money for nothing”. This is the cause of all bubbles and speculative fantasies of which crypto is one. It is definitionally a “eyes wide open“ Ponzi scheme.
I'm with you. This forum is probably isn't the best way to get familiar with crypto. Lots of other resources to learn about it.
A lot of assets don’t have cash flows gold, FX, art, collectibles yet markets still price them.
Crypto bulls see BTC as “digital monetary premium,” not a business
What is the intrinsic value of art? Of collectibles? Of historical artifacts?
Oh, I also always subconsciously shorted because I consider it all to be air, and to this day, when I have been trading for more than one year, maybe someday people will understand that buying empty numbers is a bad idea.
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