2 minutes ago, dj230 said:

Just because something is a Ponzi doesn't mean you can't make money on the way up, that's how ponzi's work

 

Curious education background in tech, school/degrees?

 

Learning how to not fall for typical gambling mentality helps a lot with trading, it really isn't that hard to make profits in the stock market if you understand how to calculate risk / reward. A lot of my profits were just from small trades adding up and compounding. 2-5% each trade, sometimes 10-20% a trade if I got lucky, I sell all my loses quickly, don't have much losing trades and if I do they're all miniscule. Unfortunately most people don't, they just buy and hold all the way down. 

 

I was in high school in 2012, was suggested to buy some from a close friend, was too skeptical for me even though I had a decent amount saved by then. I make my calculations based off risk/reward, and bitcoin then and now has too much risk for the reward. Congrats on buying it early on, will see if the Ponzi can continue though. I'm surprised you're still working with such a big win on bitcoin buying at 2013, you must have made tens of millions? I myself have already quit work, I just trade & invest for income now. 

I have no degrees.  I have a high school education that I completed in 1993. Why wouldn't I continue to work?  I enjoy tech and I enjoy consulting and getting paid for what I've spent years learning and building.  

 

How do you figure on tens of millions off of a handful of BTC at 14K?  

 

And for the record...I didn't "buy" bitcoin early.  I mined it.  Do you know what ASIC miners are?

You're making money trading and investing right now?  Really?  Right before a recession?  Ok, bro.  Buddha bless

29 minutes ago, happydreamer said:

I have no degrees.  I have a high school education that I completed in 1993. Why wouldn't I continue to work?  I enjoy tech and I enjoy consulting and getting paid for what I've spent years learning and building.  

 

How do you figure on tens of millions off of a handful of BTC at 14K?  

 

And for the record...I didn't "buy" bitcoin early.  I mined it.  Do you know what ASIC miners are?

You're making money trading and investing right now?  Really?  Right before a recession?  Ok, bro.  Buddha bless

I figured you invested some money into it. 

 

If you know how to calculate risk/reward, theres no reason you can't make money trading/investing in any market, I have been trading less and decreasing risk, but am still up over 10% on the year. Recessions don't happen overnight, lots of time to make money now, as it will be much harder if a recession actually comes. 

 

Fair enough, best of luck to you as well. For the record, my opinion is the crypto currencies now are a Ponzi, I do believe blockchain technology will be adopted, but I don't believe any crypto right now is going to be the world crypto currency, thus they'll all deflate. 

 

1 hour ago, clivebaxter said:

If it was that good people would not be talking it up all the time, sending you emails or messages on social media recommending it and telling you how much they made.

I couldn't agree more, its even worse if you are "in" crypto because then you get to listen to all the shillers on YouTube and Twitter, et al. They love to a) shill the coins they own b) spend 30 minutes telling you what a chart is depicting and then conclude with "it could go up or down from this point on", c) telling you it is going ballistic from tomorrow and the next day putting out a video or post were they say "see we told you it would go down", d) my pet peeve is the one who says his recommendations are 100 for 100 so far but doesn't mention the other 100 he has not closed because they tanked e) telling you they don't give financial advice but "edutainment" and then proceed to give you quasi financial advice for 20 minutes f) wont tell you ADA is toast because they are running a staking pool in ADA and want you to stake through them.

 

And I am "in" crypto. Problem is such a vibrant young but disruptive concept attracts shillers and sharks and my per hate "influencers" by the bucket load and the reasonable ones are drowned out. There are a quite a few reasonable ones in this thread.

 

And don't get me started on sheitcoins!

56 minutes ago, dj230 said:

Just because something is a Ponzi doesn't mean you can't make money on the way up, that's how ponzi's work

 

Curious education background in tech, school/degrees?

 

Learning how to not fall for typical gambling mentality helps a lot with trading, it really isn't that hard to make profits in the stock market if you understand how to calculate risk / reward. A lot of my profits were just from small trades adding up and compounding. 2-5% each trade, sometimes 10-20% a trade if I got lucky, I sell all my loses quickly, don't have much losing trades and if I do they're all miniscule. Unfortunately most people don't, they just buy and hold all the way down. 

 

I was in high school in 2012, was suggested to buy some from a close friend, was too skeptical for me even though I had a decent amount saved by then. I make my calculations based off risk/reward, and bitcoin then and now has too much risk for the reward. Congrats on buying it early on, will see if the Ponzi can continue though. I'm surprised you're still working with such a big win on bitcoin buying at 2013, you must have made tens of millions? I myself have already quit work, I just trade & invest for income now. 

 

It's down near 50% from all time highs, gambler/bagholder mentality, lots of people saying the same about GameStop's stock and AMC stock, "it'll come back one day" 

 

 

It is not clear how you have been smart enough to calculate the risk/ reward at any stage of Bitcoin's upward trajectory. 

 

The downside is limited to the size of the investment in BTC. The upside is incalculable; in theory, it is infinity (which is why bitcoiners talk about the Moon).

 

Please enlighten us on your methodology to calculate the risk/ reward (I prefer to see it as reward/risk), and which has kept you out of this "Ponzi" scheme.

 

As an aside, do you understand what a fool you are making of yourself by calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme.  Unlike a Ponzi, Bitcoin cannot be inflated; there is a mathematically finite amount of it. Then there are the mining adjustments, and the halvings to take into account. It simply speaks to your lack of understanding, lack of research in this crypto in particular.

1 hour ago, Walker88 said:

You have credit risk, but don't know where it is, and have zero recourse if you get stiffed.

 

My experience (as a professional hedge fund manager) is that folks who lose the most are those who had no clue where their risk was, nor its level.

 

There is no free lunch. Earning interest means someone is borrowing. The borrower can default, and is likely to do so if price fluctuates greatly, so a lender's crypto comes with good news and bad news:

 

The good news is that borrowers are likely to default if a coin rises considerably, which means the lender's paper value must have gone up. The bad news is the borrower defaulted, so the lender's crypto is gone.  Oh, the exchange is liable?  How well capitalized is the exchange?  (I bet those who champion crypto because govt regulation isn't there might suddenly wish some sort of regulation was there if borrowers default or exchanges get wiped out. If the exchange is a bank, there is little chance the govt is going to bail out a bank who got into trouble by dealing in crypto).

 

The weak link is always the exchanges. Back in 1980, the gold exchanges were on the verge of collapse due to the Hunts/Saudis trying to corner gold/silver. Henry Jarecki of Mocatta stepped in and declared "liquidation only". When you are not the one making the rules, you are the one with risk.

 

Of course, maybe 'Satoshi et al' have conjured virtual free lunches.

This is really good input and I respect your position on it.  I see where you're coming from and the points you make about interest are spot on.  I'm comfortable with the level of risk associated at this point as the interest is really kinda free money.  On other credit cards I'd be collecting airline miles or points but since no one is traveling now thats useless to me and this is a better value given the fact that I use the card as my daily spend.  Although this being said...I was also the guy who was comfortable with the risks associated with bungee jumping and skydiving while I lived in Falang-land and I also was comfortable with the risks associated with holding a gold / silver IRA from 2008-2015. I used to bet on sports, and I quit a 6 figure corporate job to travel professionally as a fashion photographer in 2015.   So in the big picture collecting interest on a crypto credit card is the least of what I've risked in life.

 

To be transparent my interest earning account is through a company I've done pretty extensive research on.  One of their investors is Fidelity and their custodian is Gemini Trust who's regulated by New York Dept of Finance.  I'm actually a proponent of crypto regulation.  I want to see it widely used and developed.  Technology is a passion of mine and to me crypto, the tech behind it, and the possibilities of it are really exciting.  

 

Thanks for the input, I really do appreciate it.  I always enjoy chatting with the guys who were lifers in the money game.  They have the best stories.  The world was such a different place then, but some things remain the same.

 

Take Care Walker ????

 

 

25 minutes ago, allanos said:

It is not clear how you have been smart enough to calculate the risk/ reward at any stage of Bitcoin's upward trajectory. 

 

The downside is limited to the size of the investment in BTC. The upside is incalculable; in theory, it is infinity (which is why bitcoiners talk about the Moon).

 

Please enlighten us on your methodology to calculate the risk/ reward (I prefer to see it as reward/risk), and which has kept you out of this "Ponzi" scheme.

 

As an aside, do you understand what a fool you are making of yourself by calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme.  Unlike a Ponzi, Bitcoin cannot be inflated; there is a mathematically finite amount of it. Then there are the mining adjustments, and the halvings to take into account. It simply speaks to your lack of understanding, lack of research in this crypto in particular.

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or have no concept of risk. You should spend all your money on lottery tickets, with your theory the risk is low. But if you actually knew how to calculate risk you'd factor in probability, which shows more people lose money buying lottery tickets than they make, if that wasn't the case, everyone would just buy lottery tickets and be rich. 

 

That's not how a Ponzi scheme works, you don't inflate anything in a Ponzi, it's when you're promised future returns paid by future investors. The only way you make money on Bitcoin or any other crypto is when another fool buys it for more than you paid for, once the Ponzi falls apart, the value is worth nothing. I get why crypto holders are pumping it constantly, because once the hype dies, they lose everything.

You might as well have purchased USD, Thai Baht, or Euro's.  The difference being that those currencies are backed by sovereign nations.  Currency crypto or otherwise produces nothing.  You are strictly making a bet on what is known as the "bigger fool theory"  That is no matter how much you pay for the crypto currency there will always be a bigger fool that will pay more.  The last time that played out in huge fashion was in the 1980's with the dot.com boom then bust.  

I am sure a lot of people have purchased crypto and it now is selling for substantially more than they paid for it.  The same was true for a substantial portion of the dot.com stocks until the crash. 

There is an old adage in the investment business.  Trees don't grow to the sky.  The bitcoin rage is fueled not by any investment fundamentals.  It is going up, strictly because people see it rising in price.  It may turn out to be a great investment for some people but personally I prefer to have an "investment" in a company that makes a tangible product, and generates income.  

Perhaps it would be well worth reading about "investing" in Tulip Bulbs that exploded in value and how that turned out. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
 

52 minutes ago, Longwood50 said:

You might as well have purchased USD, Thai Baht, or Euro's.  The difference being that those currencies are backed by sovereign nations.  Currency crypto or otherwise produces nothing.  You are strictly making a bet on what is known as the "bigger fool theory"  That is no matter how much you pay for the crypto currency there will always be a bigger fool that will pay more.  The last time that played out in huge fashion was in the 1980's with the dot.com boom then bust.  

I am sure a lot of people have purchased crypto and it now is selling for substantially more than they paid for it.  The same was true for a substantial portion of the dot.com stocks until the crash. 

There is an old adage in the investment business.  Trees don't grow to the sky.  The bitcoin rage is fueled not by any investment fundamentals.  It is going up, strictly because people see it rising in price.  It may turn out to be a great investment for some people but personally I prefer to have an "investment" in a company that makes a tangible product, and generates income.  

Perhaps it would be well worth reading about "investing" in Tulip Bulbs that exploded in value and how that turned out. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
 

You're about 10 years early with the dot com boom sir.  The internet didn't become widespread enough for a boom until the mid 90s.  

 

Bubbles happen with everything, right after dot com popped we had good ol real estate hot on its tail.  "You're gonna get priced out , you gotta get in now."  Thanks 2008 for fixing that for everyone.  I think the crypto bubble popped already.  The rates at which it was growing last year had all the signs of a bubble.  It's in a consolidation phase now which can go either way although I do believe that with the higher regulations surrounding it you will see less market fluctuation and more stabilization.  People who bought in at 60k may not see gains for a long time if ever.  However to think that it's going to lose it's entire value because you don't understand blockchain and the intrinsic value of cryptocurrency and it's ecosystem is just naive.  

 

Just like trees, BTC doesn't grow in the sky...it's generated by converting energy (read as oil) into hashing power of which BTC is a by-product.  

So to your point of investing in a company that makes a tangible product, it may be worth researching who is manufacturing the processors and the energy supplies that the mining facilities use.  Keyword...ConocoPhillips.  You're welcome.

2 minutes ago, happydreamer said:

You're about 10 years early with the dot com boom sir

You are correct.  typo.  There are many ways to make money.  You can go to Las Vegas and bet on red vs black at the roulette wheel also.  I have to admit to not being an expert in crypto currency.  However my years in the investment business always taught me the value of an investment was a multiple of a businesses expected profits.  An earning multiple.  Cryto is really a commodity but unlike a true commodity such as oil, soybeans, orange juice etc it really doesn't exist.  

Value is determined by "perception"  When people perceive something has value they price it accordingly.  Perhaps I am naïve but the only way cryto appreciates in value is because a new purchaser is willing to pay more for it than the person who already owns it.  It can not generate income.  Contrast that to Apple who makes products and sells services.  Apple sales and profits can increase which in turn makes the owning the company more desirable to own and hence valuable. Perhaps there will be many who make vast fortunes in crypto currency.  I personally don't like investing where the only avenue for making a gain is someone who is a bigger fool than I am for buying the intangible in the first place.  

1 hour ago, Longwood50 said:

I have to admit to not being an expert in crypto currency. 

Nothing wrong with not being an expert. I'd say, respectfully, that you know nothing about it. 

Some of the authors here have a misconception about what is a Ponzi scheme, and apply it, in their deluded minds, to Bitcoin. A true Ponzi scheme operates on the "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" principle, once a number of Peters are snagged into a scheme, so Paul gets paid out his investment, with interest. Bitcoin cannot, and does not, possibly work on such a tenuous foundation.

 

The components which make up what we know as Bitcoin, a tier-1 blockchain product, have a true, albeit non-tangible value. Those who understand that, together with the power behind the Metcalfe's Law principle of the value of a network, are very aware that Bitcoin is a valuable "commodity".

 

Bitcoin is far outstripping the adoption metrics of the internet in its first twelve years or so, by some 60-80%. It's not going away.

 

As to the early days of tech companies, I was shot down when I said that in Amazon's early days its stock value plummeted by 80%. Bitcoin can be almost as volatile. Both Amazon and Bitcoin are still around. Over 105 million people around the world have adopted Bitcoin at this point; it is expected there will be over one billion by 2025.  This will be the monetary network described by Metcalfe's Law. Try to put a value on one Bitcoin, then, when the number of Bitcoin ever to be produced will only be 21 million.

 

Incidentally, if all the millionaires in the world tried to buy one bitcoin, NOW, they would not be able to. They might be lucky enough to buy one-half a bitcoin.

1 hour ago, Longwood50 said:

You are correct.  typo.  There are many ways to make money.  You can go to Las Vegas and bet on red vs black at the roulette wheel also.  I have to admit to not being an expert in crypto currency.  However my years in the investment business always taught me the value of an investment was a multiple of a businesses expected profits.  An earning multiple.  Cryto is really a commodity but unlike a true commodity such as oil, soybeans, orange juice etc it really doesn't exist.  

Value is determined by "perception"  When people perceive something has value they price it accordingly.  Perhaps I am naïve but the only way cryto appreciates in value is because a new purchaser is willing to pay more for it than the person who already owns it.  It can not generate income.  Contrast that to Apple who makes products and sells services.  Apple sales and profits can increase which in turn makes the owning the company more desirable to own and hence valuable. Perhaps there will be many who make vast fortunes in crypto currency.  I personally don't like investing where the only avenue for making a gain is someone who is a bigger fool than I am for buying the intangible in the first place.  

Will you change your thesis when Apple buys Bitcoin for its Treasury? (It's gonna happen)!

On 2/15/2022 at 3:16 AM, Don Chance said:

With any investment there is a chance you could lose it all.

Hardly, in stable growth and value stocks and in real estate you don't lose everything. But it takes time. I am a firm believer in stocks and real estate. Though i entered real estate in late stage of my life. And in the USA, real estate is like almost cash. 

14 hours ago, Pravda said:

Time to back up the truck.

 

No guts no glory!!!!

You must of missed all the bitcoin bulltrap articles I was reading just prior to your purchase date.

13 hours ago, BritManToo said:

approx Vs circa ......... only 1 letter in it!

Naa...Circa is not an abbreviation.

So down circa $17,700 (plus fees) as of today.

The house I am sitting in right now cost me about half that amount.

 

 

2 hours ago, Longwood50 said:

You are correct.  typo.  There are many ways to make money.  You can go to Las Vegas and bet on red vs black at the roulette wheel also.  I have to admit to not being an expert in crypto currency.  However my years in the investment business always taught me the value of an investment was a multiple of a businesses expected profits.  An earning multiple.  Cryto is really a commodity but unlike a true commodity such as oil, soybeans, orange juice etc it really doesn't exist.  

Value is determined by "perception"  When people perceive something has value they price it accordingly.  Perhaps I am naïve but the only way cryto appreciates in value is because a new purchaser is willing to pay more for it than the person who already owns it.  It can not generate income.  Contrast that to Apple who makes products and sells services.  Apple sales and profits can increase which in turn makes the owning the company more desirable to own and hence valuable. Perhaps there will be many who make vast fortunes in crypto currency.  I personally don't like investing where the only avenue for making a gain is someone who is a bigger fool than I am for buying the intangible in the first place.  

Appreciate your feedback and your position on the topic.  You're right in that Crypto is abstract.  A lot of things dealing with complex technology are like that.  I wish I had a bitcoin for every time I tried to explain The Cloud to folks with a limited technical background.  It goes like this....

 

"Where are my files at if they're not on my computer?"  

They're in the cloud.

"Where's the cloud?"

The cloud isn't a thing you can see. Well it is a thing...but you can't really see it....you just see your files.

"So they ARE on my computer?"

No, you use your computer to access your allocated space on the cloud.

"So, why can't I see the cloud if it's a thing?"

 

And this goes on for a very long time.  It's abstract.  I get it.  And it's difficult to grasp if you're not somewhat of a techy person.

 

Thats what explaining crypto is like to those with a limited understanding of the technology that surrounds it .  Im not trying to insult you either....please excuse me if it sounds like that.  

 

Crypto...as a broad sweeping term encompasses an entire gamut, some of which is used as currency, some of which is used as fuel for projects and development some of which is used as plain ol digital currency.  Stable coins are this, 1:1 digital assets that a re equal in value to a USD.

 

Crypto does make money but not in a conventional understanding.  Take ETH for example.  ETH (Ethereum) is a platform of decentralized applications.  So think of an app, that runs on a computer or a phone or thats part of a network of other apps that validate transactions across it's network.  This network full of apps has the intrinsic value of the apps and services that run on it.  ETH is just a reward thats given to components that participate on that network to validate the transactions.  So in that sense...the value is in the network itself. Note that this is a stark contrast to Bitcoin which is solely meant to be used as currency.  Here's a quick read that goes a bit into some of the stuff that I don't want to clutter my response with

 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum.asp

 

To to speak to your point about perceived value...there's a finite number of bitcoins that can be produced.  It's not like paper money that can be printed by institutions when there's the perception that there's not enough.  Wanna talk about inflated value?  I think they actually named it...thats right......Inflation 

 

Your position is well founded and is a good guiding principle for those wishing to understand investing at it's very core.  However, investing in crypto is a lot more than the FOMO effect. The tangible value is the value of the projects it fuels, supports, computes and executes.  Within the next year or so you will certainly see the large cap tech giants adding their 2 bits to the blockchain with tokenized applications.  Facebook's Meta is designed based on this.  Blockchain is here to stay...and crypto is just the tip of the iceberg

 

Cheers

 

 

 

You would be good for the long run regardless but why buy the entire stack at once? Or do you plan to still add another 100K on a lower potential dip? Wether crypto becomes bigger than today or not, Bitcoin is very limited and you are right about the fact it would be bought up right away if do hitting a super low in between, which would still cause a rebound. 100K per bitcoin is nothing. 

People seem to forget how few there really are, for the global population. I was personally in it already back in 2016-2017, people keep talking garbage, yet here we are.

Then it went down from the last high, and people already forgot about the 3500% returns in the past 5 years alone.. Or the fact the majority bought in at around 5-15K value, and is still up in huge returns if it drops to 20-25K again, which would only be very briefly.

 

I guess many people just can't understand it, fear and not buy + then hate on it. They rather like to get played by the general financial markets, which are much more prone to a collapse at this stage.

 

It is more likely for gold to be thrown to the garbage, aside of its generic use, than BTC is.

13 hours ago, Neeranam said:

Rubbish, I'm about to pay for a flight to Bangkok using Bitcoin. 

Thereis a real estate company in Thailand that accepts Bitcoin. 

I believe Tesla accepted bitcoin, or maybe it is Dogecoin now. 

I was going to pay for my Mazda with BTC, but they would have charged me 3% for that. It was just as easy to sell BTC on Bitkub with the cash in my KTB bank account in 2 seconds. 

How come they say the transaction time is up to 20 minutes??

 

CNN: How cryptocurrencies could trigger a financial crisis.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html

29 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

How come they say the transaction time is up to 20 minutes??

Different blockchains work at different speeds, the older ones are still slowest (to be honest even the fastest ones are not fast enough to scale to what the Market will need yet) and theres a lot of development/programming involved in trying to scale transactions to be faster and cheaper and to be able to scale to massive throughputs - this is the holy grail for many chains and L2 addons. 

 

If you are buying/selling bitcoin through an exchange though it happens almost instantaneously (normally) as you are just using the exchange pool. If you want to send from an exchange to your wallet or another company you have the time it takes the validators to validate the transaction and then some chains are slower than others.

 

I did a move the other day and it took about 2 minutes. Still lightening fast compared to my fiat banking system though the transferring bank to bank..

 

 

11 hours ago, Adumbration said:

So down circa $17,700 (plus fees) as of today.

The house I am sitting in right now cost me about half that amount.

 

 

 

I suggest you buy a calculator. 

 

 

And the house doesn't belong to you. At least my crypto wallet is mine.

3 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

How come they say the transaction time is up to 20 minutes??

 

CNN: How cryptocurrencies could trigger a financial crisis.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html

Bitcoin isn't meant to be used for fast transactions all the time. That aside, you could have Bitcoin within for example TRON, making a transaction speed and cost super fast and low. I can buy from EURO in Europe and transfer to TH + sell + withdraw in cash in less than 10 minutes.

 

If I wanted to, I could do that with up to 3M baht per time easily. But anyway, these are just examples and details, you need to study the material yourself.

 

The fun of CNN coming up with something to get more views lol, just like JP Morgan said it was a scam while they were buying via Scandanavian banks in 2016-2017 on a large scale...

21 hours ago, itsari said:

Inflation invites higher interest rates , that you can not ignore . 

Higher interest paid to investors could well change many ways people invest . 

There is no interest paid for money in any crypto currency account .

 

Lots of options to earn solid interest on crypto, DYOR.

12 hours ago, happydreamer said:

ou're right in that Crypto is abstract

You are correct, it is abstract and no I don't have a in depth understanding of it.  However value comes from the ability of an investment to generate income.  The theoretical value of a stock is a multiple of its "projected income".  The faster the company is anticipated to grow the more its stock price rises in value. 

I fail to see of Crypto owns or produces anything.  If I own a crypto currency I certainly don't own a fractional percentage of any income producing assets.  If that is true, its rise in value is strictly a function of having more buyers who want it than those who want to sell it. That is the greater fool theory. 

Perhaps but I worked for Merrill Lynch during he heyday of the dot.com bust.  Companies that produced nothing and never made a profit were sold for huge amounts of money that kept going up on the theory that someday they would be profitable. 

I can recall the traditionalist saying that these companies were not worth anything since they had no earnings and only the imagined prospect of future earnings.  The refrain was " you don't understand the dot.com industry and this time is different" 

I wish I had purchased some crypto when it first came out, but I can tell you after reaching a profit, I would not hold it today.  My instincts still tell me that Coke will produce Coca Cola today, and tomorrow, that Microsoft will produce software, and Apple will make electronics. Those products have value and as sales increase so will profits and my ownership of those companies will rise correspondingly.  I find that far more reassuring than the prospect of crypto.  Two very influential people Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase and Warren Buffet the famed investor have repeatedly rebuked the idea that Crypto was anything more than a fad.  

Deleted - wrong thread

14 hours ago, allanos said:

Will you change your thesis when Apple buys Bitcoin for its Treasury? (It's gonna happen)!

No.  The fact that Apple or any person or company wishes to put money into Bitcoin is their business.  Apple could buy Lithium or Pork Bellies, that certainly doesn't guide me that they are a worthwhile investment.  At least with Lithium and Pork Bellies they are a tangible commodity unlike bitcoin which is purely abstract. 

15 hours ago, allanos said:

Incidentally, if all the millionaires in the world tried to buy one bitcoin, NOW, they would not be able to. They might be lucky enough to buy one-half a bitcoin.

You just validated my point.  The value is merely derived from demand not the production of anything tangible. 

17 minutes ago, Longwood50 said:

You are correct, it is abstract and no I don't have a in depth understanding of it.  However value comes from the ability of an investment to generate income.  The theoretical value of a stock is a multiple of its "projected income".  The faster the company is anticipated to grow the more its stock price rises in value. 

I fail to see of Crypto owns or produces anything.  If I own a crypto currency I certainly don't own a fractional percentage of any income producing assets.  If that is true, its rise in value is strictly a function of having more buyers who want it than those who want to sell it. That is the greater fool theory. 

You said you are not an expert, now you don't have in-depth understanding. Admit it, you know nothing about cryptocurrencies.  That's OK, but better to admit it and learn, instead of this great fool nonsense and using words to hide the fact.????

For example, I own EGLD and I stake it on the Maiar exchange. As I provide liquidity, I get a share of every transaction fee, along with 275% APY. I also own NFTs, and because of that I earn rewards in the form of royalties. I highly doubt that you have even heard of Elrond, and like many traditional investors, would rather lazily denounce it than learn about it and stay with the times.  

 

 

 

Of of the best TA I have seen, putting BTC's value at around $160 this year, before dropping back to where it is now.

.

20 hours ago, allanos said:

Unlike a Ponzi, Bitcoin cannot be inflated; there is a mathematically finite amount of it

This does not exclude it being a ponzi, and furthermore, the finite amount is pretty questionable. Yes, there will only be 21 million bitcoins, but then we have a handful of forks, each adding another 21 million, and then we have split one bitcoin into 100 million satoshis, so multiplying by 100 million, and then we actually trade bitcoin in USDT and other stable coins, which seems to have near infinite supply without anything backing them, and then we have MicroStrategy as a proxy for buying bitcoins, which can issue infinite stocks, etc.

 

But what does it even mean? It is just numbers, nothing underlies it, no value generated, and that is why it resembles a ponzi so much.