The debate has been rehashed to death at this point.
By now, it seems that most of the original arguments about Bitcoin becoming the currency of the future didn’t pan out. In fact, very few people seem eager to spend Bitcoin because everyone wants it as a speculative investment vehicle. The narrative about what Bitcoin will be used for continues to wander, but for whatever reason the Bitcoin crowd doesn’t want to admit that it holds a unique place as a speculative investment and trading vehicle that has one foot outside of regulatory boundaries, making it inherently attractive to people hoping for abnormal returns.
This is also why you see big banks taking on numerically large positions that are nevertheless a very small portion of their overall portfolios: It’s a weird investment that might produce interesting returns, or it might not. Unfortunately, this news usually gets spun into hot takes that banks secretly predict Bitcoin is the future currency, which leads to more hype and more investment. This effectively makes large Bitcoin investments a self-fulfilling prophecy, as long as the banks manage to get out before the next big down cycle.
>but for whatever reason the Bitcoin crowd doesn’t want to admit
I think this is freely admitted as the primary value proposition by many Bitcoin proponents
I think it is a misconception and misunderstanding by many BTC supporters and naysayers that BTC can be viable or that it necessarily must depend on being viable as a mass-transaction medium, unit of account or "currency".
Store of value is likely it's only function, but being finite, highly divisible, decentralized and highly transactable relative to other scarce assets, it could succeed wildly at this.
The crypto market is wild and it's honestly fun as hell if you're okay with losing all your money overnight.
Bitcoin is arguably the most stable of all crypto right now (outside of stablecoins of course). There are smallcap and midcap coins that can go from -100% to +500% in a month.
Even large, established coins like XRP can go from flatlining for years to 3x in price in a week.
The best part is that no one really knows whats happening, and everyone has their own theories.
Many of the people that originally saw Bitcoin as a payment processor (as digital cash) moved on to Bitcoin Cash.
The scalability issues were evident from the beginning. The idea of running Visa scale transactions on a shared ledger were debated back in 2010. Anyone paying attention knew the main chain would, at best, be a large scale settlement layer. Other layers would be needed for day to day transactions.
BCC meaning Bitcoin Cash? It is commonly called BCH now.
They are still around, with a few miners. They had a few forks which split and degraded their community significantly.
It is trading at about 0.013 BTC, which IMO is in line with their current impact.
Still plenty of comments about how to “make money” with bitcoin, completely missing the point the bitcoin is money. Ironic really since this group has been digitizing everything else in the world to make money they miss that software now actually is money!
> Would you have sold after Bitcoin has crashed from $30 to $2?
That's exactly it. Let's say you bought at $0.01. What are the odds you would have held on until the price per coin hit $10,000? Or $1,000? Or even $100?
Watch out for survivorship bias. How many other things also came and went bust in the time since bitcoin started? If you invested in all of them, you probably would be at a net loss.
Unlikely, given the insane growth of Bitcoin. If you invested a million dollars equally across a thousand schemes ($1000 each), with one of those being Bitcoin at $1, and then everything but Bitcoin failed, you'd be up almost 19 million dollars.
Same principle as a lot of VC, if you invest in fifty failed startups and one Facebook, you win.
> The only reason I didn’t buy Bitcoin when it was $1 was because of the HN comments. I try to do the opposite of what people are commenting here now.
You and me both. Fortunately, I've learned most hackers have an extreme risk avoidance, which tops the usual human fear of whatever didn't exist when someone was a teen.
Fortunately, I quickly realized the HN kings had no clothes, so I didn't double down on my mistake and started working in crypto.
The investment strategy for Bitcoin has always seemed pretty simple to me: It could be worthless one day, but there's also a chance it could be worth 10x or 100x or 1000x as much.
That asymmetry means investing even just a small amount (that you're comfortable losing) is an obvious choice.
It's also a fascinating technology (politics and monetary theories aside) and having some "skin in the game" makes you much more motivated to learn about how it works.
Well Jesus, I think the people commenting here in HN were exactly right not to hype an unproven and unreliable looking techno-currency. If that made you not to want to invest in bitcoin, not just gamble, then I guess they did their purpose. Did they stop you buying it also when it was 10 or 100?
The fact is nobody knew where it was going back then. In hindsight sure you can try to shift the blame to others, but seriously I have always noticed that if I do investments based on emotional whims without understanding what I am actually buying I never feel comfortable owning said asset. Then I have no idea if the current price is right or wrong and whether I should sell it or not.
But coming back to your main point, it is more than usual that no small portion of HN comments are conservative and critical towards any new innovations. Therefore, it is up to the reader to make their own research and judgement before taking anything said here for granted. I like that criticality, to some extent, as that keeps you grounded in reality but it is true for certain that some of it is just plain old resistance to change.
Buying bitcoin right now while it’s still under 20K will be one of the best investment opportunities of 2021. IMHO. Even if there is a small crash in price it will quickly recover and will start growing exponentially for most of 2021. Why? Limited supply and lots of new buyers - companies and wealthy people are buying now. (not a financial advice).
Im not sure why you didn't, I remember coming across it on HN , reading the comments and thinking it looked like a great invesment. I guess its about trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, which is probably luck based.
Well, most HN commenters have found success one way: by being a wage slave in one of the tech giants. You should not take any advice from them. If you are safely doing that while pondering how to start a side thing without taking any risk or spending any time on it, you represent the HN crowd.
Also, Bitcoin draws libertarians... and HN is full of modern liberals. So, it doesn't sit well with them.
Having said that, it is understandable that most people won't invest in something completely new or risky. One would not be able to build wealth like that. They'd be taking too many risks and that could most likely work against them.
So, a good balance needs to be maintained. If you most of your money in safe assets and try out small risky things once in a while, you are relatively safe while opening up to being lucky.
Really don't believe you know HN very well. Compared to most popular forums, HN has to have one of the higher rates of self-made/startup employees/entrepreneurs. I don't see how bitcoin and modern liberalism would be at odds, both are pro free market.
There are two types of freedoms under liberalism, the "freedom to", and "freedom from". Libertarians are mostly concerned with the former (e.g., minimising laws which stop their ability to do something) whereas modern liberalism takes a more balanced approach (for example, making racial discrimination illegal reduces someone's freedom to be racist whilst improving another groups ability to partake in society without experiencing discrimination)
> The american definition of "liberal" basically means socialist.
No, it doesn't.
Though it overlaps with a common American use of “socialist” to mean anyone outside of the far-right. Most American “liberals” are center-right corporate capitalists, which is also the narrow sense of “liberal” in much of the world.
> In 2020, "liberals" in america have very little to do with the original meaning of the word which meant "in favor of freedom".
This is false, and even more than just being liberal in this vague sense, most American “liberals” and a great share of American “conservatives” are adherents to ideologies which evolved fairly directly from 18th century classical liberalism, differing largely in whether they view the immediate goals of 18th century liberals as having been terminal or steps in the direction of the desired goal.
You are technically correct. The distinction lies in the way the followers of these ideologies understand their philosophy. Libertarians in America are all about liberty from government. For them ideally government is super-limited. Liberals are better understood in terms of traditional thought. Conservatives wish to conserve the “traditional way” of thinking, living, and organizing society while liberals want to “liberate” humans from the those “traditional” ways.
>Conservatives wish to conserve the “traditional way” of thinking, living, and organizing society while liberals want to “liberate” humans from the those “traditional” ways.
Your statement is true but Democrats, who call themselves liberals, are not that. They are the most conservative party. They're much more conservative than Republicans on most issues. For example, ideas about "science" or "nature" for example.
Those two are words whose meaning morphs over time and every person seems to have their own pet definition so the terms are essentially meaningless and become whatever anyone wants. I've heard people to the left of Sarah Palin being described as liberals after all. These two terms are heavily misused.
We're pretty much in a double-speak world right now.
Damn dude, the haters are having a downvote fest. Thanks for speaking truth.
> Bitcoin draws libertarians... and HN is full of modern liberals.
It kinda sucks that there are no libertarian-ish forums with HN's intelligence level. Bitcointalk was this for a very, very short time (like, until 2012). I miss that.
The politics of HN comes from where the users live. Most of the HN users live in tech hubs which are cities where most people who move there absorb the political views which helps them fit in.
Need to fit in is much more important to people than acknowledging the truth... mostly because the fear of being ostracized is one of the strongest and deepest human fears.
The only problem with downvotes is the rate limiting that HN applies to users who are frequently downvoted. Otherwise, I don't mind. I know these people are not downvoting me because they think I'm not adding to the discussion or violating guidelines or anything like that. It's precisely because I'm saying things they know is true but they have shadowed it in themselves and managed to convince themselves with other ideas just to try to fit in. So, when they see it out in the open, they feel very uncomfortable and want it to be hidden. I hope some of them will be inspired by by actions and see these things in themselves.
The only reason I didn’t buy Bitcoin when it was $1 was because of the HN comments. I try to do the opposite of what people are commenting here now.