re: Looking into Crypto

quote:

---

What are the pros and cons of getting into Crypto?

---

Pro’s- you can make some quick money.

Con’s- the government could shut it down. It could crash. There are some dark money cons but no one seems to care about the morality side of bitcoin or crypto.

Bottom line- you could make some money trading it or you could lose money. Which will happen sooner? No clue and no one here has any clue.

Second bottom line- it’s a fomo trade. People are buying it because it’s going up. Duh. They have no use for it in their daily life but because someone on a message board said it was awesome, and it’s going up, me likely. If bitcoin didn’t exist, no one’s daily life on this thread would be interrupted outside of whatever position they hold in it. That should be telling but - because thingy go up, me like spending my fiat USD to by me some because i don’t want to miss out. I go on message board and call people stupid who speak against it because me scared it will go down. Because I really don’t know what this thingy is.
Same thing happened on dot com period. Some people made some money then the music stopped and the chairs were all taken.

quote:

---

Man, I love BTC maxis. So blind to the potential of the broader picture.

---

Most bitcoiners got burned shitcoining first. This sort of trial by fire provided a valuable lesson with minimum long term damage for people who got in during prior cycles. However, the opportunity cost of shitcoining now is exponentially higher than it ever has been.

All technology follows an S curve adoption phase. Emergent money monetises in three phases in this order: store of value, medium of exchange, and finally unit of account. We are approaching the steep part of the S curve of btc monetising as a store of value. If you can't see that we have nothing further to discuss.

OP, read Paul Ryan's WSJ oped from earlier this year. True US interest expense, defined as debt service plus entitlement paygoes, is now equal to tax receipts. Everything else, all discretionary, defense etc...is funded with debt. Who's going to buy all that debt?

The gist of the Ryan oped is as btc market cap grows demand for stablecoins grows with it as they are used to trade in and out. A stablecoin is just a digital eurodollar and they are nearly 100% backed by t bills. This works out well for our ballooning deficits, Janet already shifted issuance to the short end after the Gilts crisis in Sept '22.

Trump has said btc is the new oil. What does he mean by that? Well, after Charles de Gaulle sent the French Navy across the Atlantic in 68 to call bullshite on Johnson's welfare/warfare spending by picking up their gold Nixon was forced to close the gold window. Bretton Woods 1 was over.

Bretton Woods 2 was Kissinger backing US debt with oil demand under the petrodollar system. A petrodollar is a eurodollar created from oil demand that is recycled into treasuries. To set this up the oil price had to triple so the oil market could become big enough to absorb US deficits.

The third iteration of Bretton Woods was China's inclusion into the WTO to further extend the useful lifespan of the system. They stopped buying treasuries on net in 2014 but the duel disinflationary forces of globalization and domestic horizontal drilling kept the system propped up for nearly another decade.

Now, things are sideways once again, primarily due to boomers retiring. This explodes entitlement spending as they go from paying in to being paid out. If the btc market cap increases by one or two orders of magnitude from here, stablecoin demand will be able to absorb much of our exploding deficits like oil did in the 70s.

The Ryan oped seemed like an obvious play at some distant future date when it came out. Trump's embrace of btc and his win brought this forward. Likewise the Lummis bill sounded batshit when she first floated it. Both are potential near term realities. The front running has already begun. The current bid under btc is relentless.

I've been listening to old podcasts featuring Scott Bessent. Massive monetary changes are coming very early in the next admin's term. Bessent understands where we are in the current debt cycle. He taught financial history at Yale. If you've been paying attention, it sure looks like btc is about to be used to extend the life of the usd system. Every dollar you have in shitcoins carries an enormous opportunity cost given the current backdrop.

This^ is a very abbreviated slice of the broader picture. I hope the irony of you calling me blind to the broader picture is not lost on the OP.

You can write an essay on BTC as it relates to monetary policy, and I won't necessarily disagree with a lot of what you say, though I'm less extreme than most BTC maxis on it.

I'm talking about the broader picture that exists outside of just being a currency or store of value or hedge against shitty monetary policies. I'm talking about the bigger picture of technology. Smart contracts, Dapps, tokenization, oracles, privacy, personal data, etc. BTC is really good at what it does, but it is not good at those other things I mentioned, and probably never will be as the BTC community would never come together enough to get consensus to upgrade.

I've always said the good thing about BTC is that it is resistant to change. The good thing about Ethereum (or other smart contract/crypto ecosystems, for that matter) is that it can change.

Once your get past "cryptocurrency" as currency and start looking at it as a broader, new technology, it becomes easier to see how BTC is not the only thing out there.

Once your get past "cryptocurrency" as currency and start looking at it as a broader, new technology, it becomes easier to see how BTC is not the only thing out there.



Exactly, so please explain to the OP why any of these non cryptocurrencies deserve a monetary premium or need a blockchain to function?

We need a fiat board for the boomers.
__________

Would that be an ole fashion millionaire board?

I made a strong six figure number on nvda but don't own any crypto. Am I stupid?

Ask yourself

What would life be like without bitcoin or if it went to zero?

Then ask yourself- what would your life be like without the USD or if it went to zero?

For the overwhelming majority of the world, it would not make a lick of difference if bitcoin didn’t exist or went to zero. So why would anyone want to own some of that?
Answer- because it goes up in value. Why does it go up? Because someone is willing to pay more for it than someone else. Greater fool theory in real time.

And if you just want to get a piece of that “action” then I say get some. I did. I’m not immune to fomo and I understand the fomo sentiment. But how long will it last? I have no clue.

Fwiw- it was supposed to be a hedge against inflation and when inflation was at its worst in the past 4 years, bitcoin was languishing if I recall. Red flag imo.

Fwiw- it was supposed to be a hedge against inflation and when inflation was at its worst in the past 4 years, bitcoin was languishing if I recall. Red flag imo.

You misunderstanding of your own argument is the red flag here. Btc is a hedge against monetary inflation. Btc went from $5k to $69k exactly as expected during the Fed's covid reign of terror. Monetary base increased by 40% and btc increased by 1300%.

It deflated with m2 when the Fed began vacuuming up their mess and likely would have stayed in the high 20s/low 30s if not for the plethora of shitcoin shenanigans and associated blow ups. Btc will be less associated with the shitcoin industrial complex going forward as it monetises as a global store of value and pristine collateral lending asset (see Cantor Fitzgerald's recent announcement).

quote:

---

Pro’s- you can make some quick money.

Con’s- the government could shut it down. It could crash. There are some dark money cons but no one seems to care about the morality side of bitcoin or crypto.

Bottom line- you could make some money trading it or you could lose money. Which will happen sooner? No clue and no one here has any clue.

Second bottom line- it’s a fomo trade. People are buying it because it’s going up. Duh. They have no use for it in their daily life but because someone on a message board said it was awesome, and it’s going up, me likely. If bitcoin didn’t exist, no one’s daily life on this thread would be interrupted outside of whatever position they hold in it. That should be telling but - because thingy go up, me like spending my fiat USD to by me some because i don’t want to miss out. I go on message board and call people stupid who speak against it because me scared it will go down. Because I really don’t know what this thingy is.
Same thing happened on dot com period. Some people made some money they music stopped and the chairs were all taken.

---

And here we are once again. You still don't understand the value of a decentralized immutable public ledger.

You still fail to acknowledge smart contracts.

Your points are retarded. You could change the word crypto to NVDA or rental property and your straw man arguments would still apply.

Let me show you in a picture how retarded you are. Here are some of the defi dapps on Ethereum:



Now explain why Ethereum has no value.

quote:

---

And here we are once again. You still don't understand the value of a decentralized immutable public ledger.

---

Why didn’t you just say “blockchain”?

I have several positions in blockchain related technology through some funds. It’s legit imo from my understanding of it. Not sure it’s more secure than what currently handles the money flow around the world. We move trillions everyday without blockchain technology but nonetheless, I think there is real future in blockchain technology.

Where have I said that blockchain is not legit or investable?