Bitcoin systematically does the following things:
1: Destroy economic value when people trade money (fiat currency backed by the real economy/the government) for electricity to make it. - The value of it is backed by people wanting to own it, but the money entering the bitcoin market overwhelmingly go to electric utilities, not to current holders, so the pool of actual value does not go up linearly with increasing demand, but it does drop linearly with falls in demand—its built to crash in value, repeatedly. I suspect it even still exists at all only because large numbers of the outstanding coins are frequently confiscated, which bolsters the value of the remaining pool.
2: Generate motivated reasoning. Holders of bitcoin want more people to buy in so that the value will go up. So there is an incessant drumbeat of bullshit about it. Motivated reasoning about bubbles is an extremely powerful bias. It reliably fools entire markets, and has fooled people far smarter than you and I. Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both got burned by the south sea bubble for example. Do you really think you are smarter than the first, or more cynical about human nature than the second?
Basically, if you want a high risk bet, for the love of humanity, pour your money into something which will generate actual value to the world if successful. One of the small scale fusion plays, a battery tech player (Sakti3 or one of the firms working on lithum-sulfur.. ). Because the potential downside is the same—“your investment goes Poof” but the upside is much greater, and you aren’t investing in making the world worse.
Disclaimer: As always, your investment decisions are on your head.
You know what? I’ve made these arguments before. They appear to have very little bite. So:
Tounge stuck firmly in cheek:
Bitcoin is a NSA plot to map out the shadow economy.
Consider: The programmer of Bitcoin is unknown, and appears to have taken no advantage of the fact that they have a large pool of bitcoins minted before release of the protocol. Bitcoin is inherently far more traceable than dollars. Who has access to oceans, and oceans of computational cryptography expertise? Who has no need for profit? Why, the government! Who would very much like to map out the economic linkages of the shadow economy so they can crush it? Why, the government! Who is being suspiciously slow at stomping on bitcoin?
Bitcoin systematically does the following things: 1: Destroy economic value when people trade money (fiat currency backed by the real economy/the government) for electricity to make it. - The value of it is backed by people wanting to own it, but the money entering the bitcoin market overwhelmingly go to electric utilities, not to current holders, so the pool of actual value does not go up linearly with increasing demand, but it does drop linearly with falls in demand—its built to crash in value, repeatedly. I suspect it even still exists at all only because large numbers of the outstanding coins are frequently confiscated, which bolsters the value of the remaining pool.
2: Generate motivated reasoning. Holders of bitcoin want more people to buy in so that the value will go up. So there is an incessant drumbeat of bullshit about it. Motivated reasoning about bubbles is an extremely powerful bias. It reliably fools entire markets, and has fooled people far smarter than you and I. Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both got burned by the south sea bubble for example. Do you really think you are smarter than the first, or more cynical about human nature than the second?
Basically, if you want a high risk bet, for the love of humanity, pour your money into something which will generate actual value to the world if successful. One of the small scale fusion plays, a battery tech player (Sakti3 or one of the firms working on lithum-sulfur.. ). Because the potential downside is the same—“your investment goes Poof” but the upside is much greater, and you aren’t investing in making the world worse.
Disclaimer: As always, your investment decisions are on your head.
You know what? I’ve made these arguments before. They appear to have very little bite. So:
Tounge stuck firmly in cheek:
Bitcoin is a NSA plot to map out the shadow economy. Consider: The programmer of Bitcoin is unknown, and appears to have taken no advantage of the fact that they have a large pool of bitcoins minted before release of the protocol. Bitcoin is inherently far more traceable than dollars. Who has access to oceans, and oceans of computational cryptography expertise? Who has no need for profit? Why, the government! Who would very much like to map out the economic linkages of the shadow economy so they can crush it? Why, the government! Who is being suspiciously slow at stomping on bitcoin?
Invest in bitcoin, do the work of the Man.