this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is institutional investors driving up price and then pulling out. Bitcoin is propped up by absolutely nothing other than betting. It has no use outside holding a value. Someone will be a bag holder. It’s just a matter of time.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a paraphrase of what they said in 2010 mate.

Thanks to people like you I'm not a bitcoin millionaire.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So you were saved from being a colossal asshole? You should be thanking them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, imagine if I had lots of money for little effort. It would have been such a shame!

I didn't know you were a bad person just by the virtue of having money!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

I guess it's too late.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It has no use outside holding a value.

So... same as fiat then, ey?

I begrudgingly hold BTC, waiting for the halving in 38 days when all my coins double.

At least Monero (which is actually private like cash - sender, receiver, and amount aren't known to anyone viewing the blockchain) has a valuable function.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I can't wait to see companies like Visa and Mastercard become obsolete. I think it will really help out my aunt's family business by cutting crazy high transaction fees she has to pay as a vendor.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

but, like, bitcoin has high (and variable) transaction fees.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's layer 1. Read up on layer 2 options. Lightning Network is the best current example, but there are others and will be more. That's where most of the innovation is happening now. The media never talks about it because it's necessarily more technical and they think their readers/viewers are all idiots, so why bother.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (22 children)

Or does the media never talk about it because the whole thing is confusing as fuck, there are about a bajillion different coins and no one knows which one to use, and there has yet to be an advantage (and often a big hurdle) to use any of these cyrptocurrencies to do things like buy a gallon of milk.

We hear a lot about how it's better than "fiat" currency, and yet if I want to go down to the gas station and get a soda, I can pay for that soda with exactly zero cryptocurrencies unless I convert them into dollars first.

Maybe if crypto people ever get their act together, and I don't see that happening any time soon, this will be more than people investing in digital tulips.

But hey, the local mall here has a Bitcoin ATM. In an entrance almost no one ever uses in a corner of the food court where there are no restaurants and you wouldn't even notice it unless you happened to walk past it and look at the front panel to see what it was (I only noticed it because my daughter is in online school and still has to do gym and we walk the perimeter of the mall in the winter). So there's that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Also they love to act as though fiat isn’t backed by anything despite the fact that fiat is actually backed by something extremely important: you are required by law to use fiat for interactions with some of the most powerful organizations in the world. I can’t pay taxes in crypto or gold or even rubles, my government accepts usd and if I don’t hand them usd every year I get in trouble. When they pay me for any reason it’s in usd. When they fine me it’s in usd. That is a backing. So long as I have to financially deal with the governments of the United States I have to have appropriate quantities of usd. And because of all of this everything around me accepts that currency, even drug dealers take cash. Why? Because it’s the local currency. And it’s reasonably stable.

And on that note, I’d never spend a wildly inflationary currency. It’s not an effective currency and because of that it winds up being entirely theoretical.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its propped up by gambling AND drugs

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (7 children)

It's estimated that Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy as the entire Internet. Just to put that in perspective that's roughly 2% of all the energy generated by America every year.

America produces roughly 14,000,000,000,000 pounds of greenhouse gases in a year and 2% of that is 280,000,000,000 pounds...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I did some maths back on another thread here: https://feddit.nl/comment/6632730

The internet is around 40 times bigger than crypto as a whole. Feel free to check it and tell me if I missed the mark.

However, Buttcoin still eats a disgusting amount of electricity, being 2.5% of the whole internet. All the while, its only utility has so far been to create a completely unregulated commodity market that is unsurprisingly dominated by private equity doing pump and dumps.

The interesting thing someone brought up in that discussion though is that half of all consumer internet traffic is ads. Which is scary, and I don't know (or rather do exactly know) why we don't talk about that.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And don't waste ridiculous amounts of electricity.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How much electricity does the world banking system use? (Answer: a whole lot more)

How much of that electricity could be used to simultaneously run the banking system AND turn incredibly ambitious renewable energy project ideas from absurd pipe dreams into economic no brainers? (Answer: none)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (11 children)

How much electricity does the world banking system use? (Answer: a whole lot more)

Per capita or in total?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

a whole lot more

You have a source on that? Proof of work is notoriously energy hungry... That's the "work" part.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Weird, my landlord only takes fiat. So does my grocer. And in a funny coincidence I had to pay fiat to my government this year or face legal consequences. But at no point has anything I’ve wanted required me to use a highly volatile or deflationary cryptocurrency such as bitcoin. Oh well I guess I might get in trouble tonight when I go out with my wife and get told they don’t take fiat because it’s dead.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your landlord doesn't accept Pesos so I guess that's not real money either

Bitcoin briefly rises to record high over $70,000

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my country they aren’t. They’re foreign currency. I get mad if someone slips me them instead of using our currency.

And yes it’s irrelevant how much a bitcoin is worth to its use as a currency. Currency and investment vehicles are actually conflicting concepts. I don’t want to use my mutual fund to pay taxes. It’s supposed to get added to consistently for a long time then removed from. Currency is for transactions. Bitcoin is bad at transactions.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There’s a sucker born every minute

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

And some of them got rich!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So what is blowing up the bubble this time?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People not selling since before the crash. There will be a fall of about 10% from people wanting to get out after being scared by the last crash, then it will rebound and climb as FOMO sets in with the confidence climb after the dip.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I bought $276 on the cash app for fun. It's now worth $1200. Should i cash it out or wait? I really have no idea. I feel bad that I'm part of a super weird system of fake money, but I'm also happy to see an extra $k.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Ask yourself this: has Bitcoin had - or is it trending towards - a net positive impact on our world? In other words, is it worth investing in long term? If it isn't you should treat it as a short term investment and get out as soon as you've made a profit - and you've literally 4x'd your investment. The fact that we're talking about the price in c/News is already a bad bubble sign and reminiscent of all the other times we've had crypto bubbles.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You have made back your investment plus some. Also you don't actually own any Bitcoin through CashApp, they sell fictitious potential value based on nothing. Take the cash minus the tax and invest your initial investment via actual ownership via a private wallet if you want to see what Bitcoin can be. Then, you are in profit and the worst case you lose money that doesn't matter.

Crypto is no different than stock investment, only invest what you are willing to lose and cash out when you are satisfied.

I can't give you legal financial advice, but my personal opinion is that Bitcoin still has value to gain and investing money of no consequence has a potential to be worthwhile beyond what investment in the S&P offers, and likey what realestate offers.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The halving soon.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This thread has been great for identifying and blocking cryptobros.

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