400921FB54442D18 t1_jeatgdr wrote on March 30, 2023 at 5:45 PM

Reply to comment by SlowMotionPanic in It's becoming increasingly clear that fintech has a fraud problem by marketrent

I don't know or care enough about Bitcoin to address any of your technical points -- I'm sure /u/gansmaltz will take that on -- but there are at least two obvious flaws in your claims here:

> People buy and hold it like gold or any other asset they think will appreciate.

I'm old enough to remember when my grandparents were certain that buying a bunch of silver and hiding it in their garage would pay for my college education. When they died, we cleaned it out and sold it for about $20.

... I don't think I need to spell out where I'm going with this. Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

> People don’t necessarily get into Bitcoin because they think a fiat currency is going to fail.

In the early days of Bitcoin, this was the major argument that enthusiasts were using to try to encourage people to get into crypto -- being isolated from the risks of a state-backed fiat currency. So, to hear the crypto community now say that that isn't and wasn't the point, means that some substantial fraction of that community must be lying. Either they're lying now when they say that isn't the purpose, or they were lying 10-15 years ago when they said that that was the purpose, but either way, this doesn't say anything good about whether we should trust the crypto community with our money.

voice-of-reason_ t1_jebw3a0 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 9:52 PM

Have you read the Bitcoin white paper? It states it’s purpose in their.

You can’t judge a technology based on what some people on a subreddit say, you base it off of what the creator says.

Bitcoin is a decentralised peer to peer payment network - as described by the creator - that has been operating with no significant downtime (I.e. 0.000x%) 24/7 365 since 2009. If you don’t see how that is a good investment I don’t know what to tell you.

In you’re example you talk about silver being essentially worthless even though lots of people thought it had value. The reality is that this is the situation of the USD, GBP ETC. These currencies are seen by essentially everyone as safe but they have been collapsing slowly for the last 50 or so years, I’m sure as an older person you remember and have actively experienced this with the cost of everything increasing over your lifespan.

To me, in 2023 Bitcoin is the cash of your example and cash is the silver. It’s fine to disagree with that but every year and every recession more and more people realise the value of a neutral asset like Bitcoin.

Inflation over the past year has been bad, but hyperinflation (which is inevitable for all regular currencies) will kill your nations economy, Bitcoin doesn’t suffer that issue.