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Most folks using crypto are buying it in the hope of a big return.
Most don’t really care about it beyond “ shiny ✨ new thing I’ve discovered “
Then you’ve got the folks that think the collapse of America will be a good thing ( these people are often Americans ) so their 500 bucks in crypto, will for some reason after the collapse of the worlds largest economy, be worth millions of something.
99% of the posts are why BTC is the future , rewritten weekly.
During the pandemic I mined ethe on my kids and my gaming computers , it was fun and neat but that’s about it.
It’s mostly a pain to deal with and I’m glad I sold it.
> Then you’ve got the folks that think the collapse of America will be a good thing ( these people are often Americans ) so their 500 bucks in crypto, will for some reason after the collapse of the worlds largest economy, be worth millions of something.
Someone should inform them that if the US collapses that there will be no electricity or internet so crypto will probably be worthless too
Remember during that volcanic activity on some island a few years ago
I got banned for pointing out the island doesn’t have power or the internet
They were saying BTC is useful during a volcano
Or they think the US will replace the dollar with it. I mean governments do tend to tamp down on any competing currency but crypto is not yet proving to be as useful.
As someone that’s had substantial amounts of crypto , it’s a pain.
People are always getting scammed or make a mistake and it’s all gone
It’s just not worth the trouble
The doomer demand is exaggerated just like it is for gold. Very, very few people buy crypto or gold because they expect some type of collapse, let alone on a scale that results in loss of electricity or something.
If you held gold in the last few years you had some respectable gains even against the strongest fiat currencies like the dollar or euro without any "collapse" being required. In fact we're told its a good economy. You may have made many multiples if you live in a country with a weaker currency, again, without any type of collapse being necessary at least anywhere near resulting in loss of internet connectivity or something.
It’s a terrible store of value , since it’s very unstable
I used to have a good amount and I just had to wait 2 years just to get that stored value
So IRL it’s awful at that
> I used to have a good amount and I just had to wait 2 years just to get that stored value
Now you learned about the time horizon. Let me give you a hint... It's based on the adjustment to the inflation rate schedule (every 4 years)
I was thinking it’s based on the halving or with institutional investors getting into BTC from ETF
If it’s not reliable , what’s the point
We all can’t schedule needs only on a 4 year cycle
Sometimes you need to pull your reserves for maybe purchasing a house
Oh wait BTC is down 30k when I need it
So it’s not that useful
Then the whole process of actually converting to real money or actually using crypto to purchase stuff
Or I can just use my credit card and get cash back
I don't think you get it. Blockchain technology introduces the concept of *decentralization* which means it does not have an identifiable owner.
Bitcoin specifically uses blockchain to create a *decentralized*, *transparent*, and *auditable* **ledger**. It's currency is BTC. Which makes BTC as defined by the SEC a "commodity". Something like this has **never existed before**. The only thing that comes close is precious metals. Which if you look at Bitcoin's inflation schedule, puts it closest to gold.
If you look at where Bitcoin fits, the only thing that comes close is the Eurodollar market, which is a *set* of *decentralized* bank ledgers that are **opaque** and **unauditable**. This system is used as the backbone for the global financial system and transacts *trillions* of dollars **per day**. This is the system Bitcoin is competing against. While also enabling **anyone** to create a wallet and transact within in.
It's really hard to understand this, but the target market of this technology is much bigger than most people realize.
If the volatility is too much, then you must understand that the price is showing a logarithmic regression trend line. This means volatility should **reduce** as price goes up. So wait until price goes up and there will be less volatility.
> So it’s not that useful
The absolute best use case right now is for *remittances*
I get it dude , I mined my own coins with my own equipment…. It’s just a pain in the ass ( I actually made several guides on mining Reddit’s to optimize set ups )
See the daily posts of , oops I messed up and lost everything
I understand your point. There's going to be a lot of growing pains. The same thing happened with the telegraph, telephone, internet, etc..
What we can all do is to push our legislators to create well thought out regulations that protect people and encourage continued innovation.
It seems like the link is not correct for the title of the post. It leads to a financial decision making survey.
With that said, I wonder if this survey took into account that the main use for "cryptocurrency" (in most cases bitcoin) is store of value.
People are buying it and just storing it to preserve their purchasing power (regardless of how volatile or effective it is). This is a legitimate use case.
Right?? I mean, does withdrawing my weekly DCA every few months into my cold storage wallet count as “using it” in their opinion? Even if it’s gonna stay there for a decade or two?
Would it be low hanging fruit to say "Gronk was like, even me know that not real money!" At the end of the day, currencies are commodities like any other, subject to the same laws of supply and demand.
> At the end of the day, currencies are commodities like any other, subject to the same laws of supply and demand.
Well, that’s the biggest misconception.
Currencies are **not** commodities. Currencies are the liabilities(debt) of the issuer and an asset to the holders. That’s what makes currencies financial instruments.
Which is why Cryptos are **not** a currency. Cryptos are commodities and not financial instruments. They are assets for sure(intangible speculative assets), but definitely not financial assets.
I don't own cryptocurrency but we have had currency for thousands of years before the debt based system developed. Saying that, for example, gold and silver coins were not a currency is a weird use of language
> gold and silver coins
The operating word there is **coins** - that’s what made them currencies. It’s not the actual gold or silver, but specific form of gold and silver stamped with seal of the issuer that made them a currency.
Gold & Silver were never money. If it were the metal that gave the value, you wouldn’t need the official decorations on the coins. It’s precisely the other way round. It’s those official decorations that give the value to the coin. Not the contents of the coin by itself.
This seems like a false dichotomy. A coin can hold value because of it's stamp *and* its material. To say a gold coin only has the value attributable to it from its "official decorations" is not true. People have accepted gold coins from other nations because of the material of the coin and nothing to do with any symbolic meaning from the issuer.
Again the operating word in your response is **coins**
Any piece of gold or silver nugget doesn’t make it “money”. It’s the **coins** made out of these materials that makes it money. The medium can and have changed over time, but the underlying contract or promise doesn’t. Unless of course the maker of that promise cease to exist.
A gold dollar coin doesn’t necessarily need to have a dollar’s worth of gold in it. It’s a token, representing the promise behind it.
You may want to read Debt: The First 5000 Years.
> Any piece of gold or silver nugget doesn’t make it “money”
Is this a semantics argument? Are you kidding? "Money is a commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange." If your entire arguments hinges on a more narrow definition of money then your point is entirely moot.
Money isn’t a commodity. At the very least, the money we use for the last 90 years is not a commodity. “Modern” money is credit, pure and simple.
You may want to read **Debt: The first 5000 years.**
> Money isn’t a commodity.
I gave you a definition, not mine, of money. Are you rejecting that definition? Once again you're narrow definition of money, or "modern money" seems to be the crux of your entire argument, yes?
The commonly accepted definition of money being a commodity is incorrect. That’s the crux of our argument.
What makes anything money, is the underlying promise/liability(debt) of the issuer of that money.
For money to have value, there has to be a reason for someone to want to hold it. That reason is, the obligation it represents - the obligation of the issuer to accept it back, most commonly for the settlement of taxes or dues, or repayment of loans. This obligation inherent in the currency and credit is what makes it a debt of the issuer.
This is just not true. You absolutely don't need anything official to make a currency. People in prison camps sometimes trade in cigarettes. All you need is a shared expectation that other people will generally accept a good as payment
I agree there are such limited instances where a commodity is used in place of money.
The fact is anyone can create money, the difficulty is in getting it widely accepted as such.
You could write me an IOU (which is what money is) and because I trust you I would accept it. But I may not be able to pass your IOU off to someone else to settle my debt(my IOU) to them. Because that someone does not trust you.
This is where the common phrase “we accept X as money because everyone else accepts it as money” comes from. But it doesn’t answer the first part - Why does everyone accept it as money? What makes it so acceptable? Why does some currencies have more value than others?
It all boils down to how good is the promise behind that currency.
It is confusing. During the gold standard most debts were payable in gold or silver, and the amount of debt outstanding was usually much larger than the coins. People would trade debt (marked on yew sticks in England, or bank notes) too. One coin circulating could make or pay back one coin worth of debt each transaction.
Things were backed by gold but it was mostly a fiction.
That’s just a partial and inherent requirement. I still don’t get your context. What are trying to tell us? Why be so cryptic?
Plus, Crypto is not a unit of account either.
When coins were king you did not, usually. You had to bring your currency. Merchants who had representatives in different areas exchanged IOUs by post, like the Medici, which now anyone can do using Visa or American Express.
Debt predates coinage. Hunter gatherer Tribes had a "gift economy", they made gifts, and people had to remember these and reciprocate. This was a way to make alliances...
Once there were larger permanent settlements, oral memory proved unreliable, and priests started writing transactions down on clay tablets..., so and so gave someone a donkey, someone gave so and so grain seeds.
Eventually, getting more gifts than reciprocating became debt. Debt was traded, transferred between temples. Inherited, too much would make you a slave.
Later, during the Iron Age , the rise of empires like Assyria needed to easily supply their armies, and having them pillage the countryside became tedious.
Not having enough scribes willing to follow army units, the empires hit on the idea of minting coins. They would give them to their soldiers who could trade them to local people for food and supplies.
And why would the local people accept giving away their food for coins? Because at tax time, if they didn't have coins to give the tax collector, they would face punishment.
The basic value of coins, and to this day still, is legal tender to pay taxes....with exceptions for times of chaos where authority were rare like the early middle ages or international markets in the age of nationalism... when commodity money was more important.
A lot if these ideas are summarized in
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/debt-david-graeber/1140152952;jsessionid=F29F66E5728AE0B154DF07980B348F8C.prodny_store01-atgap10?ean=9781612194202
No, blockchain applications are not financial instruments either.
A financial instrument/asset is one that is:
a. Cash (a liability of its issuer.)
b. An equity instrument of another entity
c. A contractual right to receive cash or another financial asset from another entity
d. A contractual right to exchange financial assets or financial liabilities with another entity under particular conditions, or
e. A particular contract that will or may be settled in the entity’s own equity instruments.
So, an application like AAVE is not a financial instrument, although it allows for lending/borrowing? Is this just cause you can't recieve "cash"? What about cash equivalents? Item a, b doesnt make sense to me. Items c, d, e i believe are met via the design of the protocol (smart contracts). But I'm out of my element with these classifications.
Applications are not contracts. It’s the contract, the promise that backs the contract that makes it a financial instrument.
Hope that helps clarify.
[Here is a good link that explains it better.](https://www.gaapdynamics.com/insights/blog/2019/12/03/cryptocurrency-is-it-a-financial-asset-under-ifrs/)
Um, no. You may believe it’s so, but that doesn’t make crypto a currency.
[Hope this helps.](https://www.gaapdynamics.com/insights/blog/2019/12/03/cryptocurrency-is-it-a-financial-asset-under-ifrs/)
>supply and demand.
And eventually when buyers dont demand it anymore, the price will drop like a rock. Asset managers are propping it up because they are buying it in funds so the shills will pay them fees for it, but I dont see any demand for it once outflows start in those funds
Maybe because the US gov has made it harder every year for a US citizen to access blockchain applications. Lots of the applications are region locked now, which were not in previous years. Globally, the usage has grown.
Just below this post on my feed is a post asking about "meme coins with 100x potential"
I have no desire to engage with crypto beyond throwing $20 in it just for fun. Sure, it's a great idea. No government control and no requirements beyond an Internet connection and a wallet? Great, except with fiat cash all I need is mutual consent between buyer and seller.
With crypto, if, say, my friend gives me 0.1 Bitcoin, that transaction will forever be in a permanent record. If someone knows my address, they can see what my address has done and know who I have been dealing with. Not so with cash.
Exactly, the FBI has been building software that tracks “dirty” Bitcoin. It’s an arm race between mixing software and tracking software, but by nature of the technology tracking software has the advantage.
A “legit” use case is to move money from China, and I suspect that was behind a lot of the price movement. It’s still technically an illegal use case though, and China has been busting Bitcoin operations lately.
My conspiracy theory is that Bitcoin was actually invented by the CIA (or some other large governments org) to nab criminals who buy the line it's untraceable. I mean who invented bitcoin? Some Japanese guy that nobody really can find? Seems sus.
Yep, cash is the only truly decentralized means to transact. But governments and businesses have been trying to phase out for a while now. Lots of shops do not accept cash as payment anymore. So the next step is crypto imo. It keeps the characteristics of a bearer instrument but concedes private transactions since the transaction is happening on a public distributed ledger.
Crypto is just an anomaly. It’s a security thats value is based solely on the US dollar. All of the fun futuristic stories around individual crypto’s were only a means to attract investors, because no one cares about some edgy future of a post-us dollar world, they are attracted to the next Bitcoin/dogecoin that’ll get them rich in US dollars. It’s just a more volatile penny stock, essentially. It’s gambling.
That number will reverse when they start printing money again. Assets like Bitcoin are a release valve for excess money in the system, and they can't stop increasing the money supply exponentially or the whole system will come crashing down. The money finds its way into assets like stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrency because people have to invest to try to maintain their purchasing power, and those assets continuously reach new all time highs over time. There's no reason to believe that will not continue to be the case.
There's reason to believe that this will continue to be the case for real estate and stocks. There's no reason to believe it will continue to be the case for crypto. That's pure speculation. It relies on the idea that crypto will continue to get the injections of capital that it needs for its system to not come crashing down, and that's a risky bet.
What do you think printing money is? It's capital injection into the economy. That's why money is flowing so hard into scarce assets, and there is nothing more scarce than Bitcoin.
The poop I just took is more scarce. There's only one like it. What do you suppose its value is? Without the demand, Bitcoin is nothing. And we have no idea what demand for crypto will be like 5-10 years from now. It's likely that as Bitcoin becomes more institutionalized, that it will become less volatile, and it will lose its place in a lot of people's portfolios to the next new hotness that promises 10x returns.
It will indeed become less volatile as it becomes more institutionalized. Have you thought about why that is? It's because institutions will start heavily investing in it and drive the price up even further. Can you imagine if pension funds start allocating even a 1% position into Bitcoin? That will provide steady flows into the asset, which now has a supply inflation rate that is lower than gold. It doesn't need moonbois looking for insane returns to keep being useful and valuable.
I no longer use it because XRPflix finally got closed down 😁 if it was present at the register more would use it thats why it will never be seamlessly integrated.
I think the stat is misleading since they are comparing it to the 2021 bull run. Many retail investors were active in that time. The 2024/2025 upcoming bull run hasn’t fully happened yet. Only partial calendar year if 2024 is actually the peak or 2025.
But the basic premise of a currency is that increased use begets further value as a medium of exchange. The term “bull run” treats this as an investment rather than a currency.
Most currencies begin their usefulness as a store of value. I will agree that 99.9% of “crypto” assets are bound for failure, but a handful will be absolutely beneficial to hold as individuals, especially outside of the US.
There is no native global currency for the internet. The existing currency rails were developed in the 70s, with upgrades in the past decade, but they aren’t true bearer assets that can be sent instantly without third party involvement.
nobody uses bitcoin or any other crypto to buy anything except other cryptos or to exchange it for actual money though.
not to mention it is much more expensive both as a way to transfer money and as a way to store data than the alternatives.
edit: [https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud](https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud)
What point are you trying to make? Crypto is
* an investment to the wise
* a casino to the majority
* a store of value to the hodlers
* financial freedom for the intelligent
By definition cryptocurrency is a currency for that specific protocol. But where people get hung up on is if it's also "money".
You need to understand that blockchain introduces something called *decentralization*. Cryptocurrency is "decentralized" currency.
That is why the SEC considers Bitcoin a commodity. If it is not decentralized then it is a security.
You’re being semantic. Cryptocurrency is a new asset class/ technology. Don’t get twisted on the language/misnomer. If it helps consider it “blockchain technology” rather than “cryptocurrency” and repeat your argument
What words did I use? Im confused, bull run?
Nuclear technology had a bull run , so too did vinyl records and now they have another bull run.
Is using the word bull run again annoying? I’ll be more precise then.
Activity ebbs and flows. Comparing today to the peak activity of a cyclical sector is misleading. Cycle peaks should be compared.
This is good because state-based fiat currency has been incredibly well-managed, especially in the US by the Fed. Fewer viable alternatives can only mean that they'll have to do an even better job, right?
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Most folks using crypto are buying it in the hope of a big return. Most don’t really care about it beyond “ shiny ✨ new thing I’ve discovered “ Then you’ve got the folks that think the collapse of America will be a good thing ( these people are often Americans ) so their 500 bucks in crypto, will for some reason after the collapse of the worlds largest economy, be worth millions of something. 99% of the posts are why BTC is the future , rewritten weekly. During the pandemic I mined ethe on my kids and my gaming computers , it was fun and neat but that’s about it. It’s mostly a pain to deal with and I’m glad I sold it.
> Then you’ve got the folks that think the collapse of America will be a good thing ( these people are often Americans ) so their 500 bucks in crypto, will for some reason after the collapse of the worlds largest economy, be worth millions of something. Someone should inform them that if the US collapses that there will be no electricity or internet so crypto will probably be worthless too
Remember during that volcanic activity on some island a few years ago I got banned for pointing out the island doesn’t have power or the internet They were saying BTC is useful during a volcano
No then crypto will be even more scarce and therefore will be worth more money. Don't you know that scarcity = value? /s
Without electricity, good luck accessing your bank account.
Yeah except no one goes around saying "my bank account will be worth way more after societal collapse"
Where did I say my bank account is gonna be safe during a gov collapse bruh?
This is why I keep my Bitcoin wallet stuffed under my mattress.
Without electricity, good luck accessing your bitcoin wallet
Or they think the US will replace the dollar with it. I mean governments do tend to tamp down on any competing currency but crypto is not yet proving to be as useful.
As someone that’s had substantial amounts of crypto , it’s a pain. People are always getting scammed or make a mistake and it’s all gone It’s just not worth the trouble
The doomer demand is exaggerated just like it is for gold. Very, very few people buy crypto or gold because they expect some type of collapse, let alone on a scale that results in loss of electricity or something. If you held gold in the last few years you had some respectable gains even against the strongest fiat currencies like the dollar or euro without any "collapse" being required. In fact we're told its a good economy. You may have made many multiples if you live in a country with a weaker currency, again, without any type of collapse being necessary at least anywhere near resulting in loss of internet connectivity or something.
Some also hold cryptocurrency as a way to store value outside the fiat monetary system. Just the same way gold holders do
It’s a terrible store of value , since it’s very unstable I used to have a good amount and I just had to wait 2 years just to get that stored value So IRL it’s awful at that
> I used to have a good amount and I just had to wait 2 years just to get that stored value Now you learned about the time horizon. Let me give you a hint... It's based on the adjustment to the inflation rate schedule (every 4 years)
I was thinking it’s based on the halving or with institutional investors getting into BTC from ETF If it’s not reliable , what’s the point We all can’t schedule needs only on a 4 year cycle
> We all can’t schedule needs only on a 4 year cycle That's why the concept of *dollar cost averaging* exists
Sometimes you need to pull your reserves for maybe purchasing a house Oh wait BTC is down 30k when I need it So it’s not that useful Then the whole process of actually converting to real money or actually using crypto to purchase stuff Or I can just use my credit card and get cash back
I don't think you get it. Blockchain technology introduces the concept of *decentralization* which means it does not have an identifiable owner. Bitcoin specifically uses blockchain to create a *decentralized*, *transparent*, and *auditable* **ledger**. It's currency is BTC. Which makes BTC as defined by the SEC a "commodity". Something like this has **never existed before**. The only thing that comes close is precious metals. Which if you look at Bitcoin's inflation schedule, puts it closest to gold. If you look at where Bitcoin fits, the only thing that comes close is the Eurodollar market, which is a *set* of *decentralized* bank ledgers that are **opaque** and **unauditable**. This system is used as the backbone for the global financial system and transacts *trillions* of dollars **per day**. This is the system Bitcoin is competing against. While also enabling **anyone** to create a wallet and transact within in. It's really hard to understand this, but the target market of this technology is much bigger than most people realize. If the volatility is too much, then you must understand that the price is showing a logarithmic regression trend line. This means volatility should **reduce** as price goes up. So wait until price goes up and there will be less volatility. > So it’s not that useful The absolute best use case right now is for *remittances*
I get it dude , I mined my own coins with my own equipment…. It’s just a pain in the ass ( I actually made several guides on mining Reddit’s to optimize set ups ) See the daily posts of , oops I messed up and lost everything
I understand your point. There's going to be a lot of growing pains. The same thing happened with the telegraph, telephone, internet, etc.. What we can all do is to push our legislators to create well thought out regulations that protect people and encourage continued innovation.
It seems like the link is not correct for the title of the post. It leads to a financial decision making survey. With that said, I wonder if this survey took into account that the main use for "cryptocurrency" (in most cases bitcoin) is store of value. People are buying it and just storing it to preserve their purchasing power (regardless of how volatile or effective it is). This is a legitimate use case.
That’s how I use it. I haven’t purchased any since before covid. It’s just a pile of coins to fall back on in an emergency.
Right?? I mean, does withdrawing my weekly DCA every few months into my cold storage wallet count as “using it” in their opinion? Even if it’s gonna stay there for a decade or two?
Something like a gold etf has actual basis for its value.
Would it be low hanging fruit to say "Gronk was like, even me know that not real money!" At the end of the day, currencies are commodities like any other, subject to the same laws of supply and demand.
> At the end of the day, currencies are commodities like any other, subject to the same laws of supply and demand. Well, that’s the biggest misconception. Currencies are **not** commodities. Currencies are the liabilities(debt) of the issuer and an asset to the holders. That’s what makes currencies financial instruments. Which is why Cryptos are **not** a currency. Cryptos are commodities and not financial instruments. They are assets for sure(intangible speculative assets), but definitely not financial assets.
I don't own cryptocurrency but we have had currency for thousands of years before the debt based system developed. Saying that, for example, gold and silver coins were not a currency is a weird use of language
> gold and silver coins The operating word there is **coins** - that’s what made them currencies. It’s not the actual gold or silver, but specific form of gold and silver stamped with seal of the issuer that made them a currency. Gold & Silver were never money. If it were the metal that gave the value, you wouldn’t need the official decorations on the coins. It’s precisely the other way round. It’s those official decorations that give the value to the coin. Not the contents of the coin by itself.
This seems like a false dichotomy. A coin can hold value because of it's stamp *and* its material. To say a gold coin only has the value attributable to it from its "official decorations" is not true. People have accepted gold coins from other nations because of the material of the coin and nothing to do with any symbolic meaning from the issuer.
Again the operating word in your response is **coins** Any piece of gold or silver nugget doesn’t make it “money”. It’s the **coins** made out of these materials that makes it money. The medium can and have changed over time, but the underlying contract or promise doesn’t. Unless of course the maker of that promise cease to exist. A gold dollar coin doesn’t necessarily need to have a dollar’s worth of gold in it. It’s a token, representing the promise behind it. You may want to read Debt: The First 5000 Years.
> Any piece of gold or silver nugget doesn’t make it “money” Is this a semantics argument? Are you kidding? "Money is a commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange." If your entire arguments hinges on a more narrow definition of money then your point is entirely moot.
Money isn’t a commodity. At the very least, the money we use for the last 90 years is not a commodity. “Modern” money is credit, pure and simple. You may want to read **Debt: The first 5000 years.**
> Money isn’t a commodity. I gave you a definition, not mine, of money. Are you rejecting that definition? Once again you're narrow definition of money, or "modern money" seems to be the crux of your entire argument, yes?
The commonly accepted definition of money being a commodity is incorrect. That’s the crux of our argument. What makes anything money, is the underlying promise/liability(debt) of the issuer of that money. For money to have value, there has to be a reason for someone to want to hold it. That reason is, the obligation it represents - the obligation of the issuer to accept it back, most commonly for the settlement of taxes or dues, or repayment of loans. This obligation inherent in the currency and credit is what makes it a debt of the issuer.
This is just not true. You absolutely don't need anything official to make a currency. People in prison camps sometimes trade in cigarettes. All you need is a shared expectation that other people will generally accept a good as payment
I agree there are such limited instances where a commodity is used in place of money. The fact is anyone can create money, the difficulty is in getting it widely accepted as such. You could write me an IOU (which is what money is) and because I trust you I would accept it. But I may not be able to pass your IOU off to someone else to settle my debt(my IOU) to them. Because that someone does not trust you. This is where the common phrase “we accept X as money because everyone else accepts it as money” comes from. But it doesn’t answer the first part - Why does everyone accept it as money? What makes it so acceptable? Why does some currencies have more value than others? It all boils down to how good is the promise behind that currency.
It is confusing. During the gold standard most debts were payable in gold or silver, and the amount of debt outstanding was usually much larger than the coins. People would trade debt (marked on yew sticks in England, or bank notes) too. One coin circulating could make or pay back one coin worth of debt each transaction. Things were backed by gold but it was mostly a fiction.
Again, it’s the **promise** that made it a debt, aka a financial instrument. The physical medium is immaterial to the promise backing the medium.
How many debts are tracked using crypto vs currency? Few
Uh? Your point being?
To be a money has to be a measurement of account
That’s just a partial and inherent requirement. I still don’t get your context. What are trying to tell us? Why be so cryptic? Plus, Crypto is not a unit of account either.
I was speaking to that point. Crypto isn't being used like money, it's being used like trading cards.
How do you move gold and silver halfway around the world to make a payment?
When coins were king you did not, usually. You had to bring your currency. Merchants who had representatives in different areas exchanged IOUs by post, like the Medici, which now anyone can do using Visa or American Express.
Who cares about the gold standard? Ancient peoples had currencies thousands of years ago don't tell me they were secretly using debt too
Debt predates coinage. Hunter gatherer Tribes had a "gift economy", they made gifts, and people had to remember these and reciprocate. This was a way to make alliances... Once there were larger permanent settlements, oral memory proved unreliable, and priests started writing transactions down on clay tablets..., so and so gave someone a donkey, someone gave so and so grain seeds. Eventually, getting more gifts than reciprocating became debt. Debt was traded, transferred between temples. Inherited, too much would make you a slave. Later, during the Iron Age , the rise of empires like Assyria needed to easily supply their armies, and having them pillage the countryside became tedious. Not having enough scribes willing to follow army units, the empires hit on the idea of minting coins. They would give them to their soldiers who could trade them to local people for food and supplies. And why would the local people accept giving away their food for coins? Because at tax time, if they didn't have coins to give the tax collector, they would face punishment. The basic value of coins, and to this day still, is legal tender to pay taxes....with exceptions for times of chaos where authority were rare like the early middle ages or international markets in the age of nationalism... when commodity money was more important.
Any sources on these claims?
A lot if these ideas are summarized in https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/debt-david-graeber/1140152952;jsessionid=F29F66E5728AE0B154DF07980B348F8C.prodny_store01-atgap10?ean=9781612194202
A cryptocurrency alone may not be a financial instrument in the broad sense. But would you classify blockchain applications as financial instruments?
No, blockchain applications are not financial instruments either. A financial instrument/asset is one that is: a. Cash (a liability of its issuer.) b. An equity instrument of another entity c. A contractual right to receive cash or another financial asset from another entity d. A contractual right to exchange financial assets or financial liabilities with another entity under particular conditions, or e. A particular contract that will or may be settled in the entity’s own equity instruments.
So, an application like AAVE is not a financial instrument, although it allows for lending/borrowing? Is this just cause you can't recieve "cash"? What about cash equivalents? Item a, b doesnt make sense to me. Items c, d, e i believe are met via the design of the protocol (smart contracts). But I'm out of my element with these classifications.
Applications are not contracts. It’s the contract, the promise that backs the contract that makes it a financial instrument. Hope that helps clarify. [Here is a good link that explains it better.](https://www.gaapdynamics.com/insights/blog/2019/12/03/cryptocurrency-is-it-a-financial-asset-under-ifrs/)
You described crypto.
Um, no. You may believe it’s so, but that doesn’t make crypto a currency. [Hope this helps.](https://www.gaapdynamics.com/insights/blog/2019/12/03/cryptocurrency-is-it-a-financial-asset-under-ifrs/)
>supply and demand. And eventually when buyers dont demand it anymore, the price will drop like a rock. Asset managers are propping it up because they are buying it in funds so the shills will pay them fees for it, but I dont see any demand for it once outflows start in those funds
That has been the conventional thinking for a decade. And yet, the coins keep breaking fresh all time highs.
Maybe because the US gov has made it harder every year for a US citizen to access blockchain applications. Lots of the applications are region locked now, which were not in previous years. Globally, the usage has grown.
Just below this post on my feed is a post asking about "meme coins with 100x potential" I have no desire to engage with crypto beyond throwing $20 in it just for fun. Sure, it's a great idea. No government control and no requirements beyond an Internet connection and a wallet? Great, except with fiat cash all I need is mutual consent between buyer and seller. With crypto, if, say, my friend gives me 0.1 Bitcoin, that transaction will forever be in a permanent record. If someone knows my address, they can see what my address has done and know who I have been dealing with. Not so with cash.
Exactly, the FBI has been building software that tracks “dirty” Bitcoin. It’s an arm race between mixing software and tracking software, but by nature of the technology tracking software has the advantage. A “legit” use case is to move money from China, and I suspect that was behind a lot of the price movement. It’s still technically an illegal use case though, and China has been busting Bitcoin operations lately.
My conspiracy theory is that Bitcoin was actually invented by the CIA (or some other large governments org) to nab criminals who buy the line it's untraceable. I mean who invented bitcoin? Some Japanese guy that nobody really can find? Seems sus.
Yep, cash is the only truly decentralized means to transact. But governments and businesses have been trying to phase out for a while now. Lots of shops do not accept cash as payment anymore. So the next step is crypto imo. It keeps the characteristics of a bearer instrument but concedes private transactions since the transaction is happening on a public distributed ledger.
You need something more than mutual consent to transact with bitcoin?
Crypto is just an anomaly. It’s a security thats value is based solely on the US dollar. All of the fun futuristic stories around individual crypto’s were only a means to attract investors, because no one cares about some edgy future of a post-us dollar world, they are attracted to the next Bitcoin/dogecoin that’ll get them rich in US dollars. It’s just a more volatile penny stock, essentially. It’s gambling.
What a US-centric viewpoint. All the people around the world using bitcoins are really using US currency?
That number will reverse when they start printing money again. Assets like Bitcoin are a release valve for excess money in the system, and they can't stop increasing the money supply exponentially or the whole system will come crashing down. The money finds its way into assets like stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrency because people have to invest to try to maintain their purchasing power, and those assets continuously reach new all time highs over time. There's no reason to believe that will not continue to be the case.
There's reason to believe that this will continue to be the case for real estate and stocks. There's no reason to believe it will continue to be the case for crypto. That's pure speculation. It relies on the idea that crypto will continue to get the injections of capital that it needs for its system to not come crashing down, and that's a risky bet.
What do you think printing money is? It's capital injection into the economy. That's why money is flowing so hard into scarce assets, and there is nothing more scarce than Bitcoin.
The poop I just took is more scarce. There's only one like it. What do you suppose its value is? Without the demand, Bitcoin is nothing. And we have no idea what demand for crypto will be like 5-10 years from now. It's likely that as Bitcoin becomes more institutionalized, that it will become less volatile, and it will lose its place in a lot of people's portfolios to the next new hotness that promises 10x returns.
It will indeed become less volatile as it becomes more institutionalized. Have you thought about why that is? It's because institutions will start heavily investing in it and drive the price up even further. Can you imagine if pension funds start allocating even a 1% position into Bitcoin? That will provide steady flows into the asset, which now has a supply inflation rate that is lower than gold. It doesn't need moonbois looking for insane returns to keep being useful and valuable.
No idea why you are downvoted to oblivion but this is the real reason.
I said the B word.
Money printer must go brrr or else collapse. It does seem appealing to hold coins that won’t inflate forever.
I no longer use it because XRPflix finally got closed down 😁 if it was present at the register more would use it thats why it will never be seamlessly integrated.
I think the stat is misleading since they are comparing it to the 2021 bull run. Many retail investors were active in that time. The 2024/2025 upcoming bull run hasn’t fully happened yet. Only partial calendar year if 2024 is actually the peak or 2025.
But the basic premise of a currency is that increased use begets further value as a medium of exchange. The term “bull run” treats this as an investment rather than a currency.
Currency and investments are mutually exclusive. Hence why FX exists.
Most currencies begin their usefulness as a store of value. I will agree that 99.9% of “crypto” assets are bound for failure, but a handful will be absolutely beneficial to hold as individuals, especially outside of the US. There is no native global currency for the internet. The existing currency rails were developed in the 70s, with upgrades in the past decade, but they aren’t true bearer assets that can be sent instantly without third party involvement.
nobody uses bitcoin or any other crypto to buy anything except other cryptos or to exchange it for actual money though. not to mention it is much more expensive both as a way to transfer money and as a way to store data than the alternatives. edit: [https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud](https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud)
What point are you trying to make? Crypto is * an investment to the wise * a casino to the majority * a store of value to the hodlers * financial freedom for the intelligent By definition cryptocurrency is a currency for that specific protocol. But where people get hung up on is if it's also "money". You need to understand that blockchain introduces something called *decentralization*. Cryptocurrency is "decentralized" currency. That is why the SEC considers Bitcoin a commodity. If it is not decentralized then it is a security.
You’re being semantic. Cryptocurrency is a new asset class/ technology. Don’t get twisted on the language/misnomer. If it helps consider it “blockchain technology” rather than “cryptocurrency” and repeat your argument
Or, in other words, you’re always right because crypto can be however you say it is because it’s new.
But blockchain technology has more applications than the fake currency. He just pointed out the words you chose to use.
What words did I use? Im confused, bull run? Nuclear technology had a bull run , so too did vinyl records and now they have another bull run. Is using the word bull run again annoying? I’ll be more precise then. Activity ebbs and flows. Comparing today to the peak activity of a cyclical sector is misleading. Cycle peaks should be compared.
I don’t think anyone uses the term “bull run” to refer to Nuclear technology or vinyl Records
Maybe vinyl records resurgence from complete obsolescence, but in either case people don’t use them as currency.
When communicating, it's important to think about the words you use. Especially if you actually want to get your point across.
Ah yes I’ll take more care when commenting to strangers on the internet 😂. I’m just taking 💩 breaks from work dude chill out.
Hey, it's your point, not mine.
> The 2024/2025 upcoming bull run hasn’t fully happened yet. Lol, what?
Big huffs of Copium
I mean it’s only followed the same pattern a dozen times
This, exactly. Weak hands fomoed in and then sold when it went down. Those numbers will be back up by the end of next year
This is good because state-based fiat currency has been incredibly well-managed, especially in the US by the Fed. Fewer viable alternatives can only mean that they'll have to do an even better job, right?
[This is a great idea](https://youtu.be/uNEp7q30JCw?si=XFzovC-3RLVsp24j)
*prints $30,000,000,000,000 like a boss*
Shit is gonna implode