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Comment by brndnmtthws | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to note that most of the people who are pro-Bitcoin were born after 1980 or so. Could it be that Mr Buffett just doesn't get it?

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Your argument is that one of the most successful investors in the history of mankind is physically incapable of understanding Bitcoin investment (or anything, for that matter) just because he's old?

He has a different worldview. He's made his money on old way of investing. Some of it applies, some doesn't. He would not be the first successful person to be wildly wrong about a new thing.

I would love hear one thing about investing before that doesn't apply now. Or one thing that Buffet doesn't understand about bitcoin that has any economic relevance.

Those who say he doesn't get it seem infinitely more naive and ignorant than Buffet on this.

One of the main differences is the fact that the value of a currency is fundamentally based on who accepts it. All economic theory prior to this is...i dont want to say outdated but needs to be reprioritized.

Are you seriously suggesting that "currency is fundamentally based on who accepts it" is a new idea?

No?

I don't think that he suggested that he was "physically" incapable of understanding Bitcoin investment.

But, I mean, sure. People get old and start to have difficulty comprehending things that get added to the world long, long after they built their mental model of the world. This happens even to smart people. Even to singularly smart people. I don't know if it's happened to Buffet or not, but if he lives long enough, it will.

How about maybe because he is extremely busy?

I hear this argument a lot, and don't understand it. It's entirely possible Warren doesn't understand the technical details about how Bitcoin functions. But I don't understand how that's relevant to how it functions as an investment. Mind elaborating about why the technical details are relevant to how it performs as an investment?

Couldn't it also be that he does "get it" and all the young and inexperienced investors/speculators don't?

I'm not going to try to refute your argument (even though I might disagree with it), I'm going to assume that what you say is right.

Ok, why does it matter if he does get it and the young investors don't if the young investors can participate in a new economy. Like what is there to get? If they establish a new economy, who cares if Warren gets it?

I don't think most of the young investors these days are participating in a new economy. They are just trading Bitcoin as commodity on exchanges. In which case if they don't get it and Warren does, that's a problem for them.

Exchange is the foundation of any new economy. By creating exchanges, they are creating a foundation of the next economy.

A new economy that supposedly runs on a payment method that doesn't scale so have to resort to various degrees of centralization and trusted third-parties that don't deliver on the original promises of Bitcoin?

I guess I don't see what makes this a new economy and not just the same old economy with new commodity-based payment system.

It’s still very much under development. It’s not like the rest of the economic system was built over night.

I don't see the point to buying Bitcoin.

I was born before 1980 (< 1 year before, but still true statement) so maybe I really don't get it, but a "currency" that doesn't have transaction speed or throughput needed for widespread use doesn't seem appealing to me.

I like to read about the protocol and rummage through the code. Reading about hacks/scams and other interesting stories is fun. But my interest has not so far induced me to invest money or computing time into any cryptocurrency.

Is that a subtle version of ageism ?

Bitcoin is a financial instrument with currency aspiration. Mr Buffet is very much an expert talking about stuff he knows.

On the other side of the coin, recent history of bitcoin exchanges woes showed that "pro-bitcoin" people were not specifically enlightened, they were just inexperienced.

That does not make Mr Buffet right and pro-bitcoin wrong, but you should at least give him the benefit of the doubt and not simply dismiss his points as old people ramblings.

Not subtle, but openly. I'm saying that people who didn't grow up in the internet age probably have a more difficult time understanding why it's so valuable.

Not sure why everyone's go-to after someone talks negatively about Bitcoin is "he/she doesn't get it." Exactly what is there to get?

I'm curious about this too. Bitcoin is now essentially an investment venture, no? What is there to get about making money from bitcoin price going up?

Bitcoin's price only goes up as people buy it. "Making money" requires selling it. Selling it causes the price to go down. This is fundamentally the problem—unlike stocks, real estate, and other productive investments, one can only make money in Bitcoin by selling it for a higher price than it was purchased for.

There's a really cool ecosystem of decentralized systems starting to find real-world use cases on the other side of the bitcoin divide. Bitcoin is just the figurehead.

Sure. But it seems faaar more likely that Buffet has seen this before and those who are pro-Bitcoin and haven't watched similar commodity/equity rushes are not getting it.

What? Bitcoin has never existed before it was created, and it wasn't possible before the Internet, so I don't think Warren Buffett has seen it before unless he's a time traveler.

OP talking about other phenoms. [S]he says that. IE the dot com bubble and some of the insane stock prices.

Last I checked Bitcoin wasn't a stock.

Ah yes, something that's never existed before. While true in the technological particulars, it's dead wrong economically. There are all sorts of "never seen before" tradable things that show up in the economy. That people think that cryptocurrencies are so different is evidence that Buffet is right, not the economic newbs.

See also the efforts to force "blockchain" into all sorts of round holes where it doesn't fit, such as energy.

There is nothing comparable to Bitcoin that previously existed. Gold is perhaps the closest thing.

Haha, gold! The only way that gold is comparable is that similar political commentators are running pump schemes! Otherwise, there are plenty of other commodities that bitcoin is as similar to as gold. Currencies of unstable nations are perhaps more similar to bitcoin than gold is.

And that's just it: nothing new economically about bitcoin. Nothing that hasn't been theorized to death by economists. Politically, it enables a currency for those with massively unstable governments. It enables some black markets. But the idea that this is something new that Buffet isn't getting, is just silly, and that's been borne out by the paucity of any sort of insight from the bitcoin pumpers. Buffet is right that the current soaring and unstable price is driven by FOMO. Nobody knows what the proper size of the bitcoin economy should be yet, and there's almost no way to value it rationally. The most rational pricing of bitcoin is still wild guesses, but the vast majority of purchasers are doing nothing even remotely like trying to establish a price. They are just buying and hoping it soars. Works great until it doesn't.

> It's interesting to note that most of the people who are pro-Bitcoin were born after 1980 or so.

Citation?

> Could it be that Mr Buffett just doesn't get it?

People said the same thing in 1999 when he famously refused to invest in tech stocks and then you kno0w what happened.

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