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Comment by benj111 | Hacker News Reader

What's the alternative?

Stash it under the mattress so you don't make any gains that can be taxed?

Save it in gold so you can be taxed as capital gains (unless you suffer a capital loss)?

Save in stocks & shares so you can be taxed on your capital gains and dividends? Good luck if you need to fix your boiler in the middle of a down turn.

Bitcoin? That has proven itself to be a rock stable currency and you still won't avoid losing your shirt / capital gains tax.

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There are no safe alternatives (by central bank design). Keep a reasonable amount in cash, stagger the rest by risk (bonds, equities, real estate, etc).

We've already established that bonds and savings were for "dolts", both of which are short to medium term investments. By all means invest in equities and property for long term investments. If its money you'll need in the short term, these options don't seem quite so good.

Technically you would've 'lost your shirt' in bitcoin if you had bought it during only 2 of the last 520+ months...

But those two months happen to be the months where everyone was buying. That's what made the price rise so dramatically.

> happen to be the months where everyone was buying.

So, in many ways the way any market distortion happens. If everybody else is buying, sell. If everybody else is selling, buy.

> If everybody else is buying, sell. If everybody else is selling, buy.

As always, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

It depends when you crystalize the loss. If you need the cash and the market happens to be down this week, that's a problem. Don't forget this is replacing the savings and bonds that "dolts" use, this is supposed to be your short term easy to access money.

Bitcoin has only existed for 552 weeks, beginning on 2009-01-03.

I'm pretty sure bitcoin is younger than 43 years

It is in Internet Dog (Cat) Years. Or, if each block is like a ring on a tree (per 10 min instead of 1 year), it's a little older than its inception date.

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