The Cult of Crypto
ft.com
ft.com
> I have been a btc fan since 2013. I am glad I joined 'the cult'. It has made more wealthy inadvertently although early on I had ideological motivations.
> It is a cult. So was deifying jesus and other religions. Currencies are similar to religions in that they are social constructions which different individuals and groups value differently and which rely on faith.
> I rather expect that establishment media err on the side of caution. One needs imagination to recognise a technology that has significant political and philosophical implications.
> I would urge skeptics to consider these aspects as well as urge the zealots to consider the bad aspects of crypto socially and the bad aspects of proselytising.
But to save a few minutes: it's a 2,800+ words article talking about the history of cryptocurrencies, with a handful of personal stories weaved in. Read if you have no idea what crypto is and is curious about its origins. If you've been following the space and its evolution, nothing to see here.
Just remember to start with an amount you are comfortable risking and then do your own research.
It's really the only way to understand the fundamentals of why crypto is worth anything, what is the utility, what is wrong with the fiat system, and focus on the needs of the underbanked in developing nations to understand the use cases.
This isn't a first world revolution. Unless you are underbanked you will need to exhert effort to understand the problems crypto solves.
It actually seems the perfect number. You don't want to own anything that is priced for perfect execution for the next 10 years down the road.
The rational move is to short because in the best case scenario of perfect execution you get to keep your money.
No downside, maximum upside.
An example is Microsoft stock 2003-2014. It achieved everything Gates laid out in the 80s and 90s as the way of the future but the stock stayed flat.
During this time Windows appeared everywhere from the Kremlin to the ISS and the vision of a PC on every desk and in every home was accomplished.
Problem is Gates and the dot com bubble hype were so convincing and compelling in making the case for people to invest in Microsoft that everybody gave him a blank check.
When the whole world is anticipating that something will be the next big thing there is no way to make money, because money is made in volatility and uncertanety
You might be making an opportunity loss, but mistakes are when you lose all your money because you put it in something that you heard someone telling you about. Past result of an investment is not a guarantee for future returns, so if many people got rich in something in the past years, doesn't mean others will in the next years.
Arguments like 'fear of losing out' and 'making a mistake by not doing it' are absolutely the wrong ones in an investment decision. These lead to irrational choices that can result in sleepless nights and misery. These are the drivers for a mania or bubble.
Instead think of 'can I handle the loss?', 'am I comfortable with the risk/reward profile?' and 'do I understand what I am doing?'
This last point I do not mean personally, but many people and companies have burned themselves seriously with complex derivatives that they had no idea of how dangerous they were.
If you make your investments with well-thought arguments, then you will still be able to sleep at night and live with yourself if it goes bad. (Things can always go bad, no matter what people tell you with their historic charts.)
Not necessarily. If the monetary unit of those savings is being debased at an astronomical rate. That's like expecting your iceberg of savings not to melt when the FED just turned up the heat!
You can paste the title of the article in Google in a private window and you will be able to read it because FT.com wants the traffic from Google.
As for your concerns: my advice is to stay far away from "crypto". It's literally just a huge multi-level marketing scam and 100% risk. There is no intrinsic value in "crypto"—unlike a house or a piece of land or any other thing actually produced in the real world. You may as well just go follow stock advice on Reddit's Wall Street Bets. Hey, you have a 50/50 chance of getting rich and going broke!
If you're under thirty years old, let's say, you can play with some riskier investment options because you have time to earn that money back, but if you're getting older you should try to find some low-expense ratio index funds to invest in and hold for a decade or two (try on Vanguard or Schwab).
Here are some very technically savvy people calling bullshit on "crypto" recently, with salient arguments and inside experience: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1399058952336277505, https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/06/26/Shorting-..., https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353984617914370
>Though its lack of a single leading figure and its amorphous online footprint marks it out from traditional cults, some say the cryptocurrency movement bears a striking resemblance to another progeny of the digital age: the QAnon super-conspiracy.
> “Both have doctrine passed down by a mysterious unknown founder, puzzle-solving, and internet meme culture and lots of predictions about politics/economics that are completely unfalsifiable,” says Diehl. “They’re both rooted in this ideology that claims to oppose a common enemy: corruption and untrustworthy intermediaries, and both see the internet as the way to finally eradicate those problems in some great apocalyptic event.”