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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully this kills "alt gold" ideas for BTC for good. No one can hold it as a hedge vs equities now after the correlated fall.

I feel awful for everyone in El Salvador and Turkey and elsewhere who've been conned into holding this instead of fiat and are now in a mire - a mire that probably involves not eating.

Christ, I decided that I couldnt handle the BTC risk - people who encouraged those folks to take it on should be... well... should be sorry.

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What really scares me is the TV ads. People like Big Papi and Matt Damon advertising Crypto buying platforms to people during football games is HORRIFYING. Once I saw those ads, I knew the end was near, and that these crypto platforms had literally pivoted to selling these things to completely clueless greedy people.

Like the old adage said, when your shoe shine boy has a stock tip, it's time to sell. And when your aunt has an opinion about crypto, it's time to sell, as well.

Real conversation about crypto - with my hairdresser.

Him : "NFT's are going to revolutionize the art market"

Me : "I don't know much about that, I just laugh whenever one of those bored monkeys gets right clicked and they all go mad about it".

Him : "What do you mean"

Me : "Someone copies the jpeg and uses it and they can't stop them"

Him : "nahhh you can't steal them"

Me : "It's only the meta data that's on a blockchain"

Him : "I have a question, right"

Me : "I dunno"

Him : "But do you know what a blockchain really is?"

Me : "Ahh, well, ahh... yes, I think I do, I'm a bit hazy on some of the maths, but errrm yeah"

Him : "I don't, noone can ever explain it, but everyone seems to want to buy into it so ...."

So - it's not evidence but still I think that almost all investors in crypto have little to no idea of what they are investing in. This is not good.

"So ... the blockchain is basically just a linked list with each item holding a cryptographically signed copy of the content of the previous item. Each item additionally holds a collection of transactions that happened in the last ten minutes. That way everybody is able to check if somebody who claims to own something really owns the item/coin/NFT of interest."

Honestly ... your hairdresser will have doubts that you are not messing with him.

I think my explanation was not as good as your one, and yes, he thinks I'm messing.

Forbidding folks in these countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Argentina, Venezuela) from holding a crypto alternative to their native currency is sentencing them to a guaranteed loss of 90%+ of their purchasing power, versus weathering crypto volatility.

I agree with this statement but the solution is not solely crypto nor does that provide any inherent value to residents outside of those nations.

In aforementioned countries the established financial system becomes a tool of theft by the government. Just listen to news reports or podcasts from normal folks who have to survive under these conditions. Thought you had a dollar denominated savings account? It's Liras now. Want to withdraw your money? Limited to $40US a day.

Crypto is one compelling alternative. Note, I lump a reputable USD stablecoin in here too. It's all software after all.

> ...a tool of theft by the government.

How is theft by grifters (whatever we're calling crypto-bros) better?

There does need to be a solution for countries that do this - that is to say indulge in radical devaluation; but it is clearly not BTC or ETH. It could be a properly backed and regulated crypto currency, one that also could be used without burning barrels of oil. There is no such crypto currency though, and there may never be one.

Falling off a cliff while hodlers hold on for dear life means that BTC is exactly like gold. Gold hit its all-time real-dollar high price in 1980, and never regained that price, but gave birth to the gold bug phenomenon. I imagine it can be the same for crypto: in 2065 the hodlers will still be wistful for that 2021 high price. And let's face it many of the crypto people are the same people who were super into gold, too.

The point about gold is that traditionally it's been seen to be inversely correlated with equities, which means that you hold gold and equities in your portfolio to give you stability. If equities and BTC correlate then that hedge won't work.

> I feel awful for everyone in El Salvador

From 2 days ago: El Salvador Buys $15 Million Worth Of Bitcoin ‘Really Cheap,’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/01/21/el-salv...

Nonesense. The Lira has been massively losing value since 2008 while Bitcoin has been massively gaining value for years, the only Turks that are not eating because of Bitcoin are the ones who bought it the past few months.

And the ones who bought BTC in 2009, well... man thats a lot of doner.

Odd, I see a 38% gain for the Lira this year. Do you see something different? Also poor people tend to try to avoid inflation on a time scale of months, they can't hodl because they need to get their kids their dinner.

USD/TRY was 9.60 in October 24th, 2021, and 13.50 now. That's almost a 30% drop. It was also 18 at some point in November.

BTC/TRY was 591572 24/10/2021 and it's 481599 now - 19% drop over that period.

That's correct, but it should be noted that Lira's drop is solely caused by the government's mismanagement.

The Turkish lira is down more than Bitcoin over the last year so BTC still seems like a better proposition even right after such a big crash..

Lets revisit this comment in a week

I am curious how much BTC was used given the costs of transactions was very expensive, especially for a smaller economy.

Onchain isn’t bad, it’s a few cents however smaller places like EL Salvador use Lightning network, which allows extremely low transfers (on the order of 1 sat). Lightning works better than a credit card.

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