‘I lost my life savings’ Bitcoin Collapse

Investing generally assumes a willingness to bear the risk that your calculations were wrong because reality turned out different. Perfectly willing to agree that venture capitalists and angels are better called speculators than investors.

The fact that the crypto speculation has sort of worked so far as much as it has is fascinating. Everything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for, crypto seems “speculative“ on that scale because the drivers of that willingness for any horizon are so unknown. Is that what you were referring to when you used “calculated”? “Speculative” as opposed to “calculative”?

I think part of what’s interesting about the whole crypto phenomenon is the degree to which the “investment vs speculation” semantic is so stripped away to the speculation essence, as there is no intrinsic to crypto beyond psychology. Unlike, say, a classic “invest” scenario in which a revenue-producing setup like a farm or bakery is upgraded to produce more profit- in those cases the intrinsic is the food being produced. Under the assumption that nutrition with desirable flavor has value. But if you invested in Swiss-style yogurt on certain calculations and the market swung in the meantime to Greek yogurt, well, maybe you can only give it away to prisons and schools.