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Comment by barnbuilder | Hacker News Reader

The people getting wiped out by the collapse of Voyager, Celsius, etc. were not putting their money on bitcoin. They were giving it to a custodian who thought they could beat bitcoin by investing in altcoins (or lending to those who do so).

This is definitely not "everyone's strategy"; plenty of us bitcoiners have been warning against this sort of irresponsible activity for a long time.

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Exactly. And if you had half an ounce of sense, you would have withdrawn your deposits from these platforms when UST and then Celsius collapsed.

> withdrawn your deposits from these platforms when UST and then Celsius collapsed

Which ironically, is why more of them keep (and will keep) falling. It'll be a cascade of withdrawals across the ecosystem, and all these weak platforms will rightly go under. Looking forward to it.

What's irresponsible about that compared to just parking it in BTC?

Once someone sends their bitcoin or "crypto" to a lending platform, they no longer own this asset. What they now have is an IOU for that asset that the platform may be unwilling or unable to fulfill in the future, as appears to be the case with Voyager and numerous others before it.

Yes, but setting aside direct ownership which is not a prerequisite for investing in any coin, how is bitcoin a better choice? It seems to me that is like saying, well you really should have invested in Exxon and you would be ok now.

Crypto is one of the biggest active victim-blaming communities.

"Not your wallet not your coin", or whatever they like saying, is just is just deflection from valid criticism that crypto is very easy to exploit without recourse.

I disagree. To me it's like saying passwords are broken because most people choose "password123". Or like saying dollar bills are bad because they can rip. Safety rails should be made of course, but if you aren't even maintaining basic hygiene within a system then I'm sorry but that's on you.

People are learning to use better passwords, and people learned long ago to keep their paper money in a wallet. The same will happen with crypto.

How much do you think is the fair value of 1 bitcoin?

I have no idea. Certainly more than the cost of a pizza. There are 21 million, and if split evenly among the world population each person would get ~0.002625.

It depends on a lot of factors; like how important it might become for people to avoid using fiat or government controlled digital currencies, or how deeply integrated it could become in daily life.

Splitting it evenly among the world population seems completely irrelevant for this conversation.

Check coinmarketcap - you don’t have to speculate about the market value because they list it.

I didn't ask about the "market value", and I wasn't asking you.

Passwords are broken because people choose “password123”. People work on all sorts of alternatives because of this.

It's funny how badly my criticism went over his head.

…and that woman was date raped because she wore a short minidress. It’s her fault! /s

> The same will happen with crypto.

What’s the motivation for this to happen?

My guess: from a speculative standpoint Bitcoin is finite and the only real competitor to fiat. There's also a large amount of sustained hype. It's unlikely to flatline unless something really major happens.

Blockchains like Ethereum are not (and aren't meant to be) alternatives to fiat. In fact, the best thing for ETH would be low price, since it's mostly used as gas. Altcoins are almost entirely vaporware until ETH tech matures and consumer services become feasible. Until then, any high valuation of either ETH or Altcoin is 100% Tulip Mania. I have no idea about any blockchains outside of Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Direct ownership is the point though. Bitcoin allows direct ownership. Also, being the biggest, it can be considered the safest crypto.

Bitcoin has no concept of ownership. "Not your keys, not your coins" means exactly that. If you lose your car keys, you still own your car. This is not true of bitcoin.

No concept of ownership is a stretch. If you have the keys to a Bitcoin wallet, you own that Bitcoin wallet. If you lost physical cash or gold, it would be like losing your keys to a Bitcoin wallet. No one would replace your physical cash, gold, or Bitcoin, if you lost it. However, that doesn't mean that you don't own that physical cash, gold, or Bitcoin, at least while you have it in your possession.

Well, when it comes to bitcoins, you only own them as long as you have them in your possession—which means you don't own them, you only possess them. This is what I mean by no concept of ownership. The bitcoin network doesn't care who is the rightful owner of the bitcoins, it only cares about who has access to them.

BTC isn’t a security. “Crypto” securities are much riskier than sticking with the one cryptocurrency worthy of being called a commodity- according to Gary Gensler (SEC chair, former CFTC chair). Securities are dividend or interest bearing assets. Commodities do not give interest or dividends, it’s like holding gold or some other rock. BTC is volatile enough! “Stable” coins and other “guaranteed return but not regulated” instruments have a long history of collapsing, even before “crypto” was sprinkled on top.

I wonder,

Where there any crypto investment Funds that invested in actual companies (aka not coins or derivates)?

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