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> Yep. That's always held true.

No, it's always true in zero sum games. The stock market is not zero sum. Beating the stock market is, which is why most investors don't beat the stock market. But that's different from losing principal in even nominal terms.

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Exactly. The stock market is positive sum, since companies on average create more value than they destroy. Bitcoin, though, is negative sum, since no new value is created and value is actively destroyed via mining.

Investing in BTC is like buying shares of stock in a company that produces nothing and has high ongoing costs that are only paid for by continuing to issue new shares.

It's investing in the confidence of the future of a network that can only handle 7 transactions a second, at the expense of a small country's use of electricity.

The existence of an online alternative to gold is potentially valuable (also potentially harmful but I would say the jury is still out), and it's hard to say if mining rewards counteract that.

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