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Comment by QuadmasterXLII | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't moved coins off the exchange you aren't a bitcoin investor.

"If you haven't received delivery on your crude oil futures contracts, you aren't a petroleum investor."

This reads like a no-true-scotsman. If you exchange USD for bitcoin assets with the intent to sell later at a higher price, you're semantically a bitcoin investor.

If the website ftx said you had thee bitcoins three weeks ago, how many bitcoins did you have?

Choosing (poorly) to invest with the wrong tools is still investing.

I agree that my post reads like the no-true-scottsman fallacy, but I think I may be onto something. Compare the very similar phrases "You aren't a real stock investor unless you get your shares in physical paper" and "You aren't a real real estate investor if you buy the brooklyn bridge from a guy on a streetcorner in Harlem." The overwhelmingly common experience of "stock investors" that actually don't own the paper stock is that they are able to sell at market value when they decide to (although its not perfect, see trading halts etc.) I'd argue that the paper stock claim is a real no-true-scottsman. The overwhelmingly common experience of brooklyn bridge buyers is that they are not able to later sell the brooklyn bridge at market value- they did not succesfully invest in real estate. Buying "bitcoin" and trusting the exchange to hold it for you? Hard to say what the odds are but they don't seem good lately

Even a real estate deed or a stock certificate is just a piece of paper, though. At the end of the day, unless your investment is something you can physically hold in your hand, you're trusting that your claim on it will be honored.

"You aren't a real real estate investor if you buy the brooklyn bridge from a guy on a streetcorner in Harlem" is true because the claim on the bridge was never credible, not because you never physically took possession of the bridge itself. You could argue that the exchange's IOU was never credible, but that's different from saying that any BTC-based IOU is made of lies.

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