You’re confusing speculation with taking a risk. If people are putting money in a bank with the expectation of profiting from its government guarantee, we’re in a credit crisis. The system is working as intended. Most of the time, the money in there is expected to stay still.
Most crypto buyers are buying with the expectation of appreciation.
I would argue that the risk of bitcoin being a lower value in ten years is tiny, and also that chance of the dollar's value halving or worse over the same period, is almost certain.
You might speculate the opposite.
Houses prices are also very low compared to 40 years ago if you use Grade A Eggs as your unit of account. So what?
Bitcoin seems like a pretty bad store of value because it's more volatile than most index funds.
If you look at Bitcoin as in game tokens, but one where tokens are given away to people who prove they have burned cash, you see it is a negative sum system.
Even Gold as store of value is questionable. It is a commodity. But we are entering naked empiror territory and I will avoid that hill.
Back to Bitcoin: it is basically a bet on mass adoption. If that mass adoption doesn't happen it is a ponzi. If it does the price should stabilize, even then not sure if it is a store of value.
Disclaimer. I actually own some.
Which is actually happening for more than a decade now with larger and larger player buying some Bitcoin in every bear-bull cycle.
With amazing predictability that you can fit a curve to it for entirety of its existence. What's more, the more money was already funneled into it, the closer the price is to the curve.
If you are lazy you can just look at "rainbow chart" which captures the most basic observation about Bitcoin.
That curve will predict such high price but in year 3400 (I'm guessing, I didn't check yet because I wasn't interested in time horizons that exceed my foreseeable future).
It's a logarithmic curve (albeit on logarithmic plot). For example the bull market in 4 years from the one that we are currently entering will result in just doubling Bitcoin price which is pathetic (even when compared to 5-7x of the current one, let alone past ones). In another 4 years the growth will be even less.
Besides, at some point the random noise in the price signal will mostly overwhelm the shape of the curve and bitcoin will just become like stock market, growing at the glacial pace of economy growth.
Bitcoin is ending, but not in a sense of becoming worthless but becoming another boring randomly walking asset at the price around less than $1mln per unit possibly for entirety of this century.
That general insight of the shape what Bitcoin is that can be inferred from long term prices is also confirmed by plotting MVRV:
https://insights.glassnode.com/content/images/2023/02/07_mvr...
It cyclically heads towards boring.
1. That is a weak argument. None of the prices so far would reault in this clear absurdity. Bitcoin cannot store more value than there is value. I am wrong if the population booms to the trillions, or the dollar crashes like Zimbabwe.
2. Past performance is not indicative of future results. For the past 40 years I have been alive. If you said anytime in the last 40 years I would die tomorrow, you'd be wrong every time. I will therefore live forever. Biology and statistics be damned.
Also see: https://xkcd.com/1122/
It's merely an observation.
> Bitcoin cannot store more value than there is value.
There no hard cap on entirety of future value that will exist at some point in time. And bitcoin growth is slowing down in a way. Same way since the day one. Hence simple fit to a single curve. I have no idea what fraction of value bitcoin will ultimately "store". You can look at gold amd take some guesses but there's no real reason for any of them to be right.
> Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Yes. And this is not an investment advice.
> [...] I would die tomorrow, you'd be wrong every time. I will therefore live forever.
Which is true to some approximation and good assumption to live by. Vast majority of people lives everyday with assumption they won't die tomorrow or anytime soon (for their definitions of soon). Then, if they were lucky they grow old and everybody seeing their decline adjusts their expectations. Where are the signs of decline of bitcoin? Is market cap shrinking? What about transaction volume?
> Biology and statistics be damned.
What statistics or rules of science understood at least as well as biology contradict the working assumption that bitcoin will keep for the foreseeable future its shape that it's been keeping since it popped up?
To answer the last question. First principles. Exponential growth tails off when resources limits are met.
At best Bitcoin takes over all currency usage and the value of it (at some point $ comparisons become useless as it has become more used than dollars) follows human progress i.e. the things we do to trade for bitcoin. There is no reason to believe that the growth rate of all human civ will be as high ad bitcoins break out from Satoshi. And if it is, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin and everything to do with AI. However the future is uncertain enough that we can't pretend this curve is a predictor.
Now my back foot is hurting so lets turn this around.
What are the underlying principles and systems that make your curve predictive?
Isn't it just a factual observation of reality (even trivial one) that you also agree with? Or did you observe something different?
I just stated something. I did not propose argument for anything. I didn't even tell you that you are wrong, only that you'd be wrong if you said it at any moment in the past. I don't find it even mildly provocative. You might still be right right now. It's just very unlikely in my option.
> Exponential growth tails off when resources limits are met.
Do you believe that Bitcoin grows exponentially when I just told you it fits logarithmic curve not straight line on logarithmic plot?
Are you sure you are basing your reasoning on relevant first principles?
> What are the underlying principles and systems that make your curve predictive?
Statistics. Large number of uncoordinated trades so far and large number of capital exchanging hands in various ways, places and contexts makes it unwise to dismiss it as purely accidental and prone to flipping on its head any moment. Global "once in a century" pandemic didn't affect it. Neither associated disruption to global trade nor partial transition to remote work. No political changes. Nuclear power instigating war in Europe didn't affect it. Raise of AI didn't affect it. Evolution and degradation of global economy didn't affect it. Brexit. Trump's win. Trump's loss. Loss denial. And if we are looking at events "closer to home". Countless bankruptcies of crypto exchanges didn't affect the fit. Billion dollars scams in crypto coming out didn't affect it. Bans on mining in leading countries. Forking of BCH, BCC and Bitcoin gold. Invention of stable coins (also NFTs) is not visible on the fit. I'm sorry, but all that makes it super hard to believe that suddenly it's gonna deviate from the fit when it stayed pretty much on track while all other real world and crypto charts were going bonkers due to real world events and trends and whims of the markets.
Some other cryptocurrency could solve all the problems Bitcoin has and it will still be valuable because it was the first one.
So a dollar is a terrible long term unit of account. So if your salary, as your career progresses doesn't raise at least as much as price of gold (or grade A eggs or whatever) you are getting shafted by the economy.
I'm sure there are some other insights you can draw from simple observation of gold and housing prices.
Oftentimes it takes up to 5 minutes just for the transaction to begin, and usually more than 20 minutes for the transfer to complete.
I never understand this argument anyway. If you can't send funds instantly that isn't because the currently itself can't be transferred instantly - it's because for whatever reason you don't have access to a provider that will provide that service. That's a separate problem and can be solved without having to build an entirely new currency / financial system.
> HSBC...
Also a conduit for illicit trade and money laundering.
Cash enables some illegal activity, but at least for me the benefits FAR outweight the obvious consequences
Private transactions of a non-criminal nature ?
Legal wagers made in casinos ?
Your imagination is lacking my friend.
The reason we have cash is (1) we used to not have widespread electronic instant settlement systems and (2) because you still generally need some type of physical fallback system because we energy sources and communications networks aren't always up.
Bitcoin is bad at 1 - 7 transactions per second (something something lightning network), and completely fails at (2) because it can't settle transactions without the internet, and electricity.
> There’s little legitimate reason for people to use it.
Cash is “legal tender, for all debts public and private”. Pretty sure that’s a legitimate use.