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Bitcoin

dan m said:
Let’s hope no one starts one on NVIDIA.
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They are a completely fascinating company now. The using AI to do chip fab and lithography to make AI chips that can do better AI that can can then get better at chip fab and lithography until we smash into the singularity probably around sometime in 2026 always makes me go "Bro, you still want to talk about Crypto?".
 
I don't really follow this stuff any more, but people seem to me to be misunderstanding the BTC trade. The trade is not about holding it long enough to eventually make gazillions as BTC becomes the new world currency or whatever. The strat is taking some of the money that all the people who lose their life savings and/or house are paying out. The thing that is stopping most people making this trade is that, even in the world of finance, most people are not massive dicks.

ISTM that BTC can be thought of as a derviative where the underlying is not interst rates, government debt or even some future as yet undetermined real world use for BTC. The underlying is people losing their life savings. i.e. when the eleventy billion market crashes the money doesn't cease to exist it goes somewhere -- and the BTC trade is being the somewhere by taking profit along the way.

Which is why one suspects a largepart of the "somewhere" is the Russian mob and other people who have no issue with the being a massive dick thing.

IMHO the end game for BTC is energy costs. Let's be optimistic and assume that it's the energy requirements of AI that drive BTC to a hard zero rather than a climate catatrophe.

But, like I say, I mostly ignore this stuff these days so if someone can correct my logic here then please do.
 
davidsrsb said:
Investing short term money. Bitcoin is a long term gamble, it can roller coaster up and down or simply die if mining gets stopped
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Borrowing to buy Bitcoin is really gambling because it is volatile and you do not want to be a forced seller. So far they are the only ones who should have lost as the price is an all time high. So far.
 
matthewr said:
I don't really follow this stuff any more, but people seem to me to be misunderstanding the BTC trade. The trade is not about holding it long enough to eventually make gazillions as BTC becomes the new world currency or whatever. The strat is taking some of the money that all the people who lose their life savings and/or house are paying out. The thing that is stopping most people making this trade is that, even in the world of finance, most people are not massive dicks.

ISTM that BTC can be thought of as a derviative where the underlying is not interst rates, government debt or even some future as yet undetermined real world use for BTC. The underlying is people losing their life savings. i.e. when the eleventy billion market crashes the money doesn't cease to exist it goes somewhere -- and the BTC trade is being the somewhere by taking profit along the way.

Which is why one suspects a largepart of the "somewhere" is the Russian mob and other people who have no issue with the being a massive dick thing.

IMHO the end game for BTC is energy costs. Let's be optimistic and assume that it's the energy requirements of AI that drive BTC to a hard zero rather than a climate catatrophe.

But, like I say, I mostly ignore this stuff these days so if someone can correct my logic here then please do.
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I thought block chain or what ever was moving to a different model not requiring the massive electric overhead?
 
garyi said:
I thought block chain or what ever was moving to a different model not requiring the massive electric overhead?
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That's probably ethereum you've read about moving from proof of work to proof of stake which pretty much killed of eth mining. Bitcoin mining is still very much a massive industry in itself, long gone are the days of home mining though.
 
matthewr said:
I don't really follow this stuff any more, but people seem to me to be misunderstanding the BTC trade. The trade is not about holding it long enough to eventually make gazillions as BTC becomes the new world currency or whatever. The strat is taking some of the money that all the people who lose their life savings and/or house are paying out. The thing that is stopping most people making this trade is that, even in the world of finance, most people are not massive dicks.

ISTM that BTC can be thought of as a derviative where the underlying is not interst rates, government debt or even some future as yet undetermined real world use for BTC. The underlying is people losing their life savings. i.e. when the eleventy billion market crashes the money doesn't cease to exist it goes somewhere -- and the BTC trade is being the somewhere by taking profit along the way.

Which is why one suspects a largepart of the "somewhere" is the Russian mob and other people who have no issue with the being a massive dick thing.

IMHO the end game for BTC is energy costs. Let's be optimistic and assume that it's the energy requirements of AI that drive BTC to a hard zero rather than a climate catatrophe.

But, like I say, I mostly ignore this stuff these days so if someone can correct my logic here then please do.
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I don't do Bitcoin despite having a son who has more than tripled his money and will hold onto them until he retires. If he makes a fortune then so good and if he loses the lot, then so be it.

However anyone who buys shares, expensive watches, classic cars or old Hifi etc as an investment is no different from a Bitcoin buyer in the sense they don't know or care is making or losing a fortune, all they are interested in is their own buying and selling price and have no interest in what the seller paid for it. Before anyone moans about capitalism, please note that I used the word investment.
 
matt j said:
I mean why did they sell it at a loss?
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They needed the money now.
As a proof of energy consumption mining method, Bitcoin will either have to be stopped or rising price will divert all of the worlds energy into mining. I saw some stats this week on how coin mining had cost all of Texas consumers 5% on their power bills.
 
matthewr said:
I don't really follow this stuff any more, but people seem to me to be misunderstanding the BTC trade. The trade is not about holding it long enough to eventually make gazillions as BTC becomes the new world currency or whatever. The strat is taking some of the money that all the people who lose their life savings and/or house are paying out. The thing that is stopping most people making this trade is that, even in the world of finance, most people are not massive dicks.

ISTM that BTC can be thought of as a derviative where the underlying is not interst rates, government debt or even some future as yet undetermined real world use for BTC. The underlying is people losing their life savings. i.e. when the eleventy billion market crashes the money doesn't cease to exist it goes somewhere -- and the BTC trade is being the somewhere by taking profit along the way

IMHO the end game for BTC is energy costs. Let's be optimistic and assume that it's the energy requirements of AI that drive BTC to a hard zero rather than a climate catatrophe.
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You make it sound as though people in general are losing their life savings. Surely only those who bought at previous highs and had to sell on a dip could have lost ? We are all guessing but my guess is those people are vastly outnumbered by people who didn't buy high/sell low. Seems to me that the vast majority of people who bought at any time in the last 9 years except Feb-May and Oct-Nov 2021 have made huge profits. Whether they have cashed in those profits or greedy for more is their decision.

Anyone who bought, say, $3,500 worth in Nov 2015 would now be worth $640,000. I suspect some of those are just ordinary people.

Can you explain your thinking re AI energy requirements driving BTC to zero value ?
 
wacko said:
Anyone who bought, say, $3,500 worth in Nov 2015 would now be worth $640,000.
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I think some people don't find this a cause for celebration.

Of course, those who like something-for-nothing may see merit.

To me it seems the very definition of parasitism and calls into question the word 'worth'.
 
Over the years I've bumped into a few enthusiasts for crypto but now know to avoid them like vegans.

Without exception, they had a halting appreciation of the underlying maths but this bewilderment only indicated the smartness of the person (an engineer at NASA*, a Navy Seal - for other instance) who had bested the conventional banking system and they (the enthusiast) were now going to profit from this smartness.

It's very like the 'aircraft grade aluminium, NANO technology, skin effect and general Quantum bollocks' that actually means something in the world of science and engineering but has had zero application to the somewhat magical world of hifi - apart from in promotional literature.

It's nice to feel that, having failed to succeed by the usual route of learning and hard work, you can stand on the shoulders of giants and grasp the hitherto unreachable rewards to which you feel unjustifiably entitled. Some of you will be allowed to take away some cheese - to encourage the participation of the marginally less credulous.

* this is the guy who YouTube advertisements tell us has beaten the system with his revolutionary heater, flashlight, weight loss, blindness cure and, having been hounded by Big Business, is now responding to his initial runaway success by halving the price while having only a limited stock available.

Tell me the difference between crypto and NFTs.
 
wacko said:
You make it sound as though people in general are losing their life savings. Surely only those who bought at previous highs and had to sell on a dip could have lost ? We are all guessing but my guess is those people are vastly outnumbered by people who didn't buy high/sell low.
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It's a highly volatile market in something that has, I think we all agree, no actual underlying value or purpose. It regularly cycles through booms and busts that look very much like hype related. So it might be a market made up of concrete hand HODLers and there are barely any crystallised losses but I think it's much more likely to be a large number of people losing money and a much smaller number of people making a profit from those losses. And this will continue as long as there are people willing to put money into BTC -- i.e. the underlying is people putting more money in and once that stops there will be no market.

Also ultimately if you think it's a real thing and HODL is the right trade then you need to explain what it is exactly that you are holding on for? What is the real world point / use that will arise so that the $1.5tn of value is acutally real and it won't crash 90% again?

The other thing that I would say about this is that normally for markets that operate like this people cannot just buy them on their phone.

wacko said:
Can you explain your thinking re AI energy requirements driving BTC to zero value ?
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Sort of a comparative advantage thing.

BTC requires energy and hardware which is turned into compute. Which is why for a while reputable gamers like myself could not get new graphics cards because they were all being bought by miners. AI will require much more energy and much more compute and these requirements are going to accelerate exponentially.

Energy and hardware are finite so they will be utilsed in the way that makes the most money.

Given that owning, operating and sellling an Artificial General Intelligence will generate many (many!) orders of magnitude more money than you can make from recalculating BTC ledgers and will be owned and driven by the likes of Google, Microsoft, etc. and supported by the great mass of the world's capital markets then I think the BTC thing will just not be worth doing. At which point it will just go away and reach a hard zero from which it never returns.

Again, happy to be told I am wrong but I think we need to start with the real world use of BTC that creates this underlying value because without that I beleive it's real, final price will be 0.
 
Anyone that is stupid enough to risk their life savings deserves what they get. The Crypto market has always been volatile and will continue to be for some time I’m sure

Those that brought Bitcoin high and then lost because they had to sell, as mentioned up thread, were clearly after a quick win and caught a cold! There will always be winners and losers in any market, people just need to be sensible and do their research
 
Gingerbeard said:
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I have a golden rule of never watching youtube videos (or any actually) that use the word "Shocked" in their title.

Here's an example of the breed, watch it and it'll be clear why I won't waste my time as a matter of principle. Even if it means 0.1% of the time I may actually have learned something:

 
Gingerbeard said:
Anyone that is stupid enough to risk their life savings deserves what they get. The Crypto market has always been volatile and will continue to be for some time I’m sure

Those that brought Bitcoin high and then lost because they had to sell, as mentioned up thread, were clearly after a quick win and caught a cold! There will always be winners and losers in any market, people just need to be sensible and do their research
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Even those people who are manipulated in to doing so?
 
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