All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

I am amazed at how much hype Bitcoin gets. There is no inherent service it provides in order to gain appreciation on Merit. If it appreciates, it is simply due to increased demand. And the increased demand  is solely based on the hype Factor. People buy because other people are buying.

You are basically gambling and yes you can win big, but you can also lose big. That's not investing.

Bitcoin juggernaut has begun its rampage yet again and has been appreciating ridiculously so why not invest in Bitcoin instead of real estate without all the hard work that goes into realestate investment? a classical argument for this question is Bitcoin investment is a speculative investment but so is realestate? I am interested to hear other arguments.

@Lesley Resnick

That really sucks, but your experience doesn't prove anything.

@Justin Thorpe

Touche! or maybe in this case, just be a strong hand and hold. Anyone who held long enough, even if they bought at the end of 2019 at 19k - which would have been fundamentally amateur, would be in profit right now. 

@Matt R.

Grayscale have grown massively since Dec 2019. Anything can happen, but things are really lining up. 

History is written by the winners.  Arm chair quarterbacks are everywhere.  There are so few people who will own up to owing the losers.

I was at seminar about 5 years ago and sat in on cyber currency session.  Pay Pal was the hot topic.  At the end the presenter talked about 5 cyber currencies and said everyone should put $100 in each.

My big loser....

In 1997 I bought stock in a company call XYBERNAUT, they made wearable computers, Google Glasses 20+ years earlier.  I was convinced they were going to change the world and I was there early.  Well not so much.  I lost money on and it went nowhere.  I still believe there is a time coming there will be a wearable computer and it will not be a phone or a watch.  

There will always be winners and losers, is this the Tulip mania of the 2020's or it really is different this time.  

Hey guys, I just cut my junk mail into tiny pieces of paper. It's now currency! Who wants some? Trust me, it's valuable. It's limited. It doesn't matter that you can cut up your own junk mail and give it a different currency name. It's not a pyramid scheme. I tell you it will be worth more, you just buy it at a higher price, then you go hit all the internet forums and tell people how it is going to be worth more, and then they buy it at a higher price. 

@Eric Carr I understand the ARPANET aspect, and where things are stored and can be accessed/verified - when the infrastructure works/is restored. While I am not asking about a large-scale nuclear/EMP event, I am asking what value a cryptocurrency has to its holder - as a tangible thing, which one can trade for food, for example - when the infrastructure does not work.

If it is a currency - a medium of exchange - how can it be used for that exchange without the infrastructure that supports it being accessible at the moment of the desired exchange? A piece of precious metal is tangible. A cryptocurrency is virtual. What am I missing?

A lot of good points. 

Bitcoin is the ULTIMATE Fiat currency.  It is nothing more than an electronic agreement.  Gold is easily recognized and valued, it is a hard currency. The fed does not want people to walk around with gold coins buying snicker bars.  They can not control or regulate it.  Gold as a currency was shut down, not paper backed by gold, but actual gold as a currency.  Bitcoin will suffer a similar fate.  

If anyone is telling you it can not be hacked or manipulated, they are lying or misguided.  Can you tell me with 100% certainty there is no nefarious code in the purse?  Think Huawei routers bought by the DOD.  The payoff for robbing bitcoin is immense and as a result, someone will attack it.  Russian malware, that broadcast passwords, via an IP address in the "Stans". 

People are definitely making money with it.  It will be eventually be shut down or marginalized by governments.  The idea that you can travel with $1m on a thumb drive is not something most people would ever need.  More likely it would be used by drug dealers, terrorists, etc.  

There is a difference between investing and speculation.  It involves the level of risk, likely hood of either event.  Could bitcoin go to zero, yes?  Could bitcoin go to 50,000?  The problem is that it has no intrinsic use or value.  A store of value?  The part some people are excited about is that it has continued to go up.  If a bitcoin was $4,000 like it was in December of 2019, would anyone be talking about it?

  Gold is a store of value.  It has been valued since the Romans and keeps pace with inflation and sentiment.  We need an electronic currency, not whatever Bitcoin is?  

Cards have been popular, collectible and investments for decades - it's just that it has gotten ridiculous as of late. I started selling cards in large volume in the early-2000s (we sold to wholesalers who repackaged the cards and resold them at Target and Wal-Mart) and I began selling on eBay starting in 1996 or 1997. It has simply gotten to the point where me - a homer of sports cards - can only shake my head in amazement at the ridiculousness of it all. 

Granted, some stuff hasn't appreciated much since this boom but some stuff has gone up to downright silly amounts. People bust boxes to get the cards graded and hope for a bid payday. 

One could make the argument that sports cards are nothing but cardboard and it's insane they're worth anything at all and I understand that argument - I feel the same way about crypto though. 

I reckon that's why we love RE - it's tangible and consistent. 

I don't get why it's so high either. I get it - some people got very wealthy investing in it. I just don't get why people are valuing it so highly, especially since it isn't backed up by anything of value. 

If one gets enough people interested in something foolishness can happen. Let's take sports cards for example. For fun and profit I collect sports cards and when living in L.A. I sold at a local show. I had a Topps Kobe RC priced at $10 and noone bought it. This was less than a year ago, March, when I stopped doing the show. Wanna know how much the card sells for on eBay now? Between $200-$300. 

Why? Because a lot of clueless people entered the hobby last Spring/Summer (thanks to Gary V) for the sole sake of buying and flipping.

It's ridiculous. These flippers have entered the hobby and drove up the prices in a short amount of time. Now people who have no clue about sports cards are buying cards at exorbitant, head-shaking prices, much like Bitcoin. 

There are guys who seriously spend hours a day at Target and Wal-Mart waiting for the rep to restock the shelves with cards so they can buy boxes/packs of cards to flip online. 

When there's hype for something, common sense goes out the window. Some people recognize it and take advantage but most lose their hard-earned cash (or hours and hours of time waiting at Wal-Mart and Target).

Thanks for responding.  This has not been the barn burner topic I thought it would be.  lol

Mining in the early days was profitable.  Today they say the overhead costs, computers and electricity exceed the value of the coins mined.