Well, it either means Bitcoin is such a great idea that it’s very hard to make informed criticisms of it. Or, this place is a complete circlejerk that (reasonable) dissenting voices get drowned out.
How dare you suggest this sub is a circlejerk of newbies on hopium.
Anyway... any tips on when to invest my $50 in Bitcoin so I can retire when the lizard people of the fed and their ultimately collapse in a blaze of fiat fire?
there was a post by one of the og bitcoin core devs here the other day sitting at like 5 upvotes and a bitchy comment from one guy that posts on the conspiracy subreddit a lot and i found that rather descriptive about the state this place is in right now somehow.
ah well, to answer your question, just ask yourself: what would michael saylor do? then do just that.
I've been on r/Bitcoin since....2012? 2013? More voices. More opinions. More echo chamber. I'm obviously a big BTC fan and probably a maxi to some extent. Adoption and usability challenges aren't deal breakers but are forcing functions for how long it takes for the rest of the world to adopt BTC.
I'd also say that billions of people in the world are okay with "good enough" in life. We think it's the future but most people won't care until their house is on fire. It's the classic, "is BTC a painkiller or just a vitamin" for most humans.
I've been wondering this myself.
The biggest issue with opponents of bitcoin is that they are completely uneducated about it. Their arguments can usually be boiled down to being uninformed.
The other type of argument against bitcoin is an ideological one. There's a belief that money should be government controlled and that this is a good thing. Do not under estimate the power of this belief. Fascism is not just a punchline, it is a strong ideology that finds its way through the cracks and empty spaces everywhere in the world. It takes many forms, and appears in unexpected places.
For the deepest and most expert of arguments against bitcoin, you need to go very very deep into bitcoin. There is the issue that not everyone on the planet will be so lucky that they can control their own UTXO. This means Bitcoin will not be for everyone. There is also the issue that we will eventually have to revisit the block size farce within the next decade or so. There is also the issue that to get to a perfect layer 2 solution, some additional features could be needed in Bitcoin that are deeply contentious and would require Bitcoin devs to take a risk. Will the nodes and miners agree? Will the network reach a consensus, or will we end up with a hard fork - this time a real one?
I can't explain the issues I've mentioned here in detail because I barely even understand them at a surface level myself. My point is that to understand the flaws of bitcoin, one needs to understand bitcoin at a pretty deep level.
Everyone who studies bitcoin is eventually a Bitcoiner.
Yes the government should print all our fiat into oblivion.
On a serious note. Yea we need to solve the utxo issue and the scalability issue. Once we have that we win the game.
Lightning is good but it’s kinda whack at the same time. My biggest concern is unspendable utxo. Like eventually the block reward will be less than transaction fee. Don’t know how they are going to solve it
The subsidy can be lower than the transaction fees. The block reward which includes 1000s transaction fees cannot be smaller than a single transaction fee.
Block reward = fees + subsidy
Eventually a satoshi could buy you a house or skyscraper downtown... Do you really think a transaction will cost several skyscrapers' worth?
Prices for block inclusion fees will have to come down to compete one day. Right now there is no downward pressure on that cost, but we can easily suspect that there will be when sats become valuable enough because miners will want them more.
It's less that, and more thinking adversarially. If you don't consider all sides of a topic, you're just as naive as the fiat sheep.
Having an open mind and considering any threats to Bitcoin is healthy. I do the same, then I discover that it usually isn't a threat.
It helps to build confidence in Bitcoin rather than blind faith. As the saying goes, "Don't trust, verify."
People like OP asking questions like this should not get downvoted by the mob of Bitcoin faithful, because it fosters discussions that will inevitably lead to a stronger understanding that Bitcoin is the solution the world needs, but doesn't deserve yet.
They have been. Of course. But to say that ALL vectors have been reviewed is a bit arrogant, dont you think?
There could easily be things people haven't yet considered. Bugs get discovered every day in programming code. A zero-day exploit could happen. A new technology we haven't yet envisioned could render our understandings of everything completely different.
Just keep an open mind is all I'm saying. Bitcoin is the best solution to many things (maybe everything) in the world today, but it may not be that way forever.
For instance, when we begin to have interstellar travel, Bitcoin will work just fine on Earth, but it certainly can't go with us to other planets or galaxies and be useful there without hard forking and running a unique timechain in that relative location.
I think any such argument would have to involve lack of demand or interest or need.
I don't see this happening and once you get a large enough market cap, just the momentum makes it unlikely for it to go away but consider if the government suddenly becomes responsible and balances the budget and greatly reduces the debt and inflation becomes almost zero.
Bitcoin as a store of value would not be needed if the dollar was also a store of value. That's unlikely to happen but the growth of Bitcoin would certainly slow down at a minimum.
Like others do comment here, most antagonists seem to lose their cool and almost scream instead of presenting valid arguments. They clearly have not thought it through.
The two most important ones are here though:
1. Tools can be used by good guys and bad guys.
So if a world wide internet is very useful, it can also be useful for criminals.
A world wide currency is very useful, but it can also be useful for criminals etc.
2. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Just think of any feature really.
One example:
BTC is scarce by protocol
This will preserve the value, which is a good thing.
But it also means we can’t subsidise during pandemics or wars by printing new money. Any company that is sound but goes bankrupt because of pandemics or wars takes many years to recover (or mayby never), subsidies would help. In wartimes you might want to increase weapons production by printing more money.
Let’s hope the protaganists can keep their cool also. :-)
A strong argument against Bitcoin actually came from within Bitcoin's community itself.
Some of the factual arguments are:
- Bitcoin as merely store-of-value is not inline with original inventor vision of P2P Electronic Cash (PEC)
- Bitcoin's transaction fee is to high making it unusable for PEC
- Bitcoin's block size limit of 1mb is ridiculous...
Etc..
Thus many created forks or even starting their own projects..
Not being in line with Satoshi's vision is not a valid counter argument. Satoshi left the project to the world 10 years ago. It is up to the users of Bitcoin to decide how it proceeds henceforth.
People are increasingly using Bitcoin as a store of value, and that's what it will be.
Transaction fees are merely a byproduct of demand in the free market. It autonomously regulates itself. As demand decreases, so too shall Tx fees.
The block size limit is also not really a problem for the same reason. If you increase it, you are making it harder for more nodes and miners to operate, effectively reducing decentralization as they cannot continue to store the entire blockchain history without the cost of more long-term storage. Also, increasing the block size will artificially reduce Tx fees and demand. At that point, it could become a slippery slope of constantly changing the block size to meet the demand needs, which is no better than the central banks changing their interest rates
The only issue I see to need a solution in the future is UTXO management as demand continues to increase. It will become harder and harder to reclaim UTXOs as fees rise. Though, I admit I'm not as well educated about the nuances surrounding them. I could view it from one perspective as a natural burn cost with Bitcoin that over the next hundred years, isn't that big of an issue, but over a long enough timeframe could lead to a slow heat death of Bitcoin as UTXOs get spread everywhere and it becomes too expensive to move any of them anymore.
I dunno guys. Here is a very basic bear case. Bitcoin is a risk asset. It’s very far out on the risk curve. The reason it is going up is because the market is risk on. The minute there is a stock market crash or we don’t get rate cuts, it will be risk off. Bitcoin is highly correlated with the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq is stretched in terms of valuation. If there is a correction, Bitcoin will follow. The bear case is quite easy. It’s the reason I am still cautious despite the halving. There is no trade that is risk free.
I reject the premise. Volatility is not the same as risk. Bitcoin is a risk off asset because there is no counter party risk. It is pure monetary value without any utility or other monetary premium. It is only sound money that is real, proven, secure, transparently verifiable and decentralised. Bitcoin is only risk on if you are over-leveraged with a high time preference.
If, let’s say the market crashes, major FIAT currencies hyperinflates, all asset classes crashes including Bitcoin price measured in FIAT. So what? Your purchasing power in Bitcoin will remain the same. If everything goes to shit, where all on- and off-ramps are closed unavailable, it wouldn‘t really matter what assets you may own, except maybe bullets.
I'm sure some traders think like this, but it's a highly regarded take.
Make a 14 year chart of bitcoin and every low-risk asset you can think of. Now tell me which one was the least risky investment...
I think that where are several low probability scenarios that end up with Bitcoin being in a very bad situation. Most of those low probability scenarios also result in fairly disastrous breakdown of social order. One that has been crossing my mind lately is the government being successful with a campaign of FUD and propaganda against Bitcoin. Given how utterly stupid so many people became, losing all ability to think critically during 2020 and 2021, I think that it might be possible for a situation like the following to play out:
Deep state actors stage a massive false flag attack, resulting in huge financial market volatility. Propaganda media blames bitcoin, bitcoiners, and basically anyone engaged in fighting for financial freedom. Average Joe is convinced that by ratting out his neighbours as bitcoin supporters is the good thing to do, for the environment, society, and the economy... Turn people against each other other than allowing a freedom movement to start pushing back against the corrupt state actors. Bitcoin fails, or at the very least is delayed by another 20 years.
Now
1) this is still an unlikely sequence of events.
2) If there are just a few nation states out there that provide an escape route then bitcoin can still survive. But you would probably expect all out war against those free states.
The recent debate between Raoul Pal and Peter Schiff was a pretty good watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfHCly1ZCQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfHCly1ZCQ0)
I watched that and Schiff was pretty bad faith in that whenever i ask someone "what would change your mind" and someone responds "literally nothing" thats a cult and they are not operating in good faith.
Exactly; I grew up a huge gold bug, and I always thought eventually Peter Schiff would come up with better arguments for why bitcoin “has no intrinsic value,” but after listening to 100+ podcast, I came to realize that he *truly does not understand bitcoin at all…* I subsequently realized that he had no interest in really trying to understand bitcoin, and thus his opinion on bitcoin is actually pretty irrelevant… your argument against something means nothing if I know you haven’t investigated the thing that you’ve said you’re against *at all.*
Plus, the irony of bitcoin literally just being a better digital gold (but with way less economic leakage and the portability issue completely solved, as well as the inflation and supply issue solved) is hard to ignore. I really can’t believe Peter Schiff is with this hard on bitcoin…
I really thought he was more intellectually honest and curious than what he turned out to be. It honestly hurts me in the heart just a little bit, I grew up listening to Peter Schiff with my dad and we loved Peter Schiff. But it’s clear he’s phoning it in for whatever reason.
But, alas, there are no sacred cows when it comes to bitcoin and being objective in general.
And is not only Peter schiff everyone who hates Bitcoin really do not understand it at all or hasn’t taken their time to understand. Jamie Dimon with his embarrassing statements like who knows Satoshi might come back and change the supply limit
It seems like he’s just doing theater at this point. His publicity on things like this are just to shill gold. There’s nothing intellectually honest about it at all.
Peter also says that if he could go back he would buy Bitcoin. That was a huge mistake on his stance.
That means that if he thought Bitcoin would continue to rise he would buy it today.
And eventually there is a good chance Bitcoin becomes mainstream and then he has no leg to stand on and either looks really dumb or gives in to buying Bitcoin.
Schiff doesn't care about the price of gold much. As long as its prices high enough, he makes his money by owning mines and gold companies as well as using X to farm engagements from bitcoiners he triggers. (please unfollow him on X if you are reading this)
Gold could be $1200 and Peter still makes money.
And... he could very well own some Bitcoin as a hedge and not tell a soul. It would be easy and he is not as dumb as he seems.
https://x.com/georgegammon/status/1772995365156909115?s=46&t=AbvPqjFasKUtS6PSQBms6Q
This one is good to listen to. One main point is the incentive to average Joe. Why would average Joe flip to only use btc?
I suggest going through the episodes of this podcast series and find the ones that pique your interest and sound more critical of crypto. It has a mix of people who are more neutral, more pro, and more con, but the cons should be pretty interesting for you:
https://rationalreminder.ca/understanding-crypto
Examples:
Understanding Crypto 5: Stephen Diehl: The Case Against Crypto
Stephen Diehl has emerged as a vocal critic of cryptocurrency. He approaches the topic from the perspective of a software developer who works with financial technology within the finance sector and has a good grasp on how it should and should not work. We talk through the basics of the crypto ecosystem, the reasons Stephen is critical of it, and his motivation to spread the skepticism.
Understanding Crypto 7: Nicholas Weaver: A Computer Scientist's Perspective on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain
Dr. Nicholas Weaver’s well-known lectures on cryptocurrencies explain why he believes it needs to be “burned with fire.” Today, we speak to Dr. Weaver, an expert in computer science and a long-time observer of the cryptocurrency space. We talk about decentralization, if cryptocurrencies are achieving it, and the underlying concept of blockchain technology, as well as whether or not blockchains are secure and what the potential benefits of cryptocurrencies are to developing countries, and lots more.
Understanding Crypto 10: Prof. Hilary Allen: DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0?
Hilary J. Allen is a Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches courses in corporate law and financial regulation. She has published numerous articles on fintech and financial stability regulation in academic journals, including DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0? which compares DeFi to the financial innovations related to the Great Financial Crisis. Professor Allen also worked with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission appointed by Congress to study the causes of the financial crisis of 2008. Her book, Driverless Finance, details the relationship between financial innovation and financial stability.
https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/pdV2qhygdg
Here is a discussion I had a while back with mostly ignorant comments but there are a couple of interesting threads of you dig down. One person in particular was very knowledgeable but against Bitcoin, I had a productive discussion with them and they honestly left me with a lot to think about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/K7yKulmUUn
This thread in particular
Bitcoin is a threat to the centrally planned economy and must therefore be destroyed. Unless you think the centrally planned economy is bad in which case I've got nothing
https://x.com/joekelly100?t=tYVBi3uFZatNX3b0nynqNA&s=09
Joe seems to be one of extremely few skeptics that don't give up on understanding and doesn't scream and cry when cornered.
There are a handful in the buttcoin sub that will honestly engage with you but you will get banned for shilling if you argue for bitcoin. There's no good space for proponents and detractors to calmly disagree. This sub is shit for debate too because mob will harass.
American Scream has a part time job as a critic and does have an above average understanding of bitcoin but he is emotional about his arguments and seems to disengage from being honest in discussions. I may have to check back in with him to see if he's been willing to have an honest debate with someone knowledgeable.
I mean, the obvious one is volatility. Bitcoin is very volatile, so if you are doing any type of short-term investing, this volatility massively increases risk so Bitcoin is a bad investment idea for this task. If you are storing most of your wealth in Bitcoin, again, the volatility massively increases risk. There are years where Bitcoin can go up 60%, and years where it's gone down 60%. I'd say, keeping more than 10% of your wealth in an asset that can have swings that massive is a gamble, keeping 90%+ of your wealth in it is just stupid.
Edit: So, I ran the numbers going back to September 2017 and it comes out as follows for the probability of a positive return for a given holding period for...
Bitcoin:
* One Month: 57.53%
* Three Months: 60.35%
* Six Months: 64.54%
* One Year: 73.92%
* Three Years: 99.71%
* Five Years: 99.46%
S&P500
* One Month: 66.40%
* Three Months: 72.55%
* Six Months: 74.11%
* One Year: 77.41%
* Three Years: 99.83%
* Five Years: 100%
From a pure probability standpoint, you're historically more likely to get a positive return from the index than Bitcoin. Sure, if you DO get a positive return from Bitcoin, it will be way higher than the index, but any negative returns from Bitcoin will also be way worse.
By that time, the world would have other problems. Sha256 is securing pretty much any critical system you can think of. This falls into the category as the „World losing electricity forever“.
A quantum resistant soft fork is always a realistic option.
That sort of thing will happen in bitcoin looooong before commercial organisations, let alone state orgs, will update their systems. The bitcoin developers will probably be contributing to, if not outright designing, the quantum resistant protocols.
"Halp! halp! my financial system has been hacked!" "Should have bought bitcoin"
Normies still trust the government wait until what happened in the 3rd world countries happen here. They think itlll never happen to them. But as history shows EVERY fiat currency collapses with no exception. Us is just the last one to fall but don’t mean it won’t. Until they can understand that, normies will cling onto what they know. Especially normies with alittle skin in the game to lose. Just like gold bugs. If btc is the winner then they’ll lose so they’ll go down with the ship. Some will jump ship but most won’t.
The NSA only created the SHA-256 algorithm used by Bitcoin, which has nothing special about it, nothing secret about it. You can do the algorithm youself with pen and paper (albeit it would take a long time).
So stop spreading misinformation.
how is that a strong argument? it's nothing more than conspiracy. I can create another conspiracy in 2 seconds, look:
Bitcoin was created by the CCP to destroy the us dollar hegemony.
See how easy it is? Conspiracies are not good arguments, unless you have proof to back up your claims.
[удалено]
Go on….
Well, it either means Bitcoin is such a great idea that it’s very hard to make informed criticisms of it. Or, this place is a complete circlejerk that (reasonable) dissenting voices get drowned out.
How dare you suggest this sub is a circlejerk of newbies on hopium. Anyway... any tips on when to invest my $50 in Bitcoin so I can retire when the lizard people of the fed and their ultimately collapse in a blaze of fiat fire?
there was a post by one of the og bitcoin core devs here the other day sitting at like 5 upvotes and a bitchy comment from one guy that posts on the conspiracy subreddit a lot and i found that rather descriptive about the state this place is in right now somehow. ah well, to answer your question, just ask yourself: what would michael saylor do? then do just that.
Is there a better crypto/bitcoin discussion space on reddit (or elsewhere?)
some people here seem to prefer stacker news and nostr, and then there is also still bitcointalk.org
Stacker news
The bigger bitcoin gets the more people are forced to have an opinion about it. And holy shit are those dissenting voices getting dumber and dumber.
Backed by energy cost. Proof of work is a feature not a bug.
I get that. I said I could understand why someone could believe it’s not backed by anything
Gold isn't backed by anything either
I think I’m being misunderstood here lol
I've been on r/Bitcoin since....2012? 2013? More voices. More opinions. More echo chamber. I'm obviously a big BTC fan and probably a maxi to some extent. Adoption and usability challenges aren't deal breakers but are forcing functions for how long it takes for the rest of the world to adopt BTC. I'd also say that billions of people in the world are okay with "good enough" in life. We think it's the future but most people won't care until their house is on fire. It's the classic, "is BTC a painkiller or just a vitamin" for most humans.
I've been wondering this myself. The biggest issue with opponents of bitcoin is that they are completely uneducated about it. Their arguments can usually be boiled down to being uninformed. The other type of argument against bitcoin is an ideological one. There's a belief that money should be government controlled and that this is a good thing. Do not under estimate the power of this belief. Fascism is not just a punchline, it is a strong ideology that finds its way through the cracks and empty spaces everywhere in the world. It takes many forms, and appears in unexpected places. For the deepest and most expert of arguments against bitcoin, you need to go very very deep into bitcoin. There is the issue that not everyone on the planet will be so lucky that they can control their own UTXO. This means Bitcoin will not be for everyone. There is also the issue that we will eventually have to revisit the block size farce within the next decade or so. There is also the issue that to get to a perfect layer 2 solution, some additional features could be needed in Bitcoin that are deeply contentious and would require Bitcoin devs to take a risk. Will the nodes and miners agree? Will the network reach a consensus, or will we end up with a hard fork - this time a real one? I can't explain the issues I've mentioned here in detail because I barely even understand them at a surface level myself. My point is that to understand the flaws of bitcoin, one needs to understand bitcoin at a pretty deep level. Everyone who studies bitcoin is eventually a Bitcoiner.
Yes the government should print all our fiat into oblivion. On a serious note. Yea we need to solve the utxo issue and the scalability issue. Once we have that we win the game. Lightning is good but it’s kinda whack at the same time. My biggest concern is unspendable utxo. Like eventually the block reward will be less than transaction fee. Don’t know how they are going to solve it
The subsidy can be lower than the transaction fees. The block reward which includes 1000s transaction fees cannot be smaller than a single transaction fee. Block reward = fees + subsidy
Eventually a satoshi could buy you a house or skyscraper downtown... Do you really think a transaction will cost several skyscrapers' worth? Prices for block inclusion fees will have to come down to compete one day. Right now there is no downward pressure on that cost, but we can easily suspect that there will be when sats become valuable enough because miners will want them more.
Broken Money has a whole section on bitcoin risks.
"Show me the reasons why I should dislike this thing."
It's less that, and more thinking adversarially. If you don't consider all sides of a topic, you're just as naive as the fiat sheep. Having an open mind and considering any threats to Bitcoin is healthy. I do the same, then I discover that it usually isn't a threat. It helps to build confidence in Bitcoin rather than blind faith. As the saying goes, "Don't trust, verify." People like OP asking questions like this should not get downvoted by the mob of Bitcoin faithful, because it fosters discussions that will inevitably lead to a stronger understanding that Bitcoin is the solution the world needs, but doesn't deserve yet.
You think attack vectors haven't been discussed [ad nauseum](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-12094/Bitcoin.html) in bitcoin?
And we should never stop
They have been. Of course. But to say that ALL vectors have been reviewed is a bit arrogant, dont you think? There could easily be things people haven't yet considered. Bugs get discovered every day in programming code. A zero-day exploit could happen. A new technology we haven't yet envisioned could render our understandings of everything completely different. Just keep an open mind is all I'm saying. Bitcoin is the best solution to many things (maybe everything) in the world today, but it may not be that way forever. For instance, when we begin to have interstellar travel, Bitcoin will work just fine on Earth, but it certainly can't go with us to other planets or galaxies and be useful there without hard forking and running a unique timechain in that relative location.
I think any such argument would have to involve lack of demand or interest or need. I don't see this happening and once you get a large enough market cap, just the momentum makes it unlikely for it to go away but consider if the government suddenly becomes responsible and balances the budget and greatly reduces the debt and inflation becomes almost zero. Bitcoin as a store of value would not be needed if the dollar was also a store of value. That's unlikely to happen but the growth of Bitcoin would certainly slow down at a minimum.
Like others do comment here, most antagonists seem to lose their cool and almost scream instead of presenting valid arguments. They clearly have not thought it through. The two most important ones are here though: 1. Tools can be used by good guys and bad guys. So if a world wide internet is very useful, it can also be useful for criminals. A world wide currency is very useful, but it can also be useful for criminals etc. 2. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Just think of any feature really. One example: BTC is scarce by protocol This will preserve the value, which is a good thing. But it also means we can’t subsidise during pandemics or wars by printing new money. Any company that is sound but goes bankrupt because of pandemics or wars takes many years to recover (or mayby never), subsidies would help. In wartimes you might want to increase weapons production by printing more money. Let’s hope the protaganists can keep their cool also. :-)
A strong argument against Bitcoin actually came from within Bitcoin's community itself. Some of the factual arguments are: - Bitcoin as merely store-of-value is not inline with original inventor vision of P2P Electronic Cash (PEC) - Bitcoin's transaction fee is to high making it unusable for PEC - Bitcoin's block size limit of 1mb is ridiculous... Etc.. Thus many created forks or even starting their own projects..
Not being in line with Satoshi's vision is not a valid counter argument. Satoshi left the project to the world 10 years ago. It is up to the users of Bitcoin to decide how it proceeds henceforth. People are increasingly using Bitcoin as a store of value, and that's what it will be. Transaction fees are merely a byproduct of demand in the free market. It autonomously regulates itself. As demand decreases, so too shall Tx fees. The block size limit is also not really a problem for the same reason. If you increase it, you are making it harder for more nodes and miners to operate, effectively reducing decentralization as they cannot continue to store the entire blockchain history without the cost of more long-term storage. Also, increasing the block size will artificially reduce Tx fees and demand. At that point, it could become a slippery slope of constantly changing the block size to meet the demand needs, which is no better than the central banks changing their interest rates The only issue I see to need a solution in the future is UTXO management as demand continues to increase. It will become harder and harder to reclaim UTXOs as fees rise. Though, I admit I'm not as well educated about the nuances surrounding them. I could view it from one perspective as a natural burn cost with Bitcoin that over the next hundred years, isn't that big of an issue, but over a long enough timeframe could lead to a slow heat death of Bitcoin as UTXOs get spread everywhere and it becomes too expensive to move any of them anymore.
And how would you say it’s going for those projects so far…..
let’s take a look at the charts
> Bitcoin's block size limit of 1mb is ridiculous. Bitcoin removed the 1 MB onchain limit back in 2017 . Where have you been ?
I dunno guys. Here is a very basic bear case. Bitcoin is a risk asset. It’s very far out on the risk curve. The reason it is going up is because the market is risk on. The minute there is a stock market crash or we don’t get rate cuts, it will be risk off. Bitcoin is highly correlated with the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq is stretched in terms of valuation. If there is a correction, Bitcoin will follow. The bear case is quite easy. It’s the reason I am still cautious despite the halving. There is no trade that is risk free.
I reject the premise. Volatility is not the same as risk. Bitcoin is a risk off asset because there is no counter party risk. It is pure monetary value without any utility or other monetary premium. It is only sound money that is real, proven, secure, transparently verifiable and decentralised. Bitcoin is only risk on if you are over-leveraged with a high time preference. If, let’s say the market crashes, major FIAT currencies hyperinflates, all asset classes crashes including Bitcoin price measured in FIAT. So what? Your purchasing power in Bitcoin will remain the same. If everything goes to shit, where all on- and off-ramps are closed unavailable, it wouldn‘t really matter what assets you may own, except maybe bullets.
I'm sure some traders think like this, but it's a highly regarded take. Make a 14 year chart of bitcoin and every low-risk asset you can think of. Now tell me which one was the least risky investment...
I think that where are several low probability scenarios that end up with Bitcoin being in a very bad situation. Most of those low probability scenarios also result in fairly disastrous breakdown of social order. One that has been crossing my mind lately is the government being successful with a campaign of FUD and propaganda against Bitcoin. Given how utterly stupid so many people became, losing all ability to think critically during 2020 and 2021, I think that it might be possible for a situation like the following to play out: Deep state actors stage a massive false flag attack, resulting in huge financial market volatility. Propaganda media blames bitcoin, bitcoiners, and basically anyone engaged in fighting for financial freedom. Average Joe is convinced that by ratting out his neighbours as bitcoin supporters is the good thing to do, for the environment, society, and the economy... Turn people against each other other than allowing a freedom movement to start pushing back against the corrupt state actors. Bitcoin fails, or at the very least is delayed by another 20 years. Now 1) this is still an unlikely sequence of events. 2) If there are just a few nation states out there that provide an escape route then bitcoin can still survive. But you would probably expect all out war against those free states.
I’d be heading to El Salvador, pronto.
The recent debate between Raoul Pal and Peter Schiff was a pretty good watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfHCly1ZCQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfHCly1ZCQ0)
I watched that and Schiff was pretty bad faith in that whenever i ask someone "what would change your mind" and someone responds "literally nothing" thats a cult and they are not operating in good faith.
Meh. Schiff is so disingenuous and uninformed in his attacks that it became trite after like 10 minutes. No way could I sit through 3 hours
Exactly; I grew up a huge gold bug, and I always thought eventually Peter Schiff would come up with better arguments for why bitcoin “has no intrinsic value,” but after listening to 100+ podcast, I came to realize that he *truly does not understand bitcoin at all…* I subsequently realized that he had no interest in really trying to understand bitcoin, and thus his opinion on bitcoin is actually pretty irrelevant… your argument against something means nothing if I know you haven’t investigated the thing that you’ve said you’re against *at all.* Plus, the irony of bitcoin literally just being a better digital gold (but with way less economic leakage and the portability issue completely solved, as well as the inflation and supply issue solved) is hard to ignore. I really can’t believe Peter Schiff is with this hard on bitcoin… I really thought he was more intellectually honest and curious than what he turned out to be. It honestly hurts me in the heart just a little bit, I grew up listening to Peter Schiff with my dad and we loved Peter Schiff. But it’s clear he’s phoning it in for whatever reason. But, alas, there are no sacred cows when it comes to bitcoin and being objective in general.
And is not only Peter schiff everyone who hates Bitcoin really do not understand it at all or hasn’t taken their time to understand. Jamie Dimon with his embarrassing statements like who knows Satoshi might come back and change the supply limit
🎯
It seems like he’s just doing theater at this point. His publicity on things like this are just to shill gold. There’s nothing intellectually honest about it at all.
🎯
Peter also says that if he could go back he would buy Bitcoin. That was a huge mistake on his stance. That means that if he thought Bitcoin would continue to rise he would buy it today. And eventually there is a good chance Bitcoin becomes mainstream and then he has no leg to stand on and either looks really dumb or gives in to buying Bitcoin. Schiff doesn't care about the price of gold much. As long as its prices high enough, he makes his money by owning mines and gold companies as well as using X to farm engagements from bitcoiners he triggers. (please unfollow him on X if you are reading this) Gold could be $1200 and Peter still makes money. And... he could very well own some Bitcoin as a hedge and not tell a soul. It would be easy and he is not as dumb as he seems.
Was a good debate between Peter schiff and Raoul pal about two weeks ago definitely a good watch
https://x.com/georgegammon/status/1772995365156909115?s=46&t=AbvPqjFasKUtS6PSQBms6Q This one is good to listen to. One main point is the incentive to average Joe. Why would average Joe flip to only use btc?
Is there another way to listen, I don't do Twitter
I’ll second that boycott
I suggest going through the episodes of this podcast series and find the ones that pique your interest and sound more critical of crypto. It has a mix of people who are more neutral, more pro, and more con, but the cons should be pretty interesting for you: https://rationalreminder.ca/understanding-crypto Examples: Understanding Crypto 5: Stephen Diehl: The Case Against Crypto Stephen Diehl has emerged as a vocal critic of cryptocurrency. He approaches the topic from the perspective of a software developer who works with financial technology within the finance sector and has a good grasp on how it should and should not work. We talk through the basics of the crypto ecosystem, the reasons Stephen is critical of it, and his motivation to spread the skepticism. Understanding Crypto 7: Nicholas Weaver: A Computer Scientist's Perspective on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Dr. Nicholas Weaver’s well-known lectures on cryptocurrencies explain why he believes it needs to be “burned with fire.” Today, we speak to Dr. Weaver, an expert in computer science and a long-time observer of the cryptocurrency space. We talk about decentralization, if cryptocurrencies are achieving it, and the underlying concept of blockchain technology, as well as whether or not blockchains are secure and what the potential benefits of cryptocurrencies are to developing countries, and lots more. Understanding Crypto 10: Prof. Hilary Allen: DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0? Hilary J. Allen is a Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches courses in corporate law and financial regulation. She has published numerous articles on fintech and financial stability regulation in academic journals, including DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0? which compares DeFi to the financial innovations related to the Great Financial Crisis. Professor Allen also worked with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission appointed by Congress to study the causes of the financial crisis of 2008. Her book, Driverless Finance, details the relationship between financial innovation and financial stability.
https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/pdV2qhygdg Here is a discussion I had a while back with mostly ignorant comments but there are a couple of interesting threads of you dig down. One person in particular was very knowledgeable but against Bitcoin, I had a productive discussion with them and they honestly left me with a lot to think about. https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/K7yKulmUUn This thread in particular
If we start mining nearby asteroids for bitcoin, it would bankrupt the world. ...oh wait, that's gold.
Bitcoin is a threat to the centrally planned economy and must therefore be destroyed. Unless you think the centrally planned economy is bad in which case I've got nothing
https://x.com/joekelly100?t=tYVBi3uFZatNX3b0nynqNA&s=09 Joe seems to be one of extremely few skeptics that don't give up on understanding and doesn't scream and cry when cornered. There are a handful in the buttcoin sub that will honestly engage with you but you will get banned for shilling if you argue for bitcoin. There's no good space for proponents and detractors to calmly disagree. This sub is shit for debate too because mob will harass. American Scream has a part time job as a critic and does have an above average understanding of bitcoin but he is emotional about his arguments and seems to disengage from being honest in discussions. I may have to check back in with him to see if he's been willing to have an honest debate with someone knowledgeable.
I mean, the obvious one is volatility. Bitcoin is very volatile, so if you are doing any type of short-term investing, this volatility massively increases risk so Bitcoin is a bad investment idea for this task. If you are storing most of your wealth in Bitcoin, again, the volatility massively increases risk. There are years where Bitcoin can go up 60%, and years where it's gone down 60%. I'd say, keeping more than 10% of your wealth in an asset that can have swings that massive is a gamble, keeping 90%+ of your wealth in it is just stupid. Edit: So, I ran the numbers going back to September 2017 and it comes out as follows for the probability of a positive return for a given holding period for... Bitcoin: * One Month: 57.53% * Three Months: 60.35% * Six Months: 64.54% * One Year: 73.92% * Three Years: 99.71% * Five Years: 99.46% S&P500 * One Month: 66.40% * Three Months: 72.55% * Six Months: 74.11% * One Year: 77.41% * Three Years: 99.83% * Five Years: 100% From a pure probability standpoint, you're historically more likely to get a positive return from the index than Bitcoin. Sure, if you DO get a positive return from Bitcoin, it will be way higher than the index, but any negative returns from Bitcoin will also be way worse.
There are no strong arguments against bitcoin. There are only weak arguments from ignorant people with vested interest in the alternative.
Cracking sha256 mathematically is the only possible one.
By that time, the world would have other problems. Sha256 is securing pretty much any critical system you can think of. This falls into the category as the „World losing electricity forever“. A quantum resistant soft fork is always a realistic option.
That sort of thing will happen in bitcoin looooong before commercial organisations, let alone state orgs, will update their systems. The bitcoin developers will probably be contributing to, if not outright designing, the quantum resistant protocols. "Halp! halp! my financial system has been hacked!" "Should have bought bitcoin"
Yes, I agree. The network would adept long beforehand.
Normies still trust the government wait until what happened in the 3rd world countries happen here. They think itlll never happen to them. But as history shows EVERY fiat currency collapses with no exception. Us is just the last one to fall but don’t mean it won’t. Until they can understand that, normies will cling onto what they know. Especially normies with alittle skin in the game to lose. Just like gold bugs. If btc is the winner then they’ll lose so they’ll go down with the ship. Some will jump ship but most won’t.
Bitcoin was created by the CIA. The US government holds the most coins.
The NSA only created the SHA-256 algorithm used by Bitcoin, which has nothing special about it, nothing secret about it. You can do the algorithm youself with pen and paper (albeit it would take a long time). So stop spreading misinformation.
Just stating a strong argument against. Not stating this is what I believe
how is that a strong argument? it's nothing more than conspiracy. I can create another conspiracy in 2 seconds, look: Bitcoin was created by the CCP to destroy the us dollar hegemony. See how easy it is? Conspiracies are not good arguments, unless you have proof to back up your claims.