Again, your whole crime and scam thesis is not true. You keep spouting misinformation that has been proven wrong, demonstrating your inability or unwillingness to learn or admit the truth.
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It was but now the underlying holding of gold is used for other financial reasons that still affect currency stablity...
I should have been clearer, sorry.
BUT the fact gold is still used to back a currency and crypto doesnt shows a marked difference
Even you have to concede that
BitCoin exists in the cloud. Like water vapour...
It has no substance that's real.
You are only promoting this as legit because that's how crypto works.
Sucker people into buying in.
Someone ALWAYS loses for others to win...
Like NFTs...
THE DECLINE OF NFTS:
The decline of the NFT market is further evidenced by the number of dead NFTs. An alarming 96% of NFTs are considered dead.
This trend peaked in 2023 when 30% of NFTs were dead. The following table outlines the yearly percentage of dead NFTs:
AN ALARMING
THE DECLINE OF NFTS:
96% OF NFTS ARE DEAD
The decline of the NFT market is further evidenced by the number of dead NFTs. An alarming 96% of NFTs are considered dead.
This trend peaked in 2023 when 30% of NFTs were dead. The following table outlines the yearly percentage of dead NFTs:
AN ALARMING
96% OF NFTS ARE considered Dead!
Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse was supposed to be the future. Instead of scrolling Facebook on our phones, we would prowl our living rooms in hefty AR (augmented reality) headsets, chatting to friends on the other side of the new world.
It was a hot topic. Humanity prepared to jump from one new normal to another. But today, there are fresh hot topics and the metaverse is not just an old story but something that never really happened. Tech hobbyists type into ChatGPT, ‘is the metaverse dead?’
Meta has sold about 20 million VR headsets, including models Quest 1, Quest 2 and Quest Pro. It’s not a bad number. But it’s not what they wanted. And the bigger problem: people who’ve bought a headset aren’t using it that much.
Meta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabkin, said, ‘Sadly, the newer cohorts that are coming in—the people who bought it this last Christmas—they’re just not as into it as the ones who bought it early.’
Engagement is low. People aren’t spending enough time in the metaverse. And, crucially, they’re not talking about it.
It was a hot topic. Humanity prepared to jump from one new normal to another. But today, there are fresh hot topics and the metaverse is not just an old story but something that never really happened. Tech hobbyists type into ChatGPT, ‘is the metaverse dead?’
The problem
Meta has sold about 20 million VR headsets, including models Quest 1, Quest 2 and Quest Pro. It’s not a bad number. But it’s not what they wanted. And the bigger problem: people who’ve bought a headset aren’t using it that much.
Meta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabkin, said, ‘Sadly, the newer cohorts that are coming in—the people who bought it this last Christmas—they’re just not as into it as the ones who bought it early.’
Engagement is low. People aren’t spending enough time in the metaverse. And, crucially, they’re not talking about it.
I concede nothing because gold is not used to back currency. Simple as that. You can't have trillions of dollars of printed money backed by $480 billion of gold. The estimate of the monetary base is $5.6 trillion. You're basically saying the dollar is worth 8.57% of what its currently stated value is.It was but now the underlying holding of gold is used for other financial reasons that still affect currency stablity...
I should have been clearer, sorry.
BUT the fact gold is still used to back a currency and crypto doesnt shows a marked difference
Even you have to concede that
The dollar only exists on paper, and for many people not even that. A lot of people don't use cash anymore. There's really no difference.
I equate NFTs to collectibles. They can easily be a fad that goes away, just like any collectible. However, there could be a time that they come back and suddenly are worth more, like old toys from 40 or 50 years ago. NFTs aren't for me, and are not what we're talking about here. This discussion is mostly about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, which are not NFTs.
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Those VR headsets I think are best for gaming. There may be other uses for them, but I don't think that will be widespread. I do have one and love playing games on it more than on a TV or computer screen, but that's my personal preference. It's also still fairly early. Smart phones existed long before the iPhone, and they didn't have wide adoption and use because they were lousy. Then Apple did it right, and smart phones became mainstream. It just took time and the right implementation.
But again, that's outside of this discussion I think.
There are some who invest that way, and it's not limited to crypto. Plenty of speculation, betting/gambling, and FOMO happens with stocks too. Like Nvidia.
There are also investors who really look at the details of each cryptocurrency, how they run, who's behind them, the monetary policy, tokenomics, etc. and make a more informed decision on what to invest in and how much to invest.
For example, there are a lot of investors buying up Ripple/XRP right now. That doesn't make sense to me personally because I looked at the tokenomics and I don't see how the market cap is justified when the transaction fees amount to very very tiny fractions of a penny. So I don't invest in XRP. I could be wrong. I will say that particular blockchain network actually has a lot to offer in the way of very high transaction throughput, at very fast speeds, at near zero cost. I'm not calling it useless, no value, scam, or anything like that. I admit that there is value to it because it can eliminate millions of dollars that is spent in fees transferring money around the world with current systems. I just don't see its current valuation as justified. But there are others that I do see as justified, and I invest in those.
The Metaverse was going to change the world.
And it wasn't just headsets. It was mindset. And people bought up the dream and paid millions for fake meta real estate.
Silliness in the extreme.
Snake oil...
Same same as Crypto and NFTs.
There will be another hot item coming along soon... people are inventive.
very few people look at their investments in an depth.
recently here an "ethical Super fund" was found to not be investing in ethical projects.
it was marketing spin that duped people who wanted to feel good.
most big investment funds have dirty little secrets in their managed portfolios because they bring in money.
that's the way the world operates.
tech can achieve amazing things and revolutionize processes. and challenge the old guard.
and drive down costs.
but it can be used for bad just as easily.
and that needs to be called out to warn people.
It's still early days. Something could still come to be with the metaverse. We'll have to see.
Either way, it doesn't change Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still Bitcoin, whether there are NFTs and/or the metaverse or not. Bitcoin still has its use case, monetary policy, immutable decentralized ledger, secure network, etc. You can bring up all the negative things that exist in the cryptocurrency industry, but it ultimately doesn't change what Bitcoin is because those things are not Bitcoin and Bitcoin is not those things.
Absolutely. People need to be aware that there are scams out there, and they need to be careful when they go use their money to invest in something, especially if it's something that they don't understand. That is not limited to crypto. The same goes for investing in stocks and companies that deal with them. Remember Bernie Madoff. That happened before crypto. And there are many other example of scams and fraud that have nothing to do with crypto (i.e. Enron).
So yes, you need to be careful in the crypto world. It's easier to fall prey to scams and fraud. However, that doesn't change the fact that blockchain and crypto and Bitcoin have use cases and value.
You cannot equate VALUE in that statement.
Value lies if something has a concrete asset sitting behind it.
Crypto does not. Simple.
No matter how many times you say it. End of story.
And whataboutism doesnt help your case.
Shares have their own issues.
I've invested in companies that have great prospectuses, well written, nice projection sheet in the PDS.
And they still fail from bad management or overly positive outlooks. Or were shonks.
Years later you realise they were set up to generate income for side businesses or management and not the investors.
Government bodies need to stop these people who make it work once, then try again.
Seems like little dodgy people are trying to replicate BitCoin and create pure scams now.
Bet advice would be stay out of it.
But people promoting it feed the beast...
I want to come back to this, to make a correction (including to myself). Powell didn't say gold or Bitcoin are poor stores of value. He said people "are not using it as a store of value." That's very different. Also, it's not exactly clear if he's referring to it as Bitcoin or gold. Neither makes sense, since both are used as a store of value. Many Bitcoin investors are using Bitcoin as a store of value, and even the government is using gold as a store of value.
This is lunacy.
For something to have value it does not need to have a concrete asset behind it. If that were the case then how is Nvidia valued at $3.5T? How is Apple valued at almost $3.7T? There is no concrete asset behind those valuations. Nvidia doesn't have $3.5T in the bank, or $3.5T in combined assets on its balance sheet. Nvidia's total assets is only less than $66 billion. Same goes for Apple, which has $365 billion in total assets.
There are other ways of determining the value of something than the assets sitting behind it.
Again, refer to the CFA guide I linked to previously. There are different methods of valuation for crypto. If it doesn't have value to you then don't invest in it. Just stop with the misinformation, flat out lies, and FUD.
My case? I've simply presented facts and proof to discount the lies and misinformation to show that Bitcoin/crypto is not a scam or fraud and that it does have value. That has been demonstrated. The issue is that the same lies and misinformation keep getting repeated.
Huh?
The OP said banks hold gold. The US government is not a bank. The US government has a supply of gold, but it isn't backing the dollar. It is there for emergency strategic reserve. The US may soon hold Bitcoin as a strategic reserve, but it wouldn't be backing the dollar either.The United States holds the world's largest stockpile of gold reserves by a considerable margin. The country's government has almost as many reserves as the next three largest gold-holding countries combined—Germany, Italy, and France. Russia rounds out the top five. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one of the top gold reserve holders with 2,814.10 metric tons (3,102.01 standard tons)—almost as much as Germany.
so it would seem your assertion is wrong
time to stop the propaganda on crypto.
people who have it keep promoting it for one reason: to make it look legitimate to sucker new players in.
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A national fiat currency is given value by faith. That's all it is, plain and simple. People also have faith in crypto. Well, you don't, but who says everyone should invest in everything? As I've said repeatedly, we're not trying to get anyone to buy crypto. We're just trying to get people to understand it and to stop spreading FUD about it. I couldn't care less what you do with your money. Throw it in the toilet for all I care. If you made a killing in the stock market, bravo. I will never look down on a successful investment. I applaud success.
Currencies came around because bartering was too difficult. Money wasn't always around and bartering was usually simple in the case of small villages where there were few people. As population grew, bartering became more difficult to find the products you needed and to find someone you could give your products to in exchange. That's why currencies arose, a common base everyone could use that isn't tied to any particular product or service. It eliminated the need for bartering. When conditions exist, such as in Venezuela or Weimar Germany, people resorted to bartering again out of necessity since their currencies had less value than the paper they were printed on. That can happen to any economy if the stewards of the economy fail. The dollar is worth something because people have faith in the US. But is it backed by any hard asset like gold? No. Crypto doesn't have the faith people have in the dollar just because it is relatively unknown to most people. But that is growing. As I said earlier, over 600 million people own crypto, nearly double the population of the US. Crypto has value because the participants have faith in it.
Is crypto more volatile than stocks? As a whole, of course it is. Smaller markets make for more volatility. The entire market cap of crypto is roughly that of Nvidia or Apple or Microsoft in the $3 trillion range. Those stocks are pretty volatile, too, because they're individual companies amidst a sea of companies. That's why investment advisors always recommend diversifying. No smart investor puts all of their eggs in one basket. Every individual stock has a beta coefficient, telling how it moves relative to the entire market. If it's higher than 1, it is more volatile than the market as a whole. But those are also the stocks where you can get the biggest gains. No one measures a crypto beta coefficient, but volatility means higher potential gains and accordingly, a higher potential for loss. One thing you will never hear anyone say is that crypto is a safe investment. There are blue chips that are safer, relative to others, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, but no investment is entirely safe, not even that < 1% you earn on your savings account because your bank could fail and FDIC runs out of money. But notice that the earnings are lower when risk is lower. Junk bonds have to pay higher interest than AAA bonds, just to compensate for the risk factor. Crypto is higher risk, but the potential payoff is also higher than the stock market as a whole. By all means stick with your safer investments. I don't discourage that. Everyone has their risk tolerances. If crypto is too risky for you, please don't invest in it.
If and when crypto reaches its projected $30 trillion by 2030, it will become less volatile than it is. That is inevitable with larger market caps. If it reaches $100 trillion, it'll be even less volatile. You're arguing against investing in something because it is a riskier investment than say, the S&P 500. If everyone had that mindset, there would be no Angel investors, no venture capital, very few small cap stocks, and so on.
With Trump and Musk in government anything is possible... and BitCoin probably wont be the least their problems...
Faith in crypto? Please, give me a break.
You can't just make stuff up and pass it off as fact.
There are many people, especially financial experts, who dont like it.
Many call it a scam.
We dont need a history on currency. This is different.
The fact crypto is more volatile is half the problem.
People make money from rapid gains and rapid falls.
But not everyone. Just the ones who gambled on when it was time to buy and when to sell successfully.
Gambled being the operative word.
The massive claims you make are pie in the sky.
You cant back up PROJECTIONS that it will reach $30T in 2030. I could say it will be $300T just as easily.
Youve already argued it is volatile but then stated, without any proof, it will become less volatile.
This isnt venture capital at all. That's always risky and people do it because 1 in 10 pays off big time.
NVidia and Apple actually produce tangible products that people buy.
Crypto is more like old fashioned vapourware.
I spent entire posts distinguishing between intrinsic value (I used the word intrinsic before anyone else in this thread did because I wanted to distinguish between value based on faith and value based on hard assets). Crypto and the dollar are based on faith. I was debating your contention that stocks somehow don't go up because new people/money came in when it absolutely does.
You might want to go back and re-read that post since I specifically said "THE STOCK MARKET ONLY GOES UP WHEN MORE MONEY/PEOPLE COME IN." You might have missed that MORE MONEY part. To buy back their stocks, companies have to spend money that wasn't already in the stock market. They can't just say we're seizing some of their own stock. They have to pay for it with money that wasn't already in the stock market. The stock market cannot rise without more people/money coming in. When people withdraw money from the stock market, it goes down. As a whole, the stock market is a zero-sum game. So is crypto since the methods of buying and selling are the same.
I did mention in one posts about swaps, but those occur with only very small and generally unknown tokens through DEX's like Pancakeswap, which swaps BNB for tokens, but those are still the same concept because BNB has its own value.
I can agree with all of that seeing as I've said all of that myself in this thread, except to distinguish that crypto has no intrinsic value. It has value or no one would pay for it. That is what I call perceived value or value based on faith, just like the US dollar. It has a perceived value but no intrinsic value. Even the paper it's printed on is worthless to most because no one has a use for it, except the Federal Reserve.
Trading is exactly the same. The zero-sum aspect is exactly the same. Crypto opponents keep saying crypto can't rise because it requires new money from outside to make it rise. No one has disputed that, but the argument against that is that it's exactly how the stock market works. The stock market also cannot rise without new money coming in from outside. The stock market and crypto market fall when money is withdrawn from the markets. Again, both are overall zero sum games.
There's also the contention that one person can only gain by another person's loss. That's totally false in both the stock market and the crypto markets. The exchanges match a buy orders with sell orders. No one has any idea who the other person is on the other side, who may be selling for a loss or a gain. Both people on opposite sides of a trade could be gaining or losing money because the circumstances of the person on the other end will almost always be different than yours. While the overall market, both stock and crypto, is a zero sum game, individual transactions are not.
For some reason you seem to think I said that crypto is no different than stocks. I've never said any such thing. I've said that the way you buy and sell them are the same. They have all the same mechanisms for conducting transactions. I've gone into nauseating detail on exactly how these transactions happen for both markets, but at no time did I ever say that stocks are the same as crypto as an asset. Stocks and crypto are entirely different asset classes that trade in the same manner with all the same market forces and human behavior. Yet crypto haters keep claiming as some negative that crypto is a scam because it requires new money to go up. Well, duh, so does every other asset class like stocks. It's not the slam you all seem to think it is. Nor is the argument that crypto has no intrinsic value since the US dollar or any other fiat currency doesn't either.
Mechanics are the argument many of you, including you, are using against crypto. That it's a zoro sum game and that new money is required for it to go out. PYRAMID SCHEME, I hear you all cry. That's why I've had to go into such detail on the mechanics because none of you crypto opponents seem to understand that. That and the no intrinsic value argument. I've argued against both of those as something that exists for other asset classes. But it seems going into detail still doesn't penetrate those who somehow think the same characteristic for one is a detriment but isn't for another.
Horrors. Not everyone makes money. You can say that about every investment that has ever existed. It's more volatile. Duh, it's a smaller asset class. Oh no, there are some financial experts who don't like crypto. Ah, too bad. None of those are arguments because you can find people on both sides of every topic. For every economist who says something is going up, there are economists saying the opposite. Economics is an art, not a science. I've heard a ton of people calling the US dollar a scam. Bernie Madoff and Michael Milken perpetrated scams. There are scams in all markets.
As for volatility reducing with larger market cap, that is an axiom of investing. No proof is needed. A smaller market will always be more volatile than a larger market. No, nobody can prove the market cap will rise to $30 trillion by 2030. But nobody can prove the stock market won't collapse in the next year and become a fraction of its value, especially with the commercial real estate market projected to implode in late 2025 or 2026 where many banks are predicted to go bankrupt. That could take the stock market with it.
All we have to work with are projections, often based on technical and fundamental analyses. None of the people making these projections are just sticking their finger in the air and coming up with numbers out of thin air. Bitcoin, for example, has a very distinct chart that goes in rising phases that repeat themselves every four years. Yes, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but those are the things people make projections from. Where Bitcoin goes, the market follows. You're saying projections are meaningless for crypto, but I'll bet you have no issues with stock market projections.
With Bitcoin, I can even show you a logarithmic monthly candle chart that outlines the four to five phases of all four Bitcoin bull runs complete with Fibonacci numbers that predict the cycle high price. For instance, if Bitcoin reaches the 1.618 Fibonacci number (one of the golden ratio numbers in mathematics), Bitcoin will roughly reach $175,000 per coin. If it reaches the 2.618 Fib number, it'll reach $550,000. Will Bitcoin reach those projections? Maybe. Maybe not. But people use data to predict the future. It happens all the time in every market for every asset class.
The first two Bitcoin bull runs both reached the 2.618 Fib number. The 2021 bull run only reached the 1.618 line. COVID, maybe, for why it failed to reach 2.618? We are currently well below the 1.618 line in the 2025 bull run. Will it reach it? Who knows, but given past charts, it's probably more likely than not.