I don’t understand how bitcoin has value. I know the dollar has no intrinsic value either; we just all agree it does. But the difference between the dollar and bitcoin is that if you decide to stop trading using the dollar, you become a terrorist and get a free hellfire delivery. If you stop trading using the bitcoin, no one cares. How did this whole bitcoin to value begin? How does a brand new currency start without the backing of a state? Why does it keep having value? It’s interesting af.
I bought some mdma in 2016 with Bitcoin, if I’d kept it in a wallet it would have been worth 40k today.
We may or may not have used bitcoin to buy substances and weed on silk road and… I think it was dream market, not sure, back in the day. 1 bitcoin was ~350€ at that time. I watched bitcoin become more and more valuable and less and less usable over the years, which at first I thought was very odd, until I realized that everything that roughly resembles a stock market is more or less mostly used by gamblers.
Bitcoin is now literally digital gold, it has absolutely no value other than scarcity and you betting on people thinking it will be more valuable in the future, it’s a money store, where you hopefully don’t lose money, or don’t accidentally click on a link that loses you all of your money, but most of bitcoin was bought ip by wallstreet and they built etfs around it, so it’s not as much of a risk as it used to be, I still wouldn’t touch it
My employer and I set aside a little money into my 401 account. Sometimes, it gains, and sometimes, it loses. Giving your money away to a third party and saying, “Use this to make more money, then bring me back more than I gave you,” always involves the chance they’ll come back with nothing.
So yeah, any investment is always a gamble. The safest worthwhile investment is a house (savings accounts and CDs usually do not beat inflation). It’s how the middle class builds generational wealth. But in the last few years, it’s really been flipped on its head.
I’m not sure how COVID-era monetary policy will play out in 20 years, but what I do know is a lot of people bought houses when interest rates were basically free money and now have no reason to sell. My little brother pays less for his bigger house on more land than me. Why would he sell? Any house he can buy next will be a guaranteed downgrade and lost equity. He’s borrowing at 2¼. I’m borrowing at 5⅝. Anyone buying today is probably looking down the barrel of 7%.
And this doesn’t even touch on speculators and corporate slum lords.
But in this capitalist economic system that assigns a value to literally everything, everything is a gamble.
A buddy of mine offered to sell me his 3 Bitcoin for a pack of cigarettes back in the day. I bought him the pack and told him to keep the coins, I wouldn’t know wtf to do with them
In fairness, neither of us are rich now. I’m a broke mfer, and he lost the thumb drive his shit was on
Remember the kind of people who got really into NFTs and lost everything? That’s exactly the kind of people who got really into bitcoin 15 years ago, they just happened to get extremely lucky this one time. There’s a reason why most bitcoin millionaires are such incompetent douchebags.
I was around /g/ during all of this and i thought about mining, did the math and decided not to. I was pretty broke at the time tbf.
My friend tried to convince me to get into bitcoin early and I didn’t bother, I thought it was just a fad, like my mom “investing” in Beanie Babies.
He spent all his on drugs before the price took off though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The problem with statements like “If you invested in Bitcoin back in 2009 you’d be rich now” is that you’d have to be clairvoyant to actually know that back then. And if you’re clairvoyant, the lottery offers a better return on investment than bitcoin.
In fact saying stuff like this is literally like seeing the winning lottery numbers on the telly and thinking, if only I played those numbers two days ago.
I’m not sure which meaning of “drug” makes it worse
be me
mining with CPU
sell coins to pay rent
mfw if I just lived on the street for a few years I could buy a private island
still paying rent
But if you lived on the street, would you be able to mine?
be me, 13yo
mining with my shit GPU(can’t recall) in 2013
dad smirks and says wouldn’t that just cost me more in electricity
me agrees, quits
nice job, dad
220 coins is about 22m usd today. the guys with ‘vintage’ btc and held, are smart. they won’t be posting about their gains online.
Still no clue why it’s so popular while my beanie babies languish. Can’t you use beanie babies to buy drugs? Please?
I had a cowoker who used to mine bitcoins back then. He said that it was a fun hobby but when he was moving to California he didn’t think he would be able to make enough money to justify the higher electrical bill.
He was making about $60 a month farming Bitcoin, when it was $0.30 a piece. Had he kept just a month’s worth of that, it would be worth $20.5 million dollars.
I used to mine them with cpu / GPU.
I bought a bottle of Jim beam for 25 BTC lol.
Just did the math. That’s $2.5 million today. Oooof
