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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
I cant speak for anyone else but my basic issue with crypto and bitcoin specifically are pretty simple, a currency and an investment are two very different things, no one in their right mind would put all their money into the Swiss Franc expecting it double triple or quad its value in the next few years and pay off their mortgage, a functional currency cant do that, it would cease to be useful as a currency if it did which is bitcoins problem, it isnt a currency anymore, it used to be but it isnt now, people are buying bitcoin, they aint buying things with bitcoin, they would be mad to, bitcoin is just an investment now, that is all you and Dino see it as, how high will it go is all you care about.
As an investment there is no reason for its rise in price other than investor belief and that isnt going to sustain it, just about every single person in the world that owns Bitcoin right now is trying to work out when to sell it, that is the nature of belief based investments.
As to crypto itself, I can see in some limited areas a universally accepted digital currency could be handy, the third world, drug dealing etc.
I say limited though because on the whole I think 'money', dollars pounds etc work pretty well already, I dont think there is this vast problem with it that crypto is going to solve, I havnt noticed any issues with the Canadian dollar in my day to day life that I need to fix, I get paid, I buy things, banks happily lend it, if I buy a house I know the price of the house in 6 months when I take possession and the money is exchanged is pretty much the same as it is now when I agree on the price, what vast issue with money is there that crypto of any sort is supposed to solve?
The idea that there needs to be a vast sea of millions of power hungry computers chugging away all over the world using ever greater amounts of power just to keep track of me buying an O Henry bar down the gas station when regular money just needs a single cheaply made piece of paper or a single bank computer and a debit card to achieve exactly the same result seems absurd to me, it seems to me like an incredibly complicated Rube Goldberg solution to a problem money has already solved quite nicely and elegantly already
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This is exactly the issue though. This illustrates how uneducated people are on the whole crypto currency and blockchain buzz. All you can talk about at a high level why you think it will fail because you think its just designed to replace fiat currency. Its not, and that's not where its value lies.
If you want to dig deeper into it there are a number of decent books out there like 'Blockchain Revolution' and 'Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond'. The value doesn't lie with cryptocurrency as a stash of value in my opinion. We can argue all day about that and clearly its been discussed at length and has gotten nowhere. The value in my opinion is in the alternative coins and not as an investment but as a proof of concept. VeChain was mentioned here and everyone knows about Ethereum and its smart contract capability.
VeChain is super exciting and is getting a lot of traction through its partnerships with the likes of PwC, Grant Thornton, BMW, and Walmart to name a few. They are exploring ways on the blockchain to solve problems with supply chain logistics and tracking data. Cyprus has already been utilizing this particular crypto asset to track vaccination records. If you could get systems self validating vaccination records and tracking it across borders think of the power in that.
This is just one example of the thousands that are currently in their infancy. I do not necessarily believe that crypto currency is going to replace gold or fiat currency but I have seen first hand people making a lot of money off of it because they believe in the technology. If that's the biproduct of that so be it. I think there are some decent cases as to why Bitcoin is attractive and do own some, but what excites me more is the technology and innovation the blockchain technology is pushing forward.