Precisely.  Anyone who has bought and held (or mined and held) between 2009 and early 2021 is way ahead.  It hasn't been rocket science.

Buffett is right about bitcoin being rat poison which is why rats like him don't like it. It is indeed poison to statists and authoritarians who think they have a right to the products of everyone else's lives merely because they hold the guns.

It is the age old fight between freedom and collectivism. The fight to decide whether to go up towards liberty or down to the ant heap of socialism, fascism or communism.

First, I will say Buffett is right about bitcoin being rat poison, which is why rats like him don't like it.

What is contrary to the interests of civilization is authoritarians and those who support their power hungry motives, those who are willing to sell everyone else out to a 3 to 3000000% annual invisible tax (inflation) and those who don't like giving individual people the power (and right) to control and own the value that they create; those don't think that people should have the right to the products of their own lives without it being subject to the whim of the masters they want in power where you own nothing by right.

Buffett and Munger have lost it.  They are two power hungry people who don't care about anyone else and are willing to sell everyone else down the river to support their masters around the world.  Their goal is a socialist dictatorship since they think they'll be exempt (or dead) while everyone else will pay.  They have sold their souls to be in good graces with the so-called elites.

The crypto market is stable, it is the fiat<->crypto market that is (a) leveraged and (b) susceptible to people "selling the news" (e.g. sell first and ask questions later).  The over-leveraged traders won't last long if they keep getting destroyed which could decrease volatility.  Likewise, with a larger market which would include more individuals, ETFs and many more corporations world-wide, the price would be much more stable since you would have larger pockets who wouldn't care what FXHedge tweeted, let alone if it was true since they would be able to rationally assess whether it would make any difference at all even if it was true.  This is another reason why it is always important to increase usage, no matter what use that is.

Excellent point.  This was just a non-issue that someone decided to publish and the author of the article didn't or couldn't ask penetrating questions about the obvious flaws in it.

And so?  Blocks would be slow for a while and then retarget.  Other places would step in. Prices for mining equipment would spike, old equipment might get spun up (certainly not CPU or GPUs).

And if the US and Kazakstan "stopped all the miners", what would happen to the mining equipment?  Would they also seize (steal) the equipment? Would they destroy it?  In the US that would have big issues, most likely requiring payment.  If they didn't seize the equipment the miners would sell them to someone else, somewhere else (or move them themselves) and they'd be back online reasonably quickly.  If all those miners got paid by the US government, do you think they'd burn the money or go somewhere else and buy more equipment and start mining again?

Even if 99% of mining equipment worldwide was shut down, destroyed and had no payments made, at worst it would take quite a while to retarget.  More likely, there would be a quick update to Bitcoin Core to allow a faster retargeting period and after some short period of disruption, things would continue on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps even with CPUs or GPUs if 99.9999999999999999999% was shut down.  How would anyone stop that except by banning computers or networks?

This is a bunch of garbage from some newbie who hasn't thought through all the issues.  Or perhaps he has and just (a) doesn't understand them or (b) wants to cause angst.

I agree with you, particularly given the number of US corporate buyers who could potentially enter the market, no to mention non US companies, let alone a potential ETF. The available bitcoin is so limited that an increase in demand like that would impact the fiat price significantly.

That is like him saying that the Dollar, Euro, or Yen are scams because there are scammers using them.  It is about as ignorant as the people who are saying bitcoin is only useful for criminals when fiat currencies are used much more.

Digital socialism?  It is exactly the opposite.  

Bitcoin provides insurance against socialism.  Socialism means you don't own your life or the products of your life, an evil and immoral philosophy if there ever was one.  Remember the goal of socialism is communism, and any form of authoritarianism (fascism, socialism, communism etc) wants to own you and your life with you having no recourse to someone else enslaving you for their "need".

A socialist or any other authoritarian government (or any government for that matter) controlling a fiat currency is a disaster waiting to happen.  Ditto for currency and capital controls.  It is a recipe for inflation, confiscation (stealing), etc.  Look at Cyprus, Venezuela, Germany in the 1930s etc.

JP Morgan died in 1913.*



Even OP, who found out about BTC in 2013, had plenty of time to get involved.  In 2013 bitcoin was between $10-$100 (I think around 30 in April 2013 - I had lunch with some engineering friends who I'd mentioned bitcoin to back in November 2010, then in 2012 and again then.  Neither of them did anything at that time or at least through 2018).  I told people about the internet and internet domain names in 1993, 1994, and 1995, it was a similar scenario where people talk a good game, but often decide to do other things instead of taking a few hours or days to follow through.

Even now, in April 2021, if adoption continues as it has, there is still 1 or two orders of magnitude (or maybe more) left in usage and fiat growth.  Since many people don't understand orders of magnitude, that means there is room for 10 (one order of magnitude) or 100 (two orders of magnitude) times increase in fiat price.  

I would venture that almost everyone who has attempted to trade bitcoin over the last 7-10 years would've done better to just buy and hold.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan
* His son, died 1943:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan_Jr.

Why have something censorable, centralized, and inflatable (among other things)?

Things like the digital yuan, aka slavecoin, are nothing more than tools to mislead.

A transfer out doesn't mean that someone bought or sold, it is just a transfer.  It could be internal to coinbase, e.g. to cold storage, or it could be someone who has purchased transferring the coins off the exchange to their own cold storage.

As far as "shake out of weak hands", for every sale there is a buyer, but I agree, everyone who has mined or bought at any point through 2020 has done wonderfully. Trading and market timing may work for a while, but people who timed and got out at $20000 in the last few months has missed a huge opportunity.

Agreed.  Learning to write, punctuate and spell is one key to communicating clearly.  Communicating clearly is important if one wants to convince others or make a point.  OP, if you want people to understand, you should review and revise your initial post. 

Agreed, and not to mention that they are staying in bitcoin, not converting it.  I do wonder how many people will actually use it, but it is certainly good publicity for both Telsa and bitcoin.

I find "taught" to be an interesting choice of words here as Game Boys can't learn.  I wonder why they didn't use programmed or other similar word.  Seems odd.

I think you are right.  With taproot/tapscript etc, the ability to use defi/NFTs etc on bitcoin - the most secure and distributed of the cryptos - should increase. 

Hopefully this doesn't take 20 years, the uses are immense, it is just a matter of using them. 

There are idiots all over the place whatever the asset.  TANSTAAFL for one thing.  People who think it is a get rich quick scheme haven't been following along.  :-)  I am usually of the opinion that people should be free to make their own decisions, even dumb ones, but without knowledge, derivatives are like handing teenagers a case of whiskey and the car keys.  Someone is going to get hurt and it is irresponsible to give them both. 

Look at Archegos, Credit Suisse, DB, NMR, UBS, GS, MS etc.  The hedge fund was supposedly knowledgable and yet wasn't. These prime brokerages were supposedly smart investment banks, and yet weren't.  Where was upper level management at these banks?  Where were the risk managers?   Where were the automated systems that flag things?  Anyone looking for a quick buck without understanding what is going on is bound to lose money eventually.  Kind of like Macau, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo etc. If you are innumerate, one shouldn't gamble unless it is purely for fun like a movie ticket that you have a good chance of losing.

Hopefully not another 20 years. :-)  I think it primarily depends on uptake.  With taproot, tapscript etc, the rate of usage could increase dramatically quite quickly given the potential uses for defi etc. 

It depends on your location too.  In the UK it is probably different than in the EU or the US or Africa.  So what location is your preferred location?

I thought this was interesting.  Having more, larger, traditional, players involved in this can only be a positive.  Both from having the ability to open up the market to even more participants who might not have had the wherewithal to invest their retirement funds outside an ETF and to having more availability of bitcoin via a US ETF.  Who knows how long it will take, but with enough people pushing for it, it certainly helps.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/25/fidelity-wants-to-launch-a-bitcoin-etf-cryptocurrency-sec.html