Just getting enough referrals is not enough (pardon the pun)

They should also be doing something like rolling, dicing, etc to actually bring you dough. Out of my 123 referrals only a couple has been active recently, and I expect it to be no different on average from other folks having so many (or even more). If you want to make money through them, you should always be devising new methods of attracting a fresh flock of referrals as there is tough competition in this field (apart from people going away constantly)

People are still massively confused about scarcity and how it works

I explained it a few times but it seems to be about right time to repeat the lesson. Bitcoin's yearly supply being less than gold's doesn't in the least mean that Bitcoin is more scarce than gold (the opposite can also turn out to be true, just in case). Any such figures are meaningless because there is no scarcity on its own as it should always relate to something, most commonly to some group of people (or the whole world population)

In this way, Bitcoin may already be more scarce than gold (say, per dollar worth per capita). I don't know if it actually is but you can always check that yourself. And while we are at it, I think it is correctly called supply, not emission. Are you coming from Slavic languages? Just curious

This doesn't even count as an assumption

I'd rather say it is pure speculation (even a conjecture of sorts). How come? There is simple logic why it is highly unlikely (i.e. people moving from Bitcoin to gold). Gold and Bitcoin lie at the two opposite ends of the investment "stick" (or stack), so to speak. Gold is for those who want to preserve their wealth, while Bitcoin is for those who want to multiply it fast ("get rich quick")

In simple terms, there is no way there can be a direct transition en masse between the two as there are many intermediate stages in between (like stocks, bonds, currencies, etc), which are less volatile than Bitcoin but still not quite on par with gold. So you would actually expect people to use these assets before moving to gold in the end

Technically, I agree with this (to a degree)

Altcoins pick up where Bitcoin leaves off. For example, many people after a while become no longer satisfied with the money they make through Bitcoin's volatility (as they say, one leg of mutton helps down another), while altcoins look promising in this regard (whether they actually live up to these promises is another question)

However, I don't see how it disproves my point as people move from Bitcoin to altcoins looking for more profits, and that's exactly what I'm talking about, i.e. without altcoins people would be trading Bitcoin only (note that I don't say whether it would be good or bad)

Buffett invests mostly in real sector

Financial instruments where Bitcoin truly belongs to are of no interest to him unlike, for example, George Soros (who is a dyed in the wool speculator). And in this manner, he is technically right about Bitcoin producing nothing. He means that Bitcoin doesn't produce goods which can be consumed and that point can hardly be challenged

On the other hand, Bitcoin is a payment system (at least it is designed to be one) and as such it can be considered a service helping people move money to and fro. And in this sense, its value is as real as anything else out there (provided people actually use it, of course)

Actually, we can't be sure of anything in this regard

I mean, how do we know if they haven't already bought or developed the whole spectrum of products related to online betting and gambling? We know that Stunna is behind Stake simply because he chose to admit that himself for promotion purposes or something else. But maybe he is also behind some of the other big guns in the field (financially or otherwise) but he just chose not to tell us anything about it (yet)

That reminds me of the rumors that had been circulating a couple decades or so ago about Intel buying AMD stock to support them financially. It may look a bit counterintuitive - really, why would they ever want to help their best frenemy and competitor? But if we take into account other rumors about dividing Intel into a several independent companies by regulating authorities (like Standard Oil of the Rockefeller fame), that makes sense after all

That's why we need another metric

Which would be more reliable and accurate. Personally, I go for trading volumes, though they are not without their own shortcomings either because much of the trading volume is outright fake. On the other hand, I don't think that all 5000+ altcoins combined would inaccurately "devalue" Bitcoin in market cap terms anyway, especially if most of them are left for good and dead, i.e. their orderbooks (whenever they might have been listed) are empty at the Bid side (which means they are totally worthless)

I think the solution already exists

As you seem to refer to quantitative measures, the "solutions to the environmental crisis" can be assessed pretty easily. Almost every mass production out there causes some damage to the environment, but it is not some abstract damage but very specific one depending on the type of production, like CO2 emissions (aka greenhouse gases). And these can be quantified, so if a certain company reduces them, it can be said that it produces cleaner products with less damage to the environment

But isn't it the same with gold?

As you had been saying yourself in that debate? Some traders may go for physical gold (as they are buying physically settled contracts) but many will just sell these contracts before the expiry. But we still don't see extreme volatility or insane prices with gold even if there is less physical gold in vaults than paper gold in contracts (as you claim). So why do you think Bitcoin will be different?



In other words, what makes you so scared?

Forks have nothing to do with halvings

Halving is about reducing the supply of new coins while forks are adding to this supply. Well, technically, it is more about creating a new source of coins (different coins) but for simplicity's sake you can think along these lines. And since halving reduces supply by halving the block reward, it should at least theoretically lead to higher prices eventually. That's basically why people are placing so much hope on the next halving

I guess you should first ask what these cryptoaccounts really are?

As far as I know, nowhere in the world real banks allow their customers to open cryptoaccounts. Most likely, by these people mean regular accounts where money from operations with crypto is received. And in that case banks can freeze accounts as these sources of income may be considered illegal in a certain jurisdiction

But it is definitely not about some banks allowing these things while others prohibiting as the rules are the same for all banks in the same jurisdiction. Of course, you can successfully disguise your income as something innocent. In that case you won't be caught and your account frozen. But that would be the bank's fault

Maybe, because they just happen to like crypto?

I mean they may like the technology itself and everything related. For example, many rich people continue working even if they no longer have to work at all. Indeed, it is not like being an employee or anything related to hired labor but crypto has even less to do with that than what we typically understand by work

It is not uncommon to hear thoughts like earning plenty of dough and then retiring early. But money is not about early retirement (though you can certainly choose that option once you are rich enough). Money is about being free to do what you like to do. In most cases that actually means doing something



And sometimes even more than you would typically do for a pay

I think these are two entirely different things

For example, when you are investing in the casino bankroll, you are expecting to receive a share of the profits earned by the casino and it is legally binding (at least this is what you expect). But with stock it is different and you are not guaranteed to receive dividends even if the company earns huge profits

For example, if major stockholders decide to reinvest these profits (or whatever other than paying out dividends), you will receive nothing. In this way, investing in the bankroll is more like investing directly in a business, i.e. you become an owner of that business (some part of it) and can demand your piece of the pie

This point is debatable

It can be said that it is altcoins which get publicity through Bitcoin. After all, if Bitcoin didn't appear, altcoins would not be heard of either (well, there could be some other form of cryptomoney but it is irrelevant). In this way, it is altcoins which are profiting from the Bitcoin popularity and not so much the other way around. So even in this specific case altcoins take more than give back


People learn about crypto via Bitcoin, not altcoins, so the net result should be pretty clear

They may still accept fiat as before

And at the same time they may allow their consumers to pay with crypto. It is possible by using third parties which accept crypto from buyers, then convert it to fiat and send fiat to sellers. In that way, sellers don't have to report their sales in crypto to tax authorities as from a financial perspective nothing has changed for them. But sellers won't go that route unless there is enough demand from buyers (to pay with cryptocurrencies)

That's actually a very wise thought which definitely deserves a merit (or two)

Though I don't think there are a lot of public investments going into crypto right now (as that requires disclosure of such information) but we can be damn sure that at least some of the big guns of the financial world have already invested in Bitcoin privately. Personally, I don't expect die-hards like Warren Buffett to get interested in cryptocurrencies any time soon (if ever), but other folks less stubborn and more open-minded may have already gotten their feet wet at Bitcoin investments. Obviously, they are not going to tell the world about it

Well, I suspect things are not going to be so simple

Technically, Bitcoin halving is going to change the block reward as such, but whether it is going to translate into a reduction in the market supply is an open question in itself. When the reward was high, we could rationally and reliably expect the market supply to diminish after the halving (some time after the event)

But now that the block reward is already small, the change in it may turn out to be simply insufficient to dramatically reduce the supply of bitcoins to the market. As there can be other factors that may affect supply, instead of reduction we may actually see an increase. To conclude, there are certainly more than 3 scenarios mentioned

As much as I myself want it to be the case here, it is nowhere near that

The only void that altcoins can fill is lack of volatility in Bitcoin if it can be said so, comparatively speaking. Indeed, Bitcoin is volatile as fuck but altcoins take volatility to the next level of extremity. In simple terms, they are more speculative than Bitcoin, and this is their only real advantage

Okay, I know that there are features that Bitcoin lacks (for example, smart contracts). But how much of Bitcoin price (or lack thereof) can be attributed to them? I don't think that much. In this way, your whole assumption seems to be based on non-existent premises (well, let's call them far fetched) and is therefore invalid overall

Can you explain in greater detail what you mean by this? What you mean by the blockchain based lending business exactly? How is it going to work in real life? If you mean that you should provide collateral via, say, smart contracts, then you should provide over 100% of it (like what blockchain-based stable coins do) but in that case it makes no sense as borrowers could just sell their collateral and get done with that

What am I missing here?

I'm not sure either if the whole idea makes any sense

I mean from an investment point of view as it doesn't look to me a worthy idea at all. However, technically speaking, you don't have to convert your bitcoins to gold directly and vice versa. You may just sell bitcoins and buy gold but you don't necessarily have to buy the latter with the proceeds from the former (if that was your point, of course)

In other words, you would essentially go with two independent investments but you can line them up in such a way that would effectively count as moving from Bitcoin to gold and from gold to Bitcoin