Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

https://www.ft.com/content/1d4c5942-7190-45e1-9167-a5eacfd93982

by sandbach • 1 year ago

42 118 1 year ago

sandbach• 1 year ago

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment. But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life. I started following cryptocurrencies back in 2012.

Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al.

It is 2025, and I've yet to see shops here in Europe that actively take any crypto, or people that use it in their daily lives. "Fast and cheap payments" have been fixed using regular fiat and banking services. I daily transfer and pay for stuff without any charges.

Crypto in general, but stablecoins more so, just feels like another asset that's being pumped and dumped periodically, with some constant growth factor pushing it up. At least with metals as gold, silver, etc. there's some real usage - though most of the value is just "store of value".

I don't know, for me it is mentally difficult to just buy into some asset that that has practically no real value, other than that others are willing to purchase it for more. It is as if everyone has just agreed that it has value due to demand, and that's it. It feels so artificial, that it is hard to wrap my brain around why people are willing to trade it (other than the next guy buying it for more, as mentioned).

EDIT:

Sure, there are some very legit usage of crypto, like:

- Circumventing sanctions

- Laundering money

- Scams and transactions of illegal goods

And of course just a storage of value.

xnorswap2• 1 year ago

In my view, the value, ( as it was in 2015 too btw) is digital extortion and money laundering.

Some are happy to take a hair-cut to get their money clean. The wider crypto-currency community is happy to make money off the back off essentially providing money-laundering-as-a-service.

scotty795• 1 year ago

Crypto in general, but stablecoins more so, just feels like another asset

If it draws any interest away from residential real estate market its utility for reducing problems caused by wealth inequality is immense.

Any tool that draws the capital of the rich away from the brick and mortar economy where the poor have to compete with them to survive is worth tons for society.

FabHK5• 1 year ago

I fear the opposite is the case - many rich whales pump up prices in the real world, having sold their crypto to the masses coming in late.

whatsupdog• 1 year ago

Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al.

Yes, that was before Gregory Maxwell, Luke-jr, Adam Back et. Al hijacked the project with the help from "theymos". They derailed the whole project by doubling down on keeping the block size at 1mb, with the ulterior motive of providing their own private centralized layer 2 service (lightning) as a solution for scaling.

This was the biggest setback for the actual grassroots adoption of Bitcoin. They openly censured and banned any opposing opinions and alienated a lot of crypto enthusiasts including myself. I'll never forgive them for what they did.

PartiallyTyped• 1 year ago

It’s just a slower, more expensive, distributed database.

People can claim all they wish that it’s trustless, that we miss the bigger picture, but many have said again and again, the value of any currency is as high as the trust that it will remain valuable tomorrow.

“Nerds” can believe in its value as much as they want, but as long as it doesn’t penetrate daily life it will remain just an asset for hedging against traditional financial systems at best, and most commonly a money laundering scheme.

DSingularity• 1 year ago

It’s the algorithmically enforced scarcity coupled with “to the moon” culture. That’s all that’s going on. If it keeps going up I won’t be surprised. If it dumps down I won’t be surprised.

No floor and no ceiling — only a gambler would keep his net worth tied up to crypto. You did the right thing once you crossed a threshold to significantly change your financial status. Any other decision would have put yourself in a position vulnerable to outcomes of extreme regret.

throwaway48476• 1 year ago

The valuation is predicated on a market existing to provide exit liquidity. But where is that going to come from?

beeflet5• 1 year ago

There are cryptocurrencies like dogecoin and monero that have an infinite supply and a constant production of new coins, and they still see use. So I'm not certain that scarcity is the only motivating factor.

In fact, I would think that a growing money supply is good for driving real-world usage.

RS-232• 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing your story. I too frequently think back on "what could have been." Back in 2013, I bought and sold a bitcoin, and every time I see a crypto headline I remember my mistake of spending it.

Maybe we should not be so hard on ourselves. Afterall, we still have a heartbeat. Did we truly make a mistake, or did we narrowly avoid getting consumed by avarice?

lottin2• 1 year ago

It was NOT a mistake. Do you consider not buying the winning lottery ticket a mistake? No. You don't know which ticket is going to win in advance, and buying a random ticket is ill-advised because the odds are against it being the winning one.

bspammer• 1 year ago

The best antidote to this kind of thinking is to realise you would have been tempted to sell so may times over the last decade, that there's close to zero chance that you'd still be holding it today.

To make a lot of money with bitcoin you either need to have been a true believer for a ridiculously long period of time, or find the password to an old wallet you'd forgotten about.

sweezyjeezy• 1 year ago

BTC is a (roughly) net-zero enterprise, every dollar taken out of the system comes from someone else putting a dollar in. Sure, if you had a crystal ball you could have made millions, but if everyone else ALSO had that same crystal ball you couldn't, since traders are mostly just shuffling money between themselves anyway.

There's no point kicking yourself over not foreseeing a far-fetched future scenario, if you were at a casino and a roulette spin landed on 12 - would you feel bad for not betting on that happening, despite having no good information it would land on that?

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

I take comfort in thinking that it wasn’t for early buyers/sellers, there wouldn’t really have been any traction.

And crypto today is extremely accessible and safe, compared to 10+ years ago. The first crypto I bought, was by paying some random seller on a forum with PayPal, and hoping that the deal was legit.

tzs2• 1 year ago

It wasn't a mistake. In 2013, as in every year, there were plenty of speculative things you could have invested in without having any reasonable way of knowing if they would turn out to make a lot or lose a lot.

There are probably 75 year olds today regretting that they didn't spend an extra $0.12 in 1962 when they were at the comic book store to pick up an extra copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 to preserve. That was the first appearance of Spider Man and and a copy of that in near NM+ condition ("A very well-preserved collectible with several minor manufacturing or handling defects") sold at auction in 2021 for $3.6 million.

I did buy an extra copy of X-Men #137 (the death of Jean Grey) for $0.75 in 1980 and promptly bagged it. If I could actually find it and it actually is still in mint condition it might sell for around $400. From $0.75 then to $400 now is 15% a year growth.

But that $0.75 would have been better invested in Apple stock. That would be around $1600 now which is 18% a year growth. But in 1980 there were other exciting tech companies to invest in and most did not grow like Apple, so it is pointless to consider not buying Apple stock instead of X-Men #137 a mistake.

Nor would it have been a mistake to just put the money in an S&P 500 index fund. That would only have earned about 11% a year over the subsequent 45 years.

spacemadness2• 1 year ago

I worked with some crypto kids back in 2013. One retired in his twenties after 2017 or so. I know this as his instagram account became nothing but travel photos that never stopped coming year after year. Another colleague announced his retirement at 27 one day. He must have had 20 million in the bank. I still think it’s dumb that people got rich that way, but being dumb luck rich is certainly a thing. I don’t hold it against them. Interestingly I knew a lot of others that talked about crypto all the time but they’re still working to this day.

The thing is, there were so many coins popping up and all this talk about coins surpassing BTC that it’s easy to look at BTC today and think that was the only choice. But people were speculating on a lot of soon to be dead coins.

There are stock plays you could make today that could make any of us rich off dumb luck.

geocar• 1 year ago

I sold 100 BTC back in 2015, which cleared all my debts and landed my first apartment.

I think you should be less proud of that.

I can't see the real value ... Sure, there are some very legit usage of crypto, like: Circumventing sanctions, Laundering money, Scams and transactions of illegal goods

Sounds like you understand exactly what the "real value" is:

If you buy and sell bitcoin, you're helping people launder money, protect gains from scamming people, circumvent sanctions, and trade in illegal goods. You are hurting people, possibly a lot of people.

It is 2025, and I've yet to see shops here in Europe that actively take any crypto, or people that use it in their daily lives

That's because scamming people, selling illegal goods, money laundering, and helping people circumvent sanctions, is well, illegal in Europe.

webdevver7• 1 year ago

i totally get this mindset

i think one of the big challenges of the 21st century is coming to terms with the fact that playing by the rules actually makes you poorer...

whereas speculative investment, like bitcoin, has yielded only winners. huge transfer of wealth from the rule-followers to the "but what if it moons..."-crowd and the "yeah i shouldn't do this, but..."-type of people.

this will surely have an evolutionary impact, since the now-wealthy bitcoiners (and others) will no doubt have plenty of reproductive success, thus arming their numerous progeny with a similar risk-taking mindset.

globular-toast• 1 year ago

But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life.

It doesn't sound like a mistake to me at all. You paid off debts and invested in something that has delivered value to you for almost 15 years now. A mistake would have been to spend it on blow and hookers.

barkingcat• 1 year ago

no a true mistake would have been to delete the hard drive that the wallet was stored on so you wouldn't even had the benefit of paying off anything or buying any hookers and blow.

potatoproduct• 1 year ago

I followed around the same time and came to the same conclusions, except I didn't buy or mine any because I 1) hugely underestimated how much that illegal activity was worth. 2) didn't appreciate the potential scale of the pump n dump

AbstractH24• 1 year ago

Saying an investment will at some point drop in value is not hard, saying exactly when and how high it’ll get first is.

-my biggest learning from the first half of the 2020s

throwaway287391• 1 year ago

But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life.

Maybe a tiresome pedantic response, but this is only a "mistake" to the same extent that it was a mistake for [everyone in the world who had the required funds] not to buy 100 BTC in 2015. If you can overcome the cognitive biases (endowment effect, loss aversion, etc.), the fact that you previously owned the 100 BTC has no real bearing on the situation, beyond transaction fees and a couple hours max saved by holding (doing nothing) vs. buying.

pjc504• 1 year ago

It was also a mistake for me to not buy a lottery ticket with the numbers 4 11 17 25 41 51.

There's a slow drip feed of stories of people who did buy BTC and have lost it, either to human error, lack of backups, crime, or failure of institutions. Remember MtGox collapse in 2014? The whole fad was obviously over by then, wasn't it?

We're going to have another 2008-style bubble collapse eventually. But it's not clear what the radius of effect will be.

sharperguy• 1 year ago

There are very few unbanked people in western countries, and so its natural that it would be unusual to come across those use cases there. There are in fact services that will act as a glue between the bitcoin ecosystem and "fiat", such as bitrefill which allows you to buy gift cards for many different stores using bitcoin. However for most people and every day payments there isn't really a compelling reason to try to use bitcoin. In fact, if you have both bitcoin and national currency, with rising prices it makes more sense to hold onto the bitcoin and spend the national currency.

There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.

The downside with stablecoins is that they rely on trusted entities to maintain the peg, whereas bitcoin enforces its own scarcity and trades at its own value.

I don't really think its responsible to go around telling people that bitcoin will gain in value, but there are certainly many people who believe this to be the case, and the pool is growing. I think the key value for this community is that we have something which is easier to transfer globally than a hard asset like gold, while being independent from particular jurisdictions such as the US, EU or China.

And yes I see the lack of awareness in bitcoin community about the extent to which it has become the defacto standard for internet scammers, who trick vulnerable people into depositing their life savings into a bitcoin ATM using various methods. You can see many examples of this on kitboga's youtube channel. At least, he has been able to work with some bitcoin exchanges to fight back against this in a small way.

101008• 1 year ago

Are you from Argentina? Crypto is used for the same reasons as in every other country. If someone gets paid their salary in crypto is not because the peso is weak, is simply to be avoid paying taxes for being outside the system.

pjc504• 1 year ago

There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.

Yes, I think this really is a use case even if it's not one that flatters the prejudices of American bitcoiners. People from non-US countries want access to shadow-dollars, yet the US has built a large and intrusive industry based on keeping them out.

tzs2• 1 year ago

There are very few unbanked people in western countries, and so its natural that it would be unusual to come across those use cases there.

In the US it is 6% of adults [1] overall. It is 23% of adults with family incomes below $25k. It's 14% for Black adults and 11% for Hispanic adults.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2024-economic-we...

furyofantares• 1 year ago

It seems the same as gold to me, gold having a nonzero physical value isn't meaningful when its price is so out of whack with that.

I think bitcoin has a culture that fortified itself against wild price swings and has lots of people on HODL / to the moon. It's their long term plan, they're not selling it just like you probably aren't selling your retirement account.

I'm not really convinced the stock market is that different to be honest. It's good that it gives companies a way to raise money with some basis in who people think will do well. But from my perspective as an individual with a 401k I'm just buying and holding. One day you look at your retirement account and it's a lot more than you ever put in, you didn't do any work beyond putting it in and I guess paying whoever runs the index fund or whatever. What are we doing here except pooling our money with the richest folks and watching money concentrate, holding until we retire and hoping it doesn't all come crashing down?

VMG• 1 year ago

Don't feel bad. I sold my coins and now I'm glad I don't have the headache of securing it now.

fsflover• 1 year ago

"Fast and cheap payments" have been fixed using regular fiat and banking services. I daily transfer and pay for stuff without any charges.

Could it be that bitcoin forced banks to compete?

xnorswap2• 1 year ago

No, because the systems pre-date bitcoin.

Chip & Pin launched in 2003

Contactless payments launched 2007. ( Yes, these pre-date Apple Pay, etc, by quite a long time )

Faster Payments System launched 2008 ( After a decade of planning )

Bitcoin launched 2009.

pcdoodle2• 1 year ago

The security is the value. It's a truth engine. A 60 minute old block would be almost impossible to tamper with.

beeflet5• 1 year ago

Bitcoin isn't a particularly well-designed cryptocurrency, even in terms of security. You could use pretty much any blockchain for the timestamp application.

polivier• 1 year ago

I started looking into bitcoin when it was at around $3, but never made a move to buy any. I have some regrets, but when I stop to think about it, I would clearly have sold everything when it reached $10 or something. So I haven't passed up the opportunity to make millions, I only passed up the opportunity to make a couple hundred bucks.

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

When I was active, most people I knew (that were active in crypto) sold most of their stuff prior to 2015-2017.

It was almost a rite of passage to make your exit-post once you reached your goal, or didn’t want the risk/stress. For most that included things like purchasing a home, car, paying off student loans, retiring your parents.

Most of the people I know that became rich off crypto, were those that went all in around 16/17/18. And many of those did buy/sell their way up. Or got lucky with meme coins etc.

I don’t know anyone that bought 1000 BTC in the very early days, and just held onto them with diamond hands. Nor do I know anyone that DCA’ed from 2012 up until today.

(Not that they don’t exist, probably a bunch of them)

beeflet5• 1 year ago

This is the same attitude I have. There's no regret in not predicting the powerball numbers.

When you consider the actual price you would have bought in and the actual price you would have liquidated, those theoretical 10x-100x gains start looking more like 3-10x gains. And for small investments that's not going to make you a millionaire.

throw0101b3• 1 year ago

And of course just a storage of value.

See also gold.

At some point it did make sense as a currency because of its hard-to-fake nature, but once governments became stronger and regulations and documentation became more strict, gold was not needed anymore. (And gold has all sorts of downsides [1] too.)

But there seems to be some 'nostalgic valuations' for it, and Bitcoin now has the same psychological appeal.

[1] https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...

agumonkey2• 1 year ago

Trading is soulless, yet it gives some deep philosophical lessons about regrets, future... You never know if a positive outcome is too early or too late. So you just take what you got and move on.

About crypto early narrative.. there's some lesson here, nothing means nothing, things get twisted, blended, rebranded .. they wanted to replace the world, they're not part of it, as yet another asset. Sad, cynical but nothing surprising IMO.

That said there might be an offspring of all the distributed blockchain VMS that will emerge a new layer replacing the economic and information exchange in the future (I still believe this a bit).

RhysU• 1 year ago

But obviously in hindsight, it was the most expensive mistake I've made in my life.

"You’re never happy with the amount you traded."

See "The Laws of Trading" by Agustin Lebron. One review discussing this topic is https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-laws-o...

ryandvm2• 1 year ago

Honestly, if you had held all of your BTC until today you would be an idiot.

Just because it made it to $120,000 doesn't mean that it was predictable or even an rational. Given that Bitcoin _still_ doesn't have a use case beyond buying drugs means the bottom could fall out at any time.

There is no rebar in this structure.

beeflet5• 1 year ago

bitcoin has little use case in buying drugs anymore

NomDePlum4• 1 year ago

Was that all your Bitcoin? If so, why sell it all given it had already accumulated value?

Not a criticism, more just trying to understand the rationale.

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

Needed cash, nothing more. Laid off / downturn in the industry I worked in, and separated, so a double whammy financially speaking.

Lerc• 1 year ago

I find it difficult to evaluate the potential regulation of cryptocurrency. I think it is necessary, in any domain, to have good laws that enable activity while protecting the people.

At the same time I don't have a great deal of faith in the ability of the existing government structures to enact legislation in the interest of society as a whole.

That presents a serious problem that makes the world of cryptocurrency pale into insignificance. Without belief that laws act in the interest of humanity in general, faith in the rule of law erodes. If that erosion is not stopped eventually nothing remains.

I hope things are not as bad as they seem to the outside observer.

scotty795• 1 year ago

Looking at btc price charts in dollar and euro can give you a good feel for how much everyone who earns dollars or holds assets denominated in dollars lost of their purchasing power since Trump took office. If you didn't get a raise (or appreciacion) of 18% since then you are in the red.

webdevver7• 1 year ago

why did this get downvoted lol

i got a raise of 4% this year to account for "inflation". honestly id have preferred a pack of jelly beans, that would atleast be honest and funny.

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

Well, Trump is trying to devalue the dollar. If it was up to Trump, the dollar would be trading for half (against the EUR/GPB/etc.), to stimulate US exports.

scotty795• 1 year ago

But US is not an export economy. Last time exports exceeded imports was half a century ago. You may wish it was but it isn't and it won't be. So when you are devaluing your currency by 20% even if you improve your exports a little bit you are doing it at the cost of making your imports (which will still vastly dominate) about 20% worst deal for you. And all that to recover from the world a handful of dollars in exchange for actual labor and materials. Dollars which you can nearly freely print yourself.

Why are people talking about Trump wanting to devalue the dollar as it is something smart to do?

kupfer• 1 year ago

I wish people would gamble with something other than a proof-of-work coin. There are very similar alternatives now. When bitcoin rises, more money is spent on mining. Whoever holds bitcoin is in part responsible for this waste of energy.

FabHK5• 1 year ago

Absolutely. 1% of world electricity, with the waste approximately proportional to the Bitcoin price (due to medium term market forces) modulo halvings, of course.

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

I wish people would rather invest in companies, than parking their money in crypto.

dnpp1232• 1 year ago

Why is that? If you invest in a company, you steal worker wages.

robocat• 1 year ago

Outside of the US it isn't that easy (to invest in individual shares - because there's not much that's attractive)

With the current US administration I haven't been that keen to be invested in US shares either.

And I attempt to be somewhat ethical in my investments - that really limits my options.

pyman9• 1 year ago

I'm interested in debating these facts:

- 2.4 million bitcoins are lost forever [0]. Their owners, for one reason or another, can't access their wallets. No insurance, no guarantees, nothing.

- 1.1 million are owned by a mysterious person who sits at the top of the pyramid [0].

- 2.3 million belong to investors and speculators [0] (who, I'm guessing, make money by pumping and dumping).

- 1 million are owned by banks [0], the same institutions that the mysterious man at the top of the pyramid, who created the "system of trust" said couldn't be trusted [2].

- 1.6 million are held by whales [0]: billionaires, money launderers, drug dealers [5], and so on.

- 1.4 million are still left to be mined [0], but only a handful of rich people with servers worth millions can actually mine them [3].

- The rest are owned by individuals who see it as a long term investment [0].

- It's a digital currency most people don't use to buy or sell anything. The only ones making transactions are banks, investors, and the rich [1][3][4].

- Worst of all, banks, investment firms and billionaires with ties to politicians and policymakers are likely to find out first when major regulations or shifts are coming and they'll be able to sell early and minimise losses, while everyone else finds out after the fact. In a system that was meant to be decentralised and fair, the people with the most power and access still end up with the advantage.

– And if you own even a tiny bit of bitcoin and read something like this, you get upset because your investment's at risk and you end up siding with the banks, investors, and the rich to keep the system going.

The way I see it, the banks won.

---

[0] As banks buy up bitcoins, who else are the 'Bitcoin whales'? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68434579.amp

[1] Research from 2025 has found that the popularity and application of cryptocurrencies have not only promoted financial innovation, but also exacerbated wealth inequality. In other words, blockchain developers have made the gap between rich and poor even worse. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391506544_Cryptocur...

[2] A quote from Satoshi's forum message that he posted on Feb. 11, 2009. It explains the goal of creating Bitcoin and why using banks demands too much trust with no guaranteed positive outcome. https://u.today/did-satoshi-nakamoto-foresee-current-bank-cr...

[3] Prior to May 2021 Bitcoin miners were hugely concentrated, with around 60% to 70% located in China. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...

[4] Bitcoin ownership is concentrated among the rich. Research showed that at the end of 2020, there were 1,000 “clusters” controlling 2 million bitcoins. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...

[5] Between February 2011 and July 2013, drug dealers operating on Silk Road facilitated sales amounting to 9,519,664 bitcoins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)

tonyhart73• 1 year ago

this fact does not matters since if people valued bitcoin at 120k then bitcoin price would be 120k simple as that

also pump and dump scene exist in stock too, does this stop people trade in stock??? I don't think so

pyman9• 1 year ago

Sure, but the people who value Bitcoin at 120k and have the power to move markets aren't average people, they're banks, investment firms and billionaires. In a system that was supposed to be decentralised and fair, it's still the same players with the most power, access and early information who end up with the advantage. That's the problem.

FabHK5• 1 year ago

Agreed, by and large. Furthermore, Nakamoto wanted to disintermediate intermediaries.

Instead, now we have many centralised exchanges, centralised stablecoin issuers, centralised custodians, centralised miners, etc. So many additional intermediaries, providing so little value. Remarkable.

pyman9• 1 year ago

Exactly. Like I said in another comment, the system was supposed to be decentralised and fair, but fast forward 15 years, and it's still the same players with the most power end up with the advantage.

sfmz• 1 year ago

Your links ending in ... are broken.

pyman9• 1 year ago

Fixed, sorry

agumonkey2• 1 year ago

It's a law of nature, the large wins. They always have more buffers and more information.

pyman9• 1 year ago

My faith in Satoshi died the day I pictured him in a suit, shaking hands as JPMorgan's newest partner.

The way I see it now, Satoshi didn't create a system for the people. He created a system for the rich, where regular people are just resources doing the work, keeping the network running and helping the rich stay rich.

echelon_musk• 1 year ago

Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

Many of the whales are crypto exchanges, funds, and companies like microstrategy. So in essence, they’re held by many others.

pyman9• 1 year ago

The total amount of Bitcoin held by all DEXs is a relatively small fraction compared to centralized exchanges. And crypto exchanges and funds are typically backed by large corporations and banks. For example, 51% of Coinbase shares are owned by a bank.

beeflet5• 1 year ago

Cryptocurrencies are not like other forms of money. They don't have intrinsic value. Cryptocurrencies are only valuable insofar as they are well distributed.

What did the banks win? The nerds of the world sold them fool's gold.

pyman9• 1 year ago

Control

NomDePlum4• 1 year ago

What intrinsic value does other forms of money have? It's at best a promissory note which can freely be devalued by the promises.

2008 and the subsequent QE demonstrated that surely? Look to Argentina, Zimbabwe and numerous other periods of time and countries for when the value of money became frankly worthless relative to it's previous value.

inflationhedge• 1 year ago

I have reason to believe my country's fiat will be inflated in the coming 12 months. Not hyper inflation, but a 50% to 100% increase in consumer prices over the next 12 months. My country is small and not connected to anything American related. Still wondering if it is a good idea to buy more crypto now as a further hedge against my fears. The article makes me think it may be unwise to do so given the massive speculation driving the price up led by similar american worries. Still does not change my fear of inflation at home.

pjc504• 1 year ago

You could just buy dollars, Euros, or (absurdly) the stablecoins which let non-US persons more easily hold USD-equivalent assets than having a US bank account.

gostsamo• 1 year ago

by assets. home, gold, treasuries, shares should give you similar protection against inflation as the crypto with much less volatility. less profits as well, but it all depends on your risk profile.

lottin2• 1 year ago

For the most part inflation threatens cash holdings and fixed-income instruments (such as bonds) which have not priced in inflation. Therefore in order to "hedge" against inflation you should reduce your exposure to such assets to the largest extent possible. But a crypto-currency is a high-risk investment, so using it as a "hedge" against inflation is unwise because you're swapping one risk for another (potentially) greater risk.

seydor• 1 year ago

I find it difficult to believe it has to do with the US regulation of crypto. These movements are made by whales, and were made for decades before regulation was in place. US citizens already have the dollar as a store of wealth so they need bitcoin less. If anything i expect a "sell the news" after this crypto week

acdha• 1 year ago

Look at why cryptocurrency hasn’t had much real-world adoption: almost nobody must have it. A strong fiat currency like the USD has tons of built in demand from the economy which uses it and all of the people who get paid or pay the government, but a weak fiat currency like bitcoin is highly volatile because it doesn’t have that baseline volume stabilizing things.

The speculators are hoping that Trump will give them what they’ve been hoping for: officially-backed demand. That helps with both volatility and simple volume, and if it comes with exemptions for some of the anti-money laundering or gambling policies it could allow some of the businesses which have stayed out of the American market to come in and drum up business.

ArtTimeInvestor2• 1 year ago

Reading through the comments here, it seems that most people on HN vastly underestimate the significance of the "store of value" use case.

It is a core aspect of human life.

And there is no other asset that does that with as little inflation and risk as Bitcoin. That seems counterintuitive because Bitcoin is portrayed as a very risky asset. Which it is in the short term. But long term, fiat, gold, equity, and real estate all have an even worse inflation and risk profile.

pcdoodle2• 1 year ago

Shhhh. they like the hamster wheel...

webdevver7• 1 year ago

i actually used to like the hamster wheel. until i learned how much money people were making on crypto. now i dont like the hamster wheel...

crypto is a legit information hazard that threatens to completely demoralize the actually productive hamsters in the economy. if everyone knew they could've made more money in a year than their entire career, they'd give up working forever.

throw0101b3• 1 year ago

And there is no other asset that does that with as little inflation and risk as Bitcoin.

LOL. Having 30% drops is not 'little risk':

* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/bitcoin-btc-price-plunges-bu...

Or 50%:

* https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/bitcoin-whats-going...

I want a 'store of value' to be fairly predictable, and even with inflation (generally 0-4%) fiat currencies have that (I can plan around that by investing in bonds and equities, or even some bank savings products).

webdevver7• 1 year ago

true but then it always goes back up 100%...

...which is why its not gonna plunge anymore. too many people have "seen" the pattern now, and the instant it dips even 5% people are gonna be buying "the dip" in droves, thinking this is gonna be their entry, this is their moment in the sun. "I've seen it do this before, I know how it ends, I gotta get in now!!!"

FabHK5• 1 year ago

Sorry, one cannot make statements about crypto "long term" yet.

Nobody should hold large amounts of fiat long term. That's what shares and bonds are for, which incidentally also support productive enterprises (unlike crypto).

Long term, equity, debt, gold have pretty good inflation and risk profiles. Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive, so government bonds are a fairly good store of value.

ArtTimeInvestor2• 1 year ago

    Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive

That is what the government tells you. But I don't see that when I look up my real expenses.

When I look through my old bills, what I paid for apartments, hotels, coffee it seems the real inflation was around 8% over the last 20 years. For hotels for example, it is easy to look up the same hotel today and see how prices changed.

And bonds paid less than 4%.

Can you give an example of something that increased less than 4% in price annually?

TrackerFF11• 1 year ago

I believe the risk with crypto lies in the regulatory aspect.

Crypto is polarized, as far as politics goes. Especially if we look past the US. When a pro-crypto government rules, risk goes down. And opposite when the skeptics take charge.

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