The mods have moved this into it's own topic (at least I think that's what has happened). I guess we're cool to keep talking about this until we're told to shut up... So I figured why not keep going until I get bored or someone gets angry.
Why not? Why shouldn't it have that property? Who benefits from it not having that property? Someone benefits, but it's not me, it's not you.
That's the difference between currency and money.
Money holds its value. Currency does not. Cash should be money, but it's not money as the cost to produce more cash is just the ink and paper, so central banks print as much as they damn well please. Seen a £50/£20 note recently? Think it costs anything more to produce than a £5 note? Bitcoin is closer to money as it costs a lot to produce; proof of work is at it's very core; there are no free rides here.
Let's have a thought experiment:
- You work at Acme Boxes. Making Boxes. Or whatever, I don't care and it's not important.
- You are paid £10 an hour. You work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
- We'll pretend that tax is zero to keep this simple (lol). So you earn £80 a day, or £400 a week. It's not mega bucks, but it's honest work and you get by and pay the bills.
So your labour, your work, effort energy skills... it's worth £10 an hour. It's worth that because that's what you're selling it for. Everyone is happy.
You store that £400 a week, wherever you like, for whatever reason you like, and you keep adding to it. Let's say you save £10,000 for a rainy day, new car, whatever. It's none of my damn business.
This is currency
Because the central bank has created billions (sometimes trillions - one trillion is 1,000,000,000,000 by the way, 12 zeros on that) out of thin air, and not worked at all for it, and given it to their mates. That £10,000 can now only buy £7,629.64 worth of stuff after 10 years (don't take my word for it,
it's right here, they are almost proud of it, I used the years 2018 to 2008 to work it backwards). So why have the bank of England got any say to what your labour is worth? Why is all of a sudden your work and labour worth so much less (£7.63 an hour, £305.19 a week)? Who the hell told you to take a pay cut? How is that fair? What's that got to do with you? How is this
not theft?
Sure looks like theft to me.
But it's not called theft and nobody is going to jail. It's been rebranded as "inflation" and everyone just accepts it. "It just is", and that's just the way it is. Ignorance is the name of the game here: Nobody knows any better so nobody asks questions and everyone shuts up and just accepts it.
This is money
The £10,000 you put away is worth exactly that. £10,000. Nobody took a cut, nobody stole purchasing power, nobody messed about with your business. You were left alone to go about your business. You don't have to give the money to someone else like a bank (although you can choose to), you don't have to take risk by investing. It's just your wealth, stored like a financial battery.
Who says I'm profiting hugely? Compared to some in this forum I'm basically in poverty! My Bitcoin isn't buying a yacht anytime soon. Well, maybe a fancy model remote controlled one. And that's okay.
In the early days there was a huge amount of risk in Bitcoin. Back in '09 through to I'd say '11 there was a huge risk of it being stamped out; it was too small, hardly anyone had any, not many nodes to speak of, a couple of government raids it could have been shut down no problem. Bitcoin going to zero was a very real possibility. If those glorious bastards held all this time, then good on them. They have bigger balls than me!
It's still a possibility today. Is this a form of entrepreneurial risk? maybe, I'm not sure, I'm struggling to articulate it. If Bitcoin legit tracked the $ perfectly and only changed to account for inflation, and I mean real inflation, the 20% that was created this year, not that BS "basket of goods" nonsense they spew out, then I'd be more than happy. And I'm being completely honest here.
I do think Bitcoin is still finding it's feet in terms of price and it's place in the world. It's still young and new and therefore finding it's price and being easily swayed. I'm not using Bitcoin as a get rich quick scheme. I'm using it as a "opt out of all of this disgusting corruption" scheme. I'm angry, and this is my opt out.
If I happen to make more wealth from it, sure, whatever, I'm obviously not turning that down. But that's not what this is about. At least not for me.
If you only see it as a speculative investment, then hey, you do you, I can't force you to think how I do.
I'm going to say something you're probably not expecting.
Bitcoin is sh*t. S, H I and a capital T. You have to learn about blocks, private keys, public addresses, seed phrases, fees to send the money due to the mempool. You don't have to learn it all at once, but in the same way I know what a ISA, pension, loan, APR, overdraft is: I didn't learn that the instant I opened a bank account at 13 years old. It's the same thing; you have to learn somehow, from somewhere. It's just you're starting from zero, again, just like little Ribs opening his junior account all those years ago.
You "get it" eventually... At least I know banking, and I can call someone and complain when stuff goes wrong. With Bitcoin I am the bank, and any mistakes are on me. But the experience of using bitcoin is getting better all the time. Some really smart people are doing some amazing things with this.
I would much rather be able to continue using my bank account and not have to give a cr*p about any of this and be blissfully unaware. Seriously.
But I can't. Now I know it exists, and more importantly,
why it exists and what it's a reaction to... I can't unlearn that. I can't turn a blind eye to it. I can't ignore the fact that something else exists which makes the current monetary system archaic and laughably corrupt and terrible. I can't ignore how Bitcoin was a near perfect reaction to the utter lunacy we saw in 2008 and the fact the leaky roof
still has not been fixed and we're making all the same mistakes again in 2019/20 (
before the pandemic before anyone jumps in with that excuse, all the pandemic did was speed things up), which just makes Bitcoin more and more relevant.
How are they not learning? Why are the exact same mistakes being made AGAIN? Why has NOTHING changed?! I can't ignore that. I can't turn away from that, not now. I refuse to be a part of that system.
I wish Bitcoin didn't have to exist. But it does, and here we are. And so we learn. Because we must.
Is Bitcoin perfect? No. Are the problems insurmountable and will they matter in 5 years? Probably not.
So yeah, bitcoin sucks. But the price volatility? No, I don't care about that. Not even slightly, not right now. It's still really really early. I cannot stress this enough. If you're old enough to be on the Internet back in the late 90s with BBS and dial-up modems tying up the phone line... That's bitcoin today. We have a really long way to go. Both in price volatility and in usability. It'll come, in time. Some really smart people are working really hard on some of the usability issues. I don't see any downside in the long term, or at least, nothing worth caring about. In 5 years time, I'm sure we'll find something to complain about, but I'm fully expecting huge strides in usability between here and then.
I assume that if you prefer us not to have Governments creating/regulating money, then you feel Bitcoin (or possibly other cryptos?) is a better alternative?
We must tear away "money" (actually currency) from the government. They have repeatedly broken any trust we put into the system. I'd love to say "Give the system to Ribs", but damned if I'm not buying a yacht, a jet, hookers and blow in the first week. The only way to do that is to have rules without rulers so nobody can cheat. Bitcoin achieves that from it's decentralised* properties; nobody is in charge, and any change is extremely difficult to enact as it requires consensus*. This is a feature, not a bug. It's also a pain in the ass as older bugs in the way the software worked have to be preserved, but that's another topic.
Bitcoin is the only money that matters. 99.9% of the other "cryptos" are scams or just copies of Bitcoin with absolutely no reason to use them over Bitcoin.
Brexitcoin was a real coin, I kid you not, although clearly created as a joke it reached the dizzying height of $821 market cap in July 2016. The other 0.01% are maybe doing something interesting, but I'll be damned if I'm putting my wealth into them. I was scared to buy £25 of bitcoin back in the day. If there is a #1, then there is no point putting my wealth into #2 or below.
* = Very important words in this space. Like, really important.
Like I said. Bitcoin kinda sucks still. It's still new, although it has come along leaps and bounds since I started.
The security is actually easy. You are given a series of 12 or 24 words by your wallet when you set it up. You store them using pen and paper. You never, under any circumstances, enter them into a website or computer. You don't take a photo and upload to iCloud or whatever; you keep it offline, pen and paper. You understand that if anyone gets hold of those words, they have full control over your bitcoin, and then you automatically react accordingly.
If you have more than "I'd lose sleep if I lost this" value, you buy a hardware wallet, so no virus on your phone/computer can steal it. And if someone steals the wallet, they won't be able to steal the coin it keeps track of.
If you have "This is my retirement" money in Bitcoin, there are other options to further make it safer and safer, so even if you lose the words in a house fire or something you can still get your coin. You have to learn a little and plan, just like you have to with your existing wealth management, but it's worth it.
There will be some that refuse to learn it, "can't be bothered". And custodial services will always exist for people like that. Give it a couple of years and I'm semi-sure we'll see a high street bank offering bitcoin related services. Custodial services is how most people start. That's how I started when I threw in £25. These days I self custody, nobody but me can move my money, but I only did that when I was ready.
