@cullers, I said crypto has cult vibes. Also I made multiple clear points. I’ll make another; bitcoin is the most popular and “established” coin. Yet every equally established investment outperforms bitcoin. Take any comparable collectible, its not even a contest.
By all means if people want to trade the most speculative asset on the market, feel free. I’ve yet to find the individual post 2017 who has created significant wealth doing so, and/or who hasn’t cashed out into actual money.
The video I posted has nothing to do with crypto. You said “Crypto talk is always cult/conspiracy vibes. Crazy fallacies left and right, “Us currency isn’t real money”.”
Perhaps the argument hasn’t been clear by me. The reason people put trust into crypto is because of their lack of trust with fiat currency. Understanding why there’s a lack of trust in fiat is the first step. For you to come in and call that crazy talk does nothing.
You go on to say “We can sit here and nitpick how money is backed, but the ultimate reality is the value of Crypto is based entirely on what it can be exchanged for in US currency.”
I value my pokemon cards, but it doesn’t mean I can go off and say I have x nostalgic value to it, we need to talk in term people understand. Everyone understands USD so it’s natural to talk in those terms. That doesn’t mean that crypto is backed by USD, it means that the value it’s perceived at is equal to the value the USD is. One bitcoin is worth $9,173, which says that people value bitcoin far more than a dollar. Honestly, I don’t really care about this, I’ll elaborate in the final paragraph.
You keep using investing terms, I’m not talking about an investment opportunity, maybe for bitcoin yes, because I know it’ll fail. I’m talking about the principals that are being called a conspiracy and cult. Don’t defend a system that’s clearly unfair and shouldn’t exist just to say that crypto is a bad investment. If crypto is a bad investment then go ahead and say so and make your point, but understand why people value it too. They can be separate ideas that ultimately tie together.
On a personal note, I hold a lot of precious metals because I do fear the fiat system and I’m not convinced there’s a single crypto answer yet.
Just wanted to chime in on this point, that even if one coin is eventually replaced or fails, coinholders aren’t bound to whatever single coin they have in their ledger/wallet. That is why DAI exists. It’s essentially a crypto “dollar” that maintains the same price as 1 usd. This goes back to how crypto is a stable option for transactions even with people who are afraid of risk. While some people don’t mind accepting btc, litecoin, ethereum as payment because they’re afraid of the risk of it dropping in value, rather than potentially rising, they can accept DAI where the value remains constant, devoid of risk. It’s also good for btc/ether holders that want to “cash out” during a perceived dip without taking big fee hits or paying tax. They can simply convert their coins into DAI and sit on it at whatever value it holds at that time. If I convert $15,000 BTC to DAI today, I’m confident that I could forget about it for 2 years and still have $15,000 in DAI value in my crypto wallet.
@cullers, What I meant by cult vibes is its always the same “you’ll see” conversation with crypto. Its just a tired conversation. In hindsight I should have just ignored the thread.
This is excellent to know, usually I just convert my crypto to precious metals (tons of precious metal sellers take crypto).
Yeah I don’t really like crypto but I think trying to argue against it by saying that people only track its value in terms of USD as a negative isnt a great argument. Sure many “savvy investors” only care about riding it up and then dumping it and not using it for its intended purpose but… it’s a currency. We measure all currency in terms of pairs against one another. Especially since BTC is still not established and integrated into daily life you need to put its valuation into context with something familiar.
The volatility and significant amount of speculative buying and dumping makes it completely not viable as a long term storage of wealth for the time being. I think it will be difficult to integrate and establish and take seriously as a currency because its premise for scarcity is kind of strange. I’m not going to pretend I know how mining works really but from what I understand there’s a finite amount of the coin available and it becomes increasingly unlikely and resource-intensive to find what’s left. To that I say… ok? To put this in the context of Pokémon in kind of reminds me of that Zekrom card from a few years ago. It was a full art and wow look there were only 100 or 1000 copies released! …and who cares because nobody wants a full art Zekrom card. There’s no real desirability behind the built in scarcity. Cool, I have a unique sequence of numbers that I don’t understand.
I think the concept of blockchain transactions is cool and maybe another coin can do something better but at this point there are so many I just don’t see how one will stick. I did the Coinbase earn program and I clicked through videos about 5 different new coins that were supposed to be revolutionary but I just didn’t care about any of them beyond getting the free $50.
Above is a video showing how impossible it is to use gold as a currency in 2020.
Below is a video showing how easy it is to use cryptocurrency to make purchases on popular platforms like amazon, ebay, target, etsy, etc.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHvnVD_3dE4
NYC is a pretty big hub when it comes to corprate flagships testing various platforms before integrating nationwide. It’s where a lot of apps such as Venmo and Cashapp took off and became very popular. Cashapp now integrated crypto. I wouldn’t be suprised if you see crypto options on venmo and paypal soon as well. Cryptocurrency is the future regardless of what coins are currently out there right now. The sooner people stop just looking at it as a commodity for quick gains and view it as a viable currency option that will outperform and eventually replace fiat, the better.
www.bitrefill.com
Here you can buy gift cards/refill spending crypto, it’s easy and fast 
Speaking on this: thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/05/26/satoshi-nakaboto-visa-approves-launch-of-crypto-debit-card-in-europe/
Visa has just announced approval for crypto backed debit cards across Europe and the UK.
Coinbase visa credit card is already available: www.coinbase.com/card
Yep, I’m sure visa will continue to extend options catering to crypto in more and more countries!
I dont see the same thing happening. The market structure is different now. We were already in a bottomed out uptrend during the last cycle and if you look at your long term data chart like btc/usd on bitstamp or the blx for that matter , you can clearly see that the cycles are lengthening and imo we have not bottomed yet. I am in the minority here but i see us breaking last year’s low.