![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentar ... E4NjQzNQS2
This has to be the biggest 12 year return on an `investment' in the history of the world.
Thanks to DrFfybes,smokey01,bungeejumper,stockton,Anonymous, for Donating to support the site
Clitheroekid wrote:I was reading this report today, and calculated that had you timed it right (which I assume nobody actually did) then if you'd spent $100 on Bitcoin in 2009 and sold it 12 years later in 2021 you could have made over $6,000,000,000 profit!![]()
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentar ... E4NjQzNQS2
This has to be the biggest 12 year return on an `investment' in the history of the world.
Clitheroekid wrote:I was reading this report today, and calculated that had you timed it right (which I assume nobody actually did) then if you'd spent $100 on Bitcoin in 2009 and sold it 12 years later in 2021 you could have made over $6,000,000,000 profit!![]()
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentar ... E4NjQzNQS2
This has to be the biggest 12 year return on an `investment' in the history of the world.
Urbandreamer wrote:By the way, does anyone know why detractors often use the term "Ponzi scheme". It's almost as if they are repeating something that they have heard without bothering to look it up. Or know little of bitcoin and assume that all crypto is the same.
GrahamPlatt wrote:Sadly, I saw what was probably the first public announcements of the existence of Bitcoin. Was that only 2009? Whatever, it was on a website called slashdot.org. Had a look, thought it would be a flash in the pan & moved on. Damn.
Edit. Just tried to find the article, but their archive seems to only go back to 2017.
bungeejumper wrote:Urbandreamer wrote:By the way, does anyone know why detractors often use the term "Ponzi scheme". It's almost as if they are repeating something that they have heard without bothering to look it up. Or know little of bitcoin and assume that all crypto is the same.
Discuss. I'd say that Ponzi has become a generalised name to describe an investment of zero absolute value, which is sold down an ever-expanding chain of gullible buyers with the aim of creaming off their money and then getting out before the project crashes.
To that extent, you're partially right. True HODLers tend not to sell and run with the money. But now that people are leveraging their way into crypto, many are being forced by margin calls into hasty sell-offs, so the original "purity" of the bitcoin concept is becoming somewhat muddied. And the emerging reliance on sometimes shaky stablecoins has also shifted the risk in some quite dramatic ways, worse luck.
That being the case, it seems a bit picky to object that the language has changed its meaning over time. We might as well ask whether the word Tesla still means what it did in the days when poor old Nikola was on the case.![]()
BJ
If you turn to the American College Dictionary, for example, you will find the first definition of inflation given as follows:
Undue expansion or increase of the currency of a country, especially by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie.
Urbandreamer wrote:By the way, does anyone know why detractors often use the term "Ponzi scheme". It's almost as if they are repeating something that they have heard without bothering to look it up. Or know little of bitcoin and assume that all crypto is the same.
In the hope that some might chose to educate themselves, here is a link to a bit about Charles Ponzi and others who planned/executed such schemes or wrote of such.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp
Ps, buying Bitcoin provides NO YIELD! Ponzi schemes promise yield, but use new investors money to pay that "yield" or "guaranteed return" as stated in the article.
Aegis wrote:That's an odd hill to choose to die on. The point of a Ponzi scheme is that future returns come solely from future "investment" of capital into the scheme. Whether it's expressed as a guaranteed yield, a guaranteed return or just a high return without an explicit guarantee, it's still a Ponzi scheme if it meets that criterion, and it's really difficult to see how you could argue that future growth from bitcoin DIDN'T come from future purchases of bitcoin with external assets. After all, it does nothing else to generate revenue.
Urbandreamer wrote:So will you "die" on the hill of the argument that gold is "a barbarous relic"?
Hallucigenia wrote:But just as a gentle suggtreolic estion, shouting at people and nitpicking about definitions is not going to persuade anyone to your cause.
Urbandreamer wrote:Aegis wrote:That's an odd hill to choose to die on. The point of a Ponzi scheme is that future returns come solely from future "investment" of capital into the scheme. Whether it's expressed as a guaranteed yield, a guaranteed return or just a high return without an explicit guarantee, it's still a Ponzi scheme if it meets that criterion, and it's really difficult to see how you could argue that future growth from bitcoin DIDN'T come from future purchases of bitcoin with external assets. After all, it does nothing else to generate revenue.
Err, two points about bitcoin, rather than Fiat:
Who guarantees the return?
Who benefits?
Some don't regard Bitcoin as a currency or money. They can't see any money value in it. Hence it has no value, because any money use of it is disregarded.
Some view it as a form of money, hence they compare it against other money. If you have that view you can't help but see how fiat falls short. By all means simply reject bitcoin and consider gold instead. Most of the arguments still hold.
So will you "die" on the hill of the argument that gold is "a barbarous relic"? Will you die claiming that Gold won't rise in price against inflating money supply?
The question is if bitcoin ,which is as limited as gold, but easier to move across the world, has any value.
Clitheroekid wrote:I was reading this report today, and calculated that had you timed it right (which I assume nobody actually did) then if you'd spent $100 on Bitcoin in 2009 and sold it 12 years later in 2021 you could have made over $6,000,000,000 profit!![]()
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentar ... E4NjQzNQS2
This has to be the biggest 12 year return on an `investment' in the history of the world.
Hornblower wrote:Clitheroekid wrote:I was reading this report today, and calculated that had you timed it right (which I assume nobody actually did) then if you'd spent $100 on Bitcoin in 2009 and sold it 12 years later in 2021 you could have made over $6,000,000,000 profit!![]()
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentar ... E4NjQzNQS2
This has to be the biggest 12 year return on an `investment' in the history of the world.
Remarkable returns indeed. Though veeeeery few people were even ABLE to buy in 2009, there were no exchanges. The MT Gox exchange didn't start operating until July 2010. The archived tweets of people selling out 1000s of bitcoin in 2011 or 2012 are legendary.
For much of the past 10 years, bitcoin has been the best performing asset out there. Someone putting a regular amount into bitcoin every week or month has tended to do very very well over time. The last statistic I saw was an average of 200% annualised returns (albeit with extreme volatility) over the past 10 years.
Even the bitcoin skeptics, of which there seems to be many on lemonfool, would have enhanced their returns significantly by allocating just 5% of their portfolios to bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not a 'ponzi' by the definition of the word, however it is subject to the pressures of supply & demand. This can result in self-reinforcing price movements, just like other assets.
Ditto if they'd all bought winning lottery tickets, but that doesn't seem like a sound investment strategy to me either.
That's an interesting claim, and I'd genuinely like to know how you distinguish between cryptocurrency and Ponzi schemes. After all, if I tell you that I have an investment opportunity for you which involves buying an asset now which will be economically inactive but someone else will pay you more for it in a year or a decade or whatever because they will also be in a position where someone will buy that asset for a greater price at some point in future, then the asset in question is purely valued by Grater Fool Theory, which makes it indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme.
Hornblower wrote:
Similarly, bitcoin is new technology. There are some futurists who predict it will up-end the world. That sound money that governments can't steal, inflate away, or contain within their borders is going to usher in a new renaissance of human flourishing.
Buying something in the expectation that it will increase in value in the future is exactly the behaviour of people investing in stocks, or buying commodities or real estate.
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