Re:Coinbase Wants to Be Too Big to Fail
by sparkie on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:26PM
(#18089770)
You can't take the day to day price variance of Bitcoin as an indicator of anything at all. It is completely unpredictable and yes, if you intend to spend your money tomorrow, it is not the right currency for you.
I'm not intending to give investment advice. People can take what they want from my comments. If you're waiting for the price to stabilize before you "invest" in Bitcoin, then I hate to tell you, but you're probably going to be paying a premium on it. The price of Bitcoin is only going to rise in the long term, and the earlier you get in, the less you'll be paying for it.
Hacked exchanges and fraud have nothing to do with Bitcoin as a store of value. It's a case of bad security and decision making. Gold will also not retain it's value for you if you leave it lying on your lawn. If you take the necessary steps to make your Bitcoin secure and fault tolerant, they can be more robust against any kind of attack than Gold or cash.
A currency has many purposes, but the primary characteristic of a good currency is that people expect it to have about the same value tomorrow as it did today. Unless you're in finance speculating on arbitrage, you're not putting long term investments into good currencies, because rationally you expect to spend that money again. Instead, you put investments into assets. Something that bitcoin apologists like yourself fail to dissociate is the difference between currency and asset is crucial because both have different definitions of what makes them good.
>Bitcoin changes that completely. Anyone, even low-income earners, can put small amounts into Bitcoin and it will retain value in the longer term.
This is misleading and flat out dangerous to anyone who is reading your comment and takes up your advice. The price volatility, hundreds of hacked exchanges, and amount of fraud on Bitcoin alone proves this wrong.