In finance, no one complains about flawed schemes as long as everyone thinks they’re making money.

Enron was thought to be a market master until it fell apart.

Bernie Madoff’s clients were happy with their returns until the fraud was exposed.

The only difference in the cryptocurrency world is that a lot of the players have a suspicion that some parts of the system are powered by fraud, but they either wave it away (buyer beware / I can buy the dip if the market crashes) or they think they can get their money out before it really crashes down.

I agree. Also:

Drop Bitcoin now. The more people hold it, the more damage it will do when it implodes.

Agreed. Surprised there are so many Bitcoin lovers on HN and in the startup scene, which is supposed to consist of smarter-than-average people. Bitcoin is basically shitty gold, because unlike gold, it has no intrinsic value and can go to zero, it's all based on fragile sentiment.

Newton lost a lot of money in the south sea bubble. Just because they are smarter it does not make them more rational.

I've been cashing out of my crypto weekly. Started in January, going to continue until i'm dry.

I can't predict when this garbage explodes, but i'll at least have the majority of the money out or all of it. If i'm wrong, i'm wrong, but all of this is fishy as fuck.

Defi loans, using your crypto as collateral to buy more crypto, tether printing off the charts. Most people don't care though, they see number go up and ignore the noise.

I think bitcoin can be a technological marvel that has utility to humanity, even if it's being pumped artificially and its value falls back to (or below) what it was before it was pumped.

I think you underestimate just how mighty 'fragile' sentiment can be.

Same can be said for gold.

Are most users even capable of melting it into tools when there's nobody that wants to trade for it?

The argument for gold is that it isn't 100% a speculative investment. According to Wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold) 50% of gold's use case is in making jewelry and 10% is used for industry. On the other hand, Bitcoin isn't used for anything, except as for a speculative investment, not even as a currency or as a "decentralized PayPal".

> The argument for gold is that it isn't 100% a speculative investment. According to Wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold) 50% of gold's use case is in making jewelry and 10% is used for industry. On the other hand, Bitcoin isn't used for anything, except as for a speculative investment, not even as a currency or as a "decentralized PayPal".

Also, Gold has literally thousands of years of cultural precedent as being a "valuable thing." Bitcoin, not so much.

Liquid value that's easily transferred has utility on its own.

It's not a genuine argument to claim that "bitcoin isn't used for anything".

That's the value of the Bitcoin system, not of a single Bitcoin. Gold can provide utility by itself, for example, you can make jewelry from it.

Do you think the value of Facebook stock is in the tangible worth of their building, or IP?

For the vast majority of people Bitcoin in its current form provides a worse user experience than PayPal, VISA, etc.. because the fees are a lot higher and the transaction times are longer.

If you want to buy $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin the $5-$50 transaction fee doesn't matter. For the majority of people it matters though.

What would you rather have magically transferred to you and why?

All the gold in the world or all the bitcoins in the world?

Right, where would people even get 700 B.C. technology to “use” gold!?

(Of course gold has intrinsic value! Just because you can’t use a thing, doesn’t make it worthless to me, I’ll still buy your gold despite you not knowing anything but how to pull it from your pocket)

It is even worse than gold: it has negative value due to the insane energy consumption.

I assume you've weighed this against the waste materials and environmental impact that results from mining gold, such the usage of mercury or cyanide to process the ore.

> Agreed. Surprised there are so many Bitcoin lovers on HN and in the startup scene, which is supposed to consist of smarter-than-average people. Bitcoin is basically shitty gold, because unlike gold, it has no intrinsic value and can go to zero, it's all based on fragile sentiment.

Being "smart" often doesn't translate into making good decisions or having good judgment. Sometimes intelligence only amounts to better capabilities at rationalizing whatever harebrained thing you already wanted to do, instead of giving up on it.

I think Bitcoin hits a bunch of special-interest buttons in some people that make it very difficult to put aside, for instance: truly innovative technology, startup thinking/wanting to be in on the "ground floor" of a big success, sci-fi made real, libertarianism, etc.

Well there's a false equivalence for the ages.