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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

Assuming a crypto asset is a currency, then no. You cannot invest in a currency. You can only speculate.

Investing confers ownership in an income producing asset of which you have a percentage ownership stake in.

Bitcoin is not a currency (it's a commodity) meaning other coins are also not currencies because Bitcoin is the most currency-like of the bunch.

So if it's a commodity, it's just speculation. Nobody invests in "corn" or "oil" for retirement.

They are more similar to commodities like gold, silver, or other precious metals in that they behave much like monetary assets.

Tons of people do invest in gold/silver for retirement.

Gold/silver are also speculative assets, not investments (per Warren Buffet definition, which I like and use myself). Just because they are speculative assets doesn't mean it's a bad idea to buy them.

An investment would be putting your retirement money in a startup for instance. And that would be a very very risky investment with near guarantee of complete loss of capital.

I disagree - especially with you second sentence.

I think you’d have a bunch of owners of XOM and CVX, etc stock that would beg to differ with you.

And if you don’t like those, take a plane out to Midland, Texas and drive around a bit - you’ll find quite a large number of people who do invest in oil. They may be further out on the risk spectrum than you are, but if they aren’t investing, then you can’t call buying FB or GOOG an investment either.

There is a big difference between investing in companies that produce commodities and commodities themselves. XOM, CVX, BP and the like are companies that are in the business of producing oil to generate profit for their shareholders. Owning XOM/CVX/BP stock is investing, because there's a reasonable expectation that the companies will make money and return that profit to their shareholders in the form of a buyback or a dividend. Owning an actual commodity is like buying art or trading cards speculating your purchase will go up in value based on some inside knowledge you perceive to have. That is the definition of speculation.

the interesting thing about crypto is that it allows for diversified speculation/investment in the equivalent of the oil drillers to gas station owners.

I have not found a comparable analogy. The problem is that btc or eth may not correlate with long-term crypto growth bc they may start a trend, but another similar tech may actually be the winner. Its interesting and I hope that people dont take too large of a personal position in the asset class as a % of total investments.

[Disclaimet] I currently 'invest' a small sum of money monthly in crypto assets. (Less than 1% of my portfolio monthly allocation)

What if I buy crude oil in Texas, where it’s cheap, with the idea of selling it where it’s expensive (say, Europe) ?

I’m still investing.

In fact, I could build a company around it. And if I did, and then sold stock in that company to you and you used that as investment for retirement, then you would have just validated that buying a commodity is indeed investing.

Maybe not all the time, but certainly some of the time.

By the way, you can buy some of these companies today, under tickers such as TNP, NAT, DHT, among others.

investing implies a long term horizon. if you are just taking advantage of an arbitrage opportunity then you are a commodity distributor/shipper or commodity trader. you aren't investing in the underlying asset you want to hold the asset for as short a period as possible to avoid the arbitrage disappearing beneath you.

Investing implies no such time horizon.

Investing is spending money with an expectation of a return.

For contrast, expenses have no expected return.

Neither have a time horizon. And further, what would “long term” be anyway? Not sure how you could ever define it.

I don't think it's not easy to classify bitcoin as just one certain category. It's a community-driven entity which purpose is constantly changing. I think it ought to have a completely new category.

I agree, but you'd have to take it up with the CFTC. I don't think they're big on "new categories".

It's not a commodity and it's not a currency. It's nothing-cy. How much is 0x12efadeb8790234b5ed worth? Anyone can make a crypto "asset" with less effort than it took me to type this in.

Biggest. Pyramid. Scheme. Ever.

EDIT:

Buffet: Crypto currencies will come to a bad ending. ... "tulips" ...

Munger: I think worse about crypto currencies than you do. ... "trading turds" ...

I don't see how Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. I don't need others underneath me to be producing/selling/mining so that my existing BC have value. If you think it is a sham or a con that is one thing, but a pyramid scheme it isn't.

I think he meant ponzi-scheme, which would be true if Bitcoin didn't have any purpose. Anyways, this debate has been settled for us by the US government, it's a commodity.

The asset is the ledger-recorded amount of cryptocurrency attached to the wallet keypair, not the keypair itself. Cryptos have plenty of problems without misrepresenting what they are.

Our bank accounts are also identified by mere bits. What's that quote...

> Cosmo: The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.

(To be clear, I'm extremely ambivalent about cryptos, so I don't entirely disagree with your sentiment. I can see the "it's a new form of currency" side, and I can see the "mass delusion and speculation bubble" side. History will prove someone right, but I don't know how to estimate a probability of any one cryptocurrency winning, if any do.)

I'm fully aware of that. My point is that its value is just about the same as any random sequence of bits. The fact that those bits are in a super inefficient ledger doesn't matter.

Did you realize, that money is just green paper? Deep.

It's green paper backed by a government. If I printed my own paper money it'd also be worthless.

If you started your own cryptocurrency, it'd also be worthless. That's not to say all cryptocurrencies are worthless.

Maybe we should split things up a bit ?

Bitcoin is, according to group:

IRS/tax offices around the world: a commodity (and thus taxed like stocks)

Banks: neither (and don't you dare touch it !)

Most historical bitcoin currency guys (e.g. Steam): neither (this unfortunately seems to exclude pretty much all the bigger ones)

Some remaining guys[1]: currency

Believers: currency

[1] https://99bitcoins.com/who-accepts-bitcoins-payment-companie...

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