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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

First sentence: "The lawless rollercoaster of bitcoin enriches few investors, while many often lose everything."

How can they start with this sentence even though it has been only up, up and up. All you had to do was wait and not freak out upon some nosedives. Who lost money? People that bought end 2017 thinking the sky was the limit and sold in February? Sure, but that can happen anywhere.

You know where you loose money? In the normal economy, because the government likes inflation. And we should all like it because money creation is debt based. But imo that is what is causing us normals to loose constantly (enriching the rich, who have dibs on the fresh printed money to make it happen).

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If 1 bitcoin was worth 10000 USD last year and it's worth 52000 this year, where is all the extra USD from?

Do we all buy some bitcoin, wait for it to grow 5x in value, and then we all sell for 5x profit? Where is that profit coming from?

Or do we all buy some bitcoin and never sell it?

How does the gold market work?

You may have heard the fed printed a lot of money this year.

I agree that the success of individual investors shouldn't matter in this context. But I also think that nobody should ignore potential fraud or systematic problems just because BTC "makes money". For example, scams like pyramid schemes work very well until they don't.

Yeah, that seems a bit unfair. You could start any article on the stock market the same way, but it would sound gratuitous.

But you dont care abt losing money when your inflating currency backs a loan for your house. What we are supposed to want is a roof, a value producing asset, not cash.

So if you keep all in cash you re doing something wrong. The goal of fiat currency is to adapt to changing condition naturally.

But BTC isn't possibly going to work: it s cant adapt rationally, it cant pretend to pay you the same when the country goes bad by tweaking your fiat value so you calm down and the country continues.

Whoever said inflation was wrong was like a teenager moaning at his 200$ in a free bank account. The economy has to inflate and deflate transparently for you to some extend or you ll be stuck never lending anything and stashing stashing stashing.

Even if I don't like Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency (I think it did a great job but now really should be put to rest) I completely agree with that. That paragraph is plain silly, trying to avoid a stronger word.

I can't think of a single individual who held bitcoin and lost money in the long run

They held it so well they threw their hard drive in the trash.

Not yet, because the cake is still growing. Wait until the cake has reached its peak size and starts shrinking (not for a short intermediate timeframe like 2017-2020, but for a timeframe long enough to consider it "the end game" for humans with finite lifespans) and see whether your assumption is still true then.

The problem will be that realizing that we're finally in the "cake-shrinking" phase will only be possible after watching it shrink for decades.

> Who lost money? People that bought end 2017 thinking the sky was the limit and sold in February? Sure, but that can happen anywhere.

That's like... euh,... everybody.

> You know where you loose money? In the normal economy, because the government likes inflation.

That's like... euh,... everybody.

People who are hating on Tether/Finex/Crypto are just in denial that they are getting screwed by their governments. At least in crypto, you have full claim to your tokens.

Some people are rich enough never to need to consider withdrawing their savings (and cautious/lucky enough to avoid scam exchanges and keep their private keys safe). Others are not.

Oh, and "the rich" don't have "dibs on the freshly printed money" in the normal economy (arguably they do in a crypto economy because mining rigs aren't cheap...). The newly printed money is credit for people and companies not rich [or liquid] enough to have the cash to pay, and specifically it reduces the cost of borrowing because borrowers don't need to rely on rich people agreeing a fee to lend their money until it can be repaid.

Banks are private institutions (even though need tax money to be saved when they screw up, they are socialists when it is in their advantage). The newly printed money is indeed "credit", over which interest is always paid... to the rich private institutions with dibs on printed money.

> The newly printed money is indeed "credit", over which interest is always paid... to the rich private institutions with dibs on printed money.

The newly printed money is credit to the private institutions, who must repay the printed money with interest. You're not getting a system less skewed towards the rich by replacing that liability with one towards high net worth individuals or hedge funds instead...

Why is the money not equally distributed over all people? Or indeed, that would be the same as allowing for deflation (but maybe then we'd keep the money worth the same in terms of big macs which has benefits), as is happening with Bitcoin. Saving makes sense then, as with Bitcoin. Maybe then we don't need crippling mortgages anymore, because then banks are not the only entities that can afford houses by "Whoop" signing a 500k debt into existence, which is subsequently used to enslave us for ~30 years as we pay interest (because the banks don't want to feel the inflation) on an amount that is just, just withing reach of saving for 30+ years on an average salary, 2 if you're just starting and missed on the latest insane price increase driven by the lack of newly build houses and an unsustainably low interest.

If you want to ask why money isn't 'distributed equally across all people', Bitcoin isn't your answer and nor is a currency actually designed with a deflationary or zero inflation mechanics. If you want to distribute money across all people, you design a system which actually gives everybody money, but funnily enough, Bitcoin was designed so Bitcoins were distributed to those rich enough to participate in mining activity instead...

Saving makes sense in a deflationary environment, its just that "saving" involves letting other people do productive things with the money with rather than starving them of funds in the hope they will be sufficiently desperate for cash in future to be willing to exchange more stuff for it. A deflationary environment sets a floor on how much the 1% control, not a ceiling, disincentivises them from creating jobs (lots of risk, no aggregate money returns to be earned) and makes it risk free for them to starve the economy of resources instead.

And in a world with no "crippling mortgages", you still need somewhere to live before you can save 500k. Which means instead of borrowing and repaying and ending up with a house, you spend roughly that portion of your income on rent instead...

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