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Comment by nappy-doo | Hacker News Reader

I watched bitcoin. I remember people spending 50BTC for pizzas, or whatever. I mined a couple dozen and threw that laptop away. I don't feel like I missed out.

I invest because I want value. I want to own a part of something that generates value to the world. I invest to meet my goals (which I've already done without BTC). I invest to sleep well knowing that my money is making me money. BTC offers none of this. I challenge you to name any value BTC provides beyond moving money from one jurisdiction to another. (Which is still value, but not one I need, nor feel the need to speculate in.)

Am I bitter others got rich? Nope. Do I wish I was richer? Not really, I'm doing fine, I don't spend what I have anyway. Do I worry about BTC mania infecting others and possibly causing harm where it's not needed? Yes.

That is why BTC is a bad idea. It's pure speculation. There is no value beyond what someone else will pay you for it.

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> I mined a couple dozen and threw that laptop away. I don't feel like I missed out.

> I invest because I want value.

So you want value, but you don't feel that you missed out by throwing out over a million dollars worth of assets? (couple dozen at ~50k/BTC valuation).

Sure it has no value beyond what someone else will pay you for it, but today somebody else would literally be willing to give you over a million dollars for it.

That's like counting angels on a head of a pin.

Would I have sold it before 50k? yes, yes I would.

Can I accurately predict what someone would pay me for it tomorrow? No. Can I estimate the amount it will return to me in 10 years through dividends, or earnings growth, or repurchases (or in BTC's case, lost wallets)? No. Is there regulation protecting my investment? Not really.

It is a purely speculative investment.

If you want to go find my laptop, it's in a landfill in Massachusetts somewhere. Have at it! It was an early macbook. It has a Daft Punk sticker I bought at Newbury Comics.

Value is NOT price. BTC objectively has no little to no value. Price, sure, it's all over the place.

What is the par value of a BTC? What's the earnings yield on it? ROIC? ROE? How is it providing jobs to people (beyond speculators)? It is (objectively) a drag on society and progress.

No thank you.

Price is value if you sell at that price. You then would gain currency which you could exchange for something that you think is a better value.

You're making my point for me. BTC has no value. To be useful, I need it to be something else.

I have made so much more in salary and investment growth than those BTC in the same time. I provide value to the world, and world has rewarded that. BTC provides nothing but speeding the heat-death of the universe and hodl memes.

BTC is up about 10x from it's year low right now. Are you saying you have 10xed your networth with salary in that timeframe?

Nope. I'm saying I've made more since I mined the bitcoin, apologies if that didn't make sense.

Ok, I have a proposition. Let's negotiate. How many BTC/year do you require for me to buy all of your work product, for the rest of your life? How many BTC do you want? Choose carefully.

I posit, there is no amount we can agree on to make this transaction.

If you don't want to be any richer, then why do returns, dividends, yields or earnings growth matter?

It's great that you're successful enough that throwing away over a million dollars worth of BTC isn't a big deal for you, but that's a life-changing amount of money for most folks. I'm making no claims about the features or benefits of BTC, but one million dollars worth of bitcoin is primarily useful because it can be exchanged for one million dollars, today, right now. It doesn't need any additional features, promises, guarantees or selling points.

Again, you're making the point for me. You agree that bitcoin has no value on its own, it offers nothing but what I can sell it for to another sucker.

1M is life changing, agreed. But there's no reason to have known it would be worth that. There's no reason to believe it will be worth that tomorrow. Yet someone else, possibly far less astute than I am, is on the other end of that trade. For every dollar in wealth it created for me, it destroys for someone else. Nothing else has happened but I got lucky, timing was good, and I robbed wealth from others. That 1M would be better spent on people's salary, or a dozen Teslas, or a bathroom in the bay area. But, it was given to a jerk who downloaded some program and ran it for a couple of days in 2009 (or whenever I did, it's not important).

BTC is objectively bad. It is objectively speculation. It is objectively a random number. That is all. It is a shame we place any price on it, when the money spent speculating on it could create actual wealth.

It is you who is making my point for me. I agree that the 1M would be better spent on any of those things, rather than rotting away in a refuse site somewhere in MA. My argument was never that BTC is a good investment or even that it's worth the opportunity cost. I was just arguing against the "nothing of value was lost" mentality you have at throwing away all this BTC.

Put another way - If somebody were to buy SNAP stock, it's also a purely speculative investment (no dividends, no votes, etc). I may think this is a poor use of money, but I'm still confident if somebody gave me some SNAP stock I'd convert it into USD instead of just straight up throwing it into a dump somewhere and claiming I didn't miss out on any value.

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