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Comment by jdawg777 | Hacker News Reader

I just think bitcoin is a scam and the US government shouldn't get involved with it. It would be like if the US government invested in a Strategic "Beanie-Baby Reserve" in the late 1990s.

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Doesn't scam require intent to defraud? Are you saying Bitcoin was created to defraud?

The proponents of crypto are scam artists. Whether they operate ponzi schemes like FTX, or whether they are just trying to inflate its value to pull the rug at a later date. They see BTC as an investment rather than a currency.

> They see BTC as an investment rather than a currency.

So you'd argue that the stock market is a scam too, since people use stocks not as a "what a company is worth" but as a investment they expect to gain in value, and they try to push narratives to support that?

Nobody believes that Coca-Cola shares will be the basis of the coming economic system.

Bitcoin lacks anything resembling intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of a Coca-Cola share is that you will receive a part of the profit of the company.

You don't think good money has an intrinsic value as good money?

Bitcoin is terrible money. It is less private than any bank account. It is significantly slower and pricier than any bank account for transactions. It removes control over money from governments and other institutions (which is by itself a death sentence).

Incorrect on all points. Bitcoin is as private or transparent as we need it to be. Bank account transactions are done on a higher-layer payment network than the base inter-bank clearance network, and the equivalent payment system for bitcoin would be either a bank account nominated in bitcoin, or for a decentralised solution, the lightning network which is instant and can cost less than 0.1% per transaction (compare that to 3% or more for VISA/Mastercard transactions). The bitcoin base layer can transfer trillions of dollars worth of value around the world with full final clearance in less than an hour and for around $2 currently (i.e. 0.0000002% transaction fee for $1B).

As for removing control of the supply from government - that is exactly the point: https://x.com/KenOKeefe1TJP/status/1875962999195816261

>They see BTC as an investment rather than a currency.

Which guarantees that it is useless as a currency. The other thing that guarantees that, is that Bitcoin is very bad at being a currency.

probably means Elon has a bunch of it he wants to offload at a markup.

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