Bitcoin - steer clear or not?

sonandheir said:
If quantum does crack Bitcoin the real issue then is not the 0.1% of weath stored in Bitcoin but the other 99.9% of Wealth that is stored with much lower encryption then Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin value is stored in transaction outputs. These outputs can have widely different values. They are all protected by the same public/private keys.

If someone had a secret quantum computer, they would most likely target the highest value outputs first. If they could break 1 output per hour, then it would still take ages for them to steal. There are over 100 million outputs, so that would be over 10,000 years.

Unless someone has an output which is one of the high value ones, they are unlikely to be hit in the initial wave and should have a chance to move their coins to quantum resistant outputs.

Banks and other financial institutions would probably take their websites offline for a while if a quantum computer was announced. People would have to visit the branches. Credit and debit cards would have problems.

A thing to bear in mind is that it is likely that one of the companies spending billions on quantum research will win the race to making the first viable quantum computer. Those companies are unlikely to throw their new piece of hardware at stealing cryptocurrency. They might sell quantum computers to people who do though.
 

Ben McKenzie talks to Mehdi Hasan about his documentary Everyone Is Lying to You for Money (Rotten Tomatoes 100% critics, 82% audience)
I listened to this interview today, it was both very funny as well as informative.

I didn't know who BM was before today but apparently he was very well known for roles in series like The O.C. (20+ years ago) and Gotham.
Before he became an actor he got a degree in Economics and has the last few years researching crypto-currencies and the people in and around them, including Sam Bankman-Fried before he was sent to prison, resulting in this documentary and also a book.
 
getting_on said:
the last few years researching crypto-currencies and the people in and around them, including Sam Bankman-Fried before he was sent to prison, resulting in this documentary and also a book.
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Has anyone read the book Going Infinite about SBF by Michael Lewis? The reviews were not great.
 
letitroll said:
The point applied to BTC with this 1yr, 3yr, 5yr lookback period is that the returns achieved in the asset relative to its volatility means holders are making poor absolute returns relative to alternatives (SPY,QQQ) and making truly abysmal returns when one considers the volatility of the asset they hold.
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letitroll said:
in regard to buying in 2021 (instead of a punt on BTC) a duopoly banking provider (BOI) in a country with only two real scaled banks. You bought a narrative driven digital asset in existence for only 17yrs with outrageous levels of volatility which was exciting I'm sure OR you could have bought a boring (mundane) bank - Bank of Ireland an institution in existence for 242yrs and one of only two dominant providers of banking services on the island of Ireland. You decided to buy BTC.....got mediocre returns, outrageous levels of volatility, paid high fees to acquire it, will pay high fees to eventually sell it...all while you could have bought shares in BOI for 0% commision and made x10 the return....or as discussed previously bought SPY or QQQ.....cut your volatility by 75% and tripled your returns.

Not going to burn up anymore time on this.....you are not a returns driven person.....you are attached to BTC not because you want to make good absolute risk adjusted eturns, your attached to BTC because you want to predict the end of the monetary system and be proven right....you have a cassandra streak and BTC is your I 'told you so'. It's very common in the BTC community....lots of people want to predict the end of the world and hedge against it....BTC is a nuclear fallout bunker in your mind and I know that comes with great comfort.
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Just repeating my two previous point above and a small amendment not in the above and perhaps the most damning......BTC continues to trade inversely to the narrative put forward by its proponents.....2026 brought with it another cycle of both realized and expected inflation brought on by the Iran war and energy crisis all while the US government and other Governments around the world continue to print large fiscal deficits and indeed (via long term rates rising) harder & harder fiscal decisions to be made as financing those deficits becomes increasingly difficult.

So 2026 is/was a year of higher realized inflation, expected inflation and a higher absolute probability of currency debasement via government money printing to tackle high debt to GDP ratios and mounting financing costs... the narrative that underpins BTC would say that 2026 should have been a very very very good year for BTC returns, the same way 2022's inflation era should have been a very very good year for BTC returns.....2022 wasnt and 2026 wasn't....BTC much of 26 was down 25% on the year only recently recovering to being down maybe 10%.

It is acting completely inversely to its stated narrative which is as a store of value against inflation fears.

It is however acting like a risk asset/speculative vechicle.

BTCs 1yr, 3yr, 5yr returns remain way below the core indexes of SPY and QQQ (as BTC investor you now need to start talking about 10yr returns to present an investment case that stacks up)....and volatility adjusted the returns are simply atrocious....BTC has nearly ~x4 the volatility of SPY and ~2x the volatility of QQQ......more vol/risk, less return....where do I sign up?
 
DazedInPontoon said:
Bitcoin is up 225% in 3yr. QQQ is up 109%.SPY well under 100%.
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Are you sure?

BTC vs. SPY vs. QQQ Stock Chart (Dividends Reinvested, Inflation Adjusted) | Total Real Returns

Chart of BTC vs. SPY vs. QQQ inflation-adjusted and with dividends reinvested. See how your real purchasing power changes over time.
totalrealreturns.com totalrealreturns.com

1000032803.webp
 
getting_on said:
Can you explain why?
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There is a tonne of detail, pro and anti bitcoin that is already on this site. I would be on the pro-bitcoin side, not without criticism of it but still on the pro-side.

I will go with your video you posted, from 18mins 18 secs - "Well, there is some eloquence to Bitcoin specifically in that there is not a single person who is running it. I will say that separates it from the other cryptocurrencies in some ways."
 
DazedInPontoon said:
Bitcoin is up 225% in 3yr.
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You might explain to people why the 3yr return number is so good? Hint....3yrs ago BTC was down 77%!!! from its 2021 high of $69k....the 3yr return flatters right now because of the insane volatility and huge drawdown that time period captures. Not a particularly great advertisement for prospective investors

BTC did not reclaim $69k until March, 2024 and at today’s ~$82k a buyer at the 2021 top (half a decade ago) is up a grand total of ~19% over nearly five years against ~+90% for QQQ......that is shockingly poor you could have held practically any of the Mag7 and done better.....Bank of Ireland would have done better..Glenveagh Properties...DCC.....IRES.....you could have bought key pillars of the ISEQ and done better.
 
letitroll said:
You might explain to people why the 3yr return number is so good? Hint....3yrs ago BTC was down 77%!!! from its 2021 high of $69k....the 3yr return flatters right now because of the insane volatility and huge drawdown that time period captures. Not a particularly great advertisement for prospective investors
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I'm not here to convince anyone, only to present accurate information, correct misinformation and let people come to their own conclusions.
 
And sure while I'm at it, why not another of my 'Periodic status updates for posterity' to follow my prior one

Almost 20.1m bitcoins have now been mined, which is getting close to 95.7% of eventual supply. Supply increased by 0.82% over the last year, and will do the same in the following year as issuance remains at 450 btc per day. That is scheduled to half again in April 2028. The current price is $82k per bitcoin.

We had a muted bull market peak by historical bitcoin standards followed by what's looking like an correspondingly tame bear market. The hype-sidestory this time was treasury companies, copying MSTR and riding the momentum. Almost all of those have failed or abandoned the plan, no surprise there. MSTR, Strive and Metaplant (probably) live on as the survivors.

You may have read an article or two about how MSTR (Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy) would imminently get liquidated, go bankrupt or otherwise blow up and be forced to sell all their bitcoin bringing it down with them. If so, the authors lied to you, MSTR can easily meet their obligations for the foreseeable even if they are finding it much more difficult to add to their stack. They now hold a whopping 848k bitcoin.

As for the ETFs, the largest by a long shot IBIT has ~800k coins, and it looks like ETFs in total have around 1.2m, holding roughly flat since around a year ago.

I do not see any obvious strong catalysts, neither positive nor negative, on the horizon, though the matters of the unsustainable US debt and inflation do seem to be becoming more mainstream in general and not just the realm of economic/monetary tin-foil hatters such as myself.
 
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