If you suggest to me to put 5% of my portfolio into something which is worth nothing because there is hype about it and it might well rise before falling to zero, again, I will decline.
Just so that there's no misunderstanding, I don't and have never suggested that anyone take a position because of hype - quite the opposite. Over the course of four years of discussion, there have been periods when very little interest has been shown in bitcoin.
I was an early adopter of the internet and did not rail against investment back then.
I railed against investment at the prices.
Ok, well that seems like a very reasonable approach.
Companies which had little prospect of ever making money were selling for multiples of their turnover. A company's share price would rise for no reason.
We had that in the conventional markets relative to blockchain. A company listed on one of the conventional markets changed its name to include the name 'blockchain' in 2018 - having nothing to do with blockchain. It's price went up. That's an example of sheer stupidity - and not a reflection on the technology.
To make the shares affordable, they would be split in two - and guess what? The share price would double instead of halving. I remember a friend of mine saying about a company he had invested in - "one more share split and I will be a millionaire." There was no telling him that the share price was wrong. A company would add .com to its name, and its share price would double.
Again, no disagreement - that's completely irrational.
You could not talk to the faithful. They dismissed anyone with investments in the likes of CRH or Ryanair as dinosaurs. The arguments put forward were not unlike yours.
Just to be clear, over the course of four years here, I've never seen anyone suggest that traditional investment in equities was/is a waste of time - myself included.
"The number of BTC being mined is reducing, so the supply is reducing."
Yeah, I recall your difficulty in understanding this. The BTC supply schedule is set out so as the mining reward is reduced by 50% every four years (approximately). Against a backdrop where there has been growing demand, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the significance (bearing in mind that miners have to offload btc periodically in order to finance substantial operational costs.
Take Uber - I just can't see how it will ever make a profit. It's a fantastic service. So I would find it very hard to take a punt on it.
I agree.
Coinbase floated recently? It looks like an interesting company. I only read bits about it but it seems like it might or might not make money. It made $320m in 2020 But it's valued at $85 billion. If it doubles its profits every year for 10 years, then it would be worth that. But if it crashes when BTC crashes, it will be worth virtually nothing.
Valuation assessment aside, I doubt coinbase would ever be an appropriate investment for you given your thesis on bitcoin.
Once you believe, you believe everything even that black is white. It's real Alice through the Looking Glass stuff.
And this is the crux of your position and the point of conflict. Your assessment is that this thing can't possibly have any value as it has no intrinsic value. The dot com boom/bust played out between 1995 and 2002 - rising by 400% - with a 78% reset by the end of the period. It's effectively one boom and one bust.
Tulipmania - which I maintain is a completely ill-fitting analogy given that tulips possess little to no advantage when it comes to the characteristics of a store of value or means of exchange - played out over the course of 3 months. Again, one boom, one bust.
By contrast, bitcoin has been on the go since 2009 and has suffered a whole host of drops greater than 78% - and yet, over the course of its history, it continues to develop along the adoption curve, step by step. Valuation continues to go up and to the right when you zoom out and look at its development over the duration.
We live in a world where digitisation is growing at pace (particularly post-covid). As a decentralised network upon which other services can be secured and built on, my contention is that you've been too quick to dismiss the notion of btc actually possessing some intrinsic value. As a settlement layer, it can achieve instant settlement globally with no counterparty risk.
Is there no point at which you will acknowledge that you may have gotten this wrong? I've always maintained that there is a chance that my thesis as regards how this plays out may be wrong - and I'm open to the possibility of bitcoin failing (albeit that over the course of the past 4 years, I've seen that risk diminishing). In the Duke's case, he says he would acknowledge that its here to stay if Roubini concedes. What's your own view in this regard? You maintain its destination is a $0 valuation - only the timeframe remains a variable. If bitcoin market cap was to hit $2 trillion, would you still hold the same view?