Still, for my life, I can't see the real value. Back then, when things were starting out, the idea was to bank the unbanked, make money transfer seamless, cheap, and fast, and basically break up actors like PayPal et. al.
It is 2025, and I've yet to see shops here in Europe that actively take any crypto, or people that use it in their daily lives. "Fast and cheap payments" have been fixed using regular fiat and banking services. I daily transfer and pay for stuff without any charges.
Crypto in general, but stablecoins more so, just feels like another asset that's being pumped and dumped periodically, with some constant growth factor pushing it up. At least with metals as gold, silver, etc. there's some real usage - though most of the value is just "store of value".
I don't know, for me it is mentally difficult to just buy into some asset that that has practically no real value, other than that others are willing to purchase it for more. It is as if everyone has just agreed that it has value due to demand, and that's it. It feels so artificial, that it is hard to wrap my brain around why people are willing to trade it (other than the next guy buying it for more, as mentioned).
EDIT:
Sure, there are some very legit usage of crypto, like:
- Circumventing sanctions
- Laundering money
- Scams and transactions of illegal goods
And of course just a storage of value.
Some are happy to take a hair-cut to get their money clean. The wider crypto-currency community is happy to make money off the back off essentially providing money-laundering-as-a-service.
If it draws any interest away from residential real estate market its utility for reducing problems caused by wealth inequality is immense.
Any tool that draws the capital of the rich away from the brick and mortar economy where the poor have to compete with them to survive is worth tons for society.
Yes, that was before Gregory Maxwell, Luke-jr, Adam Back et. Al hijacked the project with the help from "theymos". They derailed the whole project by doubling down on keeping the block size at 1mb, with the ulterior motive of providing their own private centralized layer 2 service (lightning) as a solution for scaling.
This was the biggest setback for the actual grassroots adoption of Bitcoin. They openly censured and banned any opposing opinions and alienated a lot of crypto enthusiasts including myself. I'll never forgive them for what they did.
People can claim all they wish that it’s trustless, that we miss the bigger picture, but many have said again and again, the value of any currency is as high as the trust that it will remain valuable tomorrow.
“Nerds” can believe in its value as much as they want, but as long as it doesn’t penetrate daily life it will remain just an asset for hedging against traditional financial systems at best, and most commonly a money laundering scheme.
No floor and no ceiling — only a gambler would keep his net worth tied up to crypto. You did the right thing once you crossed a threshold to significantly change your financial status. Any other decision would have put yourself in a position vulnerable to outcomes of extreme regret.
Maybe we should not be so hard on ourselves. Afterall, we still have a heartbeat. Did we truly make a mistake, or did we narrowly avoid getting consumed by avarice?
To make a lot of money with bitcoin you either need to have been a true believer for a ridiculously long period of time, or find the password to an old wallet you'd forgotten about.
There's no point kicking yourself over not foreseeing a far-fetched future scenario, if you were at a casino and a roulette spin landed on 12 - would you feel bad for not betting on that happening, despite having no good information it would land on that?
And crypto today is extremely accessible and safe, compared to 10+ years ago. The first crypto I bought, was by paying some random seller on a forum with PayPal, and hoping that the deal was legit.
There are probably 75 year olds today regretting that they didn't spend an extra $0.12 in 1962 when they were at the comic book store to pick up an extra copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 to preserve. That was the first appearance of Spider Man and and a copy of that in near NM+ condition ("A very well-preserved collectible with several minor manufacturing or handling defects") sold at auction in 2021 for $3.6 million.
I did buy an extra copy of X-Men #137 (the death of Jean Grey) for $0.75 in 1980 and promptly bagged it. If I could actually find it and it actually is still in mint condition it might sell for around $400. From $0.75 then to $400 now is 15% a year growth.
But that $0.75 would have been better invested in Apple stock. That would be around $1600 now which is 18% a year growth. But in 1980 there were other exciting tech companies to invest in and most did not grow like Apple, so it is pointless to consider not buying Apple stock instead of X-Men #137 a mistake.
Nor would it have been a mistake to just put the money in an S&P 500 index fund. That would only have earned about 11% a year over the subsequent 45 years.
I think you should be less proud of that.
> I can't see the real value ... Sure, there are some very legit usage of crypto, like: Circumventing sanctions, Laundering money, Scams and transactions of illegal goods
Sounds like you understand exactly what the "real value" is:
If you buy and sell bitcoin, you're helping people launder money, protect gains from scamming people, circumvent sanctions, and trade in illegal goods. You are hurting people, possibly a lot of people.
> It is 2025, and I've yet to see shops here in Europe that actively take any crypto, or people that use it in their daily lives
That's because scamming people, selling illegal goods, money laundering, and helping people circumvent sanctions, is well, illegal in Europe.
i think one of the big challenges of the 21st century is coming to terms with the fact that playing by the rules actually makes you poorer...
whereas speculative investment, like bitcoin, has yielded only winners. huge transfer of wealth from the rule-followers to the "but what if it moons..."-crowd and the "yeah i shouldn't do this, but..."-type of people.
this will surely have an evolutionary impact, since the now-wealthy bitcoiners (and others) will no doubt have plenty of reproductive success, thus arming their numerous progeny with a similar risk-taking mindset.
I remember even 10 or 15 years ago now a funny viral clip of a Middle Eastern guy welcoming his friend to Germany, who asked, bewildered, where all the German people are having only met Africans, Asians, etc there. They both burst out laughing as they realise it's a weekday so all the Germans will be at work.
It doesn't sound like a mistake to me at all. You paid off debts and invested in something that has delivered value to you for almost 15 years now. A mistake would have been to spend it on blow and hookers.
the truest of all true mistakes, was having never bought bitcoin in the first place.
-my biggest learning from the first half of the 2020s
Maybe a tiresome pedantic response, but this is only a "mistake" to the same extent that it was a mistake for [everyone in the world who had the required funds] not to buy 100 BTC in 2015. If you can overcome the cognitive biases (endowment effect, loss aversion, etc.), the fact that you previously owned the 100 BTC has no real bearing on the situation, beyond transaction fees and a couple hours max saved by holding (doing nothing) vs. buying.
There's a slow drip feed of stories of people who did buy BTC and have lost it, either to human error, lack of backups, crime, or failure of institutions. Remember MtGox collapse in 2014? The whole fad was obviously over by then, wasn't it?
We're going to have another 2008-style bubble collapse eventually. But it's not clear what the radius of effect will be.
There certainly have been some countries where stablecoins have gained in popularity. They are a little easier to use than bitcoin and prices are more stable. It tends to be in places where governments are not heavily enforcing against their use, while at the same time the local currency has been unstable, such as in Argentina.
The downside with stablecoins is that they rely on trusted entities to maintain the peg, whereas bitcoin enforces its own scarcity and trades at its own value.
I don't really think its responsible to go around telling people that bitcoin will gain in value, but there are certainly many people who believe this to be the case, and the pool is growing. I think the key value for this community is that we have something which is easier to transfer globally than a hard asset like gold, while being independent from particular jurisdictions such as the US, EU or China.
And yes I see the lack of awareness in bitcoin community about the extent to which it has become the defacto standard for internet scammers, who trick vulnerable people into depositing their life savings into a bitcoin ATM using various methods. You can see many examples of this on kitboga's youtube channel. At least, he has been able to work with some bitcoin exchanges to fight back against this in a small way.
Yes, I think this really is a use case even if it's not one that flatters the prejudices of American bitcoiners. People from non-US countries want access to shadow-dollars, yet the US has built a large and intrusive industry based on keeping them out.
In the US it is 6% of adults [1] overall. It is 23% of adults with family incomes below $25k. It's 14% for Black adults and 11% for Hispanic adults.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2024-economic-we...
I think bitcoin has a culture that fortified itself against wild price swings and has lots of people on HODL / to the moon. It's their long term plan, they're not selling it just like you probably aren't selling your retirement account.
I'm not really convinced the stock market is that different to be honest. It's good that it gives companies a way to raise money with some basis in who people think will do well. But from my perspective as an individual with a 401k I'm just buying and holding. One day you look at your retirement account and it's a lot more than you ever put in, you didn't do any work beyond putting it in and I guess paying whoever runs the index fund or whatever. What are we doing here except pooling our money with the richest folks and watching money concentrate, holding until we retire and hoping it doesn't all come crashing down?
Could it be that bitcoin forced banks to compete?
Chip & Pin launched in 2003
Contactless payments launched 2007. ( Yes, these pre-date Apple Pay, etc, by quite a long time )
Faster Payments System launched 2008 ( After a decade of planning )
Bitcoin launched 2009.
It was almost a rite of passage to make your exit-post once you reached your goal, or didn’t want the risk/stress. For most that included things like purchasing a home, car, paying off student loans, retiring your parents.
Most of the people I know that became rich off crypto, were those that went all in around 16/17/18. And many of those did buy/sell their way up. Or got lucky with meme coins etc.
I don’t know anyone that bought 1000 BTC in the very early days, and just held onto them with diamond hands. Nor do I know anyone that DCA’ed from 2012 up until today.
(Not that they don’t exist, probably a bunch of them)
See also gold.
At some point it did make sense as a currency because of its hard-to-fake nature, but once governments became stronger and regulations and documentation became more strict, gold was not needed anymore. (And gold has all sorts of downsides [1] too.)
But there seems to be some 'nostalgic valuations' for it, and Bitcoin now has the same psychological appeal.
[1] https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...
About crypto early narrative.. there's some lesson here, nothing means nothing, things get twisted, blended, rebranded .. they wanted to replace the world, they're not part of it, as yet another asset. Sad, cynical but nothing surprising IMO.
That said there might be an offspring of all the distributed blockchain VMS that will emerge a new layer replacing the economic and information exchange in the future (I still believe this a bit).
At the same time I don't have a great deal of faith in the ability of the existing government structures to enact legislation in the interest of society as a whole.
That presents a serious problem that makes the world of cryptocurrency pale into insignificance. Without belief that laws act in the interest of humanity in general, faith in the rule of law erodes. If that erosion is not stopped eventually nothing remains.
I hope things are not as bad as they seem to the outside observer.
i got a raise of 4% this year to account for "inflation". honestly id have preferred a pack of jelly beans, that would atleast be honest and funny.
- 2.4 million bitcoins are lost forever [0]. Their owners, for one reason or another, can't access their wallets. No insurance, no guarantees, nothing.
- 1.1 million are owned by a mysterious person who sits at the top of the pyramid [0].
- 2.3 million belong to investors and speculators [0] (who, I'm guessing, make money by pumping and dumping).
- 1 million are owned by banks [0], the same institutions that the mysterious man at the top of the pyramid, who created the "system of trust" said couldn't be trusted [2].
- 1.6 million are held by whales [0]: billionaires, money launderers, drug dealers [5], and so on.
- 1.4 million are still left to be mined [0], but only a handful of rich people with servers worth millions can actually mine them [3].
- The rest are owned by individuals who see it as a long term investment [0].
- It's a digital currency most people don't use to buy or sell anything. The only ones making transactions are banks, investors, and the rich [1][3][4].
- Worst of all, banks, investment firms and billionaires with ties to politicians and policymakers are likely to find out first when major regulations or shifts are coming and they'll be able to sell early and minimise losses, while everyone else finds out after the fact. In a system that was meant to be decentralised and fair, the people with the most power and access still end up with the advantage.
– And if you own even a tiny bit of bitcoin and read something like this, you get upset because your investment's at risk and you end up siding with the banks, investors, and the rich to keep the system going.
The way I see it, the banks won.
---
[0] As banks buy up bitcoins, who else are the 'Bitcoin whales'? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68434579.amp
[1] Research from 2025 has found that the popularity and application of cryptocurrencies have not only promoted financial innovation, but also exacerbated wealth inequality. In other words, blockchain developers have made the gap between rich and poor even worse. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391506544_Cryptocur...
[2] A quote from Satoshi's forum message that he posted on Feb. 11, 2009. It explains the goal of creating Bitcoin and why using banks demands too much trust with no guaranteed positive outcome. https://u.today/did-satoshi-nakamoto-foresee-current-bank-cr...
[3] Prior to May 2021 Bitcoin miners were hugely concentrated, with around 60% to 70% located in China. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...
[4] Bitcoin ownership is concentrated among the rich. Research showed that at the end of 2020, there were 1,000 “clusters” controlling 2 million bitcoins. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/bitcoin-who-ow...
[5] Between February 2011 and July 2013, drug dealers operating on Silk Road facilitated sales amounting to 9,519,664 bitcoins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
also pump and dump scene exist in stock too, does this stop people trade in stock??? I don't think so
You asking decentralised power that everyone can have "fair" power level, that not exist
Instead, now we have many centralised exchanges, centralised stablecoin issuers, centralised custodians, centralised miners, etc. So many additional intermediaries, providing so little value. Remarkable.
The way I see it now, Satoshi didn't create a system for the people. He created a system for the rich, where regular people are just resources doing the work, keeping the network running and helping the rich stay rich.
The speculators are hoping that Trump will give them what they’ve been hoping for: officially-backed demand. That helps with both volatility and simple volume, and if it comes with exemptions for some of the anti-money laundering or gambling policies it could allow some of the businesses which have stayed out of the American market to come in and drum up business.
It is a core aspect of human life.
And there is no other asset that does that with as little inflation and risk as Bitcoin. That seems counterintuitive because Bitcoin is portrayed as a very risky asset. Which it is in the short term. But long term, fiat, gold, equity, and real estate all have an even worse inflation and risk profile.
crypto is a legit information hazard that threatens to completely demoralize the actually productive hamsters in the economy. if everyone knew they could've made more money in a year than their entire career, they'd give up working forever.
It puzzles me how people see 10x-100x’ing their money on crypto as gods gift to humanity and a stroke of brilliance, but making the same amount by investing in NVDA seem like just another lucky stock pick.
If anything, there will always be the next FAANG startup, that will make one fabulously rich.
LOL. Having 30% drops is not 'little risk':
* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/bitcoin-btc-price-plunges-bu...
Or 50%:
* https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/bitcoin-whats-going...
I want a 'store of value' to be fairly predictable, and even with inflation (generally 0-4%) fiat currencies have that (I can plan around that by investing in bonds and equities, or even some bank savings products).
...which is why its not gonna plunge anymore. too many people have "seen" the pattern now, and the instant it dips even 5% people are gonna be buying "the dip" in droves, thinking this is gonna be their entry, this is their moment in the sun. "I've seen it do this before, I know how it ends, I gotta get in now!!!"
admittedly bit of a conspiracy but its not that far removed surely
So far.
It took gold, another popular 'store of value' commodity, several decades to reach its previous peak originally reached in 1980 (blue line):
* https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/07/CMD_GLDNFLT0711_VF...
There was ~20 years of it not doing much. Then ~10 years post-GFC of it not doing much. A lot of folks are looking at headlines and making long-term conclusions that certain things are inevitable:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias
> ...which is why its not gonna plunge anymore. too many people have "seen" the pattern now […]
And how many times has the 'stock market plunging pattern' have we seen? Does that prevent people from panicking? As someone who has been in /r/PersonalFinanceCanada for many years now, the panicked posts of March-April 2020 were very real.
There is an entire field of study examining how people act badly when it comes to money:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics
People still think they can pick winning stocks and beat the market consistently over the long-term:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
gosh what a clown world, this stuff is so ridiculous.
Nobody should hold large amounts of fiat long term. That's what shares and bonds are for, which incidentally also support productive enterprises (unlike crypto).
Long term, equity, debt, gold have pretty good inflation and risk profiles. Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive, so government bonds are a fairly good store of value.
Real rates have overwhelmingly been positive
When I look through my old bills, what I paid for apartments, hotels, coffee it seems the real inflation was around 8% over the last 20 years. For hotels for example, it is easy to look up the same hotel today and see how prices changed.
And bonds paid less than 4%.
Can you give an example of something that increased less than 4% in price annually?
Crypto is polarized, as far as politics goes. Especially if we look past the US. When a pro-crypto government rules, risk goes down. And opposite when the skeptics take charge.
sandbach•3h ago