Cryptocurrencies

[gfp]

2 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

Congrats.  Depending on how much you bought.

If you bought $100 worth you may not be rich, but you'll get an excellent return on your $100.  If you bought 10 BTC at $78.3K, then yes you are going to be very rich someday.

 

 

better than some swampland in the redneck riviera amirite?  or some blackberry-owning macro-obsessed insurance outfit

[rkbabang]

12 minutes ago, gfp said:

 

better than some swampland in the redneck riviera amirite?  or some blackberry-owning macro-obsessed insurance outfit

 

Yes, I expect the return from my Bitcoin to far exceed my investments in those others.  That said, I don't put my all of my eggs in one basket and I'm keeping all 3.

 

[Dave86ch]

14 hours ago, rkbabang said:

 

Yes, I expect the return from my Bitcoin to far exceed my investments in those others.  That said, I don't put my all of my eggs in one basket and I'm keeping all 3.

 

 

Bitcoin clearly benefits from the Lollapalooza effect.

[james22]

 

 

 

[wachtwoord]

5 hours ago, james22 said:

 

 

 

 

Who's that?

[Paarslaars]

Someone who predicted in November that BTC would be at 84k yesterday which was the case. Pretty sure with all the people make these guesses there is always someone right...

[james22]

47 minutes ago, wachtwoord said:

Who's that?

 

[james22]

38 minutes ago, Paarslaars said:

Someone who predicted in November that BTC would be at 84k yesterday which was the case. Pretty sure with all the people make these guesses there is always someone right...

 

Sure:

 

 

But entertaining.

 

[Paarslaars]

I will be entertained when someone's 300k in '25 prediction becomes reality. 

[james22]

 

[tede02]

Have there been any substantive cases against buying crypto ETFs? I mean this in the context of exposure via an ETF vs. owning tokens directly. 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

2 hours ago, tede02 said:

Have there been any substantive cases against buying crypto ETFs? I mean this in the context of exposure via an ETF vs. owning tokens directly. 

 

The primary concern is relying on a custodian to secure/hold your exposure. Unlike a stock, or a cash balance, that can be debited electronically in the event of an error - things with Bitcoin tend to be more permanent. 

 

If the custodian lose access to the hardware wallet, if the wallet becomes compromised and the crypto moves, etc. etc. etc. are permanent risks. The ETF issuers are probably insured against this, but how much? And what is the insurers ability to pay the claim if it happens right as BTC is spiking from $100k to $300k/coin? 

 

These are the same risks applied to you - accept probably lower as your wallet wouldn't necessarily be targeted like an ETF would be and there are fewer individuals involved with your wallet so fewer points of potential security breaches. 

 

The other complaint could be the fees - while 0.1 - 0.3% doesn't seem like a lot - it is paid out of the BTC balances that most holders would expect to be significantly higher in the future. For an asset measured on a log-chart, this is quite a bit more of a drag than for stocks

 

Full Disclosure - I own both BTC directly as well as via ETF. Probably ~75/25 mix respectively. 

Edited March 21, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital

[Paarslaars]

I only own it on an exchange, I understand the hard wallet argument but I don't feel comfortable having a that amount of value of anything in my home.

[tede02]

8 minutes ago, Paarslaars said:

I only own it on an exchange, I understand the hard wallet argument but I don't feel comfortable having a that amount of value of anything in my home.

 

That's an interesting point and it reminds me of the history of banks. Banks and custodians formed over time to deal with the problem people face in a hard-money system...what the hell do you do with piles of gold coins that are at risk of theft or damage? ETFs seem to work well to gain exposure to many assets (especially real commodities) in an expedient way.  

 

Also, thanks @TwoCitiesCapital for your thoughts. 

 

I've been following this subject for 8 or 9 years and have sat on the sidelines. More recently I've been diving into the history of money, banking, currencies, etc. When you realize that every sovereign currency in history has been destroyed, some quickly and some slowly, it gives you another perspective. 

[Dave86ch]

 

one year later

 

 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2025 by Dave86ch

[TwoCitiesCapital]

1 hour ago, tede02 said:

 

That's an interesting point and it reminds me of the history of banks. Banks and custodians formed over time to deal with the problem people face in a hard-money system...what the hell do you do with piles of gold coins that are at risk of theft or damage? ETFs seem to work well to gain exposure to many assets (especially real commodities) in an expedient way.  

 

Also, thanks @TwoCitiesCapital for your thoughts. 

 

I've been following this subject for 8 or 9 years and have sat on the sidelines. More recently I've been diving into the history of money, banking, currencies, etc. When you realize that every sovereign currency in history has been destroyed, some quickly and some slowly, it gives you another perspective. 

 

Yes - with something like BTC - I prefer the self-custody route given the threat to government recklessness and potential abuse of sovereign power. We saw this with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac which was purely political. We could see a concerted effort by the government, at some point, to prevent ownership of BTC and confiscation of assets.

 

As time goes on, this threat diminishes some due to entrenched interests and widespread ownership of the asset, but you also have another year of inching closer to currency crisis with every dollar of debt added to the pile. I don't know how these two probabilities offset one another and am comfortable having the majority of my exposure OUTSIDE of government reach given the history with gold. 

 

That being said, there was a fire on the rooftop of my condo building in Nov 2023 and I did NOT grab my hardware wallet or seed phrase when exiting the building. And while most of my personal belongings survived, including the wallet, it was a wake-up call to the dangers of self-custody and I need to accept more responsibility to secure these assets as they grow as a proportion of my networth. 

Edited March 21, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital

[SharperDingaan]

5 hours ago, tede02 said:

Have there been any substantive cases against buying crypto ETFs? I mean this in the context of exposure via an ETF vs. owning tokens directly. 

 

Holding a BTC-ETF gives you the benefit of regulatory protection, and professional portfolio management inclusive of exchange traded BTC options, futures, lending, etc. A material advantage, and one of the few times that paying for that ISDA agreement access and professional management makes sense. The caveat is that you need to keep your exposure to any one BTC-ETF under your regulatory maximum; hence, should shite happen, you may eventually get your money back. We hold our BTC entirely via BTC-ETF, and spread over multiple ETF's so as to stay under our regulatory maximums; none of them are US BTC-ETFs.

 

The rest is risk management, and scale. Whether you keep 10, or 100 gold wafers in your safety deposit box, the monthly deposit box fee is the same. Whereas the more BTC-ETF you have, the higher your total management fees will be.

 

SD 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2025 by SharperDingaan

[rkbabang]

14 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Yes - with something like BTC - I prefer the self-custody route given the threat to government recklessness and potential abuse of sovereign power. We saw this with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac which was purely political. We could see a concerted effort by the government, at some point, to prevent ownership of BTC and confiscation of assets.

 

As time goes on, this threat diminishes some due to entrenched interests and widespread ownership of the asset, but you also have another year of inching closer to currency crisis with every dollar of debt added to the pile. I don't know how these two probabilities offset one another and am comfortable having the majority of my exposure OUTSIDE of government reach given the history with gold. 

 

That being said, there was a fire on the rooftop of my condo building in Nov 2023 and I did NOT grab my hardware wallet or seed phrase when exiting the building. And while most of my personal belongings survived, including the wallet, it was a wake-up call to the dangers of self-custody and I need to accept more responsibility to secure these assets as they grow as a proportion of my networth. 

 

 

Suggestion.  2 of each of these stored at separate secure locations.

 

Put something like this:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077CYKHZ6  inside of something like this: https://www.amazon.com/SentrySafe-H0100-Fireproof-Waterproof-Cubic/dp/B00GE586CY

 

 

[gfp]

So, lately, Bitcoin has been behaving a lot more like the QQQ than Gold.  All of these things are denominated in US dollars, so that part of the equation should be equalized between them.

 

 

[Paarslaars]

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-annual-chairmans-letter

 

Blackrock letter on BTC and US debt:

 

 

 

[jfan]

https://x.com/TimmerFidelity/status/1905669076325990461

 

BTC - Gold Timeline/Adoption

 

Cryptocurrency Ownership Data – Triple-A

 

Estimates on % of population that own cryptocurrencies per country

 

How Many People Own Bitcoin?

 

Reading through Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers which states that those successful innovations that do get diffused into the target population, the # of people that become adopters over time usually follows a normal distribution with the s-curve 1/2 way point at the top of the normal distribution. 

 

Although it is likely impossible to figure out how many individual people hold BTC. Here are some charts on new addresses as well as number of address that hold more than $100. It looks like to me that adoption is still going up (likely people favoring ETFs vs holding BTC themselves)

 

 

 

[Paarslaars]

9 minutes ago, jfan said:

https://x.com/TimmerFidelity/status/1905669076325990461

 

BTC - Gold Timeline/Adoption

 

 

This assumes that BTC will not eat away at gold though... I would expect that we'll pass the gold treshold by 2030.

[DooDiligence]

Not a reader of this thread so this might have already been posted. Fidelity had it on the front page today. Anyone invested in this?

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-trump-family-took-over-crypto-firm-it-raised-hundreds-millions-2025-03-31/

 

Nothing to see here. Just another Russian laundromat. Great idea for locking up capital though.

Edited March 31, 2025 by DooDiligence

[Dave86ch]

10 hours ago, jfan said:

https://x.com/TimmerFidelity/status/1905669076325990461

 

BTC - Gold Timeline/Adoption

 

Cryptocurrency Ownership Data – Triple-A

 

Estimates on % of population that own cryptocurrencies per country

 

How Many People Own Bitcoin?

 

Reading through Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers which states that those successful innovations that do get diffused into the target population, the # of people that become adopters over time usually follows a normal distribution with the s-curve 1/2 way point at the top of the normal distribution. 

 

Although it is likely impossible to figure out how many individual people hold BTC. Here are some charts on new addresses as well as number of address that hold more than $100. It looks like to me that adoption is still going up (likely people favoring ETFs vs holding BTC themselves)

 

 

 

 

Bitcoin is simply a superior technology—portable, verifiable, and many open-source projects that thrives on top of it.

[nsx5200]

16 hours ago, jfan said:

https://x.com/TimmerFidelity/status/1905669076325990461

 

BTC - Gold Timeline/Adoption

Those adoption statistics.  Do they account for lost key/wallet, or essentially inactive key/wallet?  Also, what's the historical & expected lost rate?  If a long-inactive wallet suddenly comes alive, how does that change the price in terms of supply/demand, if that's even possible to figure out?  How should a logical bitcoin holder/investor account for such events?