Gemini IPO

[Saluki]

 

WOW, this sucks 

[gfp]

Why on earth did they name the public company "Gemini Space Station, Inc."  ?

[Fly]

I'd love to know how much BTC the Winkies have destroyed by trying to keep their exchange afloat. 

 

Buy and hold is hard.

 

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-family-amasses-6-billion-fortune-after-crypto-launch-567faec5?st=U1JvZ5&reflink=article_copyURL_share
 

The grifters all seem to love crypto. Wonder why. Hope all the crypto bros like seeing this stuff. It basically reinforces the rat poison thesis.

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/down-90-or-more-trump-family-assets-are-outpacing-crypto-crash?srnd=homepage-americas

 

Quote

 

The crash Tuesday in the crypto miner American Bitcoin Corp. was instantaneous. At 9:31 a.m. on Wall Street, just one minute after trading started, its shares were down 33%. Five minutes later, losses had ballooned to 42% and then, by 9:56 a.m., to more than 50%.

 

Grifters losing their power ?

[Fly]

1 hour ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/down-90-or-more-trump-family-assets-are-outpacing-crypto-crash?srnd=homepage-americas

 

Grifters losing their power ?

 

We've been seeing grifters like Trump come and go from crypto every cycle. There is always someone looking to outpace BTC and it never ends well. 2017 ICO era with VCs playing games, 2022 with FTX/Luna/3AC collapse and now Trump with his ecosystem of WLFI and assorted tokens trying to leverage his reputation and importance into profits. It won't work. 

 

I am a supporter of Bitcoin, and a hater of Crypto. 

[Milu]

4 hours ago, Fly said:

I am a supporter of Bitcoin, and a hater of Crypto. 

Ha, same here. About 95% of people in the crypto community I can't stand. Yet I'm a massive advocate of Bitcoin and what it stands for.

[Libs]

51 minutes ago, Milu said:

Ha, same here. About 95% of people in the crypto community I can't stand. Yet I'm a massive advocate of Bitcoin and what it stands for.

Ditto.

[nsx5200]

Just curious.  What's are the "moats"/secret sauce for Bitcoin vs other cryptos besides first mover advantage?  I guess the follow-on question would be, how would those moats erode?

[Saluki]

1 minute ago, nsx5200 said:

Just curious.  What's are the "moats"/secret sauce for Bitcoin vs other cryptos besides first mover advantage?  I guess the follow-on question would be, how would those moats erode?

 

The pitch for BItcoin is "digital" gold. Which I don't believe, but to each his own. By virtue of being first it's the most recognized and commonly held. However, you can't do anything with Bitcoin except sell it. The code isn't "Turing Complete" so you can't do much with it, but since it's so bare bones, it's also very hard to hack. But it's a FOMO trade and has the opposite of economies of scale. 

 

With Ethereum, you can write things when you put it on the block chain. You can write "Hi Mom" or you can write a few lines of code in Solidity when you put it on the Blockchain. SInce you can insert pieces of code, it enables smart contracts. And since new Crytpo ideas might not get enough traction to be viable, the way they pitch it is that their stuff runs on the Ethereum network. Like they are renting space. So all those new crypto ideas make Ethereum even more entrenched because it is forcing other users of lesser cryptos to use Ethereum.  

 

 

[Longnose]

22 minutes ago, Saluki said:

However, you can't do anything with Bitcoin except sell it

I disagree with this. Beyond its store of value its original and primary purpose was peer to peer transaction digitally with no middle man. (not buy sell) 

I can send you $1M of bitcoin or $0.001 of Bitcoin with no bank or middle man between us and if using the lightning network less than a penny in fees with near instant settlement. 

 

So not only are you storing value that can cross any border but you can transact in it without paying 3%+ transaction fees to other parties for that transaction. 

 

Cant do that with gold so thats why we invented paper/coin currency. 

 

Then we couldnt do it digitally without paying employees to keep track of it all so we added fees and economy of scale allowed end users to transact mostly free while corporations pay the tax that allows our transactions.

 

Now BTC does it all for nearly free and the blockchain proof of work keeps the integrity of the ledger.

 

Edited December 3, 2025 by Longnose

[nsx5200]

2 hours ago, Longnose said:

Then we couldnt do it digitally without paying employees to keep track of it all so we added fees and economy of scale allowed end users to transact mostly free while corporations pay the tax that allows our transactions.

 

Now BTC does it all for nearly free and the blockchain proof of work keeps the integrity of the ledger.

So if the killer app, with all its advantages, is to move money around, shouldn't we see a hockey stick adoption in terms of aggregate dollar amount transacted per day/week/month?

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionvalue-btc.html#3y [wrong link.  thanks, gfp]

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/sentinusd-btc.html#3y

 

Maybe there's a better metric that can be used to measure that, but I thought aggregate dollar amount seems to be the most reasonable to me out of the slew of possible metrics available from that list.

 

It's possible that the source data is flawed.  If so, what good source of aggregate data should I be looking at instead?

Edited December 4, 2025 by nsx5200
update to correct link

[gfp]

22 minutes ago, nsx5200 said:

So if the killer app, with all its advantages, is to move money around, shouldn't we see a hockey stick adoption in terms of aggregate dollar amount transacted per day/week/month?

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionvalue-btc.html#3y

 

Maybe there's a better metric that can be used to measure that, but I thought aggregate dollar amount seems to be the most reasonable to me out of the slew of possible metrics available from that list.

 

It's possible that the source data is flawed.  If so, what good source of aggregate data should I be looking at instead?

You said “aggregate dollar amount” and then linked a chart of average dollar amount per transaction 

[Fly]

26 minutes ago, nsx5200 said:

So if the killer app, with all its advantages, is to move money around, shouldn't we see a hockey stick adoption in terms of aggregate dollar amount transacted per day/week/month?

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionvalue-btc.html#3y

 

Maybe there's a better metric that can be used to measure that, but I thought aggregate dollar amount seems to be the most reasonable to me out of the slew of possible metrics available from that list.

 

It's possible that the source data is flawed.  If so, what good source of aggregate data should I be looking at instead?

 

Not necessarily. Look at Linux, awesome open source software available to anyone, but since it lacks a centralized business pushing it to users then it doesn't spread like the Apple OS does. Developers can make money creating dumb candy crush iOS apps to sell for $.99 but they struggle to make any money releasing something on Linux. 

 

Bitcoin is Linux. It has a niche use case and it is very good at transmitting value globally without a middle man. It will likely never compare to the structures built upon fiat currencies because it eliminates the need for those secondary and tertiary businesses. 

Edited December 4, 2025 by Fly

[Longnose]

1 hour ago, Fly said:

 

Not necessarily. Look at Linux, awesome open source software available to anyone, but since it lacks a centralized business pushing it to users then it doesn't spread like the Apple OS does. Developers can make money creating dumb candy crush iOS apps to sell for $.99 but they struggle to make any money releasing something on Linux. 

 

Bitcoin is Linux. It has a niche use case and it is very good at transmitting value globally without a middle man. It will likely never compare to the structures built upon fiat currencies because it eliminates the need for those secondary and tertiary businesses. 

I sort of agree with this analogy. Distribution is king. But its funny as a linux user its incredible how far its come. Ubuntu is a really robust operating system now. But it will never overrun mac or windows. 

 

The way I view it is kind of like whoever referenced the recent Lynn alden article. The banks and all these other institutions are actually leveraging ETH right now with stable coins to reduce thier own costs and transaction times leveraging the stable coins on ETH. But they are still gonna rake the world with transaction costs while reducing thier own costs. 

 

BTC like linux is a reasonable analogy in my mind. The gold hoarder the guy hedging against inflation the guy who doesn't wanna be slave to the institutions will go figure out BTC as a store of value and currency and will use it. But realistically most the world for a long time will still desire USD based assets. (Windows/mac) 

 

 

[nsx5200]

Thanks.  That actually makes a decent amount of sense in that Bitcoin has niche use cases.

 

Although... using Linux as an analogy undersells Linux.  By a lot.  Linux in the server/development space is actually displacing windows in that space.  Even Windows adopted Linux starting in 2016 as WSL.  The reason being that Windows/MacOS has a lot more focus and refinement in the UI space, whereas *nix tend to focus on safety and reliability, which is more important in the server space.  Interestingly enough, Linux is also the core of Android, as well as unspeakable number of embedded devices.  Combined, Linux deployment numbers easily dwarfs any comparison to Windows, MacOS, or even niche other embedded OSes.  But that is a flaw in the analogy and not a flaw in the argument.

 

Is there a particular space where Bitcoin, or even crypto-derived technology is displacing some incumbent fiat currency space, or is the direct competitor mainly to gold?  If Bitcoin is that niche, then IMHO, there are some serious flaws to the premises of future widespread Bitcoin adoption.  I appreciate your pushback/feedback.

[Fly]

13 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Thanks.  That actually makes a decent amount of sense in that Bitcoin has niche use cases.

 

Although... using Linux as an analogy undersells Linux.  By a lot.  Linux in the server/development space is actually displacing windows in that space.  Even Windows adopted Linux starting in 2016 as WSL.  The reason being that Windows/MacOS has a lot more focus and refinement in the UI space, whereas *nix tend to focus on safety and reliability, which is more important in the server space.  Interestingly enough, Linux is also the core of Android, as well as unspeakable number of embedded devices.  Combined, Linux deployment numbers easily dwarfs any comparison to Windows, MacOS, or even niche other embedded OSes.  But that is a flaw in the analogy and not a flaw in the argument.

 

Is there a particular space where Bitcoin, or even crypto-derived technology is displacing some incumbent fiat currency space, or is the direct competitor mainly to gold?  If Bitcoin is that niche, then IMHO, there are some serious flaws to the premises of future widespread Bitcoin adoption.  I appreciate your pushback/feedback.

 

Yes, my apologies I did not mean to slight Linux and my hope is that someday BTC follows a path similar to one that Linux has laid.

 

Right now BTC is definitely a niche use case when it comes to P2P transactions with highest adoption in the global south countries and those with struggling/failed currencies.  I wouldn't say it is displacing any reputable currencies at this point. In developed countries BTC mainly follows the digital gold narrative and "debasement trade" like Lyn's article above. 

 

My hope for the future (10yrs+) would be for companies like MSTR to provide financial services to retail with BTC as the core in the same way Android uses Linux. If/when this happens I still don't think BTC will be an existential threat to developed fiat currencies, but the adoption rate globally will be much higher than the tiny level it is today. 

 

Personally, I do not subscribe to the narrative that bitcoin will displace fiat. Governments and traditional financial institutions in developed countries have power and incentive aligned to continue with those systems they can easily control. I don't see any change to that in our lifetimes despite my love of bitcoin. 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2025 by Fly

[alxcii]

The Linux analogy is a pretty shallow one because among other things, the value capture mechanism is completely different vs. BTC. For Linux, value capture comes from the ecosystem around the kernel but for BTC it is primarily from directly holding the asset. If you are bullish Linux you can't buy Linux, you have to long some very weak Linux proxy like Google or IBM which may not have much correlation with the adoption of Linux itself. If you are bullish BTC you just buy BTC.

 

As for whether the picks and shovels (BTC services) can outperform BTC itself I wouldn't count on it. Just look at the value of above ground gold vs. gold equities or more relevant to this thread, whether the Winklevii have made more money from their BTC holdings or from Gemini.

 

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

On 12/3/2025 at 5:51 AM, Dalal.Holdings said:

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-family-amasses-6-billion-fortune-after-crypto-launch-567faec5?st=U1JvZ5&reflink=article_copyURL_share
 

The grifters all seem to love crypto. Wonder why. Hope all the crypto bros like seeing this stuff. It basically reinforces the rat poison thesis.

 

 

 

There's a reason the grifters aren't pushing Bitcoin....

 

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

On 12/3/2025 at 5:19 PM, nsx5200 said:

Just curious.  What's are the "moats"/secret sauce for Bitcoin vs other cryptos besides first mover advantage?  I guess the follow-on question would be, how would those moats erode

 

No other crypto does what BTC does. They either don't have reliable decentralization, have opted for efficiency over security, are memes, or "utility tokens" that rarely live up to their states purpose and obfuscate with complex token economics to obscure how bad they actually are. 

 

Bitcoin is the ONLY proof of work, secure, simple option that aims to do one thing well - be digital money with no required intermediaries. 

 

On 12/3/2025 at 6:05 PM, nsx5200 said:

So if the killer app, with all its advantages, is to move money around, shouldn't we see a hockey stick adoption in terms of aggregate dollar amount transacted per day/week/month?

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionvalue-btc.html#3y [wrong link.  thanks, gfp]

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/sentinusd-btc.html#3y

 

Maybe there's a better metric that can be used to measure that, but I thought aggregate dollar amount seems to be the most reasonable to me out of the slew of possible metrics available from that list.

 

It's possible that the source data is flawed.  If so, what good source of aggregate data should I be looking at instead?

 

Number of wallets with non-zero balances are growing at a rate comparable to internet adoption. So I would so we're already seeing the hockey stick in adoption. 

 

The problem is you're putting the cart before the horse. The correct order of operations is to first be a store of value.  Only once enough people have stored value in it is there then sufficient demand to spend it and become a monetary unit of account that is transacted in.

 

This happened with gold. This happened with the US dollar which bootstrapped itself to gold to accomplish the store or value before becoming "money". This is how every majorly adopted currency has worked. First it was saved - and only after mass adoption at savings/store of value level hitting critical mass does it become a spendable money. 

 

We're still in store of value adoption at this time. 

 

On 12/3/2025 at 9:03 PM, nsx5200 said:

Is there a particular space where Bitcoin, or even crypto-derived technology is displacing some incumbent fiat currency space, or is the direct competitor mainly to gold?  If Bitcoin is that niche, then IMHO, there are some serious flaws to the premises of future widespread Bitcoin adoption.  I appreciate your pushback/feedback.

 

I think Bitcoin is displacing a number of "stores of value" over time. Gold is the most obvious.

 

While not a problem anymore, I think Bitcoin will displace low/negative interest rate debt and we may not see it again as a result.

 

I think it will displace real estate owned in foreign countries to escape repressive regimes - think Chinese billionaires buying NYC brownstones to leave them empty and paying massive carry on property taxes/maintenance. 

 

It will displace just about anything and everything that isn't economically rational and was only bought to "store value" to protect purchasing power

Edited December 5, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital

[nsx5200]

3 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

There's a reason the grifters aren't pushing Bitcoin....

Most of the "money" is "made" by the early adopters, that's why all the new grifters push their own crypto instead of Bitcoin.

3 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

[... arguments for the pros of Bitcoin..]

Thanks for your lengthy input arguing for Bitcoin.  It helps to calibrate the narrative/viewpoint/myths/facts surrounding Bitcoin vs other cryptos.  If you don't mind me asking, for my own calibration sake, you don't have a technical background in weeds of computing, do you (ex. computer programming, protocol design, algorithm design, computer/hardware engineering, etc. or even something in the hard sciences(specifically Physics))?

[Fly]

7 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

There's a reason the grifters aren't pushing Bitcoin....

 

100% this. They start with bitcoin and quickly move on to a blatant scam. 

 

3 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Most of the "money" is "made" by the early adopters, that's why all the new grifters push their own crypto instead of Bitcoin.

 

 

Most of the risk is borne by early adopters as well. Play with 100x derivatives and you too can be like an early adopter buying BTC 

 

The grifters want something they can control. Or at least they think they can control it. 

Edited December 6, 2025 by Fly

[TwoCitiesCapital]

7 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Most of the "money" is "made" by the early adopters, that's why all the new grifters push their own crypto instead of Bitcoin.

 

I don't know what the token economics look like for those pulling the rugs. It might make sense to lie/cheat/steal multiple times in crypto. But over the longer term, the strategy that has worked best is basically Bitcoin only. 

 

7 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Thanks for your lengthy input arguing for Bitcoin.  It helps to calibrate the narrative/viewpoint/myths/facts surrounding Bitcoin vs other cryptos.  If you don't mind me asking, for my own calibration sake, you don't have a technical background in weeds of computing, do you (ex. computer programming, protocol design, algorithm design, computer/hardware engineering, etc. or even something in the hard sciences(specifically Physics))?

 

I don't. I do amateur coding and am self taught in things like SQL/Python/Basic but I would never qualifying myself as a programmer nor do I have a professional background in it. I studied economics and work in finance. 

 

Edited December 6, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital