Is it too soon to talk about Crypto yet?

[Complete Turf Care]

How do you go about buying bitcoin? If I wanted to buy $5000 worth of bitcoin as an investment, how would I do that?

 

[Oaktree]

How do you go about buying bitcoin? If I wanted to buy $5000 worth of bitcoin as an investment, how would I do that?

I believe most brokerage houses (Fidelity, Schwab, etc.) will let you buy bitcoin thru them.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Moreso it's Tether dumping fake printed dollarooo like substances into the ecosystem to pump the value so the whales can dump on the chumps. How you can have over 100 billion in vaporware.. boggles my mind. I shoulda been a criminal.

In before "tether is fully backed", if that's true why haven't they ever had a real audit and keep side skipping the issue (and no their "attestation" is not an audit plus there were non trivial conflicts of interest there).

Ripple issued its own stable coin this past week and it is pegged to the dollar and they are US-based.

Ripple Sets RLUSD Stablecoin Launch Date, Making Token Accessible on XRP Ledger and Ethereum

The stablecoin will become broadly available to crypto users on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum networks starting Tuesday.

www.coindesk.com

 

[MinnesotaEric]

How do you go about buying bitcoin? If I wanted to buy $5000 worth of bitcoin as an investment, how would I do that?

Here in the states, if your state has granted it, you can purchase Bitcoin through Fidelity. Otherwise, set up a Robinhood or Coinbase account (both are USA-based). Definitely check with your existing brokerage as they may already be set up for it. Also you can gain exposure through any of the Bitcoin ETFs. I own both FBTC (Fidelity's ETF) and IBIT (Blackrock's ETF) in a retirement account.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Ok, so Bitcoin (and similar) people often miss the point. Its not really meant as an investment, but a means of transaction. Look at El Salvador; they moved to it because it saves readmitted money without the added fees from Western Union and other wire services, allowing something like an extra 7% of their people's money in.

El Salvador's Bitcoin story is like a roadmap for nation states recovering from inflation and debt. Back in 2021 they made Bitcoin fiat currency and began both buying it as well as mining it (powered by a volcano-fueled geothermal power plant). El Salvador has been pressured by the International Money Fund to not use Bitcoin, and in the past month, El Salvador made Bitcoin "voluntary," rather than fiat currency but Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining is taught in its public schools and the nation is super pleased with its volcanic mining operations.

In fact El Salvador's Bitcoin experience has been so successful, they are looking to build a "Bitcoin city" powered by geo-thermal. Since El Salvador doesn't have any taxes on Bitcoin gains, they are attracting more and more interest from foreign investors helping them build out their infrastructure. El Salvador isn't out of the woods yet, but it appear that El Salvador is moving in the right direction.

 

[paulsharvey]

It also can be useful if your doing transactions between countries when one suddenly doesn't want to play ball. I don't even mean N. Korea or Iran, or anything like that. I've heard stories (don't know that it 100% true) of middle class white farmers trying to get assets out of the SAR, and the government blocking transfers. Even moving USD to something like Tanzania, or whatever. Then we add problems like Belarussian Rubles to something like Japanese Yen; that would likely take 3 or 4 transfers/conversations. Bit Coin can be bought in Minsk and cashed out in Yokohama, without multiple currency conversions.

Also, anyone who moves or messes with money, often Offical conversions aren't as easy, or clean. Don't know now, but if you wanted to buy USD with J-dollars (Jamaican), you had a limit per day at official exchange, and then you would have to buy them off market, at a Much worse exchange.

 

[etpm]

I've heard stories (don't know that it 100% true) of middle class white farmers trying to get assets out of the SAR, and the government blocking transfers

Not middle class black farmers? Or brown farmers? Why only white?
Eric

 

[paulsharvey]

Not middle class black farmers? Or brown farmers? Why only white?
Eric

It's the SAR. Not many black farmers trying to get their assets and flee to better places. Frankly, not many black farmers with much assets. The white (and Indian) business folks don't seem to be as affected, I guess because they can move a bit at a time; but for a good sized farm, it's going to be a single large sale, and get out of dodge, and try to start a new life somewhere better. They are kinda the modern day Kulaks, not weathly enough to do much, but wealthy enough for the lowest to target, and the richest to defect blame too.

SAR= South African Republic

But regardless of that in particular, most countries try to avoid letting people take the money and get it out. Same could be in Turkey, PRC, Canada, or where ever. Even taking money earned in US to Mexico, often involves additional taxes and bribes to get it there. Also, I'm not poking at those places, if a multi billionaire US citizen wanted to convert all of his money to Yuan, and leave, I'm guessing DHS or another alphabet group would make their life hard.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Interesting to me no one is concerned by Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin.
Bitcoin started by the unknown, ethereal, untangeable, largest owner unknown.

 

[Snobdds]

The entire thing with bitcoin is to create scarcity. Scarcity is the thing they believe will drive higher prices long term.

Full disclosure, I own bitcoin.

With that said, I am fully aware there is zero underlying assets supporting bitcoin. It's all a belief in something.

One thing about a currency is it must be transferable in many different denominations. For example, $1,10, 100 etc. Currency must easy to scale to support buying anything from $1.00 to $1,000 conveniently. Will bitcoin have this, Nope. WIll someone really use bitcoin as the preferred money to buy my bike for sale for .6258 bitcoin? Nope. It's not a easily transferable currency, unless both parties have the technical ability to make it work, which is new for this world, a technical component to buy and sell. Also, the value changes so fast that one must look up what the value is constanly to figure out what they have. For these resons, it will never be a currency.

It's a speculative investment that has no intrinsic value. Never forget this.

I am hoping when I want to sell my bitcoins, I can. Just like with gold and silver, it's easy to buy, but trying to off load it at scale is next to impossible.