# Bitcoin (BTCC) ETF



## Gator13

I believe BTCC ETF is supposed to launch on February 18th. Anyone buying? I might buy 10k for the heck of it. The Gambling Portfolio thread is to blame for my thinking. My conservative approach does quite well, but lacks excitement so it might be time to start a gambling portfolio of my own.


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## Ponderling

I'm not big on this, but hopefully this etf launch will kill off all the radio ads in my market for the provate trading platforms for cryptos.

I cannot see where the manager is worth the 1% what I believe was the proposed MER for this fund.


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## nathan79

I would only put this in a TFSA, otherwise it makes more sense to hold Bitcoin directly and avoid the 1% fee.


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## jargey3000

what about this QBTC, QBTC.U ETF that trades in the TSX?
( not to be confused with the LGBTQ sector...😈)


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## jargey3000

nathan79 said:


> I would only put this in a TFSA, otherwise it makes more sense to hold Bitcoin directly and avoid the 1% fee.


 what's the easiest way for a newbie to "hold Bitcoin directly"?


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## m3s

@jargey3000 BTCC has lower fees and lower premium than QBTC and others from what I can tell. BTCC is supposed to hold BTC directly

The easiest way to buy BTC directly will be Voyager when it launches in Canada. There's also Binance and Kraken but I think they still require CAD wire or payment at Canada Post


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## MrMatt

The big concern with these crypto ETFs is if they actually have the assets they claim to have.

When you buy GLD ETF, it seems unclear if they actually have physical custody of the gold they claim to.
The auditors are also unclear.

For the bitcoin ETF, I'd bet that they won't publicly disclose where the assets of the ETF are.
Your bitcoin might just be a ledger entry at an exchange










Top 100 Richest Bitcoin Addresses and Bitcoin distribution


Top 100 Richest Bitcoin Addresses. Bitcoin distribution.




bitinfocharts.com




You can see that several top exchanges are there, so at least in theory it seems they have something to back it up, something Quadriga apparently never did.

If I was going to invest $10k, I would go, get a wallet, and actually buy and hold myself.


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## sags

Will they allow shorting of the ETF ?


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## andrewf

Ponderling said:


> I'm not big on this, but hopefully this etf launch will kill off all the radio ads in my market for the provate trading platforms for cryptos.
> 
> I cannot see where the manager is worth the 1% what I believe was the proposed MER for this fund.


I thought spreads/fee on BTC trading were actually pretty high. So this might help to make BTC trading more liquid. However, it has a similar risk as gold ETFs, with the added risk that the fund can be 'robbed' more easily than with a physical asset.


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## james4beach

I'm not sure why everyone is acting like these are "firsts". There are quite a few bitcoin ETFs in Canada and even Horizons is planning to launch one soon. And I posted this thread two months ago about a new bitcoin ETF









Canadian Bitcoin ETF


There is now a bitcoin ETF in Canada: BTCG.UN It comes with a 1.8% management fee. It's a closed end fund, so there will be a premium or discount to NAV. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-s-ci-financial-completes-72-million-ipo-of-bitcoin-fund-1.1537301...




www.canadianmoneyforum.com





Bitcoin, just like TSLA and GameStop, is all the rage right now.

If you read the prospectus of these things it's incredibly scary. As @andrewf says, the funds can be easily robbed, could be totally wiped out through a cyber security breach and you will be left with NOTHING. And you are fully informed of the risk because you diligently read the Prospectus of course.

Read that link above for some excerpts from the Prospectus. It's very interesting. For example "It is possible the bitcoin protocol has *undiscovered flaws* which could result in the loss of some or all of the assets held by the Fund."

Investing in bitcoin is a dangerous game. It's even possible for some people or group to _take over the blockchain_ through a majority and ruin the entire mechanism. People have no idea what game they are getting into with these.


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## Beaver101

^


> Bitcoin, just like TSLA and GameStop, is all the rage right now.


 ... sounds like buying free air with real money, just like blockchain, AI, etc., etc., ... nothing but "concepts" or pulling dust particles out from thin air. 

I think a joint stock is waaay safer than these - at least there is a company that cranks out /grow a physical product.


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## Gator13

Alice_Yu5 said:


> If you think of investing as a gambling, then you may make a few times and not last for good luck. Investment is the need to look at things beyond their own value. When you hesitate, you have made up your mind. The current BTCC market is still very volatile. This needs to be observed again, but according to the current trend, it is more to go long.


Let's call it an active trading account instead that can be used to trade/hold stocks that I typically wouldn't. Maybe 0.5% of my investments.


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## nathan79

james4beach said:


> I'm not sure why everyone is acting like these are "firsts". There are quite a few bitcoin ETFs in Canada and even Horizons is planning to launch one soon. And I posted this thread two months ago about a new bitcoin ETF


This is the first "real" ETF. Apparently the others were closed-end funds. The premium to NAV could swing wildly when the BTC value fluctuated. The ETF will buy or sell Bitcoin each day, so the premium should be much more stable.


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## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> I thought spreads/fee on BTC trading were actually pretty high. So this might help to make BTC trading more liquid. However, it has a similar risk as gold ETFs, with the added risk that the fund can be 'robbed' more easily than with a physical asset.


Not really, one exchange charges 0.5% -> 0.03% as your trade value changes, as long as it's within the exchange.
They do charge more for fiat conversion
You have to realize right now, the cost to make a single bitcoin transaction on chain is about $30 US.




__





Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee


In depth view into Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee including historical data from 2009, charts and stats.




ycharts.com


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## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> Bitcoin is a dangerous game. It's even possible for some people or group to _take over the blockchain_ through a majority and ruin the entire mechanism. People have no idea what game they are getting into with these.


What? a majority can control something? OMG!!!

Did you know in real world we people take over entire countries through a majority?


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## hfp75

I dont know 100% but im guessing Horizons btc fund will be a swap/derivative.... you cant steel those btc.... they dont exist. National bank the counter party swap could refuse to pay though, so same outcome but NB isnt gonna stiff people like that. I like the idea of a swap structure better for btc. While im gonna hold 2-2.5% btc, Im not committed to Purpose or Horizons right now... but I'm after open ended funds on this one.... im waiting to get more info on the Horizons product....

having said this i do agree cryptos are like buying air.... they are only worth what the next guys willing to pay, but heck usd & cad get printed in the basement.....


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## doctrine

Buying Bitcoin at an all time high strikes me as a experiment in bag holding. There are something like 8000 cryptocurrencies out there - more than stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Unlimited quantities of numbers on a computer system that can be infinitely recreated by anyone at any time. No wonder bankers are tripping over themselves to offer access to people - try to get your piece of the free money tree before it inevitably collapses on itself.


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## MrMatt

doctrine said:


> Buying Bitcoin at an all time high strikes me as a experiment in bag holding. There are something like 8000 cryptocurrencies out there - more than stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Unlimited quantities of numbers on a computer system that can be infinitely recreated by anyone at any time. No wonder bankers are tripping over themselves to offer access to people - try to get your piece of the free money tree before it inevitably collapses on itself.


Buying Google and Amazon and Apple at an all time high worked out well for me.

You're right, there are lots of stocks, and cryptocurrencies out there, also lots of bond and debt instruments.
There are apparently 9600 mutual funds in the US (quick google search)
The question is which of the thousands are worth buying.

Just because some, or many of the available options aren't good investments, doesn't mean the whole asset class is bad.

The Crypto boom is just like the Tech Boom, where they were getting massive IPO's for all sorts of silly ideas. Most of those tech companies were dumb, and not worth it.
Today there are lots of ICO's, most of them are dumb, and not worth it.

However there remains the opportunity that there will be value.


Additionally regarding digital assets. Digital assets are a thing now.
Do you realize that Fortnite had almost 2 billion dollars in revenue last year? 
Do you know what the users got for those billions? A different appearance in the game, and the ability to give their character different dance moves.
You can play the exact same game, without paying a penny.


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## JM1983

.


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## fireseeker

MrMatt said:


> Additionally regarding digital assets. Digital assets are a thing now.
> Do you realize that Fortnite had almost 2 billion dollars in revenue last year?
> Do you know what the users got for those billions? A different appearance in the game, and the ability to give their character different dance moves.
> You can play the exact same game, without paying a penny.


Sounds like those people bought themselves some entertainment.

Is the good crypto entertaining?


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## MrMatt

fireseeker said:


> Sounds like those people bought themselves some entertainment.
> 
> Is the good crypto entertaining?


They see them as real assets, even if they're just digital.
Pokemon players "collect" them.


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## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> I thought spreads/fee on BTC trading were actually pretty high. So this might help to make BTC trading more liquid. However, it has a similar risk as gold ETFs, with the added risk that the fund can be 'robbed' more easily than with a physical asset.



View attachment 21286

Regarding the spread, this is a screenshot from a smaller exchange showing the bid/ask on BTC/USDT, not particularly deep, but not too bad.
FYI, I am not registered for fiat on that platform.


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## james4beach

I'm very skeptical that it's possible to do the BTC arbitrage needed, for an open ended ETF. Small day to day inflows/outflows, yes, no problem because the custodian (probably the Winklevoss Twins) will happily trade BTC with the funds, and arbitrage will be OK.

But once you get larger inflows/outflows, BTC will have to be traded with the open market. That's a big problem because BTC trades don't settle particularly fast. You actually have to wait a very long time for the trade to be locked in or confirmed, possibly over 24 hours!

There is a severe mismatch between the liquidity of an ETF and the liquidity of BTC.

This can expose the fund to really weird problems. On top of it, the "marketplace" is highly suspicious and there is lots of evidence of price manipulation, spoofing, and fake prices in general. I would never invest in a bitcoin ETF.


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## nathan79

james4beach said:


> But once you get larger inflows/outflows, BTC will have to be traded with the open market. That's a big problem because BTC trades don't settle particularly fast. You actually have to wait a very long time for the trade to be locked in or confirmed, possibly over 24 hours!


I would say it depends... if you specify a very low fee, it could take days to confirm, or never confirm at all. However, if you put a reasonable fee on the transaction, it should confirm pretty quickly. Most wallets will calculate an optimal fee to be included in the next block. I did a transaction yesterday and was included in the next block for $11.56 CAD.

Current fee to be included in the next block is about 102 sat/byte. Bitcoin Fees for Transactions | bitcoinfees.earn.com

For the median transaction size of *224 bytes*, this results in a fee of *22,848 satoshis*.
*(14.14 CAD)*

However, the actual fee would be less if using segwit, ie. segregated witness (there's some complex math involved, but I find it's usually about 30% less than the standard fee).

I've probably done dozens, if not hundreds of transactions and never waited more than a few hours, except when I purposely set a very low fee.

Most exchanges will let you trade after 3 confirmations, or about half an hour assuming you're included in the next block.


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## james4beach

nathan79 said:


> I've probably done dozens, if not hundreds of transactions and never waited more than a few hours, except when I purposely set a very low fee.


Yeah but your transactions are very different than an ETF which is moving millions of $ worth of bitcion.

I looked into this a bit more and BTCC will use the Gemini custodian, which means the Winklevoss Twins will be selling bitcoins to them. They are now the second or third Canadian bitcoin ETF to use Gemini.

Think about how great this is for the Winklevoss Twins. They have a massive position in BTC, but they also run this exchange. So when there's public interest in BTC, like this new Purpose ETF, this gives Winklevoss a way to "unload" their BTC by selling them to the ETF.

This is how they solved their original problem: sitting on $1 billion of bitcoins, but no way to sell them! You can't just liquidate a position like that.

But now they can...

Remember, for every buyer, there is a seller. I think it would be worth looking into the net change in Winklevoss BTC holdings, say before they created Gemini, versus now.


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## sags

Good observatiion.....the whales have a condundrum on how to dump their coins.

Satoshi has over 1 million bitcoins. Imagine what a dump of those would do to the market price.

So they have to piddle around with a few coins here and a few coins there to extract USD over time.

The Winkevoss twins can now bring in the other whales to offload their bitcoins........for a fee of course.

Watch the bitcoin markets live and people are buying and selling satoshis........and there are 100 million satoshis in a bitcoin.

That is how some calculate bitcoins will be worth $1 million if every satoshi was worth the lowest denomination of fiat of 1 penny.


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## sags

Grayscale does the same thing. They buy bitcoins and sell shares of bitcoins for a profit.

The "players" are making tons of money from bitcoins. When it plops....they will already have their cash stashed away in USD in a centralized bank.....


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## sags

The people who are expert traders are way ahead of the small retail investor in bitcoins or anything else.

Expert options trader Jon Najarian revealed on CNBC that he shorted GME stock and added hedges.....such that if GME stock was worth more than $60 in April he would lose a maximum of $45,000 USD.

But.........if GME stock fell below $60 per share and was around say $30 in April........he would make a profit of $300,000 or thereabouts.

The dirty little secret that bitcoin promoters don't talk about is that much of the bitcoin purchasing is in small quantities by people around the world who are dirt poor and desperate. Just go on a bitcoin forum and read the comments section for awhile and you learn these buyers don't have play money to lose.

In their desperation they see bitcoins as a way to escape their poverty. By the time it all comes unglued.......the wealthy will walk away with their money.


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## james4beach

sags said:


> the whales have a condundrum on how to dump their coins.
> . . .
> The Winkevoss twins can now bring in the other whales to offload their bitcoins........for a fee of course.


I suspect this is what's happening, and it could explain why bitcoin is suddenly being pumped so aggressively in the media.

The large holders (hedge funds etc) have spent some time loading up, and now they've developed good infrastructure to sell. To be able to sell it, they need the public to become bag holders.

The classic way this is always done on Wall Street is, you whip up excitement and get the dumb public to buy the mutual funds (ETFs these days) so you can sell to them, _without tanking the price_. You have "shills" talk about it on business TV and endorse it.

Today, it's the same old Wall Street technique, but with a new, unregulated security. Good luck to all the buyers! Who knows, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this time, Wall Street isn't looking for bag holders.


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## Rich1975

sags said:


> The people who are expert traders are way ahead of the small retail investor in bitcoins or anything else.
> 
> Expert options trader Jon Najarian revealed on CNBC that he shorted GME stock and added hedges.....such that if GME stock was worth more than $60 in April he would lose a maximum of $45,000 USD.
> 
> But.........if GME stock fell below $60 per share and was around say $30 in April........he would make a profit of $300,000 or thereabouts.
> 
> The dirty little secret that bitcoin promoters don't talk about is that much of the bitcoin purchasing is in small quantities by people around the world who are dirt poor and desperate. Just go on a bitcoin forum and read the comments section for awhile and you learn these buyers don't have play money to lose.
> 
> In their desperation they see bitcoins as a way to escape their poverty. By the time it all comes unglued.......the wealthy will walk away with their money.


 The poor are allowed to make money too. They are also allowed to lose money and make bad financial decisions. If they want to put 500 dollars in a hedge fund they should be able to. Having certain investments limited only to high net worth individuals or accredited investors is inequitable, and I think in the next 10-15 years you will see this change.


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## MrMatt

Rich1975 said:


> The poor are allowed to make money too. They are also allowed to lose money and make bad financial decisions. If they want to put 500 dollars in a hedge fund they should be able to. Having certain investments limited only to high net worth individuals or accredited investors is inequitable, and I think in the next 10-15 years you will see this change.


I think it's also important that even wealthier people can be bad with money.
Doctors are a notorious example of poor money managers.

I understand the idea of "qualified investor", but I think the criteria aren't necessarily appropriate.


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## andrewf

Rich1975 said:


> The poor are allowed to make money too. They are also allowed to lose money and make bad financial decisions. If they want to put 500 dollars in a hedge fund they should be able to. Having certain investments limited only to high net worth individuals or accredited investors is inequitable, and I think in the next 10-15 years you will see this change.


It's a lot like buying a scratch ticket, which the poor are also disproportionately like to do.


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## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> It's a lot like buying a scratch ticket, which the poor are also disproportionately like to do.


And middle class are more likely to go to Vegas, and wealthy are more likely to go to Monaco


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## sags

If there was a lottery and the grand prize was 10 bitcoins (current value of $500,000 USD) or a home valued at $500,000........which would they choose ?

I think bitcoin will be a success when most people would choose the bitcoins.


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## sags

Another company has applied to the OSC for crypto ETF approval.


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## MrMatt

sags said:


> If there was a lottery and the grand prize was 10 bitcoins (current value of $500,000 USD) or a home valued at $500,000........which would they choose ?
> 
> I think bitcoin will be a success when most people would choose the bitcoins.


It's easier to sell 10 BTC than a house.

I'd put a 10% discount on BTC and 20% discount on the house, so I see them as
$450k or $400k


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## newfoundlander61

I think this ETF starts trading this morning.


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## m3s

newfoundlander61 said:


> I think this ETF starts trading this morning.


I see BTCC.B (CAD unhedged) and BTCC.U (USD) trading on Questrade



sags said:


> If there was a lottery and the grand prize was 10 bitcoins (current value of $500,000 USD) or a home valued at $500,000........which would they choose ?
> 
> I think bitcoin will be a success when most people would choose the bitcoins.


In that case it's already successful

A $500k house in Canada can be anything from a shitty shanty that requires a full reno in a major city to an overpriced place in a poor location that's been on the market for years. Even crazier if you compare around the world it's all over the place

Older demographics got their wealth from houses but this is no longer the easy money. I think most tech aware middle aged and younger would chose the BTC especially in the US. It's similar to what houses were to the older generation

Canada seems to trail US trends by 5 years or so


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## Beaver101

> ... Older demographics got their wealth from houses but this is no longer the easy money. I think most tech aware middle aged and younger would chose the BTC especially in the US. It's similar to what houses were to the older generation
> 
> Canada seems to trail US trends by 5 years or so


 ... so what do these high tech(? or more like marketing) self-made millionaires/billionaires eventually do with their gazillion riches? I don't suppose they would remain nomadic. I'm curious.

Now where did that Canadian Crypto guy (Mr. Cotton?) settle in (aside from 6' deep or in the virtual world) eventually? India or Halifax???


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## newfoundlander61

I remember this guy would call BNN Market Call on a regular basis asking the guests about Bitcoin and just about all of them said not to buy any. He would get so frustrated with their responses, haven't heard him call in a long while.


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## MrMatt

Prices are nuts, mining is insanely profitable right now, almost $7/kWh on recent GPU's


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## sags

The bitcoin promoters/marketers have convinced a lot of people that they must be "missing something" in the crypto story.

They know it doesn't make any financial sense, but bitcoin trudges onward and upward., so they are scratching their heads and buying some bitcoins........just in case. It is not unlike Donald Trump's relentless attacks on normalcy and decency. It eventually wore people down.

I look at it and think....for what purpose will I ever need them and can't think of any.

The ONLY reason for me to buy them is hoping to sell them for a profit in the future. I am thinking buying in at $51,000 would be bad timing.

My mama always told me.......a fool and his money are soon parted.


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## sags

For those interested......Congressional hearings are under way about Robinhood. It is being carried live on CNBC.

Just for info....if you have a subscription to Sirius XM you can listen to it on various devices.


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## sags

Just to clarify....is it the assumption of bitcoin promoters/owners that at some point in time people will be forced to use bitcoins and therefore forced to pay people for their bitcoins ?

If that is the case, I can understand bitcoins having value.......like other commodities such as oil, wheat or a rental unit to live in.

If not........where is the foundation of future value ?


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## MrMatt

sags said:


> Just to clarify....is it the assumption of bitcoin promoters/owners that at some point in time people will be forced to use bitcoins and therefore forced to pay people for their bitcoins ?
> 
> If that is the case, I can understand bitcoins having value.......like other commodities such as oil, wheat or a rental unit to live in.
> 
> If not........where is the foundation of future value ?


Well you can use bitcoin to buy a Tesla
Myself I think that the value of Bitcoin is just a shared delusion, just like fiat currency.

Ethereum, or other platform currencies have a functional us, which gives it real value What that value is is open for discussion.


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## nathan79

sags said:


> Just to clarify....is it the assumption of bitcoin promoters/owners that at some point in time people will be forced to use bitcoins and therefore forced to pay people for their bitcoins ?
> 
> If that is the case, I can understand bitcoins having value.......like other commodities such as oil, wheat or a rental unit to live in.
> 
> If not........where is the foundation of future value ?


Bitcoin gives people control over their money by removing the bank as an intermediary. You can transfer an unlimited amount of money in minutes to anyone worldwide without permission from any third party. If you try that with a bank your options are limited by daily and weekly withdrawal limits and they can decide to close your account for any reason without notice.


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## sags

MrMatt said:


> Well you can use bitcoin to buy a Tesla
> Myself I think that the value of Bitcoin is just a shared delusion, just like fiat currency.
> 
> Ethereum, or other platform currencies have a functional us, which gives it real value What that value is is open for discussion.


The price of a Tesla 3 in Canada is listed as $51,600 CAN. What is the bitcoin price ?





__





tesla model 3 price canada - Google Search






www.google.com


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## sags

nathan79 said:


> Bitcoin gives people control over their money by removing the bank as an intermediary. You can transfer an unlimited amount of money in minutes to anyone worldwide without permission from any third party. If you try that with a bank your options are limited by daily and weekly withdrawal limits and they can decide to close your account for any reason without notice.


Bitcoins are bought and sold in USD.........so the banks are the intermediary to an exchange or payment processors.


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## fireseeker

nathan79 said:


> Bitcoin gives people control over their money by removing the bank as an intermediary.


I struggle to understand how this is true.
Yes, the bank has been removed as an intermediary. But how is that giving people more control over their money?
There is still an intermediary -- it's the cryptocurrency itself. 
A person converts a bunch of their CAD or USD into, say, BTC. Once that happens, you have ceded control over your money to the vicissitudes of BTC's valuation. (Fiat is different in that it is backed by the guarantee of the state. And original mediums of exchange -- like goats or wheat, for instance, had intrinsic value.) BTC could double, or go to zero in the time you hold it.
To me, that sounds like less control over my money.


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## MrMatt

sags said:


> Bitcoins are bought and sold in USD.........so the banks are the intermediary to an exchange or payment processors.


You can buy bitcoin with USD, but it's not the only option.

Uhh I've never bought any cryptocurrency with USD or through a bank.
You can easily go buy it cash in several local convenience stores if you want, and they take CAD$, not that I'd use them.


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## m3s

fireseeker said:


> To me, that sounds like less control over my money.


Governments are printing trillions of fiat. What influence do you have over that?

Issuance of BTC and others is written in code well in advance. You are measuring its value with a fiat that has no intrinsic value or definitive issuance. then of course it will always fluctuate in terms of fiat

I love reading the crypto critics because it all applies to fiat and yet


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## MrMatt

fireseeker said:


> I struggle to understand how this is true.
> Yes, the bank has been removed as an intermediary. But how is that giving people more control over their money?
> There is still an intermediary -- it's the cryptocurrency itself.
> A person converts a bunch of their CAD or USD into, say, BTC. Once that happens, you have ceded control over your money to the vicissitudes of BTC's valuation. (Fiat is different in that it is backed by the guarantee of the state. And original mediums of exchange -- like goats or wheat, for instance, had intrinsic value.) BTC could double, or go to zero in the time you hold it.
> To me, that sounds like less control over my money.


What do you mean "backed by the guarantee of the state"?
They make absolutely no claims what you can actually get for a dollar.
Just like bitcoin makes no claim what you can actually get for a bitcoin.
Neither has intrinsic value.

If I have a wallet with currency X, I can take it from my wallet, and give it to you, and you can put it in your wallet with no intermediary.
We can do this with physical currency, or most crypto currencies.

If I have some CAD, I have ceded control over my money to vicissitudes of the CAD valuation, if I exchange it to Bolivars, or Deutschemarks, then my wealth is in those currencies.

It is unlikely that a G7 currency will go to zero, because the shared agreement of value is very strong.

However if you offered me Tuvaluan dollars, I'd assign them no value.
Honestly I think Dogecoin has more real worth value than Tuvaluan dollars.


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## fireseeker

m3s said:


> Governments are printing trillions of fiat. What influence do you have over that?


I have a vote. 
In the history of human societies, this is a considerable power.


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## sags

_Governments are printing trillions of fiat. What influence do you have over that?_

None......except for voting for the politicans who make the decisions. The dollars they "print" are designated as legal tender and are backed by the government.

Retailers are required by law to accept CAD as payment for goods and services. There is no requirement they accept bitcoins.

What control do bitcoin owners have over the miners who control transaction fees ?

_Issuance of BTC and others is written in code well in advance. You are measuring its value with a fiat that has no intrinsic value or definitive issuance. then of course it will always fluctuate in terms of fiat_

So bitcoin value is based on a fiat that has no value ?


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## fireseeker

MrMatt said:


> What do you mean "backed by the guarantee of the state"?
> They make absolutely no claims what you can actually get for a dollar.
> Just like bitcoin makes no claim what you can actually get for a bitcoin.
> Neither has intrinsic value.
> 
> If I have a wallet with currency X, I can take it from my wallet, and give it to you, and you can put it in your wallet with no intermediary.
> We can do this with physical currency, or most crypto currencies.
> 
> If I have some CAD, I have ceded control over my money to vicissitudes of the CAD valuation, if I exchange it to Bolivars, or Deutschemarks, then my wealth is in those currencies.
> 
> It is unlikely that a G7 currency will go to zero, because the shared agreement of value is very strong.
> 
> However if you offered me Tuvaluan dollars, I'd assign them no value.
> Honestly I think Dogecoin has more real worth value than Tuvaluan dollars.


The state guarantees the dollar as legal tender. Practically, this means a mainstream seller in Canada must accept my payment in Canadian dollars. This is a big plus!

You are correct that those Canadian dollars can vary in value. But its long history suggests that that variance will not be dramatic from day to day or week to week. This is also a plus!

The direct wallet-to-wallet exchange you describe is appealing. I'd want safeguards to prevent money-laundering etc. But I can certainly see it as being useful. 
It's just hard to see its current utility if the only medium of exchange is crypto.


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## MrMatt

sags said:


> _Governments are printing trillions of fiat. What influence do you have over that?_
> 
> None......except for voting for the politicans who make the decisions. The dollars they "print" are designated as legal tender and are backed by the government.
> 
> Retailers are required by law to accept CAD as payment for goods and services. There is no requirement they accept bitcoins.


No they aren't.
If they are, please cite the relevant legislation.

Lenders are required to accept CAD as payment for debt (FYI that's what legal tender actually means)



> What control do bitcoin owners have over the miners who control transaction fees ?


Well you can offer however much you want for them to process your transaction.
It's up to the miners if they will accept your offer or not.



> _Issuance of BTC and others is written in code well in advance. You are measuring its value with a fiat that has no intrinsic value or definitive issuance. then of course it will always fluctuate in terms of fiat_
> 
> So bitcoin value is based on a fiat that has no value ?


No, bitcoin and fiat are both value based on a shared agreement of value.

Lots of people agree that $4 CDN is equal to a big mac, therefore it is.
Just like for a while we agreed that one btc was $5k, now we agree it's $50k.
Barrel of oil, Fortnite vbucks, share of Tesla stock, share of Gamestop stock, 1 hour of our time.
They all have values that we agree on.


----------



## MrMatt

fireseeker said:


> The state guarantees the dollar as legal tender. Practically, this means a mainstream seller in Canada must accept my payment in Canadian dollars. This is a big plus!
> 
> You are correct that those Canadian dollars can vary in value. But its long history suggests that that variance will not be dramatic from day to day or week to week. This is also a plus!
> 
> The direct wallet-to-wallet exchange you describe is appealing. I'd want safeguards to prevent money-laundering etc. But I can certainly see it as being useful.
> It's just hard to see its current utility if the only medium of exchange is crypto.


When a crypto currency transaction is done, it's done.
When you cash a check, it never fully 100% clears.

That's one advantage, plus the lower fees on some coins.


----------



## sags

I pay a credit card every month directly from my bank account. It updates immediately and there are no transaction fees.

What improvement would paying in bitcoins create ? Answer.........none.

On the issue of legal tender.........if you buy something you create a debt that can be paid in CAD. 

The vendor may choose to not accept a debit or credit cards due to the fees......but they will accept cash.

If I fill up my car and then go to pay in cash and the cashier says he won't accept my CAD.......I am leaving with free gas.

If they call the police....they can explain to them that I offered legal tender and they refused to accept it.


----------



## m3s

fireseeker said:


> I have a vote.
> In the history of human societies, this is a considerable power.


Once again, the critics clearly don't know the fundamentals of what they are criticizing.

You can vote far more often with far more power and transparency in digital currencies.. and the governance is improving

How do you think open source projects work



sags said:


> I pay a credit card every month directly from my bank account. It updates immediately and there are no transaction fees.
> 
> What improvement would paying in bitcoins create ? Answer.........none.


Visa makes billions a year on merchant fees. Just because they are not transparent to you does not mean they don't exist!

Why do you think visa and mastercard are getting in to crypto transactions this year? Why would they bother if there was no improvement?

Stick your head back in the sand


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> I pay a credit card every month directly from my bank account. It updates immediately and there are no transaction fees.


Every credit card transaction has transaction fee.
A relatively large one actually.


> What improvement would paying in bitcoins create ? Answer.........none.


Of course, because bitcoin is the wrong tool for that job.



> On the issue of legal tender.........if you buy something you create a debt that can be paid in CAD.
> 
> The vendor may choose to not accept a debit or credit cards due to the fees......but they will accept cash.


They don't have to. Though most do.

Please cite the relevant law requiring cash to be accepted for all transactions.


----------



## MrMatt

MrMatt said:


> Please cite the relevant law requiring cash to be accepted for all transactions.


"
The Bank of Canada says it's up to sellers to determine what kinds of payment they will accept for transactions, and there is "no law" that would require anyone to accept bank notes or any other form of payment for a commercial transaction.
"


https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cash-coronavirus-questions-answered-1.5609691



sags, please stop spreading disinformation


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> No they aren't.
> If they are, please cite the relevant legislation.


Canada's Currency Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-52





Currency Act


Federal laws of Canada




laws-lois.justice.gc.ca





Some history is described here as well, mentioning the Act. It matches my description below, which explains that currencies of different countries are permitted in Canada, not just the CAD.

Under 'Accounts, Contracts and other Matters Relating to Money' there are two sections. One refers to public/government payments. The other is "Contracts, etc" which refers to private or commercial payments. I see three options listed, and the Act seems to say you must do one of these

pay in CAD, or
pay in the currency of another country, or
pay in a unit made up of two or more countries currencies
So for example, you could arrange for payments in USD (as I do in my business) or even in some unit computed from a mix of Dollars + Pounds + Yen.

But as far as I can tell, a business cannot demand payments in some made up thing like Bitcoin which is not the currency of a country. They can choose Australian Dollars, they can choose Swiss Francs. But they can't demand Bitcoin and refuse to accept normal currency.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> But as far as I can tell, a business cannot demand payments in some made up thing like Bitcoin which is not the currency of a country. They can choose Australian Dollars, they can choose Swiss Francs. But they can't demand Bitcoin and refuse to accept normal currency.


For debts and the fulfillment of contracts, yes.
The currency of Canada or if agreed to another country.

But I am under no obligation to enter into a contract with you for cash.
That's simply not in the law.

Many businesses do not accept physical currency.








Why can't you pay cash at a passport office?


You're out of luck if you show up without a credit card or debit card to pay the $87 passport fee. Cash is not accepted.




www.thestar.com





I don't think it is good policy, however it isn't violating the currency laws.


----------



## sags

Debit and credit cards are paying in cash through an intermediary.

If your point is that a vendor doesn't have to accept physical cash.....paper dollars, that is correct but digital CAD is still CAD.


----------



## nathan79

It's up to the buyer and seller to agree on payment. The seller could ask for seashells if they wanted, but they probably wouldn't make too many sales. 









Past Series


More about the first five series of notes issued by the Bank of Canada.




www.bankofcanada.ca





_Today, money is not just bank notes but takes many different forms: credit cards, debit cards, cheques, and contactless payments using mobile devices. You can pay with any of these forms of money, even though they are not considered “legal tender.” _*In fact, anything can be used if the buyer and seller agree on the form of payment. So “legal tender” has little impact on our everyday lives. *

Transactions made not using a recognized currency are considered barter transactions:
ARCHIVED - Barter Transactions - Canada.ca


----------



## m3s

I'm fine with the CRA treating digital assets, currencies, trades and yield as legitimate assets, currencies, trades and yield for tax purposes

However, you can't turn around and make a law that the same digital assets, currencies, trades and yield are illegitimate after taxing them. Again.. the USA had a law that required all transportation companies employed a veterinarian on staff even for their "horseless carriage" transportation business. Governments tend to be made up of older gentlemen who don't understand emerging technologies.

Thankfully people could still operate their horseless carriage automobiles long before the government adapted their silly laws


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> I'm fine with the CRA treating digital assets, currencies, trades and yield as legitimate assets, currencies, trades and yield for tax purposes
> 
> However, you can't turn around and make a law that the same digital assets, currencies, trades and yield are illegitimate after taxing them. Again.. the USA had a law that required all transportation companies employed a veterinarian on staff even for their "horseless carriage" transportation business. Governments tend to be made up of older gentlemen who don't understand emerging technologies.
> 
> Thankfully people could still operate their horseless carriage automobiles long before the government adapted their silly laws


Sure you can, there is literally no limit to the power of government.
Which is why it is so important to have proper checks and balances.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Sure you can, there is literally no limit to the power of government.
> Which is why it is so important to have proper checks and balances.


The Biden administration has a few people who are very pro fintech and it's very possible the US will relax rules and allow adoption of various kooky payment alternatives.

His election was seen as a positive for crypto currencies and fintech in general. It looks like your buddies Biden and Harris may be the best thing ever, for your crypo koin passion.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> The Biden administration has a few people who are very pro fintech and it's very possible the US will relax rules and allow adoption of various kooky payment alternatives.
> 
> His election was seen as a positive for crypto currencies and fintech in general. It looks like your buddies Biden and Harris may be the best thing ever, for your crypo koin passion.


They're still moving forward with ID requirements, and many experts think they're only going to permit surveillance coins.


----------



## m3s

Day 1: BTCC was the most traded ETF in Canada. Traded at about 2% premium to BTC.

Day 2: BTCC traded 26x volume of EBIT that launched only 24hrs later. Galaxy Digital files for BTCX

For once Canada is front running the US in something related to digital assets


----------



## m3s

$421M AUM in its first 2 days

$10.51 NAV vs $10.55 CAD close
$10.57 NAV vs $10.57 USD close

Looks like they drop back to NAV towards the end of each day

Will be watching to see how EBIT compares (prospectus looks very similar)


----------



## james4beach

American regulators may not have approved them because Bitcoin ETFs have unique risks, since there are liquidity concerns, and the crypto coin markets themselves are somewhat suspect (may have fake trades, and may be manipulated). There are also unique risks of theft and total loss, unlike traditional stock, bond, or even commodity ETFs.

Canadian regulators may be looser and more permissive. I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing.


----------



## doctrine

Canadian stock securities have loose regulations and pretty rampant manipulation. The US is one of the few countries in the world who will actually send people to serious jail time for financial crimes. Not surprising they are hesitant in allowing direct access to the bitcoin ponzi.


----------



## james4beach

doctrine said:


> Canadian stock securities have loose regulations and pretty rampant manipulation. The US is one of the few countries in the world who will actually send people to serious jail time for financial crimes. Not surprising they are hesitant in allowing direct access to the bitcoin ponzi.


Right, I agree. The US is one of the safest, best regulated markets in the world.

The Canadian regulatory approval is kind shady in this particular case. Usually ETFs file well in advance, publicly. In this case it appears that private conversations happened behind closed doors, so it was a less transparent regulator approval.

My Bay Street contacts were surprised when the ETF was approved. They said they didn't see it coming (nothing had been filed publicly), which is weird.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> No, bitcoin and fiat are both value based on a shared agreement of value.
> 
> Lots of people agree that $4 CDN is equal to a big mac, therefore it is.
> Just like for a while we agreed that one btc was $5k, now we agree it's $50k.
> Barrel of oil, Fortnite vbucks, share of Tesla stock, share of Gamestop stock, 1 hour of our ti


One small detail though... The value of Bitcoin is based on a shared agreement only between those who actually holds them.

Only about 5% of the Canadian population holds Bitcoin. They are the ones that agree with its valuation, not the other 95% of the population.

I don't hold Bitcoin because I don't agree with its current value and with its volatility. I don't hold shares of Tesla because I don't agree with its current value. Though I do hold CAD like 100% of the Canadian population. How CAD is valued depends on how good the Canadian economy is doing and that also depends on the government the Canadians have voted for. We have a consensus agreement and I'm pretty sure my CAD won't lose -50% tomorrow (as it won't gain +100% either). If I fear my CAD will be _slowly_ devalued, I'm much more confident when using those CAD to buy stocks (companies) which are productive assets generating wealth.

Someone may disagree with the government's money printing, but I disagree even more with something that I can't value, that's highly speculative and that's highly volatile, held only by believers and speculators. All characteristics that CAD doesn't have.

When an non-productive asset that can't be valued soars too fast, at some point people who got rich holding it will sell to cash in to something safer and that leads to a bubble pop. If I had bought $100,000 of Bitcoin 2 years ago and it's now worth $1.5M, would I continue holding it? I'd sell it and retire. This kind of situation doesn't happen with my CAD.

I prefer the risk of missing out on this one than the FOMO.

Anyways, that's my uneducated opinion from someone who doesn't really understand Bitcoin, but that's still how I see it at the moment. I'm posting this to be challenged because I'm open-minded and I like adverse opinions.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> One small detail though... The value of Bitcoin is based on a shared agreement only between those who actually holds them.


Not really.
We generally view that the market value of something is what a buyer and seller are willing to exchange it for.
That's how we value stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and all other products.

Bitcoin is valued the exact same way, the prospective buyers and recent sellers are also part of this.



> Only about 5% of the Canadian population holds Bitcoin. They are the ones that agree with its valuation, not the other 95% of the population.


Just because you're a holder doesn't mean you agree with the valuation.
For example, during a hostile takeover, I have been forced to sell at much less than the value of the stock I held.
I'd say most holders of Bitcoin feel it is worth more than the current price, which is why they are holding it.



> I don't hold Bitcoin because I don't agree with its current value and with its volatility. I don't hold shares of Tesla because I don't agree with its current value. Though I do hold CAD like 100% of the Canadian population. How CAD is valued depends on how good the Canadian economy is doing and that also depends on the government the Canadians have voted for. We have a consensus agreement and I'm pretty sure my CAD won't lose -50% tomorrow (as it won't gain +100% either). If I fear my CAD will be _slowly_ devalued, I'm much more confident when using those CAD to buy stocks (companies) which are productive assets generating wealth.


I agree with your valuation on Bitcoin and Tesla.
However I hold CAD as a convenience. I fully expect CAD to dramatically fall in value over the next few years.



> Someone may disagree with the government's money printing, but I disagree even more with something that I can't value, that's highly speculative and that's highly volatile, held only by believers and speculators. All characteristics that CAD doesn't have.


You just described stock investing for the vast majority of the population.



> When an non-productive asset that can't be valued soars too fast, at some point people who got rich holding it will sell to cash in to something safer and that leads to a bubble pop. If I had bought $100,000 of Bitcoin 2 years ago and it's now worth $1.5M, would I continue holding it? I'd sell it and retire. This kind of situation doesn't happen with my CAD.


No the value of CAD is almost certainly going to drop over time.



> I prefer the risk of missing out on this one than the FOMO.


Me too.
and if I change my mind, there will be plenty of time later.
I figured it out and bought Google, Apple and Amazon a bit later, and still made a lot of money.



> Anyways, that's my uneducated opinion from someone who doesn't really understand Bitcoin, but that's still how I see it at the moment. I'm posting this to be challenged because I'm open-minded and I like adverse opinions.


My first rule of investing is
1. If you don't understand how an investment will make you money, don't invest in it.

I think cryptocurrencies have a value. I can't figure it out, because the market is still young.
I also agree it's simply a widely shared delusion that there is value.
However this is the same case for Fiat currency and Company stock.
If the shared "delusion of value" in a particular currency is high, it will have value, if it is low, it won't.
This holds true for Crypto and national currencies. 
In some circumstances Canadian Tire money was considered as good as Canadian dollars, which I understand.


Governments and companies, can basically print however much new currency/stock they want, and there are few options to actually stop them.

That's one advantage of cryptocurrencies, they CAN'T do that, without the agreement of the market participants. To change the rules of a cryptocurrency requires people to stop using the old system and start using the new system.

Everyone can choose if they want to move to the new system, or stay on the old system.

Lets say someone wants to use a "new" version of bitcoin, people can stay on the current bitcoin or move to the new one.
What actually happens is that for a period of time, both "old" and "new" bitcoin will exist, and one may die out. This has already happened many times.

Mostly people agree and simply abandon the old one and move to the new one.
Occasionally people stick to the old one and they both exist going forward.


TLDR.
I like crypto technology, I think it has some real uses. 
I think Bitcoin is the least interesting of the "mainstream" coins.
I have a very very small amount of crypto to understand it ( < $20 for educational purposes)
I can't value it, so I'm not investing in it. (My Rule #1 of investing)


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> Not really.
> We generally view that the market value of something is what a buyer and seller are willing to exchange it for.


But _*if*_ Bitcoin is just a temporary hype between a small set of believers and speculators, won't that create a huge devaluation and liquidity problem if something turns South?

I mean, if I create a cryptocurrency by myself, then start building a hype with my 10 friends, which then create a hype with 100 people, then 1000 people and then once the valuation hype is crazy, I just sell all my holdings, I'm done with it and then those 1000 people start realizing it's worthless because nobody truely wants it anymore other than them, so it would slowly disappear from the lack of interest and lack of intrinsic value. It's even worse than gold because gold has many uses but a string of code has no other uses.

Isn't that a bit like with collectibles that once were highly valued and then became worthless?

At the moment, I'm very curious to know how much of Bitcoin's current value is due to the belief of a disruptive technology vs speculative greed.

I guess that's what creates the huge volatility in hype assets. It starts going up for the right reasons (valuation of a disruptive technology from believers) and as it continues going up, it starts getting pushed higher and higher for the bad reasons (greed, speculation, FOMO from gamblers) and then it pops.

I think the difference I see between stocks and Bitcoins is that stocks are productive assets. The company grows, they make more money, they create wealth and people buy into them to get their share of the profits. Bitcoin acts more like a commodity. A commodity that can't even be consumed. I know it's like paper money, but then the huge volatility and hype just kills its purpose as a currency.

That being said, I also like the tech and the idea and I also like blockchain even more.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> But _*if*_ Bitcoin is just a temporary hype between a small set of believers and speculators, won't that create a huge devaluation and liquidity problem if something turns South?


Well if it isn't worth anything, then of course you'd see a massive drop in price, the sooner the better.



> Isn't that a bit like with collectibles that once were highly valued and then became worthless?


The thing is, they only need to be highly valued by a tiny population to sustain their value.
There are only a limited number of people who will pay big money for Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies, or a Monet.



> At the moment, I'm very curious to know how much of Bitcoin's current value is due to the belief of a disruptive technology vs speculative greed.


That's the $57k dollar question. (bitcoins price right now)



> I think the difference I see between stocks and Bitcoins is that stocks are productive assets. The company grows, they make more money, they create wealth and people buy into them to get their share of the profits. Bitcoin acts more like a commodity. A commodity that can't even be consumed. I know it's like paper money, but then the huge volatility and hype just kills its purpose as a currency.
> 
> That being said, I also like the tech and the idea and I also like blockchain even more.


Well some stocks are productive assets, and some are junk.

I agree, bitcoin is more like a commodity. That's why I think it's one of the least interesting coins.

Platform technlologies like Ethereum are much more interesting, it's designed to be infrastructure and provide something of value.
I think there is a lot of value in Digital infrastructure.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> The thing is, they only need to be highly valued by a tiny population to sustain their value.
> There are only a limited number of people who will pay big money for Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies, or a Monet.


That's true, but then it limits the adoption. I don't want to be paid in Pokemon cards as I don't want to be paid in Bitcoins. But, if I'm not wrong, the pro-Bitcoins would like to see a massive adoption.

I will be willing to use Bitcoins as a currency once it reduces its volatility and once I understand what can make its value *slowly* move up or down.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> That's true, but then it limits the adoption. I don't want to be paid in Pokemon cards as I don't want to be paid in Bitcoins. But, if I'm not wrong, the pro-Bitcoins would like to see a massive adoption.
> 
> I will be willing to use Bitcoins as a currency once it reduces its volatility and once I understand what can make its value *slowly* move up or down.


Limits adoption to people who are interested in using it, which is fine.
Many people don't adopt large numbers of things, for a long time many things we think of basic were not used by most people, and often were mocked.

Indoor plumbing, cell phones, email, credit cards, cars, handwashing.

I don't think Bitcoin is a good currency for everyday use. Quite simply, it isn't capable of fulfilling that role today. 

That being said, Gold isn't a good currency for everyday use either.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> Limits adoption to people who are interested in using it, which is fine.
> Many people don't adopt large numbers of things, for a long time many things we think of basic were not used by most people, and often were mocked.


True. It fits with this curve shown as an argument from disruptive innovation investors.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Many people don't adopt large numbers of things, for a long time many things we think of basic were not used by most people, and often were mocked.


You're neglecting to mention that many people don't jump on board with fads and hype, things which turn out to fizzle and disappear. There is a good reason to be skeptical about grand claims that "everything is different now".

Not every new technology or exciting thing you hear about will turn out to have lasting power.

Do you remember how popular emerging market stocks were a decade ago? Analysts in the media were constantly talking about how the future is in emerging market investment, and tons of ETFs appeared for them. There are some people who started loading big emerging mkt positions into their portfolios (and have been pushing them ever since!)

From 2002-2008, EEM was up over 300%, doing much better than US stocks (which were going nowhere). At the time it looked like it was going to be the future. I remember many guests on CNBC and RobTV/BNN heavily pushing the emerging market investment story.

The crypto coinz are really just another kind of stock, except it's not a stock (and is unregulated), but in people's minds, it's the same thing as a *speculative stock*.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> You're neglecting to mention that many people don't jump on board with fads and hype, things which turn out to fizzle and disappear. There is a good reason to be skeptical about grand claims that "everything is different now".
> 
> Not every new technology or exciting thing you hear about will turn out to have lasting power.
> 
> Do you remember how popular emerging market stocks were a decade ago? Analysts in the media were constantly talking about how the future is in emerging market investment, and tons of ETFs appeared for them. There are some people who started loading big emerging mkt positions into their portfolios (and have been pushing them ever since!)
> 
> From 2002-2008, EEM was up over 300%, doing much better than US stocks (which were going nowhere). At the time it looked like it was going to be the future. I remember many guests on CNBC and RobTV/BNN heavily pushing the emerging market investment story.
> 
> The crypto coinz are really just another kind of stock, except it's not a stock (and is unregulated), but in people's minds, it's the same thing as a *speculative stock*.


I've mentioned earlier that I don't see the value in bitcoin so I don't own any.
I've also remarked often, in this thread, that I'm okay being late to the party if it turns out good.
I've saved far more money than I've lost waiting until I understand.

Yes I remember how popular emerging markets stocks were a decade ago, I bought Unilever to avoid all the problems with emerging market economies.

I'm not a mind reader, and I honestly don't care what's in other peoples minds.
I buy on my understanding of value.

I agree, many people think that crypto or gold or a stock or a bond is all "speculative", where they think it's an asset and you hope it goes up in value.
I think considering blockchain related technologies "currencies" or "investments" is shortsighted and misses the point.

I think we can all agree that Battery powered Electric cars look like the future today.
But you have to realize that many if not most of the pioneers in this space were never commercial success and none of them exist in their original form today.

I remember when people thought computers were a gimmick, and cell phones and the internet and PDAs and digital cameras and so many other technologies it isn't funny.

To me it is obvious and clear that there is a future in Blockchain related technologies.
It's also obvious to me that much of the stuff being promoted is crap that won't stand the test of time.


Lastly Blockchains are incredibly tightly regulated. They're just not regulated by a particular national governmental organization.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> I think we can all agree that Battery powered Electric cars look like the future today.


Sure, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to buy TSLA, NIO or PLUG. For all we know, the traditional auto makers may the best performing stocks going forward a long time, and they certainly will use the same technologies.

I think it's very hard to trade or do any kind of adaptive capital allocation based on these themes and "the world is changing" stories.

Future in blockchain? Hey sure maybe, but you probably get enough exposure through the S&P 500 with its massive weights in Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

I still remember when BRIC was supposed to be the future of everything. Quick, everyone, buy BRIC before you miss your chance.

The reality is that when these "new things" become significant economic forces, all kinds of major companies end up with exposure, and profit from it. I would still argue that the broad indexes like the S&P 500 and TSX Composite will have the best long term returns (10+ years) and beat the traders who attempt to use sector or theme ETFs.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> The reality is that when these "new things" become significant economic forces, all kinds of major companies end up with exposure, and profit from it. I would still argue that the broad indexes like the S&P 500 and TSX Composite will have the best long term returns (10+ years) and beat the traders who attempt to use sector or theme ETFs.


Sure, but core & explore has been an outstanding strategy for myself.

Take that index portfolio, add in a few small positions that turn out to be 5x-10x's and you can be very happy.
I've put maybe 5-10% of my portfolio in higher risk stuff, which has worked out very very well for me.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Take that index portfolio, add in a few small positions that turn out to be 5x-10x's and you can be very happy.
> I've put maybe 5-10% of my portfolio in higher risk stuff, which has worked out very very well for me.


Glad it worked for you, but it did not work well for me. Energy is the most striking example and I bet many here on CMF experienced this. Back around 2005, I was overweight energy. For a while I was long XEG and Suncor. This seemed great for a few years, but the rally fizzled out.

I don't think trading/speculating on individual sectors is a great idea. They are volatile and may not remain strong.

This chart shows XEG versus the TSX Composite. I think this is a good lesson ... betting on the energy sector seemed like a big win for the first 5 years, and still seemed OK at 9 years.

Others have experienced similar things trying to speculate in mining stocks, marijuana, and biotech.


----------



## james4beach

Down 11% today. Wow, what a crazy ETF.

This is going to become a favourite for gamblers. Very high volume (5 million shares) and I saw bid/ask spreads as thin as 1 or 2 cents.


----------



## m3s

I notice the number of BTC per share they post daily is drifting. Hard to say how bad that is and if it corrects unless someone records it every day

$564M AUM reported yesterday so could be $1B before long?


----------



## off.by.10

m3s said:


> I notice the number of BTC per share they post daily is drifting. Hard to say how bad that is and if it corrects unless someone records it every day


I don't know how much change you've seen but it should be slowly reduced by the fund's MER over time, no?


----------



## m3s

off.by.10 said:


> I don't know how much change you've seen but it should be slowly reduced by the fund's MER over time, no?


Makes sense. I'll post this here to see

BTCC.U ETF (USD)
Shares per BTC: 5,258.789
BTC per Share: 0.00019016

BTCC.B ETF (CAD) Non-FX Hedged
Shares per BTC: 6,676.83
BTC per Share: 0.00014977


----------



## james4beach

This could turn into an extremely exciting ETF. It's gonna be party central.

Day traders might get into this. The spreads are tight, and it can move a huge amount in a day. That's what active traders want... imagine that TQQQ and HMMJ had a baby.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> This could turn into an extremely exciting ETF. It's gonna be party central.
> 
> Day traders might get into this. The spreads are tight, and it can move a huge amount in a day. That's what active traders want... imagine that TQQQ and HMMJ had a baby.


If enough day traders will get in there, it might actually stabilize


----------



## andrewf

The volatility is in the underlying, no? Or are we observing big deviations from intraday NAV?


----------



## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> The volatility is in the underlying, no? Or are we observing big deviations from intraday NAV?


I think as more day traders get into bitcoin, the volitility of bitcoin will drop.
There are still a lot of arbitrage opportunities in crypto markets.


----------



## m3s

BiTBO shows the BTCC.U premium at about 1% now. Already much lower than the GBTC premium that a lot of Americans use

EBIT is also there but no calculated premium yet


----------



## MrBlackhill

What about QTBC?

I never took time to read why BTCC is considered the first BTC ETF when there was QBTC already.

Not sure why QBTC has 1.95% fees while BTCC has 1% and EBIT has 0.75%.


----------



## MrBlackhill

Haha... Just noted that on Evolve website for EBIT, there's a link to "Bitcoin Explained". I was expecting some well-documented explanation, but instead I stumbled upon this:









BITCOIN EXPLAINED (BC Explained ep 1)


"We all have a crypto-friend who sounds like this guy. Gold back in 698BC was no different..."____________________________Like our stuff? Want us to make mor...




www.youtube.com


----------



## sags

I bought some BTCC shares today for $9.41 per share. It is less than the IPO price.

I was going to play the online slots but stuck some money in this instead. Same result probably.......


----------



## Jimmy

HIVE Blockchain was pounded yesterday ~ 28% so I bought a little. Everyone seems to be adopting the concept of crypto currencies from the banks to companies like SQ and Tesla.


----------



## l1quidfinance

Time for a little speculative spice in the portfolio so I purchased a little BTCC today.


----------



## MrMatt

Interesting thing, the "price" of mining for Conflux has spiked up.

Someone is paying 10-20% more to mine Conflux instead of Ethereum.


FYI, some miners are auctioning off their mining.
So rather than mining a specific coin, they hold an auction and mine what pays best.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Someone is paying 10-20% more to mine Conflux instead of Ethereum.


Where can I buy and is there an ETF yet??

Ready to dump all my bitcoinz for Cornflux thanks in advance

And is Cornflux better investment than DEFI or would the ideal portfolio be some kind of BITCOINZ + DEFI + CORNFLAX mix, perhaps with some HIVE and DOGE thrown in for good measure?


----------



## sags

I was thinking of Dogecoin, or maybe Cardona........yea, I like that. It sounds Spanish or something.


----------



## sags

I have a couple of short .com domain names for sale right now on Afternic.

One of them is perfect for a crypto coin or website.


----------



## james4beach

sags said:


> I was thinking of Dogecoin, or maybe Cardona........yea, I like that. It sounds Spanish or something.


Sorry I should have written that I am joking in my post above. I think all of this is ridiculous, and besides my existing small amount in bitcoin, I won't be buying any of this junk. Bitcoin is junk too.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> Where can I buy and is there an ETF yet??
> 
> Ready to dump all my bitcoinz for Cornflux thanks in advance
> 
> And is Cornflux better investment than DEFI or would the ideal portfolio be some kind of BITCOINZ + DEFI + CORNFLAX mix, perhaps with some HIVE and DOGE thrown in for good measure?


Bit of a troll post isn't it?

Don't know what Cornflux or Cornflax is.

Realistically Conflux (and Cardano and Polkadot) are all platform coins and can be used for things like DEFI.


My actual point is that there are ways to see what might be coming up, if people are willing to pay more to mine a particular coin, that's indicative of bullish sentiment.
It's a way to see pricing inefficiencies in the market.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Bit of a troll post isn't it?
> 
> Don't know what Cornflux or Cornflax is.


You should not be posting stuff like this.

Yes I'm making fun of a bunch of nonsensical, illegitimate investments that you are posting about. You are giving people bad ideas.

These are unregulated things and people who don't know better might think these are legitimate investment ideas. These are mainly Chinese based, weirdo things that aren't even regulated in China let alone in North America.

*They are likely scams. *We might as well start discussing Chinese and Vietnamese penny stocks too. Do you have any hot Chinese mining penny stocks to tell us about?

My advice to everyone: stay away from all crypto coin stuff, all block chain companies. When I worked in tech venture, I met with some of the people pitching these things. They all smelled like crooks to me. Many of these are going to turn out to be scams or money laundering operations.

The trading markets (the prices) are mostly fake, highly manipulated. Don't fall for it.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> You should not be posting stuff like this.
> 
> Yes I'm making fun of a bunch of nonsensical, illegitimate investments that you are posting about. You are giving people bad ideas.
> 
> These are unregulated things and people who don't know better might think these are legitimate investment ideas. These are mainly Chinese based, weirdo things that aren't even regulated in China let alone in North America.
> 
> *They are likely scams. *We might as well start discussing Chinese and Vietnamese penny stocks too. Do you have any hot Chinese mining penny stocks to tell us about?
> 
> My advice to everyone: stay away from all crypto coin stuff, all block chain companies. When I worked in tech venture, I met with some of the people pitching these things. They all smelled like crooks to me. Many of these are going to turn out to be scams or money laundering operations.
> 
> The trading markets (the prices) are mostly fake, highly manipulated. Don't fall for it.


I should not be posting stuff like what?
Like your troll posts?


Blockchain type technologies are a new technology that is in it's early stages.
They're nonsensical if you don't understand them, just like stocks or options are to those who don't understand those.

I don't think they're investments, and I'm not sure what you mean by "illegitimate".
They're recognized by the government of Canada.





Guide for cryptocurrency users and tax professionals - Canada.ca


Cryptocurrency is a relatively new innovation that requires guidelines on taxation so that Canadians are aware of how to meet their tax obligations.




www.canada.ca





They follow rules, which are published for anyone who is interested in reading them.

I agree that most of them have no real future, and some are like scams. This is also the case for the "legitimate" investing markets, ever hear of Enron?

I have never once recommended investing in cryptocurrencies, and specifically said I'm not, because I can't value them.
I've been explicitly anti-bitcoin, because it doesn't make sense to me.

All that being said, it's an interesting technology, I'm investigating and discussing it.
In particular I like the platform coins, they seem very interesting.


Lets take another new technology, that years ago would have been laughable.
Imagine describing cloud computer where you and a bunch of people you have never met each rent out one thread on a computer somewhere on the internet.
What about serverless, where you have bits of a program, where you run, and are billed by the millisecond.





New for AWS Lambda – 1ms Billing Granularity Adds Cost Savings | Amazon Web Services


What I like about AWS Lambda is that it lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, and you pay only for what you use. Since we launched Lambda in 2014, you have been charged for the number of times your code is triggered (requests) and for the time your code executes, rounded up […]




aws.amazon.com






The idea of paying other people to run computer programs for you, seems to be becoming mainstream. 
Serverless is already here, but what about even more distributed platforms, like Ethereum or Polkadot?

I don't expect everyone to understand or agree on the merits, that's fine. But to suggest that the whole crypto space is just one big scam is like saying "tech" was a scam during the tech bubble.
Sure there is/were lots of crap in there, but some great things came out of the tech bubble, and some great things are likely to come out of the blockchain bubble.
FWIW, I sat out investing during the tech bubble, because I didn't understand it. I'm also sitting out the blockchain bubble, because I don't understand it.


----------



## nathan79

Stay away from mining stocks, unless you want more volatility and potentially lower returns than the underlying assets. There's little point to investing in these companies since their revenue is dictated by the value of whatever they are mining. If BTC drops by 30%, their revenue drops by the same amount but their expenses remain basically the same. When Bitcoin underwent its halving last year, these companies saw their revenue drop by 50%, even while the Bitcoin price barely declined. When you factor in the additional risks inherent with investing in any company, these companies are a poor bet compared to simply holding the underlying asset.


----------



## nathan79

If someone is new to this space, I always advise them to put at least 80% of their investment into Bitcoin directly. If they want to put the remainder into Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero or another well-established project that's fine. I don't recommend other speculative coins, and I would advise putting no more than 5% of your investment into them. Just be prepared to lose almost all of your money.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> I should not be posting stuff like what?


You are pitching speculative, unregulated, highly questionable things. Some of them which have never been seen outside of China.



MrMatt said:


> I don't think they're investments, and I'm not sure what you mean by "illegitimate".


Thanks for clarifying that you don't consider them to be investments.

I believe many of these things will turn out to be scams. Should be approached with extreme caution.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> You are pitching speculative, unregulated, highly questionable things. Some of them which have never been seen outside of China.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for clarifying that you don't consider them to be investments.
> 
> I believe many of these things will turn out to be scams. Should be approached with extreme caution.


I am not "pitching" anything.

I'm not suggesting them as an investment.
I'm not suggesting a particular item as a business idea.

I am acknowledging that the technology may have some utility.


Which item did I discuss which "never been seen outside of China"

To clarify I don't think they're appropriate investments, but like beanie babies I guess one could consider them "investments".


Why is it that you have to attack me/my posts with false claims?


----------



## Jimmy

nathan79 said:


> Stay away from mining stocks, unless you want more volatility and potentially lower returns than the underlying assets. There's little point to investing in these companies since their revenue is dictated by the value of whatever they are mining. If BTC drops by 30%, their revenue drops by the same amount but their expenses remain basically the same. When Bitcoin underwent its halving last year, these companies saw their revenue drop by 50%, even while the Bitcoin price barely declined. When you factor in the additional risks inherent with investing in any company, these companies are a poor bet compared to simply holding the underlying asset.


I am learning about this area still. The Bitcoin price is up 8,000% in 5 yrs so they have to 1/2 their fees every few years and are still making tons of $. HIVE was up ~ 1000% last year. I think they are less volatile but the returns are less


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> I am learning about this area still. The Bitcoin price is up 8,000% in 5 yrs so they have to 1/2 their fees every few years and are still making tons of $. HIVE was up ~ 1000% last year. I think they are less volatile but the returns are less


What "they" is halving their fees?
The fees are separate from the block reward.


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> What "they" is halving their fees?
> The fees are separate from the block reward.


From Investopedia, the miners get paid in bitcoins. They have had to 'halve' their fees (edit rewards) as the price of bitcoin has gone up. Anyway, bitcoin mining is a huge growth area w ~ 65% cagr. More and more are adopting bitcoin as currency and there will be huge demand for related services.


----------



## nathan79

Mr. Matt is correct. Transaction fees and block rewards are separate, but transaction fees only make up a small portion of miners' profits.

What's more important to remember is that block rewards are fixed between halvings, while transaction fees are loosely connected to the price of Bitcoin. When the price of Bitcoin rises, demand increases which causes transaction fees to also increase. When the Bitcoin price drops, demand decreases causing transaction fees to decrease.

For example, the average transaction fee on February 23rd was $31.48 and the BTC price at that time was $54,727 USD. Right now, the average transaction fee is $22.67 and the Bitcoin price is $47,355. From a miner's perspective, their profit per Bitcoin has dropped by 13.5% and their profit from transaction fees has dropped by 28%.

Lucky for the miners, transaction fees only make up about 14% of the total rewards, so the effect of the decrease in fees is minimal compared to the price of Bitcoin.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> From Investopedia, the miners get paid in bitcoins. They have had to 'halve' their fees as the price of bitcoin has gone up. Anyway, bitcoin mining is a huge growth area w ~ 65% cagr. More and more are adopting bitcoin as currency and there will be huge demand for related services.


You're wrong.

They didn't "have" to halve their block reward. They decided as a matter of policy to decrease the block reward over time.
I don't see how you think that there is a 65% CAGR in mining, while simultaneously acknowleding they are being paid less of a block reward for their mining?
Please suppprt your claim of a CAGR.

Think about it, lets say you earn 1 block reward and it's 1 BTC, then they half the reward, you earn 1 block reward and it's now 0.5BTC due to halving. Your logic doesn't make sense.

Now the fees that those making transactions pay are also included in the block reward. But they're only a fraction of the block reward.








Bitcoin Miners Now Earn 1 BTC in Fees Per Block - Decrypt


Transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain have exceeded $20 on average—but that’s a good thing, experts argued.




decrypt.co




If you mined a block you would get 6.25BTC reward + almost 1BTC in fees

Fees are set by something like a silent auction.
You offer Xbtc to process your transaction, and when the miners decide what transactions they'll include, they'll typically include the transactions that are moth profitable for them.


Finally the cost to mine a bitcoin is mostly the electricity cost, if the price of bitcoin increases, it makes it profitable for people wiith higher electricity prices to mine, and the number of miners increase, making it less likley to be the one that happens to mine a particular block.
If price of bitcoin drops, suddently it doesn't make sense to pay the electricity to mine and they drop off.
The only reason something like ethereum is profitable to mine today is because there aren't enough computers in the mining network.


----------



## m3s

You have to ask yourself why someone is always trying to control you and act accordingly


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> You have to ask yourself why someone is always trying to control you and act accordingly


Great example.
Lets put it into context, one of the cofounders sold out for $800, because they thought it was too risky.
The other two felt they had nothing to lose.

Maybe the idea that it was too risky wasn't that outrageous.

Also a decade later Apple almost went bankrupt.

So yeah, reasonable informed people (like one of the founders) thought it was "too risky".

That being said, in a free country, you should be allowed to make bad decisions.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> Great example.
> 
> That being said, in a free country, you should be allowed to make bad decisions.


That's my point

Maybe that founder invested the $800 in something the hive mind assumed was safer like cigarettes?

Investments are risky


----------



## MrMatt

My point is we aren't in a free country.
We're in a somewhat free nanny state that wants to control every aspect of your life, where you're not accountable for your actions.

Justin Trudeau said as much, when he suggest more Canadians should be able to avoid criminal prosecution... like his family does.








Trudeau says his father used connections to help brother Michel avoid criminal record after pot charge


Justin Trudeau said he used the anecdote about his late brother’s pot arrest to highlight how minorities and people with little means often don’t have the option to clear their name.




www.thestar.com






The scariest thing to these people is not having control.
Imagine if they couldn't control your bank account, or print money, or selectively apply laws where they punish their opponents, but let their friends off.

Bitcoin isn't really a threat, it's public so they're mostly okay with this. Though they'd all prefer one where they can arbitrarily start and stop the markets etc.

But other blockchains that don't give them control, or even visibility are terrifying to them.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> The scariest thing to these people is not having control.
> Imagine if they couldn't control your bank account, or print money, or selectively apply laws where they punish their opponents, but let their friends off.


Programmable money can do both though.

For example a Central Bank Digital Currency would allow for programmed conditions on stimulus cheques - must be spent on x or y in z amount of time etc. They could have more control over how handouts are spent. It could also make tax audits much easier etc

It's also possible to give people control of their privacy. You can give governments access to certain info if you want governments services etc. iOS lets you control what apps get access to what information for example and warns you what apps are accessing what info.

Programmable money will be the biggest innovation in the coming decades imo. Bitcoin will exist just like gold exists - as a hedge or diversification


----------



## sags

I have changed my mind about bitcoins...but only as a store of value.

The younger generation doesn't seek gold.

They would rather own digital......so I would bend to their will rather than resist and break.

I am buying a few bitcoins with ETFs and will continue to do so.

I wouldn't bet the farm on it....but maybe a few of the extra eggs in the chicken coop.


----------



## sags

Today's young billionaires are not flashing their money around.

They are more laid back and likely to be wearing a t-shirt and jeans than a tuxedo.

I am thinking the market for gold (bling) is going to shrink over time.

That has consequences for the acceptance of gold as something people desire to own.

The "golden calf" statue of Trump carted into the CPAC hall was mocked all over the internet.

Considerations of what people value are changing right before our eyes.


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> I have changed my mind about bitcoins...but only as a store of value.
> 
> The younger generation doesn't seek gold.
> 
> They would rather own digital......so I would bend to their will rather than resist and break.
> 
> I am buying a few bitcoins with ETFs and will continue to do so.
> 
> I wouldn't bet the farm on it....but maybe a few of the extra eggs in the chicken coop.


It's up to you.
I think bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, just like gold. 

The actual utility is well below the market value of both.
You're paying a lot of money for something that isn't actually valuable or useful.


----------



## Tostig

Gold ETFs will drop to $0 only when gold itself drops to $0. Will that ever happen? Unlikely.

The same with broad market stock ETFs. Sure, there will be some stocks that will drop to zero just like what Bre-X did. But the entire broad market dropping to zero is also unlikely. Drops of 30 to 80% maybe but all the way to 100%? unlikely.

However, Bitcoin, although may be getting some traction is still not ingrained into any economy. So the likelihood of a bitcoin ETF dropping to zero is still more likely than broad market equity ETFs.


----------



## m3s

Tostig said:


> However, Bitcoin, although may be getting some traction is still not ingrained into any economy. So the likelihood of a bitcoin ETF dropping to zero is still more likely than broad market equity ETFs.


Digital currencies are being adopted in many countries.. USA, Switzerland, Singapore.. I'm afraid Canadians are completely sheltered from this.

Although I have noticed BMO has opened some key partnerships and a virtual CAD was just announced.


----------



## Tostig

m3s said:


> Digital currencies are being adopted in many countries.. USA, Switzerland, Singapore.. I'm afraid Canadians are completely sheltered from this.
> 
> Although I have noticed BMO has opened some key partnerships and a virtual CAD was just announced.


It may be a good thing that Canada seems to be sheltered.

Remember when Canadian businesses were criticized for not being aggressive enough? Then came the 2008 financial crisis and Canadian banks, although hit, came out looking better than their international counterparts.

PS: I thought you were writing about bitcoin and crypto. As far as I am aware, crypto has not become part of any country's economic infrastructure.


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> Digital currencies are being adopted in many countries.. USA, Switzerland, Singapore.. I'm afraid Canadians are completely sheltered from this.


I'm not sure what this means. All the major currencies are already digital. The banks all make electronic transfers with each other, and most payments are electronic.

I get paid electronically (in USD) by my foreign customers. When I had a job, I got paid electronically through payroll deposits. Everything is digital already. Just about all CAD and USD payments and flows are electronic, quick & easy.

We're already living in the future. I work remotely, I don't even have to leave my apartment. My client wires me the money, and I get it within 24 hours of when he sends it. The funds are immediately cleared, and I zip the cash around and transform as I want. *Everything* is electronic, already. And these are in stable and predictable currencies like USD, CAD, EUR which hardly fluctuate at all from day to day.


----------



## MrMatt

Tostig said:


> Gold ETFs will drop to $0 only when gold itself drops to $0. Will that ever happen? Unlikely.
> 
> The same with broad market stock ETFs. Sure, there will be some stocks that will drop to zero just like what Bre-X did. But the entire broad market dropping to zero is also unlikely. Drops of 30 to 80% maybe but all the way to 100%? unlikely.
> 
> However, Bitcoin, although may be getting some traction is still not ingrained into any economy. So the likelihood of a bitcoin ETF dropping to zero is still more likely than broad market equity ETFs.


It's unlikely that Gold will ever drop to zero, as it is still useful.
If people decided that Gold wouldn't be the "store of value", it would simply drop to it's actual application value, which could be decorative value, or as a conductor around the price of copper. 

All crypto currencies would do the same thing. That is why I think the ones that do something useful have some value, while lose which do not do something useful (ie Bitcoin) do not.

FWIW, when government currencies are no longer accepted as a store of value, they also become worthless (or worth-less).

Think of casino tokens, inside the casino, they're "as good as cash", outside maybe not. Casino goes bankrupt and they're worthless.

It's all a shared delusion. Betting against the bitcoin delusion is IMO dumb, but I'm definately not voting for it.


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> I'm not sure what this means


I don't think you understand programable currency yet. Quick and easy is relative I suppose

24 hrs is not quick and easy imo. When I wire money the banks do some trickery to make it settle in under 24 hrs but this is actually settled for days. Stocks take at least 2 days to settle

Yes it is electronic.. so was dial up internet and flip phones


----------



## Tostig

The Bitcoin ETF makes it more intriguing as it is now more affordable. No way, if I do buy some, it would be in my RRSP or TFSA as it is purely speculative. I wouldn't even consider it to be a hedge against the CAD or USD - that's what gold and silver ETFs are for.


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> You're wrong.
> 
> They didn't "have" to halve their block reward. They decided as a matter of policy to decrease the block reward over time.


I don't want to play semantics. As the Investopedia post implied they had to halve their bitcoin rewards because apparently they were making so much money. $111,875/ block.



MrMatt said:


> Please suppprt your claim of a CAGR.


The blockchain industry is projected to grow 69% cagr. Global Blockchain Technology Market Size Report, 2019-2025














MrMatt said:


> I don't see how you think that there is a 65% CAGR in mining, while simultaneously acknowleding they are being paid less of a block reward for their mining?
> 
> Think about it, lets say you earn 1 block reward and it's 1 BTC, then they half the reward, you earn 1 block reward and it's now 0.5BTC due to halving. Your logic doesn't make sense.


? You seemed to have missed the logic.

Bitcoin went up in price 8,000 % in 5 yrs. Or ~ 1,600% a year. The reward share is reduced by 50% every few years. The asset is increasing in price that is multiples of the 50%. Hope that helps


----------



## m3s

Bitcoin halving is coded to occur every 210,000 blocks. It restricts the supply of bitcoin by design - the opposite of printing fiat. It eventually settles down higher than the previous cycle.


----------



## doctrine

Jimmy said:


> You seemed to have missed the logic.
> 
> Bitcoin went up in price 8,000 % in 5 yrs. Or ~ 1,600% a year. The reward share is reduced by 50% every few years. The asset is increasing in price that is multiples of the 50%. Hope that helps


Yes, these gains can easily be projected forward. Bitcoin should be $4 million a coin in 2026, and $312 million a coin in 2031. By 2031, the market cap of Bitcoin should be approximately $6.2 quadrillion. Believe it or not, it's still not overpriced at this level, as there would still be some assets that are worth money besides Bitcoin, although it would be over 50% at that point. A few months later, Bitcoin should approximately be the value of everything. If you don't buy now, you won't have a piece of anything. Cathy Wood has foreseen this and so should the rest of us.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> I don't want to play semantics. As the Investopedia post implied they had to halve their bitcoin rewards because apparently they were making so much money. $111,875/ block.
> 
> 
> The blockchain industry is projected to grow 69% cagr. Global Blockchain Technology Market Size Report, 2019-2025
> 
> 
> View attachment 21362
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ? You seemed to have missed the logic.
> 
> Bitcoin went up in price 8,000 % in 5 yrs. Or ~ 1,600% a year. The reward share is reduced by 50% every few years. The asset is increasing in price that is multiples of the 50%. Hope that helps


It's not semantics, you are confusing Mining block reward with the transaction fee. 
They halved the block reward, they did not "halve" the transaction fee.

reward share? That term doesn't make sense.
The miner who mines the block, gets a reward. That reward will decrease over time.

The block reward is not related to the transaction fee.



Also someones estimate of a forward looking estimate of CAGR is really irrelevant to any discussion on facts. It's just an opinion.


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> It's not semantics, you are confusing Mining block reward with the transaction fee.
> They halved the block reward, they did not "halve" the transaction fee.
> 
> reward share? That term doesn't make sense.
> The miner who mines the block, gets a reward. That reward will decrease over time.
> 
> The block reward is not related to the transaction fee.
> 
> 
> 
> Also someones estimate of a forward looking estimate of CAGR is really irrelevant to any discussion on facts. It's just an opinion.


We already clarified we were talking about reward share not the fees so now you are just seemingly being needlessly argumentative and obfuscating. Not sure what you are going on about reward 'share' either. They get paid in bitcoin rewards Call it whatever semantics you like. 

There are several independent research sites predicting blockchain cagrs. You can call research an 'opinion' if you like.


----------



## Jimmy

doctrine said:


> Yes, these gains can easily be projected forward. Bitcoin should be $4 million a coin in 2026, and $312 million a coin in 2031. By 2031, the market cap of Bitcoin should be approximately $6.2 quadrillion. Believe it or not, it's still not overpriced at this level, as there would still be some assets that are worth money besides Bitcoin, although it would be over 50% at that point. A few months later, Bitcoin should approximately be the value of everything. If you don't buy now, you won't have a piece of anything. Cathy Wood has foreseen this and so should the rest of us.


and you probably said the same thing about Amazon 20 yrs ago lol.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> We already clarified we were talking about reward share not the fees so now you are just seemingly being needlessly argumentative and obfuscating. Not sure what you are going on about reward 'share' either. They get paid in bitcoin rewards Call it whatever semantics you like.
> 
> There are several independent research sites predicting blockchain cagrs. You can call research an 'opinion' if you like.


Actually that's the point I was making is that YOU said they had to "halve" their fees.
But that never happened, the block reward was halved, the fees were not.

You're mixing up terms, and also misrepresenting what is going on.
I'm not arguing, I just happen to be very assertive in my speech.

Secondly, I'm being very clear and specific in what I am saying, that is the opposite of obfuscating.

You're mixing and matching fees & rewards, and making performance claims that are actually someones projections. 
That is very confusing. We don't know if you're talking about fees, or the block reward, what has happened, or what someone thinks will happen. Facts or fiction.


Just to remind you what you said.


Jimmy said:


> From Investopedia, the miners get paid in bitcoins. They have had to 'halve' their fees as the price of bitcoin has gone up. Anyway, bitcoin mining is a huge growth area w ~ 65% cagr. More and more are adopting bitcoin as currency and there will be huge demand for related services.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> and you probably said the same thing about Amazon 20 yrs ago lol.


Or Nortel, or Enron, or Gamestop.
You can say whatever you want, but there is a HUGE difference between the reality of what has happened, and someones guesses on the future.


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> You're mixing and matching fees & rewards, and making performance claims that are actually someones projections.
> That is very confusing. We don't know if you're talking about fees, or the block reward, what has happened, or what someone thinks will happen. Facts or fiction.


I said fees instead of rewards in my first post but that was a day ago.

9 hours ago you wrote this.



MrMatt said:


> They didn't "have" to halve their block reward.


We have been talking about rewards ever since whether it has been confusing to you or not. An independent research firm again estimated the growth of an industry which I cited an didn't 'claim' anything. I don't want to belabor this either way


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> Or Nortel, or Enron, or Gamestop.
> You can say whatever you want, but there is a HUGE difference between the reality of what has happened, and someones guesses on the future.


Yes and Cathy Wood is likely more prescient than you or doctrine apparently.


----------



## MrBlackhill

Bill Gates, about Elon Musk send Bitcoin:


> Elon has tons of money and he’s very sophisticated, so I don’t worry that his bitcoin will sort of randomly go up or down,” Gates told Bloomberg in an interview. “I do think people get bought into these manias who may not have as much money to spare. My general thought would be that *if you have less money than Elon*, you should probably watch out.


Fortunately, I have more money than Elon.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> I said fees instead of rewards in my first post but that was a day ago.


Yes, and since you never updated what you were talking about, or made any statement acknowledging your misstatements one would assume you're holding to your previous claim.


You've got over a thousand posts, one would think you'd know how a forum works.


----------



## sags

The approval of the ETFs in Canada will have a huge investor impact.

I got lost in all the techno babble.......but buying shares at TD.......easy peasy pudding and pie.


----------



## doctrine

Jimmy said:


> and you probably said the same thing about Amazon 20 yrs ago lol.


Do you actually know what you're talking about? Did you invest through the tech bubble, were you saying in 2000-1, at the peak with thousands of new publicly traded technology companies, that Amazon was the future? That was the company? And you bought shares in Amazon and held them through 20 years and 3 epic market crashes and 50-90% declines, never selling? Sitting on nice capital gains?


----------



## Jimmy

doctrine said:


> Do you actually know what you're talking about? Did you invest through the tech bubble, were you saying in 2000-1, at the peak with thousands of new publicly traded technology companies, that Amazon was the future? That was the company? And you bought shares in Amazon and held them through 20 years and 3 epic market crashes and 50-90% declines, never selling? Sitting on nice capital gains?


So cynicism is only ok when you say it? lol
You are the only one saying that nonsense. My pt was you likely were dry and cynical at another high growth investment when it started . Pick 10 or 15 yrs ago if you want . The time period is not the pt.


----------



## james4beach

doctrine said:


> Do you actually know what you're talking about?


Just FYI everyone...
I'm probably one of the only people on this board who actually has real qualifications in crypto coinz. I realize we're all anonymous, so you can't verify this.

I worked at a company which specializes in cryptography. I studied the math of cryptography in university, learned under some of the world's experts (I mean guys who invented this stuff), and I actually use these algorithms in my routine work. I've also worked on the math of attacking and finding weaknesses in cryptography, and have even found real weaknesses/attacks on bad cryptography. I've published those findings.

In my previous job, I worked together with venture capitalists and PhDs who are world experts in crypto. The government and big companies paid us big bucks to hear our opinions. I was on teams which investigated crypto coinz and I've had many discussions about them with PhD experts. I contributed to decisions on whether to invest in these technical ventures.

Today for example I was chatting with a colleague of mine, someone whose supervisor is the editor of the famous _Journal of Cryptography_. We were talking about crypto currencies, again. Because we both find them hilariously stupid.

My *professional opinion* as someone who is qualified to say so, is that most of this coin stuff is hyped up, overly elaborate, somewhat nonsensical bullshit. There are a few good ideas floating among them, but Bitcoin is not one of them. There is a lot of suspicious sounding stuff, and the VC people that I know rejected all of it, because they were concerned that these may be scams or fronts for money laundering, and really have no practical use.

All of the math/crypto PhD colleagues I work with agree on these points. There are some interesting technical ideas among these, but a lot of it seems like bullshit techno-babble.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> most of this coin stuff is hyped up, overly elaborate, somewhat nonsensical bullshit. There are a few good ideas floating among them, but Bitcoin is not one of them. There is a lot of suspicious sounding stuff, and the VC people that I know rejected all of it, because they were concerned that these may be scams or fronts for money laundering, and really have no practical use.
> 
> All of the math/crypto PhD colleagues I work with agree on these points. There are some interesting technical ideas among these, but a lot of it seems like bullshit techno-babble.


I agree on most of this. It's like the tech bubble, lots of crap and froth and excitement mixed in with a few good ideas.
I've also been clear that IMO Bitcoin is the least interestesting headline coin.

I think the money laundering is a red herring


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> Today for example I was chatting with a colleague of mine, someone whose supervisor is the editor of the famous _Journal of Cryptography_. We were talking about crypto currencies, again. Because we both find them hilariously stupid.


You posted interest in them during the 2017 mania and that you bought not long before it all crashed. That soured a lot of people's opinion just like the tech bubble did to FAANG. Blockchains are open source and no professional or other have found any technical flaw in the cryptography.

The mania and hype is the same as any other speculative market - driven by human psychology of fear and greed



james4beach said:


> I'm interested in bitcoin, and of course I wish I bought some earlier, but no more than I wish I bought CSU shares ten years ago. Shoulda woulda coulda.





james4beach said:


> I'll probably roll the dice with a small amount, maybe a few day's worth of employment income. World-wide bubble manias like this don't happen too often!


I'm interested in the very few blockchains that have smart contracts. There's only a handful of those and most of them have fatal flaws in scaling, fees, or how they issued the tokens.

I remember all the professionals and analysts still laughing and discrediting the major tech companies in the 2000s. Probably because they invested in the tech bubble mania and got burned. It's all very much still in development and will boom/bust again because of how human nature piles into greed and creates bubbles with such things

The professionals discredited FAANG for years because they couldn't comprehend the global scale. Even as google was rising they couldn't see it similar to Tesla nowadays. Based on the number of crypto addresses, we are at about 1997 in terms of the internet adoption.

I was on the internet in 1997. It was very similar feeling to how I was excited about its potential and everyone including professionals just found it "hilariously stupid"


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> I was on the internet in 1997. It was very similar feeling to how I was excited about its potential and everyone including professionals just found it "hilariously stupid"


I was on the internet & BBS in 92, I remember discussions later in the 90's talking about the future.
I said it would be more "community and BBS like" than just pages. 

Look today, and it's all communities, Facebook, Reddit, medium, forums like this + broadcast media. Even Medium seems to be able to community-ize their offerings.


----------



## wayward__son

you know I respect you J4B, but Bitcoin is basically an 800bn USD bug bounty -- if you know of vulnerabilities I would have thought you'd be better off going short, attacking the blockchain and then going to the beach rather than posting about it on Canadian money forum.


----------



## sags

I "liked" both J4B and M3S comments because I think J4B is right, but am also interested in which "solution" M3s judges as the best candidate for success.

I suspect that if it is any........... it will be a stable coin connected to a blockchain and fiat currency.

I am liking Cardona, but struggle to understand all the technology. I wish they could describe what they will do in plain English.

I bought some ETF shares but with the price of bitcoins, I don't expect to make any money from it. Too little........too late.

If the ETF expanded their purchases beyond bitcoins into other "cheaper" entry level priced coins.........then a little bit could become a lot.

I don't know if the ETF will be allowed to expand into other coins. I am hoping they can and will.


----------



## nathan79

james4beach said:


> My *professional opinion* as someone who is qualified to say so, is that most of this coin stuff is hyped up, overly elaborate, somewhat nonsensical bullshit. There are a few good ideas floating among them, but Bitcoin is not one of them. There is a lot of suspicious sounding stuff, and the VC people that I know rejected all of it, because they were concerned that these may be scams or fronts for money laundering, and really have no practical use.
> 
> All of the math/crypto PhD colleagues I work with agree on these points. There are some interesting technical ideas among these, but a lot of it seems like bullshit techno-babble.


A rather odd statement as Bitcoin is one of the few that doesn't make elaborate, nonsensical claims. If you'd read the whitepaper, you see it's quite clear what they were trying to accomplish. There's nothing suspicious about it.

I would be suspicious of any project where the coins or tokens are distributed via an ICO (initial coin offering). A very high number of these are outright scams, and it can be difficult or impossible for a regular person to tell which are legitimate projects.


----------



## sags

Although......Satoshi's vision wasn't perfect and was incomplete. He left a lot up to future developers with no central authority to make such changes.

The original concept was for an alternative currency, which is unlikely due to volatility in price, dreadfully slow transaction speed due to an expanding blockchain, and the ability of miners to pick the transactions to verify based on the size of the fee.......rather than in order of request.

The miners verify the transactions with the highest fees and lower fee transactions can flounder for days or never be verified.

The average fee right now is over $14, which is a ridiculously high fee for a transaction.

Satoshi also recommended at least 6 verifications to ensure against "double spending", which is the achilles heel of any blockchain theory.

I think at this point in time, most bitcoin experts have transitioned into bitcoins as a possible form of "digital gold" as a store of wealth.

That concept may be more viable than the original concept.


----------



## nathan79

sags said:


> I "liked" both J4B and M3S comments because I think J4B is right, but am also interested in which "solution" M3s judges as the best candidate for success.
> 
> I suspect that if it is any........... it will be a stable coin connected to a blockchain and fiat currency.


There will likely be multiple stablecoins in the future, so take your pick. They aren't really much of an investment, though. Their main purpose is to reduce friction when trading between fiat and other cryptocurrencies.

What do you want from a cryptocurrency? A store of value (secure, deflationary), privacy (anonymous, untraceable), something to use for small transactions (speed, low fees), or something for executing smart contracts (flexibility)? It's doubtful that any one coin will be able to excel in all areas.

My feeling is that Bitcoin will still be around in 20 years, while most other projects will have faded to obscurity. Ethereum will probably stick around in some form. Cardano shows a lot of promise, but it's largely untested.


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> Although......Satoshi's vision wasn't perfect and was incomplete. He left a lot up to future developers with no central authority to make such changes.


That was the point, no central authority.

Anyone can go and fork Bitcoin, you don't need anyones approval to make any tweak you want. So people have, and if the changes are worthwhile, it will survive, and if not it will die off. Not by any central authority, but the consent of the participants.

Imagine a massive global system, that works because of unanimous agreement of the participants. 
You can opt in or out of any variant you wish.
A central authority would damage that.


----------



## m3s

sags said:


> I am liking Cardona, but struggle to understand all the technology. I wish they could describe what they will do in plain English.


Yes cardano is what I was alluding too

Ethereum is the original blockchain with smart contracts. The co-founders of ethereum split up years ago. One of them started cardano to address issues from ethereum and bitcoin - namely the inefficient mining, scalability and lack of governance. If you say bitcoin is the gen 1 blockchain, ethereum is the gen 2 blockchain then cardano is the gen 3. Polkadot (from yet another ethereum co-founder) copied cardano's consensus algorithm but isn't as decentralized or advanced as cardano.

Cardano is taking the slow and steady approach to do things right. They are using universities and peer reviewed studies. They want to be government/regulation friendly. They launched in a way that would secure a strong decentralized community rather than central control of wealth for themselves. Cardano is a sleeping giant that took time to learn from other's mistakes and plans to be scalable for mass adoption. They are starting in Africa where people are unbanked rather than fighting the established western system

Tomorrow is a major upgarde for cardano that introduces multi-assets. At the moment, the vast majority of tokens are created on ethereum. This has congested ethereum creating insane fees that will take years to fix. Unlike ethereum, cardano is designed to scale that will let tokens pay small fees in their own token. The next major upgrade for cardano will be smart contracts. Rumour has it they have agreements with governments and major announcements after that which is why the price is booming

Cardano is named after the italian mathematician btw but does sound spanish


----------



## MrMatt

nathan79 said:


> There will likely be multiple stablecoins in the future, so take your pick. They aren't really much of an investment, though. Their main purpose is to reduce friction when trading between fiat and other cryptocurrencies.
> 
> What do you want from a cryptocurrency? A store of value (secure, deflationary), something to use for small transactions (speed, low fees), or something for executing smart contracts (flexibility)? It's doubtful that any one coin will be able to excel in all areas.
> 
> My feeling is that Bitcoin will still be around in 20 years, while most other projects will have faded to obscurity. Ethereum will probably stick around in some form. Cardano shows a lot of promise, but it's largely untested.


I've heard of Polkadot, and since Conflux mining is paying well I think there is interest there.

Follow the money.


----------



## nathan79

sags said:


> Satoshi also recommended at least 6 verifications to ensure against "double spending", which is the achilles heel of any blockchain theory.
> 
> I think at this point in time, most bitcoin experts have transitioned into bitcoins as a possible form of "digital gold" as a store of wealth.
> 
> That concept may be more viable than the original concept.


Satoshi was being extra cautious... 1-3 confirmations is sufficient for most transactions. The fees are definitely an issue right now, though I'm hopeful that future developments may be able to solve this problem.

I do tend to view Bitcoin as a digital gold, or a long term savings account. The value fluctuates in the short term, but over the long term it increases faster than inflation. That's more than you can say about GICs or bank savings accounts.


----------



## m3s

sags said:


> I bought some ETF shares but with the price of bitcoins, I don't expect to make any money from it. Too little........too late.


I feel like BTC still has legs for this bull run. Institutions are adding it to their treasuries as a hedge against inflation. Banks are adopting it because they see the demand. BTC is flowing out of exchanges into cold storage which indicates they don't plan to sell. Hype and mania is still growing and the historical halving cycle isn't over

I'm using the ETF to hopefully grow my registered account limits but I will dump them like hot potatoes (the beauty of registered accounts and the ETFs is the ability to dump quickly without capital gains tax etc) If only Cardano could be held in registered account I see far more potential there



sags said:


> If the ETF expanded their purchases beyond bitcoins into other "cheaper" entry level priced coins.........then a little bit could become a lot.
> 
> I don't know if the ETF will be allowed to expand into other coins. I am hoping they can and will.


There's an ethereum ETF coming next and CME recently started trading ethereum futures. This isn't really considered a good thing for ethereum it just means people are speculating on ethereum. Cardano has the best user experience I've found by far. The struggle is to find an onramp into Cardano because it isn't on major exchanges like coinbase yet.

Voyager app will launch in Canada soon but I don't know how soon. Otherwise you'd have to use Binance or Kraken


----------



## m3s

Click bait title but good summary of recent events


----------



## Jimmy

People who have experience and educational backgrounds in stock valuation are the ones who are most credible in valuing these types of investments. Part of it is based on the value of existing currencies. I think there are ~ $4T US in circulation. That is the thinking going into assessing the size of the addressable market


----------



## andrewf

Jimmy said:


> I don't want to play semantics. As the Investopedia post implied they had to halve their bitcoin rewards because apparently they were making so much money. $111,875/ block.
> 
> 
> The blockchain industry is projected to grow 69% cagr. Global Blockchain Technology Market Size Report, 2019-2025
> 
> 
> View attachment 21362
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ? You seemed to have missed the logic.
> 
> Bitcoin went up in price 8,000 % in 5 yrs. Or ~ 1,600% a year. The reward share is reduced by 50% every few years. The asset is increasing in price that is multiples of the 50%. Hope that helps


That's not how compounding works. 8000% over 5 years is 141% growth per year.


----------



## m3s

Jimmy said:


> I think there are ~ $4T US in circulation. That is the thinking going into the assessing of the addressable market


Professionals comparing to US in circulation is like comparing Tesla to GM or Gmail to USPS

Gold is +$10T, global money is +$35T stocks are +$100T and derivatives are +$1Q (notionally) Of course email never replaced the post office either

How much do you value a decentralized ledger of all trust based transactions? Impossible to say because it doesn't exist.. yet


----------



## Jimmy

andrewf said:


> That's not how compounding works. 8000% over 5 years is 141% growth per year.


? We weren't even talking about compounding. The rate halving is not a compound calculation either. Irrelevant either way.


----------



## Jimmy

m3s said:


> Professionals comparing to US in circulation is like comparing Tesla to GM or Gmail to USPS
> 
> Gold is +$10T, global money is +$35T stocks are +$100T and derivatives are +$1Q (notionally) Of course email never replaced the post office either
> 
> How much do you value a decentralized ledger of all trust based transactions? Impossible to say because it doesn't exist.. yet


That was just part of the estimation in an interview w Cathy Wood. She was looking at it from a currency replacing angle.


----------



## james4beach

wayward__son said:


> you know I respect you J4B, but Bitcoin is basically an 800bn USD bug bounty -- if you know of vulnerabilities I would have thought you'd be better off going short, attacking the blockchain and then going to the beach rather than posting about it on Canadian money forum.


I didn't say there are protocol vulnerabilities in Bitcoin. I just said that there are a variety of interesting blockchain-related ideas, but Bitcoin does not stand out as particularly interesting or useful.

I'm not aware of any vulnerabilities in Bitcoin, but I do think there is suspicious activity among the exchanges and miners. The bitcoin system offer a lot of power to a very small group of people.

It's also useless and inefficient for payments. This thing will never became a payment standard. Other coinz might.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> That was the point, no central authority.


No central authority by design, true. But in practice, there is roughly 70% mining and verification power centered in China, and there appear to be a few tech billionnaires who hold very large amounts of the total outstanding units. Those billionnaires also control the exchanges.

And there are very few regulations which enforce honesty. This ecosystem is ripe for abuse by large players.

There is a "fake populism" in this stuff which irritates me, because it's being used by marketers (and possibly pump & dump artists) to convince people to buy.

Many of these coinz, including Bitcoin, are not actually 'democratic' and non centralized, in practice. There is heavy concentration in Chinese mining pools, organizations in sketchy countries, plus a handful of tech billionnaires who control the exchanges.

What people don't understand is that by deciding they don't trust government & regulators, they are instead putting their trust into these completely wild/uncontrolled parties (like foreign organizations and tech billionnaires).


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> People who have experience and educational backgrounds in stock valuation are the ones who are most credible in valuing these types of investments. Part of it is based on the value of existing currencies. I think there are ~ $4T US in circulation. That is the thinking going into assessing the size of the addressable market


No, they're not.
Money managers are bad at properly valuing investments. If they were good at it, they'd outperform the indexes.








Active fund managers trail the S&P 500 for the ninth year in a row in triumph for indexing


Investing in low-cost, passive funds remains the soundest long-term investment.




www.cnbc.com


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> No, they're not.
> Money managers are bad at properly valuing investments. If they were good at it, they'd outperform the indexes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Active fund managers trail the S&P 500 for the ninth year in a row in triumph for indexing
> 
> 
> Investing in low-cost, passive funds remains the soundest long-term investment.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnbc.com


Yes they are and you aren't even on topic. We were talking about their ability to value an individual stock or in this case a market. You are obfuscating and talking about their records as portfolio mangers which, better or not , is irrelevant

The CFA is the top program for financial experts. Please name a program that you think is superior to the CFA for stock analysis then. You learn stock valuation in other programs too BComm , CPA and MBA programs. The pt was there are people trained and experienced in evaluating stocks and markets like Cathy Wood who have more credibility to forecast the size of the bitcoin market than those w non financial backgrounds.

You are happy to look at any of her funds btw which destroy the indexes.


----------



## MrMatt

Jimmy said:


> Yes they are and you aren't even on topic. We were talking about their ability to value an individual stock or in this case a market. You are obfuscating and talking about their records as portfolio mangers which, better or not , is irrelevant
> 
> The CFA is the top program for financial experts. Please name a program that you think is superior to the CFA for stock analysis then. You learn stock valuation in other programs too BComm , CPA and MBA programs. The pt was there are people trained and experienced in evaluating stocks and markets like Cathy Wood who have more credibility to forecast the size of the bitcoin market than those w non financial backgrounds.
> 
> You are happy to look at any of her funds btw which destroy the indexes.


Yes, and my point is that these people trained and experienced in evaluating stocks and markets are not good at it.

Please show me any data that CFAs are "good" at evaluating stocks and markets.
And no being named 'top stock picker" by someone isn't proof.
Having a portfolio where you happen to have Tesla in it, isn't proof either.

But again, that's off topic, the point is that your claim of 65%CAGR is not true.
That is simply someones projection, not a statement of fact. 
And you didn't source it anyway.

Just to remind you what you said.


Jimmy said:


> Anyway, bitcoin mining is a huge growth area w ~ 65% cagr.


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> Yes, and my point is that these people trained and experienced in evaluating stocks and markets are not good at it.
> 
> Please show me any data that CFAs are "good" at evaluating stocks and markets.
> And no being named 'top stock picker" by someone isn't proof.
> Having a portfolio where you happen to have Tesla in it, isn't proof either.
> 
> But again, that's off topic, the point is that your claim of 65%CAGR is not true.
> That is simply someones projection, not a statement of fact.
> And you didn't source it anyway.
> 
> Just to remind you what you said.


They are. You don't seem to understand the difference between valuing a stock accurately and fund management.

CFA's are trained in fundamental stock evaluation. Noone else is at their level. Hope that finally sinks in. If you want to educate yourself look a the qualifications of most advisers or fund managers Most have the CFA. No mystery why they are in their positions. You can delude yourself they are unqualified I don't care.

You can go and reread the 'sourced' link to the growth rate (post #133) of bitcoin you seem to have forgotten. It was an independent market research group's projection not my 'claim' again for the second time.

You are free to google the growth rate and get many similar projections instead of debating only on opinion . either way we'll leave it there


----------



## m3s

Kevin O'Leary Reverses Stance on Bitcoin, Says Crypto Is Here to Stay, Invests 3% of His Portfolio

Kevin O’Leary has begun investing in bitcoin. Having previously called the cryptocurrency “garbage,” he has now changed his mind and believes that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. He is also getting used to the volatility of bitcoin and believes that institutional investors are willing to hold through price fluctuations.


----------



## sags

I think KO is in the same boat as me.........too late to the party for bitcoins.

I bought the ETF shares when bitcoin was $46,000 each. Even if it goes to $100,000 each (kind of crazy), I will only double my investment.

The "huge" money........from 8 cents to $46,000 is already baked in and the early adopters are the most secretive billionaires on the planet.

My conclusion is latching onto the "next" big thing or maybe the one that is the "last" one that is fully adopted by the public.

I am liking Cardano because it is well thought out and makes a lot of sense to me........a doofus on the technology.

I wish there was an easy entry point is all. I am not interested in an exchange or a wallet or all that because I would screw it all up anyways.


----------



## MrBlackhill

Wow what was that 8T volume on BTC this morning? Pretty crazy volume. (BTC, the bitcoin, not BTCC, the bitcoin ETF)

What am I not understanding? How can there be 8T volume transactions for the $46k BTC which has a market cap of about $900B? 8T x $46k is about $368T, that's a lot of activity when Price*Volume is 400 times higher than market cap.

There's certainly something that I don't understand correctly here...


----------



## m3s

Where do you see this?

I see $55B 24hrs volume with a market cap of $900B. That's pretty normal to low volume. Maybe you are confusing 8T transactions = 8T x $48k when a transaction could be $1k etc?

Volume was way higher on Friday when the futures expired. $350B


----------



## MrBlackhill

m3s said:


> Where do you see this?
> 
> I see $55B 24hrs volume with a market cap of $900B. That's pretty normal to low volume. Maybe you are confusing 8T transactions = 8T x $48k when a transaction could be $1k etc?
> 
> Volume was way higher on Friday when the futures expired. $350B


Oh yes, market cap $900B sorry, but anyways, I was looking on an app on my phone and then I went to confirm on Yahoo Finance. (On my phone it's showing that volume around 4:25 AM this morning, but on Yahoo Finance around 9:25 AM)

Obviously, it depends of the timescale, but still. I was on a 5-minute interval.


----------



## MrMatt

I think the question is where are they reporting this "trading volume" from?

I don't think they log every exchanges trades.
They might be reporting every wallet transaction, but that isn't a trade.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> I think the question is where are they reporting this "trading volume" from?
> 
> I don't think they log every exchanges trades.
> They might be reporting every wallet transaction, but that isn't a trade.


I guess I'd have to read the article here :





Bitcoin Trade Volume


Bitcoin Trade Volume — Analysis of Real Bitcoin Trade Volume from Bitwise




www.bitcointradevolume.com







https://static.bitwiseinvestments.com/Research/Bitwise-Asset-Management-Analysis-of-Real-Bitcoin-Trade-Volume.pdf


----------



## m3s

sags said:


> I think KO is in the same boat as me.........too late to the party for bitcoins.
> 
> I bought the ETF shares when bitcoin was $46,000 each. Even if it goes to $100,000 each (kind of crazy), I will only double my investment.


Isn't that what everyone said about FAANG for the last decade?

Again in terms of adoption.. bitcoin has roughly the same number of users as the internet had in 1997. Except bitcoin is growing much faster than the internet. There are definitely risks to bitcoin like cardano and others but the user base is rising fast

Metcalfe's Law seems to be a blind spot for boomers because technology spreads exponentially faster than things used to


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> I guess I'd have to read the article here :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Bitcoin Trade Volume
> 
> 
> Bitcoin Trade Volume — Analysis of Real Bitcoin Trade Volume from Bitwise
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.bitcointradevolume.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://static.bitwiseinvestments.com/Research/Bitwise-Asset-Management-Analysis-of-Real-Bitcoin-Trade-Volume.pdf


That .pdf has obvious factual errors right from the beginning, so IMO it's not worth reading.

I'd be happy with the exchanges self reported numbers, just understanding the limits of that data set.
I think it's a reasonable proxy for overall activity rates.


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> Isn't that what everyone said about FAANG for the last decade?
> 
> Again in terms of adoption.. bitcoin has roughly the same number of users as the internet had in 1997. Except bitcoin is growing much faster than the internet. There are definitely risks to bitcoin like cardano and others but the user base is rising fast
> 
> Metcalfe's Law seems to be a blind spot for boomers because technology spreads exponentially faster than things used to


"This time it's different" seems to be a blind spot for some, because they really think that "this time it's different". 
Big spoiler, it isn't different this time.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> Big spoiler, it isn't different this time.


I totally agree.

I'm seeing a lot of "this time is different" lately and that leads to greed and then fear. Dot com bubble is the classic example. I think blockchain tech has huge disruptive potential but it's still in dial up internet stage and people who don't understand that are speculating

History will repeat as it does


----------



## nathan79

sags said:


> I think KO is in the same boat as me.........too late to the party for bitcoins.
> 
> I bought the ETF shares when bitcoin was $46,000 each. Even if it goes to $100,000 each (kind of crazy), I will only double my investment.
> 
> The "huge" money........from 8 cents to $46,000 is already baked in and the early adopters are the most secretive billionaires on the planet.


I remember people saying the exact same thing in 2013 when it first cracked $1000, and I expect people will still be saying that when it hits $1,000,0000.

I would say that if you're buying now you should be prepared to hold through the next bear market. There's no way of telling when that will be, however. The price could go to 150K over the next 6 months and then never go below 40K again, or we could have seen the top already at 58K, and we could eventually drop below 20K again. I suspect it goes much higher this year, but this is not financial advice.

As for the volume, I suspect a glitch somewhere. It will probably be corrected eventually.


----------



## m3s

sags said:


> The "huge" money........from 8 cents to $46,000 is already baked in and the early adopters are the most secretive billionaires on the planet.
> 
> My conclusion is latching onto the "next" big thing or maybe the one that is the "last" one that is fully adopted by the public.


I doubt there are many secret bitcoin billionaires

Very few have the means or diamond hands hold beyond 10x, 100x, 1000x etc. There are the rare exceptions like Winklevoss twins

Satoshi's 1M BTC wallet has never been touched. So he was either already rich enough to not need to sell or he's dead



sags said:


> I am liking Cardano because it is well thought out and makes a lot of sense to me........a doofus on the technology.
> 
> I wish there was an easy entry point is all. I am not interested in an exchange or a wallet or all that because I would screw it all up anyways.


Grayscale plans to create more ETFs for alt coins such as cardano

Cardano wallets are very user friendly. Ethereum and bitcoin are very technical and clunky by comparison. Voyager is also very user friendly but hasn't launched in Canada yet

To buy cardano now is extremely early. The mainnet isn't even fully developed


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> Satoshi's 1M BTC wallet has never been touched. So he was either already rich enough to not need to sell or he's dead


Or he's lost the credentials. I'm sure that happens to many people.


----------



## nathan79

I doubt those are Satoshi's only Bitcoins. He's wise not to touch them in any case.

Glad I sold my DOGE for Cardano a while back... lol.


----------



## sags

But the ridiculously big money to make is long gone........no ?

At 8 cents a bitcoin somebody could buy tens of thousands of them for $50K. Today, they can buy 1 bitcoin.

The value of tens of thousands bitcoins is rising exponentially higher than a single bitcoin.

I was mining them in the first mining pool and bitcoins were so worthless I got bored and stopped.


----------



## sags

Bitcoin is becoming more centralized in order to strengthen the security of the blockchain.









Dorsey, Saylor, Winklevoss Twins Join MIT Campaign to Protect Bitcoin - Decrypt


Crypto industry backs MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative as it launches a new R&D program to strengthen Bitcoin’s infrastructure.




decrypt.co


----------



## m3s

> Another thing we've learned while writing Citi GPS reports on disruptive innovations is the time it takes a new product to become widely used by global customers has decreased dramatically. According to Visual Capitalist, it took the telephone 50 years to reach 50 million customers, 22 years for television, seven years for the Internet and just 19 days for Pokémon Go. So it's not a surprise the uptake of Bitcoin in the past almost 7 years has been nothing but extraordinary. Not only has Bitcoin increased in usage and value (hitting $1 trillion in market capitalization in February 2021), but it has created a whole ecosystem around it — including crypto exchanges, crypto banks, and new offerings into savings, lending, and borrowing.


Citi report


----------



## james4beach

Great news everyone! There are going to be options available on BTCC









Options Trading to Begin for Purpose Bitcoin ETF


TORONTO, Feb. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Purpose Investments Inc. (“Purpose”) is thrilled to announce the TMX Group will begin listing options around...




www.globenewswire.com





This means that you don't have to stop at just gambling on BTCC. You can now make leveraged options gambles on bitcoin!


----------



## james4beach

Additionally, I didn't realize that this thing trades as multiple tickers

BTCC.B ... CAD, no currency hedging
BTCC .... CAD, currency hedged

The second ticker seems to be new and isn't even showing up in my data sources yet. Adding in the new options and oh boy, this is going to be one crazy party.


----------



## james4beach

And even more Bitcoin ETF news! Oh boy soon we'll have nothing else _but_ Bitcoin news to talk about.

EBIT is another Bitcoin ETF. And now the expense ratio on EBIT is being reduced to 0.75%
BTCC has 1.0% management fee

And there's a new Canadian ETF coming, called *ETHX*. It will be the world's first true Ethereum ETF.

Summary of all these new developments

BTCC.B
BTCC
Options on BTCC
EBIT - now with lower MER
ETHX - coming soon
HBIT - Horizons bitcoin ETF coming soon
HIBT - Horizons _inverse_ bitcoin


----------



## Spudd

Also BTCC.U for USD trading.


----------



## m3s

ETHX is a great deal for that financial provider. Not only do they collect MER fee, but they could also stake ETH for 8% yield

There are lots of services offering 5% yield on ETH now if you don't want to use DeFi yourself (kraken, blockfi, celsius, voyager etc)

Maybe someone will come out with an ETH ETF that distributes a yield


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> Additionally, I didn't realize that this thing trades as multiple tickers
> 
> BTCC.B ... CAD, no currency hedging
> BTCC .... CAD, currency hedged
> 
> The second ticker seems to be new and isn't even showing up in my data sources yet. Adding in the new options and oh boy, this is going to be one crazy party.


Currency hedging a currency investment seems silly to me.


----------



## fireseeker

MrMatt said:


> Currency hedging a currency investment seems silly to me.


What about using options to hedge a currency-hedged currency investment?


----------



## james4beach

fireseeker said:


> What about using options to hedge a currency-hedged currency investment?


There's so much hype about all this that the fund companies are literally tripping over themselves, to sell as much $ of new product as fast as possible. There will soon be 5 bitcoin/ethereum ETFs in Canada.

I updated my list in the post above. I forgot to mention HBIT. Horizons has filed to introduce

HBIT ... bitcoin ETF
HIBT ... inverse bitcoin ETF
lol just don't make a typo in your order!


----------



## MrMatt

Does this make anyone think of the actively managed ETF's ? I don't hear much about them.

Honestly since nobody has a good valuation case on any fundamentals, I don't get it.

I think Ethereum, Cardano, Conflux, polkadot platforms might have a value, but even then, I still haven't seen a good valuation case.

Well I sat out the first many years of Goog & Amzn, and missed the AAPL & MSFT resurgence, I'm totally cool being late to this party too.

FYI, I almost missed out on Nortel, Enron, BB, Yahoo and countless others.


----------



## MrBlackhill

What am I not understanding about this "first" BTC ETF?

I thought there was already QBTC the Bitcoin Fund and QETH the Ethereum Fund.


----------



## james4beach

MrBlackhill said:


> What am I not understand about this "first" BTC ETF?
> 
> I thought there was already QBTC the Bitcoin Fund and QETH the Ethereum Fund.


Yes they are all the first ever! QBTC, BTCC, EBIT, so many firsts. (Using various definitions I'm sure)

So many bitcoin ETFs. So much excitement. Everyone* is going to get rich, it's going to be amazing.

_* fund companies and the whales dumping their bitcoinz on the dumb public_

Here's something to think about. With the $1 or $2 billion worth of coinz in all these new ETFs, someone had to sell their coinz, for the public to buy them. What kind of idiot would have sold $1 billion worth of such amazing coinz, when they are sure to explode higher in value?


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> Here's something to think about.


You should really think about gold and fiat. It's no different. Why would someone sell you gold

Elon was right - having some Bitcoin is simply a less dumb form of liquidity than cash


----------



## Spudd

MrBlackhill said:


> What am I not understanding about this "first" BTC ETF?
> 
> I thought there was already QBTC the Bitcoin Fund and QETH the Ethereum Fund.


What I heard is that technically, those are not ETF's, they are closed end funds. It means their value can differ from NAV more than would happen with an ETF, which should more closely track the underlying.


----------



## andrewf

james4beach said:


> And even more Bitcoin ETF news! Oh boy soon we'll have nothing else _but_ Bitcoin news to talk about.
> 
> EBIT is another Bitcoin ETF. And now the expense ratio on EBIT is being reduced to 0.75%
> BTCC has 1.0% management fee
> 
> And there's a new Canadian ETF coming, called *ETHX*. It will be the world's first true Ethereum ETF.
> 
> Summary of all these new developments
> 
> BTCC.B
> BTCC
> Options on BTCC
> EBIT - now with lower MER
> ETHX - coming soon
> HBIT - Horizons bitcoin ETF coming soon
> HIBT - Horizons _inverse_ bitcoin


Inverse bitcoin ETF sounds like a disaster! Given how volatile it is, inverse bitcoin ETF is headed to zero regardless of how BTC performs.


----------



## sags

Be greedy when others are fearful..........Warren Buffet.


----------



## sags

Kevin O'Leary on CNBC today.......

I was wrong. I am going big into crypto. I am starting a fund and building mining farms in countries with low energy costs. I will pay for all the equipment.

Hokey Doodle.........next thing you know old Warren will say he scooped up $50 billion worth of bitcoins. Old Charlie will say.......bah, humbug !


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> Be greedy when others are fearful..........Warren Buffet.


Not sensing much bitcoin fear in the investors.
Waiting for the proverbial shoeshine boy to tell me what the next big coin is.


----------



## MrBlackhill

Cryptocurrencies started maybe about 10 years ago, but its interest on the market started maybe about 5 years ago. Pretty crazy to see that there's already $1T into cryptocurrencies. I'm still trying to figure out what triggered its 6x within 6 months. Is it truly because it's stealing gold's safe heaven status as we expect inflation?


----------



## m3s

MrBlackhill said:


> I'm still trying to figure out what triggered its 6x within 6 months.


Bitcoin rewards for mining are cut in half every 4 years (2012, 2016, 2020) So you combine a 50% reduction in supply with rapidly growing demand. Halving the rewards at 4 year intervals is a poor design imo. Cardano for example reduces the issuance slightly every 5 days rather than a 50% shock every 4 years. As bitcoin rewards decline and its volume and market cap increases the halving should be less of an impact



MrBlackhill said:


> Is it truly because it's stealing gold's safe heaven status as we expect inflation?


The younger generation distrust gold and silver as a safe heaven because they perceive it to be manipulated by JP Morgan etc paper trading. The recent robinhood manipulation just put fire to this theory. Combine that with poor monetary policy and inflation and you have a recipe for distrust in the financial establishment. As precious metal heirlooms are passed down they will probably be sold off for digital assets instead.


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> Bitcoin rewards for mining are cut in half every 4 years (2012, 2016, 2020) So you combine a 50% reduction in supply with rapidly growing demand. Halving the rewards at 4 year intervals is a poor design imo. Cardano for example reduces the issuance slightly every 5 days rather than a 50% shock every 4 years. As bitcoin rewards decline and its volume and market cap increases the halving should be less of an impact
> 
> 
> 
> The younger generation distrust gold and silver as a safe heaven because they perceive it to be manipulated by JP Morgan etc paper trading. The recent robinhood manipulation just put fire to this theory. Combine that with poor monetary policy and inflation and you have a recipe for distrust in the financial establishment. As precious metal heirlooms are passed down they will probably be sold off for digital assets instead.


If paper trading is enough to destroy confidence in physical gold, then all this paper trading should be enough to destroy confidence in digital currencies.


I don't think the declining block reward is a major issue., I'd like there to be maybe a 2% inflation, puts a bit of incentive to do something.
I don't like the idea of total available bitcoin to decrease over time, this will cause it to get bid up endlessly, which I don't actually think is a good thing

As far as value, I think the question is how much of the market cap of *coin is real money, and how much is just paper gains. Remember, for several coins there are large amounts held by early adopters that were never traded.

I'm not arguing that Market Cap isn't a "real measure" you just have to be careful what it actually means. Market Cap is the estimation of value that every share is valued at the most recent trade of a single share.
It completely ignores the whole supply/demand curve, and it's why manty traders look at Level 2 data.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> If paper trading is enough to destroy confidence in physical gold, then all this paper trading should be enough to destroy confidence in digital currencies.


True, but at least for the younger generation it's much easier to hold your own crypto keys than it is to store your own gold

Imagine the day when there is a "run on the bank".. when everyone wants their paper gold and paper fiat. I never thought it would happen but I never thought americans would storm the white house either. Who knows what can be orchestrated on social media nowadays especially with banks manipulating trading like the GME fiasco

If there was ever a "run on the bank" you'd much rather be at home with your keys, metal and/or ammo


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> True, but at least for the younger generation it's much easier to hold your own crypto keys than it is to store your own gold.


Ease != Security.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> Ease != Security.


Another component is how packing your house and garage full of "wealth" has gone out of fashion similar to what sags was saying about bling going out of style


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> Another component is how packing your house and garage full of "wealth" has gone out of fashion similar to what sags was saying about bling going out of style


Never heard of all the junk around ones house referred to as "wealth"


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> Never heard of all the junk around ones house referred to as "wealth"


It's the tendency to want to accumulate "things" and "stack" silver and gold vs how I am seeing a trend more towards minimalism at least in terms of "stuff"

People being people the new thing to hoard is toilet paper and NFTs


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> It's the tendency to want to accumulate "things" and "stack" silver and gold vs how I am seeing a trend more towards minimalism at least in terms of "stuff"
> 
> People being people the new thing to hoard is toilet paper and NFTs


And crypto currencies.
Some people always want more.


----------



## james4beach

MrBlackhill said:


> I'm still trying to figure out what triggered its 6x within 6 months. Is it truly because it's stealing gold's safe heaven status as we expect inflation?


I suspect it's a combination of:

strong marketing push by large holders through social media
+
flood of central bank liquidity
+
bubble (psychology)


The marketing push (or spam) has been evident on social media for quite a while, but there was a huge push post COVID. I think this is a significant part of the story and it's also why there are many coin converts among younger people. They are the ones hearing the message.

Also note that in a high liquidity environment where people are fearless (like now) money managers become very vulnerable to FOMO and are scared to death of showing poor performance. In desperation, they start doing stupid things (just like they did in the late 1990s) by for example embracing this unregulated, speculative security when they should instead be sticking to their classic investment mixes.


----------



## MrBlackhill

james4beach said:


> money managers become very vulnerable to FOMO and are scared to death of showing poor performance


I think they have no other choice. I think in times like these, they _have_ to follow the trends to get the performance. The though part for the managers is not how to make money, but how not to lose money. They will ride the hypes and get more and more nervous as they have to perfectly time the bubbles burst and retract before the collapse so they can be seen as heroes.


----------



## james4beach

MrBlackhill said:


> I think they have no other choice. I think in times like these, they _have_ to follow the trends to get the performance. The though part for the managers is not how to make money, but how not to lose money. They will ride the hypes and get more and more nervous as they have to perfectly time the bubbles burst and retract before the collapse so they can be seen as heroes.


Yes and I think it's very funny actually. They are all about chasing performance. Grantham wrote a great piece on this several years ago, I recommend reading it:

My Sister's Pension Assets and Agency Problems (The Tension between Protecting Your Job or Your Clients' Money)

But I think you're wrong about the other part. These managers and professionals don't really care much about protecting customer money. The reason is that a downturn, when it eventually comes makes them all lose their jobs and bonuses anyway. So with this incentive structure, the rational approach for a money manager is to chase performance as much as possible -- and seek risk -- without much concern about the downside.

And I think this is a fundamental reason that the money industry and "professionals" are so heavily equity focused, because there is a bias in favour of risk & high returns... and the down side is really not a huge concern to them. Nobody gives a s***t if the customer loses money.

Bear markets sour the customers, and they leave anyway. This means that the industry is designed to milk the customers for all they're worth during bull cycles. This is the fundamental reason we are in a very pro-equity and pro-risk culture.

It's NOT in the investor's best interests. Beware. The *rational and optimal* investment strategy for an individual is likely a more conservative portfolio than what the industry (including advisors) try to get them into.

It's easy for an advisor or manager to come along and tell you to go 100% into equities, and help you tweak a great performing portfolio. They know that will make you happy, because you're greedy, and you want to get rich quick. The advisor or fund manager doesn't give a s*** about you when the bear market comes. You're going to withdraw your money and leave anyway, because everyone does. Just look at how AUM shrinks during every bear market.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> I think they have no other choice. I think in times like these, they _have_ to follow the trends to get the performance. The though part for the managers is not how to make money, but how not to lose money. They will ride the hypes and get more and more nervous as they have to perfectly time the bubbles burst and retract before the collapse so they can be seen as heroes.


Well if they have a broken compensation structure, yeah.
You get lots for big wins, might as well swing for the fences.

That being said, there are money managers out there who are paid, and incentive to deliver good risk adjusted returns. They're just not going to get the 5* rating for performance.

Honestly, who's going to want to invest with the guy who says he didn't realize Amazon was a big in retail deal till April 2020.


----------



## sags

The ETF is getting pounded..........so I bought more. I think I might enjoy walking barefoot on a bed of nails.......


----------



## sags

Lots of news on bitcoins today. It is still king of the digital world.

Paypal is looking at buying some digital companies, Their competitor Square has registered a bank..........

The Fed is talking about the need for a US digital coin based on US dollars.......hmm.

Bitcoin enthusiasts say it doesn't matter. Bitcoin is no longer considered an alternative currency. It is a store of value now........a digital gold.

It is interesting how quickly the digital coin world is changing.

I like some of the other coins and concepts, but I am sticking with bitcoins and the easiest way to buy and store them........the Purpose ETF.

Bitcoin is all the business news really talks about.


----------



## fireseeker

sags said:


> Bitcoin is all the business news really talks about.


Hmmm. What might that indicate, I wonder?


----------



## doctrine

New Bitcoin motto: Everything you don't know about math, plus everything you don't know about computers, combined with everything you don't know about investing.


----------



## MrBlackhill

About every single technical analysis / chart that one can make in a single post. Pretty interesting.









Discover Substack Newsletters


Find great things to read on Substack. Browse top publications, find writers you follow, or search by topic.




bitcoinuncharted.substack.com


----------



## m3s

Goldman Sachs wants to trade, custody crypto, sell crypto ETFs now. Watch the SEC approve Goldman Sachs while the Winklevoss Twins have been waiting (head of SEC who taught blockchain at MIT is also ex Goldman Sachs)


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> About every single technical analysis / chart that one can make in a single post. Pretty interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Discover Substack Newsletters
> 
> 
> Find great things to read on Substack. Browse top publications, find writers you follow, or search by topic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bitcoinuncharted.substack.com


Pretty confusing.
For example. This chart.
What is it saying? Those lines, are they the Logins, or the BTC price, they clearly aren't both.

This chart does not aid in understanding.
Now if they had a second series of lines, for the same exchanges, showing the BTC price, that would be useful.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> Pretty confusing.
> For example. This chart.
> What is it saying? Those lines, are they the Logins, or the BTC price, they clearly aren't both.
> 
> This chart does not aid in understanding.
> Now if they had a second series of lines, for the same exchanges, showing the BTC price, that would be useful.
> View attachment 21381


The grey line is the BTC price with the axis on the right. That's why "price" is in grey. All the coloured lines have their legend on the top left corner with their axis on the left.

UPVs means Unique Pageviews (for the "Login" page).

Maybe the grey line is not distinctive enough. All other graphs are pretty clear even when they have 3 axis.

The summary of the graph analysis is in bold text prior to the graph image.


----------



## m3s

You can just go to glassnode and pull up all kinds of interesting charts from the blockchain data

The beauty of a transparent market where the central exchanges don't control the data


----------



## MrBlackhill

m3s said:


> You can just go to glassnode and pull up all kinds of interesting charts from the blockchain data
> 
> The beauty of a transparent market where the central exchanges don't control the data


Yes, lots of great data available.

It's behind a paywall though, so, again, the people with the most money are the people with access to the most data.

I don't know if it's transparent when you have to pay $800/month to have full access.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> The grey line is the BTC price with the axis on the right. That's why "price" is in grey. All the coloured lines have their legend on the top left corner with their axis on the left.
> 
> UPVs means Unique Pageviews (for the "Login" page).
> 
> Maybe the grey line is not distinctive enough. All other graphs are pretty clear even when they have 3 axis.
> 
> The summary of the graph analysis is in bold text prior to the graph image.


Okay, didn't notice the Grey line, and it wasn't obvious or identified on the graph (which was my point, it's a bad graph)
That being said, it seems obvious that dramatic changes in value would correlate highly with brokerage activity.
The direction of the causal relationship would be unclear.


Also regarding the data and glassnode.
The data is free, the analysis and fancy graphs from glassnode are what you're paying for.

You're free to make your own graphs, or have someone other than glassnode make them for you. It's actually becoming more common programming tasks for learning as the blockchain is a huge freely available dataset to work with.

Secondly, the blockchain transactions only part of the story, the on exchange data is also important, and very opaque.
I'm finding the market depth on the exchanges to be fascinating data right now. 
There are some HUGE arbitrage opportunities.


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> The data is free, the analysis and fancy graphs from glassnode are what you're paying for.


I didn't know we could have access to Tier 2 and Tier 3 data for free. That's nice.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> I didn't know we could have access to Tier 2 and Tier 3 data for free. That's nice.


Well 100% of the blockchain data is available.
The exchanges also offer a variety of data.


----------



## MrMatt

MrMatt said:


> Well 100% of the blockchain data is available.
> The exchanges also offer a variety of data.
> 
> 
> View attachment 21382


That being said, it would be a lot of work to compile all of this yourself.


----------



## m3s

I've signed up with multiple exchange - Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, Voyager

I opened them for free, I keep them open for free, I get the best data for free, I transfer in and out of them free (well this depends on the type of transfer) With the stock brokerages they make it seem like some arduous task to transfer from one brokerage to another and then charge you monthly fees for the privilege of having an account with them not to mention data fees. Yes they make money but it is far more transparent. It's also far easier to track in one place with free APIs

The only real benefit of using these ETFs is that you can hold them in TFSA/RRSP etc


----------



## MrBlackhill

I'm still not buying BTC, but I bought a blockchain ETF.

I like the idea, but I'm not confident enough to make my mind.

Therefore, I prefer buying companies owning fields of tulips instead of directly buying tulips. So if something goes wrong with the tulips, at least the companies can use their fields for something else. It's my way to hedge while getting exposure.


----------



## sags

So woke up this morning to see bitcoin charging back up. I am now back in the green with the ETF shares.........LOL.

My theory is that since bitcoins actually trade in satoshis, the price rises or falls based on minutely small transactions.

So, the bitcoin crowd wait until the price falls and then charge back in with $20 or less purchases and drive the price back up.

If bitcoins had to be sold in whole bitcoins, I doubt there would be much of a market for them and the price would collapse.

Bitcoins are basically penny stocks. Imagine if you could buy 1/100,000th of Apple, Tesla, BRK shares what that would do the price.

PS......people can buy as little as 1 share of the ETF instantly.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> I'm still not buying BTC, but I bought Blockchain.
> 
> I like the idea, but I'm not confident enough to make my mind.
> 
> Therefore, I prefer buying companies owning fields of tulips instead of directly buying tulips. So if something goes wrong with the tulips, at least the companies can use their fields for something else. It's my way to hedge while getting exposure.


What do you mean "i bought Blockchain"?


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> What do you mean "i bought Blockchain"?


A blockchain ETF, sorry.


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> So woke up this morning to see bitcoin charging back up. I am now back in the green with the ETF shares.........LOL.
> 
> My theory is that since bitcoins actually trade in satoshis, the price rises or falls based on minutely small transactions.
> 
> So, the bitcoin crowd wait until the price falls and then charge back in with $20 or less purchases and drive the price back up.
> 
> If bitcoins had to be sold in whole bitcoins, I doubt there would be much of a market for them and the price would collapse.
> 
> Bitcoins are basically penny stocks. Imagine if you could buy 1/100,000th of Apple, Tesla, BRK shares what that would do the price.
> 
> PS......people can buy as little as 1 share of the ETF instantly.


Your theory is interesting, but lacking data.
You can buy fractional shares, it hasn't had much of an effect on the price.


Also houses are typically sold as "the whole" house, just as a car (average car costs about 1 BTC).
Are you suggesting if you could buy 0.001% of a house at a time, prices would be different?


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> A blockchain ETF, sorry.


Which Blockchain? BTC? Eth?


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> Your theory is interesting, but lacking data.
> You can buy fractional shares, it hasn't had much of an effect on the price.
> 
> 
> Also houses are typically sold as "the whole" house, just as a car (average car costs about 1 BTC).
> Are you suggesting if you could buy 0.001% of a house at a time, prices would be different?


Well, I'm no expert, but why is there stock splits? So that's affordable for investors, no? So that people can buy more, no?

But if everybody could buy fractional shares, there would be no need for stock split, no?


----------



## MrBlackhill

MrMatt said:


> Which Blockchain? BTC? Eth?


I bought HBGD, it has low volume but it holds many Bitcoin-related stocks and blockchain stocks. Argo, DMG, Hive, Riot, Hut 8, Bitfarms, etc. It also holds Voyager, Galaxy, Marathon, etc.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> Well, I'm no expert, but why is there stock splits? So that's affordable for investors, no? So that people can buy more, no?
> 
> But if everybody could buy fractional shares, there would be no need for stock split, no?


Well fractional shares are brokerage specific.
But splits are mostly to make things easy, and they like to be in a certain neighbourhood.

However I've bought a number of single or small numbers of shares (BRK.B at about $3k for example)


----------



## m3s

Kevin O'Leary now admits now that he's owned BTC and ETH for years but kept quiet in case it became illegal

Institutions have also been buying while putting out negative comments for years. You've all been hoodwinked


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> Kevin O'Leary now admits now that he's owned BTC and ETH for years but kept quiet in case it became illegal


Is it possible he started publicly endorsing it / pumping it as he was trying to dump his position?

Bitcoin ownership is heavily concentrated among billionnaires and especially among Silicon Valley rich people, by the way.


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> Bitcoin ownership is heavily concentrated among billionnaires and especially among Silicon Valley rich people, by the way.


Gold ownership is heavily concentrated among billionaires

It's interesting that people feel a need to attack BTC with statements that apply even more so to anything else

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they buy BTCC?


----------



## sags

The difference is though......O"Leary, Cuban, Musk, Saylor aren't spending their "rent money" on bitcoins. If they lose 100%.....no big deal for them.

But many, many people in Asia, China, India......are desperately hoping that buying some bits of a bitcoin will give them enough to buy chickens that provide eggs every day.

I will put "discretionary gambling money I would lose anyways" into bitcoins.......but that is all.


----------



## m3s

sags said:


> The difference is though......
> 
> But many, many people in Asia, China, India......


How is this different exactly?

People gamble in those countries either way. There are people who can and cannot afford to gamble just like anywhere else. There are many countries with inflation and currency crisis (Lebanon recently) where people would benefit from diversification and alternative assets.

India is also a great example of a government that demonetized its fiat banknotes overnight (2016)


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> Gold ownership is heavily concentrated among billionaires
> 
> It's interesting that people feel a need to attack BTC with statements that apply even more so to anything else


Gold ownership is indeed concentrated among the rich, and also among central banks, which hold massive amounts of it. However they all sit on those and hardly ever trade them.

Billionnaires in speculative securities are different. They are actively trading those positions and trying to make a lot of money quickly. So the behaviours are different, especially short term thinking.

Central banks don't trade $100 billion of gold because the price is up this month. They pretty much sit on those amounts forever, and keep accumulating. The true HODL'ers.


----------



## m3s

You're grasping at straws here

Gold is widely traded and manipulated with paper trading and derivatives. If everyone tried to withdraw their gold from paper ETFs what do you think happens

Large chunks of BTC never moves which is why it is compared to gold. Pointless argument really I buy gold and don't feel the need to convince anyone not to


----------



## andrewf

james4beach said:


> Is it possible he started publicly endorsing it / pumping it as he was trying to dump his position?
> 
> Bitcoin ownership is heavily concentrated among billionnaires and especially among Silicon Valley rich people, by the way.


Why anyone listens to 'Mr Wonderful' is beyond me.


----------



## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> Why anyone listens to 'Mr Wonderful' is beyond me.


Well, if you actually listened to him, you'd know why.

You don't listen to him, so you don't know what he says, so of course you wouldn't understand why anyone would listen.
Now if you actually listened to him, then you'd have at least 1 reason to do so.
Myself I find that he's intelligent and insightful, a bit obsessed with stupid things (wine & watches), but he seems to be a very nice compassionate guy. Though he does have a nice TV-tough presentation.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Myself I find that he's intelligent and insightful, a bit obsessed with stupid things (wine & watches), but he seems to be a very nice compassionate guy. Though he does have a nice TV-tough presentation.


He doesn't seem particularly intelligent or nice. And he's a horrible business man. Who would trust this guy's advice or ideas?

I have zero respect for O'Leary after he screwed Mattel / TLC shareholders (the public). He was fired and sued repeatedly for that too. He's a crook. 

I don't get my financial advice from crooks.


----------



## doctrine

I don't mind listening to O'Leary, if only to deconstruct what is behind his motives. He is certainly one to take advantage of a trend. If he smells a chance to make a buck, he will absolutely take it. And suspecting he would talk up his book only to unload it is absolutely true, although I would think he probably has some investment in a startup that he is focused on pumping, more than actual coinz.


----------



## james4beach

There's a brand new bitcoin ETF which will start trading tomorrow: BTCX

This is not to be confused with BTCC or BTCG.U which are distinct ETFs, though it sounds like BTCG will be merged into BTCX. In addition, totally unrelated, Horizons should be releasing two more bitcoin ETFs in the next few months as well (yes I'm serious). And remember, there's also QBTC and EBIT.

Currently I think Canada has at least 5 bitcoin ETFs, with a minimum of 3 more on the horizon. No doubt we'll have at least 10 bitcoin ETFs by the end of the year.

This is not normal or healthy.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> There's a brand new bitcoin ETF which will start trading tomorrow: BTCX
> 
> This is not to be confused with BTCC or BTCG.U which are distinct ETFs, though it sounds like BTCG will be merged into BTCX. In addition, totally unrelated, Horizons should be releasing two more bitcoin ETFs in the next few months as well (yes I'm serious). And remember, there's also QBTC and EBIT.
> 
> Currently I think Canada has at least 5 bitcoin ETFs, with a minimum of 3 more on the horizon. No doubt we'll have at least 10 bitcoin ETFs by the end of the year.
> 
> This is not normal or healthy.


I think it's normal and completely healthy.
I think it's stupid to buy pretty much any of these products.

For clarity.
Normal - Hot trend, lots of people or company pile in.
Healthy - It's IMO a bad idea, the faster it dies off the better.
Stupid to buy - I don't think they're a good investment. Since nobody can realistically value (most of) them, nobody should buy them

I'd rather all the bad crypto ideas collapsed on themselves tomorrow, and we're left with the good ideas.
It is healthier to yank off that bandage, than to let it fester.


----------



## andrewf

MrMatt said:


> Well, if you actually listened to him, you'd know why.
> 
> You don't listen to him, so you don't know what he says, so of course you wouldn't understand why anyone would listen.
> Now if you actually listened to him, then you'd have at least 1 reason to do so.
> Myself I find that he's intelligent and insightful, a bit obsessed with stupid things (wine & watches), but he seems to be a very nice compassionate guy. Though he does have a nice TV-tough presentation.


He's usually very wrong about things until being forced to admit that it is right. He is not a thought leader. He's a circus clown.


----------



## MrMatt

andrewf said:


> He's usually very wrong about things until being forced to admit that it is right. He is not a thought leader. He's a circus clown.


Most people are wrong about things. 
I think he offers a different perspective, in todays world that is very important.
There are massive amounts of groupthink, and most people don't even consider other perspectives.


----------



## sags

I sold all my shares in BTCC. 

I made a few dollars on the rise of the price, but it still doesn't make any sense to me.


----------



## sags

I think central banks will create easier ways to transfer fiat money.

It isn't difficult to create a blockchain to verify and record transactions.

If they charge a tiny fee for using the blockchain, it is a revenue source for the government.


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> I sold all my shares in BTCC.
> 
> I made a few dollars on the rise of the price, but it still doesn't make any sense to me.


I would recommend never buying an investment that doesn't make sense to you.

Also personally I think Bitcoin is dumb, so I'm not buying. (yet)

Ethereum is really interesting though Vitalik just did a nice interview on Tim Ferris. I learned a lot, however now I have more questions than I did going in.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> Ethereum is really interesting though Vitalik just did a nice interview on Tim Ferris. I learned a lot, however now I have more questions than I did going in.


Just wait for Charles Hoskinson on Joe Rogan's podcast (after their smart contracts are launched)

The fracture of the ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Charles Hoskinson now competing with separate projects could be the ultimate downfall

Very Interested in how these projects mature in the next few years


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> Just wait for Charles Hoskinson on Joe Rogan's podcast (after their smart contracts are launched)
> 
> The fracture of the ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Charles Hoskinson now competing with separate projects could be the ultimate downfall
> 
> Very Interested in how these projects mature in the next few years


If I knew a friendly exchange, I'd consider some Cardano.


----------



## james4beach

Horizons got approval for their new HBIT bitcoin ETF

So that's maybe the 6th bitcoin ETF in Canada now? I lost track


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> So that's maybe the 6th bitcoin ETF in Canada now? I lost track


Purpose 1.5%
Horizons 1%
Evolve .75%
Galaxy .4%

The more competition the better imo


----------



## MrBlackhill

m3s said:


> Purpose 1.5%
> Horizons 1%
> Evolve .75%
> Galaxy .4%
> 
> The more competition the better imo


Yeah, I don't know about this, but I was thinking that everybody is currently launching their BTC ETF to get their share of the easy MER. I guess that managing a BTC ETF isn't really worth a huge MER unless I'm mistaken? The first ones to launch a BTC ETF just took advantage of being alone.


----------



## MrMatt

MrBlackhill said:


> Yeah, I don't know about this, but I was thinking that everybody is currently launching their BTC ETF to get their share of the easy MER. I guess that managing a BTC ETF isn't really worth a huge MER unless I'm mistaken? The first ones to launch a BTC ETF just took advantage of being alone.


Well I think the important thing with a Bitcoin ETF isn't caught in the MER.
1. How many bitcoin per ETF unit.
2. How are they storing the wallet keys.


----------



## m3s

Traditional investment firms like Purpose and Evolve are paying Gemini for cold storage.

Galaxy Digital (TSE GLXY) is one of the original public companies that holds its own BTC (2nd largest treasury until TSLA bumped them to 3rd) I haven't read the fine print but this should explain how 1 middle man can charge half the fees of 2

Edit: They all have a custody service + Gemini as the sub-custodian


----------



## MrBlackhill

I may be late, but it's the first time I notice something like this as a donation medium:









-----



m3s said:


>


I'm noticing they all have different indexes. I'm wondering if one of them will be more reactive and accurate.


----------



## sags

All the ETFs are open during market hours. 

Some people don't like that because you could lose everything while they are closed for business.

If you want to totally control your crypto.......you need to buy it and store it yourself.


----------



## MrBlackhill

sags said:


> All the ETFs are open during market hours.
> 
> Some people don't like that because you could lose everything while they are closed for business.
> 
> If you want to totally control your crypto.......you need to buy it and store it yourself.


Good point, I haven't thought about this. (I don't hold any BTC ETF)


----------



## m3s

The only reason to use a BTC ETF is for TFSA and RRSP.. You can easily yield +5% on crypto nowadays instead of paying +1% fee (there are apparently additional fees with these ETFs)

Not sure how to calculate it but I suspect the yield opportunity can outweigh the tax benefits before long (especially if your TFSA/RRSP is maxed or you want the possibility to use tax losses etc)


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> You can easily yield +5% on crypto nowadays


If there was an easy way to get 5% yield, wouldn't all banks on earth borrow money at 0% (or 0.25% I suppose) and invest it at 5%, thus making unlimited amounts of free money?


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> If there was an easy way to get 5% yield, wouldn't all banks on earth borrow money at 0% (or 0.25% I suppose) and invest it at 5%, thus making unlimited amounts of free money?


Yes, and people do this.

I think it's dumb, because of forex risk.

You could stake Ethereum, or Indian Rupees and get 4-5%, but it's in that currency, what it ends up being in the borrowing currency could be something else.

If you did this with the Rupee, you'd have lost money.


----------



## m3s

james4beach said:


> If there was an easy way to get 5% yield, wouldn't all banks on earth borrow money at 0% (or 0.25% I suppose) and invest it at 5%, thus making unlimited amounts of free money?


People borrow fiat against their crypto using DeFi and traditional financial services available. This is smart as saves them from selling crypto and paying capital gains tax and also lets them hold the appreciating asset. You can yield 5% on the liquidity for loans and exchanges.

Borrowing fiat at 0% and investing at 5% isn't guaranteed so no everyone isn't doing it. Same as anything else really. You can't get 5% yield on fiat when fiat can be created out of thin air nobody cares about your fiat liquidity.


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> Yes, and people do this.
> 
> I think it's dumb, because of forex risk.
> 
> You could stake Ethereum, or Indian Rupees and get 4-5%, but it's in that currency, what it ends up being in the borrowing currency could be something else.
> 
> If you did this with the Rupee, you'd have lost money.


USDC and USDT pay like 10-12% and are pegged to the USD dollar. You can find a canadian stablecoin and earn between 8-12%. Bitcoin ETFs are a bit of a waste since they don't pay a yield and the MER sets you back.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> USDC and USDT pay like 10-12% and are pegged to the USD dollar. You can find a canadian stablecoin and earn between 8-12%. Bitcoin ETFs are a bit of a waste since they don't pay a yield and the MER sets you back.


I've never heard that USDC/USDT pay 10-12%, and are pegged to USD, that doesn't make sense.
If the coin is backed 1:1 by currency, how can it earn 10%?


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> I've never heard that USDC/USDT pay 10-12%, and are pegged to USD, that doesn't make sense.
> If the coin is backed 1:1 by currency, how can it earn 10%?


Provides liquidity to DeFi protocols. Unlike traditional finance where the liquidity is employed by the intermediaries

Many are happy to pay these rates to borrow USD stablecoins instead of selling their crypto and paying tax etc


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> Provides liquidity to DeFi protocols. Unlike traditional finance where the liquidity is employed by the intermediaries
> 
> Many are happy to pay these rates to borrow USD stablecoins instead of selling their crypto and paying tax etc


uhhh, people are paying 10% interest to borrow USD?
That's insane... it doesn't even make sense.


----------



## m3s

I'm sure cowboys thought the concept of an internal combustion engine was crazy. It's so different

When you can understand that a protocol can exchange billions of dollars in value a day without an intermediary.. you might get the aha moment

Liquidity is worth a lot. 10% against an asset that grows about 200% a year isn't insane either if it's short term and prevents a tax event


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> I'm sure cowboys thought the concept of an internal combustion engine was crazy. It's so different
> 
> When you can understand that a protocol can exchange billions of dollars in value a day without an intermediary.. you might get the aha moment
> 
> Liquidity is worth a lot. 10% against an asset that grows about 200% a year isn't insane either if it's short term and prevents a tax event


But the whole point is USDC/USDT don't grow, or shrink.
Why would you pay any interest to borrow 1 USDC when you can borrow 1 USD for almost nothing, and buy 1 USDC?


----------



## Jimmy

This asset is intriguing. Tesla is accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment now. Others will follow. There will be other digital currencies not just bitcoin so it is hard to value. I like the miners instead who collect fees for whatever currency is purchased or traded.


----------



## sags

Government regulation is coming. That likely won't be good for any crypto.


----------



## MrMatt

sags said:


> Government regulation is coming. That likely won't be good for any crypto.


Government regulation is rarely good for anything.


I wonder what tactic they're going to use.
People are too stupid to be allowed to manage their own money?
It's being used to fund crime?

I imagine a combination of both


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> uhhh, people are paying 10% interest to borrow USD?
> That's insane... it doesn't even make sense.


I don't know how you haven't heard of it. It's been around for awhile in the industry. Demand for stablecoins exceeds bitcoin so the interest rate is higher.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> I don't know how you haven't heard of it. It's been around for awhile in the industry. Demand for stablecoins exceeds bitcoin so the interest rate is higher.


yeah, I don't understand that.
I'd just mint more stablecoins then.


----------



## Fain

m3s said:


> I'm sure cowboys thought the concept of an internal combustion engine was crazy. It's so different
> 
> When you can understand that a protocol can exchange billions of dollars in value a day without an intermediary.. you might get the aha moment
> 
> Liquidity is worth a lot. 10% against an asset that grows about 200% a year isn't insane either if it's short term and prevents a tax event


100% once people understand the demand for them alongside the market structure of why that demand exists it's very easy argument. Although I do see rates coming down as it matures. Until then the yields are outpacing GIC rate by a ton, and your money is held in a Regulated custodian in trust.


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> yeah, I don't understand that.
> I'd just mint more stablecoins then.


How does the provider of the Interest account(Blockfi, Celcius, Crypto.com) mint more stablecoins? they have a demand for it and pay the rates on deposits held with them.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> How does the provider of the Interest account(Blockfi, Celcius, Crypto.com) mint more stablecoins? they have a demand for it and pay the rates on deposits held with them.


Tether, or the issuer should mint more.

Really if the interest rate was 10%, the price of USDT should be bid up slightly and detach it from USD, at which point it is no longer a stablecoin.


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> Tether, or the issuer should mint more.
> 
> Really if the interest rate was 10%, the price of USDT should be bid up slightly and detach it from USD, at which point it is no longer a stablecoin.


i don't think you're understanding it. Most stablecoin projects are 1:1 ratio so thats a massive capital they need to raise for that. 

And again the issuer is not the company paying interest on the deposit. You have to look at them separately.

This is a


MrMatt said:


> Tether, or the issuer should mint more.
> 
> Really if the interest rate was 10%, the price of USDT should be bid up slightly and detach it from USD, at which point it is no longer a stablecoin.


Why is the price of USDT higher than USD? The demand for USDT in crypto is largely coming from those wanting to sell USDT. Demand from exchanges and marketmakers need along since USDT is popular for crypto pairs. 

The market is operating differently than what you think "should" happen so obsviously you have to check what premises/logic your using. These rates are temporary and are on a downwards trajectory. in 2-3 years, they'll likely be much smaller than they are now. Until then 10% yield on USDT and 6% yield on bitcoin is a good buy & hold for me.


----------



## m3s

MrMatt said:


> But the whole point is USDC/USDT don't grow, or shrink.
> Why would you pay any interest to borrow 1 USDC when you can borrow 1 USD for almost nothing, and buy 1 USDC?


USDC/USDT are transferred and exchanged with other digital assets. The exchanges therefore require liquidity. Same as your legacy bank requires and employs your fiat.

I've been in the US for years and have tried to boost my credit score the entire time. I tried to borrow USD from TD Bank. I have a good US credit score, high net worth, low bills and yet I get poor credit offers because "I'm using too much of my credit already, average account age and requests" No **** that's why I'm trying to increase my limit lol (US is already talking about fixing this broken bs system.. Canada will be in the dark ages for years)

Now expand your mind beyond the "world" of Canada/USA to the majority of humans on this planet who don't have easy access to cheap credit. I'm not going to hold everyone's hand until they get this. The rates are there for you to benefit from or else just enjoy your negative real return yields and keep buying bank stocks if you feel the traditional bank system will ultimately prevail.

The Turkish lira collapsed overnight this week and yet people wonder why there is a demand for USDC.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> The market is operating differently than what you think "should" happen so obsviously you have to check what premises/logic your using. These rates are temporary and are on a downwards trajectory. in 2-3 years, they'll likely be much smaller than they are now. Until then 10% yield on USDT and 6% yield on bitcoin is a good buy & hold for me.


A good market shouldn't have such significant arbitrage opportunities.

It just shows how immature the crypto market is.


----------



## james4beach

m3s said:


> The Turkish lira collapsed overnight this week and yet people wonder why there is a demand for USDC.


Wouldn't those stuck with Turkish lira flood into US Dollars, Euros, Yen, Swiss Francs, and Canadian dollars before considering any kind of coin?


----------



## m3s

USDC is USD

People in Turkey have typically held gold and euros instead of lira. Their government is now cracking down on this

The recent lira crash has spiked their interest in BTC


----------



## MrMatt

m3s said:


> USDC is USD


No it isn't, if it was, they'd pay the same risk adjusted interest rate.
USDC is more of a second place USDT, though one could argue that it has better backing. Myself I'm not in a position to make that determination.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> No it isn't, if it was, they'd pay the same risk adjusted interest rate.
> USDC is more of a second place USDT, though one could argue that it has better backing. Myself I'm not in a position to make that determination.


If the koin represents US Dollar cash, where is the cash stored?

Can anyone point me to the audited financial statements which show the USD cash deposits?


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> If the koin represents US Dollar cash, where is the cash stored?
> 
> Can anyone point me to the audited financial statements which show the USD cash deposits?


USDC has these, and they publish them. 




__





Centre | USD Coin


USDC Transparency




www.centre.io





There are questions on how well backed USDT actually is, which I think is how USDC has been able to grow so quickly.

also using koin is rather derogatory and suggests you're trolling, rather than being legitimately interested.
Myself I find this interesting, and I investigate as a curiousity. I'm not putting money into this as it still seems nonsensical to me.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> also using koin is rather derogatory and suggests you're trolling, rather than being legitimately interested.


Not legitimately interested? I have close to $1,000 worth of BTC.

Nothing wrong with the term koin. These are not "coins" as this is a term understood by society to mean a monetary instrument. There are coins of various types. But these (BTC, ETH etc) aren't coins. So I will reserve the term "coins" for things which are actual coins.

Same reason I refuse to call them "currencies". They are most definitely not currencies, and not coins either.

If you find "koin" derogatory, as you posted here, I think you have too much emotional attachment to this stuff.


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> A good market shouldn't have such significant arbitrage opportunities.
> 
> It just shows how immature the crypto market is.





james4beach said:


> If the koin represents US Dollar cash, where is the cash stored?
> 
> Can anyone point me to the audited financial statements which show the USD cash deposits?


What project are you referring to? 





__





Centre | USD Coin


USDC Transparency




www.centre.io







james4beach said:


> Wouldn't those stuck with Turkish lira flood into US Dollars, Euros, Yen, Swiss Francs, and Canadian dollars before considering any kind of coin?


It's cheaper to use USD and capital is easier to move. Not to mention the interest rates are much higher. 

Currently, retail mom and pop investors are going into 5 year GICs are rates yielding 1.50% which is a recipe for massive underperformance. Wheras a CAD stable coin is yielding around 10% for the time being.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> If you find "koin" derogatory, as you posted here, I think you have too much emotional attachment to this stuff.


No, I have an emotional attachment to clear and effective communication.





__





Urban Dictionary: koin


To live and be free in the most awesome way imaginable.




www.urbandictionary.com


----------



## james4beach

Fain said:


> Currently, retail mom and pop investors are going into 5 year GICs are rates yielding 1.50% which is a recipe for massive underperformance. Wheras a CAD stable coin is yielding around 10% for the time being.


This obviously smells very fishy. The interest rate on CAD cash is currently more like 0.10%. If something claims to be at parity with CAD and yields 10%, then something is wrong... there's obviously a lot of risk involved.

If we interpret 10% as an indication of risk, that means that these CAD stable koins are significantly riskier than even junk bonds, which only yield a few %.

Gut feeling says these are all scams. If someone is trying to sell you these, make sure you record their name, details, and keep a record of their salespitch. This will be useful in future lawsuits and criminal investigations.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> Not legitimately interested? I have close to $1,000 worth of BTC.


Well if you're using slang that doesn't apply, yes I question if you're legitimately interested.

Also why would you buy $1k in BTC, how can you justify that as an investment? FOMO?


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Also why would you buy $1k in BTC, how can you justify that as an investment? FOMO?


I originally bought $300 worth. I've sold some along the way but it's increased in value.

I am interested as much as any average person. But the terms you are trying to use (coin) is misleading marketing and misrepresents what these are. You are doing a disservice to the public by repeating the misleading labels for these instruments.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> I originally bought $300 worth. I've sold some along the way but it's increased in value.
> 
> I am interested as much as any average person. But the terms you are trying to use (coin) is misleading marketing and misrepresents what these are. You are doing a disservice to the public by repeating the misleading labels for these instruments.
> 
> The koins are likely scams.


I think that there are likely scams in every market.

I think there are legitimate and valuable uses for blockchain technology, just like I think there are legitimate and valuable uses for stock and equity investing.
Sure there are scams, but there are always scams.


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> I think that there are likely scams in every market.
> 
> I think there are legitimate and valuable uses for blockchain technology, just like I think there are legitimate and valuable uses for stock and equity investing.
> Sure there are scams, but there are always scams.


I think there are FAR more scams in the "blockchain & coins" market, than there are in stocks, bonds or commodities.

A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money by the time this is over.


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> I think there are FAR more scams in the "blockchain & coins" market, than there are in stocks, bonds or commodities.
> 
> A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money by the time this is over.


I think that there are likely FAR more scams in the unregulated finance industry than the unregulated blockchain industry.

Actually I think there are still a crazy amount of scams even within legitimate industries, despite ever improving consumer protection laws.


----------



## Fain

james4beach said:


> This obviously smells very fishy. The interest rate on CAD cash is currently more like 0.10%. If something claims to be at parity with CAD and yields 10%, then something is wrong... there's obviously a lot of risk involved.
> 
> If we interpret 10% as an indication of risk, that means that these CAD stable koins are significantly riskier than even junk bonds, which only yield a few %.
> 
> Gut feeling says these are all scams. If someone is trying to sell you these, make sure you record their name, details, and keep a record of their salespitch. This will be useful in future lawsuits and criminal investigations.


You gotta do more DD and research than just a GUT feeling or smells fishy. 

Are you familiar with Blockchain and where the Supply/Demand dynamics are coming from? What industry do you work in?

My funds are custodied in a Regulated New York State Trust Company with audits, insurance and an equity buffer of over 3 Billion which exceeds most of the discount brokerages in Canada. As far as disappearing with my money, I'm sure the Billionaire Winklevoss Twins will be hard to find. 

You're trying to paint this as something more sketchy than it actually is. Once you dig into things more, the more it makes sense. It will scare most boomer generation ppl but crypto is in a secular growth trend and not going away.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> You gotta do more DD and research than just a GUT feeling or smells fishy.
> 
> Are you familiar with Blockchain and where the Supply/Demand dynamics are coming from? What industry do you work in?
> 
> My funds are custodied in a Regulated New York State Trust Company with audits, insurance and an equity buffer of over 3 Billion which exceeds most of the discount brokerages in Canada. As far as disappearing with my money, I'm sure the Billionaire Winklevoss Twins will be hard to find.
> 
> You're trying to paint this as something more sketchy than it actually is. Once you dig into things more, the more it makes sense. It will scare most boomer generation ppl but crypto is in a secular growth trend and not going away.


The only reason Bitcoin has increased in value is because someone is willing to pay more.
It looks a hell of a lot like a Ponzi scheme.

There are many chains/coins that were or likely are simple pump and dump, or premine scams.

There are legitimate technologies, but there is a lot of garbage in there too.


Actually you don't need to do more Due Diligence if it seems fishy.
you only need to do due diligence if you intend on proceeding with an investment. 

I think except for very specific technologies, the crypto space as a whole doesn't make a lot of sense.
When things don't add up, that's a big red flag.


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> The only reason Bitcoin has increased in value is because someone is willing to pay more.
> It looks a hell of a lot like a Ponzi scheme.
> 
> There are many chains/coins that were or likely are simple pump and dump, or premine scams.
> 
> There are legitimate technologies, but there is a lot of garbage in there too.
> 
> 
> Actually you don't need to do more Due Diligence if it seems fishy.
> you only need to do due diligence if you intend on proceeding with an investment.
> 
> I think except for very specific technologies, the crypto space as a whole doesn't make a lot of sense.
> When things don't add up, that's a big red flag.


Suit yourself. But going onto specific threads without DD and discussing takes away from the people who want to discuss it in detail.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Suit yourself. But going onto specific threads without DD and discussing takes away from the people who want to discuss it in detail.


I believe I am sufficiently informed, I've been pretty clear on my simplified summary.

Some things are dumb, some are pointless, a lot looks like ponzi schemes, and there is some interesting technical innovation, which I'm having trouble putting a value on.

I don't understand the price of BTC, and I haven't heard a justification for it that makes sense. That's not a failure of DD, that's the reality that there isn't IMO a good explanation of why it is priced where it is.


----------



## james4beach

Fain said:


> Are you familiar with Blockchain and where the Supply/Demand dynamics are coming from? What industry do you work in?


I described my background somewhere in one of these threads. Yes, I work directly in this field, and have expertise in cryptography. I've even considered working for blockchain companies, but decided against it because of concern I might be getting wrapped up with illegal activities.

I've met many people in the blockchain and koin industry in my professional work, and I don't trust any of the people I met. Many of them seem suspicious.

My colleagues are experts in these fields, and the consensus belief among my group of people is that the whole industry reeks, and is suspicious. Our colleagues in law enforcement agree.

I think many of these things are fronts for money laundering and organized crime. And though there certainly are legitimate investors and users, there is too great a presence of criminal uses for me to be comfortable touching any of this.


----------



## Fain

james4beach said:


> I described my background somewhere in one of these threads. Yes, I work directly in this field, and have expertise in cryptography. I've even considered working for blockchain companies, but decided against it because of concern I might be getting wrapped up with illegal activities.
> 
> I've met many people in the blockchain and koin industry in my professional work, and I don't trust any of the people I met. Many of them seem suspicious.
> 
> My colleagues are experts in these fields, and the consensus belief among my group of people is that the whole industry reeks, and is suspicious. Our colleagues in law enforcement agree.
> 
> I think many of these things are fronts for money laundering and organized crime. And though there certainly are legitimate investors and users, there is too great a presence of criminal uses for me to be comfortable touching any of this.


To be completely honest, I sincerely doubt you work in the field given your assumptions of the industry and the evasive answer. For instance, You say you work directly in the sector but follow up that comment by saying you considered working in the sector but are afraid of illegal activity. 2nd you seem surprised by the interest rates which have been paid by regulated custodians for years. I feel like you are on the outside looking in with the usual misconceptions about the crypto industry.


----------



## Fain

m3s said:


> I'm sure cowboys thought the concept of an internal combustion engine was crazy. It's so different
> 
> When you can understand that a protocol can exchange billions of dollars in value a day without an intermediary.. you might get the aha moment
> 
> Liquidity is worth a lot. 10% against an asset that grows about 200% a year isn't insane either if it's short term and prevents a tax event


Yeah, demand for the liquidity is usually small in comparison to the counterparties total assets. It's often negligible and a cost of doing business.the Rates will fall as the industry matures but for now, it's a godsend if you custody your crypto in an account that is insured, in a regulated custodian, audited, and well capitalized(e.g. over 1 Billion equity).

One IPO/RTO you might be interesting in is Genesis Mining Ltd. About to launch on the TSX with 500M valuation. I grabbed a small portion of the Pre-RTO round. If it goes as well as HUT8 or RIOT it could be a 3-4x.


----------



## Fain

m3s said:


> USDC/USDT are transferred and exchanged with other digital assets. The exchanges therefore require liquidity. Same as your legacy bank requires and employs your fiat.
> 
> The Turkish lira collapsed overnight this week and yet people wonder why there is a demand for USDC.


I had a call with a Turkish firm 6 months ago that was looking to create a Turkish stable-coin. There is big domestic demand there. It would likely be converted to USDC, USDT or the European Stablecoins. 

The whole FX industry is being disrupted(slowly) as the costs are much lower. Race to the bottom is good for consumers.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Yeah, demand for the liquidity is usually small in comparison to the counterparties total assets. It's often negligible and a cost of doing business.the Rates will fall as the industry matures but for now, it's a godsend if you custody your crypto in an account that is insured, in a regulated custodian, audited, and well capitalized(e.g. over 1 Billion equity).
> 
> One IPO/RTO you might be interesting in is Genesis Mining Ltd. About to launch on the TSX with 500M valuation. I grabbed a small portion of the Pre-RTO round. If it goes as well as HUT8 or RIOT it could be a 3-4x.


Who are the 
insured & regulated (by whom?) custodians.
I'm not aware of any regulator for crypto accounts.


----------



## m3s

Fain said:


> One IPO/RTO you might be interesting in is Genesis Mining Ltd. About to launch on the TSX with 500M valuation. I grabbed a small portion of the Pre-RTO round. If it goes as well as HUT8 or RIOT it could be a 3-4x.


Thank I'll check it out

BITF is my current BTC mining play in my TFSA. They have the advantage of cheaper hydro power in Quebec and expanding both mining and power infrastructure. They applied for NASDAQ listing in Feb.

Seeing all the issues that plague the Muskrat Falls hydro project.. they should consider mining BTC in Labrador instead of trying to run transmission lines across the ocean to skirt Quebec


----------



## james4beach

MrMatt said:


> Who are the
> insured & regulated (by whom?) custodians.
> I'm not aware of any regulator for crypto accounts.


It's not regulated. This stuff is now so obviously becoming a HYIP kind of scam, eventually it will blow up. Count on it.

I think we are about to be reminded (when this is all over) why securities regulations are so important.


----------



## Fain

james4beach said:


> It's not regulated. This stuff is now so obviously becoming a HYIP kind of scam, eventually it will blow up. Count on it.
> 
> I think we are about to be reminded (when this is all over) why securities regulations are so important.


Again, you are completely out to lunch and talking about a subject you seem ignorant of. How do Bitcoin ETFs store bitcoin if there isn't a regulated custodian? Jesus dude. 









Crypto Custody | Gemini


Gemini crypto custody - our low-risk, high-liquidity solution - features institutional-grade security, uncompromising compliance and speedy asset liquidity.




www.gemini.com




Gemini is a fiduciary and qualified custodian under New York Banking Law and is licensed by the State of New York to custody digital assets. Gemini Custody™ is regularly audited and subject to the capital reserve requirements and compliance standards of a traditional financial institution.


----------



## Fain

m3s said:


> Thank I'll check it out
> 
> BITF is my current BTC mining play in my TFSA. They have the advantage of cheaper hydro power in Quebec and expanding both mining and power infrastructure. They applied for NASDAQ listing in Feb.
> 
> Seeing all the issues that plague the Muskrat Falls hydro project.. they should consider mining BTC in Labrador instead of trying to run transmission lines across the ocean to skirt Quebec


The NASDAQ uplisting will help them sure. Strange I would have thought Hydro would be pretty reliable as a power source. 

Here's the Genesis deck if you were interested. Could have some good momentum on first month of trading.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Again, you are completely out to lunch and talking about a subject you seem ignorant of. How do Bitcoin ETFs store bitcoin if there isn't a regulated custodian? Jesus dude.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Crypto Custody | Gemini
> 
> 
> Gemini crypto custody - our low-risk, high-liquidity solution - features institutional-grade security, uncompromising compliance and speedy asset liquidity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.gemini.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gemini is a fiduciary and qualified custodian under New York Banking Law and is licensed by the State of New York to custody digital assets. Gemini Custody™ is regularly audited and subject to the capital reserve requirements and compliance standards of a traditional financial institution.


What are the regulations to store Bitcoin?
The custodian can be regulated, but the activity of holding bitcoin is not.

I also think you didn't just say who you were talking about, then coming back with such a nicely formed PR statement, sounds fishy.


If you don't hold the keys, you don't own the coin. Just the promise of one.


----------



## Spudd

Fain said:


> The NASDAQ uplisting will help them sure. Strange I would have thought Hydro would be pretty reliable as a power source.
> 
> Here's the Genesis deck if you were interested. Could have some good momentum on first month of trading.


In that deck it says the symbol will be BEN.H, but when I look that up, it's Butte Energy already. It seems a little shady to me that a venture company is rebranding to something crypto-related. These venture rebrandings into the latest hot sector seem to be a dime a dozen. You make it seem like an attractive investment but I think I will steer clear.


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## Fain

Spudd said:


> In that deck it says the symbol will be BEN.H, but when I look that up, it's Butte Energy already. It seems a little shady to me that a venture company is rebranding to something crypto-related. These venture rebrandings into the latest hot sector seem to be a dime a dozen. You make it seem like an attractive investment but I think I will steer clear.


It's a Reverse Takeover (RTO) as opposed to an IPO. It isn't a business pivot, it's a go public through a shell. Much cheaper method to get listed and better for shareholder value.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> It's a Reverse Takeover (RTO) as opposed to an IPO. It isn't a business pivot, it's a go public through a shell. Much cheaper method to get listed and better for shareholder value.


RTO is another red flag.

Read what a reverse takeover is. I get this link








How a Reverse Takeover (RTO) Works


A reverse takeover (RTO) is a process whereby private companies can become publicly-traded companies without going through an initial public offering (IPO).




www.investopedia.com





Yeah, I'll stay far away from this. 
Too many good investment options to spend time investigating ones waving red flags


----------



## Fain

MrMatt said:


> What are the regulations to store Bitcoin?
> The custodian can be regulated, but the activity of holding bitcoin is not.
> 
> I also think you didn't just say who you were talking about, then coming back with such a nicely formed PR statement, sounds fishy.
> 
> 
> If you don't hold the keys, you don't own the coin. Just the promise of one.


I referenced the custodian before and it should be obvious given how big they are and so widely used in the industry. Whether its Gemini, Prime Trust, or another. It doesn't matter.

You said "I believe I am sufficiently informed" but are surprised at rates, rules, regulations, and dynamics in the industry and refer to it as a Ponzi Scheme.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> I referenced the custodian before and it should be obvious given how big they are and so widely used in the industry. Whether its Gemini, Prime Trust, or another. It doesn't matter.
> 
> You said "I believe I am sufficiently informed" but are surprised at rates, rules, regulations, and dynamics in the industry and refer to it as a Ponzi Scheme.


Not as much "surprised" as observing obvious discrepancies.

I honestly don't know that much about the regulation. Clearly I was wrong here.

Also i never said "crypto" or "crypto markets" or "blockchain" is a Ponzi scheme.

I actually said, regarding BTC.
"It looks a hell of a lot like a Ponzi scheme."

Which it does.
A *Ponzi scheme* is a fraudulent investing *scam* which generates returns for earlier investors with money taken from later investors. This is similar to a pyramid *scheme* in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers.

If you are investing in BTC, your entire return is selling to the next round of investors.
It's a zero sum game, fed entirely by new investors entering the market.

That looks like a Ponzi Scheme. The only thing missing is the "fraudulent investing scam", but that's an opinion. I think people are getting EXACTLY what they believe they are getting. I just don't believe in zero sum games as "investments"

I think the platform coins are interesting investments, I think that there might be some transfer, ledger and record opportunities in blockchain and all that.
But specifically today, BTC, I don't get it.

Also you never came back with any justification on why BTC is worth any value ($5, $500, $50k, $500k) none. I don't see a believable valuation case.

Also I may be wrong, who knows. I thought Amazon was just another stupid tech stock, it took me a while to "get" the whole idea of cloud first workflows, I thought people would wise up that Apple products were overpriced. I might be wrong here, and I'm open to changing my mind, but so far, I don't see what I have wrong.


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## Fain

I don't have a price target for Bitcoin. I only believe that there's more adoption, increased payment functionality and more institutional acceptance which will lead to more on the demand side. The 6% yield has made it attractive and worthwhile as a buy and hold investment for me.


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## MrMatt

Fain said:


> I don't have a price target for Bitcoin. I only believe that there's more adoption, increased payment functionality and more institutional acceptance which will lead to more on the demand side. The 6% yield has made it attractive and worthwhile as a buy and hold investment for me.


Can you articulate how your premise for investment returns differs from that of a Ponzi scheme?


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## Fain

MrMatt said:


> Can you articulate how your premise for investment returns differs from that of a Ponzi scheme?


Dude, stop the trolling. You know Ponzi Scheme is clearly defined. The whole blockchain is transparent, and the counterparty i'm dealing with is regulated by New York State, Unless you think New York State is part of the "ponzi scheme". Take off your tinfoil hat and do some research. Why not give them a call and do you own research?


----------



## sags

Governments will maintain control of the monetary and financials systems at all cost.

That is what they do, they take it seriously, and they have the force to back them up.

The only crypto that I think has a future is one backed by central banks.

All the others are easily blown away with the stroke of a pen.


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## sags

I know there is a lot of anger and animosity towards central bank activities, and I understand that, but it doesn't change the reality that the government have all the power and will do whatever they need to do to maintain control.

They warned people about crypto so when they pull out the rug they can say....we warned you.

And that be that.....


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## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Dude, stop the trolling. You know Ponzi Scheme is clearly defined. The whole blockchain is transparent, and the counterparty i'm dealing with is regulated by New York State, Unless you think New York State is part of the "ponzi scheme". Take off your tinfoil hat and do some research. Why not give them a call and do you own research?


I know Ponzi Scheme is clearly defined.
I also know Bitcoin is clearly defined.

If I buy or trade or mine Bitcoin I get exactly what I think I'm getting. I don't dispute that.
I do believe the entire value premise of Bitcoin is that there will be someone else willing to pay more.
This is how Ponzi schemes work.

I think that the entity who confirms that yes, person X has X BTC etc isn't just confirming a fact.
I don't think merely facilitating the transactions in some way necessarily requires you to be part of the scheme.


But again.. lets circle back.
Ponzi schemes only get money from new entrants.
Bitcoin returns are funded solely from new entrants.
Where is the difference?


----------



## Jimmy

MrMatt said:


> I know Ponzi Scheme is clearly defined.
> I also know Bitcoin is clearly defined.
> 
> If I buy or trade or mine Bitcoin I get exactly what I think I'm getting. I don't dispute that.
> I do believe the entire value premise of Bitcoin is that there will be someone else willing to pay more.
> This is how Ponzi schemes work.
> 
> I think that the entity who confirms that yes, person X has X BTC etc isn't just confirming a fact.
> I don't think merely facilitating the transactions in some way necessarily requires you to be part of the scheme.
> 
> 
> But again.. lets circle back.
> Ponzi schemes only get money from new entrants.
> Bitcoin returns are funded solely from new entrants.
> Where is the difference?


Bitcoin could replace many assets as a storer of value and currency for exchange. The price of bitcoin is going up as it gets more and more likely to supplant other assets.The market for currencies is about $40T alone. Gold is another $13 T. Bitcoin is only valued at about $1T now. You should read the Genesis link if you want to be informed. Paypal, Tesla , Square and some banks are now holding and accepting it.

So that is why its value is rising not just 'someone is willing to pay more' as you mischaracterize it. Hope that helps.


----------



## Spudd

MrMatt said:


> Ponzi schemes only get money from new entrants.
> Bitcoin returns are funded solely from new entrants.
> Where is the difference?


To my understanding, a Ponzi scheme is when you have person #1 invest $100, and then when person #2 invests $100 you give person #1 $20 telling them it is the returns on their investment. You tell both person #1 and #2 that they have $100 invested with you even though you only have $180 on your books in real life. If both people want to cash out at the same time you don't have enough money to fulfill your obligations.

Vs. bitcoin, where you buy a bitcoin, and you have 1 bitcoin. Later, if you want to sell it, you can ask whatever price you want for it, and if anyone is willing to pay that price, you'll sell it to them, giving them 1 bitcoin. 

The bitcoin scenario is more of a "greater fool" situation than a Ponzi scheme.


----------



## Fain

Jimmy said:


> Bitcoin could replace many assets as a storer of value and currency for exchange. The price of bitcoin is going up as it gets more and more likely to supplant other assets.The market for currencies is about $40T alone. Gold is another $13 T. Bitcoin is only valued at about $1T now.. You should read the Genesis link if you want to be informed. Paypal, Tesla , Square and some banks are now holding and accepting it.
> 
> So that is why its value is rising not just 'someone is willing to pay more' as you mischaracterize it. Hope that helps.


Gold is very much losing its status as a store of value. one of the reasons many are so bullish on bitcoin is the finite supply and very small but growing adoption. Just checking the growth of the ETFs in AUM alone gives a very bullish signal.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Gold is very much losing its status as a store of value. one of the reasons many are so bullish on bitcoin is the finite supply and very small but growing adoption. Just checking the growth of the ETFs in AUM alone gives a very bullish signal.


Yet you conveniently fail to explain how it isn't a ponzi scheme.


----------



## Jimmy

Spudd said:


> To my understanding, a Ponzi scheme is when you have person #1 invest $100, and then when person #2 invests $100 you give person #1 $20 telling them it is the returns on their investment. You tell both person #1 and #2 that they have $100 invested with you even though you only have $180 on your books in real life. If both people want to cash out at the same time you don't have enough money to fulfill your obligations.
> 
> Vs. bitcoin, where you buy a bitcoin, and you have 1 bitcoin. Later, if you want to sell it, you can ask whatever price you want for it, and if anyone is willing to pay that price, you'll sell it to them, giving them 1 bitcoin.
> 
> The bitcoin scenario is more of a "greater fool" situation than a Ponzi scheme.


Then gold and other currencies are in those situations too then. Bitcoin is worth only $1T It is replacing a part of those currencies.Right now it is valued to replace just 2% of them. Some think it could replace a higher %. Just makes them investors like anyone else.


----------



## Jimmy

Fain said:


> Gold is very much losing its status as a store of value. one of the reasons many are so bullish on bitcoin is the finite supply and very small but growing adoption. Just checking the growth of the ETFs in AUM alone gives a very bullish signal.


ARK did some great research papers on its value as an asset and a currency where it has advantages against gold and fiat currencies. It is hard to value but it looks strongly like its value as an asset or currency is increasing.


----------



## Fain

Jimmy said:


> Then gold and other currencies are in those situations too then. Bitcoin is worth only $1T It is replacing a part of those currencies.Right now it is valued to replace just 2% of them. Some think it could replace a higher %. That doesn't make them fools.


Will ignore the previous post by the thread troll and dive into this one. . . Completely agree with you there. Over next 5 years, will Bitcoins ETFs AUM increase? ? will a portion of new money supply find its way to bitcoin? will institutional ownership increase? My answer is yes to all of them.


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## fireseeker

Fain said:


> Over next 5 years, will Bitcoins ETFs AUM increase? ? will a portion of new money supply find its way to bitcoin? will institutional ownership increase? My answer is yes to all of them.


I think you're agreeing with @MrMatt. He's been arguing that BTC's value can only rise if new buyers arrive, ready to pay more than earlier buyers.


----------



## fireseeker

A topical piece from Rob Carrick today at the G&M: Why your investment adviser hates bitcoin



> One of those negative comments came from Richard Morin, chief executive at Archer Wealth Management in Montreal and onetime head of National Bank of Canada’s online brokerage arm. “I wouldn’t be surprised if bitcoin was above $100,000 in a few months,” he said in an interview. “But I’m still very comfortable telling all my clients it doesn’t belong in their portfolio.”
> Mr. Morin said he doesn’t understand how bitcoin could ever deliver on its promise of becoming a widely used currency or store of value. For him, even a small weighting is out.
> “I’m basically a risk manager,” he said. “My job is to eliminate scenarios where clients don’t meet their retirement objectives. One scenario [with bitcoin] is losing 3, 5 or 10 per cent of your portfolio. I don’t want to take that risk, and my clients agree with me.”


----------



## Jimmy

Fain said:


> Will ignore the previous post by the thread troll and dive into this one. . . Completely agree with you there. Over next 5 years, will Bitcoins ETFs AUM increase? ? will a portion of new money supply find its way to bitcoin? will institutional ownership increase? My answer is yes to all of them.


Yes it does look promising. It is unnerving to see the Chinese govt try and meddle like they did a few years ago though causing the price to fall. There is some concern w govts wanting to create digital currency too but that will just replace their physical $ more not bitcoin hopefully. Bitcoin is free from exchange rates too.


----------



## MrMatt

Fain said:


> Will ignore the previous post by the thread troll and dive into this one. . . Completely agree with you there. Over next 5 years, will Bitcoins ETFs AUM increase? ? will a portion of new money supply find its way to bitcoin? will institutional ownership increase? My answer is yes to all of them.


I completely agree, and this is required to earn money by "investing" in bitcoin.
Without a flood of increasing money, the price of bitcoin falls. 
The rise of bitcoin looks like the rise of a ponzi scheme, the projected fall will happen for the exact same reason as the natural collapse of a ponzi scheme.

I actually have a valuation for bitcoin, and I'll draw it from Gold.
The value of a bitcoin is the cost to mine a bitcoin. The rest is speculation
This is like the AISC of mining gold, anything above that is the speculation premium.


Come to think of this, it's a particularly useful, and convenient feedback loop.
If the value is perceived to be high, people will pay more to mine bitcoin (ie more electricity to mine it). 
If the value is low, marginal miners will drop off, lowering the cost to mine it.
Of course the problem for bitcoin bulls there, is that with sufficiently low interest in mining, the value approaches zero.


This is why I draw a distinction between platform BTC and platform coins. 
Platform coins make sense in that if the service they provide is worth something, then the coins required to make that action happen are ALSO worth something.
Lets say you make a blockchain escrow service (these exist), that might be worth paying for, whatever it's worth paying, will drive the value of the requisite coin.

So assuming I'm a troll, I'm a particularly bad one. I've made an argument (good or bad) for the illusion of value in BTC, and why, in it's current form, I think it looks like a ponzi scheme. I've also made a simple argument for why some coins DO have a real value.

To be fair those other coins could be overpriced, but that's a different argument.


----------



## Jimmy

fireseeker said:


> A topical piece from Rob Carrick today at the G&M: Why your investment adviser hates bitcoin


Some advisers also like it. 



> Darryl Brown, a chartered financial analyst (CFA) and independent investment adviser, said he sees a case for holding something like 3 per cent to 7 per cent of a portfolio in cryptocurrency to enhance diversification. The idea is to hold an asset that isn’t driven by the same economic and financial market factors as stocks and bonds. Traditionally, gold has served this role.


----------



## james4beach

Horizons has launched the world's first *inverse* bitcoin ETF,

BetaPro Inverse Bitcoin : BITI

Fascinating! Today for example with EBIT down 9.1% (bitcoin fell), BITI was up 9.8%


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> Horizons has launched the world's first *inverse* bitcoin ETF,
> 
> BetaPro Inverse Bitcoin : BITI
> 
> Fascinating! Today for example with EBIT down 9.1% (bitcoin fell), BITI was up 9.8%


Betting for or against a shared delusion is a losing game. Look at GME stock, the insanity there took out some huge funds, and some suggest almost took down brokerages.


----------



## james4beach

An interesting event this week.

The high volatility of bitcoin futures in Chicago caused a trading halt (circuit breaker) on the futures. Because the Horizons HBIT tracks the futures, the ETF was disrupted and market makers were unable to fulfill buy or sell orders.

The Horizons CEO says he this "opened the eyes of the retail investing public to understanding how volatile this asset class is"

Oh really, it's volatile?


----------



## MrMatt

james4beach said:


> An interesting event this week.
> 
> The high volatility of bitcoin futures in Chicago caused a trading halt (circuit breaker) on the futures. Because the Horizons HBIT tracks the futures, the ETF was disrupted and market makers were unable to fulfill buy or sell orders.
> 
> The Horizons CEO says he this "opened the eyes of the retail investing public to understanding how volatile this asset class is"
> 
> Oh really, it's volatile?


What an investment based on nothing but the shared delusion that someone else will pay more for a few digital bits is volitile?
OMG


----------



## Thal81

Cryptos have been crashing pretty hard. I wouldn't want to be the last one holding those fakecoins when the dust settles. As I'm typing this on a Sunday, crypto ETFs are proving to be especially problematic since you can't buy/sell during non-market hours.


----------



## james4beach

Thal81 said:


> Cryptos have been crashing pretty hard. I wouldn't want to be the last one holding those fakecoins when the dust settles. As I'm typing this on a Sunday, crypto ETFs are proving to be especially problematic since you can't buy/sell during non-market hours.


To be fair, they're not down that much. BTC is down about 45% since the recent high in April, which given its volatility profile, isn't that much.


----------



## m3s

My cardano crashed back to prices not seen since... weeks ago. Although it was briefly set back a month

The trick to crypto is to buy during the years when nobody cares about crypto. Everyone who fomo's in during the mass hysteria ends up getting stressed or shook out by the volatility

This is healthy in the longer term. The faster it climbs the harder it falls


----------



## m3s

First US BTC futures ETF has over $1B AUM in under 2 days. It had almost $1B volume on day 1

Canada has new BTC and ETH ETFs with yield coming

BTC in price discovery


----------



## wayward__son

Bitcoin hashrate is also somehow already all the way back after a long summer in the wilderness when China kicked out all the miners and more than half the total hashrate went offline. i was always a Bitcoin enthusiast and regrettably really only got into ETH and learning about some of the other stuff in crypto this year. what a world. never been more hopeful and excited for the future.


----------



## m3s

wayward__son said:


> Bitcoin hashrate is also somehow already all the way back after a long summer in the wilderness when China kicked out all the miners and more than half the total hashrate went offline.


I loaded up on the Canadian miners BITF, HUT and HIVE during that period before they got listed on the NASDAQ.

Made no sense they crashed when China banned the competition. Canada is the 4th BTC miner behind USA, Kazakhstan and Russia. We could have easily been #2 but now BITF is expanding in Argentina instead. Shame we have all that hydro in the middle of nowhere going to waste while we sleep. It's not like the water stops at night. Texas figured this out and uses BTC mining to expand their renewable infrastructure

I still prefer ETH but BTC has just proven its use case. China could not ban it. USA could not ban it. Imagine when a 2nd, 3rd country make it legal tender


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## wayward__son

yeah, the pre-NASDAQ uplist punt seems to be reasonably +EV. I hope same holds true for my GLXY bags lol

BTC is the unkillable cockroach, and manifestation of the 'energy currency' that Henry Ford and Buckminster Fuller advocated.

ETH and other L1s are blue ocean of possibility for organizing humans.

in the meantime, looks like we are right on schedule for the usual once-every-four-year mania. should be an interesting Q4


----------



## m3s

wayward__son said:


> in the meantime, looks like we are right on schedule for the usual once-every-four-year mania. should be an interesting Q4


GM ser, my bags are packed


----------



## m3s

Houston Firefighter Pension bought Bitcoin

Wen Ontario Teacher's Pension?


----------

