Comment on Anon gives up on Bitcoin in 2010
doylio@lemmy.ca 2 weeks agoI think there are people who genuinely think it has value. It’s very popular in places like Argentina, Venezuela and Turkey where the local currency inflates so rapidly people cannot save money. To those people, its value is that it holds value better than their local currency.
There is also a lot of speculation in the space, which makes it very tough to determine how much actual value accrual there is
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Sure, if your local currency is badly mismanaged, then any alternatives look good. But, you still have to change back to your local currency when it’s time to pay taxes.
I wonder how many of those people who are buying Bitcoin with Argentine Pesos are buying it as a store of value, vs. gambling on it going up. If you can buy Bitcoin, you can probably buy dollars, or buy index funds. It could also be that cryptocurrency exchanges are willing to break laws and operate in places where they’re not legally allowed to operate. It’s hard to keep up with all the crypto exchanges that broke the law that way. OTOH, traditional financial businesses tend to follow local laws. Of course, if you’re relying on being able to access your bitcoins when you relied on a crypto exchange operating illegally, you might be in for a rude shock.
doylio@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The whole point of crypto is you don’t need to hold it on an exchange. And there are other real reasons to use crypto today such as cheap & fast international settlement, protecting your assets from authoritarian governments.
I agree there’s lots of speculation, and I’m not someone who believes it’s likely to replace the dollar, but it’s also clear there are legitimate uses
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You don’t need to hold it on an exchange, but you need an exchange. You need some place where you can find people who want to buy Argentine Pesos and sell Bitcoin so that you can buy Bitcoin and sell your Argentine Pesos.
You think Bitcoin is cheap and fast?
doylio@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Certainly cheaper and faster than Western Union, but yeah it’s horribly slow by modern blockchain standards