[spottybanana]

Bitcoin isn't that new thing any more, to me it looks like fiat holders have seen too many bitcoin holders gain significant value. Yes, there are also those that lose their BTC for whatever reason but to me it seems to be quite a minority compared to those who actually have made good dough just holding BTC. To the tune of having retired on their stash.

[hurril]

Fiat holder is a ridiculous term in a false dichotomy. A holding of BTC is a security holding just as holding stocks (despite the fact that they are not legally referred to as such.) Nobody chooses between holding dollars or holding BTC. Nobody.

The fact that this parent has a number of children that don't seem to pick up on this is problematic to say the least.

[tdeck]

Sounds like "fiat holder" is the "allopathy" of the fake medicine space.

[IgorPartola]

What do you mean? Of course people choose to hold crypto or put their money in the bank or buy a stock market index fund or spend it on something.

[ivalm]

You hold fiat money to exchange for goods and services. You buy securities (or sometimes physical assets) to eventually get more fiat money to then exchange for goods and services. Currently you buy BTC with fiat to later exchange BTC back into fiat and still use fiat to exchange for goods and services. This is why BTC is more like a security than a currency.

[hurril]

Holding stock in a company (for instance via en index fund) is not a fiat holding. The fact that it is commonly priced in terms of fiat currency is not any different that the fact that BTC is too.

Neither of them have to be. All exchanges take place in pairs; one holding is exchanged for another. Buying BTC with dollars is (USD, BTC); buying Microsoft is (MSFT, USD); buying EUR with dollars is (EUR, USD).

Nothing prevents you from pricing Microsoft stock in BTC or BTC in EUR or Etherium.

The holding as such, however, is only a fiat holding when it is in fact either a (wad of) cash equivalents and/ or a bank balance.

There isn't a person on earth for which there is only two types of relevant holdings, in either USD or BTC. A person that (seriously) considers acquiring a crypto holding, such as BTC, is most likely choosing between other crypto currencies, gold or silver, primarily. Even more likely, they're merely FOMO-speculating as a complement to plain stock holdings.

The fact that a number of you don't seem to understand this should call your competency into question.

[davidebaldini]

I believe the perception of this dichotomy is something of your own imagination. Anecdotally the term fiat is used exclusively in the context of crypto, but to the best of my understanding its usage doesn't imply that the sole alternative to fiat is BTC, or crypto. Rather, I believe the term solely carries a prejudice against money that is declared valuable as such by political authority rather than by its market adoption and de-facto usage.

[hurril]

How could that be of my imagination when it's used and liked in the parent to my comment? Everyone is a fiat holder but holding (not crypto) does not constitute being a fiat holder.

But yes, I agree with you about where fiat is used. It's almost always used by people that don't quite undersand the concept of value or that of money for that matter.

Money is not declared valuable by political authority. That is just not how it works. Crypto is what's declared valuable by fiat, ironically. Its value is described as derived in terms of a limited supply (it's just like Gold!)

Fiat currency derives its value from network effects, debts and the feeling of safety (or the lack thereof.)

[grey-area]

If BTC was valued based on actual real-world usage (as opposed to wash trading on exchanges and speculation), the value would be near 0.

[colordrops]

> Nobody

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

[hurril]

So show me someone that either saves cash or BTC.

[grey-area]

If you cashed out to fiat and retired on your stash in this last bubble you’re doing great, though that is at the expense of millions of retail bag holders who bought your cryptocurrency hoping they’d get rich too.

If you didn’t cash out already and are taking your coins offline etc, you’re the bag holder.

[reidjs]

This assumes the USD stays dominant indefinitely, right?

[WalterSear]

It assumes that the fraudulent stablecoin created by Binance, and involved in the vast majority of trades, (more 70%, a few days ago) unwinds.

https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-insid...

https://bitfinexed.medium.com/tether-is-setting-a-new-standa...

USDC (the second largest stablecoin), isn't appreciably better.

[BLKNSLVR]

Tether is associated with the Bitfinex exchange, not Binance.

Binance has its own stablecoin: BUSD

USDC is associated with Coinbase, the exchange that recently went public, so I'd assume it's far more trustworthy than Tether.

[WalterSear]

USDC is avoiding audits too.

[WalterSear]

This Binance?

https://wallet.tether.to/richlist

[BLKNSLVR]

Binance has holdings in all sorts of cryptocurrencies that it has no involvement in the creation or minting of.

As a cryptocurrency exchange, Binance must hold Tether to operate.

As the most popular cryptocurrency exchange on the planet, they're likely to be on the larger end of Tether (and various other cryptocurrencies) holdings.

I'm not defending Binance here, I think there's fair potential that they're doing shady stuff, but they're not responsible, in any way, for the minting of billions of dollars of Tether, or involved in any of the dodgy accounting around Tether's backing.

Same goes for Huobi, who are second on that list. They're an exchange. Holding Tether is an essential part of being in that business.

[grey-area]

There are also deep and to my mind suspicious links between the two, this fraud is a shared endeavour.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/a-by-the-minute-look-at-tethe...

[nemothekid]

I don't understand the implications of this assumption. Are you assuming that if the USD wasn't dominant then BTC would be better to hold?

BTC is functionally a security. Under any duress of the USD I'd expect it to perform no different than AMZN stock.

[grey-area]

Nobody is actually using Bitcoin to pay for things, because it is a terrible currency due to fundamental design flaws. At this point the narrative of Bitcoin the world currency is dead, it’s now a get rich quick scheme.

[nl]

No really.

If you traded your BTC for some non USD currency the same point remains.

[randomhodler84]

A bag thats value getting heavier every year while the bank balance is losing value every year. Are not fiat holders the true bag holders? When you accept that everything is relative value, the dollar is not absolute (far from it!), holding fiat for long times seems foolish.

[dragonwriter]

> holding fiat for long times seems foolish.

Yeah, sure, but everyone except cranks who works in fiat openly acknowledges that. Fiat (well, major fiat currencies like the dollar) are good for low-volatility liquidity. For long-term accumulation of value, you invest in productive assets, which are both riskier over the long term and higher volatility over the short term, but have higher average long-term yields. And, ideally, you diversify investments in ways that maximize independence of at least long-term variation, to mitigate risk and get closer to consistent long-term average results.

Crypto“currency” that isn’t fiat-pegged tends to be worse than major fiat at the things people who prefer fiat think fiat is for, while (in the best cases) being a very high-volatility speculative asset with very good average performance over its history to date (which isn’t very long term). It’s thus not a great replacement for fiat, but potentially a bice addition to the stable of available investments.

[randomhodler84]

Replacement, maybe, no, I don’t know. It radically changes things back about 200y to a pseudogold standard but universally harder (energy usage over physical gold supply). I know I spend fiat over harder money. (I don’t spend bitcoin, I save in it).

I think you should not ignore the forest for the trees here. A small purchase today held for another 5-10y could prove quite lucrative for you.

[lasc4r]

I think we all know that stuffing your cash under a mattress is a bad idea.

[nl]

If you are concerned about inflation, then buy a basket of high liquidity stocks.

[pjc50]

Some have retired. Others have invested their retirement savings, enabling the first group to retire.

[faeriechangling]

>Fiat holder

Am I supposed to believe crypto nerds aren't holding any fiat?

[xvector]

It's kind of scary. You go to Reddit and it's full of people dumping their life savings into crypto, genuinely believing it'll bail them out.

For some reason people genuinely seem to believe that crypto will only go up, when the reality is that we have no clue.

When every average Joe thinks crypto will make them rich, it's time to dump your bags.

[fakedang]

I dumped my BTC (2011ish early adopter) once my mom began to talk about a Bitcoin investor who played the crypto markets and made so much money at my age. My mom does not know how to format a Word file.

I just hope my parents and relatives aren't secretly stashing away their life long savings in crypto because of all the hullabaloo.

[vishnugupta]

> once my mom began to talk about a Bitcoin investor

There’s an ad running on Indian TV literally of this script..Two moms are talking, while one brags about her son being in USA, buying cars etc the other’s son is seemingly trading crypto on a mobile app. The other mom then retorts “all that is fine, but have you invested in crypto?”.

It’s crazy, they are drumming up FOMO.

If you are curious and know Hindi: https://youtu.be/KKItA9fDCk4

[fakedang]

The video could have been better without the stupid memes and just the ad, which is shocking in itself.

[ngc248]

This .... exactly this, You did a good thing by getting out of it. When a normie on the street starts talking about crypto, it means crypto has jumped the shark and it is a pure bubble driven mainly by people's greed.

[oraphalous]

This isn't any more sound as an investment strategy than a dude is hip because they listened to band X before it was cool.

[minsc__and__boo]

You don't own a stake in band x

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/herdinstinct.asp

[tluyben2]

As long as the economy stays okish, crypto might fall 50% but it will get up a bit again as well. Wait for an economic crisis to see it tank to for real. When msft drops 80%, btc will be under 5k again. It will happen. People seem to have some weird faith this time is different because covid postponed things. For now you can make a lot of money with btc weekly: it drops hard 1 or 2 times a week and then goes back up 3-4k. But when 'the normal' economy bottoms out, it will drop and the 'hodlers' will be out of trillions. If you keep that in mind: happy trading but hodlers are crazy imho.

[JumpCrisscross]

It’s voluntary wealth redistribution. You see it every cycle. It’s fine. It’s probably core to why market economies outperform.