I view Bitcoin the same way I view Herbalife. I don't have any issue with the product. I'm bothered by the misleading claims made by proponents to benefit themselves.
I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment.
Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means.
I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in economics. I get what crypto is and how it works, and I won't go near it.
Bitcoin isn't inherently dangerous, but the way that the crypto ecosystem convinces people to gamble on a zero sum game they don't understand is absolutely dangerous. For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system. Very real harms have, and continue, to be caused by bitcoin and crypto.
> Are you blaming bitcoin for gambling addiction and bad investing now?
No. I’m explicitly not blaming bitcoin. I’m blaming the humans that take advantage of others using the technical complexity of the crypto ecosystem to convince people that it is something that it isn’t.
The fact that you can wreck your life in Vegas or day-trading on Robinhood using dollars isn’t something I like either.
The whole point of the sentence you quoted is that bitcoin isn’t some magical wealth creator as it is frequently sold as. It’s to point out that it is a zero sum game; for every dollar someone has gotten out of the system, someone else has put a dollar in.
> for every dollar someone has gotten out of the system, someone else has put a dollar in.
That's a feature and in the fiat economy the same is almost true. If Bitcoin is a "zero sum game" then fiat is a "negative sum game" for the vast majority of participants whose money is debased.
That’s not how stocks work outside of daytrading/short term holding.
My ownership of a stock is a claim on a portion of a company’s assets and future productive addition to the economy. The stock market is a positive sum game. If I buy a share of ABC Gold mining company, it’s because I expect them to dig some actual gold out of the ground and expanding the economy. They can distribute a dividend to me after then selling that gold. No one has added any money to the stock market, but I am wealthier.
Same applies to bitcoin - no more net value needs to be invested into bitcoin and the USD price will continue to increase at ~7%, which is the rate at which the USD is being devalued through supply inflation over the last 100 years.
If I lent my bitcoin to ABC Gold Mining like you have, then I could expect to additionally receive interest on my loan.
Well Herbalife is a corporate entity, that has governing leadership that you can challenge its 'claims' because the corporate entity makes them, sells it to people who don't know better etc. Conceptually, that means that Herbalife gives people false information, they take that and perpetuate it in their MLM for their benefit.
Bitcoin, is piece of open source software that was released on the internet 13 years ago running all over the world. With no central governing entity, all driven by software consensus mechanisms.
Would you consider that you just don't like some of the organizations that have built themselves around this network making misleading claims? Rather than the technology itself?
I used a leaky analogy, so I'll explain more precisely what I mean. When someone tries to sell their MLM, they pretend that they want to help you get rich, but it's obvious that they just want to help themselves. I get the same vibe from Bitcoin enthusiasts. For example, they'll claim that Bitcoin will help the poor in countries with hyperinflation but that seems disingenuous. Perhaps it's not fair to expect the regular Bitcoin holder to actively help the unbanked thousands of miles away, but there doesn't even seem to be a curiosity in the entire Bitcoin community about whether it's actually it's actually used that way, let alone how to encourage adoption and what the macroeconomic implications of this.
I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment.
Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means.
I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in economics. I get what crypto is and how it works, and I won't go near it.
Bitcoin isn't inherently dangerous, but the way that the crypto ecosystem convinces people to gamble on a zero sum game they don't understand is absolutely dangerous. For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system. Very real harms have, and continue, to be caused by bitcoin and crypto.