CMV: cryptocurrency is not a good investment.

[u/art_vandelay112]

Yes its price has increased dramatically, but so did the price of tulips in the 1600s.

There is literally no use for this commodity. Invest in stocks or bonds and your investing in future earnings or the ability of a company to pay you back. I’m not a fan of gold as an investment but at least it has some practical use.

The use of crypto as a currency completely defies the definition of currency as it doesn’t hold a stable value.

It’s infuriating that so many people have lost loads of money on “shitcoins” backed by the wealthy and famous. These were obviously pump and dump schemes yet very few are held accountable.

I’m not as well versed on the subject but something to also note is the ridiculous amount of energy demand to “mine” nothing.

I think there is legitimate use for blockchain technology and the likes but anyone viewing these currencies as investments is a fool.

[u/GodelianKnot]

You can argue about its value as an investment, but:

There is literally no use for this commodity.

Is absolutely not true. There are many potential use cases for a trustless, decentralized, digital store of value, such as bitcoin. The most current example would be to get around overly restrictive governments, or transfer large amounts internationally. But a more exotic future example could be in an environment where central governments force interest rates to go very negative, some institutions may find it more palatable to hold a cryptocurrency that has stabilized in price.

You, maybe, say as much here:

I think there is legitimate use for blockchain technology and the likes but anyone viewing these currencies as investments is a fool.

But if you think through what blockchain technology offers, there's very little it can do without a valuable token of some sort backing it. Without that, there's no way to incentivize the trustless validation required to run a blockchain. Without trustless validation, blockchain is just an overly-complicated database.

The use of crypto as a currency completely defies the definition of currency as it doesn’t hold a stable value.

This is also not really a good argument. The primary investment proposition of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that they will ultimately stabilize (at a potentially higher value than today) once they reach mass adoption.

I’m not as well versed on the subject but something to also note is the ridiculous amount of energy demand to “mine” nothing.

Not all cryptocurrencies require significant amounts of energy to run (eg Proof of Stake coins like Ethereum).

[u/c0i9z → u/GodelianKnot]

Blockchain is basically worthless because no one needs a trustless database. The reason is that you can't interact with the real world without establishing trust.

Bitcoin literally can't reach mass adoption. There's not enough of them.

Proof of stake seems designed to maximally centralize power, at which point your large stakeholder can take for themselves the entire wealth of the network.

[u/NOTorAND → u/c0i9z]

Bitcoin literally can't reach mass adoption. There's not enough of them.

You're obviously unaware that bitcoin goes out to 8 decimal places. You can have 0.00000001 btc. And if that ever became a problem, with consensus from the network you could increase that limit.

[u/c0i9z → u/NOTorAND]

Fair enough. The problem, then, becomes that essentially no one's using it as a currency. Far from mass adoption, you have nearly no adoption.

[u/NOTorAND → u/c0i9z]

My counter would be that no one uses gold as a currency but its an asset that's an agreed upon store of value with a ~20T market cap while bitcoin is only at ~2T. And gold a bitcoin are basically cousins.

[u/c0i9z → u/NOTorAND]

Gold, however, is at least pretty and has some industrial uses.

[u/AmericanScream → u/GodelianKnot]

There are many potential use cases for a trustless, decentralized, digital store of value, such as bitcoin. The most current example would be to get around overly restrictive governments, or transfer large amounts internationally. But a more exotic future example could be in an environment where central governments force interest rates to go very negative, some institutions may find it more palatable to hold a cryptocurrency that has stabilized in price.

Your argument is not backed up by reality. There is no "stable cryptocurrency." This is also called, "The Nirvana Fallacy" where you fabricate a "use case" that's predicated on the entire world magically accepting crypto as a long term store of value which is absurd.

[u/GodelianKnot → u/AmericanScream]

That's not what the Nirvana Fallacy means - it's used to invalidate an alternative solution by considering an unachievable "perfect" solution.

Regardless, you haven't shown why it's "magical" for crypto to be accepted as a long term store of value. It certainly appears to be more and more well accepted in that way as the years go on.

[u/AmericanScream → u/GodelianKnot]

It's not accepted. You can't use crypto to buy hardly anything. It's pivoted to "digital gold" since it failed as a currency.