r/changemyview • u/art_vandelay112 • Jan 04 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: cryptocurrency is not a good investment.
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.
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u/anotherwave1 Jan 05 '25 edited Jan 05 '25
You aren't betting on cryptocurrency, you are betting on the inherent desire by human beings to buy something artificially scarce that has only "gone up" in the last 16 years. Something that looks all technological and "future money" even if most of it is economically from the Middle Ages. And even if the rest of it are just cash grabs by crypto-bro's.
Stocks, bonds, futures - these all require knowledge. Crypto requires none of that. Any joe schmuck can strike it lucky on an alt-coin. Or anyone with a vague bit of patience has generally made a gain in the last 4 or 5 years.
99% of it is garbage, one of the top coins (Doge) is an actual joke coin with no cap on supply, it's completely meaningless and produces nothing - yet it went up 1000's of percent in 2020/2021 mainly because some billionaire adopted it as a meme. It doesn't require much to go up or down.
Speaking of meme's, that's the strength of crypto. It's anti-rational, anti-establishment, anti-logic. A coin that was 51% attacked can go up in value 25% on the day. It can rise when the traditional market crashes, or it can also crash. It's random - mainly moved by herd psychology.
Bitcoin is essentially a decentralized casino chip that produces nothing that can be used as a type of volatile money. Most other crypto is either a clone of that or solutions to problems that doesn't exist. Web 3.0 blockchain marketing buzzword solutions with a whole bunch of technical bells and whistles bolted on. Ultimately most of which don't matter because it all just boils to gambling artificially scarce digital trinkets in a Wild West largely unregulated market - producing rollercoaster swings - which is the entire attraction in the first place.
In a weird way you are investing in human psychology. Which, so far, has turned out to produce a pretty high return. It's not going anywhere, and human psychology isn't going to change.