10 Comments

At one point, I owned one Bitcoin that I purchased for approximately $3000. I sure wish I hadn’t panicked and held onto it.

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Interesting brief history of Bitcoin, the security of decentralized blockchain tech, as well as potential investment opportunities for crypto coins...I do believe that cryptos will play an important role as we transition to new currencies to replace to the almost dead US Petrodollar - its prominence continues to decline as it makes its way to humanity's trash pile...much of the turmoil occurring across the world today is due to the death of the US dollar, as created by the US federal reserve in 1913...

FACT: US Federal Reserve Bank is a privately-owned company, sitting on its very own patch of land, immune to the US laws...history has shown that currencies have an average lifespan of about 70 years, the US dollar is now over 110 years in age and is nearly exhausted...

another phenomenon that came upon the scene about the same time as Bitcoin is the BRICS intergovernmental organization (initially comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)...BRICS membership has grown since then and is now rapidly expanding — about 30% of the world's land surface and 45% of the global population are now within BRICS...importantly, all of the OPEC states are members or set to join BRICS...

the writing is on the walls, the US Dollar is dead...smart money is moving to gold & silver in order to survive the impending financial collapse...central banks across the world are gobbling up gold (see last 2-3 years, since BIS required as Tier 1 asset)...good time to consider altering course in order to protect the nest eggs...gold, silver, and cryptos, may provide the life raft needed to survive The Storm...

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Thanks for the concise and clear explanation of crypto, Tim. Good job.

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Tim: how can a crypto currency be an independent (i.e. free of central government meddling) store of value if its value is traded in US dollars (which are themselves highly influenced by government interference/policies)?

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Value is determined by what it can buy. USD is just one item for sale.

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Thanks Jake. But I still don't see how one can avoid the dollar value issue. For example, if I want to use bitcoins to buy my next car, the price of the car will be set in dollars and if I use bitcoins, the number of bitcoins required would have to be a function of the dollar price of the car. Seems to me that the value in dollars is always in play.

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It depends. You might be able to find someone who will accept BTC as payment. But even if you have to use USD, the total amount of Bitcoin tokens in existence has an upward cap of 21 Million; USD has no limit. The value of Bitcoin is affected less by the Dollar and more by the overall stock market and economy. When the economy is doing well, investors have more capital to spend on BTC; when the economy is bad, investors tend to liquidate their assets into fiat currency. But the overall trajectory of BTC is up, while the overall value of the dollar goes down.

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Thanks Jake. I take your point.

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In my opinion, the goal Bitcoin is not to be free of gov fiat currencies, rather what BTC provides is a reserve store of value to either back fiat currencies or to back individuals value, similar to how certain individuals utilize gold, real estate, etc.

The US dollar is the worlds reserve source of value... ⛓️‍💥 ...just waiting for the loose link to break. Does it raise any flags to you that such a pivotal system is in the hands of the few? Our current system incentivizes corruption. The US government can just print more money to temporarily rid their problems, or maintain the largest military in the world (to maintain the significance of USD).

BTC is a global financial settlement layer. If the value of one fiat currency goes haywire, its government and citizens can still reach settlement with its strong reserve currency: bitcoin, gold, land, etc. But USD reserves...? The one main thing that connects these hard assets is scarcity and demand, and it makes so much sense to have digital alternative.

Particularly living in santa barbara, it is easy to feel like the housing is so expensive because people purchase investment properties here. If these investors had alternative hard assets it might open supply for real-world assets and benefit real people.

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Yes. Nice summation.

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