Crypto Currency

[doulos]

I started buying bitcoin in 2020. At this point bitcoin is >50% of my net worth. I’ve spent at least 500 hours studying and learning about every aspect of the thesis, and I intend to keep dollar cost averaging in forever.

You rarely meet bitcoiners in the wild, and I rarely meet Ethereans in the wild. This isn’t surprising because neither of us are really seeking the other contingent out. If you’d like to, there are very large Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse rooms about bitcoin basically 24/7 with extremely knowledgeable hosts and speakers who discuss monetary history, game theory, macro economics, geopolitics, and every other facet of the bitcoin thesis, and there are thousands of hours worth of podcasts, audiobooks, etc. that cover all of these topics as well. The thesis is far stronger now than it has ever been in the past due to accelerating adoption by corporations, institutions and nation states, and the advances in mining infrastructure and tech are pretty much non-stop.

Despite all the “boomer coin” and “web3” and defi-obsessed mentality that is prevalent out there, the future for bitcoin has never looked brighter. I think a lot of people just fail to understand that store of value is by far the greatest and most valuable form of “utility” that exists in the world by multiple orders of magnitude. Hopefully I don’t need to explain the difference in amount of value that can be driven by retail speculators into Ethereum vs. the amount of value that can be driven by corporate treasuries, pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign treasuries and central banks into bitcoin. It is very much possible (and game theoretically quite likely) that bitcoin not only retains its position as top dog, but becomes worth many orders of magnitude more than Ethereum or any other alt coin over the coming decades.

I appreciate your perspective but completely disagree with it. However, I hope we both do very well in whatever lies ahead!

[BreadManPanarin]

I appreciate your perspective but completely disagree with it. However, I hope we both do very well in whatever lies ahead!

Perhaps you can explain why you disagree?

[doulos]

Perhaps you can explain why you disagree?

I could, but frankly my experiences tell me it would not be a productive discussion for either of us, or for those who would have to suffer through it! I wish you the best in your speculative adventures though.

[BreadManPanarin]

Then perhaps you could lay out your bull thesis for Ethereum such that myself and others might learn from it? I promise not to turn it into a debate.

[doulos]

Then perhaps you could lay out your bull thesis for Ethereum such that myself and others might perhaps learn from it?

Short term (this year). Etheruem 2.0, combined with EIP-1559, creates a supply crunch + demand increase due to staking yields, which pushes Ethereum into the 10-20k range.

Long term (within 10 years). Ethereum proves itself as safe and stable and becomes the settlement layer for a huge portion of finance that exists. It also serves as store of value, and as a currency to be used (see early uses such as with NFTs and where it could go). It has a value in the 100-150k range.

That's pie in the sky range. I see a LOT that could go wrong to disrupt any of that from happening (a lack of client diversity causes a huge issue to happen and cause a massive setback, government regulation chokes much of the life out of crypto in general and despite how "impossible" people think this is due to the decentralization of crypto, reality turns out to be that it kills it for all but the most libertarian and paranoid who are willing to do really difficult things to still use it, other black swan type events that we don't even forsee etc)

Realistically, though the amount I have in crypto as a percentage of my total net worth has of course continued to go up over the years due to price increases, I have continued to make the exact same deposits into my traditional investment accounts so that if all of my crypto goes to 0 I will still be retiring on the same timeline I had initially planned. However, should some form of the pie in the sky outcomes come to pass ... well I'll be saying goodbye to my job far far earlier.

Someone like Cathie Wood has no problems seeing a bright future for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, so perhaps we'll both be very happy down the road. I hope so.

[BreadManPanarin]

Thanks for humoring me. Was just curious if you had any insights on Ethereum that I wasn’t already aware of. Cheers.

[doulos]

I would suspect both of us have heard each other's arguments ad nauseum.

[Mr. Guru]

I wouldn't be surprised to see both Bitcoin AND Eth 10x from here in the next handful of years

[forumname]

I wouldn't be surprised to see both Bitcoin AND Eth 10x from here in the next handful of years

Breadman and doulos both provided some pretty lengthy explanations for their positions on this and I found them both extremely helpful. Would you care to do the same?

[Invictus]

You all make it really appealing to invest in Bitcoin or Eth... I just hate that I can't buy graphic cards now :/

[blayze]

Short term (this year). Etheruem 2.0, combined with EIP-1559, creates a supply crunch + demand increase due to staking yields, which pushes Ethereum into the 10-20k range.

Long term (within 10 years). Ethereum proves itself as safe and stable and becomes the settlement layer for a huge portion of finance that exists. It also serves as store of value, and as a currency to be used (see early uses such as with NFTs and where it could go). It has a value in the 100-150k range.

Pretty much sums up why I'm more intrigued with Ether > Bitcoin.

I think the practical applications of ether provide for a much larger opportunity than either of them as a widely adopted currency (which I can't see for the foreseeable future).

[Mr. Guru]

Breadman and doulos both provided some pretty lengthy explanations for their positions on this and I found them both extremely helpful. Would you care to do the same?

There's 100 better sources to get your information from but I'll just redirect you to this short video that will hopefully lead to down a rabbit hole.

https://youtu.be/J6I-OzXItfA

[Mr. Guru]

Lately I've been obsessed with decentralized finance and making yield on my crypto has shifted my perspective on when/if I should sell or ever exit this position.

Anyone into DeFi and is actually using a platform?

[doulos]

Lately I've been obsessed with decentralized finance and making yield on my crypto has shifted my perspective on when/if I should sell or ever exit this position.

Anyone into DeFi and is actually using a platform?

Definitely played around with it. Lots of things to be really careful of, but eventually I am hoping I will have enough in stablecoins to just park a bunch and let it do it's thing. That is if stablecoins don't get regulated into the ground, which is very possible.

[BreadManPanarin]

Pretty much sums up why I'm more intrigued with Ether > Bitcoin.

I think the practical applications of ether provide for a much larger opportunity than either of them as a widely adopted currency (which I can't see for the foreseeable future).

I need to point this out one more time because I cannot possibly stress this enough.

The practical application of bitcoin is a store of wealth. The global store of wealth total addressable market is estimated between $700 trillion and over a quadrillion. Bitcoin makes up less than .1% of this TAM so far. There does not exist any larger or more important practical application in the entire world than store of wealth. Literally nothing. Anyone who suggests there is simply does not know what they are talking about. The largest tech companies in the world are worth a few trillion dollars, whereas the largest store of value assets in the world (bonds, gold, real estate, etc.) are worth tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars. And bitcoin has been absolutely destroying these other stores of value in terms of performance which means that inevitably more wealth managers will be moving massive amounts of money into bitcoin over time. We are transitioning gradually from a reality where investing in bitcoin comes with reputational risk for wealth managers to a reality where not investing in bitcoin will come with reputational risk for wealth managers. To ignore this trend or fail to front run it would be very foolish in my opinion.

Don't worry about whether Ether or Bitcoin become widely used currency. That is so far down the road as to be completely unimportant to worry about right now, and is not central to the investment thesis of either of them.