Bitcoin is not an investment, bitcoin is a hedge and is an alternative to the traditional financial system, the traditional financial system will never cease to exist. Everyone who participates in this movement should know this.

Bitcoin has brought countless advantages to those who use it, and fundamentally speaking it is capable of replicating social scalability, something rare these days.


Apparently, the OP completely ignores the solid fundamentals that the currency has and all the revolutionary technology that makes it work.

I am not worried about Bitcoin ETF itself, rather more concerned about the company that runs the ETF. Let's keep all these debates around decentralized ecosystem and geo-political situations a side. But unfortunately the world's largest asset holder has got the approval to run Bitcoin ETF. They have so much financial power, they can indeed really manipulate the market.

Just ask a simple question - why the Bitcoin price didn't increase after ETF approval? Who's behind this? BlackRock controls a lot of things. Bitcoin should not be controlled by them.

Are you sure about that? If this is the first time it's in the spotlight, how will you describe the opening of bitcoin futures in 2018?
What about acceptance in El Salvador? What about that short time when Musk was promoting it, or the investment that Microstrategy made?


It never was a viable mainstream currency. In fact, bitcoin never was a mainstream investment, which is proven by the amount of people who own it. If you ask around, maybe 1 out of 10 people you know will hold bitcoin, probably even less than that. Is that mainstream?

It's not and the fact that a certain amount, for instance 10% of it will be held by ETFs doesn't make it centralized.

It has already done that long ago. Do you think Wall Street wasn't involved in bitcoin trading in 2019?

Not sure if you really understand why Bitcoin was created because it was never created as an investment medium or mainstream product, understand one thing that Bitcoin was created as an alternative for P2P transactions without involvement of any third party. It's people who made it investment scheme and that's not the reason why Bitcoin was created. Hence I would like to conclude it doesn't matter of what potential investor thinks because a true Bitcoin enthusiast is more concerned about anonymity rather than investment or returns.

I understand very well why it was created, but... that's not how it evolved. Today, almost all Bitcoin transactions have a third party involved because almost no mainstream investors physically hold their own private key. It's certainly possible Bitcoin could be used that way, but it mostly isn't, and the reason for that is that most people don't care about "centralized" and "decentralized" and don't even know what that means. To most investors today, Bitcoin is nothing more than the word, "Bitcoin".

And it doesn't matter what potential investors think... unless you are talking about the market price of Bitcoin. I am not trying to say here that Bitcoin is worthless, or that it's price will go to zero, only that the current price depends on a mass appeal which could evaporate because of the attention the ETF is bringing.

Also, you understand Bitcoin isn't great for anonymity, right?   

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Touché!

But my scenario here wouldn't portend a small drop like it's seen in the past few days, but rather a huge drop like it saw 18 months ago, or maybe much more. My thesis here is that the current price is based on the perception that Bitcoin has mass appeal, and when the market finds that it doesn't, it would correct to a much, much lower level.





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I can almost guarantee that nearly all Institutional investors... don't know what a private key is, nor would they want to.

Bitcoin's goal of creating a decentralized financial system... failed. It doesn't do that in any mainstream way. In actual reality, it's mostly just a meme investment.

You are making many assumptions about Bitcoin which are not true and then asking us what we think about the eventuality of those false assumptions. A lot of "what if" scenarios. There is absolutely no point in asking such questions because you could claim anything, even something as ludicrous as for example: the entire internet might collapse in a few years due to some mysterious cosmic burst of radiation from some far-away galaxy. What would happen to the value of Bitcoin in such a scenario? Would the Blockhain be lost?

All such questions do is create more FUD. Especially during times when Bitcoin is going down.

So lets stick to what we know to be true. Bitcoin ETFs will not be able to "break" Bitcoin. ETF is a net positive for the value stability of Bitcoin.

I like the challenge of a contrarian debate. Consider this, Bitcoin naturally acts as a hedge against existing currencies and asset classes. As centralised currency systems rise and fall (periods of recessions) which economists agree happens in 8-12 year cycles, hedges become important. Protecting against a loss in financial value is not a view thats constrained to a group of as you put 'enthusiastic anarcho-libertarians', its a bi-partisan or nonpartisan (universal) desire that is not constrained by geographical boundaries.

In this scenario, the outcome is universally bullish for Bitcoin as an alternative asset class.

there is a non-zero bottom with bitcoin (unless the technology broke(code bug))

even if hobby miners cant mine. there is a significant amount of mining farms that are not day players but instead already invested 2 years worth of electric contracts and 2 years of hardware lifetime. so they will mine no matter what..
and they want to break even so they wont sell daily or at a loss, they will just accumulate coin as they dont have daily costs. its all prepaid longterm


this means hashrate wont drop to zero. this also means there is a non zero cost of mining even most efficiently. which everyone on the planet sees as a base rate no one can acquire for less and everyone cant afford to sell for less if they acquired.

everyone will then project their own personal/regional higher costs and if the market is cheap they will be happy to buy bitcoin cheap

this will and does cause a non zero market price support.
yes traders can try to sell large lumps of bitcoin to push the price down, but even they will run out of coin.

the amount that the price can tank is not down to zero (unless bitcoins code was broken)

so these corrections back to value levels. are not "tanking to zero" risk.. but instead temporary discount opportunity

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on the other hand PoS coins dont really have any "work" cost of mining.. so PoS coins can tank to zero
especially coins which do not have their own market sentiment but are instead shadow tracing bitcoins price.