Topic: Bitcoin is a stock - page 2. (Read 3997 times)

This is a much more accurate description of what bitcoin is then how the OP describes bitcoin.

Owning bitcoin is like owing dollars, or euros, or yen. It is a currency.

If a share of stock you own say NFLX, BIDU, TSLA pays no dividends, has no material voting rights, will receive no money if the company goes bankrupt, and then you insist on referring to wikipedia to "PROVE" what a stock means, well then you are missing my entire point. We all feel better about what is written in a wikipedia article, however, that doesn't mean your stocks mean anything.

In practice, a share or stock means nothing, you own a piece of fiction, a piece of a limited asset backed by NOTHING other than our collective delusion.

Bitcoins and stocks are digital measures of value where the market agrees every day on their worth.

Oh and if you own enough stocks, then maybe you have enough voting power to control the organization and make the changes you need to make your stocks worth more. Hmmm, Same can be said for Bitcoins.

If bitcoin is a share then so is fiat. They are both currencies, only one is tangible and one is digital. In some cases bitcoin can be tangible, but in general fact stocks are simply owning part of the company.
You own a share you own a part of a company, you own a bitcoin you own a piece of currency like you do with cash.

We have to start with the assumption that he's comparing abstractions or there's really no debate.

...and I apologize if this seems like I'm splitting hairs.  But "stock" generally refers to the equity shares a company offers to the public.
Investment in private companies is usually via VC firms, angel investors, and large institutions, or from friends & family I guess (depending on size).
Those investments wouldn't typically be called "stock" - and would actually be more like investing in bitcoin than owning stock in publicly traded companies is.

Bitcoin is making stock based companies obsolete. Your terminology is archaic to us as horse-drawn carriages.

A stock is just an ownership in a company.   The company doesn't even need to be public.  You can incorporate and issue yourself a million shares if you want.   Then sell some shares to investors who want to speculate that your company will do well in the future.

OP lacks basic knowledge.  Instead of taking my advice to look up the meaning of 'stock' he prefers to be ignorant.  Its not even that complex

I can see some of the similarities that OP bases this conclusion on:

- You buy something that has a value based on what the market has agreed upon.
- Ownership is somewhat ambiguous since you don't gain anything tangible*, like gold (or other physical commodities).
- And you don't have much of a say in the "operations of Bitcoin", or in the operations of the company you buy and hold stock in.
- The price could go up or go down... to the moon or to zero.

One might suggest that you do gain something tangible* - the unique private key for some paired public key that you own.
But the main flaws of your argument are in your understanding of how stocks are valued...
Bitcoin is a speculative investment.  People typically buy bitcoin because they expect it to be worth more at t, where t is some time in the future.
Or they invest because they believe that the value of bitcoin is less volatile (or has greater upside) than their traditional currency.

The way you portray the stock market, you assume those are all speculative investments.  Perhaps you've heard the phrase "do your homework" in regards to stocks?
There are methods to estimate the intrinsic value of a stock - the discounted cash flow formula is standard.
You can also use Price to Earnings ratio, PEG, etc. etc. to compare company A to company B (typically within the same sector).
Amazon's price is ~800-900X earnings......so then you would say, "see, it's magic!".  But no, it isn't.
P/E is just one way to understand the price relative to similar entities.  Using the DCF formula, you would find Net Present Value...
for a firm with extremely high growth, and a dominant position (+ high barriers to entry) - like Amazon - the NPV calculation includes more years.
While there is certainly some guesswork involved, leading to differences in estimates and recommendations by analysts, this isn't just pure speculation.
So, intrinsic value calculations will change based on concrete numbers from the quarterly income statements/balance sheets of these companies.
Investors act accordingly and the price changes.  There's also movements based on missing or exceeding consensus estimates, guidance from the firm, etc.

Then there are the obvious differences between bitcoin and stock that have already been mentioned.
You might have a better case comparing some characteristics of penny stocks to bitcoin...
but your fundamental understanding of stock valuation needs some work.

where do you think people will be buying it in the future? in a totally decentralized way? if BTC is going to be mainstream, i still see this as the typical way of acquiring BTC.

What am I shilling?   Did you look up 'stock' yet?

A lot of things have prices that go up and down and is traded.   Doesn't make it a stock

Do some basic research on any stock of your choosing and maybe you won't be such a shill.

Bitcoin behaves as both a stock and currency... what's with the dichotomy here?

Huh?   Look up the definition of "stock"

Can treat it as a stock, investment instrument or money. This is free market after all.

The purpose of my post is to help figure out how to value and predict the future of Bitcoin. It is actually the misunderstanding of labels that create a problem for deciding what Bitcoin is. If you contemplate what a stock actually is today, and I mean most stocks that the average person owns, then you realize that those stocks are digital assets that have value only because of consensus.

What is the difference between Bitcoin and a share of lets say BIDU on NASDAQ? Over the years we have collectively agreed that BIDU value should be correlated to some composite of revenue, profit, and potential. It is collective fantasy that we value BIDU in any way at all, but as a group we all somehow agree that BIDU is tied to these "fundamentals" so we all can sleep at night or some pathetic reason.

Almost all stocks today do not pay dividends and you will not receive anything if they go bankrupt. It is you that has made a mistake. I am comparing bitcoin to what everyone calls a stock today. What you think of as stocks is not actually representative to what stocks have become.

Money actually only needs to be a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. That is  it.

bitcoin is not a stock it is the future

well the price is a balance between supply and demand.
demand can't be fixed because it will always depend on the will of the people to exchange goods and services for money.
but at least the supply side is such as to support a stable price (no possibility of inflating the supply).

that is the best design that can be achieved for money.
stocks and fiat currency have volatility in both supply and demand.

the reason bitcoin is so volatile despite its superior design is the low volume on exchanges (relatively to fiat and gold).
considering it is only 5 years old i would even argue it has been remarkably stable in the past few months.

Money also needs to be a store of value (Related to Point 6). Although its supply will not grow arbitrarily, its price is highly volatile. This is a negative for bitcoin (in terms of being classified as money, not negative for traders)

bitcoin is not a stock, bitcoin is money.
in fact it is the only thing besides precious metals that has all the properties that money needs to have.

money needs to be:
1. a medium of exchange - it should be easy to give money to another party in exchange for goods and services.
2. it needs to be portable - it should be easy to carry around.
3. it needs to be durable - it should not be easily destroyed over time.
4. it needs to be divisible - it should be easy to split it into smaller units.
5. it needs to be fungible - all units must have the same value, it should be hard to counterfeit.
6. it must retain purchasing power over long periods of time - its supply must not grow rapidly and arbitrarily.

both fiat and stocks fail at 6 as they can be created by corruptible men at will.
precious metals are protected by the laws of nature from being created arbitrarily.
bitcoin is protected by mathematics from being created arbitrarily.