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Topic: If bitcoin according to Satoshi is digital money then why call it investment. - page 5. (Read 691 times)

sr. member
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Bitcoin wasn't envisioned as a form of investment, but it because an investment because of how drastically the price started changing and because it's consistently going up over the years. When the value of something increases over time, it's natural that people will treat it as an investment.
The idea of Bitcoin as electronic cash is still somewhat relevant, and there are people who use it this way. But there isn't enough adoption of Bitcoin as a form of payment, and then there's the scalability issue.
It should also be noted that even fiat is sometimes used as an investment. For example, it used to be very popular in my country to buy the USD, hodl and then sell for local fiat because our fiat suffered a lot more from inflation than the USD, so the USD was mainly seen as an investment. But it is also a type of money, there's no doubt about it. Bitcoin can easily be both, and it doesn't matter whether this is what Satoshi thought Bitcoin would become.

I understand the fact that investment is one thing everyone would want to venture once they see the opportunity and I believe that was the situation of bitcoin then. As the price began to appreciate, whales seized the opportunity to accumulate more of it withholding it in supply, making it scarce commodity while the price grows very fast.

Adoption I think is one of the major challenges facing bitcoin currently as most government frowns at it and they see it as a big threat to their fiat and other activities they do which some are quite shaddy. Although some have adopted bitcoin as a legal tender digitally and it is working very good for them. It is good that there has been a gradual individual adoption of bitcoin into various businesses which solely represents the bitcoin for goods and services goal and that would tell in time to come.
sr. member
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You already have the answer Op, you are not thinking is all, Bitcoin can be use to pay for expenses online, I have use bitcoin to pay bills too thanks to few online market place that accept Bitcoin as means of payment, this makes Bitcoin a digital money.

It's also a good store of value because it goes higher than what it is today, demand and supply is running it Bitcoin's blood, this makes it a digital gold, which automatically means a good investment opportunity.

I don't understand how you get lost with these because Bitcoin is the most simplest one to understand. 
legendary
Activity: 2688
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I know you must be wondering what's up with my topic right? I too was having a thought over this and I  felt I should bring it here for discussion so we all can share our own various opinions.

For quite sometime now all I have been seeing is statements and topics of bitcoin being an investment and it bothered me to look into it and I as well stand to be corrected logically and with facts with respect to this conversation.

The sole reason why bitcoin was invented was to serve the purpose of digital money for which it was clearly stated on the white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto as captured below by quote;

Quote
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
    Bitcoin White Paper
If you look at the top page of the while paper, it is clearly written there and there was no captions like investment  attached to it or being mentioned by Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Now I ask how come it deviated to being an investment?. I have read all through the white paper and never saw anything like investment but rather " an electronic peer 2 peer cash payment system" which means bitcoin is money but in a digital way of making payments. So how come it became an investment?

I believe in the course of adding more value to it's existence, whales bought large volume by market manipulation at the early stage of bitcoin inception and those who couldn't stand the market wave sold out giving way for the whales to take over the market and since then along with other occurrence and scenarios,  bitcoin became an investment and store of value aka digital gold as per say as it worked out for the whales according to their schemes. Would it be that easy to correct that notion of bitcoin being called an investment other than money.
When it is used for payment of goods and services on daily basis and we having full custody of our funds in a digital way would it be necessary we calling it an investment aside the price increase which is fluctuating and barely stable for a long time.? I believe Satoshi Nakamoto the sole originator of the bitcoin knows much better than everyone why he invented the bitcoin and I also would be looking forward to his reappearance be it pseudo anonymous or otherwise to making some notable observations on the bitcoin journey so far.



Anything that grows in value over a period of time is investment. Don't people invest in forex and trade it to make profit?
Bitcoin is a medium to tranfer value. You can not use bitcoin directly to buy all things in many places but through bitcoin you can transfer value throughout world in a blink of an eye.

Bitcoin is investment because it's value goes up and down with it demand and supply matrix
sr. member
Activity: 686
Merit: 403
You can only get the right definition depending on what you are using your Bitcoin for, if you by to make more profit, it's a store of value in your case, if you buy to spend on other things and items it becomes internet money or digital money, you can even call it a scam currency if you bought at the top and it goes way down (Bad Timing), that's your fault though.

As you can see, Bitcoin is anything you can it, this world still have it's freedom of speech right? Bitcoin is fit to be called a digital gold, it created value that's why the name fits, I don't know why some people are even arguing about this topic.

As a Bitcoin adopter, why are you buying? What are you using your Bitcoin for? If you know the answer then..........
legendary
Activity: 3248
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Bitcoin wasn't envisioned as a form of investment, but it because an investment because of how drastically the price started changing and because it's consistently going up over the years. When the value of something increases over time, it's natural that people will treat it as an investment.
The idea of Bitcoin as electronic cash is still somewhat relevant, and there are people who use it this way. But there isn't enough adoption of Bitcoin as a form of payment, and then there's the scalability issue.
It should also be noted that even fiat is sometimes used as an investment. For example, it used to be very popular in my country to buy the USD, hodl and then sell for local fiat because our fiat suffered a lot more from inflation than the USD, so the USD was mainly seen as an investment. But it is also a type of money, there's no doubt about it. Bitcoin can easily be both, and it doesn't matter whether this is what Satoshi thought Bitcoin would become.
legendary
Activity: 2898
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The simple explanation to this is that people trade on Bitcoin vs fiat and thus the price changes due to demand and supply. This is a secondary effect to being a currency and similar markets were already existing with foreign currencies. Because the speculation of prices occurs hence the price changes. This leads to the trading market and a long term holding market. Therefore it has become an investment and a store of value.

Additionally since the currency is deflationary, the store of value concept become attractive to investors.
legendary
Activity: 4410
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Originally it wasn’t viewed as an investment by most people. I felt alone back in the day using terms like market cap. It was originally a PayPal replacement with no fees. Things have changed a bit and now it’s being pushed as a replacement for gold. It’s scarcity in the end proved to be too valuable to investors for its original mission to succeed.

scarcity is not the value proposition.. if there is 10 people at a party but you can cut the cake into 21 pieces. its not a scarce cake.
however if the cake cost $500 to make then each slice is worth $50 thus people tend to respect the taste of the cake more

bitcoin is no different. if its costing a minimum of $20k to make a fresh btc. meaning no one on planet can get it for less right now. then everyone respects that and then speculate on its taste(desire) above that.

there is a good reason why bitcoin leaped in 2013 when asics first ramped up mining cost. yes it speculated by 100x and then corrected to 10x. but the leap had reason
then with the halvings and everyone evaluated their cost per creation at year end. that speculated the next bull/hype a year after halvings.

the underlying cost of creation of anything has power over the end value proposition/speculation above that base cost. its simple economics

in short
its more about the mining cost supporting/underlying new raised bottoms, which markets then speculate above. rather than pure 'scarcity'
donator
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Originally it wasn’t viewed as an investment by most people. I felt alone back in the day using terms like market cap. It was originally a PayPal replacement with no fees. Things have changed a bit and now it’s being pushed as a replacement for gold. It’s scarcity in the end proved to be too valuable to investors for its original mission to succeed.
hero member
Activity: 560
Merit: 511
store of value aka digital gold
OP, why did you call bitcoin gold. Gold is an asset likewise bitcoin. Initially Satoshi created bitcoin as a digitital currency and an alternative to fiat using P2P for transactions. As time goes in bitcoin begin to gain recognition and that helped to increase the value of bitcoin because it is limited in supply. Another great event that has helped bitcoin value to increase is bitcoin halving. As the day passes on bitcoin started gaining more value and the depreciation of fiat currency made bitcoin to be seen as an investment and also used as a store of value because if you hold bitcoin for long and sell during the bull run,your bitcoin will yield you profit. Bitcoin is now a commodity because the price is being affected by demand and supply.
hero member
Activity: 3150
Merit: 937
Perhaps Satoshi never thought that Bitcoin would turn into a financial asset. He thought that BTC will have a somewhat stable and low price (low volatility)and it will be used as a digital currency. I guess that he was wrong about this. He was also partially wrong about Bitcoin being a 100% "peer-to-peer" system, because of all the third party centralized crypto projects, like exchanges, wallets, casinos, etc.
I know that Bitcoin in itself is truly p2p, but the entire crypto industry definitely isn't 100% peer-to-peer.
Maybe this will change and all centralized crypto projects will fade away.
Bitcoin became an investment because of it's fixed supply and growing demand, not because some whales did market manipulation back in the day.
legendary
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Bitcoin can only be money (currency) or legal tender, if a government approve it. "Currency is a medium of exchange for goods and services. In short, it's money, in the form of paper and coins, usually issued by a government and generally accepted at its face value as a method of payment." - Source : https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency.asp

So, most governments does not accept Bitcoin as a currency, but rather define it as a commodity. (Mostly to protect their monopoly over the manipulation of their own local currency)
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 952
as it's grow in value people start to considering bitcoin as an investment. in practical bitcoin is mostly used in trading site rather than for buy goods or pay something. we still face many difficulty in country's regulation, there are still so many country that do not accept bitcoin yet. because of that problem, so many businessman having difficulty to adopt and utilize bitcoin as money or payment method. there are still so many website that accept bitcoin as payment method but i think mostly they are selling service or digital goods, not many that sell actual goods.

Yes the lack of its massive usage as a payment method due to government restrictions is actually pushing it to been an investment since this doesn’t need to have government approval. Just like Gold which is rarely used by common people to trade and after finding out about its value they decide to hold the little they have just to beat the devaluation of the fiat is why bitcoin is used too. Currently it is more of an investment than a currency it was intended for because this, should nations begin to relax laws against it and it is used more freely for buying and selling of goods then it would be treated as a currency. But investment purpose of it would never be eliminated because of its value and scarcity.
full member
Activity: 477
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as it's grow in value people start to considering bitcoin as an investment. in practical bitcoin is mostly used in trading site rather than for buy goods or pay something. we still face many difficulty in country's regulation, there are still so many country that do not accept bitcoin yet. because of that problem, so many businessman having difficulty to adopt and utilize bitcoin as money or payment method. there are still so many website that accept bitcoin as payment method but i think mostly they are selling service or digital goods, not many that sell actual goods. I think those businessman should establish company in countries which already accept bitcoin and contribute to those country's economic development, also serve people outside that country too. by this way, those country can be good example for other country to consider bitcoin as catalyst for development of country's economy.
legendary
Activity: 4410
Merit: 4766
Now I ask how come it deviated to being an investment?.


People didn't call it an investment, they turned it into an investment property. Right, bitcoin was initially created to be a decentralized currency not controlled by anyone. But it is we investors who have turned bitcoin into a speculative asset, all because of our behavior and usage. But honestly, if bitcoin is not an investment, it is not volatile and not profitable. I wonder how many people will use it? Are you sure you are getting into bitcoin because you need privacy, not profit?
Privacy is one of the key features of bitcoin if I am not mistaken. Sole ownership without third party interference was the sole aim where by one can have access to his or her fund and do what ever he or she wants to do with it without any trace or mingling with government or any third party organizations. You have control over you funds.
Everyone individual loves profiting so therefore would utilize every opportunity they have to make more profits. No one is exempted from that even you too would want to use every little avenue to make profit.

the sole aim was a digital cash for the unbanked, but dev politics make to too costly(fees) for the 3rd world unbanked people. so next they used the lack to requirement of ID feature to next shout out "privacy".. yet a transparent open ledger is not private, it just lacked the requirement of nonsense metadata of users details

it was initially deemed as property2009-2013 thus was not in the jurisdiction of currency laws. but when defined as a currency2014+ then financial laws became applicable to services and businesses interacting with bitcoin. and thus regulations caused those financial businesses to require data on their customers

it became a currency becasue people lobbied to cal it that "to mainstream" it into an investment category

so now using a service to swap fiat to bitcoin is not a private thing.
sr. member
Activity: 1106
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Investment is an activity to buy something and then you hope that one day you can get profit from it. Investments can be in any form, such as bonds, stocks, cryptocurrencies, even fiat. So from this, even though Bitcoin is digital money, it can be used as an investment, because when we buy it, we have hope that its value will increase in the future. Because of that, Bitcoin can be said to be an investment or digital money, but I agree more if it's just called digital money compared to an investment.
sr. member
Activity: 728
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Now I ask how come it deviated to being an investment?.


People didn't call it an investment, they turned it into an investment property. Right, bitcoin was initially created to be a decentralized currency not controlled by anyone. But it is we investors who have turned bitcoin into a speculative asset, all because of our behavior and usage. But honestly, if bitcoin is not an investment, it is not volatile and not profitable. I wonder how many people will use it? Are you sure you are getting into bitcoin because you need privacy, not profit?
Privacy is one of the key features of bitcoin if I am not mistaken. Sole ownership without third party interference was the sole aim where by one can have access to his or her fund and do what ever he or she wants to do with it without any trace or mingling with government or any third party organizations. You have control over you funds.
Everyone individual loves profiting so therefore would utilize every opportunity they have to make more profits. No one is exempted from that even you too would want to use every little avenue to make profit.
legendary
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Well, Bitcoin is decentralized. Satoshi, who created this Bitcoin, has no control over it. So it is up to the user how they want to look at it. Satoshi has definitely mentioned that it is a peer-to-peer digital currency system, but in reality, Bitcoin worked well as an investment that outperformed multiple billion-dollar enterprises. So I see no issues in looking at it as an investment, but rather a great investment.

In the free market rule, an asset usually finds its own way based on usage and demand. So Bitcoin worked well in that category. Also, I personally believe, Bitcoin will never be considered as a currency unless its price stabilizes. People usually do not like to let go of an opportunity. Bitcoin is an opportunity.
hero member
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Now I ask how come it deviated to being an investment?

Because gradually people can't deny that bitcoin meets the criteria as an investment asset, and is proven by several success stories of bitcoiners in their investment journey. Even if you personally think otherwise, it's actually not a problem, basically bitcoin still doesn't violate the principle of being a payment instrument for anyone who thinks it's valuable.
legendary
Activity: 2576
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It's probably unintended but Satoshi must have an inkling about it. He/she/they likened Bitcoin to gold, after all. Satoshi must have known altogether that Bitcoin will have this tendency. It's money. It's scarce. It has a growing demand. As a result, it will have an increasing value unlike fiat which is decreasing because it is unlimited. Therefore, many people will probably keep it more than spend it.

Satoshi was certainly mindful of the ratio of 21 million coins to several billion people. He/she/they knew that some coins will be lost for good and it will have an effect on the value of the ones that remain in circulation. Satoshi was probably aware of the tendency of Bitcoin becoming an investment.
full member
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It's an investment because if it can be traded hands then there's value, look at Forex, isn't that some kind of an investment too? Another obvious reason would be the value of a bitcoin, it's going up in value and I don't think it's a good idea to just let it stagnate if there's a room to grow.
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