Topic: Is having 1 bitcoin like having a lottery ticket? (Read 2638 times)

Definitely should have chosen peanuts, they have intrinsic value!

About lottery - no, it is not. In lottery, see, there is one winner for a million losers. In Bitcoin, the ratio is much, much better, and you are given the chance to pick whether you'll be the winner (hold) or a loser (sell lower than you bought).

It is a high risk investment, in some ways a lottery ticket is too. Your average pay out however will be higher with bitcoin and the outcome is more predictable.

I left the part out "and bending it's interpretation to your needs"

In a lottery, the odds are known and  you're statistically much more likely to lose money than to win. With an investment, the odds are not known.

Claiming things like that here is like asking if Jesus was real in a Christian forum
But to be serious, I think that it is more of an lottery then an investment. It seems like small groups have hoarded most of bitcoins in existence and are creating artificial deficit to drive the price up. It is unpredictable how high they plan to go before they begin their dumping procedures, but I'm pretty sure that they have a plan with an exact number. So bitcoin could go 30 000$ per coin or the maximum could be 2000$ per coin. Impossible to predict the plans of smaller groups in control, with trends or common sense.

And as an investment, I think that buying BTC is generally foolish. Not foolish in a way that it is impossible to earn with it, because it is possible. But in a way where the investments actually go - into mining. The arms race for mining is just stupid and investing by buying BTC just fuels this stupidity. It's stupid because with increased network power, the security or any other practical aspect doesn't improve much. It doesn't protect the network from an 51% because all the network is pooled together into single points that could be compromised anyway. If you could compromise BTCguild and GHash.io, then you can coordinate an 51% attack without any difference how powerful these networks are. The increasing network power would only make sense if it would speed up transaction times and wouldn't be pooled together into points that could be compromised. People only invest into mining to earn BTC, but mining has very little positive effect to the progression of the entire bitcoin system.
Investments should go into support services that offer new payment options and practical usability for bitcoin. Without practical usability, then bitcoin is just a new innovative gambling platform where people get their kicks on trying to buy low and sell high.

Agreed.  I'll take it a step farther.  Bitcoin has no breakup value.  There is no minimum price.  Nailing down the fundamentals of Bitcoin is like trying to nail jello to a wall.  The market cap can contract 100% in a short period of time if it breaks for some reason.  This isn't FUD, it simply is reality.  We all are on the outside looking in.  It is an experiment, invest accordingly.

But if you are on the outside looking in and don't exactly believe or know of the fundamentals of BTC, comparing it to the lottery is actually quite valid. And after all the shit we've seen in this forum to call THAT the most retarded thing you ever seen?  Pulllease.

exactly, we could debate all day whether it's more idiotic to believe in abiogenesis or in divine intervention, but these topics are discussed to death already all over the internet, and i don't think it contributes to anything constructive anyway.

On a serious note, awesome view as much as I dislike religion.

The OP is referring to investing now, not investing 2 years ago.  Regarding "stratospheric gains", I picked $100,000 USD / XBT.

I think closer to a lottery would be spending that 1 xbt on some *brand new* altcoin.

Now that would be lotterious... buying a billion ToiletFlushCoins just to see if they go up 2000x overnight.

Some of them do (doge?)... then you've got your 100 xbt winnings after you dump them a few days later.

Lol. It's a horrendous analogy. But, if by lottery ticket, you are speaking in a very general sense, like "Something you buy that might make you really rich in the future"

Yes.

But then again, any financial asset or commodity is. It's just that some of them have more of a chance of doing that. I could buy 20 metric tons of peanuts or I could buy 2000 bitcoins in early 2010. LOL.

There are people who will laugh and assume your only reason for getting into bitcoin is to "get rich quick," and will respond as if you made that exact statement. Ignore these people, these creators and attackers of straw men.

In what price USD to you declare "stratospheric gains"?  Is 15,000% in 2 years not enough?

Set a win at ( > $100k/coin) and a loss at ( < $1000/coin).  Pick at arbitrary date between 5 and 50 years out.  Check for win/loss on this date.  In this case however, if one of your tickets wins, they all win, and if one loses, they all lose.  I think the primary objection people have to the lottery analogy is they believe the chances of winning are much better than the lottery.  I actually think the chances of implosion are higher than the chances of stratospheric gains within our lifetimes, but maybe only by 2:1 odds or so (obviously just a gut feeling - bitcoin methods of success are clear, methods of failure are not).  In any event, this makes the expected value of one of these lottery tickets quite high ..

The difference with BTC and the lottery.

The lottery has a date at which a winner will be anounced. Bitcoin allows you to cash out at any time.
The lottery gives NO insite into your winning state. Bitcoin shows the value of your investment at any time.
In a lottery you either win or loose. With bitcoin you can get richer or poorer. Losing all or winning all are the only two possibilities that are nearly impossible.
etc.


What the OP might be trying to ask is if bitcoin can go both ways (to da moon or into the earths core).
The simple answer is YES bitcoin can go up or down just as easily. Statisically chances are higher that it will go to $0 but due to market adoption belief is that it will go much higher.


Bitcoin is more like religion than the lottery.
You read everything there is to know and still there is no certainty. It's all down to faith and personal investment

+1

Attack the statement, not the man or his personal beliefs.

Regardless of OP's religious beliefs, comparing BTC to a lottery ticket is just deserving of ridicule and highly reflective of the levels of mindless mania that n'th wave noobs are experiencing. The lessons to correct such behaviour will be expensive both to individuals wealth and btc's own credibility, but then again, that is the cyclical nature of markets.

There is no getting rich quick, btc is not a lottery, and we have much work ahead to make btc worthy of its price, but the end result will be more than worth it.

What exactly are you implying then?

I didn't say that he is retarded.

So do I, but that doesn't make me retarded.  I'll agree there is some correlation since many people use religion to escape personal responsibility, but don't discount faith just because some idiots abuse it.