Semi OT: Anyone lose money in the crypto crash?

[refshateRaps]

Really, not sure how no one else here see what's going on? Sure az hell looks like a once in a lifetime opportunity across almost all sectors, some far more then others, from my view. Bout to slip away fast here prob too.

Come May we could be in a completely different financial world IMO...

What do I know? Follow your own reads.

BMO is trading at a 5.7 profit/earnings and 1.3 times book value because its being just dragged down for no reason. The P/E sale is like 2008 right now. The book value buy is insane considering a 5% dividend and all but guaranteed to recover.

https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/advchart/frames/frames.asp?show=&insttype=Stock&symb=BMO&x=39&y=18&time=100&startdate=1%2F4%2F2006&enddate=3%2F15%2F2023&freq=1&compidx=aaaaa%3A0&comptemptext=&comp=none&ma=0&maval=9&uf=0&lf=1&lf2=0&lf3=16777216&type=2&style=320&size=2&timeFrameToggle=false&compareToToggle=false&indicatorsToggle=false&chartStyleToggle=false&state=15

P/E ratio at bottom.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/quote/BMO?p=BMO

Hah, I've been buying BMO (and other banks) all the way down the last few days. Considering another tranche this morning. But they picked the wrong time to buy Bank of the West last month, and probably vastly overpaid.

It's pretty scary trying to catch those falling knives. Things are worse out there than many people understand. I was talking to a private equity guy at the game last night, and that area has dried up completely.

Market makers know exactly what's coming and they are trying to shake out tickers all over the map right now.

All solid buys and it looks like they are about to sling shot hard north shortly IMO, but there's too much strength in tech right now to be overly focused on the knifes. But they are clearly bottoming so hopefully into the end of the week they firm up nicely and not keep bouncing thru the FOMC next week.

[deck]

Here we have a bank that clearly made many wrong investments that led to its downfall. But instead of letting it fail like any company, the Fed simply prints more fiat to save it. I don't care how strong the US military is, the more you add to that pot the more diluted the content will be. It's very simple logic.

It's days like this that I appreciate BTC for its finite supply. It's 21 million total and nobody can change it.

Sure, but if the fed didn't step in and save SVB, we wouldn't have seen crypto rebound this week. Likewise, people are fooling themselves if they think the 9 trillion of liquidity injected into the economy by the fed hasn't fuelled the valuation of crypto.

I'm not in favour of endless QE, but people need to take a lesson in economics if they think a deflationary currency is a good thing. Lets just hope crypto never becomes a currency and stays as a speculative commodity.

[Ackshun]

Here we have a bank that clearly made many wrong investments that led to its downfall. But instead of letting it fail like any company, the Fed simply prints more fiat to save it. I don't care how strong the US military is, the more you add to that pot the more diluted the content will be. It's very simple logic.

It's days like this that I appreciate BTC for its finite supply. It's 21 million total and nobody can change it.

I guess we don’t know what we don’t know.

The truth is; we don’t know what would have happened if the US didn’t back stop Silicon. The invisible hand does not work, since behavioral economics is a real thing.

[BlackThought]

Here we have a bank that clearly made many wrong investments that led to its downfall. But instead of letting it fail like any company, the Fed simply prints more fiat to save it. I don't care how strong the US military is, the more you add to that pot the more diluted the content will be. It's very simple logic.

It's days like this that I appreciate BTC for its finite supply. It's 21 million total and nobody can change it.

Sure, but if the fed didn't step in and save SVB, we wouldn't have seen crypto rebound this week. Likewise, people are fooling themselves if they think the 9 trillion of liquidity injected into the economy by the fed hasn't fuelled the valuation of crypto.

I'm not in favour of endless QE, but people need to take a lesson in economics if they think a deflationary currency is a good thing. Lets just hope crypto never becomes a currency and stays as a speculative commodity.

1. crypto price has nothing to do with what I said. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is at 25k or at 15k, it's value proposition is the same. Whether you agree with that value proposition we can discuss but the price of the crypto has nothing to do with it. People value things wrong all the time, so price is not the end all be all.

2. It doesn't take a Economist to see theres something wrong with this entire SVB debacle. Everyone who's investing made bets back in winter of 2021. Here we have a group of people that made the wrong bet yet don't have to pay for it. I would like to hear the solution for how to keep these people from taking the same risks next time.

[deck]

Here we have a bank that clearly made many wrong investments that led to its downfall. But instead of letting it fail like any company, the Fed simply prints more fiat to save it. I don't care how strong the US military is, the more you add to that pot the more diluted the content will be. It's very simple logic.

It's days like this that I appreciate BTC for its finite supply. It's 21 million total and nobody can change it.

Sure, but if the fed didn't step in and save SVB, we wouldn't have seen crypto rebound this week. Likewise, people are fooling themselves if they think the 9 trillion of liquidity injected into the economy by the fed hasn't fuelled the valuation of crypto.

I'm not in favour of endless QE, but people need to take a lesson in economics if they think a deflationary currency is a good thing. Lets just hope crypto never becomes a currency and stays as a speculative commodity.

1. crypto price has nothing to do with what I said. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is at 25k or at 15k, it's value proposition is the same. Whether you agree with that value proposition we can discuss but the price of the crypto has nothing to do with it. People value things wrong all the time, so price is not the end all be all.

Umm.... what? That makes no sense. You are going to need to clarify that statement. Crypto's only value proposition is as a speculative asset, it is terrible for everything else, and it follows that it's valuation is the only thing that matters. If you are one of those people that sees crypto as a utilitarian path to free the world of financial institutions, or to free the world of government control over currencies, it's not worth while for you and I to debate, as we are worlds apart. Crypto does nothing to solve those problems. It is gold v2, and not much else. Satoshi's initial vision may have been a good one, that but vision was immediately grabbed by the balls and turned into a money making ploy like everything else. The cyrpto system as it is today is a 'greater fool scheme'. It's very simple logic.

If you want to subscribe to the vision of a world wide democratic currency that wrestles control away from governments, then you are a hypocrite if you are trying to make money or increase your standard of living off it's valuation increases. Forgive me if I am incorrectly assuming you want to see the value of crypto go up.

2. It doesn't take a Economist to see theres something wrong with this entire SVB debacle. Everyone who's investing made bets back in winter of 2021. Here we have a group of people that made the wrong bet yet don't have to pay for it. I would like to hear the solution for how to keep these people from taking the same risks next time.

There is certainly something wrong with the SVB debacle; they made a very large bet that interest rates would stay low, and they got caught out. To be sure, I don't support them getting bailed out. But had they not got bailed out, crypto would have been hit very hard, as alot of SVBs start-up ventures are centred around crypto and web3. This had the potential to be a smaller FTX type incident for the cypto industry, but the fed prevented that.

I took exception to this statement:

It's days like this that I appreciate BTC for its finite supply. It's 21 million total and nobody can change it.

It's an ironic thing to say because the fed intervening likely prevented another contagion type event that would have affected crypto valuations. What good is a finite supply currency/asset that is just as susceptible to the corruption in the financial system as everything else?





black thought is the GROAT, BTW.

[BlackThought]

Sure, but if the fed didn't step in and save SVB, we wouldn't have seen crypto rebound this week. Likewise, people are fooling themselves if they think the 9 trillion of liquidity injected into the economy by the fed hasn't fuelled the valuation of crypto.

I'm not in favour of endless QE, but people need to take a lesson in economics if they think a deflationary currency is a good thing. Lets just hope crypto never becomes a currency and stays as a speculative commodity.

1. crypto price has nothing to do with what I said. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is at 25k or at 15k, it's value proposition is the same. Whether you agree with that value proposition we can discuss but the price of the crypto has nothing to do with it. People value things wrong all the time, so price is not the end all be all.

Umm.... what? That makes no sense. You are going to need to clarify that statement. Crypto's only value proposition is as a speculative asset, it is terrible for everything else, and it follows that it's valuation is the only thing that matters. If you are one of those people that sees crypto as a utilitarian path to free the world of financial institutions, or to free the world of government control over currencies, it's not worth while for you and I to debate, as we are worlds apart. Crypto does nothing to solve those problems. It is gold v2, and not much else. Satoshi's initial vision may have been a good one, that but vision was immediately grabbed by the balls and turned into a money making ploy like everything else. The cyrpto system as it is today is a 'greater fool scheme'. It's very simple logic.

If you want to subscribe to the vision of a world wide democratic currency that wrestles control away from governments, then you are a hypocrite if you are trying to make money or increase your standard of living off it's valuation increases. Forgive me if I am incorrectly assuming you want to see the value of crypto go up.

I don't have to clarify anything. I don't think you understand the definition of "value proposition".

Again, it has nothing to do with my world view. You are getting some very basic facts wrong here.

[deck]

1. crypto price has nothing to do with what I said. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is at 25k or at 15k, it's value proposition is the same. Whether you agree with that value proposition we can discuss but the price of the crypto has nothing to do with it. People value things wrong all the time, so price is not the end all be all.

Umm.... what? That makes no sense. You are going to need to clarify that statement. Crypto's only value proposition is as a speculative asset, it is terrible for everything else, and it follows that it's valuation is the only thing that matters. If you are one of those people that sees crypto as a utilitarian path to free the world of financial institutions, or to free the world of government control over currencies, it's not worth while for you and I to debate, as we are worlds apart. Crypto does nothing to solve those problems. It is gold v2, and not much else. Satoshi's initial vision may have been a good one, that but vision was immediately grabbed by the balls and turned into a money making ploy like everything else. The cyrpto system as it is today is a 'greater fool scheme'. It's very simple logic.

If you want to subscribe to the vision of a world wide democratic currency that wrestles control away from governments, then you are a hypocrite if you are trying to make money or increase your standard of living off it's valuation increases. Forgive me if I am incorrectly assuming you want to see the value of crypto go up.

I don't have to clarify anything. I don't think you understand the definition of "value proposition".

Again, it has nothing to do with my world view. You are getting some very basic facts wrong here.

Ok. Got it. You are not able to define the value proposition of crypto.

[BlackThought]

Umm.... what? That makes no sense. You are going to need to clarify that statement. Crypto's only value proposition is as a speculative asset, it is terrible for everything else, and it follows that it's valuation is the only thing that matters. If you are one of those people that sees crypto as a utilitarian path to free the world of financial institutions, or to free the world of government control over currencies, it's not worth while for you and I to debate, as we are worlds apart. Crypto does nothing to solve those problems. It is gold v2, and not much else. Satoshi's initial vision may have been a good one, that but vision was immediately grabbed by the balls and turned into a money making ploy like everything else. The cyrpto system as it is today is a 'greater fool scheme'. It's very simple logic.

If you want to subscribe to the vision of a world wide democratic currency that wrestles control away from governments, then you are a hypocrite if you are trying to make money or increase your standard of living off it's valuation increases. Forgive me if I am incorrectly assuming you want to see the value of crypto go up.

I don't have to clarify anything. I don't think you understand the definition of "value proposition".

Again, it has nothing to do with my world view. You are getting some very basic facts wrong here.

Ok. Got it. You are not able to define the value proposition of crypto.

I don't think you understand much of anything.

You are aware that bitcoin's 10 year ROI is like 400x or something crazy. If we use your logic and base its value proposition on price, not only would it be complete chaos, it would already be the greatest asset of all time. Which while any fan of bitcoin would appreciate this, it does nothing for discussion.

Also what Bitcoin is trying to do is different from other cryptos especially the layer 1s that are trying to do smart contract. The fact that you group all of them together just shows another part of your ignorance of the subject.

Like I said, we can differ in opinion in the outlook of any product. But to have a constructive discussion you should at least understand what the product is claiming or attempting to do.

[Fairview4Life]

Can you actually type out what that value proposition is, and why bitcoin is better at meeting that value proposition over long established norms?

[BlackThought]

Can you actually type out what that value proposition is, and why bitcoin is better at meeting that value proposition over long established norms?

It's very simple. Digital store of value secured by immense computing power. That's what the current state of bitcoin is trying to do.

Put it in more simpler terms, it's basically a bunch of people believing in something to be valuable, in that way it makes bitcoin compared to gold. The rest is basic supply and demand. If more people believe in it, due to its finite supply, its value should go up. While there are many ways to track how successful bitcoin is in this part of its value proposition, one of the ways is simply look at how many people are participating and using the network. And while the user count is volatile especially compared between bull and bear markets, overall we've seen a gradual increase in user count over the years.

Another part would be bitcoin's security. The most simple way to measure this would be the amount of computing power used to mine bitcoin. It's very easy to look at the hash rate chart of bitcoin.

Spoiler:

z

Again, it's been going up steadily, do you see any break in the pattern besides that time when China banned its miners?

So this is what I meant when I said the value proposition of bitcoin didn't really change at least not recently. I didn't mention price at all because anyone can make any argument that way just by deciding the time frame to cherry pick to back his statement. Bitcoin is down 15% on a Tuesday afternoon therefore it sucks. Meanwhile it's up 500% since 2020 covid crash so it's good again. It's not constructive and it's downright stupid to be honest.

[Johnny Bball]

Can you actually type out what that value proposition is, and why bitcoin is better at meeting that value proposition over long established norms?

It's very simple. Digital store of value secured by immense computing power. That's what the current state of bitcoin is trying to do.

Put it in more simpler terms, it's basically a bunch of people believing in something to be valuable, in that way it makes bitcoin compared to gold. The rest is basic supply and demand. If more people believe in it, due to its finite supply, its value should go up. While there are many ways to track how successful bitcoin is in this part of its value proposition, one of the ways is simply look at how many people are participating and using the network. And while the user count is volatile especially compared between bull and bear markets, overall we've seen a gradual increase in user count over the years.

Another part would be bitcoin's security. The most simple way to measure this would be the amount of computing power used to mine bitcoin. It's very easy to look at the hash rate chart of bitcoin.

Spoiler:

z

Again, it's been going up steadily, do you see any break in the pattern besides that time when China banned its miners?

So this is what I meant when I said the value proposition of bitcoin didn't really change at least not recently. I didn't mention price at all because anyone can make any argument that way just by deciding the time frame to cherry pick to back his statement. Bitcoin is down 15% on a Tuesday afternoon therefore it sucks. Meanwhile it's up 500% since 2020 covid crash so it's good again. It's not constructive and it's downright stupid to be honest.

There's a deifnately break in its value if you look at its stock chart. Bitcoin's value is not up 500% since covid's worse day. It's down. Significantly. Anyone can see the chart.

Meanwhile SVB went broke making bad high risk commercial loans (that weren't coming back) and getting right screwed on US bonds where they didn't diverify properly and overloaded on that end and took heavy losses while interest rates were rising.

[Fairview4Life]

So…I’m a little confused I guess. A user said this is basically a speculative investment without any real value proposition above that, and I am pretty sure you said he didn’t know what he was talking about and then posted that the value proposition is as a store of value which is only valuable because people believe it’s valuable. There is no other value proposition beyond being an investment vehicle? Isn’t that exactly what you were arguing was wrong?

[ItsDanger]

Don't ever look at a bank from a profit perspective. It's all about liquidity.

[BlackThought]

So…I’m a little confused I guess. A user said this is basically a speculative investment without any real value proposition above that, and I am pretty sure you said he didn’t know what he was talking about and then posted that the value proposition is as a store of value which is only valuable because people believe it’s valuable. There is no other value proposition beyond being an investment vehicle? Isn’t that exactly what you were arguing was wrong?

I'll let him respond because I don't think this is a good summary of what he meant.

I did point out the problems with tying bitcoin's value proposition directly to its price of the day, what I meant was that the method's that bitcoin is using to achieve its price has not changed. It can be over bought, it can be affected by world events, but at the end of the day what the thing Is trying to do to increase its value, which is increase adoption and increase security, has not changed.

[BlackThought]

Can you actually type out what that value proposition is, and why bitcoin is better at meeting that value proposition over long established norms?

It's very simple. Digital store of value secured by immense computing power. That's what the current state of bitcoin is trying to do.

Put it in more simpler terms, it's basically a bunch of people believing in something to be valuable, in that way it makes bitcoin compared to gold. The rest is basic supply and demand. If more people believe in it, due to its finite supply, its value should go up. While there are many ways to track how successful bitcoin is in this part of its value proposition, one of the ways is simply look at how many people are participating and using the network. And while the user count is volatile especially compared between bull and bear markets, overall we've seen a gradual increase in user count over the years.

Another part would be bitcoin's security. The most simple way to measure this would be the amount of computing power used to mine bitcoin. It's very easy to look at the hash rate chart of bitcoin.

Spoiler:

z

Again, it's been going up steadily, do you see any break in the pattern besides that time when China banned its miners?

So this is what I meant when I said the value proposition of bitcoin didn't really change at least not recently. I didn't mention price at all because anyone can make any argument that way just by deciding the time frame to cherry pick to back his statement. Bitcoin is down 15% on a Tuesday afternoon therefore it sucks. Meanwhile it's up 500% since 2020 covid crash so it's good again. It's not constructive and it's downright stupid to be honest.

There's a deifnately break in its value if you look at its stock chart. Bitcoin's value is not up 500% since covid's worse day. It's down. Significantly. Anyone can see the chart.

It hurts to know that you could've bought bitcoin for $4000-5000 during the covid crash of March 2020.

[refshateRaps]

If I had known what I know now, this may sound ludicrous, but you can generate 5-6 figures upside without owning any asset, network, reputation, or money, and you wouldn't have needed to invest in crypto in such a volatile market.

Onlyfans I bet

[Ackshun]

If I had known what I know now, this may sound ludicrous, but you can generate 5-6 figures upside without owning any asset, network, reputation, or money, and you wouldn't have needed to invest in crypto in such a volatile market.

Onlyfans I bet

Ummmm sex sells

[refshateRaps]

OPEX Fridays can do funny things, so you never know about tomorrow?

But never the less, my bets are heavy that they are launching the greater markets into something epic-ly fierce ramping hard soon enough. Hopefully they don't even need to hold her back too long and let the inevitable set-up begin to take place.

A $25K BTC break and hold was always set to be the match for wick on the entire crypto sector. See if it becomes support...

Good luck to all RealGM players.

What do I know? Follow you own reads

[deck]

I don't have to clarify anything. I don't think you understand the definition of "value proposition".

Again, it has nothing to do with my world view. You are getting some very basic facts wrong here.

Ok. Got it. You are not able to define the value proposition of crypto.

I don't think you understand much of anything.

You are aware that bitcoin's 10 year ROI is like 400x or something crazy. If we use your logic and base its value proposition on price, not only would it be complete chaos, it would already be the greatest asset of all time. Which while any fan of bitcoin would appreciate this, it does nothing for discussion.

Also what Bitcoin is trying to do is different from other cryptos especially the layer 1s that are trying to do smart contract. The fact that you group all of them together just shows another part of your ignorance of the subject.

Like I said, we can differ in opinion in the outlook of any product. But to have a constructive discussion you should at least understand what the product is claiming or attempting to do.

All due respect, I am very well versed on this topic. I understand Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, ASICs, hashrates, append only ledgers, bitcoin halving, all of that. In point of fact, I work in the industry. The problem with Bitcoin is all of the things it claims to be doing are complete bull, and generally the people that buy into the narrative are the ones that didn't take the time to vet the claims of what the technology is capable of.

The fact that you haven't been able to define what the value proposition of bitcoin is suggests maybe you don't understand the topic as well as you think?

If you want to focus only on bitcoin, it makes the discussion significantly easier, as Bitcoin is particularly bad at pretty much everything it attempts to do. There are simple facts about bitcoin that are basically irrefutable.

1. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to be used in practical terms as a currency. ASICs will help with this, but nothing can fundamentally change the fact that it is too slow to be a transitional currency. This is why layer 2 protocols exist, and it is why at present day, Bitcoin is relegated to being a speculative asset.

2. Bitcoin as a currency is negative sum, for every dollar that buys in, some percent of that dollar is removed and converted back to fiat. This is fundamentally required in order for mining to be profitable. Even in the Utopian world where we run the whole thing off renew-ables, miners will still take profits to extract tangible value from the system. So while the deflationary aspect of Bitcoin is appealing as a hedge against fiat being devalued, the money flowing out of the currency in the form of miners taking profits is massively offsetting that advantage.

3. Bitcoin is a greater fool scheme; in order for people to sell their bitcoin for a profit someone else must buy their bitcoin at a higher price. This is a fundamental truth because a mined bitcoin as zero intrinsic value. This isn't to say you can't make money off bitcoin, but one must acknowledge it for what it is, a speculative asset where making a profit is predicated on being able to sell your bitcoin for more to someone else in the future.

4. Bitcoin does nothing to provide banking services and does nothing to democratize the banking industry as so many advocates claim. The problem with the government fiscal policy and banking and everything else is greed. The problem is human nature. Bitcoin doesn't fix this, and if you actually take a critical look at the industry, the opposite is true. Bitcoin as created a new playground for greed, fraud, and speculation to run rampant.

5. As of November 2022, more than 51% of all bitcoin wallets are down vs. the price they bought in at. Meaning more than 51% of all people that have bought in have lost money. The 49% are people that bought in early, and have been extracting value from the system the whole time. And many of those early investors were already the uber rich, like Peter Thiel and doucebags like the Winklevoss twins https://slashdot.org/story/22/11/21/232218/more-than-50-of-bitcoin-addresses-are-now-in-loss

If you actually want more information about the problems and limitations of bitcoin and crypto, this is an excellent video:

[url]

Watch on YouTube

[/url]

This gentleman explains the problems intrinsic to Bitcoin far more eloquently than I ever could in a realgm post. If you are able to refute the points that Dan Olson makes in this video, then perhaps we can have the 'educated' discussion that I am apparently incapable of.

[deck]

Can you actually type out what that value proposition is, and why bitcoin is better at meeting that value proposition over long established norms?

It's very simple. Digital store of value secured by immense computing power. That's what the current state of bitcoin is trying to do.

Put it in more simpler terms, it's basically a bunch of people believing in something to be valuable, in that way it makes bitcoin compared to gold. The rest is basic supply and demand. If more people believe in it, due to its finite supply, its value should go up. While there are many ways to track how successful bitcoin is in this part of its value proposition, one of the ways is simply look at how many people are participating and using the network. And while the user count is volatile especially compared between bull and bear markets, overall we've seen a gradual increase in user count over the years.

Another part would be bitcoin's security. The most simple way to measure this would be the amount of computing power used to mine bitcoin. It's very easy to look at the hash rate chart of bitcoin.

Spoiler:

z

Again, it's been going up steadily, do you see any break in the pattern besides that time when China banned its miners?

So this is what I meant when I said the value proposition of bitcoin didn't really change at least not recently. I didn't mention price at all because anyone can make any argument that way just by deciding the time frame to cherry pick to back his statement. Bitcoin is down 15% on a Tuesday afternoon therefore it sucks. Meanwhile it's up 500% since 2020 covid crash so it's good again. It's not constructive and it's downright stupid to be honest.

Oh goodness, where to start... I guess first I apoliogise to everyone for my ranting on this topic. It does push my buttons when I read so much misinformation.

First:

If more people believe in it, due to its finite supply, its value should go up.

Right here, you are conceding that Bitcoin is a greater fool scheme. You are admitting that it's value is predicated on the perception of it's future value. In order to profit from holding bitcoin, you require someone else to believe it is more valuable than what you bought it for.

Second:

While there are many ways to track how successful bitcoin is in this part of its value proposition, one of the ways is simply look at how many people are participating and using the network. And while the user count is volatile especially compared between bull and bear markets, overall we've seen a gradual increase in user count over the years.

It's been generally acknowledged, even among crypto advocates, that a significant number of crypto transactions are actually 'wash trading'. https://cryptopotato.com/50-of-all-bitcoin-is-subjected-to-wash-trading-report-says/ This situation does seem to be improving, but the fact remains that a noteworthy number of transactions on chain are not legitimate consumer transactions. This trend is even more concerning when we consider stable coins that are buying and issuing BTC for no other purpose than to prop up their own currencies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/08/26/more-than-half-of-all-bitcoin-trades-are-fake/

All that said, in terms of actual commercial usage of BTC as a currency, usage has actually been declining. Major retailers like Dell that at one point were purporting to allow purchases with crypto have actually discontinued those services because nobody was using it. And why would they? Who in their right mind is going to pay the transaction fees for BTC to buy a bucket of KFC chicken, lol.
https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/02/bitcoin-dell-virtual-currency.html


Third:

Another part would be bitcoin's security. The most simple way to measure this would be the amount of computing power used to mine bitcoin. It's very easy to look at the hash rate chart of bitcoin.

It's amazing that you called me out for not understanding BTC / Crypto, and then you make the monumental blunder of touting the security of BTC, while also weirdly making the correlation between the amount of computing power being wasted as evidence of that security. With regards to security, BTC is good at only one thing; preventing man-in-the-middle attacks. And yes, I will conceded, it is very good at preventing this attack vector. The problem with this statement is that man-in-the-middle attacks with conventional transactions on a network like VISA are unheard of. VISA is also very good at securing against man-in-the-middle attacks. And even if a hacker were to compromise the VISA network, intercept one of your transactions, and maliciously modify it some how, VISA has the consumer protections in place to roll back that transaction and honour your original transaction. So yes, BTC is good at preventing man-in-the-middle attacks, but with regards to financial transactions, this is a problem that was solved decades ago.

Where BTC security is absolutely atrocious is with regards to everything else. I've said it before, but the major problem with public, append only ledgers is that everything that happens on chain is publicly readable to the entire world. A low trust environment is by requirement a low privacy environment. The only way around this is to try to obfuscate your identity behind something like meta-mask. But all this means is we are back to putting our trust in a centralized authority (Meta Mask, Binance, Coinbase, etc.) and we are right back to the same problems that BTC was supposed to be solving for. We've traded our existing fk-ed up financial system for one that has even fewer consumer protections, less privacy, less security, and with the whole thing running on a super inefficient and costly network.

Crypto does nothing to solve greed and human nature. It is Big Bank V2, but the bank (Coinbase / Binance / crypto miners, etc.) provides less services, less privacy, less security, and charges us more for the privilege.