Cryptocurrencies

[OngBonga]

You guys are funny putting your money into crypto. Just go to Vegas and put your rollz on red if you want to gamble.

I think we're past the point of crypto being a "gamble". Putting your money in the bank is a "gamble". What if the system collapses? It's exactly the same risk with crypto now. Well, sort of. I mean, you have thousands of "banks" and you could invest in one that will disappear. That's a risk. But if you open a savings account, are you going to Natwest, or that new bank that you've never heard of? Investing in bitcoin long term is virtually risk free now. Other coins, there is more risk, but established coins with a purpose will be fine. Probably.

I honestly think, and this is not intended as a dis, that people use terms like "gambling" when talking of crypto because they don't understand it (I don't either) and they try to feel better about missing out a decade ago when there were millions up for grabs if we invested then. But the crypto market is still young, there is a fuckton of money to be made. It requires luck, discipline, research and patience. If you're unlucky but tick the other boxes, then you're very unlikely to do worse than sticking your money in an ISA.

[Poopadoop]

I think we're past the point of crypto being a "gamble". Putting your money in the bank is a "gamble". What if the system collapses?

Your bank savings are insured up to £85k by FSCS in the UK at least, and probably for similar amounts in other civilized countries. So no, it's not a gamble unless you put more than £85k into one bank.

I honestly think, and this is not intended as a dis, that people use terms like "gambling" when talking of crypto because they don't understand it (I don't either) and they try to feel better about missing out a decade ago when there were millions up for grabs if we invested then.

I mean all investments are gambles, they just vary in terms of risk/reward. Some are very low/zero risk and low reward like banks and gov't bonds, and some are high risk/potentially high reward like stocks and crytpos.

What you're saying here is kind of like saying people were dumb for not investing in microsoft when it was 2cents a share or whatever. The problem with saying these things is they're 100% hindsight. If it was obvious microsoft was going to dominate the PC market and the PC market would explode, then everyone would have invested in it, and the shares would never have been that cheap.

But the crypto market is still young, there is a fuckton of money to be made. It requires luck, discipline, research and patience. If you're unlucky but tick the other boxes, then you're very unlikely to do worse than sticking your money in an ISA.

There's a lot of people who try to make a go at investing, some of them pretend to do it as a profession and charge you for the privelege of getting their advice. The problem, as I've alluded to, is that the past is a poor predictor of the future for high risk investments. There's huge variance involved, and hence, a lot more luck than skill. The problem is people mistake variance for skill when they make money and rightly attribute it to luck when they lose money. But it's mostly luck.

There was a study done that showed that of the entire sample of wall street stock brokers followed over a period of a year, their investment outcomes came out in a normal distribution that was centred around the mean increase of all stocks. In other words, as a group they were no better than chance at investing. The distribution further suggests that the entire population of them were basically sitting in a distribution of luck. And these were "professionals", "experts" who do their research. If these experts are basically gambling with their investment choices and hoping to roll double-sixes, then what makes you think you are any different? It's nice to tell yourself there's really some angle involved and you can oustmart the pros, but in the real world that doesn't strike me as a plausible thing to bet on.