> There's a great number of people watching the antilope being eaten, and rooting for the lion.
Ignoring the metaphor and taking it literally: watching nature documentaries, I don't think I've ever rooted for the antelope. I've always been on the side of the big cats (particularly leopards, snow leopards and such)[1]. And reading comments under such videos, seeing most people rooting for the antelope was always disheartening to me, knowing that, if this cat doesn't kill this or another antelope soon, it's going to die. And out of the two I always prefer the cat to survive.
[1]: Will also root for the lynx feeding on a deer, no questions asked. Lynxes are awesome. :)
I once watched a documentary where a polar bear was unable to hunt. In one last ditch effort it tried to hunt a walrus from a large group but failed. He didn't have enough energy left to kill. Felt so bad for him. The narrator said the bear Wouldn't survive long. Nature is brutal.
The rancor is not surprising given how obnoxious the crypto community have been to people with reasonable objections. It's more like watching a cultist missionary get eaten by a lion.
Just the other night I was told to enjoy being poor by a couple of new investors, sucks for them, I don't think they invested sufficiently long enough ago to not have lost money by now
I can already do that far more easily using my bank. I sent money from my European bank to a Vietnamese account yesterday. Including opening my banking app, selecting the amount and so on, maybe 60 seconds total for the money to leave my account and arrive in the VN account.
Well how wonderful for you to be part of a certain privileged subset of people whose banking is fully accessible, easily usable, flows smoothly and has no political obstacles binding it. There are many others for who this isn't the case and all shills, NFT hustlers and cryptobros aside, the basic functionality of cryptocurrencies allows an excellent, hard-to-block workaround of these possible problems that many people I personally know have used to save their own assess in countries such as Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and (oddly perhaps) Hong Kong.
I don't understand that logic in your counterargument (and it's common among many people who hate on crypto btw. I don't single you out on this). It amounts to, "I can do this in this way and I love it, so I'm going to shit on alternative means that others might have to use for doing the same thing because they can't use my method" Really?
You can do that for free and faster (and also transferring actual money, not virtual coins you need to re exchange at the end for real money to be able to anything in the real world)
Where and how exactly? I'm not a huge crypto fan, but what you're saying is generally a huge problem with FIAT, unless you are sending it to someone in the same country as you.
Have you used paypal extensively? Have you not read the MANY horror stories about its arbitrary blocks, lockouts, outright thefts of funds or at least months-long freezes and so forth? All of these things happen with many other corporate platforms. Sure, they also work for millions of people but it's good to at least have an alternative that can be called on for when things go bad or you live in a place where banking isn't as smooth as it often is in interconnected western countries. What's wrong with having that? One doesn't need to be an NFT hustler, cryptobro or shitcoin scammer to appreciate these basic benefits of a means of wealth transfer that it's very difficult for governments to control.
I actually haven't heard the horror stories but I have been using PayPal relatively extensively since at least 2007 and never ever had an issue. Aside from many retail purchases in the UK I've used it to send money around the world also. I'm also pretty sure TransferWise (now "Wise") works for sending money across most of the world. Plus the latter is regulated in the UK so I know that up to £85k is guaranteed by the government to be safe. I am one of the bigger critics of government yet I trust them a lot more than anyone in crypto. Sure they've done bad, but at least they've done some good too.
I'm definitely not a crypto hater, I have used several cryptocurrencies somewhat. I wouldn't call it that smooth, and I'd also worry significantly about the lack of regulation (despite that being one of the main selling points of crypto) and the wild volatility.
I can mail someone a check in about a day or two for the price of a greeting card, and for about fifteen bucks a formal wire transfer. The issues around payments in the USA are due to policy, not technical issues.
While my portfolio is -15% YTD overall, BTC is -33% in a week.
It's not even remotely comparable. I even have some stuff (Shell) that have done really well actually.
Despite inflation, US dollar is strengthening, defense stocks are doing great. And commodities are also up and rising. I-Bonds are yielding 9%+ and TIPS are doing good.
You just gotta know how to navigate a bear market.
I bought my SHEL in January. +20% actually. I'm not even someone who timed it that well, I know somebody talking about how oil was oversold in 2020 when the price of oil hit negative $40 and bought into the exact valley.
Even then: SHEL is kind of a bad bet. I was expecting that Europe would try to be more dependent upon European oil, but it turns out that American Oil (XOM) was the real winner of the Ukraine / Russia conflict.
I've also bought into TIPS / I-Bonds as this inflation thing is getting worse. Hopefully those do well in the coming months (or maybe not, they're more of an "inflation hedge", in that I know they'll do good if inflation goes bad. No, not the "crypto" kind of hedge, I mean something that's _ACTUALLY_ tied to inflation and does better-and-better the worse inflation gets).
--------
The key in these times is to remember what does good during recessions and war. And keep your wits about you as well. There's plenty of good buys if you know where to look.
All those cryptobros buying in 2020 or 2021 for "inflation hedge" have their moment to prove their theories today. My inflation hedge, TIPS/I-Bonds, are yielding 9% right now. How well are your cryptos doing?
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/