Also, the overall crypto market cap is low. This means that crypto makets are easily manipulated by someone with a few million bucks who can corner the market.
Guilty as charged. But the crypto markets are still more based in some sort of reality and price discovery than stocks, which are juiced with easy money and propping up. Crypto is the only market that's allowed to put in bottoms. Also isn't broadly the case. More BTC addresses with a more distributed supply is the trend.
I can think of a few reasons:
- Crypto doesn't generate revenue (If you invest in a gold miner or farmer, they mine gold or crops for you)
- Governments don't like crypto (crackdowns will happen)
- Cryptos are easily made (there are 10.000s with similar capabilities and switching is simple, all depends on popularity)
- Little practical usage at the moment and high transaction costs
- Criminality (funky exchanges, no judicial way to get anything back after theft)
Anyhow I would suggest you not to gamble your whole house in this. Please think in probabilities, not certainties. Invest some, but not all.
Compare not only to money, but also dividend stocks, cyclicals, bonds, stocks in southern america / china / Russia or real estate. There are ton of ways to park your funds.
I first bought BTC 2-3 months shy of ten years ago. The only advice I needed to hear during all that time was to completely ignore all the Peter Schiffs and those trying to outpace inflation with artificially propped up stocks (hence why I am not buying), who have cut my gains. Currently short 3X the Russel 2000. Gains should push well into the 30s% as SVB unfolds tomorrow.
Stocks in the US are considerably inflated and propped up on top of the usury system.
Especially considering the economy has not being doing well over the last twenty years, this is well overvalued, and it's going down ~80% as soon as it isn't be propped up more. That's the only time I'll be buying.
Then look at Euro stocks. When inflation is factored in, many have lost value, if not most.
I'm generally only going to buy something if it's undervalued. And stocks are overvalued. They were going to pop in '18, '20 and maybe need another shot of fiat tomorrow. If I buy stocks now I think the most likely scenario is I will be underwater for years.
Crypto I have a very good handle on. I posted here the exact day BTC began it's ~50% rally:
www.rooshvforum.com
Had picked up a big chunk, more two days ago when it hit sub-$20K again. Picking up more.
It's a very predictable market, particularly in it's lows. To any small extent it's manipulated by private actors, it's demonstrably less than how stocks are held up. Stocks are not so predictable, as over the last 15 years they have been considerably detached from price discovery. Right now crypto is around it's very predictable bottom. The only thing that has held me back from buying more is the growing possibility of a recession, at which point I would expect maybe $10K BTC.
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I think that crypto doesn't generate revenue is a good argument, and it's yet to be seen why some of these token have value. There is a number of ways this could go. But I only see crypto gaining more momentum, whether it be a Bitcoin standard, ETH, or something else. Ultimately most will die. But I there is too much traction here. People have been saying BTC will die from $5-69,000. Crypto is a bet outside of the inherent usury system, it's a bet on new technology that is growing through trial and error.
I ultimately don't care if governments don't like cryptos, as they are hostile enemy forces, which would prefer if we all just died, and in the meantime would prefer to see us reduced to a UBI-based permanent wanker on our way to an early grave. Crackdowns will obviously effect the price, but this ecosystem is ultimately out of their control. I'd rather live there than being a peon of a usury-based monetary system, which won't let the market correct to allow a reasonable entry point; and will no doubt begin confiscating fiat and stocks at some point in the next two decades.
Many cryptos. Yes. Not sure how it will end up, but to someone who is savvy it's quite obvious as to which the better ones are, as it was obvious which stocks would have performed better after 2008. Safe bet is BTC. Switching is not simple, if wanting to maintain purchasing power, as the bar to becoming a top coin is extremely high. Ultimately there is only a need for one coin and a derivative stable coin. It could be BTC + Stacks, or ETH + L2, or maybe something else. The individual project tokens - it's not so clear why they would need to exist long-term. But a lot of useful software has been written, and can be used with whatever token.
I agree on little practical usage, and this was always one of my biggest criticisms, but this is changing by the month. There are probably 10s of millions of people using a crypto project on a monthly basis, and all of this activity requires a base asset to operate. Now this is mostly ETH + BTC. There's billions of growing transactions occurring on crypto, happening outside of sanctions or in low trust/unstable jurisdictions. Last year was the biggest year, in a 80-99% bear market (deepening on asset). I think it will be around 2030 before we really see things take off, like decentralised could computing, messaging etc.
Transaction fees are small, and in the process of being made irrelevant. Standard BTC and TXs are already 90% or so cheaper than international transfers.
Criminality. As mentioned in this thread or another. The criminality has happened on centralised usury-based systems. I believe BTC is less used by criminals than the dollar.
What does it do within 3 years?
See the chart I linked to -
This is the last model left standing, which fits BTC's price moves over 10+ years. It will put BTC around $200,000 by the end of 2025, or a 10X from now.
Last bull market I bet on ETH, seeing that it was seeing a lot of growth of projects, which were gaining more adoption, and needed ETH to operate. ETH did 50X over BTC's 20X. Harder to say how it will go now. There could be traction from Stacks, which builds smart contracts/apps on top of BTC. That's been popular in this 2023 spring. There are a lot of assets being ported onto ETH L2s, but I don't see any move to be made to profit from this. The only other chain that's really been left standing is BNB, but it's just a budget chain. All the other chains have been hit hard.
I'm working on scheming out a portfolio balance into 2025. So far it's 25% ETH (staked, earning about 5%/year), 16% BTC, 10% Gala, 5% ENS. I have some others, but not sure of the exact quantities. My main play is to pick one very good performer looking at 30-100X. Gala and ENS are my favourites. Gala has been one of the coins that's shown it's potential already, with a 4X since Nov, before pulling back. To be sold Nov-Dec 2025.
I think asset seizures are what take BTC to $1M, 2030 onwards. Maybe 2033. At that point it's gold and crypto in your possession. What are the latest projections for that time period?