If you want to beat inflation, dump the money in a high-yield savings account, or a 401k, or a stock index, or any of the other options that have something resembling banking protection/regulation. There are so many better options than a speculative investment that you lose entirely with a social engineering attack or a SIM swap.
Nobody is going to SIM swap you unless you have a shitload of crypto and let everyone know about it. It’s not an easy attack, so it would have to be targeted. Pretty easy to not be a target (not having millions of dollars of crypto on a wallet helps).
I want to have a shitload of crypto and let everyone know about it… where do I post my receiving address…? 😅
Anyway, my point was more about not using a SIM as a security mechanism, ever. It wasn’t designed as one, and still isn’t.
As for being a target… something like 2 years ago, I had a chance to get a glimpse at a C&C panel for some malware. It didn’t bother checking your balance, just vacuumed all and every password from every app on an infected phone, along with all sorts of data about the phone, SIM, SIM2, etc. Cloning a SIM is so easy, they’ll do it just to get your $50 worth of NFTs.
What if I want to buy a cheese sandwich today with BTC?
A cheese sandwich can remain the same fixed price in dollars for years, with only the relatively slow change in actual value due to inflation.
I’ve seen BTC swing 10% in 24 hours. Does the cheese-sandwich-maker have to look up the rate this instant and calculate a spot price for me?
Will they have more or less dollars at the end of the day, when they need to pay their bills and buy more cheese from their suppliers?
“Just buy cheese from someone who takes BTC”, doesn’t help, it just kicks the can further down the road.
“Just add a bit of a buffer in the price to take fluctuations into account”, means that I go buy a cheese sandwich with dollars from next door because it’s 50 cents cheaper for the same thing.
As an investment vehicle, BTC is doing hot laps of the track (with occasional accidents), but until its volatility issues are sorted and it becomes “boring”, it’s not going anywhere as an actual currency.
If you want to buy a sandwich in Indian Rupees… you either find someone selling sandwiches for Indian Rupees, or you have to exchange them to whatever the seller will accept (USD? CAD? AUD? EUR?..)
Yes, FOREX has some swings, it’s not for everyone. Bitcoin may swing more or less than other currencies, depending on the day.
Does the cheese-sandwich-maker have to look up the rate this instant and calculate a spot price for me?
If you travel around, you’ll find countries where sellers do exactly that: they pull out a smartphone, check the spot price, add some margin, and tell you the price in USD for whatever you’re trying to buy.
Alternatively, you can swipe a credit card that will do all of that automatically. BTW, there are BTC backed credit cards too.
buy cheese from someone who takes BTC […] just kicks the can further down the road.
That’s how money works: you kick it all the way around the street, over and over, changing from can, to stone, to ball, to… etc. Those who manage to start with a can and end up with a Lambo, win. Those who end up with a single grain of sand, lose.
Your last paragraph is not how money should work at all. Money should represent value that ideally doesn’t change, so that the money I receive for selling a can is worth a can, not a Lambo an not a grain of sand. What your describing is closer to speculation and pyramid schemes (NFTs for example).
Either try and explain to me how BTC could be an ideal currency that fixes the problems in existing currency, or try to explain me how it’s really cool as an investment thing to siphon money from others, but don’t try and do both at the same time.
Money should represent value that ideally doesn’t change
Money represents human desire and trust. A can today doesn’t necessarily have the same value as the same can tomorrow; maybe someone came up with 1000 extra cans, maybe someone licked that can (ew!), maybe deliveries have been cut for the week and it’s the last can of soda in a hundred mile radius.
A can is worth “exactly” itself, only in the moment of a single transaction.
A can is worth “about the same” amount of a given currency, only when there is a steady delivery of cans from a steadily working factory producing millions of cans from a steady supply of raw materials with a trust in an expected steady production rate, against a trust in an expected steady demand, with a trust in the given currency’s expected steady exchange rate for other products.
At any other moment, a can’s price can change wildly.
What your describing is closer to speculation
Welcome to money.
and pyramid schemes (NFTs for example).
That is doubly wrong… but let’s focus.
explain to me […]
BTC is not an “ideal currency”, just another currency. It intends to fix only one problem: to bypass banking dependence. For other problems, you’ll need other currencies.
To “siphon money from others” is an inherent quality of all money; if you don’t believe me, try getting some money (with any value) without “siphoning” it from someone else.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. With siphoning money, I mean not giving actual value in return. The NFT market was a clear example of this: get some hype going, sell the promise of great gains on your investment, once the ball gets rolling make sure you’re out before they realise it’s actually worth nothing. In the end, some smart and cunning people sucked a lot of money from often poor and misinformed small investors.
I think I have an inherent idea of value, as in: the value it has in a human life and the amount of effort needed to produce it. This has become very detached from economical value, as there you can have speculation, pumping value and all that other crap. I think that’s what frustrates me about the current financial climate: I just want to be able to pay the people who helped produce the product I buy fairly with respect to how much time and work they put it. Currently however, so much money is being transferred to people “just for having money”. The idea that money in and of itself can make more money is such a horrible perversion of the original idea of trade…
Volatile means that in the short term, some may win, and some may lose.
The multi-year trend though, still beats inflation hands down.
If you want to beat inflation, dump the money in a high-yield savings account, or a 401k, or a stock index, or any of the other options that have something resembling banking protection/regulation. There are so many better options than a speculative investment that you lose entirely with a social engineering attack or a SIM swap.
Lower risk, lower reward. Keep in mind that 401k is not 100% guaranteed either.
SIM swap? You mean like SMS 2FA? (don’t use SMS 2FA, BTW).
Anyway, if your risk scenario includes a “wallet inspector”, you definitely shouldn’t buy Bitcoin, or carry money around.
Nobody is going to SIM swap you unless you have a shitload of crypto and let everyone know about it. It’s not an easy attack, so it would have to be targeted. Pretty easy to not be a target (not having millions of dollars of crypto on a wallet helps).
I want to have a shitload of crypto and let everyone know about it… where do I post my receiving address…? 😅
Anyway, my point was more about not using a SIM as a security mechanism, ever. It wasn’t designed as one, and still isn’t.
As for being a target… something like 2 years ago, I had a chance to get a glimpse at a C&C panel for some malware. It didn’t bother checking your balance, just vacuumed all and every password from every app on an infected phone, along with all sorts of data about the phone, SIM, SIM2, etc. Cloning a SIM is so easy, they’ll do it just to get your $50 worth of NFTs.
What if I want to buy a cheese sandwich today with BTC?
A cheese sandwich can remain the same fixed price in dollars for years, with only the relatively slow change in actual value due to inflation.
I’ve seen BTC swing 10% in 24 hours. Does the cheese-sandwich-maker have to look up the rate this instant and calculate a spot price for me?
Will they have more or less dollars at the end of the day, when they need to pay their bills and buy more cheese from their suppliers?
“Just buy cheese from someone who takes BTC”, doesn’t help, it just kicks the can further down the road.
“Just add a bit of a buffer in the price to take fluctuations into account”, means that I go buy a cheese sandwich with dollars from next door because it’s 50 cents cheaper for the same thing.
As an investment vehicle, BTC is doing hot laps of the track (with occasional accidents), but until its volatility issues are sorted and it becomes “boring”, it’s not going anywhere as an actual currency.
Welcome to currency exchanges.
If you want to buy a sandwich in Indian Rupees… you either find someone selling sandwiches for Indian Rupees, or you have to exchange them to whatever the seller will accept (USD? CAD? AUD? EUR?..)
Yes, FOREX has some swings, it’s not for everyone. Bitcoin may swing more or less than other currencies, depending on the day.
If you travel around, you’ll find countries where sellers do exactly that: they pull out a smartphone, check the spot price, add some margin, and tell you the price in USD for whatever you’re trying to buy.
Alternatively, you can swipe a credit card that will do all of that automatically. BTW, there are BTC backed credit cards too.
That’s how money works: you kick it all the way around the street, over and over, changing from can, to stone, to ball, to… etc. Those who manage to start with a can and end up with a Lambo, win. Those who end up with a single grain of sand, lose.
Your last paragraph is not how money should work at all. Money should represent value that ideally doesn’t change, so that the money I receive for selling a can is worth a can, not a Lambo an not a grain of sand. What your describing is closer to speculation and pyramid schemes (NFTs for example).
Either try and explain to me how BTC could be an ideal currency that fixes the problems in existing currency, or try to explain me how it’s really cool as an investment thing to siphon money from others, but don’t try and do both at the same time.
Money represents human desire and trust. A can today doesn’t necessarily have the same value as the same can tomorrow; maybe someone came up with 1000 extra cans, maybe someone licked that can (ew!), maybe deliveries have been cut for the week and it’s the last can of soda in a hundred mile radius.
A can is worth “exactly” itself, only in the moment of a single transaction.
A can is worth “about the same” amount of a given currency, only when there is a steady delivery of cans from a steadily working factory producing millions of cans from a steady supply of raw materials with a trust in an expected steady production rate, against a trust in an expected steady demand, with a trust in the given currency’s expected steady exchange rate for other products.
At any other moment, a can’s price can change wildly.
Welcome to money.
That is doubly wrong… but let’s focus.
BTC is not an “ideal currency”, just another currency. It intends to fix only one problem: to bypass banking dependence. For other problems, you’ll need other currencies.
To “siphon money from others” is an inherent quality of all money; if you don’t believe me, try getting some money (with any value) without “siphoning” it from someone else.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. With siphoning money, I mean not giving actual value in return. The NFT market was a clear example of this: get some hype going, sell the promise of great gains on your investment, once the ball gets rolling make sure you’re out before they realise it’s actually worth nothing. In the end, some smart and cunning people sucked a lot of money from often poor and misinformed small investors.
I think I have an inherent idea of value, as in: the value it has in a human life and the amount of effort needed to produce it. This has become very detached from economical value, as there you can have speculation, pumping value and all that other crap. I think that’s what frustrates me about the current financial climate: I just want to be able to pay the people who helped produce the product I buy fairly with respect to how much time and work they put it. Currently however, so much money is being transferred to people “just for having money”. The idea that money in and of itself can make more money is such a horrible perversion of the original idea of trade…