Bitcoin just hit a RM all time high!

[kpc12]

As we have seen our currency’s decline over the last year +, I’m curious to see if anyone in the MalaysiaPF community has hedge their bets against the ringgit by investing in BTC and what their thoughts on the future outlook for this year.

With the halving coming up in less than two months, seems like it would be a good investment to portion a % of your wealth there VS keeping it in banks.

Not expecting a lot of upvotes here but thought I’d see what your thoughts are.

 

[kirutu3]

@kpc12 Good for you if you bought low or HODLed. But I'm done with the heartaches and anxiety attacks

 

[anonymousrain]

@kirutu3 You are not wrong about bitcoin. Investment generally should have low volatility. High volatility creates high emotion. And the gamblers mentality comes in.

Personally I think bitcoin has run its course. Lots of the highly paid techies which love bitcoin are losing their jobs due to ai. So they won’t be buying a lot anymore.

 

[vlc]

@kirutu3 If you are investing in a way that generates anxiety, you need to stop investing. That is not investing, that is gambling, and you have no business making financial decisions.

Either educate yourself or put your money in FD.

 

[kirutu3]

@vlc What i meant was specifically for crypto (and BTC).

I agree with your sentiment, the occasional extreme volatility gives me incredible anxiety, hence thats why I stopped investing in crypto.

 

[vlc]

@kirutu3 asdfas

 

[luckyleaf]

@kpc12 Good time to sell at all time high. I see so many people FOMO and buy when dip 10% they sell back in 2022

So far it's been a cycle every few years. Dip to 100k can buy again but be prepared to lose it all.

 

[nc6041]

@kpc12 And this the sign that the FOMO begins. Last year those I told to go in at 20k didn't listen to me. Well , lots of people going to be buying high again ~

 

[mariauk]

@nc6041 Good news

 

[mutambo]

@kpc12 I think there's a direct correlation between the number of bitcoin posts here and the price of bitcoin.

Sadly thats the only thing I can say about the price of bitcoin. It's purely based on speculation and not based on any fundamentals that we can assess like stocks and bonds. Why it goes up, nobody knows. Why it goes down, nobody knows. People always have ways of explaning the unexplainable.

When one "invests" in bitcoin, one is playing a game of greater fool. You're buying into the asset, hoping that the next person, a greater fool, will offer you a higher price for it. You do that until you become the greater fool yourself and be left holding the bag for god knows how long.

That's bitcoin in a nutshell. There's nothing more to it. People who buy into the idea of bitcoin being the global currency, don't even use bitcoin to buy everyday stuffs themselves which is hilarious to see.

As long as we require governments to run a acountry, there's no way they're gonna accept a currency outside of their control as it poses a literal national security risk. The moment China banned cryptocurrency spelt the end of crypto ever becoming mainstream because nearly everything is made in China. Wanna buy their stuffs? Not with crypto as long as the ban stays.

Just imagine being a country that's unable to do business with any Chinese entities in China.

 

[pandafan]

@mutambo It goes up because your ringgit is going to shits. Same with every other currencies.

 

[rolanda]

@mutambo Interestingly, China bans and unban cryptocurrencies all the time. Yet, I've came across a post somewhere, idk if it is reliable but the china do hold a large substantial stash of BTCs just like the US government do.

From a tech point of view, when I was involved in a Blockchain project back in 2015/2016 before the 2017 big hype, before the 2020/2021 pandemic hype, I believe China was and still is exploring the implementation of the Blockchain technology into their unified electronic payment system and also the possibilities outside of the financial sector.. R&D Concepts like Smart contracts and Tokenized assets, which in 2024, there have already been a huge leap of advancement and improvements in architecture/cryptography/concensus mech etc in this Blockchain field. China is not against the Blockchain technology itself.

From a philosophical point of view, BTC(the first Blockchain implementation) is also treated as digital gold. You see, many ppl argued that it is virtual and something you can't see, atleast Physical gold is something you can hold and touch unlike BTC.
However, here are the similarities between the two, both have limited scarce supply, both requires energy to "mine" (manpower and machinery vs Electricity and Computing power) , both are speculative assets that you have to convert to fiat currency before you do a purchase and both can be used as a collateral.

Now, we lived in 2024, not one single day goes by without internet connection, computers, smartphones and all those servers running 24/7. Everything is connected. We are already living in a semi-virtualised world--The Internet, introduction of AR/VR, AI technologies and many more innovation that is ahead of its time yet to be commercialized. (Which I have seen, in my career). Electronic currency BTC may not be a great example of showcasing the potential usage of Blockchain technology, but BTC as it is, is definitely not going away. That's how I see it.

 

[neahkahnie]

@rolanda I can't see BTC itself as a future currency, but I agree with you that the Blockchain technology itself if fascinating, and will probably open many possibilities in the future of fintech, or tech in general.

 

[rolanda]

@neahkahnie I think BTC was never intended to be the 'future' currency. I believe it was supposed to be an alternative solution , a response to perceive and raise awareness into the dark side of fiat currency manipulation, financial/philosophical/technological weaknesses and failures in the traditional banking pillars. The very possible reason BTC got it's value today.

The original whitepaper cited 2008 financial crisis and highlighted the weakness in the current banking systems and centralised markets. BTC was the digital alternative mitigation solution to that.
Coincidentally, the mechanics it utilised also solves the very complex digital finance problem-- duplicated money & vulnerability problem in electronic digital money transactions ( aka. the double spending problem) without the need of human monitoring/regulator, without an expensive cost for verification of the legibility of transactions. It subsequently allows decentralised banking, maintain legibility of each transactions and keeping out control of bad actors participating in the banking network to the minimal.

People speculated BTC was the way to give back control of money back the masses, it was sometimes referred as a rebellion movement against centralisation of control. Questions like "really, what is fiat currency? " "What gaves USD gets it's value? " "Forex market manipulation -- Black Wednesday 1992" " Asian Financial Crisis 1997"
The crisis events and growing distrust in the people, BTC's ability to empower individuals to hold control over one's finances, that idea had resonated with the masses who had began to lower trust and confidence in centralised financial establishments.

Nevertheless, the core mechanism that enables BTC was later known as the "Blockchain Technology", which was later fortified by the introduction of ETH. ETH elevated Blockchain to new heights, a network of decentralised virtual machines that enables smart contracts, which later on paved the way for numerous innovative tech-business concepts like tokenized assets etc. The Blockchain space has now become a very big big ecosystem and evolving still, and not just confined to Fintech alone.

 

[vlc]

@mutambo Bitcoin is not a game of "Greater-fool". That's trading in shits and alts. It's only a game of "greater-fool" if you try and treat it like one by trying to time the market. How different is that from day-trading penny stocks?

Bitcoin is used to fund terrorism and illegal activities without leaving a paper-trail. How do you think Putin influences fascist governments all over the world without tracing back to him? And you think it's cheap? Even in 2018, regular people were telling me they were buying drugs off SilkRoad with BTC. Just because you are stupid and don't see the uses, does not mean it's not being used.

Massive amounts of BTC are being transacted across borders by people like this, not counting the smaller terrorist agencies and drug cartels across the world.

As they say, war is good for business, and if this business is booming, so is war.

 

[beloved2018]

@mutambo There are speculators and fools, but also people who truly understand the purpose of BTC. USD is somewhat broken due to the manipulation of money printing and lack of controls. It still has its high value today, but fundamentally USD as a fiat is broken and not pegged to anything valuable, unlike in the past when it was pegged to physical Gold that has scarcity properties.

BTC offers itself as a value asset with properties similar to Gold (scarcity, divisibility, fungibility etc) which is why there is potential value in it. A greater purpose would be pegging USD to BTC (not replacing a currency) to restate its true value, but that’s a long shot and long way to go, though not impossible

 

[kymm951]

@mutambo Like what WarmWinter said, you should get more up to date with the current state of crypto.

Every year there are some innovation in crypto and they're developing at a breakneck speed. In 2017, we got introduced to a global state machine in the form of ETH, then we have dexes, lending platforms, real world assets, and much more.

Even VISA is contemplating using blockchain as a settlement solution. Why? Cause it's faster and cheaper.

As for being a currency, there are stablecoins for that. People ARE getting paid in crypto. You can also transfer cross border in less than a second using crypto.

Even bitcoin itself is getting developed and introduced ordinals last year, where that goes is anyone's guess. Bitcoin at the current state is a brand, everyone equates bitcoin = crypto and it's always their first step into the crypto world. That's why even when the real development isn't on bitcoin, it's still getting a lot of attention and demand.

Vanguard's CEO got sacked cause he didn't allow Bitcoin ETFs in their profile while other big firms like BlackRock is raking in all the profits. Don't be that guy.

Also, China bans and unbans crypto every few years. It's nothing. They're also creating their own CBDC so there's that on their stance.

 

[blackfriar]

@kymm951 No need to waste ur time convincing these people.

When BTC hits 100K, the FOMO should be overdrive. Just enjoy the show.

 

[jesperh]

@blackfriar As the saying goes, people will buy BTC at the price they deserve.

You said it best when you advised to get oneself educated on the topic.

Case in point, Michael Saylor dissed BTC in 2013 saying it’ll suffer the same fate as online gambling, but changed his mind in 2020 and became one of the loudest BTC proponents after studying and doing his own research.

His company MicroStrategy is now a BTC development company. He adopted BTC as his company’s treasury reserve asset. Convinced the board of directors to read books on BTC and study it. They issued more shares so that they can buy more BTC.

It’s okay for people to disagree with us. We have the freedom to change our mind. Most important is to keep learning.

 

[mariauk]

@blackfriar Exactly, the FOMO will make folks lose their pants