RE:Musk's revised attitude to Bitcoin & other cryptocurrenciesTheir is no capital gains with gold on any black market lol
Yasch22 wrote: Fwiw, all of us should also keep an eye on the way cryptocurrencies are shaking up the world of finance. A lot of us who are 40 and older grew up thinking of banks as THE Rock Solid Blue Chip investments, and we also grew up with a tremendous faith in fiat currency. For those who didn't feel that faith, the perceived alternative investment for a long time was precious metals, especially gold.
You may have noticed over the past 13 years -- or since March 2008 (onset of the crash) -- that gold hasn't exactly set the house on fire. It's risen from roughly $1200/ounce to $1800, or about 4% per year.
The Bank of Nova Scotia (my proxy) has risen from ~$45 to $80 in the same time period, or about 6% per year. But that's just share price. Add in roughly 3% annually from dividends. The story is similar for almost all of the leading Canadian financial institutions, as we had stronger government regulations in place compared to the Americans.
Anyway, the point is that we're probably in a position right now where traditional banking and traditional ways of thinking about currency are coming under revolutionary fire from cryptocurrencies -- especially Bitcoin -- and the "digital wallet" way of doing our banking.
The Establishment was unduly shocked a couple of months ago when Tesla, one of the world's biggest companies by market cap, decided to put $1.5b of its $18-19b cash on hand into Bitcoin. They also said they would accept payment for Tesla products in Bitcoin.
The Establishment was shocked again a few weeks ago when Tesla announced it had sold 10% of its Bitcoin just to test its liquidity, and made something like $100m profit. They had bought BTC at roughly $38K, and sold it at ~$55K.
Then a couple of days ago Tesla announced four things:
(a) it was suspending use of BTC as a currency to buy products
(b) the reason given was that too much dirty energy (coal, gas) was being used to mine & transact Bitcoin.
(c) they still believe in cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin
(d) they were looking at other crypocurrencies that could be mined at less than 1% of the energy used per BTC transaction.