Somebody explain Bitcoin to me. Every time I looked into it, it looked made-up

Down 30% today, after some big exchange got hacked, possibly by North Korea.

I still don't get it.

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"A frenzied demand for coins with limited supply has now led to unsophisticated investors holding the bag at the top,” Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia-Pacific at Oanda Corp told Bloomberg. Some people have reportedly mortgaged their homes in order to buy into the decentralized asset, which is also seen by some as an alternative safe haven to gold. Innes added that the recent tumble in price is a result of investors having “a reality check.”

Why would such a volatile unregulated currency be "an alternative to gold"???

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Warren Buffett's top lieutenant, Charlie Munger, is a bitcoin skeptic.

Munger was asked for his views on cryptocurrencies during a University of Michigan's Ross School of Business event.

"I think it is perfectly asinine to even pause to think about them," Munger said. "It's bad people, crazy bubble, bad idea, luring people into the concept of easy wealth without much insight or work. That's the last thing on Earth you should think about … There's just a whole lot of things that aren't going to work for you. Figure out what they are and avoid them like the plague. And one of them is bitcoin. … It is total insanity."

Yeah, I'm not the only one who thinks it's a hoax.

And yet some people still promote it, with nonsensical statements as this:

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The primary selling point of bitcoin has always been the amount of security it offers

Yep, still unbelievably risky. I don't get it.

Bitcoin is one of the greatest scams of all time.
But if you had gotten in at the right point, you could be very rich today.

That seems to be true of most Ponzi / pyramid schemes.

I don't think that Bitcoin qualified as a "Ponzi / pyramid scheme." It's something brand new and, so far, undefinable. Bitcoin's big contribution is the blockchain technology. Some big financial institutions are looking at for security of their servers.

Nevertheless, the bloom is off the rose.

I admit not understanding blockchain technology.  But there’s a lot I don’t understand in this great big world.

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You actually see it over and over again. Blockchain systems are supposed to be more trustworthy, but in fact they are the least trustworthy systems in the world.

I don’t understand the revival of LPs among “audiophiles.”

I don’t understand the plethora of claims of “FAKE!” and “The earth is flat” in the comments section of videos showing Space-X launches.  The dominance of Russian URLs and Russian comments raises the possibility of intentional misinformation but I don’t know who would benefit from such a campaign.

richard09 wrote:

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

..Some people still tout it as magical.

You may want to look at Kai Stinchcombe before agreeing with his screed about bitcoin. A technologist he ain't.

Yeah, bitcoin was a ponzi scheme. Most of us could smell that five years ago.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/12/15/cryptocurrency-actor-ben-mckenzie-intv-contd-cnntm-vpx.cnn