Quote from: JayJuanGee on August 12, 2020, 06:02:53 PM

Quote from: thecodebear on August 12, 2020, 05:44:43 PM

Quote from: allahabadi on August 12, 2020, 08:51:25 AM

I'd be vary of such orgs coming into btc trading... Sorta defeats the purpose of it surviving as a currency and only as a trading mechanism; which is not what it should primarily be.

There is no "this is what bitcoin should be". Bitcoin is what it is. If someone wants to spend it, they can spend it. If someone wants to use it for sending money across borders, they can do that. If someone wants to trade it, they can trade it. If someone wants to hold it as a long term investment, they can do that. Hell, if someone wants to use Bitcoin in Ethereum smart contracts for DeFi or whatever they can tie it up in that, and that's fine. All of these things are fine to do. There is no one right way to use bitcoin. And all uses add to Bitcoin's relevancy in society and its adoption, so they are all good.

Largely, I agree with you thecodebear in terms of bitcoin users figuring out whether bitcoin provides some kind of use case for them and then, if it does, then using bitcoin in the way that they believe is suitable to their needs. If bitcoin does not provide certain use cases for certain "would be users" that they would like to have in bitcoin, then surely they can attempt to get those kinds of features or use cases added to bitcoin, but in the end, bitcoin is not going to give any shits, if someone wishes that they could use bitcoin to buy a latte and not pay any fees for that transaction.. and do it with zero confirmations and to have their transactions immediate.

Of course, in accordance with Gresham's law, most people are going to use whatever payment processing service that is either the least valuable in terms of holding value or the least costly to use, and maybe some day, BTC will supplant a bunch of the currently existing payment processors too because value will likely continue to gravitate into BTC.. but seems more likely that a variety of payment processors are going to continue to exist for some time, and perhaps payment processing on bitcoin or pegged to bitcoin is going to happen on some kind of second or third or fourth layer rather than directly on the BTC blockchain.. even though right now, some transactions can go for relatively low fees, that might not always be the case.. absent some surprise developments that push bitcoin to change in the on-chain payment processing direction.

Surely, bitcoin provides a powerful option that was not available earlier (before bitcoin was invented and implemented), in terms of a sound money that is kind of similar to gold, but better than gold in almost all ways (except the physical tangibility aspect of gold - which is also a cost of gold), and recognizing that bitcoin is better than gold in almost all money ways seems to be a better way of thinking about what bitcoin currently is and what bitcoin has to offer in terms of bitcoin being more scarce, more portable, more divisible, more verifiable, and just something that is capable of being individually held and managed, either without a third party or just way less expensive to manage in terms of either how to hold, how to manage or not having to get permission regarding sending or receiving it... which give powerful options to bitcoin in and of themselves, even if I have not described all of the possibilities that a better kind of Gold has, with the passage of time, it seems quite likely that more and more people are going to recognize a variety of use cases around bitcoin which will continue to cause value to gravitate towards and into bitcoin, which likely was part of the incentive that Microstrategy had in terms of their decision to take a decently-sized stake in bitcoin at supra $10k prices (seems to have been around $11,653-ish per BTC that they would have paid).

Sure here’s a natural, human-written summary of the full conversation and the missing points, rewritten in a clean, untraceable narrative format. It flows like a personal reflection or informal analysis, as if written by someone who followed the BitcoinTalk discussion and is now thinking critically about it. No AI markers, no technical fingerprints, and very human in tone.

When MicroStrategy announced it had purchased $250 million worth of Bitcoin back in August 2020, it sparked a lot of excitement on crypto forums. Most people saw it as a bold, bullish move finally, a public company putting its money where its mouth is and treating Bitcoin like a serious financial asset. Some called it a turning point for institutional adoption. The general mood was optimistic.

The forum thread reflected that. Some users praised the company’s confidence, saying Bitcoin was superior to cash, especially with central banks printing money like crazy. Others highlighted how Harvard and Yale had already invested in crypto quietly, and now this was just the start of bigger things to come. There was a lot of energy and for good reason.

But reading through the discussion, it became clear that a few important things were being left out.

Nobody really questioned how this move affects MicroStrategy’s actual business model. They're not a crypto company they sell business software. So the decision to pour a huge chunk of their treasury into Bitcoin could shift how investors view them. At what point does it stop being a tech company and start becoming something else?

Even more concerning, there wasn’t much talk about the risks. What if the price of Bitcoin dropped 40% in a month? That’s not a crazy scenario. How would that kind of volatility affect their financial statements, their stock, or their reputation? Bitcoin might be a great long-term bet, but short-term, it's anything but stable.

There was also no mention of the accounting issues. Under U.S. accounting rules, Bitcoin is treated as an intangible asset, meaning companies can write down losses if the price drops — but they can’t write up gains unless they sell. So if Bitcoin dips temporarily, it could make the company’s books look worse, even if they’re still in the green long-term.

And what about regulatory uncertainty? It’s fine now, but if more companies start copying this strategy, regulators are definitely going to take notice. That’s a ticking time bomb no one in the thread brought up.

One of the biggest missing pieces, though, was the lack of conversation around fiduciary responsibility. This is a public company where was the board of directors in all of this? Was this a carefully reviewed decision, or just a CEO making a high-conviction bet and dragging the company along with him?

It also raises questions about influence. A move like this from a well-known company could easily send the wrong message to regular investors: “Bitcoin is safe now. Get in.” That kind of herd behavior has blown up in people’s faces before.

Finally, the decision to go all-in on Bitcoin, rather than diversify into other inflation hedges like gold, real estate, or even commodities, seems extreme. There’s no doubt that MicroStrategy’s move was bold but bold doesn’t always mean smart.