Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

And, to boot people seem to use the expression 100% in bitcoin in quite ambiguous and confusing ways too... even if there were to be some kind of resolution to get more folks to accept bitcoin as payment, it still does not seem like a great idea to go 100% bitcoin.... because even if any of us might be able to pay our rent, buy our groceries or other consumer products in bitcoin, they are still likely going to be priced in dollars because it would be quite ridicuous for any vender/merchant to price his/her services in bitcoin.. without having to frequently change his/her price.. which is largely likely attempting to make the price fair in terms of dollars otherwise not too many folks are going to buy their goods/services if they have to pay a 20% to 50% premium as compared with similarly competitive products/services.

I agree Bitcoin has its uses and I think what can be achieved with Bitcoin is truly great but I do not like the Bitcoin maximalist view that everything has to be used with Bitcoin because Bitcoin has weaknesses that cannot be avoided just like the current dollar system has weaknesses. They can be used together and I think that is what a lot of people confuse they think that Bitcoin should take over and become the only currency but having options is the best way. Bitcoin is decentralized but having many currencies is true decentralization because you are not stuck with 1 way of paying or receiving money for things.

I am not sure whether I completely agree with you at least in regards to there being any need to have many options for paying; however, I do agree that the facts of the ways of the world is that we already have a lot of options, and if we have a lot of options, in accordance with Gresham's law, we likely would want to spend our less valuable assets prior to spending our more valuable assets .. and each of us should be able to conclude that bitcoin is amongst the best of assets, if not the best asset, so we should not want to spend that one first - yet there could be situations in which we might want to spend and replace bitcoin or that we are already overly invested into bitcoin and in that regard, there is no problem to spend some of our bitcoin because we are relatively overallocated to it.

I do believe that it is quite likely that all monetary will likely continue to gravitate towards bitcoin, but still it could take 150 years or even longer in order for various other monetary options to disappear.. so in our current world we do have quite a few monetary options, but there are some kinds of money that we likely would not even want to hold for very long.. so there is likley quite a bit of variation in various kinds of currencies that we might receive, and some of them, we might be willilng to hold for the duration of the transaction and others maybe we are o.k. holding 1-6 months and others we might be ok holding for longer periods..

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

Another thing with older folks is that they are not necessarily working for an income, so when folks stop working then they tend to be on "fixed incomes," so they really tend to get fucked when their most common expenses go up.. because whatever their cash sources are likely not going up enough to keep up.

Yes a lot of older people are on pensions which they have accumulated when they worked 20 years ago and now with inflation they cannot live off of it. A lot of retired folk that thought their retirement would be their time off find that they need to work it is why the retirement age in all countries continues to go up.

Yep.. for sure problems if you get old and you might not have adequately prepared .. and some older people might ONLY have a pension or social security and maybe their house and they might not have other assets and their pension and social security might not be adequate to cover their expenses, so they might have a dilemma about what to do about their living situation, and it is not necessarily a comfortable situation.. and surely there are some folks who might not even own any real estate, so they have even fewer options when their fixed incomes might be failing to keep up with their ongoing monthly expenses... so it may be too late for those people to invest in bitcoin and they should have had been investing in the past (and yeah, we did not really have bitcoin until recent times, either).

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

People usually say 3-6 months of living expenses, and of course, you can add on a bit or subtract a bit.. but yeah, usually having more is better in terms of having a bit more flexibility if some extra expenses come up or even if there might be some spontaneous extra spending for consumption goods.. and yeah, many of us might be tempted to NOT want to have as much of an emergency fund because we want to "put our funds to work", but then we end up getting fucked if we put too much of our available funds "to work" and then those funds end up losing their value or some other calamities come to our situations.. and we failed/refused to adequately plan/prepare for such... I am guilty of having had periods like this in my life in which my cushion was not not enough and then I experienced too much stress and figured out that keeping better/moar cash reserves can be a real relief during those kinds of times in which either unexpected expenses come or lessening of cashflows come (or both)..

Yes it is a skill to determine how much you want to invest but it is a slipperty slope because if you invest too much and then have a emergency you risk losing a lot of money if it is in the bear market. The opposite is you do not invest much and you have a bull run but that cannot be predicted and I prefer the safety of having a emergency fund for my family so if some thing does happen I can support them. None of us know when a emergency can happen and it could be any thing it does not need to be a medical emergency.

I agree that you are not necessarily even in any kind of position to invest at all until you have your basics covered and your emergency fund.. and then once you have those covered, then it is up to your abilities regarding how aggressive/assertive that you are able to be in terms of your investment level into BTC.

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

Yep.. the more uncertainties regarding your cashflow and expenses causes differences.. including if you have a family versus single.. or if you have your own business that requires you to perform versus if you have a salary or some kind of sick pay if something happens to you.. Lots of these kinds of things and sometimes, there may be needs for various kinds of self-insurance (one of them might be a cash reserves) if you are not able to purchase insurance to cover some of the potential issues.

It depends on your situation and there is not 1 answer that people can follow. I have been asked by family and friends on how much they should invest and I never tell them a figure I tell them to look at their life and determine what they need to survive and think about how much they want to make and when. A lot of them do not invest in the end because they thought it was a quick rich path which it is not.

hahahahaha

I have had similar experiences. Talk them for a little bit, and they get less excited when it comes to figuring out how much they are able to comfortably invest... and the overwhelming majority fail/refuse to take any action.... so from my perspective, that's on them. I did my part.

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

I recommend people get started in bitcoin right away.. Of course, everyone is responsible to figure out if s/he is able to start with $100 per week or if s/he might be able to invest more, such as $250 per week or if s/he is ONLY able to do $10 per week.. and those starting out numbers might well be a whole hell of a lot lower while such newbie is figuring out his/her particular financial and psychological circumstances... and to likely tweak later upon getting his/her shit in better order.

Yes you can always tweak it but $100 a month is $1200 a year and that could x2 or x3. I think most people can afford $100 if they cut back on other things but the question is if they are willing to cut back on lifes luxuries to invest in Bitcoin. A lot of people will not.

For sure, I would not suggest that anyone start with anything beyond some kind of level that is comfortable for them, and between about 2014/2015 until early 2020, I was recommending to just get off zero and to invest $10 per week and then figure it out later if they would want to increase their weekly amount.

After March 2020, I started to recommend $100 per week as the new $10 per week - even though of course, I am not suggesting anyone to invest more than they are able to, and I am also not suggesting that I am taking any responsibility over their decision regarding whether to invest and how much.. but at the same time giving guidelines regarding where to start.. with the realization that there may well be some desire to make some progress after 4-10 years or more of investing and for them to be able to reassess their situation at various points along the way...... and have pretty decent chances of making good progress 4-10 years or longer.. without any guarantees, either.

Again it's my experience that an overwhelming majority of anyone that I had gotten that far into the conversation do not end up doing diddly squat in terms of taking further action to actually set up a bitcoin account and to actually start buying some bitcoin on a regular basis... or to somehow follow up with me to inquire more in regards to how to start to take action... pretty rare, pretty rare.. and almost all of them would have been way better off if they had started to do something.. as long as they started to do it and continued.. for 3 years or longer.. (or going back three years or earlier, from here).. and yeah, I started recommending bitcoin in mid-to-late 2014, even though I had gotten started in late 2013.. I did not recommend anyone for my first 6-9 months in bitcoin.. I guess I was still learning and not quite convicted enough until I had spent a decent amount of time already noodling over it.. that probably would have been my having had spent greater than a few hundred hours studying it by the time I started to recommend it... and gosh, now, I likely have several thousands of hours.. .. and not that I am very smart or even studying the same thing over and over.. looking at some charts like shadows on a cave wall.. hahahahahha

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on February 28, 2023, 03:18:26 AM

I don't take offense because I am constantly witnessing examples of people who want to go their own way and recking themselves in one way or another with shitcoins, yield products, fence sitting, selling too much too soon (and then becoming bitter).. You have been registered on the forum only a couple years less than me. Seems to me that you should have encountered some of these kinds of examples in real life, too? Of course, it is possible to NOT be very interactive about BTC with others, and I don't even claim to be a social butterfly in the real world, but just having interactions, it seems that bitcoin ends up coming up in the various conversations..

Yes I have had family and friends as I mentioned come to me and ask how they should invest and how much is it going to return but my answer is normally based on how they ask. If they are asking how much Bitcoin can go up I become less interested if they are asking about why Bitcoin is a good alternative then I have all the time in the day for them.

Exactly!!! It is good to deny having Nostradamus capabilities from the start. That's been my approach too.

I will say something like I think it is a good idea..

Get the fuck off zero..

start a plan that you can feel comfortable in terms of your level of building a position in BTC and 1% to 25% could be good with 1% being if you are wimpy and 25% if you are more aggressive and bullish, and in the end it is up to you to figure out the details, regarding how much, how to get there and how to manage your investment into bitcoin whether the price goes up, down, sideways or all three... which all of them are likely to happen, and no guarantees to get richie..though seems to be amongst the best of investments that are out there.. and perhaps even the best investment, so long as you don't end up recking yourself along the way.

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

I have tried to convince many of my friends to invest into Bitcoin but none have seriously done it. The worse part for me is some of them are invested in shitcoins and that infuriates me to the max.

sometimes I am mean about it, even in real life.. but i cannot help myself.. and if they are adamant and confrontational about their choices to invest in shitcoins, then likely we cannot end up in a battle.. we just have to agree to disagree and I will not concede that I think that they are doing anything worth while, except perhaps gambling... but whatever, I am around bitcoin and into bitcoin to invest, not gamble.

Quote from: Macadonian on February 28, 2023, 10:00:25 PM

I have played around with altcoins in the past but I soon realized that they are a mountain of shit that should be left untouched.

I have a few, and all of them add up together are less than 0.1% of my BTC holdings.. so I do not give too many shits about them.. and I usually do not do anything with them.. but whatever. .. I usually do not talk about any of them much or even if I am talking with anyone about their various contemplations or investments about shitcoins, I might mention some shitcoins that I own.. and do not care about... just to be able to relate or to talk about how dumb they are. ..