Each of us has to figure out the extent to which we talk about bitcoin or completely stay secret and also how we might talk about bitcoin without necessarily talking about our own bitcoin.  It is not easy, especially when dealing with friends and relatives and some of them want to know and some of them are better at keeping secrets than others.  Sometimes if we want to help someone we might need to ask them about their finances in order to help them to be helpful to themselves, since sometimes people might not have had given a whole lot of thought to their own cashflow management systems beyond perhaps trying to make sure that they do not spend more than they earn, yet even with the widespread use of debt, sometimes we will find out that people sometimes have their own finances in a messy place based on the ways that they are using debt.

There may also be a decent number of people who believe that they have absolutely no extra money to invest in anything since they largely spend all of the money that they make, and maybe they do not even plan too far out into the future, except maybe a person might realize that he is saving up to buy a new phone or a computer or a motorcycle or a car or maybe to go on a vacation... so maybe they have not really given very much thought about how they are spending, even if a lot of folks might think about the various ways that they might try to be able to make more money by working more hours or by trying to get a promotion... and bitcoin can sometimes fit into the conversation since they might sometimes believe that they are making progress to save money or to get a raise but then they see that the costs of the various things that they are buying is not really giving them much room to have any extra money, so any amount of extra money that they might have from pay check to pay check may well end up getting spent by the time the next paycheck comes, so they might not even have very much of a cash cushion, even though they might understand that having a cash cushion helps them from getting stressed out about their income and/or their expenses.

Many times people will respect that we might talk in terms of hypotheticals rather than our personal circumstances, so even if we might be attempting to help them to better understand bitcoin, we also might be describing in terms of hypotheticals of similarly situated people in order to attempt to describe how a person might have had gotten into bitcoin... but then many times friends will want to know how long we have been in bitcoin and how much money we made from it.. so they might not be easy conversations to talk generally since another person might not give you much credibility if they believe that you are not talking from personal experience or they might think that you are just making shit up... so sometimes we have to describe some personal details or some similarly situated hypothetical person in order for them to take us seriously, in the event that we might feel inclined to try to help them to understand bitcoin and to try to get their finances in order to so that they can start to buy bitcoin regularly.

I have sometimes had people trying to share some of their personal finances with me, and I will try to get them to stop with the specifics and maybe they can give some general ideas if we are talking about some topic and maybe to say that sometimes we might have money left over each week that we could buy bitcoin whether it is $10 or $100 or $1k or some other amount.


We are not talking about shitcoins in this thread, and sure bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, yet we need to be careful in regards to using vague language, which can mislead folks about what is the topic being discussed or how it might relate to bitcoin or not if we are using a term that is vague and misleading like crypto (cryptocurrency).

Another thing is that a lot of shitcoiners  and even bitcoin bashers will purposefully use terms like crypto currency to convolute terms and to mislead people, since many people might be confused in regards to whether and/or how bitcoin might be different from shitcoins.  We should not be contributing to such deceptive and vague kinds of speaking, even if we hear smart people who are also mixing up such terms which might cause us to wonder if they are really smart if they are not speaking clearly on the topic of bitcoin or how bitcoin relates to shitcoins and they are using vague and misleading kinds of words.

Sometimes, legal documents and/or courts of law will refer to crypto currencies and/or digital currencies, and sometimes they will properly define their terms and other times, they are also guilty of being vague, misleading and/or deceptive, so we some times might find otherwise credible sources speaking with vagueness and lack of specifics that might also be purposeful (or perhaps accidental) misleading.

We should not be talking about which shitcoins are less shitty in this thread either, since it is off topic and it tends to be a slippery slope that keeps us away from the main topic of this thread, namely bitcoin.  Sure from time to time, we might feel it is necessary to mention something that is happening in shitcoinlandia and we might even consider that some of those shitcoinlandia happenings might relate in one way or another to bitcoin.


I did mention that bitcoin is likely 1,000x or more better than gold and that it might take 50-200 years for that to be reflected in the market, and right now bitcoin has about 1/9th the price of gold (in terms of market cap). 

Regarding other assets and/or currency  it is going to vary in regards to how much better bitcoin is than each of them, yet it seems to me that for any asset/currency to take over as a protocol then it likely has to be at least 10x better than any of its competitors, and surely it seems that bitcoin is at least 10x better than the dollar so bitcoin will continue to beat out on the dollar, even though it could take many years (maybe even 50-200 years) for bitcoin to accomplish such beating out of the dollar.

I hate to get into specifics since so many things can happen in terms of the various ongoing battles that bitcoin is likely going to continue to have in the coming years, including likely battles in regards to stable coins  (another variant of the dollar), and surely bitcoin is likely going to win, yet we cannot count our chickens before they hatch, and each of us just needs to figure out our allocations and the various ways that we are going to accumulate and hold bitcoin in order to attempt to protect ourselves and not become a casualty in any of the various battles that are likely to continue to take place, including that bitcoiners are likely going to continue to be attacked from time to to time, and it will vary based on jurisdiction and/or circumstances... including trying to get all bitcoiners to use KYC/centralized services which is ultimately not good for bitcoin. even though bitcoins numbers are still likely going to continue to be pumped through various KYC/centralized services and various derivative products and even various ways of faking bitcoin.. companies/governments claiming to have more bitcoin than they actually have.


What good does it do to call bitcoin a digital asset?  Are we trying to suggest that bitcoin is similar to other digital assets?

Sure it is true that bitcoin is a digital asset, just like bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, yet it is still vague, misleading and perhaps even deceptive to throw around such terms without specifying what the fuck we are talking about.

I am not opposed to sometimes using the general terms like crypto or digital asset, as long as we understand what we are talking about, and if we might be referring to shitcoins we might want to make sure to throw some derogatory language in the mix in order to make it clear that they are inferior to bitcoin even if they might have some shared features.

Sometimes we might want to talk about what an exchange is doing or what a government policy is doing, and so we might have to talk about bitcoin and shitcoins when we are trying to explain what someone or some entity is doing in the space or some policy that they are promoting, and so we might even describe them as having various shitcoins and bitcoin within what they are promoting or even describe them as being vague in their descriptions regarding what they are doing and/or how it might relate to bitcoin.  There might be some entities that are purposefully vague about what they are doing, which may or may not be helpful even if they might not be wanting to say what they are doing, so they might purposefully use vague language.

Let's say that you are in a bar and some friend of yours, tells another person that you are a cryptocurrency expert, and you might even agree that you know some things about crypto just to not raise any suspicions, so you purposefully agreed to use vague language in order to attempt to protect yourself in regards to some statement that your friend probably should not have had made.  So sometimes there can be valid reasons to use vague and even misleading language.. yet in a thread like this we should be trying to avoid being too vague and even if we might want to refer to shitcoins from time to time, we might want to be careful not to mislead other members or to be deceptive in our ways of posting about bitcoins and/or shitcoins to the extent that they might come up as a side topic of this thread.


Bitcoin really does not need marketing yet at the same time, we sometimes need to figure out various people who we can trust to talk about bitcoin ideas, and yeah, it can be risky to interact with people in the real world, so we have to figure out our own boundaries, and if we are potentially putting ourselves in danger in the present or into the future, we might have to take extra precautions. 

People are empowered by talking about bitcoin, using bitcoin and letting other people know about the power of bitcoin, yet none of us want to be put in a cell, or to have our bitcoin taken from us or to be put in physical jeopardy, so there may well could be some circles in which it is not worth it to mention anything about bitcoin or to try to talk with certain folks about bitcoin, and even in some circles we might be asked if we know anything about bitcoin, we might say that we don't really know much about it, except that we had heard some other people talk about it or that we had seen an article about it or we saw it mentioned on the television.  We have to use our best judgement and surely it would not be very good for us to die in our 30s because we get attacked by someone in regards to bitcoin that we may or may not have.. and many of us would prefer to live to an old age, to live with freedom and to live with financial options.  Sometimes we might have to hold our bitcoin in a variety of ways and we also might have to hold some other assets in order to deflect people from knowing more details than they need to know about our actual bitcoin holdings.

And, yeah, it likely sucks to be in a country in which there are ways that bitcoin is illegal, and even in countries that we believe bitcoin is legal, we can still be oppressed in regards to various kinds of reporting in respect to our bitcoin, which has become more and more oppressive with the passage of time, including sometimes restrictions and difficulties to move bitcoin on and off of exchanges.  We have to make judgements about whether and/or how to use various kinds of products and/or services and even decisions about how to hold our bitcoin.  I have a friend who told me that he was going to buy bitcoin, but then he was not going to keep any evidence of that bitcoin on his phone, which I thought was overly precautious, even though I kind of understood why he was taking such measures. 

It is not always clear what to do, including there are guys who had transactions over the years, but then they might want to move those coins or even figure out ways to create more hops with their transactions, yet if they take coins off of an exchange and then they move the coins back to the exchange to sell them, then it may well be easier to tell them that the coins were taken off of the exchange earlier, if they are asking you from where you got the coins..so sometimes having too many hops could work against you when an exchange is asking you to verify your source of funds for coins that you send to them. It is not fair, but it is part of our current world and some of the challenges that we might have when we are dealing with third parties, so we have challenges dealing with third parties and we have challenges dealing directly with people, yet we still have to decide whether we are going to save and/or accumulate wealth in bitcoin or if we are going to hold our wealth in other ways.  Some people may get scared out of their BTC if they believe it is too burdensome to try to hold it.


Surely learning about bitcoin first is important, yet to get started investing in bitcoin, we do not need to learn about shitcoins.. so one of the main things to learn first is our own discretionary income situation, so then we can decide how much of a budget that we might have to invest into bitcoin, and so once we get started investing into bitcoin, we might choose to learn about various other shitcoins and/or crypto, yet that is optional.. as long as we stay focused on bitcoin first. and figure out various matters to bitcoin and our cashflow.  Of course, the more we know then we can be more aggressive in our bitcoin investment and the more uncomfortable we are about our knowledge, then we might gravitate towards investing less into bitcoin if we feel that we might need to know more about shitcoins or how they might relate to bitcoin... yet like you mention, if we learn about bitcoin first, then we will help ourselves to understand a framework in which we might consider the various other shitcoins that are tending to try to promote themselves as similar to bitcoin or better than bitcoin, and if we largely are able to create a presumption in our head that all crypto outside of bitcoin is a shitcoin or a scam and then that they have a burden to persuade us that they are not a scam, then we might be able to have more confidence in our understanding how they relate to bitcoin and why we are trying to avoid fucking around with them, even if some of them might have short-to-medium term pumps and/or promotionals that try to distract us and others into investing (and/or gambling) into them. 

Many times, I tell people not to fuck around at all with shitcoins, yet if they cannot resist to get involved in shitcoins then at least limit their investment of time, energy and/or value to no more than 10% the size of their investment into bitcoin, and don't cheat if you lose money in shitcoins to draw another 10% from bitcoin and to deplete the bitcoin investment, yet new money coming in can be up to 10% on shitcoins and 90% into bitcoin... just to allow some avenue with limitations, yet some people cannot control their own tendencies to gamble and they might not be able to limit their exposure to shitcoins...and it might be difficult to save them from themselves an their perhaps even knowing that they are gambling rather than investing when they involve themselves in shitcoins.