Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Bitcoin is a stock
by
SilenceDogreat
on 28/07/2014, 04:44:17 UTC
I can see some of the similarities that OP bases this conclusion on:

- You buy something that has a value based on what the market has agreed upon.
- Ownership is somewhat ambiguous since you don't gain anything tangible*, like gold (or other physical commodities).
- And you don't have much of a say in the "operations of Bitcoin", or in the operations of the company you buy and hold stock in.
- The price could go up or go down... to the moon or to zero.

One might suggest that you do gain something tangible* - the unique private key for some paired public key that you own.
But the main flaws of your argument are in your understanding of how stocks are valued...
Bitcoin is a speculative investment.  People typically buy bitcoin because they expect it to be worth more at t, where t is some time in the future.
Or they invest because they believe that the value of bitcoin is less volatile (or has greater upside) than their traditional currency.

The way you portray the stock market, you assume those are all speculative investments.  Perhaps you've heard the phrase "do your homework" in regards to stocks?
There are methods to estimate the intrinsic value of a stock - the discounted cash flow formula is standard.
You can also use Price to Earnings ratio, PEG, etc. etc. to compare company A to company B (typically within the same sector).
Amazon's price is ~800-900X earnings......so then you would say, "see, it's magic!".  But no, it isn't.
P/E is just one way to understand the price relative to similar entities.  Using the DCF formula, you would find Net Present Value...
for a firm with extremely high growth, and a dominant position (+ high barriers to entry) - like Amazon - the NPV calculation includes more years.
While there is certainly some guesswork involved, leading to differences in estimates and recommendations by analysts, this isn't just pure speculation.
So, intrinsic value calculations will change based on concrete numbers from the quarterly income statements/balance sheets of these companies.
Investors act accordingly and the price changes.  There's also movements based on missing or exceeding consensus estimates, guidance from the firm, etc.

Then there are the obvious differences between bitcoin and stock that have already been mentioned.
You might have a better case comparing some characteristics of penny stocks to bitcoin...
but your fundamental understanding of stock valuation needs some work.