Nearly a Third of Millennials Say They'd Rather Own Bitcoin Than Stocks (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A survey by venture capital firm Blockchain Capital found that about 30 percent of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin than $1,000 of government bonds or stocks. The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 percent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin, compared with 15 percent among those ages 65 and up. Bitcoin rose more than 6 percent Wednesday to as much as $7,545, helping to push the value of the total cryptocurrency market above $200 billion for the first time, according to CoinMarketcap. The digital asset has soared more than 600 percent this year, compared with gains of 15 percent for the S&P 500 Index -- which might explain millennials' attraction.

Comments

Not that strange

[rudy_wayne]

Bitcoin and stocks have something in common. Their price has absolutely no connection to reality. Since Bitcoin is new and tech-y, younger people feel more comfortable with it, even though it's all a complete scam, just like the stock market.

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Millennials in tech are also a scam, so they deserve each other.

Re:Not that strange

[sheramil]

This. They see the stock market as being controlled by Wall Street; they can't get in on the game, so they turn towards another game that lets them do nothing while they imagine they're accruing value somehow. Nobody ever went broke offering people something for nothing.

I was originally going with "It's because they're stupid. That's why. That's why everybody does everything." - Homer Simpson

Re:Not that strange

[TsuruchiBrian]

Who's running the scam?

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in the case of Bitcoin, nothing for something.

Re:Not that strange

[NewWorldDan]

Bitcoin has essentially nothing in common with stocks. Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders. The corporation has actual assets. Bitcoin is just numbers on a computer. It is effectively a currency, and while currency trading does occur, the currency markets are a great way to lose money. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers and the number of people who hold Bitcoin. This makes it very similar to any fiat currency, actually. At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.

But, whatever. Millennials can be as stupid as they want, it just means better returns for me. You do you, I've studied how rich people build and maintain their wealth, and I'm going to do that.

Re:Not that strange

[Applehu Akbar]

There is a perception out there that Wall Street has lost touch with the idea that out there beyond the Hudson there are factories which make things, retailers who sell them and IT people whose data installations keep it all coordinated. Instead the glamour boys of Wall Street are the faceless people who dream up derivative financial "products" that have replaced analysis of the real economy with manipulating paper.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Stocks are a scam. What goes up must come down, and with so much money done with HFT, there is no real way to make cash as a common person. If you are a CEO who finds a security breach, shorts his stock, announces it, and cashes in, that is a completely different ballgame since insider trading is legal now. If you make a buck in a stock, someone else loses a buck. Plain and simple.

BitCoin doesn't go down over the long haul. $1000 in BTC means $2000 in a few months, pretty much guaranteed.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You just explained Karl Marx's philosophy on Dialectical Materialism in a few sentences.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Every other bitcoin holders who desperately need it to keep going up in price.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

That kind of ignorance is uncalled for here.

Stock valuation is imperfect, but over the long term the money you get out is related to how well the business is doing. The longer you hold the closer the relationship gets.

If you actually bother to go to the bother of evaluating the worth of a company, you'd find that the ones that go somewhere usually are cost more money. There are exceptions, but if you've actually done your homework you can find those stocks that are underpriced for what they're offering and buy them. Every time people do that it brings the cost back in line with the value.

Re:Not that strange

[jedidiah]

What's to control? It's pretty easy. Buy low and sell high. Barring that, you can just shove money in an index fund over the long term. There are also plenty of individual stocks to gamble on.

Bitcoin is just one single thing.

Even in the currency market there are a ton to speculate on.

Bitcoin screams "single point of failure".

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

HFT is a scam, but it has little impact on people over the long term. If you're holding a stock for a number of years, the difference between what you make and what you would have made without the HFT is tiny.

HFT ought to be illegal because it uses future prices to steal a few cents here and there from a large number of people. But, individually, small investors aren't going to notice the difference as those couple cents are nothing compared with what you make over the long term.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin and stocks have something in common. Their price has absolutely no connection to reality.

You think the price of stocks has absolutely no connection to reality? That's a weird and willful ignorance.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of true but the real world is a bit more complex. Example Tesla. Stock is way over valued everyone knows it but when will it come back into line with it's real valuation. The same can be true at the other end also it may be a great company trading low but still go down lower. Even then before it goes back to trading high you may need your money back or the company could turn around (in the downward direction.)

Re:Not that strange

[fahrbot-bot]

Bitcoin and stocks have something in common. Their price has absolutely no connection to reality. Since Bitcoin is new and tech-y, younger people feel more comfortable with it, even though it's all a complete scam, just like the stock market.

Although... owning stock is owning a part of a company that (usually) has an tangible value. Owning bitcoin is owing bits and no coin. I imagine bitcoin is more of a scam than stocks, but their apparently never ending rise in value seems easy and attractive, but what goes up eventually comes down.

Youngsters are used to simply raiding their parents fridge, but there is actually no free lunch.

Re:Not that strange

[fahrbot-bot]

Bitcoin is just numbers on a computer.

All bits, no coin.

Re:Not that strange

[Beeftopia]

Bitcoin has essentially nothing in common with stocks. Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders.

What about non-voting, non-dividend paying shares? Google class C's are non-dividend-paying and non-voting and are going for over a thousand bucks a pop. I suppose with a stock, if you sell it at a loss, you can write it off on your taxes. I doubt you can do that with bitcoin. Just need a Congresscritter to update the law and that will change (if they haven't already - if someone in the donor class starts getting involved with bitcoin, that should change).

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

because gold is tasty and nutritious? currency backed by a gov or by a real world albeit illicit commodity like drugs.
Is one better?

anyway when poor people in lesser developed countries are investing you know the bubble is still growing.

Re:Not that strange

[Wycliffe]

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers and the number of people who hold Bitcoin. This makes it very similar to any fiat currency, actually. At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.

As bitcoin does offer a service, I think the main threat to bitcoin is competing cryptocurrencies. Not surprisingly, this is the same threat to other fiat currencies which is why most countries outlaw competing currencies and many even outlaw or restrict precious metals for the same reason. On the other hand, there are no laws preventing someone from creating hundred or even thousands of competing cryptocurrencies but cryptocurrencies do benefit from having a sufficiently large mining pool so it seems like bitcoin and all the cryptocurrencies should eventually stabilize at the price needed to maintain a sufficiently large mining pool to keep it secure. I have no idea what this price point would be but it might be interesting to try to calculate.

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not strange because surveys are rigged. They'll tell the person who pays for it whatever they want to hear.

I used to work for one who had the same initials as the Video Cassette Recorder and if your results weren't what we wanted then we would ask you a bajillion other questions that were designed to be annoying so you would hang up.

But it didn't stop there. We even had surveys rigged with so many leading questions that if you were against what our survey was for we'd make you seem like some kind of animal to disagree. And push you into saying very clearly if you "strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neutral, strongly agree or strongly disagree."

And the question trees were designed to check you and take you down the most grueling path if you disagree, if you agree the survey will be over in 15 minutes but we would keep people on there for an hour sometimes.

The sad thing is people answer this shit for free!
The best part is when you finish and try to get the last quick demographic questions in like Zip code, approximate age then they get offended then they hang up and we have to throw the results out.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and house prices always go up too.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck keeping up with inflation if you don't invest your money in a "scam".

Re:Not that strange

[Aighearach]

If google decided to close up shop, they'd get a share of the money from the liquidation sale.

If bitcoin closes up shop, nobody gets anything.

That's the basic difference between a stock, and a non-secured virtual currency.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders. The corporation has actual assets.

Amazing how many people here seem to forget this salient fact. Mind you not a few speculative "investors" do as well.

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers and the number of people who hold Bitcoin. This makes it very similar to any fiat currency, actually.

Not quite. Fiat currency maintains its value by a government's ability to raise taxes (i.e. if an economy goes to pot so will the government's official currency), because it is mandated, by fiat as it were, that all tax liabilities must be paid in said currency (as money). As currencies they further have utility as exchange technologies. So called crypto-currencies, whose utility as currency is undermined because they a) lack reasonable price stability and b) are not responsive to changes in the demand for money, are actually a much more dubious proposition. Which is not necessarily to say the price will not keep bubbling up as millenials "invest" in them. Unlike fiat currency, they have value by agreement.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

If a stock confers no power to vote on binding resolutions and pays no dividend, it's worthless in my opinion. I would never own that stock nor pay anything to own it. If such a stock ever came into my possession, which is unlikely since I refuse to pay for it, I would sell it immediately.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You've heavily missed the point.

These millennials mostly have a fairly justified belief that things like the stock market are inaccessible to them personally, or real world life experience that indicates that small investors are sometimes fleeced with no recourse. To them, these things might as well be the same to the extent that any reassurances you give them about real world reliable tangibility will invoke immediate distrust... because they feel like you're trying to sell them into an economy that doesn't benefit them.

Because you are.

I hope for your sake the circle doesn't tighten all that much further, i don't think it can and still be functional though. So maybe you'll lose everything in a massive crash even as others are bailed by the government and wealth is actually consolidated... or maybe your heavily hedged gamble will pay off. Shrug.

Re:Not that strange

[jpaine619]

They may be non dividend paying and non voting, but they still represent an ownership of the company. If you hold 10% of the stock, regardless of it being non-voting and non-paying you still own 10% of Google.

If Google sells itself, you get 10%.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

BitCoin doesn't go down over the long haul. $1000 in BTC means $2000 in a few months, pretty much guaranteed.

No speculative bubble to see here people...move along...move along.

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

What goes up must come down... except for bitcoin which is pretty much guaranteed to double every few months. LOL!!! This won't end well.

Re:Not that strange

[religionofpeas]

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers

So it has value. Nobody cares whether value is "intrinsic", however you want to define that.

This makes it very similar to any fiat currency

Except for the part where people outside of our control can decide to print more fiat currency, and lowering the value of our savings accounts.

At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.

While gold has industrial applications, we'd only need to mine 10% of the current amount to fulfill the needs of industry. Where's the intrinsic value of the other 90% ?

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You are trolling. This is obvious, because you form sentences too well to be as stupid as the content of your post makes you seem.

There are people in the world who don't have the patience to gain the education necessary to be a successful stock investor. So they rationalize to themselves that there really isn't anything worth knowing, and they may as well be studying techniques for guessing the right lottery numbers for all the good it will do them. Having built their house on this foundation of ignorance, they go around calling stupid anyone that properly self-educates and wisely invests in stock, and makes money doing so.

Like I did. And like most of my friends and co-workers have done. And several members of my family, too.

But I don't think you are one of these. I think you are just a troll looking for a reaction. Well, I hope mine has amused you.

Re:Not that strange

[datavirtue]

You think the crypto-currencies compete with each other? I'm not convinced of this yet. They are competing for the attention of dollars in some way...but there is nothing stopping us from using them without comparing them to something else. Comparison is the thief of perceived utility at this point. Bitcoin has zero advantage or market hold compared to Litecoin or any other currency. That is the value of crypto I guess--other than being a fancy sea shell.

Re:Not that strange

[datavirtue]

Investors/speculators are hoping the assets and performance of the company eventually meet up with the hype and color in the blank space between actual asset value and stock price. Some are investors, others are speculators. In the case of Telsa I don't find it very attractive since automotive manufacturing is extremely competitive and stocked with well healed players.

Re:Not that strange

[LostMyBeaver]

I never really cared about being rich. And I certainly will never have enough money to manage my money the way rich people do. I do have some bitcoins on a hard drive somewhere which I should maybe look into digging out. I also have some Monero. They cost me nothing to get. The sun actually paid for them.

Now let's address items of no intrinsic value.

- Stocks. In theory they are ownership of a real world corporation. :
          * But first off... the value of the share and the value of the company have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
          * A stock is more of an "I Owe You" than a piece of a company. And what makes this IOU different is that the company doesn't owe you anything at all. The stock itself is about as valuable as a bitcoin in the sense that the value of the stock goes up and down based on trading volume, interest, statistics, trends, etc...
          * The CEO of a company (see Meg Whitman) isn't responsible for making a company succeed. His/her job is to provide a return on investment to shareholders. The shareholders don't really care what the CEO does as long as they can get the trading volume to increase and hopefully convince people that the share will go up. This does not mean the value of the company should go up, but the value of the share will go up.

If a company has netted a certain amount of disposable cash, the CEO will dole it out to the share holders who gambled on their shares ... not invested in their companies... because investing in the company requires issuing more shares. The shares in circulation following an offering are bought and sold by share holders to/from shareholders. So, the dividends are simply being paid to gamblers who bought and IOU that only has value based on the CEO's ability to convince stock traders to pay more for shares... even if that means taking one of the greatest corporate empires of the world (HP) and killing off more or less all new technology development, chopping it into pieces, outsourcing to India and buying and chopping up a bunch of other companies too.

Bitcoin is a lot less nasty. It makes more sense really. You don't lie to yourself about some altruistic nonsense about investing in companies. You're not... in either case. You're not making jobs either way... in fact, gambling on Bitcoin for now is far better than doing things like gambling on grain, wheat, pork bellies, etc... at least for now Bitcoin isn't making it so that people can't afford milk and bread because supply/demand failed because we drove food prices up artificially by gambling on them

Then you have fund managers... who don't inside trade, but collaborate to drive volumes of shares up and down using software which tries to trick other people to hop on board and ride the shares up and down to buy low and sell high without any rationality other than electronic market manipulation. Then they stomp their feet about 1%er rallies messing up Wall Street because they claim "We made the fund ... and retirements, etc... grow by X percent" and in reality, they may have ensured that the retirement fund has more money, but they also devalued the dollar so greatly by their gambling that while they'll enjoy the short term aggregate kill on the stocks, the people they did it for actually have less not more.

People who gamble are stupid... period.
      If you gamble on stocks... you're stupid
      If you gamble on funds... you're stupid
      If you gamble in Vegas... you're stupid

I can go on, but on the other hand... if you have a solar powered computer sitting in the sun mining... and the computer is used for other things and you're just using spare cycles, and other people are stupid enough to pay for you to spend the cpu cycles... then that's not gambling... that's earning money.

Re: Not that strange

[datavirtue]

"strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neutral, strongly agree or strongly disagree."

I always feel like someone is playing with me when surveys are typed like this. The recent Facebook survey after the congressional hearings was phrased in absolutes like this.

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tell how much I hate it by how bad I screwed up typing it :(

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a strange distinction between IPO and resale of shares. The first is an "investment" and the latter isn't?

A resale is nothing more than one investor cashing out and a different one investing. If the company bought back the IPO stock, they'd have to liquidate some other asset to repay the IPO investor. Then the second buyer could invest and the company again trades a future stake for a new cash infusion. A resale between investors has the same net effect, but doesn't require the company to provide the liquidity.

There is no real difference between the two investments. They both provide the company with capital (the investment) in exchange for a stake in the future company which may provide dividends or a fraction of the company assets upon liquidation. There is always a gamble in the sense that future returns are not guaranteed. Secondary trade of the stock just transfers these risks and possible rewards from one party to another. The investment only ends if the company dissolves or buys back the shares, returning to the position it had before it sought investment.

Re:Not that strange

[war4peace]

I think that the less regulated the value of something is, the more it is connected to reality.
If people panic and drive the price down abruptly, that's reality right there. Artificially maintaining the value of something is not reality at all.

Re:Not that strange

[war4peace]

With the difference that bitcoin can't close up shop. The "bitcoin" as an entity doesn't actually exist.

Re:Not that strange

[war4peace]

Bitcoin has zero advantage or market hold compared to Litecoin or any other currency.

Good luck trying to find ONE online shop out there which accepts any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the latter being accepted by only a handful of shops out there.
I would say that's a huge advantage,

Re:Not that strange

[Gonoff]

....There are people in the world who don't have the patience to gain the "education" necessary to be a successful stock investor....

Fixed that for you. The information used by many to enabvle them to do business in this sort of activity is not education as most of us understand the word.It seems that, along with knowledge, many people have had to learn how to disable ethical sensetivities and enable the sociopathic tendencies that we see. That's mpore training than learning.

Re:Not that strange

[Alioth]

If you're going to boil it down to "investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic metals", they don't. The only thing that has true intrinsic value is food and shelter.

Re:Not that strange

[Gonoff]

....but over the long term the money you get out is related to how well the business is doing.....

No. It is related to how well the stock is doing. This is very different. Let me list a few words and phrases

derivatives

hostile takeover

stock market crash

insider trading

overvalued

stock swap

and so on. If I know these phrases, someone who knows about stock trading will know of many other examples of the disconnect between stocks&shares and companies who actually do something. The fact that there are so many people here who think that cryptocurrencies are less "real" than the global stock scam is a sad reminder of ideas like gullibility, ignorance and cupidity.

Re: Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I've been working here for *months* and I have no impact! These old fogeys know nothing.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you then buy bitcoin with your capital gains?

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless the insiders sell then dilute the remaining stock so badly that you might as well have invested in Zimbabwean dollars.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You say “outside of our control” well, in principle we are in a democratic Republic so it is within our control. On the other hand if a syndicate of major Bitcoin minors decide to abuse the blockchain to their advantage there is absolutely nothing to prevent them.

Re:Not that strange

[Kiuas]

Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders. The corporation has actual assets. Bitcoin is just numbers on a computer. It is effectively a currency, and while currency trading does occur, the currency markets are a great way to lose money. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers and the number of people who hold Bitcoin. This makes it very similar to any fiat currency, actually. At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.

You should note however, that the same is true of stock: stocks have no intrinsic value and are essentially also just numbers on a computer that reflect your share of a given company. The value of that stock (both the dividends and aftermarket value of the stock itself) is entirely maintained by the utility it (and therefore the company) offers and the number of people who hold them. If the company goes under or the economy collapses the stock is worthless. The fact that a corporation has actual real world assets does not protect them from bankruptcy. The company may well have assets while at the same time having debt that exceeds the value of said assets.

'Intrinsic value' is a bit of a quirky term because intrinsic value attached to things like metal come from their use in the current economy. Gold has some applications in electronics for example, but outside that most of its value is made up non-intrinsically by the fact that historically we've chosen to attach a great deal of value to it as it used to work (together with other metals) as a currency.

Think about a thought experiment where you take a laptop to someone in the west and ask them to trade it for a week's supply of food. It's pretty safe to say that nearly all people would take said trade because even if they have no use for the laptop themselves, they know and understand they can sell the laptop. Now think about doing this in the third world and ask someone there to trade it for a week's worth of food: it may work if the individual I'm bartering with is educated enough to understand that even though they likely have poor access to electricity/the net, they can still go to town and exchange said laptop for money or directly for supplies they need. However if that's not the case (think about for example some of the Amazonian tribes living essentially isolated from the modern world and having little to no concept of money, let alone electronics), it's highly unlikely that I'm able to do said trade even if for me the laptop is worth much more than a few meals. The 'intrinsic value' of the laptop (and conversely, food) is entirely different for me and the individual I'm trying to trade it with depending on the position of said individual within the global market as well as the state of the global economy itself. In a post-apocalyptic scenario with little electricity and no internet, the laptop will likely be worth a tiny tiny fraction of what it is now.

The point here is to say that in the end, all value-statements are always subjective and bound to current market conditions. That is, we can't make statements such as "Item X is always intrinsically worth at least Z dollars" but that also means it's impossible to peg the value to anything else either, so statements like "Item X is always intrinsically worth at least Z kilograms of wheat" are equally not true.

Which is not to say that intrinsic value is a useless concept, it's not. It's clear that metals have more intrinsic value than works of art for example because they have real world applications and uses. Likewise stock in major corporations currently has more intrinsic value than bitcoin. The point I'm getting at is just that 'intrinsic value' does not and will never equate to 'objective value', which in fact does not exist.

Re:Not that strange

[Beeftopia]

If google decided to close up shop, they'd get a share of the money from the liquidation sale.

Is there any historical, real world example of this happening? When a company liquidates, typically its stock has gone to zero.

Re:Not that strange

[Beeftopia]

And I want to clarify: you're suggesting that when a company liquidates, the value of the company's assets will divvied up among all the ownership stakes, Class A-C stockholders and debtors. There is however a hierarchy of payoff, with bondholders being highest, and even in bonds, there are tiers of bonds, and the lower tiers take a loss at a minimum. Stock holders typically don't get anything, and class C holders are the very bottom of the hierarchy to get paid. And if the company would have enough money to actually pay Class C shareholders, they probably wouldn't need to liquidate in the first place.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

The stock market isn't a scam. If you buy stock, you actually become a partner in a company with real assets and revenue. As an owner, this is your money and stuff. The scam is day trading, technical analysis, HFT, etc. If you buy a good company at the right price, you'll make money. Read Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor for info on how to do this. Learn the business and accounting terms and concepts until his books make sense to you. It is not a get rich quick scheme, but if you keep buying and holding, you will get rich eventually. Alternatively, just buy a Vanguard index fund, reinvest the dividends, and don't panic when things go down. If you really want simplicity, put everything in a target date fund. When the target date is reached, withdrawal no more than 4% of the balance a year, which will fluctuate.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a moronic stock investor. I buy stuff with dividends, keep it, and let the dividends buy more stock. Even when the market tanks, I'm not hurt too badly. IBM stock may be not great, but that quarterly chunk of change it provides isn't bad.

You don't have to worry about the ups and downs to make cash in the stock market.

Re:Not that strange

[mad7777]

Please, do tell us more about your brilliant investment strategy. Or maybe we should just buy your upcoming book, How to Save Nothing and Spend Your Way to Financial Independence??

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe that the price of stocks have no connection to reality, then you are an ignorant fool.

Re:Not that strange

[coofercat]

If you're going to get scammed by someone, then why not pick the one that the old farts in the establishment dislike?

Let's be honest, you don't need to be a millenial to think that the establishment is pretty crooked. Once you stop believing in it, then as they saying goes, you'll believe in anything - and here's where Bitcoin got in.

Every young generation thinks they're going to change the world. The truth is though, we only really get to make it change course by a small amount. If all these millenials cause bitcoin to grow and collapse (or grow and succeed), they'll cause some kind of 'course change'. What that'll be is up for debate though.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders. The corporation has actual assets.

The largest companies now have data, not tangible assets.

Re:Not that strange

[joelgrimes]

Yes, there are cases where the shareholders aren't wiped out. American Airlines. Even Enron - sort of.

Also, a company doesn't have to liquidate for non-voting shares to realize value. The Ma Bell breakup, for example. If something like that were to happen to Google, then owners of non-voting, non dividend-paying shares would get something out of the breakup.

The point being that those shares are not as vaporous as bitcoin.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you're not a chemist.

Re:Not that strange

[jbengt]

* But first off... the value of the share and the value of the company have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Untrue. The market may set a price that veers away from the "actual" value of the share, but the value of the share definitely has a lot to do with the value of the company.

* A stock is more of an "I Owe You" than a piece of a company. And what makes this IOU different is that the company doesn't owe you anything at all.

But the company does owe you a share of the company for the stock share you have. And the share is more than an IOU if the company has an ongoing history of paying dividends.

* The CEO of a company (see Meg Whitman) isn't responsible for making a company succeed. His/her job is to provide a return on investment to shareholders.

Sounds like you're contradicting the statement above. BTW, part of the responsibility to provide a return on investment is a responsibility to make the company and its' returns sustainable in the long run.

Re:Not that strange

[sls1j]

Well until there's a bug in the software that does it triggering a panic.

Re: Not that strange

[InvalidsYnc]

Or in the case of Bitcoin, nothing for something.

And your chicks for free?

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It is a publicly-driven ponzi scheme.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Barring that, you can just shove money in an index fund over the long term. ... Bitcoin screams "single point of failure".

Is there an index fund for crypto currency?

Heck, is there even one for regular currency?

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You are deluding yourself if you really believe that.
The "stock" market simply put is gambling. No one on the stock market gives a flying fuck about the company, ESPECIALLY its employees beholdin to that.

Just fuck off.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

if you really gave a fuck about a company, you'd buy their, you know, product.
Stocks are a crap shoot. Everyone "plays" the stock market for MONEY. No one plays it for love, peace and prosperity.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always a neglected stock whose price doesn't yet reflect the growth they've made in profitability and long term planning.

What is and isn't affordable is always based on the current asking price versus the company's financials. Always has been and always will be. The main thing that keeps changing is the tools available for evaluating those things.

Re: Not that strange

[kilfarsnar]

Or in the case of Bitcoin, nothing for something.

This mathematical calculation is worth $7500! And they say the value of fiat currency is based on nothing...

Re:Not that strange

[kilfarsnar]

How am I supposed to buy low in the stock market? The Federal Reserve will bail out the banks no matter what. That's the only reason the market has been scraping all-time highs for the past couple of years.

Stocks will never be affordable again, at least not until the dollar itself collapses. At which point we'll all have bigger problems than buying stocks.

If you had gone on a buying spree in 2008 you would have made quite a bit of money since then. You think the market will never go down again? Don't worry, we have not entered a time when the stock market goes up forever. Yes, the Fed will step in to bail out the banks and other large institutions. So, you invest with that in mind. If you are in the market when the Fed steps in, they bail you out too.

Re:Not that strange

[kilfarsnar]

BitCoin doesn't go down over the long haul. $1000 in BTC means $2000 in a few months, pretty much guaranteed.

If that's true, why would anyone ever sell a Bitcoin, other than immediate financial necessity? It seems one is encouraged to hold it forever, never actually realizing the on-paper gains.

Re:Not that strange

[kilfarsnar]

You say “outside of our control” well, in principle we are in a democratic Republic so it is within our control. On the other hand if a syndicate of major Bitcoin minors decide to abuse the blockchain to their advantage there is absolutely nothing to prevent them.

In practice money is controlled by a banking system that is beyond the reach of voters.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this really cool bridge I'm prepared to sell you...

Re:Not that strange

[tehcyder]

BitCoin doesn't go down over the long haul. $1000 in BTC means $2000 in a few months, pretty much guaranteed.

Yeah, nothing says "legit " like a promised rate of return of over 100%

Re:Not that strange

[NewWorldDan]

I don't believe I said anything about giving a fuck about any company. I don't. I'm looking for return on investment. Likewise, whoever I bought my stock from either wants a different investment or they are looking to get cash out. That's why it's called a market.

Now, when you go out and work your 9-5 job at some big corporation, you're not being payed 100% of the value of your labor. The corporation profits off your work. This is a suitable arrangement because they have resources that let you be more productive than you would be on your own, and it's less risky than being self employed. I buy stock in the corporation so that I can profit off your labor. I buy mostly index funds, which are an amalgamation of hundreds of different corporations to spread my risk around. When I walk around downtown, I smile at all the people I see, because I know that their hard work is actually putting money in my pocket. That's why stocks are awesome. The future belongs to whoever owns it.

Re:Not that strange

[david_thornley]

Money is worth what you can get for it. If I have Bitcoin, I can sell then for dollars, and there are places that will just take it as payment. Nobody's going to give me anything for five Thornleycoins, no matter how cool the blockchain implementation.

Re:Not that strange

[david_thornley]

The stock market is accessible. Buy a fund that you think is likely to do well, buy into other funds so you're diversified, and that's all you have to do.

I wouldn't try to make a quick buck in the market. It sounds to me the equivalent of cutting myself with razor blades before jumping into a shark tank. However, stocks will go up over time. Not regularly, and not every stock, and it may take some patience, but they will as a whole go up.

Re:Not that strange

[david_thornley]

Except for the part where people outside of our control can decide to print more fiat currency, and lowering the value of our savings accounts.

The money supply is considerably higher than the amount of currency, and the amount of currency and rate of inflation are done by adjusting the interest rates. There's no reason why Bitcoin couldn't be banked like regular dollars, and then the same would apply to it.

Re:Not that strange

[david_thornley]

not invested in their companies... because investing in the company requires issuing more shares.

Much of the value of stock is what someone else will pay for it. The primary (IPO) market is largely driven by what the investors think they might be able to get for the shares later on the secondary (exchange) market. It's true that, if I buy another hundred shares of, say, 3M, no money goes to 3M, but the person I bought it from is relying on people like me to buy it in the first place, and that works all the way back to the IPO.

Re:Not that strange

[david_thornley]

A lot of the terms you use would make no sense if the stock value was independent of the company value. People do hostile takeovers because they think that they can make the company more valuable. Insider trading is the illegal and unfair use of information about the company to predict what the stock will do - in other words, information about the company normally does affect the stock price in a more or less predictable manner. Overvalued? That suggests that the stock should have a particular value, which, it turns out, is based on the company.

If there was a disconnect, nobody would do a hostile takeover. Insider trading would not exist. You're looking at words that describe exceptions, and missing the fact that exceptions only exist where there is a rule.

Re:Not that strange

[thegarbz]

This. They see the stock market as being controlled by Wall Street; they can't get in on the game, so they turn towards another game that lets them do nothing while they imagine they're accruing value somehow.

Or maybe they see the forced investment scheme into the stock market as a source of endless growth for what it has been, a very slow forming bubble that is at risk when millions of baby boomers retire and start to extract money from their various investment funds.

It's because they're stupid.

Are you telling me there exists another generation where more than 2/3rds of the population make sound investment decisions? It's not because *they* are stupid. It's because *we* are stupid. As in a subset of humans are stupid.

Re:Not that strange

[thegarbz]

At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.

Ironically metals are one of the things that have dropped in value in the past few years.

But, whatever. Millennials can be as stupid as they want, it just means better returns for me. I've studied how rich people build and maintain their wealth, and I'm going to do that.

Firstly, it's a small subset of millennials, and I will wager that subset is just as large in every other generation.
Secondly, your view is reflected by every investor, ever.
Thirdly, rich people build wealth by investing in an idea of endless growth and hoping they die before the bubble pops. Only a subset of visionaries are able to bounce between ideas and investments to maintain the growth. All I can say is, good luck. You'll need it, it's actually how most rich people build wealth.

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Then people buy the stock the millisecond it goes down, bringing it back up.

Re:Not that strange

[Aighearach]

The common realworld scenario is simply selling the company. Liquidation sale is the easier type of selling to understand.

If you understand enough to know that liquidation isn't the normal case, I'd really expect you to comprehend the context and to be able to tell that no additional clarification is needed. It is like asking to have 2+2 explained; you're just pretending to be daft in order to be pigheaded.

Re:Not that strange

[Aighearach]

No. You do not want to clarify what I said, that's a lie.

You're actually trying to make your own point that isn't contained in mine, and doesn't follow at all. You're not even self-consistent; you mix and match and try to compare using terms like "shareholder" and "class C holders" which is like comparing rectangles and squares. And yet, your whole purpose seems to be an attempt to be pedantic!

You should have known you were off the rails by the fact that nothing you said affects the main thrust of my point, that shareholders have an ownership stake in something and that it has cash value. You're jumping to a bunch of wild conclusions about real-world liquidation scenarios, but I didn't present any of those. Those are situations where the company has negative value; go and liquidate a company with significant value, and yes you'll have to pay everybody. If bitcoin decides to liquidate, the only money is from selling the office equipment, and even if it was a lot of money nobody would be obligated to share it.

Re:Not that strange

[Aighearach]

LOL except that there is. I mean, I know, what you said can be looked up on the internet and it is a claim that is made. But it is an obvious lie. If it was actually decentralized everybody could "mine" (calculate) the same coins and there would be no way to have trust.

You can't have a fiat currency that isn't centralized, the best you can do is as here where you design it so that idiots can't tell the difference and will endlessly repeat the claim.

Re:Not that strange

[war4peace]

If it was actually decentralized everybody could "mine" (calculate) the same coins and there would be no way to have trust.

You really have no idea how the blockchain works, do you?

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy low and sell high.

So many people don't even grasp this correctly. I've talked to so many people who repeat the mantra "buy low, sell high", but when push comes to shove, they saw the stocks plummeting during the last recession and sold after those lost nearly 50%. Then when the stock market started to rebound, they bought the same stocks again after they were back up. Pretty much cut their savings in half.

In general, people have a lot of knowledge and virtually zero understanding. They're trying to hammer in a screw with the claw side."Looks at meh! I can uze hamar!"

Re:Not that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. Bonds are ownership of real corporations. Shares may be voting rights, but if the company actually goes belly-up, you'll likely get next to nothing from shares.

Re:Not that strange

[Bengie]

Nearly all of Gold's value comes from speculation, not intrinsic value. Depending on how pedantic you want to be, one could validly argue that nothing has intrinsic value. Nothing has any value beyond the value an observer thinks it has, which is the opposite of "intrinsic". "Intrinsic" means something is a universal truth.

I understand the usage of "Intrinsic" in this context, but it is not an appropriate word.

Re:Not that strange

[Aighearach]

You have some... no, on your chin... no, its still there...

You really have no idea how stuff works, do you?

Feel free to include a thought in your comment next time, if you manage one. I'll give you a hint: people smarter than you disagree about if the technical details of the blockchain means it is distributed, or if that is just blah-blah that distracts idiots from the fact that it is in fact centralized and controlled. So waving your hands because you know what one of the sides says about it? Yeah, doesn't make you smarty.

You didn't make any point. If I could train a monkey to read wikipedia, he'd come to the exact same conclusion, but he'd be equally unable to argue that he knows it to be actually true and understands the arguments of people who disagree.

Then I'm buying Stocks!

[bobbied]

Don't run with the herd if you want to make real money..

Re: Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize one-third is less than half, right? The summary implies 2/3 still prefer stocks. So investing in stocks is still whee the herd is going.

I will continue to invest in stocks because I feel they are less risky than Bitcoin.

Someone mentioned neither are grounded in reality, which is a complete misunderstanding of what a stock is. Bubbles do make stock prices less grounded in reality, however, when you own stock in a company, you own a part of that company. You get to vote for directors, etc. Obviously you need massive amounts of stock to have a noticable precense, but if enough idea think like you, you can all steer the company together.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[DivineKnight]

So you'd rather play 'The Hat,' would you? Hmmm.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Um... Running with the herd is a very effective way to make money.

You just have to stop running before most of the heard when you get near the cliff. :-)

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Never try to catch a falling knife.

Re: Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shush this is slashdot 2017. He will get mod points. You wont. Math be damned.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[fahrbot-bot]

Don't run with the herd if you want to make real money.

I get the no risk / no reward sentiment, but... animals that break away from their herds are often the ones killed and eaten first.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was assured millenials have no money, so whether they'd rather own stocks or bitcoin is irrelevant. The herd is living hand-to-mouth buying "experiences". So if you want to make real money, fleece them by selling experiences!

Re: Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you voted? Yeah right, you can't...

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

HAH!, Tell that to the man that sunk 5k in PMs over BTC. Dude, let me clue you in on some advice. The point ins't knowing when something is a scam; the point is KNOWING its a scam, playing the game, and GTFO before the bottom falls out. PROFIT baby!

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[bobbied]

And sometimes the herd is heading over a cliff where they all die... It's all in how you look at it.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[david_thornley]

Some of the directions from the herd lead to lots and lots of money. Others lead to bankruptcy. If you can tell the difference, go for it. Personally, I'm part of the herd. I have investments that I'm confident will appreciate over time (at least on a sufficiently long timescale). More importantly, I'm sure that, given diversification, I'm not going to get wiped out.

Re:Then I'm buying Stocks!

[david_thornley]

The Greater Fool theory of investment. I've always been a modest sort of guy, so I just lack faith that I'm not the greatest fool.

It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Millennials are no smarter than previous generations by chasing performance in investments. Most people have no clue and just invest in what is popular today. I remember just how many people were buying up tech stocks in 1999 and ate the loses. Pets.com anyone?

Re:It's clear

[bobbied]

Yet, they think they are smarter if you talk to them. I remember when I was dumb too, so I guess I cannot complain that much about the young skulls full of mush not listening to my sage advice born from the wisdom of experiences brought about by both success and failures. They will learn, the hard way, just like I did.

Fredrick Brooks was right, there is no silver bullet.

Investing in BitCoin? Yep, it's a big fat ugly bubble and folks will be slaughtered when it pops. Some will get rich, but only some, and at the expense of others but how can ANYTHING that has literally *nothing* to back it but the perception that it is worth something going to be a good investment in the long term? The Dot.Com bust was this, except, in some cases there actually was the POSSIBLITY of a profit for that stock, albeit a remote one. A BitCoin is only a collection of data bytes that some machines made up somewhere, and that's all it will ever be. That somebody is willing to trade you something of value for it is all that gives it value.

My advice? Speculate in BitCoin if you like, but don't treat it like an "investment" and absolutely DO NOT bet money on it you cannot afford to lose. And Remember, the folks who can play the BitCoin market faster or better will make all the money, so if you are serious about this, work out a way to be the guy that makes money, if not, stick to things with intrinsic value.

Now you may get off my lawn please...

Re:It's clear

[TsuruchiBrian]

Maybe gold is not worth anything and never was. It seems to have been an ok investment overall for most of recorded human history.

Sticking to investing only in things with intrinsic value shields you from one way in which your investment can fail. (e.g. Everyone deciding that beanie babies are not cool anymore), but there are plenty of ways that investments in intrinsically valuable things can go horribly wrong. Houses have lots of intrinsic value. People still got destroyed over house purchases.

I don't think bitcoin is a good investment now either. (or I would have invested).

There are no safe investments with good returns. Every investment is gamble somewhere on the risk/return spectrum.

Re:It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

stick to things with intrinsic value.

Like diamonds [very good at selling - you should try and see].

Re:It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Value investing is the only thing that works out consistently over the long term. If it doesn't work in a given time period, odds are good that none of the other methods of picking investments are working either.

Re:It's clear

[bobbied]

My point is that BitCoin has zero intrinsic value and owning one gives you nothing except the perceived market value. You own nothing but a pile of digital bytes. Gold, on the other hand, DOES have value, is something you can hold in your hand, is used for a lot of industrial processes AND has a perceived market value. Stocks have a "book value" where the holder of the share actually owns a part of the company and possibly gets a share of the profits.

My second point is that if you insist on trading in BitCoin, THINK about what you are doing. Understand the risks. And if you insist on trying this, try to make sure YOU are the one who's making money on market movements, not the other guy.

Re:It's clear

[Hognoxious]

DeBeers manipulate the market to push up the value. If something happens to them, it'll plummet.

Re:It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

The BitCoin on your harddrive is just as valuable as the few grams of gold you have in your hand.
Try to go to the industrial user and sell your few grams ... see how much you are going to get.

Re:It's clear

[ctilsie242]

Gold is one of those things that comes and goes in value. Both gold and silver have been flat over the past seven years, so you really would not make much, even "as a hedge for inflation". To boot, there isn't anything you can do with gold and silver, except admire the shininess. With a chunk of land, I can lease it out. With stocks, I can get dividends. Why buy something that only is worth anything when it is sold, when you can get something that pays out over time?

Re:It's clear

[Kielistic]

To boot, there isn't anything you can do with gold and silver, except admire the shininess.

Perhaps you should look up the properties of gold; it is extremely useful and fairly unique. Look here

Re:It's clear

[TsuruchiBrian]

Even when gold is only a hedge against inflation, it is a better investment than a savings account in a bank.

Again, I don;t personally invest in gold, but I can see why some people might.

With a chunk of land, I can lease it out.

Grandparents on both sides of my family have had their homes/land taken from them by either invading armies or their own government. My family members that lived through world war 2 have a bias for valuable things that are small enough to be taken with you if you need to leave behind everything else you own. One of those grandparents also experienced the kind of inflation where you need literally buckets of money to buy something.

With stocks, I can get dividends.

With some stocks you do get dividends. This is either a good or a bad investment depending on the size of those dividends relative to what you paid for the stock. If they are less than the interest you'd get from a savings account, and the stock price isn't going up, then it's probably better to have the savings account.

Why buy something that only is worth anything when it is sold, when you can get something that pays out over time?

It's this kind of thinking en masse that contributes to overvaluing real estate and the stock market, and causes those things to become poor investments as their prices rise relative to their return. The same thing is true for thinking "Why not invest in precious metals you can flee a war with?". In reality there are no easy answers for what a good investment is. Having biases the prevent you from considering every opportunity fairly is likely to prevent you from seeing the value in some good investments and choose some relatively bad ones.

Re:It's clear

[TsuruchiBrian]

My point is that BitCoin has zero intrinsic value and owning one gives you nothing except the perceived market value. You own nothing but a pile of digital bytes.

Not exactly true. You don't own the bytes either. The only thing you "own" is a private encryption key that makes you the only person in the world able to solve a really hard math problem.

Gold, on the other hand, DOES have value, is something you can hold in your hand, is used for a lot of industrial processes

Golds value is not from industrial processes. The price/value of gold would be nearly identical if it had no uses at all. In fact there are probably lots of things it is very useful for, but not used for, *because* it is gold and more valuable as an inert precious metal sitting in a vault.

Stocks have a "book value" where the holder of the share actually owns a part of the company and possibly gets a share of the profits.

I don't see why owning part of an instance of an abstract concept (i.e. a company) is inherently any better than owning a digital currency. One comes with rights upheld by a government, the other comes with rights upheld by nature/math. You also get a share of the profit if the value of bitcoin goes up. There is no difference there.

My second point is that if you insist on trading in BitCoin, THINK about what you are doing

I don't insist on trading in bitcoin. I own zero bitcoins.

Understand the risks.

You can lose *all* the money you invest in any currency if the value of that currency falls. In the case of bitcoin, you can also lose all your bitcoins if you forget your private encryption key. With physical currency you can have it physically stolen, etc. I'm well aware of the risks.

And if you insist on trying this, try to make sure YOU are the one who's making money on market movements, not the other guy.

I don't think you can insist on this. Investing is gambling. That's like telling someone in a casino to insist that he gets jackpots when playing the slot machines.

All investing is risky and I do not recommend investing in bitcoin. What I am saying is that it's not any worse than the other risky traditional investments that are out there.

In fact it being a digital currency (being made only of ones and zeroes) is not relevant. Only like 10% of US dollars exist as physical money. 90% of it is just digital. And the physical money is not any more real than the digital stuff, because paper isn't worth anything. It doesn't matter. It's all the same.

Re:It's clear

[bobbied]

There is a big difference between placing a bet and investing...

If you look at investments like you are placing bets, you will lose in the long run. Betting is speculating on chance, and speculation on chance is not a good investment strategy in the long term. The house always wins in the end when you are betting.

My advice is that you become the house and take advantage of the idiots who are betting. Be the Casino, not the guy betting his next paycheck on the next turn of the card. If you cannot be the Casino and win when others bet; DON'T bet, invest.

Re:It's clear

[TsuruchiBrian]

There is a big difference between placing a bet and investing...

I would say there is not.

If you look at investments like you are placing bets, you will lose in the long run. Betting is speculating on chance, and speculation on chance is not a good investment strategy in the long term. The house always wins in the end when you are betting.

It's all chance. Betting in a casino (i.e. gambling) is almost always a bad idea only because the games have all been carefully engineered to all but guarantee a negative expected return. There are a few rare but well known exceptions (e.g. the MIT blackjack team, etc).

Gambling on stocks, commodities, real estate, currencies, etc is still gambling in the sense that it is based on luck, it's just not gambling on a game that's been engineered specifically to make you lose. The things that actually matter are risk vs. ROI, and being a successful investor is about knowing what level of risk you can tolerate at any given time.

The difference that matters between investing in the stock market vs a casino is not that one is investing and one is gambling. They are booth gambling. The difference is that gambling in a casino comes with a negative ROI, and gambling in the stock market comes with a positive ROI.

Does investing in bitcoin come with a positive ROI? I don't think we have enough data to say that it does conclusively in the long term, but so far it's been very positive, albeit highly volatile.

Investing is just non-stupid gambling. Casino gambling is mathematically proven stupid gambling.

Re:It's clear

[bobbied]

If you think investing is no different than betting on games of chance, I feel for you. You obviously don't get what I'm saying and will have issues holding on to your "investments" because you are playing games. The wolves will have their way with you.

Good luck, I hope you win the lottery or what ever game you think you are playing.

As for BitCoin... It's a crap shoot, literally. This thing is driven by all the same market forces that made fidget spinners, pet rocks and PokimonGO popular. My recommendations on BitCoin are to stay out, or if you must, mine if the ROI is competitive. Being an Exchange operator isn't a bad deal either if you can charge enough fees. But buying BitCoin to hold, hoping it will be worth more later is literally worse than flipping coins and betting it will come up heads. The value of the currency has shot up recently to record levels, there is no reason to think this run up is sustainable because nobody is offering a reason for it.

Do YOU have an idea why BitCoin is so high?

Re:It's clear

[TsuruchiBrian]

If you think investing is no different than betting on games of chance, I feel for you. You obviously don't get what I'm saying and will have issues holding on to your "investments" because you are playing games.

I think I obviously do get what you are saying, and I am trying to explain to you why I think you are wrong. Thinking you are wrong is not the same as not understanding what you are saying.

Based on what you have said, I think you don't understand what I am saying.

The wolves will have their way with you. Good luck, I hope you win the lottery or what ever game you think you are playing.

I keep telling you that I am not investing in bitcoin or casino gambling, so I don't know why you keep assuming that I am.

As for BitCoin... It's a crap shoot, literally.

As I said, it's not literally a crapshoot, because craps is engineered to have a negative ROI by casinos, and the ROI of bitcoin is determined organically.

This thing is driven by all the same market forces that made fidget spinners, pet rocks and PokimonGO popular.

This statement makes me suspect that you don't actually know that much about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, or what makes them useful in general.

My recommendations on BitCoin are to stay out, or if you must, mine if the ROI is competitive.

That's everyone's recommendations on bitcoin mining. This is obvious to anyone who does 10 minutes of research.

Being an Exchange operator isn't a bad deal either if you can charge enough fees.

This is no different than just owning a normal business that charges fees for services.

But buying BitCoin to hold, hoping it will be worth more later is literally worse than flipping coins and betting it will come up heads.

The ROI of "flipping a coin" is basically 0. So you are claiming to know that the ROI of bitcoin at it's current price is less than 0. I don't think anybody knows the answer to this question. The risk is certainly too high for me to feel comfortable with it. Which is why in addition to not mining any, I also did not buy any to speculate.

The value of the currency has shot up recently to record levels, there is no reason to think this run up is sustainable because nobody is offering a reason for it.

I suspect you are not looking very hard.

Do YOU have an idea why BitCoin is so high?

Yes, kindof. While the popularity of bitcoin is based on the whims of society, the price of bitcoin is based on the cost of mining at the current level of difficulty. The price of bitcoin can not be much higher than the cost of mining, because people will just mine the currency rather than buying it. It works similar to gold. You aren't going to pay $2000 for an ounce of gold, if it can be mined it at a cost of $1000 an ounce. Long story short. The price is high because people have decided to mine enough bitcoin to *make* mining very expensive (mining gets harder as more bitcoins have been mined), driving up the price to what it is.

If everyone stopped mining, the price would gradually decrease as mining becomes cheaper due to computers becoming faster and cheaper (computational power becoming cheaper) over time.

Is this like how the price of fidget spinners is determined? In some sense yes. The price of fidget spinners is capped by the cost of producing them. You can't really get away with selling commodity fidget spinners at $10,000 a piece if the cost to make a fidget spinner is $1. The market will not bear it. The cost of producing a bitcoin is reflected in it's current price.

And no the rate of increase is not sustainable. That doesn't mean it is not a good investment. It just means that it can no longer be the amazing investment it was up until now.

I can explain wh

Of Course They Have Neither...

[Anonymous Coward]

$1000 worth of stock nor of Bitcoin.

But nice of you to ask them.

And this...

[Type44Q]

And this is how the unknowing are separated from their wealth. Buy high, sell low, boys.

Re:And this...

[sheramil]

Buy high, sell low, boys.

It worked for Tony Montana!

Oh, wait a minute. It didn't work. He died in a hail of bullets. But he was as high as a kite when it happened.

Re:And this...

[McGruber]

And this is how the unknowing are separated from their wealth. Buy high, sell low, boys.

Note the source of the survey... from the article:

A survey by venture capital firm Blockchain Capital found that about 30 percent of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin than $1,000 of government bonds or stocks. The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 percent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin, compared with 15 percent among those ages 65 and up.

The true suckers are going to be those buying Bitcoin polling sponsored by mainstream media (CNN and/or FoxNews) finds 30% of people would rather have bitcoin than bonds or stocks.

Re:And this...

[Applehu Akbar]

The upcoming bitcoin kilonova may restimulate interest in investing in the real economy.

Re: And this...

[Type44Q]

+1

Re:And this...

[Solandri]

Bitcoin appears particularly attractive because it hasn't (permanently) gone down yet. Every bubble has hordes of supporters and investors who are convinced their favored investment is "special" and can't go down. And it always does. Unfortunately the losers are one last ones left holding the bag, not always the people hyping up that particular investment.

In my time, I've seen this happen with gold (1970s/1980s), the tech bubble (1990s), the housing bubble (2000s), and oil (2010s). A lot of people fleeing the housing bubble collapse seemed to dump their money into oil since it had gone up to $100/bbl and showed no signs of stopping.

If you're investing in something because it's continued to climb and you're convinced it can't go down, you're simply wrong. It can, and it will. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Bitcoin is a bit more insulated because it's designed to become harder to acquire over time (which coincidentally enriches early adopters), so the supply constriction enhances an increase in value (e.g. imagine what would've happened to home prices if the more people bought homes, the fewer homes builders were allowed to build). So its crash won't happen until enough people realize how stupid a trait that is for "currency" or something with no intrinsic value.

Re:And this...

[religionofpeas]

In my time, I've seen this happen with gold (1970s/1980s)

Would you say current gold owners are "holding the bag" ?

Re: And this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation adjusted price is still significantly lower than peak from around 40 years ago. I would say that's a pretty resounding yes.

Re:And this...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that was buying while high and selling to the low.

Re: And this...

[religionofpeas]

Inflation adjusted price is still significantly lower than peak from around 40 years ago. I would say that's a pretty resounding yes.

That's only true for a rather narrow peak in the year 1980, right at the end of the bull run. Most current gold owners did not buy their gold right in that peak. Most of the gold was already owned before that, and people just rode the waves.

Re:And this...

[tlhIngan]

If you're investing in something because it's continued to climb and you're convinced it can't go down, you're simply wrong. It can, and it will. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Bitcoin is a bit more insulated because it's designed to become harder to acquire over time (which coincidentally enriches early adopters), so the supply constriction enhances an increase in value (e.g. imagine what would've happened to home prices if the more people bought homes, the fewer homes builders were allowed to build). So its crash won't happen until enough people realize how stupid a trait that is for "currency" or something with no intrinsic value.

No, it will happen like all bubbles do - it pops when people start cashing out. It's worse with Bitcoin because its very low transaction rate means it can be extra volatile.

Even more volatile will be the exchanges - if someone were to convert more than a few bitcoins, will exchanges have the liquidity to perform the exchange? If you have say, 100 bitcoin and it reaches $10,000/BTC, you're looking at a million bucks. Will the exchange you use have the liquidity to cash it?

This could easily lead to a run as people trying to cash out run into exchanges unable to cash out - they simply run out of cash.

That's the likely scenario that will crash it - someone starts selling, exchanges stop being able to exchange and everyone is locked into bitcoins because there is no liquidity to convert it. The exchange rate falls sharply because exchanges with money will realize they will run out of it fast as the thunderous crowd of people trying to cash out come knocking.

Re:And this...

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you're investing in something because it's continued to climb and you're convinced it can't go down, you're simply wrong.

This is the most important lesson people need to learn. There is no free lunch - the idea that bitcoin will pay huge returns and have no downside is a honeypot for ignorant investors.

Re: And this...

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:And this...

[burtosis]

Whatever you're talking about, don't mention phase II where after deliberately starting the run and forcing a crash, you sweep in and "bail out" investors at pennies a coin. Phase III - blow the bubble again.

Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

People prefer returns on investments.

Tomorrow we'll investigate if the sky is blue.

Re:Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Tomorrow we'll investigate if the sky is blue.

Some of us live on Mars, you insensitive clod!

Re: Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Apologies I'll attempt to be more inclusive in future.

Re: Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us live in the past, you insensitive clod!

Re: Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us don't live you insensitive clod!

Re: Breaking news

[Megol]

The (silent) majority don't.

This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[sandbagger]

BitCoin are unregulated investment instruments. They can't keep climbing indefinitely and some people will lose their shirts.

Not you of course. No, you're special.

The most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different' and no, no it's not different. Investments are regulated so that people are protected from the Bernie Madoffs of the world and it's necessary to do so.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[un1nsp1red]

Investments are regulated so that people are protected from the Bernie Madoffs of the world and it's necessary to do so.

So, you're using a real-world example of some shit that actually recently happened to say that "investments are regulated" so said thing can't happen? I think I'm lost.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[ClickOnThis]

Investments are regulated so that people are protected from the Bernie Madoffs of the world and it's necessary to do so.

So, you're using a real-world example of some shit that actually recently happened to say that "investments are regulated" so said thing can't happen? I think I'm lost.

Bernie Madoff went to jail for what he did, and he'll probably die there.

Regulations may not prevent shit from happening. But when you have regulations, you can make shit happen to people who violate them. Thus providing an incentive to the would-be Madoffs of the finance world to behave themselves.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[SlaveToTheGrind]

BitCoin are unregulated investment instruments. They can't keep climbing indefinitely and some people will lose their shirts.

Wow, now that you mention it, I've never heard of a single regulated investment instrument where anything like that happened.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[jedidiah]

Bernie Madoff engaged in the classic con. For a con to work, you need a greedy mark. Every one of his victims thought they could get something for nothing. They thought they could get unrealistic returns.

This sounds a lot like Bitcoin really.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[TsuruchiBrian]

They can keep climbing in definitely... I guess the heat death of the universe will eventually put a stop to ... everything, but before that, there is no reason the value of bitcoin can't keep going up. I don't think it can keep going up at the rate it's at, but even if it just plateaus no one need lose their shirt.

If it were true that nothing can keep going up in value indefinitely, then gold would have become worthless by now.

As long as there is limited supply of something, and no cap on the amount of potential demand, then there is no cap to the price of that thing.

Wait? People were protected from the Bernie Madoffs of the world?! I can think of at least one Bernie Madoff in particular people weren't protected from.

Re: This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold doesn't require the energy output of a small country to maintain it. It's not possible to plateau unless it can deliver value consistently above this maintenance cost, which I very much doubt it can do. Not when competing coins can do it cheaper.

Re: This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[religionofpeas]

Gold doesn't require the energy output of a small country to maintain it. It's not possible to plateau unless it can deliver value consistently above this maintenance cost, which I very much doubt it can do. Not when competing coins can do it cheaper.

The value of cryptocurrencies depends on the security. If you make it cheaper to maintain it, it will also be cheaper to attack it.

With the growth of solar and wind, there will be plenty of cheap surplus energy, so I'm not worried about the "waste".

Re: This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's plenty of cheap power, it's cheap to attack. Requiring difficulty to scale up accordingly. We can surely come up with something better, that has waste built into its dna.

Re: This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[Megol]

Gold doesn't require the energy output of a small country to maintain it. It's not possible to plateau unless it can deliver value consistently above this maintenance cost, which I very much doubt it can do. Not when competing coins can do it cheaper.

The value of cryptocurrencies depends on the security. If you make it cheaper to maintain it, it will also be cheaper to attack it.

So you are saying that bitcoin gains its security from obscurity?
You are wrong BTW. Security and computing power requirements aren't related.

With the growth of solar and wind, there will be plenty of cheap surplus energy, so I'm not worried about the "waste".

Yes because they are magically extracted from the ether. Even ignoring the production costs the use of that energy isn't free and will essentially waste resources that could be used for something useful instead.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[thegarbz]

They can't keep climbing indefinitely and some people will lose their shirts.

Wait you can't be implying ...

Investments are regulated so that people are protected from the Bernie Madoffs of the world

Bahahahahahahahahahahha ahahhahahaha ha ha ha hahahahhahaha. I needed the good belly laugh.

Re: This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[petermgreen]

You are wrong BTW. Security and computing power requirements aren't related.

The fundamental problem is if you have two versions of history how do you tell which is the correct version and which is the version manipulated by an attacker without trusting anyone.

The bitcoin solution is to choose the version of history that has more computing power behind it. So more computing power behind the legitimate history means it is harder for an attacker to get a false history accepted.

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[michael_wojcik]

Every one of his victims thought they could get something for nothing. They thought they could get unrealistic returns.

My impression is that many of his victims had no idea what they were doing; they were just people with money to burn who were told by their acquaintances to "invest with this guy". Sure, a lot - perhaps most - of Madoff's investors thought they would make unrealistic returns (and no doubt some did; that's what happens with a Ponzi scheme), but I think that in many cases it was simply a matter of following the crowd. People jump on fads.

The same was certainly true of the original Ponzi scheme. Some historians think even Ponzi himself didn't realize it was a scam - his bookkeeping was apparently terrible to the point of nonexistent, and he just had piles of cash that he'd dip into when an investor wanted to cash out. (Which makes it a rather odd sort of scam, though since Ponzi quickly attracted "advisors" who most certainly did know what was going on, it could hardly be considered an accident.)

Re:This is the hard way to learn why we regulate

[ClickOnThis]

So, you're blaming Madoff's victims?

Madoff engaged in fraud. That is distinct from the instruments he used to commit the fraud.

Bitcoin is not a con. It is a nascent crypto-currency that has been subject to wild over-speculation.

Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[rsilvergun]

I'd thought the money was in trading them, not owning them. There's a book called "Where are the Customer's Yachts" that talks about all this.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Strider-]

Tech stocks? Sure, but there are actually a lot of traditional stocks that actually pay dividends. Banks, and the traditional industrial set come to mind. They're not sexy, but they are one of the reasons why Warren Buffet is as wealthy as he is.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I make about 10k a year off owning stocks. No trading needed.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the average person, passive stock investing is better than active.

If you'd bought any Canadian bank stock 20 years ago and done nothing but reinvest the dividends in the same stock, you'd have beat Warren Buffet for the 20 year period.

All these stupid books do nothing but make money for the sleazeball authors. If the strategy worked they'd use it rather than tell everyone about it.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[ClickOnThis]

I'd thought the money was in trading them, not owning them. There's a book called "Where are the Customer's Yachts" that talks about all this.

Investing in the stock market is, if nothing else, a hedge against inflation. Historically, the stock market has outperformed the inflation rate by a significant margin. That's not to say other investments aren't good (like bonds, real estate, etc.)

You may not get stinking rich by investing in the stock market, but with careful planning, you can get a return that helps you to buy other things that matter, such as a home, an education, the odd vacation, a comfortable retirement, and so on.

And yes, if you want a yacht, investing can help you get one. Maybe just a small one, though.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin seems to have so many problems technical as well as legal that I really don't see how it can last for long. However it seems to be high at the present.

I know a guy who told me that he was a millionaire in 2003 before the bubble popped, we will have a few bitcoin has beans later too. Bitcoin keeps going up not because of utility but because of speculation and because it is new and exciting and has gone from 0 to hero it looks good but in the end the punters dry up and then some boy calls out "the emperors wearing no clothes" and everybody laughs.

The utility of bitcoin is you can send bit coin to anyone anywhere for high transaction fees at a slow rate
Kind of useless for real time payments (and too expensive per transaction) and if you send someone some bitcoin what will they do with it? oh trade it for cash somehow so kind of useless. I have zero practical use for bitcoin and I am sure some small niche does but it is hard to see the value.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[swillden]

I'd thought the money was in trading them, not owning them. There's a book called "Where are the Customer's Yachts" that talks about all this.

Active traders who get lucky make big money. Those who don't lose big money. For the typical investor it's better to buy a diverse basket, anchored by blue chips, and just accept the 10-12% average annual return -- with occasional periods of much better results and occasional periods of much worse results.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[jpaine619]

Worthless?

If you want to do a hostile takeover of a company, what's one way you can do it? Yep... buy 50.00001% of the voting stock...... Or regular stock if they haven't been split into voting vs non-voting. You now control the whole company...

As you can see, stocks are hardly worthless.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[jpaine619]

Back in the day (and maybe still today) there were guys who would research the shit out of companies and if they found the stock price versus the value of all of the company's assets were out of sync (stock price was too low), they would buy up 50.1% of the company (via stock), force a sale, and then liquidate the whole company. Whatever they made from the sale minus the cost of the stock was the profit.

My memory may not be accurate on what the procedure was called, but I seem to remember the guys were generally called Corporate Raiders.

Didn't matter if the company was profitable, or in good long term shape, it was a way to make a quick buck and there were people who did it.. Fucked a whole lot of folks out of good jobs once the company was liquidated......

Re: Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh that Gecko fella from Wall Street?

Re: Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait and also you will understand. Give it a few more years. Most people fail to understand money, Bitcoin is even more advanced concept.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[tommeke100]

Same with Junk Bonds. Many are just groupings of loans to big companies and have survived 2 crashes. They pay monthly dividends as well. If hedged correctly over different industries they are relatively safe. But of course they can also default (but so can every company).

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[Whorhay]

I agree except that the historical average has been more like 7% rather than 10-12%. Though obviously in shorter periods the averages have been both higher and lower. One of the criticisms of Dave Ramsey is that he touts the 10-12% number as gospel and while the strategy is still correct people will expect to do a lot better than reality might dictate. While it might not seem like a major difference, over the long term it really adds up.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[swillden]

I agree except that the historical average has been more like 7% rather than 10-12%.

The Dow Jones average since 1900 has been 10%. The S&P 500 average since its inception in 1923 is 12%. Certainly, if you're making plans for retirement, etc., you should choose a more conservative number just to be safe, and because as you approach retirement you'll want to shift to less aggressive investments with lower rates of return. Personally, I assume 5% after inflation.

Re:Isn't owning stocks basically worthless?

[david_thornley]

Owning is a fairly safe way to make reasonable profit on your investment. You're extremely unlikely to get rich that way, but if you diversify and are willing to be patient during value dips you're extremely unlikely to lose significantly.

Trading stocks is a much higher-risk higher-gain practice. The big money is in trading them. Of course, the big money comes from lots of little investments, and unless there's a good reason why you should be receiving big money rather than losing the money so someone else can win big, it's not a sure thing. Invest some of your life savings in stock ownership. Don't spend more than you can afford to lose in day trading.

here's a better question...

[jm007]

which weighs more.... a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?

Re:here's a better question...

[Kenja]

Well the pound is weak right now due to brexit, but I think you could buy more grams of lead for a pound than you could feathers.

Re:here's a better question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Feathers from an African or a European swallow?

Re:here's a better question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't.....Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

Re: here's a better question...

[calicuse]

This. One of the best games ever.

Re:here's a better question...

[jpaine619]

I'll do you one better.. What weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of lead?

If you said they are the same, you are wrong.

Hint: Go look up the Troy vs Avoirdupois systems of weight.

Re:here's a better question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, c'mon. Ambiguity of units is no way to appear clever. That's no different than saying, "Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? Ha! You're wrong! I was referring to the English pound and the amount of feathers and lead you can buy with that!"

The whole purpose of units is to make it clear what you're talking about and enable comparisons.

Blockchain Capital? Like, whatever!

[Hognoxious]

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting where they
came up with that name.

But I've, like, watched a few episodes of W1A or something and I suspect it's totally a close substitute.

Buy and hold stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Best long term investment is also simple.
Buy at regular intervals (each pay period) the same dollar amount of S&P 500 index fund. Hold for many years. You can't lose, historically.

Re: Buy and hold stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's idiotic.

Why do you want to pay an MER+Trailing commission of over 1%? On a $100k portfolio you're pissing over $1,000 per year into the toilet. ETFs are almost as bad

Buy at regular intervals the top 5-10 stocks in the S&P 500 directly (and alternate stocks each purchase so you're only buying 1 or 2 at a time to keep commissions down).

Re: Buy and hold stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your own numbers straight, dumbass.

Buying stocks directly isn't free either. There is a fee per trade.

Your mutual fund/ETF fees are wack, too. Mutual fund yearly maintenace fee (with no purchase fee) at Vanguard for Admiral class shares is a paltry 0.04%

Too young to know

[manu0601]

Perhaps millennials are too young to remember what a bubble is?

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps your an old fart who doesn't understand where the future is headed.

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha... We've got a ringer here, everyone!

Re:Too young to know

[Applehu Akbar]

perhaps your an old fart who doesn't understand where the future is headed.

Old fart who understands both weighing in here.

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

and... you broke the scales!

Re:Too young to know

[Srin Tuar]

Slashdot is for retired has-been technies who dont want anything to change.

What they are missing; the thing they dont want to learn is that there is a technological shift happening that is going to change their world. Slashdot has been pooh-pooh ing bitcoin since with was under a dollar, and they will continue to do so as bitcoin or somthing like is assimilates the whole world around them.

I only read bitcoin threads on slashdot to laugh at them. Theyll be even saltier the next 10x price hike.

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah, you youngins with all your smarts...make us oldies feel so stupid.
I'm waiting for bitcoin to hit $1 trillion before I enter the market. Should only be a few years at the current rate. That will happen...right???

Re:Too young to know

[Megol]

Most would remember the dot-com bubble at least.

Using the definition of millennials as those born 1981-1997, the end of the bubble as 2001 and assuming a level birth-rate and sufficient understanding of the world to remember the bubble at 10 years:

Percentage of millennials remembering the bubble = percentage of millennials being 10 or older in 2001 = percentage being born in or before 1991

= (1991-1981)/(1997-1981) = 10/16 = 0.625

62.5 % should remember at least one bubble. Given the above assumptions hold of course - but those should be reasonable for this level of discussion.

62.5% > 50% QED ;p

Re:Too young to know

[manu0601]

perhaps your an old fart who doesn't understand where the future is headed.

I am not sure there is a nice future for people who invest on a single thing.

Re: Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

When ones entire life is spent inside a bubble itâ(TM)s impossible to see the bubble.

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what universities are teaching now? That you are special and smarter than everyone else? You wasted your money, dude.

Re:Too young to know

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an N class sitting in my home to play with!

Transfer those pesky stocks to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I will take them off of your hands, gladly.

Nearly the majority

[Anonymous Coward]

of millennials have absolutely no idea of how economics actually work.

Re:Nearly the majority

[hambone142]

Very accurate. They are just familiar with the name and are enamored with it.

I'd also suspect these people have zero interest in saving for retirement.

Financial reality

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true. I have worked in finance for years. Virtually no one is prepared for what they think will be retirement. Maybe 5% of them are actually prepared. The rest are depending on completely unrealistic and borderline delusional expectations. This is not just Millennials; it includes many Boomers and many, many Xers, but it will keep getting worse.

Social Security and Medicare are mathematically insolvent. Anyone who says otherwise does not understand how numbers work. They will end in disaster. Do NOT depend on those programs sticking around.

Stop taking out student loans to study music, art, English literature, Aborginial studies or virtually anything else in humanities or fine arts. If you want to study those things, buy books; do not take out hundreds of thousands of dollars you will never be able to pay back. Do not listen to these talking heads telling you that everyone has to go to college; it is a lie. Most people should not go to college unless they actually have to or specifically want to become a scholar. Employers do not care about 90% of these worthless degrees, and a new economy is dawning.

Learn skills. Educate yourself. Learn how to make money on your own. Avoid debt when possible. Do not commit to large purchases like homes and cars that you need to heavily finance.

Save, start a business, learn a trade, network, and learn to be income self-reliant. That is how you can survive the financial train wreck that is coming.

Re: Financial reality

[Anonymous Coward]

The end is near! The end of the world is upon us! No, really, this time, it's really going to happen! I SWEAR!

Re:Financial reality

[jbengt]

Medicare solvency depends in large part on healthcare costs being under control, so I'll give you that it might become insolvent. But Social Security itself is not mathematically insolvent now, and its' future solvency issues can be easily addressed with upward adjustment of the top income cutoff, modest reductions in benefits, slight increases in retirement ages, or a combination. The real issue is that the US Treasury owes money to the Social Security trust fund, which it might or might not pay back.

Re:Financial reality

[david_thornley]

Actually, more jobs appear to require a degree than should, so getting a degree is valuable. Getting one in a STEM field is more valuable than in humanities, but humanities degrees are valuable.

Evaluate your potential debt. Making a large purchase and paying it off over time can be the way to go. Typically, you never want to pay interest on your credit card, but beyond that there's not may good generalizations.

Millennial investment plan

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Buy Bitcoin
2. Get gender reassignment surgery
3. ???
4. Profit!

IANAB

[Zeromous]

Do it right. Invest in blockchain companies and their technologies. Not currency.

Re:IANAB

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin doesn't need companies and companies still try to think of something where a blockchain is more useful than a database for a company. Unless you want to invest in companies without a working businessplan, I would (and did) invest in the currency instead.
Banks are "interested" in blockchains because it competes with there database, but replacing there database with a blockchain has only one advantage: that they can dissolve there company without affecting there customers, which doesn't sound attractive for the bank.

Re:IANAB

[Zeromous]

A shared completely secure database between companies. This is gamechanging and how I know you don't know jack as a skeptic.

Yea, 33 here, got shares in my company & Bitco

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust stocks or employers and I've been investing in my own businesses since I was a youngster. If your not in control your at risk.

Every business has risk though and it tends to be the bigger the risk you take the greater the potential reward. When you don't surrender control to others (ie like starting a business and investing in that business, etc) you are gaining an opportunity to evaluate risk and make decisions about your future for yourself. It's up to you decide how much risk you want to take and this is key to success. If you don't want to take any risks then expect to end up impoverished. This is the danger of letting government steal our wealth and force less risk on the population. It hinders the potential and growth of the people's finances.

Bitcoin is risky- but I've also been hugely rewarded for whatever risk I've been willing to take with it. I lost some at certain points, but I've gained a heck of a lot more than I've lost. At the biggest drop I lost about $200. I've been rewarded with 10s of thousands of dollars of Bitcoin in profits however.

I didn't freak out when Bitcoin 'crashed'. I understand that's just how this thing works. The masses are stupid and don't get that you should not pull out at a low point. If you prepared yourself for a downturn then you'll not need to pull out and pushing through the lows is the way to go. Credit cards took 40 years to become widespread. Comparatively Bitcoin has done remarkably well in spite of the critics.

The government needs to stay out and let people take whatever risks they so choose with the cavet that *yes- you could lose money*.

I don't "invest" in Bitcoin like most people (I don't buy Bitcoin generally, I only accept it as payment), but I have taken advantage of it to profit from a trade stand point for about six years now. My business has profited greatly. We've increased profit margins by as much as 26 times simply by taking Bitcoin and spending it. High cost low margin products for instance it's helped out greatly on for instance. That doesn't include the increase in value while those Bitcoin have been held. Credit cards have a 3% cost. Bitcoin 0%. With a low margin high investment cost product that retails for $700-3000 you can literally double your profit margins with this 3% savings alone. I'll reserve my secrets for turning that doubling of profits to 26 folds, but basically I get significant discounts from upstream for paying with Bitcoin because I'm taking advantage of liquidity in the markets.

Diversification between safer gambles and more risky gambles can help safeguard ones assets. The smartest thing I did out of college was stop listening to other people. Parents, colleges/school, etc. I turned down a great job offer to start a business and instead took a part time job paying close to minimum wage (well significantly less than I was worth) explicitly because it was a better investment to focus on starting a business than it was to make more money from the onset than it was to surrender those funds.

Yea- so I make six figures today and I started my business in 2008 during the down turn in the economy. My assets are far greater than near anybody I know and I'm only 33. I am one of the wealthiest people in my neck of the woods in New Hampshire (I do have a few friends who have also done equally as well). And yea- I even pay 100% of my taxes owed. Sometimes that is the cost of doing business even if I'm doing better than most because of stupid laws that deprive the majority of there wealth which then makes them dependent on government.

If don't believe in use of violence outside of self defence (ie like to achieve social and political goals, ie taxes are a form of theft, drivers licenses require use of violence, etc) check out:

http://www.freestateproject.org/
http://www.freekeene.com/
https://forum.shiresociety.com/

$1000 is play money

[Anonymous Coward]

They're making a high risk bet with money they would be willing to lose. Ask them how they would invest their life savingsSORRYICANTKEEPASTRAIGHTFACE...life savings...LOL

Re:$1000 is play money

[Cryacin]

"Life savings?" $50 is less than $1000 bucks mate.

Damned If You Do Damned If You Don't

[FrodoOfTheShire]

If you invest in Bitcoin you run the risk of having your money stolen illegally. If you invest in Stocks you run the risk of having your money stolen legally. I no longer invest in stocks because every time I purchase or sell stocks, a good percentage of my money gets syphoned off. And I would not invest in BitCoin either because it is a bubble economy and too prone to theft.

Re:Damned If You Do Damned If You Don't

[DontBeAMoran]

How is Bitcoin "prone to theft"? Don't leave your coins on any exchange, don't use an online wallet, don't tell your secret key to anyone.

It's not that hard.

Re:Damned If You Do Damned If You Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Bitcoin "prone to theft"? Don't leave your coins on any exchange, don't use an online wallet, don't tell your secret key to anyone.

It's not that hard.

You're saying bitcoin isn't that hard, after all those points you just made?

Ok, if it isn't that hard, then I dare you to explain bitcoin to your Mom.

Re:Damned If You Do Damned If You Don't

[DontBeAMoran]

Would you leave your money at a currency exchange counter? No. Those guys could be gone next week.
Would you leave your money on the street? No. Someone would pick it up and run away.
Would you tell strangers your bank account password? No. They would hack into your bank account.

There, simple.

It's too late now

[Neo-Rio-101]

It's too late to jump in the bitcoin market now. The run is nearly over and everyone and their dog are now jumping in - which is a pretty good sign that a drop in price is imminent.
The suckers are lining up and the people with all the amassed bitcoin will likely sell it off to the suckers at the top of the market.
Then the price will fall out of the bottom as demand is saturated.

Economics has everything to do with value and what people are willing to pay, and especially in the case of currency trading, which prices the orders and money sits at and NOTHING ELSE. Sure, news may influence people's positions, but at the end of the day - money talks and BS walks.

You never try to chase after a quickly falling or rising price by jumping in the market going in the same direction.
Where people see a dropping market, you have to be thinking as a buyer.
You buy at the low prices and sell at the high prices, and never EVER the other way around.

As the bitcoin price goes up, those holding bitcoins will be thinking of selling and taking profits.

Re:It's too late now

[religionofpeas]

The run is nearly over and everyone and their dog are now jumping in

Most posts on this topic right here are negative (as they've been for years), and they get moderated as insightful. Doesn't seem like everybody is jumping in right now.

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not too late grandpa. It's going to at least 2x within a year.

Re:It's too late now

[ayesnymous]

There will surely be a huge drop, maybe 50% or more, once the CME approves Bitcoin futures later this or next month. All the sheep will be jumping in at that point, and the rug will get pulled out from under them.

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too late to jump in the bitcoin market now. The run is nearly over and everyone and their dog are now jumping in

I haven't invested in Bitcoin, I didn't when they were a few dollars a piece and have since. The whole way through that process I've avoided it because I didn't see the risk as worth the payoff. I still don't. However there's no way of knowing whether now is the time BitCoin will crash, or whether it will increase another order of magnitude or more first. If you're so sure that Bitcoin is on the edge of the abyss then I'll bet there's a futures market out there you could use to make a killing...

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

Then sell your computer and invest it in bitcoin. We get the bonus of not having to read your tripe in every one of these threads.

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

I only know one person who made money on cryptocurrency and he cashed out at least 3 years ago. Ponzi schemes only benefit those who are in and out early.

As an aside, where are these idiot millenials that keep saying this sort of stuff and how are they getting polled in the first place?

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

This was said in 2013, and 2014. We have been hearing about BTC crashing for years now, but it only still keeps climbing in value. We also heard the same thing about Apple crashing, but Apple stockholders are still laughing their way to the bank, especially when Apple's stock gets their yearly bump from stellar iPhone sales.

This isn't a bubble. This is growth.

Re:It's too late now

[david_thornley]

Sure, sure. And the turkey got fed in June, and in July and August, and October and early November, so the food just keeps coming.

Apple, by the way, makes stuff that people buy. It owns stuff. Some people think Apple will sell less stuff or at lower prices, and that hasn't happened. It will sometime.

Re:It's too late now

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when you posted this 3 years ago.

At what point do you stop saying "it's too late"? Or are you just taking that one to the grave?

Causality

[chrisvdb]

> The digital asset has soared more than 600 percent this year, compared with gains of 15 percent for the S&P 500 Index -- which might explain millennials' attraction.

I wonder about the causality in this sentence...

In other news

[Registered Coward v2]

1/3 of millennials don't understand risk, volatility or liquidity.

Re:In other news

[tommeke100]

1/3 of millennials don't have 1,000$ to invest.
Also, with 1,000$ you can take a gamble. Would you invest 100,000$ in bitcoins if that was all the money you had to invest?

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

More like only 1/3 of millenials understand understand risk, volatility or liquidity.

Bitcoin is liquid. Stocks or government bonds require someone to sell it on your behalf who will charge a commission.

Bitcoin is less risky than stocks, and no more risky than cash. It, like dollars, is a fiat currency, it's just that it's diffferently-fiated than a government-fiated currency. Bitcoin has no inherent value- its value is derived from the relationship between supply and demand, exactly like dollars, yen, etc.

Whether bitcoin is overly volatile is an open question, but I'm sure even its appreciation against the dollar over the last year has many, many counterparts in historical FOREX markets. Sure, the dollar doesn't move that much against the euro, but what about the baht against the naira?

Re:In other news

[thegarbz]

1/3 of millennials don't understand risk, volatility or liquidity.

1/3rd of the entire frigging population does that. The article is disingenuous blaming it on millennials. This isn't generational, it's based on experience.

When your busboy starts tipping stocks, get out

[Anonymous Coward]

""Taxi drivers told you what to buy. The shoeshine boy could give you a summary of the day's financial news as he worked with rag and polish. An old beggar who regularly patrolled the street in front of my office now gave me tips and, I suppose, spent the money I and others gave him in the market. My cook had a brokerage account and followed the ticker closely. Her paper profits were quickly blown away in the gale of 1929."

Investing EULA

[geekmux]

"The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 percent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin..."

2,000 people didn't read anything and just clicked "I Agree".

Yup, there it is, on page 37 of the Investing 101 EULA...the definition of volatility...

Tautology

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people want Bitcoins? Because the value goes up.
Why does the value go up? Because people want Bitcoins.

It will keep working until there is an external influence on the people who cause them to thing they aren't going to go up anymore, and thus not want Bitcoins anymore. So, if everyone agrees to just chant positive things about Bitcoins, the value can go up forever!

Millennials

[PopeRatzo]

A third of millennials would rather own bitcoin than stocks.

Forty-three percent of millennials prefer socialism to capitalism.

Discuss.

https://thefederalist.com/2017...

https://legalinsurrection.com/...

Re:Millennials

[jedidiah]

Pretty much. I could throw $1000 into the fire pit right now. I would end up sleeping on the couch for the next year, but it's entirely doable for me.

Re:Millennials

[PopeRatzo]

Millenials are, upon the whole, the worst fucking generation ever birthed by mankind.

I would argue that the Millennials are the finest generation to come along in my lifetime. They're certainly better as a whole than my generation.

I find millennials to generally have good moral compasses, compassion, great work ethic and the courage of their convictions. I think that's why they seem so universally hated by other age cohorts.

Re:Millennials

[Dragonslicer]

Millenials are, upon the whole, the worst fucking generation ever birthed by mankind.

What does that say about the generation that raised them?

Re:Millennials

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. After all, the alt-right is a Millennial creation.

Re:Millennials

[PopeRatzo]

I agree. After all, the alt-right is a Millennial creation.

The alt-right is an infinitesimal minority. They're the vanguard with all the old racists behind them. Look at how many people show up to these alt-right rallies. Usually in the dozens, if that. They've got Bannon (old) and Mercer (old) behind them, but they don't even have the numbers to muster a baseball roster. Wherever they go, millennials who are opposed to them vastly outnumber them.

Re:Millennials

[Anonymous Coward]

The alt-right is an infinitesimal minority.

Wherever they go, millennials who are opposed to them vastly outnumber them.

That kinda ruins your notion that millenials are great now, doesn't it?

If the alt-right is an infinitesimal minority, there's no need to follow them around and confront. Best to ignore them like you would ignore that crazy preacher on the street corner with the "The End is Near" sign.

Alas, millenials in droves thought it was somehow a good idea to do so. They convinced themselves that fighting the alt-right head on is how you beat them, when it's more like adding fuel to the fire. The alt-right feels MORE vindicated when they see their rallies attracting so much attention ("see? We are being bullied and ganged up on")

It's kinda like how Trump got so much free press attention during the election cycle. Trump didn't go away despite all the dirt and controversy.

Re:Millennials

[Anonymous Coward]

Wherever they go, millennials who are opposed to them vastly outnumber them.

Hold on there - you're starting to make them sound like they might be onto something.

Re:Millennials

[Talderas]

That the lot of them are a bunch of mother fuckers.

Re:Millennials

[thegarbz]

I'll discuss, but first define "socialism" and "capitalism". Hint, not everything that somehow prevents a corporation from raping you sideways is socialism - Popular slashdot definition. If that's the one we're going with, then capitalism doesn't exist and the discussion is over.

While we're discussing things, prove to me that 1/3rd of every other generation makes sound financial investments.

Re:Millennials

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing. That generation is the biggest and bestest (read most narcissistic and greedy) generation ever.

Same generation that let corporations destroy manufacturing in the US in favor of temporary boosts to quarterly profits.
Same generation that ran the economy into the ground multiple times before Millennials even graduated college.
Same generation that continues to vote for policies counter to public interest. Lets give more money to corporations and gut public education further #whatcouldpossiblygowrong.
Same generation that made it mandatory to have a 4 year bachelors degree to do data entry or be a coffee fetcher for minimum wage.
Same generation that sees employees as a money sink rather than an asset to invest in.

Re:Millennials

[fatwilbur]

Everyone is a socialist when they're young and in university, because they have nothing and want a piece of everyone else's pie. Nearly all of them, once they get their own pie later in life, switch to a capitalist mindset. I think it demonstrates how well our economy works on average.

Re:Yea, 33 here, got shares in my company & Bi

[Anonymous Coward]

Even other Libertarians think that you lot are Crackpots:
"If your not in control your at risk." You're. You are.
"I've been rewarded with 10s of thousands..." Tens, not 10s.
"High cost low margin products for instance it's helped out greatly on for instance." Instance Oatmeal?
"...can help safeguard ones assets. " One's
"...because it was a better investment to focus on starting a business than it was to make more money from the onset than it was to surrender those funds." You have a real knack for Gibberish. Do you come from Gibberland?
"...doubling of profits to 26 folds," By 26 fold.
"...with the cavet that *yes- you could lose money*." Dick Cavet?
"... that deprive the majority of there wealth..." Their there, now.

Come to Keene, New Hampshire, where they are opposed to public Education, and where "My assets are far greater than near anybody I know and I'm only 33."
Your Ass maybe; you sure seem to be blowing a lot of illiterate gas.

Basics first

[WrongMonkey]

How many millenials even own a house?

Re:Basics first

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they are still renting a studio.

Re:Basics first

[Anonymous Coward]

I purchased my first home at 23, a year out of college (currently 24). However, it remains to be seen whether or not that was the best choice at the time. For now, though, it seems to be going well with respect to property value projections.

true that

[Anonymous Coward]

Millennial here; never owned stocks (and refuse to participate in that charade); but boy, can I tell you I do own me some BTC.

Re:true that

[datavirtue]

What would a millennial be doing on Slashdot?

Re:true that

[Anonymous Coward]

I started to read reddit when I was 14 in the beginning of the 2000s, so why not...

Or Beany Babies

[XXongo]

When they were kids, they were the generation that would rather own Beany Babies than stocks. Since the bottom dropped out of the Beany Baby bubble, they are looking for something else.

Re:Or Beany Babies

[Merk42]

When they were kids, they were the generation that would rather own Beany Babies than stocks. Since the bottom dropped out of the Beany Baby bubble, they are looking for something else.

1. They were kids
2. The ones that "invested" in Beanie Babies were adults at the time and not Millennials

Re: Or Beany Babies

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Bitcoin is a first of it's kind decentralized trustless way to transfer value and has the most concentrated network effect of all Cryptocurrencies. It's a technological marvel. It can replace money, bank accounts, stock certificates, contracts.. it's revolutionary, deflationary and its still not widely dispersed which means increase in value. The millennials are not dumb here.

Re: Or Beany Babies

[kilfarsnar]

Except that Bitcoin is a first of it's kind decentralized trustless way to transfer value and has the most concentrated network effect of all Cryptocurrencies. It's a technological marvel. It can replace money, bank accounts, stock certificates, contracts.. it's revolutionary, deflationary and its still not widely dispersed which means increase in value. The millennials are not dumb here.

Do you know why inflation is built into currencies? Why should I buy something today if my money will be worth more tomorrow? Why would I produce a good today if it will be cheaper to produce it tomorrow? Deflation encourages saving, discourages spending and reduces the velocity of money. It's not that the millennials are dumb, it's that they don't fully understand money and investing.

Re: Or Beany Babies

[amicusNYCL]

Why should I buy something today if my money will be worth more tomorrow?

Because you've waited as long as you possibly can and you need it today.

Why would I produce a good today if it will be cheaper to produce it tomorrow?

Because your company has zero stock since you keep waiting to do anything, and a company that's not producing anything and has zero stock might as well not be in business at all. You can't pay your employees if no one is buying anything because you're not making anything.

Deflation encourages saving, discourages spending and reduces the velocity of money.

It's not like everyone would save everything and spend nothing. People still need the things they need, I'm not going to go without food today because a burger might be cheaper tomorrow.

Re: Or Beany Babies

[kilfarsnar]

Why should I buy something today if my money will be worth more tomorrow?

Because you've waited as long as you possibly can and you need it today.

Why would I produce a good today if it will be cheaper to produce it tomorrow?

Because your company has zero stock since you keep waiting to do anything, and a company that's not producing anything and has zero stock might as well not be in business at all. You can't pay your employees if no one is buying anything because you're not making anything.

Deflation encourages saving, discourages spending and reduces the velocity of money.

It's not like everyone would save everything and spend nothing. People still need the things they need, I'm not going to go without food today because a burger might be cheaper tomorrow.

Yes, so you have reduced commerce to only things that people need immediately. That's not most spending or production, however.

Re: Or Beany Babies

[amicusNYCL]

It's the same thing. If I want a TV, yeah I can wait and wait and wait because it's only getting cheaper and cheaper, right? Well, all that time waiting is without a TV. If I want a TV there's no point to wait without a TV. It goes the same with anything else. If there's a good I want, I can wait as much as possible but all of that time spent waiting without the thing I want. Eventually you're either going to buy things or decide that the only thing you want is a bank account that keeps getting worth more and more, which doesn't matter at all if you're never going to buy anything.

oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

wooho, the great stock market crash of cyrptocurrency.

the youngest generation has to be the dumbest generation we've ever raised. I see this in stores all the time.

In other words

[hey!]

At least a third of millennials are financially illiterate.

"Bitcoin" is a specific asset. "Stocks" are a class of asset. You want your assets diversified so that if something terribly wrong is found with one of them (e.g., a cryptographic flaw in Bitcoin) you are not wiped out.

If you were invested in a diverse portfolio on Black Tuesday-- the day the stock market crashed setting off the Great Depression -- you'd have been find even if your portfolio consisted entirely of stocks. It was people who put all their eggs in one basket that lost everything.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you buy altcoins...

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were invested in a diverse portfolio on Black Tuesday-- the day the stock market crashed setting off the Great Depression -- you'd have been find even if your portfolio consisted entirely of stocks. It was people who put all their eggs in one basket that lost everything.

Blatantly false. Something like 100 stocks lost around half their value across that week- keep in mind the DJIA tracked only 30 stocks at the time. Sure, you could have gotten some of that back if you had read the gradual slight recovery through May 1930 as temporary, but such foresight would have been absolutely critical- if you missed that window, you'd have been sitting on those depressed stocks another 20 years. (Wartime recovery didn't raise stock prices until after the war because so little money was going into the stock market rather than, say, war bonds.)

Point being, there was no way to avoid the Depression with diversification, unless you mean diversification into gold and silver buried in your backyard.

Re:In other words

[hey!]

Right, but even if you'd been invested in JUST those stocks, you wouldn't be wiped out, and a few years later you'd have been right as rain.

And in completely unrelated news

[blackpaw]

Nearly a third of millennials are complete idiots.

Re:And in completely unrelated news

[david_thornley]

Only a third? Less than that even? Who says we aren't making progress as a species?

uncle sam will take a cut at some point

[Anonymous Coward]

Either bitcoin (cryptocurrencies) will remain a niche, or it will keep getting larger, and eventually businesses will be paying employees with bitcoin...then we'll see some actual stability. Let's say that a bitcoin replaces all currencies...then 1 bitcoin of the 21 million would be say 90 trillion /21 million or ~ 4^6 or $4 million per bitcoin. All this will do is shift wealth...which will end up in calamity since wiping out everyone's wealth will be much easier...just ask devops199.

Survey Methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

Link to survey here - http://www.survey.blockchain.c...

At the very bottom of the page:
"This survey of over 2,000 adults was conducted online within the United States by Harris Poll on behalf of Blockchain Capital from October 18-20, 2017 among 2,112 U.S. adults, ages 18 and older.

For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact
blockchaincapital@sparkpr.com"


If a company is not willing to make their survey methodology public - they have something to hide.

In related news

[dave562]

100% of millennials have never been personally affected by a commodity bubble bursting.

Sometimes people have to learn lessons the hard way.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like Millenials didn't graduate into the teeth of the Great Recession, or at least the echoes thereof. That's why we, as a generation, are so gun-shy about stocks (The disruption of which came from a bubble on fraudulently packaged mortgage commodities that various stock vehicles were duped into buying). See also the South Park "Aaand it's gone" scene. I concur that Bitcoin isn't the answer, but your comment is factually false.

Us early millenials probably remember Pogs too, as well as Magic and Pokemon card bubbles.

Re:In related news

[thegarbz]

Implying that having witnessed the commodity bubble bursting means the older generations all make sound financial decisions?

Before you try to prove why millennials think the way they do, it's worth investigating if other generations don't actually make equally dumb decisions.

Re:In related news

[dave562]

While I cannot speak for entire generations, I can speak for myself.

In 2003-2004 when I noticed home prices in my neighborhood going through the roof, I started thinking that I should start saving up for a down payment. Around 2005-2006 when people started taking out all sorts of ARMs because they want to get into the "house flipping game", I started questioning whether or not the skyrocketing house valuations were sustainable. After doing some research, I decided to sit on the sidelines.

And what do you know? *pop* went the bubble.

YMMV

Re:In related news

[thegarbz]

So your slow reaction caused you to miss a major investment opportunity? What people don't realise with investment, there's no great pay-off in really long term investments and the idea of infinite growth is basically a lie. You need to see the opportunities that are there and exploit them if you want to make it. For the past few years, that has definitely been bitcoin. You can't blame people for being interested in it. I myself though it was insane when a BTC broke the $1000 mark and said "nah I won't touch it, the bubble will pop any second". Shame. I could have made a 700% ROI, and yet nothing is guaranteed.

ffin sad

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad none of them have any money to afford either, but their opinion counts thanks to social media. ffin sad

scalability will be needed replaces all currencies

[Joe_Dragon]

scalability will be needed for it to replaces all currencies. And when mining stop makeing new coins and lot's of miners drop out leaving to it costing more to do the backed transactions then they payed for them?

Millennials don't know investment vs currency???

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they even ask if the idiots know what a "stock" is? Most are so badly educated that they don't know an investment in a corporation and a 'currency' as this shows. Idiots.

Millennials are probably the stupidist generation since the Dark Ages. This just reinforces the facts.

Something we've known for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

A third of people can be morons some time. Look at the numerous elections where we narrowly avoid electing a known criminal.

You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

So nice to see incompetents vote down actual professional advice from an expert trying to help them. Enjoy homelessness.

Re: You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been at this game for decades myself--long enough to see that at any given point there is someone shouting the end times are near.

They have been wrong every time. Economic bad years? Yes, they happen. You might even say they are guaranteed because of the business cycle. Even so, staying in the market (broadly diversified) has always beaten hoarding your money under a mattress.

You are GUARANTEEING poverty by advising people to do this.

Re:You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional advice? Now THAT is funny.

Re: You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe he mentioned ends of time anywhere. I thought his advice was quite sound.
Which of his points do you disagree with? The all look totally valid to me.
Do you disagree with the coming trainwreck statement? You said it yourself..."Economic bad years? Yes, they happen. You might even say they are guaranteed because of the business cycle.".

staying in the market (broadly diversified) has always beaten hoarding your money under a mattress.

It's all about timing isn't it. The people who took their money out of the banks and the stock market and started hoarding it under their mattress before the bank runs and the market crash during the great depressing did pretty damn well actually.
In fact, removing your money from a market that's about to tank let's you invest back into it while it's undervalued.

Re: You are a tool

[Whorhay]

All well and good but categorically refusing to consider incurring debt to own a vehicle or home is bad advice. In some very specific markets this could be good advice but in most of the USA at least it is foolhardy.

Not owning a means of reliable transportation means you are likely limiting your ability to seek employment, or business opportunities, to a much smaller range. Renting in perpetuity means you are very likely paying more for your living space with nothing to show for it in the end. While renting allows you to escape the responsibility for paying a mortgage you are subject to eviction should the owner decide to stop paying it. There is a lot to be said for living within your means, not buying vehicles and properties with little added value but exponentially larger price tags.

Re: You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct that the world is not ending; that is not the point. The economy will always recover, but tens or even hundreds of millions of people can lose their life savings in that process.

Re: You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

But you WON'T lose your life's savings if you had been buying into the stock market all along, every month of every year.

The people that LOSE IT ALL are the "market timers" who jump in all at once at the height of a bubble.

I had put a lot of money into the market just before the 2018 crash. My stock value TANKED. But I held on. And I kept buying stock. I not only recovered, but I am far above where I started.

Look, everyone has to judge his situation to know how much volatility he can take at any stage of his life, but to stay stocks are just a gamble that you are better off not playing is objectively untrue. People will be POORER if they avoid stocks.

Re: You are a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

^^ correction: 2008 crash

Ya all got the Beanie Baby?

[Anonymous Coward]

Millennials calling their stock broker:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPWb1YtfPis

This is going to end well.

Qualification?

[aglider]

I wonder how qualified those "millennials" were.
If they were not enough, the original question could turn to: do you prefer to own a pasta drainer or a smartphone?

Newspeak dictionary here.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nearly" is to be read as "under", which the journalist wants to make sound like it wasn't.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A third of millennials have never heard of black tulips

American millennials are way ahead of Irish ines

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, our millenials dont knote what bitcoin is. But that doesn't surprise me.

Millennials are proven dumb everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is Millennials are into get rich quick schemes and what goes up fast, usually comes down just as fast. Slow and steady is what makes you rich.
The question is, what is Bitcoin really being used for? I think its more about some sort of marketing fad that has gathered legs and because of its rapid growth it has attracted people with little marketing strategy and instead just naive wealthy Millennials who want to make a fast buck.

Re: Millennials are proven dumb everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

It's internet money, private and decentralized. Non-government needed, no counterparty risk like with a bank. It's a database also.
You got all sort of shit like Snapchat with high valuation while this Bitcoin thing is still pretty cheap and really useful unlike having another messaging app.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

They both suck...

[wardrich86]

The entire stock market seems to consist of a bunch of morons that have no idea what they're backing, but just want some money, based on charts they've seen. This was especially hilarious when the fuckwits jumped to Nintendo stock when a game by Niantic and The Pokemon Company became super popular. It's also pretty evident when you watch "investors" on shows like the Shark Tank.

Bitcoin has some chance at catching on, but not until major retailers start using it. I mean, the money we use right now isn't what it used to be... it's not gold-backed like it once was. And it's not like it holds any actual value outside of a hunk of metal/paper that you can trade.

Re:They both suck...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, the money we use right now isn't what it used to be... it's not gold-backed like it once was. And it's not like it holds any actual value outside of a hunk of metal/paper that you can trade.

You are right. It's a good thing Bitcoin is there to solve these problems.

Oh, wait...

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

TIL that nearly a third of millenials are more stupid than expected

Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes many early investors earned a fortune on it, but it's clear the bubble will soon burst. And those that earned are probably already abandoning ship, at least with some funds ans if they're smart.

No digital currency is safe, I guess. Bitcoin can drag them all down and will by causing panic. This will happen sooner or later, the question is - when (a trillion dollar one).
Well if you still try investing into coins, but be careful. Just the money you can afford to play with.

sad

[TRRosen]

This is exactly why it should be banned immediately before it causes real damage and deaths.

Nearly a third of millenials...

[Anonymous Coward]

...are idiots.

Millenial here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd probably be part of that 30%. Here's why.

Government bonds and stocks are long-term investments. Gov't bonds, in particular, are low-risk/growth-focused. That's useful, but for an average worker, your 20s/30s are the time to have a higher-risk mix in your investment portfolio. Your 40s/50s are when you should downshift the risk, and 60s and beyond are a good time to be in the low-risk bracket. Speaking broadly, of course; I'm not a financial adviser, YMMV, etc.

On top of that, my wife and I are fortunate enough to already have a (reasonably) well-planned savings and investment portfolio. Nothing huge or fancy, but it means I'm not pinning my hopes for the future on a $1,000 windfall, whatever form it comes in.

Bottom line: I'd see the $1,000 as a short-term opportunity to play around with Bitcoin, without having to risk my existing investments.

TL;DR: Extrapolating from "sure, I'd take that hypothetical $1K in Bitcoin" to "I trust Bitcoin with my financial future" is a bit of a jump.

Where's the diversification?

[pak9rabid]

Put all your eggs into one basket, that's real smart.

DIY Cryptocurrency Mining...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want mine your own crypto currency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.

Meanwhile, two thirds of them...

[Hognoxious]

Two thirds of them think having tribal tattoos and piercings designed to take a ship's hawser make them original and creative.

I wonder what the degree of overlap is.

that's because Millennials have teh dumbz0rz

[inerlogic]

no, seriously, they're dumb.

Forget the source- actual data!

[Anonymous Coward]

A survey by venture capital firm Blockchain Capital found that about 30 percent of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin than $1,000 of government bonds or stocks. The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 percent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin, compared with 15 percent among those ages 65 and up.

So, 30% of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather have an immediately fungible, no-1099-generating store of value rather than one where they'd have to pay a commission to be able to use it in a transaction and get a 1099-INT or -DIV generated that they'd have to save until the end of the tax year and report? Wow, those idiots.

Seriously, I'm as skeptical as anyone about bitcoin, but I'd take the $1K bitcoin over anything besides cash because it essentially IS cash. Where and how millenials save money isn't the issue here- it's that 70% apparently prefer to take the financially worse of two options.

Re:Forget the source- actual data!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, 30% of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather have an immediately fungible, no-1099-generating store of value rather than one where they'd have to pay a commission to be able to use it in a transaction and get a 1099-INT or -DIV generated that they'd have to save until the end of the tax year and report?

I can't wait until the IRS starts auditing folks for not declaring their gains on their taxes.

33% of Millennials are dumb as a fencepost

[Rick Schumann]

Sadly that means a larger percentage of Millennials are smart compared to everyone else.

James Altucher on home ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

James Altucher has a lot to say about home ownership:

https://jamesaltucher.com/2015/10/own-house/

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, just wow. School is really failing our kids.

this has never happened before

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have a field of tulips in Holland I can sell to you, for a good price :)

Who wouldn't?

[thegarbz]

I mean let's face it, the vast majority of the world is not made up of stock brokers and wallstreet types. They don't actively research investments in great detail and are often suckered in by marketing, and news of the day (arguably so is wallstreet).

So with that in mind what would you invest in in the absence of any real research:
a) A stock market which over the last 5 years has been incredibly stagnant.
b) This bitcoin thing which over the last 5 years has increased in value by 6000%.

I wonder if more than 2/3rds of every other generation is able to make sound investment decisions. I wonder if all the people who are moaning about bitcoin do too.

Headline spin

[thelandp]

The headline could have been:

"More than Two Thirds of Millennials Say They'd Rather Own Stocks Than Bitcoin"

but that would imply the opposite idea, rather than the preconceived notion that the authors wanted you to think.

The media is full of that kind of thing: sensationalizing the headline to grab attention, whereas if you really think about the information it's not so interesting.

It would be nice if slashdot editors didn't get sucked in and pass these kinds of things onto us though.

Well, it depends

[eric_harris_76]

It depends on the government. Greece? Nope. California city or town with absurd pension fund commitments? One in Illinois? Illinois? Nope, nope, and nope. California? Uh, no. U.S.A. national government bonds? Haven't checked the credit rating lately, but it's certainly still better than Greece. But nope, in the very long run. St. Louis, Missouri? Nope, not even if it gets grafted (pun intended) back onto St. Louis County. Ferguson? Double nope.

Other governments might be a better bet. Any government in Switzerland seems like a safe place.

Bitcoin is unprecedented, so it's not just risky, the risk is unknowable. As is the upside. It could be Betamax. ("What's Betamax?") It could be Intel. It could become Intel and then Betamax.

The most you could lose is $1000, same as those government bonds. The most you could make is much higher for BTC.

Not something to put your life's savings into. But a grand? Sure.