I’m posting this on the Monero sub because ya’ll are chill, the BTC community are occasionally peppered with nuts

My friend who’s a Bitcoin maxi has took all his savings and put it in bitcoin, i believe 10k USD more or less. He’s very (almost religiously) certain that bitcoin will skyrocket. I talk, debate and question his beliefs for weeks now, trying to take a nonjudgmental stance (although sometimes i falter), and there are three pieces of “evidence” that he believes Bitcoin will eventually 100k or even 1M

  1. The bitcoin standard by Saifadean Ammous, a watered down textbook on Austrian economics that I’ve been reading recently actually.

  2. The “Power Law”, basically a regression analysis on Bitcoin’s historic price and adoption, mainly esposed by this dude https://x.com/Giovann35084111 (here’s a youtube vid https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=NxAkZ2tHQko)

  3. The “Energy Hypothesis” of bitcoin, he thinks that bitcoin will allow society to capture excess energy generation and make it profitable through mining bitcoin

I’ve reviewed these and think it’s flimsy at best. It is under my belief that a store of value can only be feasible when either it is a medium of exchange or if it is backed by something (like fiat paper money, for example) that allows it to be an efficient medium of exchange, none of which applied to bitcoin right now.

I even try to suggest him books like Roger Ver’s Hijacking Bitcoin (that I converted from epub to pdf just for him) and he wouldn’t read it because “Ver’s a scammer and got fooled by BCH”. Although I really just think it’s heavy confirmation bias, Ver is indisputably a knowledgeable source for bitcoin (he was an early adopter, he’s “Bitcoin Jesus” for god’s sake, and has a lot of knowledge of the economics behind bitcoin given that he’s a businessman who’s built his businesses on top of bitcoin). Hijacking Bitcoin is an excellent book btw go check out the pdf I posted it a while ago on this sub

I’m just looking for advice on how to proceed. It was fun debating and dunking on him but at this point i’m just worried that the bitcoin bubble will burst and he’d lose his savings.

It’s one of those occasions where I kinda don’t want to be right in the debate

  • mister_monster@monero.townEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    Lol OK.

    Points 1 and 2 are correct. The whole “energy money” thing is ridiculous. Bitcoin does follow a power law and if you’ve read saifedans book you’d be blown away.

    Of course, the things in the book apply to more than just bitcoin. Good luck convincing maxis of that. They just gloss over the details on how magically bitcoin is special. “It can only be done once” or some bullshit like that.

    Yes, in the long run, a thing can only store value if it is liquid. But for now, bitcoin is worthwhile.

    How to proceed… Don’t. You can’t save people from themselves. And save… What are you saving him from exactly? Disagreeing with you? It’s his life, let him live it.

    • aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      The power law is proposed by an “astrophysicist” nutcase that treats regression models like the second coming of jesus christ himself. I’m blown away how he was convinced of this power “law” (a trend line on a loglog graph is not a law), given we both studied mathematics.

      And yes, i think you’re right. I guess i wanted to put a little sense in him. It’s just scary how completely his life was enveloped in Bitcoin, and how quickly he put his savings into the damn thing. I guess I what I thought was that I’m in the right position, with the right set of ideas, knowledgeable of some fundamental things about crypto, to instill some doubt and try put some sense in him, and I just wanted to try. If not me, nobody else in his life will. But you’re right; it’s his life in the end.

    • aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      21·
      5 months ago

      I’m reading saifadean actually and i feel those blown away are those without any intellectual weight 🤷‍♀️

      He oversimplifies things a lot, has a full blown hard on for the gold standard, has rose colored glasses for the 19th century? He attributes the flourishing of civilization during that time period to the gold standard:

      the industrial revolution has created the chat

      expendable factory workers paid slave wages has entered the chat

      karl marx with his critique of capitalism during the time period has entered the chat, wondered wtf was going on, then left the chat immediately