Somehow these last two posts have resonated with me (non BTC holder and general confused individual about it) more than previous readings.

Here comes the rabbit hole!

Hey Andrew thanks for posting this. I’ve been in the sidelines waiting on Bitcoin as there’s one thing I just can’t seem to get my head around. so enlisting help from the members here to “square the circle”.

My uncertainty highly resonated with the post a few weeks ago from @Solvetheriddle regarding visa/stablecoinw of which I’ve paraphrased below.

In the US, many Visa cards have a ‘Zero Liability’ policy, meaning that you are not responsible for payments that you have not personally authorized. If your card is cloned, you are scammed, or anything else happens that harms your consumer rights, Visa is there to help you get back what you are owed by working with your card-issuing bank.

The seller clearly has the advantage, but at the end of the day, the universally accepted payment method is decided by the consumer, because if they don't feel protected, they simply won't buy.

where I struggle around bitcoins future use as money sits around the protection. I worry that if this were to become the preferred method, my hard earned could be transferred with no recourse available.

I’m sure I’m not alone here and there will be others out there to share the same concerns, especially with the advancements in automation. A high profile theft/transfer could pose some headwinds in this space

I understand that there are cold wallets to store your bitcoin in as a defense mechanism but doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of money? It should be easy to utilise. holding it offline in a cold wallet feels more like a store of value play rather than utility. What am I missing here?

Strap in @thetjs it’s a deep hole.

Saylor’s website https://www.hope.com/ is a good place to start. there’s plenty of solid content there. But these days, there are countless resources to explore.

Keep in mind that people come to this with different understandings, expectations, and hopes. There’s no PR department behind an open-source protocol, so you’ll encounter ideas and people that clash with your worldview..and others that resonate. But it's the big ideas behind Bitcoin that are important, and are shared across the entire network; it’s as much a social phenomenon as a technological one.

The journey is messy and non-linear. It will challenge many of your assumptions. But if you keep going, you’re guaranteed to encounter some fascinating ideas.

And who knows.. you might even find yourself becoming a card-carrying cult member ;)

As someone once put it, there’s no one who’s done 100 hours of research and walked away bearish.

It's path dependant @SudMav

The internet today is unrecognisable from the internet of 2005, but it's basically the same tech stack as it always was.

Today in 2025 the range of options in terms of wallets, custodians, integrations etc is vastly improved from where it was even a few years ago. And layers will continue to be built atop it.

I'm sure very few people will even bother with full self custody in the future. Even today I use Strike as my lightning wallet, which is a custodial wallet. There's just a wide spectrum of solutions for different use cases.

Think of it like this. You could easily run your own email server, but virtually no one does, even though it's free and open source. We just rely on providers like google to do it for us. It's just easier. (The deal being they get to read all our emails and harvest data..lol). Now I'm sure plenty of your self sovereign types would see this as a failure of the dream of email (being an open Permissionless communications protocol). And they'd have a point. But my point is that SMTP is the protocol that's baked in, and none of us ever think about it even though we send hundreds of emails each week.

Using Bitcoin, for most, will be similar I think. Even though it's not a perfect analogy.

Straw Team,

I’ve since taken an initial plunge and received the customary suspension of my bank account and phone call with the fraud team to ensure I’ve not been coached to complete the transaction.

Once I explained that I’d been listening to the talking points of Straw People the suspension was lifted.

Tbh I was more surprised than anything. They had sent some texts initially to confirm it was me and that seemed fine and then several hours later then suspension email came through. So it seemed like two different security streams not talking to each other.

I did ask that they note it on my customer file the intent for further transfers so will be interesting if that works or if I get another unexpected surprise.

Great to read the thread by everyone especially those looking to know more or enter into Bitcoin.

It is no doubt hard to newly invest into an asset which is compounding at 60% plus per year for the past 10 years and not have reservations or questions and concerns.

What i can say is that when buying bitcoin or Satoshi's it always feels expensive at the time.

What i would say is research and do the work to understand what bitcoin is offering us in trade, individuals, families, communities, nation states and the current explosion with corporate treasuries.

My wife puts it very eloquently when we have people ask, "its a savings mechanism for your money so it can maintain its purchasing power".

We need to remember that in Australia we are fortunate to not have seen inflation at double digits to this point and each one of us have the luxury to be able to banked but globally this is not the case. This current advantage we have is now manifesting itself in some level overreach and restrictive practices and getting worse.

On this basis ask yourself how important is it to have access to your money you have earnt and saved for at anytime for any purpose your desire?

Bitcoin fixes this.

I remain bullish on Bitcoin over the long term just as i was five years ago acknowledging the pull backs that occur along the way .

It is generational wealth and thus needs to be treated accordingly especially in securing it.

Having recently moved to multi-sig set up as well as running my own node and server moving to be fully sovereign was important to me an my family .

Keep the conversation going it is the best way debunk the concerns that people have .....

Yes @thetjs & @BigStrawbs70 I had a rant about this previously on SM forum.

I'm a fairly major customer of CBA (at least in my mind lol), but they dragged me through the third degree for trying to transfer >$10k in a month to Bitaroo and I was forced to answer questions for about 30 minutes with some nufftie that kept telling me how bad Crypto was with me constantly stating BTC was not crypto.

Anyway, to keep the peace, I've been capped at $10k/mth transfers to Bitaroo or face having all of my CBA accounts frozen.

As you guys and many others have pointed out, I can basically invest in absolutely anything else without limits as a sophisticated investor (what a wankie term) and loss everything, but just don't spend more than $10k/mth on BTC or else!!

No wonder ETF's get so much traction.

Be honest, how often have you checked the price today??

Haha @Metis, more than is healthy!

This video is fantastic, and I see where the momentum for Bitcoin's price comes from. You've got big institutions now like AMP, Swiss Banks etc. taking what are small positions for them, but big positions from the perspective of additional cash into the asset class. Obviously there is scarcity, there will only be a set number. @Strawman's earlier comment that even now investing in Bitcoin would be the 'early adopter' stage reinforces the likelihood of big capital gains to be made in the future, and people like Robert Kiyosaki (who has repeatedly successfully predicted Bitcoin highs) reckons that it will go to $1 million plus.

My issue that I struggle with is that it has no intrinsic value, its value is completely based on selling to somebody else for more money than you paid for it. It doesn't make anything, it is not a 'productive asset'. Even the much maligned Australian residential property provides rental income, but more importantly a place for someone to live.

So now I struggle with whether I can put money into something, just to sell it to someone else in the future, as it won't do a damn thing in the mean time. Even the fact I am now contemplating getting onboard convinces me that the sky is the limit for the price, as I am fundamentally against the very concept.

Don't worry guys, I'll be sure to let you know before I buy any, so you can all get out before my entry into the asset class crashes it to zero.

I hear you, @tomsmithidg, but I think you're looking at it through the wrong lens.

Ask yourself this: what's the intrinsic value of the AUD? Or the yen?

It's a bit like asking what purple smells like, or how heavy sound is.

Intrinsic value only applies to assets that generate cash flows. What's the discounted sum of all the future cash flow of cash, as it were? It's a bit of a red herring.

BTC no intrinsic value, but do any currencies

Money (Fiat Currency), in and of itself has no value it is fair to say, it is a tool and as such derives value from utility – in trade both at a point in time and in the future (a store of value). I think the term “intrinsic value” doesn’t fit very well for currencies or BTC, due to the fact it doesn’t directly generate economic output (cashflow or capital capacity).

So I think we are safe to say BTC as a so called “asset class” is very similar or the same as Money, it is a tool for trade either in the present or future as a store of value. As Money we can trade for other Money, currency exchange. To do this we need an exchange rate and a basis on which to set that rate – which like everything that has ever been traded on free markets is based on supply and demand.

What drives the supply and demand of most currencies is international trade or capital flows, which are influenced by the productive output of a country, the amount of currency on issue, the real interest rates capital can achieve on that currency and the balance of payments for the trade of goods and services. As such there are some “intrinsic” elements that exist to measure comparative value between currencies that are based on the underlying size and productivity of the economy connected with the currency, plus the pricing (interest rates) and quantity of the currency (money supply).

I would use the term “derived value” rather than “intrinsic value”, currencies act more like a derivative of the underlying value of an economy – they are not of value beyond their ability to lay claim on pool of things which have value. That is limited by the economy to which they relate, even the USD which has supply and demand for transactions outside of the US, still has it’s value derived significantly from the US economy. If the US economy was worth nothing the so would the USD – no one would trust it or use it… or would they?

Well they could, if everyone accepted the USD was worth something and agreed to use it as a basis for exchange, then it would act like a currency and have a value attributable to relative to the value of other currencies. The only difference to BTC in this case would be in the trust that more USD would not just be created and devalue the existing money on issue.

This, to me is a key point of distinction, which says that BTC can be money, but it can’t be a currency. A currency derives value from the economy it is connected and hence can (with great difficulty) be measured against other currencies for rates of exchange. 

So, I conclude that BTC has no intrinsic or derived value, while Fiat Currencies have no intrinsic value but do have a derived value. Both have value in use, but so do seashells if that is what people chose to use. The key point of difference for BTC is it’s scarcity, so price reacts strongly to demand, where as currencies, seashells and other cryptocurrencies have supply flexibility, so supply is also a major influence on price – which if you don’t have trust, can be a major driver of that price.

I will make one other point on BTC in terms of inflation and it’s use as money. It’s scarcity is it’s greatest feature which offers price appreciation when compared to Fiat currencies which continue to be diluted and inflated away. However, no one seems to talk to the increase in the money supply that is created by BTC’s global use and increase in price.

BTC increases the money supply across the globe, but there is no increase in assets or productive capacity associated with the rise in the value of BTC. Simple maths says you increase the money supply associated with an economy, you get inflation – more money chasing the same amount of goods and services makes them more expensive. Underlying economic value is transferred to the holders of BTC as it’s price rises, away from non-holders, but no value is being created in the process, so it is also a wealth transfer.

For BTC the economy is global, the expansion of the BTC money supply is price driven, rather than money printing, but the underlying economic activity/value already has currencies in place. So BTC is adding to global money supply = increasing global inflation…

Now to address a bit of a contradiction in the above – BTC still is not a currency, it’s money, despite any tenuous link to global economic activity. Because it does not provide a means of relative value between the economy it covers and others… until we start trading with aliens.

Just some of my thoughts on BTC as I grapple with understanding it and evaluate the investing opportunities.

@Strawman , I definitely agree re the intrinsic value of AUD (reducing all the time - any chance we can link it back to Gold?? I won't hold my breath), thing is I don't invest in cash, I use it to invest in productive assets that generate revenue that I can then reinvest or spend. As a long time listener of the Podmachine, I know that you tend to lambast the investing of funds, particularly money printed by the government, in non-productive assets. Is there an asset less productive than Bitcoin? It actually consumes massive amounts of electricity to mine, some say equivalent to running some small countries. It is also super-inefficient, apparently 3-6 transactions per second vs 65000 per second for Visa, and I assume it will get slower as the blockchain gets longer, though maybe not as computing power gets higher.

All of that still changes nothing, Bitcoin is clearly an asset class that is going to increase in value, but this hairless ape can't understand why. Of course I also wouldn't pay $6.2 million to stick a banana to my wall and call it art, so I'm clearly not on the same wavelength as the super wealthy.

Ah, but is money really unproductive? I don’t think so.

It’s a tool ..a record of past economic contribution I can deploy later, whether for consumption or as capital for productive investment. Which I agree is a wonderful thing to do for a whole host of reasons.

Bitcoin isn’t about “investing” in a thing; it’s opting into an alternative monetary network you believe has superior qualities - just like you’d prefer AUD over (say) the Congolese franc.

The “return” from money isn’t yield; it’s purchasing power. In a hard money system, that grows with productivity. Even the yield we earn today in bank accounts is because that money is (hopefully) being employed productively elsewhere. Either that or from new issuance..

The only reason one might expect gains beyond that with Bitcoin is that there are additional (and potentially material) early adopter gains as the network monetises. That’s a one-time curve, not a perpetual return. Which is why it's so interesting at this particular juncture.

Loving this back and forth btw @tomsmithidg. It's such a fascinating thing which I can go on about endlessly (obviously haha)

Also, re energy use and throughput, it's late and they are long (but good) answers for another day!

Thanks tomsmithidg This thinking gels with my own. I can see its value rising but can't get what the actual base productive value for it, just as you describe it. However, there is a way perhaps. I buy some shares, they increase in value. Shares are productive being a slice of a productive company which, if it gets more productive and profitable, rises in value as more people want to hold a slice. So the share price rises. At a point, I think perhaps its a good idea to take a slice of my slice and return it to cash to transfer into another share. My transferred slice might even be close in size to the original share investment value. So, the share has been productive. Its generated value such that I can remove my original stake to reinvest elsewhere, leaving the productive gain to continue to produce, or not. If not then I still have my original value. I think of Bitcoin in a similar way. Does it matter that I can't see what the real reason for it is? Perhaps not, as long as others invest in it and the value rises. Opportunistic of course, and completely against the ethos of researching a good company and investing in it for a logical well thought out developed business investment strategy. The risk is of course it stops rising, but if others believe in it can you use their exuberance to profit? Why not. NextDC, Dronesheild currently (I think), PLS the lithium stock - perhaps all similar examples, for periods.

I don't and wont invest in Bitcoin. Perhaps, probably, I am dumb. I am happy to invest in companies that I understand. Bitcoin I don't. It feels a bit like AI - everyone wants to say their in it for fear of missing out....

Taking a guess based on whom i follow on the ASX and whom are suitable and i feel need the shift to Bitcoin for the longevity is :

Jumbo Interactive - JIN .

This is based on flat to negative revenue and EPS and tough forward outlook .

Balance sheet is strong with no debt and cash at the half year of $65million.

They generate solid cashflow with existing operations so using existing cash position of say $20million to enter Bitcoin would be reasonable .

Not sure if the mindset of CEO - Mike Verveka is on this wave length but i feel this would reverse the slow and gradual erosion of shareholder value currently occurring. My confidence is also dampened as they have been undertaking significant share buy backs approx 890,000 shares so far.

Disc : Not currently Held

Interesting @wtsimis

I might push back a bit on the longer term growth outlook. A lower jackpot environment made for a difficult recent half, but when you zoom out they've got a decent track record of growth, and (at least in theory) reasonable chance for further expansion. But a major founder shareholder and strong cash balance sure helps.

I tend to think it needs to be a company with a more difficult outlook. It'd be seen as a very bold move, so you almost need a whiff of desperation I reckon.

I definetly don't want my companies buying bitcoin, gold or investing in other industries for that matter. Focus on their operations, return cash to shareholders if not needed.

JIN is cycling a bumper year, the cycle will turn again.