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

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

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[–] kenkenken@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

All assets are backed just by beliefs and believers. Even when you can say that it is backed by something you need to believe in that "something" and see value in it. And beliefs are based on myths: why an asset should have value and how it can lose it. More diverse myths an asset has, more robust it is against drastic events. For example, stablecoins rely on a single myth: the peg with it's base currency. If stablecoins lose the peg, they virtually go to zero. All "backed" assets have this important myth that they will still be backed in future. But in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, people have different explanations why it has value. There is no a single point of failure. And Bitcoin is quite good especially among cryptocurrencies because of its price history. And I have my own ideas of bitcoin value, and don't need to listen Saifadean Ammous, bitcoin maxies or whoever. Even if Bitcoin is now a religious cult, but the human civilization entirely consist of such cults. And even if I don't own bitcoins myself, I'm quite confident in its price, but not in overstated predictions of maxis.

So. Do you really need to give financial advises to your friend? Are you sure that you understand it better and won't give a poor advice?

[–] aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

Good point. I might be wrong. I’ll advocate for my side (and often interject how monero does things better than bitcoin).

Often, religious cults also harm their constituents