If You’re Not Buying Bitcoin On Your Credit Card, Then WTF Are You Actually Doing To Boost Your Cool Factor?
We've been over this before, but apparently we're going to have to go over it again, because now it's popping up on mainstream financial media outlets.
A lot of people have gone out of their way over the past year to claim that Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general) don't pose a systemic risk to the financial system or to the economy in general. That may or may not be true and we don't pretend to be the arbiter on the subject.
What we do know, however, is that in addition to the obvious ris
Well, if you’re going to go all in, then you might as well get a HELOC too. Or better yet – cash out refi, since the tax plan just took away heloc interest write off. Here’s my fool-proof plan:
1. Refi and pull $100-200k out of your house
2. Buy bitcoin
3. Pay a few points in interest (which you write off) while you watch your money grow
4. Make a gazillion dollars
5. Buy amazon and burn it to the ground just to show Jeff Bezos who’s boss
Got that? Okay, GO!
At least you would not be paying a 22% interest rate. Revolving credit is on fire, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/. Wonder what December will look like.
I have been wondering whether the big spike in credit card delinquencies had something to do with cryptos or whether it was just high consumer sentiment w/o much in terms of real wage increases. Page 13 and 14:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/HHDC_2017Q3.pdf
Creating bitcoin futures has introduced systemic risk as the combination of the high volatility and margin has real potential to crash the entire exchange in an event when specs’ losses rapidly & massively exceed their equity. Futures are an essential service for producers to hedge their commodity & currency risks, not for bitcoin speculating. Desks that want nothing to do with bitcoin futures nevertheless now have existential exposure through a counterparty risk of other traders doing bitcoin futures. Bitcoin futures should be banned, or at least cash-basis only (no margin) at this time to preclude a potentially catastrophic systemic event.
@2:12 ….. “Just go online and give them your credit card” ….lol
oh, you mean collateralizing loans like this: https://www.saltlending.com/
And while I’m here: https://media.coindesk.com/uploads/2015/06/Household-Income-of-Bitcoin-Users-630×519.png
This data is from 2015 but I’d be very very curious to know todays #s
The 20% is likely low – since – and as pointed out the time, frustration, and risk associated with other purchase methods is likely too much for the typical millennial buyer. You don’t need much of a survey to determine the credit cards are either directly or indirectly (cash advances, etc.) funding BitCoin purchases. If you look at the LocalBitCoins website (https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/us/united-states/c/other-payments/) where buyers and sellers are listed for the US – as I did recently (changes continually) – there were out of 35 random payment type sell offers that I counted on the first page – more than 10 were showing credit cards as preferred payment method.
However, if you want to understand the reality of BitCoin as an exchange media – you don’t have to accept anyone’s opinion – FOMOs, old men – yelling at clouds, or naive and remarkably ignorant “futurists.” You simply need to set up a BitCoin account, buy some BitCoin and then go out an make some essential purchases with it. You should allow a couple of weeks of your time for this effort. However, in the end your curiosity will be totally satisfied and you will be well informed about the realities of BitCoin – extremely time consuming, expensive fees, with very limited use options for your regular purchases. Even companies that accept BitCoin likely limit it’s use to their current in house inventories (NewEgg for example). I speak as a former cured BitCoin that made some money with it, but tested it’s use and found it totally noncompetitive for all of my needs.