Cryptocurrency

Yes, yes and yes.
Gave the kids their chanukah gelt in BC and it nearly doubled in a month in the past 6 weeks before dropping back a bit in the past few days. Whats really weird is that it was initially viewed as an uncorrelated “safe haven” kind of investment like gold but has become a speculative product which has drawn a lot of money from gold. Now that several of the major investment banks (JPM, BR, etc) have taken positions, it has given BC legitimacy and attracted more institutional money.

If you can’t handle the incredible (10-15 percent) daily volatility of BC (or the other coins), consider investing in the BC miners or trusts holding BC products which are still crazy volatile but not as much as the coins. You also have to worry what happens the first time we wake up and some big holder announces that their BC wallet has been hacked and a gazillion dollars in virtual currency has vaporized.

Important to distinguish BC (bitcoin) from BC (blockchain)…..the former doesn’t seem to have yet taken off as an alternative currency as much as a speculative “store of value”, whereas the latter (i.e. blockchain technology) already has incredible functionality and likely to become pervasive in our economy over the longer term.

I know a bit about it.

Essentially it’s gambling. All crypto investments are extremely high risk and subject to massive peaks and valleys on any given day. There’s no guarantee even the most stable of cryptos won’t crash tomorrow or if the most popular, like BTC, will have another skyrocket increase in price. There are “farms” that own massive percentages in certain cryptos and they could at any point decide the price by either buying or selling a massive amount.

As for their price themselves, cryptocurrencies never really became useful currencies and are still essentially only valued at what people will pay for them, not at what they will buy. Like BTC can take hours to approve a transaction (“get your transaction signed and on the ledger” in crypto speak) and it’s so volatile you won’t find many vendors willing to take that sort of risk. You can buy something for $100 with 0.001 Bitcoins but by the time the transaction goes through, the vendor will receive 0.001 BTC but it’s now worth only $75.

And there are a lot of con artists out there making bank off of it. It’s how the old adage goes, in a gold rush the only ones making money are those selling shovels.

What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t invest in crypto. Maybe if you have a few hundred or thousand dollars you don’t mind potentially losing, it’s not the worst idea. But definitely don’t view it as a good investment.

What is the third “yes” responding to?
Is it mutar to carry bitcoin on shabbos?

“you shouldn’t invest in crypto”

It isn’t clear to me that there is anything real to invest in, which would create halachic problems.

Cryptocurrency has been very helpful to money launderrers, drug kingpins, and terrorist organizations, though.

Meno, that’s true. But it is worthwhile being cognizant that one can lose their entire balance using the traditional bitcoin system. In fact, there are multiple well known cases of folks with bitcoins valued in the millions of dollars through hundreds of millions of dollars that lost access to their bitcoins due to a forgotten password.

Jude, which is why US, European and Japanese currencies are considered safe since their governments backs up their monetary value by its reliably full faith and credit. Whereas the currencies of Iran, Russia and China are not considered nearly as safe.

And where, between those examples, would you please cryptocurrency?

Ive heard that the value will reach a peak and then start to drop

Daf to the rescue – it is miracle that any currency is accepted. Going to an exotic currency seems like pushing the miracle too far.

Maybe, as in the lottery thread, it depends on what else you do for hishtadlus. If you have a steady job and want to increase your rate of return investing a little into crypto or lottery, this is one thing.

But, if you did not try to get a profession, and chase miracles instead, this is unseemly. If you learned Torah disregarding your financial status, then you should be happy with your helek. If you now ask Hashem for a miracle to provide for you, it means that you both not value your learning and did not bother to learn a profession. You should at least go take swimming lessons.

Another factor in BC risk is the incredible concentration of ownership. While estimates vary, the general consensus is that 80 to 90 percent of bitcoins that have been mined as of year-end 2020 are held by fewer than 0.5 percent of BC investors. If even a few of those owners decide to liquidate at the same time, the value will drop so fast, there is really no way to hedge.

@ujm and @jude You are missing something big when it comes to currency value. A dollar is valuable because billions of people assign value to it. I can walk into any store in the US and my dollar bill will be accepted there. Crypto doesn’t have that value. The vast majority of people do not accept payment in Etherium or Dogecoin in exchange for goods or services. It’s value comes almost entirely from the fact that people like to invest, buy, and sell it. (The few people who do accept it as currency are overwhelmingly drug and gun dealers, relying on the inherent anonymity of blockchain.) That alone makes it an extremely volatile system who’s value is very unstable.