Cardano has for a long time been my favourite altcoin, and I have stacked a substantial amount of ADA since watching Charles's famous whiteboard video in 2017.
I have now come to a phase in my journey where I truly and unequivocally understand that Bitcoin is the only money that can exist, and why altcoins, no matter how fascinating they sound, remain experimental projects that will, in best case scenario, hopefully, find valid use-cases in society, but will never be able to compete with Bitcoin as money.
I don't buy the web3 vision anymore. I think it's silly, deceptive, and easily exploitable by bad actors. I believe 99.9999% of tokens are a waste of time, resources, energy, and focus. Extending the current Internet with Bitcoin/Lightning makes more sense and is more practical. To quote the excellent essay “Only, The Strong Survive”:
"The core philosophical issue at play rests on the answer to what was left dangling as a rhetorical question: do you need a token for that?, which seems to be, no, you do not. Because “that,” whatever it is, is not money, hence it will lose the fight for liquidity, it won’t sustain endogenous value, nor will it sustain endogenous security." (Allen Farrington & Big Al, Only the Strong Survive)
I now understand why it is risky to store such a large portion of my crypto wealth in something other than Bitcoin. My decision to stack ADA was purely based on greed and short-term thinking, fueled by the hope that the price would go to the moon quickly so I could dump my stack and quit my fiat job.
It has now occurred to me that I was living a central moral and philosophical contradiction: how could I claim to value ADA and have fiat in contempt, but at the same time plan to trade my ADA for fiat to quit my fiat job? (I'm currently working on a fascinating side project that, God willing, will help onboard thousands of Africans to Bitcoin by the end of the year.)
I have now decided to sell all my ADA and stack more bitcoins. I wish the Cardano community well, but here ends my journey with them. I love Charles; I've learned much from him on Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, and wish him all the best.
Altcoins are usually just unregulated companies. No thanks.
It's true what you quoted. Every time you read about a new exciting project, just think why they're not using Bitcoin for that instead. Every time you read rewards are paid in some alt instead of Bitcoin, ask yourself the same question.
They usually don't use Bitcoin because that's real money. Instead, they provide you with some useless token that they can print more of, or that they acquired at zero or near zero cost. They basically want your money for free.
The funny thing is that your greed is actually feeding their greed.
I now basically only pay attention to projects that use Bitcoin only. Anything else is just a waste of time.
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Altcoins are usually just unregulated companies. No thanks.
Actually that's exactly what I want. I want unregulated securities.
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I totally get the POV from a free market standpoint. The issues arise when there are regulated and unregulated and the unregulated try to masquerade as regulated. cough celsius cough
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Bitcoin is self regulated
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100% de acuerdo.
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A new "toxic maxi" is born ;)
I say that in jest, because I went down exactly the same path. ADA and Charles are "new" and "shiny" - he's charismatic and there are some very smart people working on the project. But at the end of the day, they only exist because some people are diluted to the point of thinking ADA could or even should be "money". All their non-monetary goals ride on the coattails of it eventually being a valuable money - and that is exactly why it is doomed to fail. Hucksters draining the world of valuable brain power. It's unfortunate.
All that effort and brain power would be much better spent building layers on top of bitcoin. Sooner or later people will realize the "money" part is the foundation. That's when crypto dies.
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Congratulations, you made it through.
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Deine essays haben mir in meiner bitcoin-Reise sehr viel geholfen und inspiriert. Sehr vielen Dank!
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Welcome to the bitcoin community.
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Five years of religiously stacking ADA through bear and bull markets have come to an end.
They have now been secured on the Bitcoin chain, where they've always belonged, and I can now entirely focus on my side project instead of constantly thinking about when ADA will “moon,” which was mentally unhealthy.
Thank you all for the encouraging messages.
PS: It wasn't actually that straightforward, because the exchange I used (I won't name them) blacklisted my transaction and held my coins hostage for several hours, making unreasonable demands to release my bitcoins. After many tense emails they finally agreed to whitelist my transaction. It wasn't fun at all and I don't wish this ordeal to anyone.
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What African country are you in/from?
Welcome back to the community, stay humble, stack sats 😀
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Welcome! I thought the same until I met the Lightning network, I accumulated TRON and luckily I was able to withdraw in a moment in profit.
With the Lightning network I realized that everyone could be a part of Bitcoin, no matter where they are from/how much money they have.
1 btc = 1 btc 1 sat = 1 sat ⚡
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Bitcoin is a blackhole of monetary premium. Any value in "utility" will be commoditized until margins are close to marginal cost. The funny thing about the internet and information is that typically marginal cost is ~$0.
Other crypto may find use cases but ultimately they are fancy distributed google sheets
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It's all part of the journey that most bitcoiners go through. We can only learn by making mistakes and seeing how rotten the scam world really is.
You were truely struck by enlightment, and now you see what we see. Keep walking, the journey is not over.
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I love this moment when the altcoiner sees the light. It doesn't matter the coin, spend enough time reading & thinking about bitcoin and you will break through and get it. All the best wishes for your project.
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Welcome
Bitcoin and Lightning helped us get free of fiat payment processors and their banks and associated headache as well.
Now we can offer our services for Bitcoin without middlemen. BTC is awesome. :)
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I actually started stacking ADA a few months ago along with some other alts because of their staking feature. I don't like putting all eggs in one basket, but then again, I've never used real-life, everywhere-expendable money to purchase crypto so I guess I'm not that concerned if my strategy goes south. Of course, I also stack sats wherever and whenever I can.
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The diversification argument is flawed and does not apply here. Every alt you stack will eventually lose value against bitcoin. This is a fact. Just look at the price curve denominated in bitcoin.
I participated in an ICO in 2017/8 and bought 6000 XTZ with 1 btc. No matter how much the price of XTZ increased in USD, it never surpassed 1btc, but actually lost ~90% of its value in BTC!
It's the value in BTC that matters, because it's sound money, not in fiat, a currency that governments can print indefinitely. The data is clear.
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That’s a good point
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Welcome! We all have different perspectives and different journeys. Regarding the token issue you mention in bold: Check out Ruben Somsen's spacechains!
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Anyone familiar with BIP 300? You could basically throw up any experimental project onto a BTC sidechain and use the functions of the project without creating a new currency for every project. I hope I'm understanding it well.
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Welcome to team bitcoin, it does take a while to tackle all the fallacies that shitcoiners use to lull you into their ecosystem and become their exit liquidity, all part of the journey
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If Bitcoin can be the gold of the digital world, would we still need a cash?
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This is how Bitcoin Maxis are born.
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We all take this same journey welcome fellow bitcoiner
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short it all
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I am still holding ADA and just can’t let go. I guess I’m stubborn. I guess I can’t call myself a Bitcoin maximalist since I just can’t let go. I hold mostly bitcoin because the more I learn, the more I’m convinced this is the only way….
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Did you buy high and would make a loss, if selling now? I understand. No one expects you to act against your best interests…
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I am currently siting at a little loss. I figure I should at least wait it out to see if I break even or come out a little on top until I can exchange it for bitcoin
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But will waiting for appreciation to break even be against fiat value or in sats? If you’re not gaining against sats you’re paying tax on fictitious fiat gains while also ending up with fewer sats. That’s a bad combination.
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Welcome aboard!
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All alt-shitcoins are scams
Preaching to the choir to farm sats, is see :)