Replying to Avatar Muslim Bitcoiner

I genuinely don't understand the thought process behind holding any altcoin.

Sure, some altcoins have specific use cases to supposedly optimize their "medium of exchange" function on the base layer, like smart contracts, privacy, faster payments, yield, etc. But when you claim to use these altcoins for those purposes, you've already inadvertently made the case why you shouldn't hold on to these coins for any duration longer than needed to complete a transaction or benefit from some heavily marketed utility.

If desired, the most logical move is to quickly use the altcoin for its "utility", then convert the altcoin back to Bitcoin.

But you see the problem? There is no incentive to actually hold on to the altcoin. If there's no rational reason to hold to the altcoin, it will underperform compared to Bitcoin. It will lose the fight for liquidity. An altcoin "money" cannot develop without people holding it.

I don't see the economic, or more importantly, the philosophical, justification for holding on to any altcoin for any significant amount of time, or how it could even compete as an actual money.

They simply go to zero against Bitcoin.
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Rush 1y ago

Was an ETH bagholder for a few years back. I was so interested in how the technology works on paper. And for the things Eth Foundation said that works, it worked. So as it happens, I was reading the Bitcoin Standard trying to figure out why I should balance my bags with more "slowly-developing" bitcoin. At that time Vitalik's book came in the mail (I forgot I pre-ordered it), so I read it right after.

And man the lucidity Saifedean has compared to the mumbo jumbo Vitalik's wrote. It suddenly all clicked. Vitalik's product is all smokes and mirrors.

If you read Arabic, I have commented on Vitalik's book back when I had this project on Twitter (@shu3latmaktaba). Check it out.

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Muslim Bitcoiner 1y ago

That's how it started for me, by first reading the Bitcoin standard. There really is no better introduction to Bitcoin. I keep many copies of the book on hand to give out to people.