Anyone else irked by the phrasing "buy bitcoin"?
You don't buy and sell bitcoin. You convert to it. You can't buy money. You can't invest in money.
You are USING the money by converting. Bitcoin is the superior asset.
Discussion
If I can buy a car with seashells, that's what I'll call it. Makes the seller look like a dweeb for making such a bad trade.
Same with trading paper that's literally on fire for the hardest money humankind has ever created.
But it's not a car. It's money.
You're making a trade for a better KIND of money. Money being an economic good rather than a consumer good (a car).
So I feel like "buy bitcoin" leads newbies to misunderstanding it drom the getgo. You don't invest to sell back to dolllars like a stock. If you do trade back to dollars at a gain that's still just a trade and not a purchase of dollars or other fiat.
You can't live in or drive a bitcoin.
The utility of Bitcoin is to buy it with a good (dollars) or a service in order to sell it for a good or service in the future, preferably with its value increased with time.
Saying you're not buying Bitcoin is just incorrect. Ever trade has a buyer and seller, where the buyer and seller are also the seller and buyer, respectively. You're buying dollars when you sell a good and selling dollars when buying a good.
I guess my contention is that there's a distinction between buyer and seller and they cannot be mutually inclusive. I feel that the seller always receives the monetary good and buyer takes the consumer good.
If no distinction between the two exists, then money doesn't exist.
I should check with the Austrian perspective on this.
Appreciate your civility nonetheless. 😎
It's not always the case. I have to pay rent to my landlord, so it's perfectly valid to say that I have to buy dollars from my employer in exchange for labor so that I can sell them to my landlord in exchange for housing.
The commodity used as money has no special status besides being the most saleable good in this situation, a medium of exchange that everyone involved is willing to trade other goods for.
Here's what llamaGPT says.