cryptocurrencies
- Thread starter mathman
- Start date
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Probably not bitcoin.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
How so?
A few weeks ago it was around $16000. It is now around $27000/
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
A year ago it was $69,000.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
The accounts are FDIC insured so it's not safer in that sense. If you are concerned about ultimate stability in the system, perhaps. If you are concerned about all the "money printing" to backup the system, perhaps.
It's you've not, then it's pretty safe to keep your money in a bank.
If you have more than the insured about you should buy Treasuries.
That only works when the interest rate is up. "Less than inflation" is not a good return on Treasury.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Or open up a second account.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
If you buy and then rates go down you can actually have capital gains on Treasuries. Buying and then rates go up is not a good thing with Treasuries/bonds.
It's often difficult, at least where I am, for Joe Bloggs to get up to speed with which institutions are linked for purposes of the insured sum. By that I mean our government guarantees (via the FSCS) £85k per person per institution, but this is not the same as "per bank". Multiple banks are owned by the same institution, such as Lloyds, Scottish Widows, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, and MBNA, plus more, are all owned by the one institution: Lloyds Banking Group. So if one is in the fortunate position to have more than the guaranteed sum to keep in banks, you have to do some research so that you don't inadvertently end up with all the money with same institution. But I guess if you are in the position to have that much, you're probably someone who would be well aware of the issue.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
That's not the case here. It's per account. You could have a checking account in your name, another checking account in you and your wife's name, an account for your business, an IRA and you could have them all at the same bank and each would be insured for $250k.
Certainly you could have an account at Schwab, Vanguard and Fidelity and each checking account would be insured for $250k and each stock account would be covered by SIPC limits for stock ($500k/$250k cash).
It's also a good idea to spread it around a bit just on the off chance that one institution did something that tied things up for a while, it's unlikely to happen to several of them at the same time.
That's also a reason to diversify across assets classes. If you had to you could pull equity from your house or real estate in general. Maybe the stock market is down but real estate equity is up. The same applies to Bitcoin, gold, maybe you have a small side business. They aren't as likely to all be down at the same time although you can't really diversity out of systemic risk by staying in the same system.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Government issued debt....Treasury bills and notes. It's considered a risk free investment in the sense that it's guaranteed by the U.S. government.
You usually use the short term notes when rates are rising. You buy the long term bonds when you think rates are going down..
It would have to be in a different bank and hope they do not both go under.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
That's not a question that can be easily answered. It, in part, depends on the adoption rate, it depends on how long a time horizon we are talking about and it also depends of how debased the dollar becomes due to all the money supply increases.
Anything is possible.
It's more likely the more time that passes (10 years vs 5 years, 20 years vs 10 years, etc).
If the Fed continues to take actions that reduces the purchasing power of the dollar the more likely that 1 Bitcoin will be worth USD 1 million because USD 1 million will be worth less (will purchase less).
It's also possible that 1 Bitcoin is never worth USD 1 million (or it may be worth more).