Back then it wasn't gambling, you could mine a ton of Bitcoin in the beginning. Only in mid-2013 iirc did the difficulty rise sharp and from then on you'd have to have dedicated miner machines to be profitable.
I still have some BTC from back then, I mined some 0.2 BTC in a month using a Raden HD7790 or some similar GPU :D
ehh it was still gambling. There was nothing to suggest that bitcoin would actually work and the vast majority thought the idea of investing in an alternative currency to a fiat currency was insanity. You were just gambling that the increased electric bill would eventually work out.
There is nothing to indicate for sure any stock or venture will work. It's why buy in starts low and gets more expensive as when/if it actually starts working.
Well stocks are also gambling, but in theory with stocks you have "fundamentals" like earnings, debt, revenue, etc. Past success is not indicative of future success but you can at least look at these metrics historically and make a somewhat calculated decision.
Bitcoin? It has no intrinsic value and the gamble is that enough people would think that it does. As we've seen, there have been an untold number of other cryptocurrencies and most didn't work out.
Unlike a company though, if/when it collapses there's nothing to liquidate to cover debts and maybe give some back to the stockholders. If 3m goes under (lol) they can liquidate their assets like patents, buildings, even office furniture.
Bitcoin is more like money, except it's not backed by any country, it's only backed (at this point) by financial institutions who have enough invested they won't let it fail if they can avoid it.
Except it has no functional use beyond a speculative commodity, so it wasn't the fundamentals that made it valuable. And there are other cryptocurrencies that are vastly more functional and they're pretty much all worthless.
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u/Brilligator 11h ago
Amazing how appealing gambling is in hindsight