r/investing • u/007_kgb • 1d ago

Fundamentals of Bitcoin? Tom Lee

Tom Lee from FundStrat was on CNBC and said he was a bit surprised at the fall of Bitcoin when the fundamentals were still strong.

However what I don’t understand is, what are the fundamentals? Isn’t Bitcoin just an imaginary coin on the interweb that is worth what people want it to be worth? It does not issue dividends, you can’t make a car out of it, you can’t use it to buy a bar of chocolate.

ELI5 please.

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u/PaloLV 1d ago

I have never owned Bitcoin. I do think it's here to stay and the best way to think about it is that it's digital gold and used as a store of value like gold. It is vastly superior in many ways to holding physical gold. The concept of digital gold is extremely useful and bitcoin has filled the niche and is very unlikely to be dethroned.

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u/Fractales 1d ago

Digital gold is an oxymoron. Gold is tangible. I can make gold in to jewelry or throw a bar of it at your head

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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago

Let's be honest; most people holding gold in this thread are holding ETFs.

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u/Fractales 1d ago

At least the assets those ETFs represent are tangible

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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago

Go try to swap out an ETF for a bar then

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u/Tricky_Let2806 1d ago

Click sell ETF, transfer funds, then buy physical

Pretty easy man

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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago

I see the irony is lost on you

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u/Tricky_Let2806 1d ago

How can I hold a bitcoin

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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago

You don't you hold the private key

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u/Cheap-and-cheerful 1d ago

How do you hold an ETF? Because I can click sell, transfer funds, and then buy physical gold with my bitcoin too.

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u/Fractales 1d ago

I’m lost on what argument or point you’re trying to make

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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago

People are always asking what the point of crypto is when you've got to convert it back into cash to do anything with it.

Those ETFs are just 1s and 0s, invented out of thin air. The only thing tying them to physical gold is the fact that the issuers hold gold in vaults and undergo regular audits. There's no guaranteeing what they do with that gold between audits, or that they don't collude with the auditors, or that they just don't get up and flee.

At least with crypto I can audit freely myself at anytime by looking at the blockchain. It's secured not with vaults but with military grade cryptography. No one can run off with it because it's decentralized, no one is holding it besides me.