Bitcoin / Bitcoins / Crypto Currency

No "serious investor" would touch them with a bargepole, and for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.

A few of my investor friends are starting to take note of them.
Not sure if they are serious but they definitely have more money than I do

What investment isn't a bet then?
It's a bet on the movement of a price where there is extremely limited visibility of supply or demand, no baseline fundamentals to track or compare, where the value of your purchase can disappear in a puff of smoke with fuck all come back.

That's pretty much what Bitcoin "investment" is. It's a bet.

Don't pretend that all those wallies losing billions of dollars and causing the GFC were doing anything other than gambling.

Investor = gambler. Some of them use their own money, some of them don't.

A few of my investor friends are starting to take note of them.
Not sure if they are serious but they definitely have more money than I do

I'm sure that plenty of people's great aunts taking note of them too.

But I'm not sure how many fund managers would take a 8+ figure punt on them with someone elses money, or how many prop traders would sink £10,000,000 of their discretionary cash, or how many hedge funds would think that bitcoin is the next alpha generator.

Just wait until the news breaks.. "1 billion lost by junior trader on bitcoin 'gamble'.. blah blah... not sure how safeguards were missed... blah blah... action will be taken... blah blah"

Don't pretend that all those wallies losing billions of dollars and causing the GFC were doing anything other than gambling.

They weren't. To think that they were is to misunderstand the cause and effect of the credit crunch and ensuing snafu.

They weren't. To think that they were is to misunderstand the cause and effect of the credit crunch and ensuing snafu.

They found new ways to exploit the markets within the law and sometimes outside the law and didn't have enough actual money (thanks to ignoring the law) to pay for their gambles when they went tits up. Gambling.

That's not gambling at all - That's exploiting greed and ignorance.

There are elements of gambling involved - CDS / CDOs, for example, are insurance against a revenue stream going tits up - and if you don't buy the underlying instrument, you are as good as making a bet that the company making the payments doesn't fold.

From the laymans point of view the bankers and investors or whoever is involved with using money to try and make money. They are gamblers.
Just because they have a few degrees and are 'regulated' by some shady governance doesn't make them any less so.
It can be dressed up however you want but they spunk money up the wall and are therefore gamblers.

I go and play poker in my local pub. Yes I have a better understanding of the odds and statistics than my fellow gamblers and I may play a game that utilises this knowledge better than others but at the end of the day it still comes down to luck. If you cannot predict the outcome of an event with absolute certainty then you are relying on luck and are therefore gambling

hippy will only be interested when they start the fatcoin.

That's not gambling at all - That's exploiting greed and ignorance.

There are elements of gambling involved - CDS / CDOs, for example, are insurance against a revenue stream going tits up - and if you don't buy the underlying instrument, you are as good as making a bet that the company making the payments doesn't fold.

What? Taking note of the risks, knowing they were insanely high and still choosing to splunk down a load of 'cash'/whatever to proceed and then losing said cash is exactly gambling.

Bankers were placing bets that their institution could not hope to cover if they failed. They failed.
It all went tits up.
If that's not gambling, the dictionary is wrong.

hippy will only be interested when they start the fatcoin.

Beertokens: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9493.0

From the laymans point of view the bankers and investors or whoever is involved with using money to try and make money. They are gamblers.
Just because they have a few degrees and are 'regulated' by some shady governance doesn't make them any less so.
It can be dressed up however you want but they spunk money up the wall and are therefore gamblers.

I go and play poker in my local pub. Yes I have a better understanding of the odds and statistics than my fellow gamblers and I may play a game that utilises this knowledge better than others but at the end of the day it still comes down to luck. If you cannot predict the outcome of an event with absolute certainty then you are relying on luck and are therefore gambling
In your anaology, the bank plays the role of the house.

The casinos don't gamble - they take their slice from the gamblers, both the winners and the losers.

If you want to torturously stretch the analogy a bit more, they then take the income they make from the games being played in the house, and sell that income stream to other people, de-risking their exposure to the income stream.

What? Taking note of the risks, knowing they were insanely high and still choosing to splunk down a load of 'cash'/whatever to proceed and then losing said cash is exactly gambling.

Bankers were placing bets that their institution could not hope to cover if they failed. They failed.
It all went tits up.
If that's not gambling, the dictionary is wrong.
Taking note of risks and doing something with them is not gambling.

Repackaging risk and flogging it to someone else seems like not-betting to me.

As I said though - Some bets were made.

However, the whole shebang was not down to just those bets.

You must work in the industry to be so knowledgeable and vociferous in your defense of it?

Who / what / where am I defending it?

I understand the credit crunch, its causes and effects, and can bollock on about it.

As far as defend it? Defend what? Credit trading? Derivatives? Securitisation? Banking in general?

tl;dr

Gambling. Exactly. I'm glad we agree.

Totes.

2:1 on Red Rum

Neighed.

From the laymans point of view the bankers and investors or whoever is involved with using money to try and make money. They are gamblers.

Out of curiosity do you think that market traders who buy fruit and veg from a wholesaler at a low price and then try to sell them at an increased price in local markets before it goes off are gamblers as well?

Yes

Is there any trade you would say isn't gambling?

Is there any activity you would say isn't gambling?
FTFY

By a superficial interpretation of what could be termed gambling, we gamble with everything we do.

Walking out of the house in the morning, we are gambling that we aren't hit on the head by another Chelyabinsk-like meteor.

us t bills or treasuries i guess
although that isn't looking quite so foolproof these days