Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Maybe. It’s not that it’s revolutionary but SoFi came at people as a bank first. So if they make getting bitcoin seem simple it will open the door to more folks and if other banks follow it will be massive.

I’m thinking of it like those programs of “round to nearest dollar into your savings” or whatever. Crypto has always been confusing and out of reach to most. Remember this board is consistently 6-12 months ahead of populous, especially on technology issues.

Khane said:

I can see this being a positive for people that actually want to actively trade bitcoin or just DCA into actual bitcoin, however, are the other, established crypto trading platforms/exchanges still dubious and insecure? In other words, is there any real, actual benefit for someone who understands BTC doing this over holding their own wallet and trading on one of those other platforms?

BTC in your bank! sound great but it probably translates to "We'll hold your keys for you!" with no mention of if thats via hot wallet or frequent updates to a cold wallet or... "We'll be the custodian of your BTC!".

Am I missing something?

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No, you've basically got it. Its a perception thing plus the FDIC insurance. I'd actually guess a traditional bank is far more likely to re-hypothicate and misrepresent how much they actually hold than an exchange is. Banks have never been burned on it before so I'd guess they'll learn the hard way. The only reason this is interesting is its a shifting of the overton window. Who thought banks would be holding Bitcoin 10 years ago?

Outside of that its an ease of access thing. Essentially everyone in America has a bank, not everyone has an exchange or trading account.

EDIT: I guess there is also the fact that you could argue that Banks have an enormous effect on governance and them being able to make money on Bitcoin improves the likelihood of number go up via policy decisions... also increased likelihood of co-option but thats the gambit Bitcoin has to run, can it survive the banker bros.

Sanrith Descartes said:

Currently have a old Gemini account I recently logged back in. Thoughts on continuing to using Gemini or swapping to Coinbase for US buying/holding BTC?

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Gemini isn't great, but its a clear step down in quality moving to Coinbase IMO

Control said:

Sorry, parachuting, but why does bitcoin need to be money?

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It doesn't need to be money. But what is its purpose? The BTC maxis would tell you it's an "insurance" policy and a way to transact "outside the system, man!!!".

But the part Bitcoin maxis never seem to grapple with is if the U.S. financial system ever actually failed to the point where you'd need Bitcoin as a hedge, you wouldn't be able to use it anyway. The same government that controls internet infrastructure, ISPs, exchanges, and banks could throttle or outright block the on and off-ramps overnight. They don't need to "ban" Bitcoin (they'd do that too though); they just have to make it impossible to transact or convert at scale.

So yeah, BTC can be an interesting speculative asset or a philosophical protest against fiat, but as "insurance" it's useless if the insurer (the U.S. system/fiat) goes under and the regulators decide nobody's leaving the wreckage with their crypto bags. In that kind of collapse, you're not buying groceries with sats, you're bartering bullets and gasoline.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be money to have value, but pretending it can save you from a sovereign-level financial crisis is fantasy. If the U.S. goes down, it's not taking Venmo offline, it's taking everything offline.

Kirun said:

It doesn't need to be money. But what is its purpose? The BTC maxis would tell you it's an "insurance" policy and a way to transact "outside the system, man!!!".

But the part Bitcoin maxis never seem to grapple with is if the U.S. financial system ever actually failed to the point where you'd need Bitcoin as a hedge, you wouldn't be able to use it anyway. The same government that controls internet infrastructure, ISPs, exchanges, and banks could throttle or outright block the on and off-ramps overnight. They don't need to "ban" Bitcoin (they'd do that too though); they just have to make it impossible to transact or convert at scale.

So yeah, BTC can be an interesting speculative asset or a philosophical protest against fiat, but as "insurance" it's useless if the insurer (the U.S. system/fiat) goes under and the regulators decide nobody's leaving the wreckage with their crypto bags. In that kind of collapse, you're not buying groceries with sats, you're bartering bullets and gasoline.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be money to have value, but pretending it can save you from a sovereign-level financial crisis is fantasy. If the U.S. goes down, it's not taking Venmo offline, it's taking everything offline.

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This is a great argument if the world has two settings:

1. Everything stays exactly the same forever, or

2. The U.S. suffers a total system-wide collapse where the entire internet and payment rails are taken offline.

But those aren’t the scenarios most Bitcoin holders are talking about. The far more realistic case (and the one history repeats constantly) is gradual monetary debasement, rising inflation, tightening capital controls, or selective financial surveillance.

In those scenarios, Bitcoin doesn’t need to become everyday spending money, it just needs to outperform fiat as a long-term store of value, which it has done for over a decade. You don’t buy BTC to survive an apocalypse; you buy it to survive a slow grind.

Total collapse makes any financial asset useless (except maybe gold- and that's arguable). But in every scenario short of that (i.e. the ones we’re actually likely to experience) Bitcoin materially improves your financial position relative to holding only dollars.

Kirun said:

It doesn't need to be money. But what is its purpose? The BTC maxis would tell you it's an "insurance" policy and a way to transact "outside the system, man!!!".

But the part Bitcoin maxis never seem to grapple with is if the U.S. financial system ever actually failed to the point where you'd need Bitcoin as a hedge, you wouldn't be able to use it anyway. The same government that controls internet infrastructure, ISPs, exchanges, and banks could throttle or outright block the on and off-ramps overnight. They don't need to "ban" Bitcoin (they'd do that too though); they just have to make it impossible to transact or convert at scale.

So yeah, BTC can be an interesting speculative asset or a philosophical protest against fiat, but as "insurance" it's useless if the insurer (the U.S. system/fiat) goes under and the regulators decide nobody's leaving the wreckage with their crypto bags. In that kind of collapse, you're not buying groceries with sats, you're bartering bullets and gasoline.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be money to have value, but pretending it can save you from a sovereign-level financial crisis is fantasy. If the U.S. goes down, it's not taking Venmo offline, it's taking everything offline.

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You should listen to what "Bitcoin maxis" say they believe more and talk about it less.

Arden said:

This is a great argument if the world has two settings:

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That sounds neat until you realize those "gradual" scenarios you're describing are exactly the ones governments already know how to manage and exploit. Inflation, capital controls, and selective financial surveillance aren't system failures, they're just policy tools. They don't need to nuke the internet or crash the dollar, they just need to make life inconvenient enough that the average person never touches BTC.

Bitcoin can't sidestep that, because every practical interaction with it - converting, spending, reporting, taxation, compliance, etc. still flows through the same rails they control. The idea that it "outperforms fiat as a store of value" only holds when regulators allow liquid markets to exist and when enough institutional money is participating to keep price discovery alive. Remove that liquidity and it stops being a hedge and turns back into a collectible.

So sure, in a slow-grind scenario, Bitcoin might rise faster than CPI. But if that grind gets bad enough that people actually start exiting fiat en masse, governments have every incentive to slam the gates shut and they've done it before, repeatedly. It's not "apocalypse or nothing" it's more like, "works until it matters."

Flobee said:

You should listen to what "Bitcoin maxis" say they believe more and talk about it less.

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I've listened and read plenty. That's why I'm pushing on the parts that don't hold up outside of crypto echo chambers. "Maxi" rhetoric isn't a mystery, it's just the same handful of claims: that Bitcoin is incorruptible, immune to capture, and destined to replace fiat. Those ideas are worth testing, not repeating. If the only acceptable opinion is uncritical agreement, that's not conviction, it's just Dogma at that point. And honestly, that's what makes the discussion frustrating. You can't preach about decentralization and open discourse, then treat any skepticism as heresy.

I'll keep listening and reading, but I'll also keep pointing out when the logic collapses under real-world constraints. That's how you separate a belief system from a functioning monetary system.

Kirun said:

That sounds neat until you realize those "gradual" scenarios you're describing are exactly the ones governments already know how to manage and exploit. Inflation, capital controls, and selective financial surveillance aren't system failures, they're just policy tools. They don't need to nuke the internet or crash the dollar, they just need to make life inconvenient enough that the average person never touches BTC.

Bitcoin can't sidestep that, because every practical interaction with it - converting, spending, reporting, taxation, compliance, etc. still flows through the same rails they control. The idea that it "outperforms fiat as a store of value" only holds when regulators allow liquid markets to exist and when enough institutional money is participating to keep price discovery alive. Remove that liquidity and it stops being a hedge and turns back into a collectible.

So sure, in a slow-grind scenario, Bitcoin might rise faster than CPI. But if that grind gets bad enough that people actually start exiting fiat en masse, governments have every incentive to slam the gates shut and they've done it before, repeatedly. It's not "apocalypse or nothing" it's more like, "works until it matters."

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You’re right that governments use inflation, surveillance, and capital controls as policy tools, that’s exactly why Bitcoin has value in the first place. People hedge against tools they expect will continue, not tools they think will end.

You can absolutely make BTC inconvenient, but you can’t make it disappear, and you can’t put global demand back in the bottle. As long as one jurisdiction allows liquidity, and many will, because financial repression is not uniform across nations, Bitcoin continues to function as a hedge, even if other governments restrict it.

That’s why gold survived 6,000 years of bans, confiscations, taxes, and capital controls.

We've SEEN governments attempt restrict BTC- big ones. Those attempts failed spectacularly.

Kirun said:

I've listened and read plenty. That's why I'm pushing on the parts that don't hold up outside of crypto echo chambers. "Maxi" rhetoric isn't a mystery, it's just the same handful of claims: that Bitcoin is incorruptible, immune to capture, and destined to replace fiat. Those ideas are worth testing, not repeating. If the only acceptable opinion is uncritical agreement, that's not conviction, it's just Dogma at that point. And honestly, that's what makes the discussion frustrating. You can't preach about decentralization and open discourse, then treat any skepticism as heresy.

I'll keep listening and reading, but I'll also keep pointing out when the logic collapses under real-world constraints. That's how you separate a belief system from a functioning monetary system.

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You're just flat out wrong man. I'm sure you can find someone making that argument but it's far from the standard. I've put a lot of hours into this subject so I can speak with some amount of authority here. You're building a strawman and spending a lot of words beating it down. I guess if that's what you're into whatever but you're certainly not representing a person with serious conviction and understandings position. To be frank you don't seem interested in learning, instead it seems at least you're into winning arguments with people that don't exist, or at least aren't present to defend themselves.

Flobee said:

You're just flat out wrong man. I'm sure you can find someone making that argument but it's far from the standard. I've put a lot of hours into this subject so I can speak with some amount of authority here. You're building a strawman and spending a lot of words beating it down. I guess if that's what you're into whatever but you're certainly not representing a person with serious conviction and understandings position. To be frank you don't seem interested in learning, instead it seems at least you're into winning arguments with people that don't exist, or at least aren't present to defend themselves.

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Yeah, not a personal attack on you Kirun but the strawman analogy is pretty apt. That's what brought me into this discussion in the first place from the main Investment thread.

At this point it feels like you’re arguing against a version of the Bitcoin thesis that no one here is actually claiming. You’re building a model where BTC only exists in either perfect stability or total collapse, and then using that binary to defend your conclusion. That reads less like an objective analysis and more like you’re emotionally invested in keeping the discussion inside a frame that supports your argument.

The problem is that the real-world scenarios people are talking about don’t fit that frame, so the rebuttals don’t actually connect

Kirun said:

It doesn't need to be money. But what is its purpose? ... In that kind of collapse, you're not buying groceries with sats, you're bartering bullets and gasoline.

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I'm no crypto zealot, the hostility just seemed strange. In that kind of collapse, you're not buying groceries with gold or real estate either, because they're not money. In that scenario, dollars probably won't be money either, only bullets/gas as you say. Which is why I wondered why you were focused on bitcoin being money since it seems more logical to me that it's an investment/hedge. That real estate isn't money isn't a negative. It's just not what it is.
Of course the government can make it very difficult to use bitcoin, but it also confiscates real estate and makes gold illegal at its leisure. In a worst case scenario, you've got a better chance of bailing and using your bitcoin later than the other two, aside from whatever gold you want to make room for in your go bag.

But in a very-fucking-likely scenario, how much value has the dollar lost since bitcoin was launched? How much more do you expect it to lose in your lifetime? I have no idea if bitcoin will still exist in a useful form in 30 years, but I'm pretty certain that a dollar is going to be worth a lot then.

Control said:

But in a very-fucking-likely scenario, how much value has the dollar lost since bitcoin was launched? How much more do you expect it to lose in your lifetime?

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Was going to mention this but didn't want to go on excessively.

Zero need to argue the philosophical points about whether BTC is a good store of value or not- you can just let the numbers do the talking.

Since Bitcoin's launch, the dollar has LOST about 33% of its purchasing power.

Since its high in 2011, Bitcoin has GAINED roughly 3,450 times its value and averaged about ~54% per year in return.

(I used 2011 because I think it's a fair year to measure from. It was the year of BTC's first major bubble and crash, and it effectively removes the "early adopter luck" argument. If you go back further to, say, 2009, the gains are astronomically larger for BTC).