The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Driko on March 04, 2017, 08:03:02 PM
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I have been following bitcoin for a few years and have used it on a few occasions. I remember around three years ago the price was about 300 for a bitcoin and today bitcoin has surpassed the price of gold and is at 1270. It could be a good long term investment since they will supposedly never create more than 21 million. I have also heard that investors in china have been buying into it amid speculations on the value of the dollar and what impact our future trade policies and possible tariffs will have on other countries.
I bought half of a bitcoin today and I think I will probably purchase up to 4 this year and then hold for the long term and see what happens.
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I've used it and I love. I reckon crypto currencies should be the default payment method and we'd all be heaps better off.
I have no idea if it's a good investment though.
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Yes! I got lucky with making a purchase almost 2 years ago when they were $230. Not a huge investment, but enough to make me very happy if it someday hits $1MM as is the unsupported claim made by the bitcoin boosters.
I don't think I'd have the confidence to make the same investment today at all-time highs, but maybe the long-term future still warrants it.
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Can someone explain to an idiot like me how Bitcoin works?
I fear I am the last person left on the planet who doesn't "get it"!
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Yes, a buddy and I while in University set everything up and bought a few coins (when they were trading ~$100) at one point we had 4 coins. we did some trading and always came out worse off so decided with our 2 we would just hold. Well a year later the exchange we were holding one in closed and we lost one coin. So are now down to 1 with no plan for selling or anything.
I like the idea but honestly see it as purely speculation so I don't think i'll be buying any more.
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Bitcoin is an experiment into whether you can have a successful currency with deflation built into the design. Because the economy continues to grow, more currency is constantly needed. That's why for USD, the supply of money in circulation (known as M1 or M2) has been constantly increased over time. Had the treasury not increased the amount of money in circulation over the centuries, there would eventually be a shortage, which would choke off people's ability to transact and encourage hoarding of currency even as sellers became more and more desperate to unload goods. This is what happened in the Great Depression.
The drop in prices could be understood as an increase in the value of currency.
Bitcoin has already hit the point of diminishing returns in terms of the number of new bitcoins that could be mined. As the Bitcoin economy grows, Bitcoins will become harder and harder to obtain. Hoarding has already started based on this promise.
The question becomes: What happens next? Does the value of Bitcoins necessarily rise to millions of dollars each? Or is the long-awaited collapse already built in?
Thing is, anyone using Bitcoin has other currency options to transact in. Even drug dealers might choose the costs of laundering over the risks of holding a virtual currency. A mental shift from thinking about Bitcoin as a currency to thinking about it as a collectible fad might set off a landslide of selling among the majority of users holding it for appreciation.
I'd give it even odds of doubling or crashing. Do I wish I had put my life savings into it 7 years ago? Yes. But I also don't want to be among the last to exit.
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Thing is, anyone using Bitcoin has other currency options to transact in. Even drug dealers might choose the costs of laundering over the risks of holding a virtual currency. A mental shift from thinking about Bitcoin as a currency to thinking about it as a collectible fad might set off a landslide of selling among the majority of users holding it for appreciation.
I'd give it even odds of doubling or crashing. Do I wish I had put my life savings into it 7 years ago? Yes. But I also don't want to be among the last to exit.
Thanks ChpBstrd.
That pretty much explained everything I really need to know (over and above the Wikipedia description).
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I have been involved in Bitcoin since 2011. I think that it is a beautiful idea, from an economic and an computing point of view.
I have a few advises for those who consider investing in Bitcoin :
- Never ever keep your bitcoins on an exchange. First, get a wallet on your computer and store them there after you bought them.
- Actually, if you have more in value than what you would be comfortable having in your home in cash, consider storing them in a cold wallet.
- Actually, consider buying a hardware wallet such as trezor (https://trezor.io/).
- Have backups, being usb sticks and/or papers, safely stored.
- If you consider speculating, just reconsider because it is madness. Only consider Bitcoin as a long-term investment, it is highly volatile and it can take years to recover from a crash.
- If you did not understand some words or idea stated in the above points, it means you are not ready yet for Bitcoin. Read and educate yourself first.
Remember that you are your own bank with Bitcoin. What happens if someone steals your computer ? if your house burns ? if your computer is hacked ? if you mistype and address when sending money ?
A Bitcoin ETF will hopefully be granted this week to the Winklevoss brothers. People not extremely versed in computing matters should rather consider this.
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A mental shift from thinking about Bitcoin as a currency to thinking about it as a collectible fad might set off a landslide of selling among the majority of users holding it for appreciation.
My belief is the underlying discovery/invention of decentralized cryptocurrencies (of which Bitcoin was the first) is not a fad. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. The desire to own "collectible" things with limited supply, as a speculative investment, is also not a fad. If a better cryptocurrency comes along, or if Bitcoin is proven insecure or compromised by a government or something, then yes Bitcoin could behave like a dying fad when bitcoin owners move en masse to another coin.
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Bitcoin has three largely distinct things going for it:
1) Ease/speed/cost of sending payments (compared to ACH transfers, credit card processing companies, paypal)
2) Anonymity
3) Potential for price appreciation.
I'm quite bullish on #1, whether BTC itself or another crytocurrency or a similar system, and long term I'm glad I don't own paypal/mastercard/etc.
#2 has been attacked, at least in the USA, by requiring the exchanges that people used to convert USD->BTC and back again to turn over a lot of detailed information on their customers.
#3 is gambling not investing. So it can be fun but don't bet any money you cannot afford to lose.
Yes, a buddy and I while in University set everything up and bought a few coins (when they were trading ~$100) at one point we had 4 coins. we did some trading and always came out worse off so decided with our 2 we would just hold. Well a year later the exchange we were holding one in closed and we lost one coin. So are now down to 1 with no plan for selling or anything.
I like the idea but honestly see it as purely speculation so I don't think i'll be buying any more.
You were holding your bitcoins at the exchange? No no no. What Dago said. At least store them on your computer, and have a hard copy print out of your wallet's private key so you can recover them if your computer crashes. (This can be as simple as a printed out piece of paper in an envelope).
I have also heard that investors in china have been buying into it amid speculations on the value of the dollar and what impact our future trade policies and possible tariffs will have on other countries.
The chinese are buying bitcoins because they face extremely harsh currency controls in trying to move money overseas and bitcoin is one way around that. It doesn't really have much to do with us/the US.
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A mental shift from thinking about Bitcoin as a currency to thinking about it as a collectible fad might set off a landslide of selling among the majority of users holding it for appreciation.
My belief is the underlying discovery/invention of decentralized cryptocurrencies (of which Bitcoin was the first) is not a fad. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. The desire to own "collectible" things with limited supply, as a speculative investment, is also not a fad. If a better cryptocurrency comes along, or if Bitcoin is proven insecure or compromised by a government or something, then yes Bitcoin could behave like a dying fad when bitcoin owners move en masse to another coin.
Yeah, I agree with you. Either way it will be interesting to see how it pans out over the years. I really regret not getting involved when I first found out about it, but that's life lol
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Yes. I used to have 20 but now I am down to 5. I have also been buying ETH
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Yes. I used to have 20 but now I am down to 5. I have also been buying ETH
Yeah ETH is interesting also. I haven't looked into it to know how safe it is, but I'm guessing you can store that offline also. Seems like from a speculating on price perspective ETH could possibly appreciate way more in the next year.
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Yes, a buddy and I while in University set everything up and bought a few coins (when they were trading ~$100) at one point we had 4 coins. we did some trading and always came out worse off so decided with our 2 we would just hold. Well a year later the exchange we were holding one in closed and we lost one coin. So are now down to 1 with no plan for selling or anything.
I like the idea but honestly see it as purely speculation so I don't think i'll be buying any more.
You were holding your bitcoins at the exchange? No no no. What Dago said. At least store them on your computer, and have a hard copy print out of your wallet's private key so you can recover them if your computer crashes. (This can be as simple as a printed out piece of paper in an envelope).
Yes looking back it was a huge mistake. We had one coin stored offline but had some on the exchange ready for trading. After finishing school and not seeing each other every single day anymore we stopped the trading and the coin just stayed on the exchange. We know better for the future though!
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Yes. I used to have 20 but now I am down to 5. I have also been buying ETH
i bet you've been happy lately :) ETH is killing it
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I got out of bitcoin - there wasn't enough I could do with it. Some restaurants accepted it, and some websites. Awareness is a huge obstacle for Bitcoin.
New bitcoins come from computers guessing a checksum. They propose a block of transactions, including giving themselves a prescribed amount of bitcoin, and then guess at the checksum. The rest of the miners can verify a correct checksum, and accept the block. Cheat, and the rest of the miners ignore the block. It's like a big audit trail where every bitcoin miner tries to be the first to correctly generate the next page.
You might read up on the different sides of the Bitcoin community so you understand the fight that was going on there. Some want bitcoin to have more transactions, others want transactions to have higher fees (somewhat of an oversimplification). It's also worth knowing that most bitcoin mining happens in China owing to the lower electricity costs there. Maybe also for getting around export restrictions, although last I checked bitcoin was only 0.1% the currency flowing out of China.
I would warn you not to sell bitcoin on eBay - lots of fraud there. There's a reason people have long lists of restrictions and sometimes require photographs of a person holding their ID. What happens is that the transactions look normal, and then weeks later everyone asks for a refund. A refund of bitcoin that is gone, that they claim wasn't received. So avoid that route.
In searching for a place to purchase bitcoin, I settled on Coinbase. Several places didn't have a license to sell in big states like California, but Coinbase had settled that issue. Their transaction fee (1%) was reasonable compared to other approaches. But I still went into my Coinbase account, and transferred bitcoin to an address provided by my own digital wallet. I kept bitcoin on my computer (with encrypted backups online).
Hope others find it more interesting and useful than I did.
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"Distributed ledger technology (blockchain) will do for transactions what the internet did for information"
-Ginny Rometty
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I never traded it.
Years ago i was one of the lucky ones who mined a block by pure luck, then at a later joined i joined a coop. And in total mined like 1.4 coins or so.
Currently it is all sitting in an "illegal" poker website. slowly have been growing it over the years, up to 27 coins! And from time to time i use some to buy products online, and once for the hell of it, used it at a bar :D
Really would love ot sell it, but i just keep it as my "please be a super mega duper home run fund" and one day it hits like 5k a coin :D
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Really would love ot sell it, but i just keep it as my "please be a super mega duper home run fund" and one day it hits like 5k a coin :D
if you're not, be sure to keep an eye on what's happening with bitcoin. a possible hard fork is coming, and with BTU (bitcoin unlimited) being heavily pushed, the price of BTC could tank. it's seriously stressful, haha.
good read if you don't know much about BTU and why people want it to happen.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/03/21/is-this-massive-power-struggle-about-to-blow-up-bitcoin/#33bc1b677325
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Cool link. I liked this chunk which summarizes the difference in philosophy between the two camps quite clearly:
At the highest level, there are two camps that see bitcoin becoming two different things: digital gold or electronic cash,” says Adam White, head of GDAX, the professional trading platform of one of the most well-known startups in the space, Coinbase. “Neither is right or wrong. They’re just different perspectives on what the network can become.” The developers’ approach is one more of digital gold — not necessarily putting every coffee payment onto the bitcoin network itself, but having them processed by other, faster networks that would later connect to bitcoin’s to provide finality to the transaction. Bitcoin Unlimited’s vision, supported by a number of miners at this point, is of bitcoin as e-cash — a network that has room for every morning coffee to be processed on bitcoin’s network, which would, incidentally, give them more transaction fees.
I am by no means an expert, but my understanding is that, if there was a hard fork people who had held pre-fork bitcoins would actually be able to double spend them (once on the BTC network and once on the BTU network). So from the user perspective the fork itself is pretty much a non-issue.
Now if the fork scares people out of bitcoin entirely, tanking the exchange rates of both forked networks, that's a different issue. But a hard fork doesn't require individual users to pick a winner between the two new blockchains.
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I am by no means an expert, but my understanding is that, if there was a hard fork people who had held pre-fork bitcoins would actually be able to double spend them (once on the BTC network and once on the BTU network). So from the user perspective the fork itself is pretty much a non-issue.
Now if the fork scares people out of bitcoin entirely, tanking the exchange rates of both forked networks, that's a different issue. But a hard fork doesn't require individual users to pick a winner between the two new blockchains.
BTU will likely become it's own, separate altcoin. it's being proposed because the blockchain will be larger, and therefore more transactions can be made faster. if/when the mainstream starts to really adopt the technology, they could look at BTU has the "superior" coin. a lot of the exchanges are already on board with it. there are so many different scenarios which can be played out... what many people are afraid of (myself included) is that 2 of the largest bitcoin holders (individuals) in the world are the ones proposing the hard fork / switch. there are A LOT of conspiracy theories about why they're doing this, and both sides make sense to me. that's why i'm a little stressed being a BTC holder.
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Bitcoin is an experiment into whether you can have a successful currency with deflation built into the design. Because the economy continues to grow, more currency is constantly needed. That's why for USD, the supply of money in circulation (known as M1 or M2) has been constantly increased over time. Had the treasury not increased the amount of money in circulation over the centuries, there would eventually be a shortage, which would choke off people's ability to transact and encourage hoarding of currency even as sellers became more and more desperate to unload goods. This is what happened in the Great Depression.
The drop in prices could be understood as an increase in the value of currency.
This right here is why Bitcoin will never replace USD, GBP, or Euros. With that said I own some that I have used for ordering things online that are much cheaper when priced in bitcoins. My bitcoins have appreciated but I wouldn't invest in them when there are all sorts of real world things to invest in.
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I am by no means an expert, but my understanding is that, if there was a hard fork people who had held pre-fork bitcoins would actually be able to double spend them (once on the BTC network and once on the BTU network). So from the user perspective the fork itself is pretty much a non-issue.
Now if the fork scares people out of bitcoin entirely, tanking the exchange rates of both forked networks, that's a different issue. But a hard fork doesn't require individual users to pick a winner between the two new blockchains.
BTU will likely become it's own, separate altcoin. it's being proposed because the blockchain will be larger, and therefore more transactions can be made faster. if/when the mainstream starts to really adopt the technology, they could look at BTU has the "superior" coin. a lot of the exchanges are already on board with it. there are so many different scenarios which can be played out... what many people are afraid of (myself included) is that 2 of the largest bitcoin holders (individuals) in the world are the ones proposing the hard fork / switch. there are A LOT of conspiracy theories about why they're doing this, and both sides make sense to me. that's why i'm a little stressed being a BTC holder.
Well the question is whether BTU would retain the whole BTC blockchain up till now (which is what a hard fork would imply) or essentially start over mining from scratch. If the former, you get an additional altcoin where everyone who had a bitcoins pre-fork has equal numbers of the altcoins instantaneously. If the latter then it's just yet another altcoin (although one with particularly rich and powerful backers).
Link to any of the conspiracy theories? I haven't been much into bitcoins in several years, but it's always entertaining to read up on the politics of the community.
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Link to any of the conspiracy theories?
i don't have any links to specific stories, but there's a lot of talk on the bitcoin talk forum (bitcointalk.org). it's been interesting to hear what everyone thinks (and a lot of it is conspiracy theory'ish!)
specifically read up on roger ver and jihan wu.
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Well the question is whether BTU would retain the whole BTC blockchain up till now (which is what a hard fork would imply) or essentially start over mining from scratch. If the former, you get an additional altcoin where everyone who had a bitcoins pre-fork has equal numbers of the altcoins instantaneously. If the latter then it's just yet another altcoin (although one with particularly rich and powerful backers).
most people (the conspiracy theorists), believe that BTU will run on a separate blockchain to BTC. 1 theory is that the whales want people to adopt it, because people will trade their BTC for BTU out of fear their BTC will become worthless. pt.2 to the theory is that the whales will buy back BTC at a much lower price retaining and even larger % of BTC. at the point BTU gains mass adoption, it will be dumped, and people will buy BTC again, but at a much higher price. this seems very plausible, as it's no different than any other "pump and dump". roger ver (look him up) is rumored to have something like 300,000 bitcoins. jihan wu (look him up) must have a ridiculous amount as well (he's the largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining equipment). they're 2 of the largest proponents pushing for BTU adoption. ironic? i think "kinda". i think instead of increasing the blockchain, the solution is to have 1 transaction per block - you have scalability and instant confirmation. blocks are packed into records within the blockchain, so it could conceivably work. network speeds will accommodate this someday. increasing block sizes slows down the system, and it's only going to become slower with more adoption and in turn trading/sending. BTU could work in theory, but a lot of people are weary. i'm very much one of them.
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Really would love ot sell it, but i just keep it as my "please be a super mega duper home run fund" and one day it hits like 5k a coin :D
if you're not, be sure to keep an eye on what's happening with bitcoin. a possible hard fork is coming, and with BTU (bitcoin unlimited) being heavily pushed, the price of BTC could tank. it's seriously stressful, haha.
good read if you don't know much about BTU and why people want it to happen.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/03/21/is-this-massive-power-struggle-about-to-blow-up-bitcoin/#33bc1b677325
I do not keep up with it anymore, really only use it for some donations now and then and my poker money.
I maybe spent 20$ on my power bill for all of it.
Would suck to see it tank :(
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I do not keep up with it anymore, really only use it for some donations now and then and my poker money.
I maybe spent 20$ on my power bill for all of it.
Would suck to see it tank :(
that's cool that you actually use it. yeah, it would be terrible if it tanked for sure!
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I'm toying with the idea of a speculative buy.....not sure if I'll go ahead....think I'll do some more reading before deciding - a bitcoin does seem expensive at £1k....
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Bitcoin has three largely distinct things going for it:
1) Ease/speed/cost of sending payments (compared to ACH transfers, credit card processing companies, paypal)
2) Anonymity
3) Potential for price appreciation.
How exactly is BTC anonymous? I only briefly looked into it years ago and didn't see a way to acquire any anonymously, short of mining. Every way I found to buy BTC involved leaving a trail by using a credit/debit card, bank info or similar. I think there was some money transfer card you could buy at CVS with cash and then use that online? As long as you avoid video surveillance of course you'd then be anonymous. But I could be mistaken.
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Can someone explain to an idiot like me how Bitcoin works?
I fear I am the last person left on the planet who doesn't "get it"!
I recently watched 2014 documentary called The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin. I think it does a good job of explaining some of the basics of bitcoin as well as its potential. It also addresses many pitfalls and challenges of crypto-currency. I looked up a few of the main players that were documented in the movie and found it interesting to see a few of them spent time in jail and many of their bitcoin related exchanges were shuttered; rightly or wrongly I am not sure. Mt. Gox would be the most noticeable failure of a Bitcoin related exchange with Bitinstant not far behind.
Bitcoin is a really interesting subject and worth a few hours of free time if you have it. The more I learn about it, the less I feel I know.
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Bitcoin has three largely distinct things going for it:
1) Ease/speed/cost of sending payments (compared to ACH transfers, credit card processing companies, paypal)
2) Anonymity
3) Potential for price appreciation.
How exactly is BTC anonymous? I only briefly looked into it years ago and didn't see a way to acquire any anonymously, short of mining. Every way I found to buy BTC involved leaving a trail by using a credit/debit card, bank info or similar. I think there was some money transfer card you could buy at CVS with cash and then use that online? As long as you avoid video surveillance of course you'd then be anonymous. But I could be mistaken.
Yes, moving money into and out of bitcoins in the USA is getting much harder to do anonymously than it used to be. If you really want to though you can still search local bitcoins (https://localbitcoins.com/), meet up with someone at a random mcdonalds, starbucks, or other place with free wifi and hand them cash and have them transfer over the bitcoins while you sit there. So it's not easy for them to be anonymous (in the USA), but it's feasible.
There are also ways of transferring and mixing bitcoins to new wallets after you buy them so that, while it'll be obvious you bought some bitcoins, it won't be clear _which_ bitcoins you own/are spending. *shrug*
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No BTC for me, but 10% of my portfolio is in ETH and a tiny bit in XMR! These are much, much better investments IMO.
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No BTC for me, but 10% of my portfolio is in ETH and a tiny bit in XMR! These are much, much better investments IMO.
agreed.
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Has anyone tried to invest in btc-mining?
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No BTC for me, but 10% of my portfolio is in ETH and a tiny bit in XMR! These are much, much better investments IMO.
agreed.
I'm interested in hearing why that is your opinions. Surely not just because the price is lower. (A fallacy)
I do hold ETH.
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Do people actually buy and sell stuff with it? Because if not, it's really a sort of crypto-gold (useless, but widely enough regarded as valuable to hold value of some sort) not a crypto-currency. Right?
I never really understood how anything with an inherently limited supply would work as a currency. There'd be no incentive to ever spend it, since it's inherently going to gain value over time. That's AFAIK the opposite of what you want in a currency, which is basically just supposed to be a way to make transactions fast and easy, not a way to store value.
-W
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People do buy and sell stuff with it. Not a huge amount, and it seems like the trend of online retailers adding it as a payment option has sort of plateaued. But you can, for example, use bitcoins to order computer equipment off of NewEgg, book travel on Expedia, or buy random stuff from overstock.com.
And for transmitting payments overseas it really does have advantages over conventional approaches. (Certainly faster, potentially cheaper, potentially circumvents currency controls.)
Also, bitcoin is currently adding 630k coins per year to a money supply of 16.3M coins* which would produce a pretty decent rate of inflation (3.8%/year) if demand was constant rather than growing.
*~1/3 of bitcoins have potentially been lost from circulation. If you take those out of the analysis, the growth of the money supply is currently 5.8%/year.
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My understanding is that the supply is inherently limited/fixed (each coin is harder to mine than the last) and that there is hence a long term deflationary issue. Is that not correct?
It would be interesting to see how much actual trade happens with the bitcoins that exist. I know only a couple of bitcoin folks, and they just hold onto them and obsessively check the prices online. They buy their groceries with regular money/credit cards/etc.
Sample size of 2, there, so not real useful. But the impression I get is that people have bitcoins to have bitcoins, not to conduct transactions of any kind (I know a few goldbugs too and they do the same sort of thing). That makes me think the whole thing is just beanie babies 2 at worst and gold 2 at best, not the hyper-disruptive new currency thing we keep being promised.
-W
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My understanding is that the supply is inherently limited/fixed (each coin is harder to mine than the last) and that there is hence a long term deflationary issue. Is that not correct?
It would be interesting to see how much actual trade happens with the bitcoins that exist. I know only a couple of bitcoin folks, and they just hold onto them and obsessively check the prices online. They buy their groceries with regular money/credit cards/etc.
Sample size of 2, there, so not real useful. But the impression I get is that people have bitcoins to have bitcoins, not to conduct transactions of any kind (I know a few goldbugs too and they do the same sort of thing). That makes me think the whole thing is just beanie babies 2 at worst and gold 2 at best, not the hyper-disruptive new currency thing we keep being promised.
-W
The ultimate number of bitcoins is fixed, which is why people talk about it as being an inherently deflationary currency, but new additions to the current supply won't stop for another century or so. Until then the money supply is increasing every ten minutes or so.
On any given day between $100-$400M of bitcoins change hands.
The "hyper disruptive currency thing" is pretty much entirely independent of the exchange rate between a given cryptocurrency and the us dollar. I have no idea if the USD:Bitcoin is going to go to zero, stick where it is, or keep growing, and I feel no need to move any of my savings into Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, or ZCash. But if I had to pick a few companies to short on a twenty-year timeline Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, and PayPal wouldn't be at the bottom of my list.
Honestly, whether you think (some) cryptocurrency is going to significantly displace current payment processors or not there's no "sure thing" profit to be made with that information. So why not just sit back, relax, and watch the future happen?
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Oh, no question. I have no interest in owning either currencies or commodities either way. If bitcoin takes over, my VTSAX will presumably be exactly the same (with some bitcoin-processor replacing some of the payment processors you just mentioned, maybe, but big deal).
I'm curious about the design of bitcoin intellectually, though. If I were trying to make a new currency I think I'd aim for some low level of built-in inflation rather than the opposite - I'd want to *punish* hoarding and promote transactions. Then again the goal might not have originally been to create a way to make transactions easier/faster. It's certainly a good design to make early adopters rich (if it sticks around). Gotta tip my hat to the originator(s) for that!
-W
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If I were trying to make a new currency I think I'd aim for some low level of built-in inflation rather than the opposite - I'd want to *punish* hoarding and promote transactions. Then again the goal might not have originally been to create a way to make transactions easier/faster. It's certainly a good design to make early adopters rich (if it sticks around). Gotta tip my hat to the originator(s) for that!
My guess is that a lot of decisions in the original design were focused more on promoting adoption of a cryptocurrency rather than having the best possible features of any possible cryptocurrency. The exact point you've caught (that it'll make the early adopters rich if it sticks around) was probably a great way to incentivize people to become early adopters.
Now there are a lot of competing systems out there, many of them with features I really hope end up in whatever system makes it, but hitting that critical mass of adoption to actually be useful to people is going to be more and more of a challenge.
Bitcoin is currently the only cyptocurrency with a total circulation >$10B.
Two others are >$1B.
8 in the $1B-$100M range.
45 in the $100M-$10M range.
138 in the $10M-$1M range.
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Maybe a system that flips from deflation to inflation somehow once acceptance passes some critical point?
It will certainly be interesting to watch.
-W
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I have been involved in Bitcoin since 2011. I think that it is a beautiful idea, from an economic and an computing point of view.
I have a few advises for those who consider investing in Bitcoin :
- Never ever keep your bitcoins on an exchange. First, get a wallet on your computer and store them there after you bought them.
- Actually, if you have more in value than what you would be comfortable having in your home in cash, consider storing them in a cold wallet.
- Actually, consider buying a hardware wallet such as trezor (https://trezor.io/).
- Have backups, being usb sticks and/or papers, safely stored.
- If you consider speculating, just reconsider because it is madness. Only consider Bitcoin as a long-term investment, it is highly volatile and it can take years to recover from a crash.
- If you did not understand some words or idea stated in the above points, it means you are not ready yet for Bitcoin. Read and educate yourself first.
Remember that you are your own bank with Bitcoin. What happens if someone steals your computer ? if your house burns ? if your computer is hacked ? if you mistype and address when sending money ?
A Bitcoin ETF will hopefully be granted this week to the Winklevoss brothers. People not extremely versed in computing matters should rather consider this.
Words to live by. I had @3000.00 lost at Cryptsy when the bastard robbed his own exchange and fled to China
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Last night I crossed a small personal rubicon with regard to cryptocurrencies and got one of my computers set up to mine zcash (one of the many bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies out there) on the GPU. If 1) the current difficulty is stable 2) the current zcash to bitcoin exchange rate is stable 3) the current bitcoin to USD exchange rate holds, my computer will generate ~$60/month in value (~$50/month net the cost of electricity).
If I look at the cost of buying a new graphics card, that works out to a 300% net annual return on investment. If this were sustainable -- it isn't -- that $50/month of extra income would replace the need for $15,000 in the stash. Of course all three of these assumptions listed above are questionable. #1 is almost certainly false*, #2 could either go up or down but is unlikely to stay the same, #3 gets back to the general question of whether bitcoin is a bubble or not. But it was a wistful sort of fun to spend a little while doing the math on how I could "retire" on an investment of ~1/3 of my annual spending.** Anyway, should be a fun experience (figuring out how to get the mining code to compile on my machine certainly was!), and worst case scenario I'm out the cost of a slightly higher electric bill.
*The more profit there is to be made in mining a particular currency, the more people start doing so. Since the amount of currency produced per unit time is fixed (except when it goes down on a fixed schedule), the amount of money made by each unit of computational power goes down. In addition, while Zcash's algorithm is supposed to be resistant to optimization with FPGAs and custom silicon (the way most bitcoin mining is done these days), if it turns out not to be, the the bottom could drop out of the mining market quite fast.
**Actually closer to 1/2 because at a certain point one would have to start buying new computers to keep the new GPUs in.
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To put a different spin on things, your kids will have to live in a world with just a bit more CO2 and particulate pollution floating around because of your extra electricity use.
Or you could spend the earnings on putting PV on your roof...
-W
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This is the most common crypto currency today. In other words, it's virtual money. Simple people use bitkoyny for shopping on the Internet, and smart and rich still make money on them.
(https://mining-cryptocurrency.ru/wp-content/uploads/bitcoin-2017.jpg) (https://cryptalker.com/what-is-xbt/)
Well, you have me convinced. With only one post to your name I know you can be totally trusted, and judging by the quality of your post you could only be one of the "smart and rich" and an expert in all things. Thank you, O Wise One, for sharing your knowledge.
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You know it's legit 'cause of the fancy bitcoin pic.
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I bought 10 coins for about $200 back in 2013 when Coinbase first started just to see what it was all about. Still got em, not really as an investment, mostly just as a novelty item.
Difficult for us in the US to wrap our heads around why Bitcoin has any meaning, but in many parts of the world it is a much more stable currency than the government's and can be useful for bypassing a lot of the currency controls designed to keep people poor in the developing world. I'd rather own Bitcoin than 90% of the rest of the currencies in the world, especially if I lived in say, Turkey right now, where you can't get your hands on anything but a rapidly deteriorating Lira.
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Remind me again what % the Lira has lost this year, and what % BitCoin has lost? What's with all the one-post-wonders on Bitcoin today?
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Bitcoin is pure speculation at this point, there's nothing you can point to and say "it should be worth such and such amount." It's whatever people value it at, like gold.
Because of that, I'd only ever own a pure spec play if it was going up in price. Does this chart look like it's going up to you? https://www.tradingview.com/x/yfDKwVvD/
(https://www.tradingview.com/x/yfDKwVvD/)
Now perhaps it goes up in the future, but I'd wait for it to actually start an uptrend before trying to guess you're at the bottom here.
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Honestly, the long gradual* slide in the price of bitcoin and associated currencies has been great. It's now possible to discuss the technology and its future implications online again without having the conversation hijacked by either speculators/scammers, or people convinced everyone interested in bitcoin/cryptocurrency is by definition a scammer/speculator themselves.
*By the standards of movements in cryptocurrency prices.
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Venezuelan Bolivar then, if you like. No need to be rude really.
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MMM's tweets make a subtle case for bitcoin long term... Bank just seizes money? I have had this happen multiple times too because they claim my regular paychecks are unusually large. I am sorry banker people you did not go into tech, don't seize my money. I have had 3 week holds, permanent holds, all kinds of stupid shit over the past 10 years.
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Just because Bitcoin is better than many currencies in the world doesn't mean that it's better than owning shares of businesses who operate within the world's reserve currency. Many of those businesses would have the resources to do business in bitcoin readily if it ever became necessary.
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Interesting example of that, I read that one of the ways relatively wealthier Venezuelans are dealing with how rapidly inflation destroys the value of savings is to set up a brokerage account to as a lot like a savings account. Any money that goes in is immediately used to buy stocks on the Venezuelan exchange (which, like any asset priced in bolivars, is growing rapidly in nominal terms). For any purchases stocks are sold to cover the bill.
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Just because Bitcoin is better than many currencies in the world doesn't mean that it's better than owning shares of businesses who operate within the world's reserve currency. Many of those businesses would have the resources to do business in bitcoin readily if it ever became necessary.
I agree, I have 30% of net worth in stocks but only 2% in crypto. The rest in other hard assets and bonds. I however, get most excited by the prospects of crytpo and love tracking it.
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Remind me again what % the Lira has lost this year, and what % BitCoin has lost? What's with all the one-post-wonders on Bitcoin today?
It likely has to do with the BitCoin ETN announced yesterday: CXBTF. It's a Swedish ETN that has been around since 2015, but is now also quoted in USD. Depending on your broker, you can now buy this ETN in US accounts.
https://bitcoinist.com/us-investors-regulated-bitcoin-etn/
Supposedly, Fidelity now allows trades in CXBTF. Schwab, on the other hand, doesn't currently.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1) The issuer promises to keep the ETN 100% hedged by buying or selling whatever amounts of BitCoin needed to keep it 100% hedged. I don't know if this is required by Swedish regulatory authorities. If it isn't required, one concern I would have is the potential for a future change in the structure resulting in less than a 100% hedging factor.
2) BitCoin has a relatively slow transaction speed. If there is a mad rush of buying or selling, trades against the ETN have no comparable technologically imposed throttle, so I would be concerned with the issuers ability to buy or sell BitCoin fast enough--if trading volume in the ETN outpaces BitCoin transaction limitations--to keep the ETN 100% hedged without incurring a drag effect in fast moving markets.
3) The ETN is actually traded in Swedish Krona, so any US investors are exposed to exchange rate fluctuations between the two currencies.
4) Because an ETN is a debt security, the market value of the ETN can be influenced by the creditworthiness of the issuer. If there is a downgrade, the market value of your holdings could fall, even if BitCoin doesn't.
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Boo. I thought the world was over shitcoin.
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Boo. I thought the world was over shitcoin.
Come on now, tell us how you really feel. ;)
Seriously, though, I can understand the use-case for criminals, or for people living in countries with a trash currency, or with draconian currency controls.
But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency; not even as a medium for gambling. Gambling that I understand has at least a game wrapped around it, either to play or to watch, and sometimes an element of skill on the player's part.
As it applies in the USA, I view the technology behind BitCoin as nothing more than a very elegant solution that is still in search of a problem to solve.
Hooray for anyone who got lucky with it. But I won't be rolling the dice on it. And it's not just because there are no dice to roll.
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Boo. I thought the world was over shitcoin.
Come on now, tell us how you really feel. ;)
Seriously, though, I can understand the use-case for criminals, or for people living in countries with a trash currency, or with draconian currency controls.
But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency; not even as a medium for gambling. Gambling that I understand has at least a game wrapped around it, either to play or to watch, and sometimes an element of skill on the player's part.
As it applies in the USA, I view the technology behind BitCoin as nothing more than a very elegant solution that is still in search of a problem to solve.
Hooray for anyone who got lucky with it. But I won't be rolling the dice on it. And it's not just because there are no dice to roll.
I don't doubt whoever came up with the original coins had a poetic / romantic vision for what they would become. But the proliferation of various shitcoins, together with the complete bastardisation of bitcoin, turning it into a specufest and trying to legitimise it as an investment or investment asset class poses risks to financial system, provides a new channel for criminals, provides a new method of extracting money from people who don't know any better and generally acts as an air suck from other more productive uses of human capacity and endeavour.
I need to take a breath now.
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But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency
I don't know if you are talking about Bitcoin or about blockchain-based currencies in general, but one of the main points of them is doing transactions, exchanging money avoiding the middleman, the banks.
Besides, even $ and €, if those are what you were referring to with "developed democracies", are depreciating, they are losing purchasing power.
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Much better to spend those depreciating dollars on a 'currency' with no value whatsoever (beyond speculation).
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But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency
I don't know if you are talking about Bitcoin or about blockchain-based currencies in general, but one of the main points of them is doing transactions, exchanging money avoiding the middleman, the banks.
Besides, even $ and €, if those are what you were referring to with "developed democracies", are depreciating, they are losing purchasing power.
Bitcoin is off approximately 50% from its peak. The USD and the Euro have never experienced anything remotely close to that level of inflation.
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Seriously, though, I can understand the use-case for criminals, or for people living in countries with a trash currency, or with draconian currency controls.
But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency; not even as a medium for gambling.
I used ETH to send my brother living in another country (not a developed democracy) some money.
I used BTC to buy good that are legal to sell in almost every country including western Europe, but not the USA. The people willing to ship them to the USA didn't want a USA money trail.
Another time I used BTC to buy goods online that had a steep discount when paying in BTC. Possibly because they were committing tax fraud, but that isn't my responsibility to police.
EDITed to add - as the buyer of said goods, AFAIK, I violated no laws.
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But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency
I don't know if you are talking about Bitcoin or about blockchain-based currencies in general, but one of the main points of them is doing transactions, exchanging money avoiding the middleman, the banks.
Besides, even $ and €, if those are what you were referring to with "developed democracies", are depreciating, they are losing purchasing power.
Bitcoin is off approximately 50% from its peak. The USD and the Euro have never experienced anything remotely close to that level of inflation.
I didn't say that $ and € depreciate in the same measure as Bitcoin.
I said that $ and € depreciate too.
I believe they depreciate at a higher rate than what the official figures tell us.
But all this belongs to the Besides part of my previous post, which is its incidental part. Its main part was more important.
As it applies in the USA, I view the technology behind BitCoin as nothing more than a very elegant solution that is still in search of a problem to solve.
@ILikeDividends,
I think cryptos have already found and helped to solve some problems.
1. Cutting out the middleman
2. More Confidential Transactions
3. Greater Access to Credit
4. Individual Ownership
5. Strong Security
https://blog.finjan.com/advantages-of-cryptocurrency/
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Thanks to this thread, I checked, and there has been some wild price action on crypto- in the past week. It appears that double-digit percentage moves are the norm for the moment. It's hard for me to understand how storing wealth in something so volatile can be appealing.
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Thanks to this thread, I checked, and there has been some wild price action on crypto- in the past week. It appears that double-digit percentage moves are the norm for the moment. It's hard for me to understand how storing wealth in something so volatile can be appealing.
Down about 25% over the past week. And in other news, another Bitcoin exchange disappeared:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2019/06/27/crypto-exchange-and-xrp-refuge-bitsane-vanishes-scamming-as-many-as-246000-users/#2f2a14fc77fa
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Thanks to this thread, I checked, and there has been some wild price action on crypto- in the past week. It appears that double-digit percentage moves are the norm for the moment. It's hard for me to understand how storing wealth in something so volatile can be appealing.
It’s desperation investing in the everything bubble. Can’t make money in overpriced bonds. Can’t make money in overpriced stocks. Etc... Might as well hold 97% in treasuries and gamble the rest on crypto.
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But for the life of me, I can't understand any use-cases, nor the appeal, for anyone in a developed democracy with its own currency
I don't know if you are talking about Bitcoin or about blockchain-based currencies in general, but one of the main points of them is doing transactions, exchanging money avoiding the middleman, the banks.
Besides, even $ and €, if those are what you were referring to with "developed democracies", are depreciating, they are losing purchasing power.
Bitcoin is off approximately 50% from its peak. The USD and the Euro have never experienced anything remotely close to that level of inflation.
I didn't say that $ and € depreciate in the same measure as Bitcoin.
I said that $ and € depreciate too.
I believe they depreciate at a higher rate than what the official figures tell us.
But all this belongs to the Besides part of my previous post, which is its incidental part. Its main part was more important.
As it applies in the USA, I view the technology behind BitCoin as nothing more than a very elegant solution that is still in search of a problem to solve.
@ILikeDividends,
I think cryptos have already found and helped to solve some problems.
1. Cutting out the middleman
2. More Confidential Transactions
3. Greater Access to Credit
4. Individual Ownership
5. Strong Security
https://blog.finjan.com/advantages-of-cryptocurrency/
All fractional reserve currencies depreciate. That's how we get more of them to spend. Economies with a fixed amount of currency don't grow or have financial stability problems.
You believe they're hiding inflation numbers? Believe based on what?
1. Maybe the only real benefit for those with limited access to banks.
2. Hiding financial transactions is a benefit to whom, exactly? Financial transparency has been one of the pillars of our economy for decades. Post 9/11 financial laws that were largely adopted internationally were created specifically to make even more financial transactions traceable. As soon as the Washington Post shows the following headline "Smugglers caught paying for a ship full of weapons with Bitcoin" you can kiss what limited confidentiality exists goodbye. Bitcoin will be regulated or outlawed. The former simply takes away the perceived benefits. The latter can make several hundred billion dollars in speculation disappear overnight.
3. How much credit can a heavily fluctuating currency offer?
4/5. So secure that individual owners have lost passwords and locked themselves out of countless millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Possibly forever.
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I decided I was tired of missing out on the action, so I put in some low-ball bids. Instead of falling toward my bid, BTC zoomed up another 10% (Ether trading about 4% greater than my current bid). Looks like the excitement is back!
No reason to change my bids, I'm sure they'll trip soon enough.
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nah way too speculative for my taste
but it is interesting and I am curious how it will react to Libra
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Bitcoin will only become viable as a currency when it does not fluctuate so much daily or weekly. The fluctuation, which attracts speculative investors, is actually a big negative toward using bitcoin for anything mainstream.