Author Topic: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion  (Read 402651 times)

sol

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1050 on: April 24, 2018, 08:52:21 AM »
It's difficult to determine whether the moral high-horsing, rampant condescension, egoic characterization of the "others" as disproportionately criminals, or splash of sexism is the most offensive.  Hmm.  Definitely the sexism.

Lol!  Did I strike a nerve somehow?  Aggressive personal attacks against an individual are not the normal way we operate here, but I'll give you a pass because you're still finding your footing.  My condescension is benevolent.

So let's get back on track, and try to address the contents of the argument at hand with logical and reasoned responses.  I'll go first!  There is no intended sexism in my previous post, not at you nor at anyone in general.  Was it my use of "housewives" to describe people swept up in the crypto craze that you found objectionable? 

And I thought people like you would be happy that I presented a justification for buying crypto:  money changes hands!  Just like penny stocks, large sums are gained and lost in crypto relatively quickly, for reasons unrelated to fundamentals, and if you're good and/or lucky you can be on the receiving end of that transfer. 

As to the "criminal" charge, I'm not the one characterizing the crypto base that way.  The FBI did that.  The exchanges themselves do that.  You've done that!  So why all the pent-up anger?  You seem to have a lot of frustration on this issue, and it's harshing your mellow, man.  Maybe take a little vacation and try to relax a little?  That always works wonders for me.

Now that we've addressed your personal attacks on me, I will patiently await your attacks on the arguments that precipitated your personal attacks.  Those are more welcome.

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1051 on: April 24, 2018, 12:25:51 PM »
"Statements such as 'crypto is guaranteed to fail' have no semantic content as they are mathematically indefensible."

There is no way you are serious here. This is math-based absolutism applied to a field that doesn't deal in absolutes. Replace the word "crypto" in your statement with the phrase "PayUsToMailHumanShitToYou.com", and read it back to yourself. Nobody on the forum uses phrases like you've described as descriptors of mathematical certainty, and it's bullshit sophistry to act as though they do and then pretend you're smarter than everyone else for spotting a mathematical error in a non-mathematical sentence.

I agree math-based absolutism does not work in fields that are too complex for such black-and-white decision making.

The gist of many of the previous replies is, in essence, that crypto is destined to fail.  Your hypothetical company about feces seems to have a very low success rate, but humans are unpredictable and perhaps it would find a niche market among fertilizer enthusiasts / fetishists / pranksters.

These replies often come from the frame of mind that it's inconceivable for this new technology to have any long term impact or success, because of short term problems. 
Use bitcoin for a short while and it becomes clear for example that Western Union is facing a future similar to Kodak in the 90s, unless they can adapt.  The ability to remit value across great distances no longer requires an intermediary to take a large cut.


Quote
If you're hedging against a crypto future by buying a small amount of crypto, how do you evaluate which crypto is the most likely winner? It's like stock picking, except none of the companies will reveal anything about their finances. How do you evaluate the likely future value of the crypto once you've picked what you think is the winner? Successfully choosing Ethereum as the currency of the future, but buying it at 300 dollars only to find out in the future that it's only worth fifty, is worse than doing absolutely nothing.

This is an excellent question.  It occurs to me that this may be a rhetorical argument to prove the futility of such an endeavor, but here goes.
Each blockchain is a communication network that transmits value. Metcalfe's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law) gives us a reasonable estimation framework for the utility of said network, and with supply fixed/limited for most cryptos it is simply the one with the largest user base that is the most profitable, and most likely to succeed, at any given time.  Cryptos are strongly correlated with one another so pick the top couple and rebalance periodically and your bases should be covered pretty well.

Quote
If you think crypto taking over is a possibility worth hedging against, the smart option isn't to pick a couple of random coins and hope you're the world's greatest stock picker. The smart option in that case is to load your investment portfolio with companies heavy on stock and light on cash. Companies with significant debt denominated in dollars and significant current assets will gain in such a scenario, with no risk of losing out by picking the wrong crypto - so someone who was serious about covering the possibility would be increasing their holdings with that kind of company, rather than bidding up a cryptocurrency that requires a catastrophic collapse of civil society to see its share of transactions rise to one-tenth of one percent of economic activity.

Everyone has different risk tolerances and different methods for making contingency plans.  It's comforting  to think that such a plan will eliminate risk, but that does not make it so. 

I have very little faith in the long term viability of the majority of the ~1500 cryptocurrencies.  Or in the long term viability of trillions of dollars of ever escalating debt for modern countries.  Or in the long term viability of the relentless consumer culture that drives this 100+year growth frenzy.  Or the increasing amount of money being siphoned out of the equities markets while providing no value.

Therefore it makes sense to me to have as distributed an allocation as possible to defray risk, acknowledging that individual components of the portfolio will have outsized risk, but largely for different future scenarios.   I would be plenty happy if the next 50 years go by and crypto disappears and the status quo is maintained, aside from a shift to sustainable consumption to preserve our planet's future.

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1052 on: April 24, 2018, 12:40:57 PM »
It's difficult to determine whether the moral high-horsing, rampant condescension, egoic characterization of the "others" as disproportionately criminals, or splash of sexism is the most offensive.  Hmm.  Definitely the sexism.

Lol!  Did I strike a nerve somehow?  Aggressive personal attacks against an individual are not the normal way we operate here, but I'll give you a pass because you're still finding your footing.  My condescension is benevolent.

So let's get back on track, and try to address the contents of the argument at hand with logical and reasoned responses.  I'll go first!  There is no intended sexism in my previous post, not at you nor at anyone in general.  Was it my use of "housewives" to describe people swept up in the crypto craze that you found objectionable? 

The "clueless housewives" bit of sexism struck a nerve, yes. 

I'm glad your condescension is benevolent.  I was under the impression that candidly calling people out on their BS was kind of the way things operated around here.

Quote

And I thought people like you would be happy that I presented a justification for buying crypto:  money changes hands!  Just like penny stocks, large sums are gained and lost in crypto relatively quickly, for reasons unrelated to fundamentals, and if you're good and/or lucky you can be on the receiving end of that transfer. 

"people like you" ??
 
You seem to have very strong opinions about who you think I am, and it doesn't seem to be based at all on the things I say other than I find it possible that crypto will have a role in our future society, and you don't.

Quote
As to the "criminal" charge, I'm not the one characterizing the crypto base that way.  The FBI did that.  The exchanges themselves do that.  You've done that!  So why all the pent-up anger?  You seem to have a lot of frustration on this issue, and it's harshing your mellow, man.  Maybe take a little vacation and try to relax a little?  That always works wonders for me.

Now that we've addressed your personal attacks on me, I will patiently await your attacks on the arguments that precipitated your personal attacks.  Those are more welcome.

If there's any point at which I said half of crypto users were criminals and the other half were clueless rubes, I misspoke.  I'm reasonably certain the major exchanges have not issued any such statement either?  I could be wrong, as usual.

It's fine dude, you're allowed to your opinions.  And you're probably right, all of crypto is criminals and idiots.  You're safe!  Because you're smart enough to avoid the trap that all the criminals and idiots are setting for you.  Hooray!  Back to the high horse.


runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1053 on: April 24, 2018, 01:04:55 PM »
"Use bitcoin for a short while and it becomes clear for example that Western Union is facing a future similar to Kodak in the 90s, unless they can adapt.  The ability to remit value across great distances no longer requires an intermediary to take a large cut."

As per the below link, a single bitcoin transfer now uses up about two hundred and fifteen kWh. I don't know where you are, but in the EU that's about forty quid's worth of electricity. And unlike Western Union, the advancement of technology more or less guarantees that figure will go upwards.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change

Pro-crypto postings very often seem to start from an uncontroversial beginning ("banks are charging us too much") before leaping immediately to a drastic conclusion ("bitcoin is the future"). Banks are worried about losing sources of profit, but they're barely even registering cryptocurrencies as a threat: fintech companies are what's scaring the crap out of them. I'm in the EU rather than the States, and there's an enormous amount of change in the financial services sector, more or less none of which involves cryptocurrencies, and almost all of which involves customers being offered better services for less money. Crypto advocates are frequently right that a given incumbent service provider is expensive, cumbersome and difficult to use, but they're almost invariably wrong when they assume that the best solution is to switch to crypto.

Revolut enables instant FX transfers at more or less the mid-rate with no fees, which is astounding. N26 is offering a current account that's close to being best in class in every market they operate in, and account charges are effectively zero. There's some curiosity about blockchain, and whether it will turn out to be useful, but cryptocurrencies themselves are not what banks and other incumbent financial institutions are worried about. Visa and Mastercard, for example, are facing what could be an existential threat in the EU from new payment service providers thanks to the second payment services directive, and none of those providers will be operating via cryptocurrencies. Mortgage lenders are worried about the prospects of a Dutch-style shakeup, where pension funds saw weakness and carved out a fifth of the mortgage market in a couple of years. Pension funds, in turn, live in mortal fear of Vanguard deciding to move into the European pension markets - when Vanguard opened an office in London a few years back, the announcement alone produced a visible drop in the share price of incumbent pension providers. People and companies are carving chunks out of each other's profit margins all over Europe's financial sector, and crypto is almost entirely irrelevant to it all. It's regarded as an object of curiosity at best, and a catastrophic bubble at worst.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2018, 01:21:17 PM by runbikerun »

Telecaster

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1054 on: April 24, 2018, 02:19:27 PM »
"Statements such as 'crypto is guaranteed to fail' have no semantic content as they are mathematically indefensible."

There is no way you are serious here. This is math-based absolutism applied to a field that doesn't deal in absolutes. Replace the word "crypto" in your statement with the phrase "PayUsToMailHumanShitToYou.com", and read it back to yourself. Nobody on the forum uses phrases like you've described as descriptors of mathematical certainty, and it's bullshit sophistry to act as though they do and then pretend you're smarter than everyone else for spotting a mathematical error in a non-mathematical sentence.

I agree math-based absolutism does not work in fields that are too complex for such black-and-white decision making.

The gist of many of the previous replies is, in essence, that crypto is destined to fail.  Your hypothetical company about feces seems to have a very low success rate, but humans are unpredictable and perhaps it would find a niche market among fertilizer enthusiasts / fetishists / pranksters.

These replies often come from the frame of mind that it's inconceivable for this new technology to have any long term impact or success, because of short term problems. 
Use bitcoin for a short while and it becomes clear for example that Western Union is facing a future similar to Kodak in the 90s, unless they can adapt.  The ability to remit value across great distances no longer requires an intermediary to take a large cut.

I think this technology will have little long term impact or success because of structural, not short term, problems.  Western Union is an interesting example.  In today's world of electronic bill pay offered by every bank, as well as Paypal and credit cards, what on Earth do we need Western Union for?  The answer is in many parts of the world people don't have access to a traditional banking system, and need to be able to send and receive cash.   Bitcoin isn't cash, so it doesn't help with that problem.   As an aside, while WU is a legitimate company, the irreversibly of WU transactions and accompanying scams have essentially eliminated it as a viable method of money transfer except for when both parties already know each other because the mere mention of WU screams "scam" to most people.  That's not a bright future for Bitcoin. 

Another structural problem, which is actually two structural problems, has to do with contracts.  Namely, our economy (and some say civilization) relies on the ability to pay for goods and services now for delivery in the future, and receive goods and services now, but pay for them in the future.  Mortgages, wages, Amazon Prime, construction, your bar tab, all operate on this principle.  But it is all supported because most contracts are legally binding, there are are legal ways to seek relief in the event of noncompliance. 

The other structural problem is that you can't enter into contracts priced in Bitcoin. I know down to the penny how much my mortgage payment will be ten years from now.  But there is no way I could price it in Bitcoin because the price isn't stable.  You can't even price a contact this week in Bitcoin.  Most businesses have margins that too small for that risk.  Transaction costs also play into this, because while you know how much MasterCard will be charging you next month, you have no idea what the Bitcoin transactions will cost you.   You can't do business like that.  Maybe as a novelty, but it doesn't scale.  The easy solution is don't accept Bitcoin. 

The next structural problem is that Bitcoin doesn't scale.  Because of the blocksize limit, the theoretical number of transactions per second is also limited--to a tiny number.  Far too tiny to support the economy of even a reasonably sized city.    There are proposed workarounds, but then you don't have Bitcoin, do you?  You have some other coin called BitcoinFun or something.  And you better get on the BitcoinFun fork fast before everyone stops using the old Bitcoin and its value goes away.  On the flip side it doesn't matter if a dollar bill was issued 20 years ago, or 20 minutes ago.  It still spends the same. 

The next structural problems is that in almost every country (maybe every country, I dunno) taxes and wages must be paid in legal currency.  Since taxes and wages are typically two of the biggest if not the two biggest expenses of any business, businesses need dollars to stay solvent.   You gotta make payroll and you gotta have dollars to do that.  And let's say you booked a lot of sales at Christmas when Bitcoin was high.  Now in April taxes are due, and Uncle Sam wants his cut and so you go to sell some of your Bitcoin which you've been saving just for this occasion.    Oops, Bitcoin is half what it was, but Uncle Sam doesn't care.  He wants the December profits even though that money evaporated, which could be very painful.  Like shut down your business and seize your assets painful.   The easy solution is don't accept Bitcoin. 

I could go on and on but hopefully you see my point.  The last point alone is reason why Bitcoin or any crypto will never see any significant market penetration.  There are too many structural problems. 


Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1055 on: April 24, 2018, 11:54:07 PM »
The entire marketplace is infected with a get-rich-quick mentality, mixed with a fairly unpleasant libertarian dislike of government, and the kind of thing that would be regarded as an absolute minimum standard in terms of business reporting is simply not bothered with.

This weekend I had some lenthly conversations with one of my friends who is an active crypto miner and "investor", and he made a pretty convincing case that cryptos are now played much like penny stocks.  He says no one views them as a serious investment.  They don't even attempt to deny the blatantly illegal pump and dump schemes that characterize the marketplace. 

All he see is a wildly fluctuating unregulated asset class rife with speculators, some of which are organized crime and some of which are clueless housewives, and he thinks there is money to be made (or potentially lost) playing the waves.  He doesn't have any illusions that cryptocurrency is going to supplant the USD.  He just thinks that, like penny stocks, this is a high-risk game in which you can 10x or 100x your investment in a matter of weeks, with a little bit of luck and slightly more knowledge than the average crypto investor (who has virtually nil).

From his perspective, this whole thing makes a lot more sense to me.  There is no future in it.  Of course it's a bubble.  It's 50% fraud and 50% pyramid scheme, and every serious investor should stay far far away.  But!  It's also a legitimate "get rich quick" scheme just like penny stocks are, if you can get in and out early on each artificially manipulated price wave, precisely because so many people are getting fleeced after buying into the hype.  HODL is for suckers.  Learn to watch the markets and time your exits, and there is real money to be made in the short term if you're morally flexible enough to embrace it.

I leave for a few months and as expected, you still still over here all salty :P
 
Hope everyone bought the dip! I plan to add to the equities bucket once we are down another 10-20%.

Cheers!

Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1056 on: April 25, 2018, 11:05:14 AM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

Just like you old farts had an entire generation buying equities with you in retirement accounts, it's easy to see where the millennial generation will be putting their (albeit less) money towards.

Look macro, play it accordingly.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2018, 11:09:17 AM by Tonyahu »

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1057 on: April 26, 2018, 12:04:16 AM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

Just like you old farts had an entire generation buying equities with you in retirement accounts, it's easy to see where the millennial generation will be putting their (albeit less) money towards.

Look macro, play it accordingly.

Dismissive attitude to people who disagree, comment that doesn't actually relate to the link provided, wild claim offered with no supporting evidence. We have a trifecta.

Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1058 on: April 26, 2018, 10:18:19 AM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

Just like you old farts had an entire generation buying equities with you in retirement accounts, it's easy to see where the millennial generation will be putting their (albeit less) money towards.

Look macro, play it accordingly.

Dismissive attitude to people who disagree, comment that doesn't actually relate to the link provided, wild claim offered with no supporting evidence. We have a trifecta.

1) He has consistently not followed the rules of the thread.

2) I am glad you ignored the link, fits your agenda.

3) Ask 10 millennial's what they think about Stock Market and then ask them about Bitcoin.



sherr

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1059 on: April 26, 2018, 11:40:35 AM »
3) Ask 10 millennial's what they think about Stock Market and then ask them about Bitcoin.

I am an (older) millennial. I work with a lot of people younger than me. As a programmer, in a high-tech company. Every single person I know thinks that Cryptocurrencies are at best a silly way to speculate (not invest), at worst an outright scam. There are some people around here who are pro-crypto, but they are a small minority. Nowhere near the number of people that invest in the stock market.

If you think otherwise I suspect it is because you have intentionally surrounded yourself with like-minded people. Which is not necessarily bad, but you might want to watch out for group-think when making significant financial decisions.

sherr

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1060 on: April 26, 2018, 11:47:24 AM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

2) I am glad you ignored the link, fits your agenda.

I also have no idea what you think this proves. Of course the CEO of an exchange is interested in expanding his business and being an exchange for more stuff. Why wouldn't he be? More exchange fees to charge, more income for his business. That says nothing at all about whether cryptocurrencies are a good thing to "invest" in.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 11:50:06 AM by sherr »

waltworks

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1061 on: April 26, 2018, 12:04:07 PM »
I'm a couple of years too old to be considered a Millennial (the cutoff is 1980 or so, right?) but my wife, siblings, and most of our friends are millennials. Tech savvy hipster ones, too. Not one that I know of gives a rat's ass about cryptocurrencies, and the ones that invest at all invest in... wait for it... the stock market, the bond market, and real estate.

Even if crypto completely replaced all other forms of money, why would anyone stop investing in the stock market? They have basically nothing to do with each other - the companies involved (mostly) make actual products and provide actual services. They can take payment in dollars, or bitcoin, or rare comic books, or whatever, and that business will still be just as valuable and just as worth investing in regardless.

Now, some big crypto company might someday become the next Visa, or something, and maybe be publicly listed and worth investing in. If you got in on the ground floor, you might end up rich, just like any new and upcoming company. But that company won't kill off Microsoft or Unilever, it can only really displace companies that are purely providing payment processing services.

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GuitarStv

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1062 on: April 26, 2018, 12:12:18 PM »
I'm a millennial.  Crypto is not an investment . . . generously it can be called speculation.  The stock market by way of index funds is (in contrast) a pretty decent place to park your money to achieve long term appreciation that beats inflation.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 12:57:32 PM by GuitarStv »

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1063 on: April 26, 2018, 01:15:01 PM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

Just like you old farts had an entire generation buying equities with you in retirement accounts, it's easy to see where the millennial generation will be putting their (albeit less) money towards.

Look macro, play it accordingly.

Dismissive attitude to people who disagree, comment that doesn't actually relate to the link provided, wild claim offered with no supporting evidence. We have a trifecta.

1) He has consistently not followed the rules of the thread.

2) I am glad you ignored the link, fits your agenda.

3) Ask 10 millennial's what they think about Stock Market and then ask them about Bitcoin.

1: There are no rules in this thread. You don't get to arbitrarily decide upon rules for particular threads, because that's not how this forum works. If you want somewhere you don't have to see any dissenting opinion, go over to Reddit's crypto subs. Otherwise, you're not the arbiter of what's acceptable in a thread: the mods are. You're on a website whose front page flags a post with the title WHY BITCOIN IS DUMB, for fuck's sake.

2. That link proves the quadratic root of fuck all. It's literally the head of a stock exchange saying "maybe in the future we could be a crypto exchange". That's it. You've ignored the fact that the same person derided ICOs in the same article, for God's sake.

3. I'm a millennial. So are most of my friends. I don't know a single one who thinks Bitcoin is a good idea. Literally not a single one. I know plenty who think investing in index funds is a good idea, though.

Seriously, this is shitposting. You're putting up cheap garbage with no effort to support any of it. It's crappy behaviour and this forum deserves better than mindless crypto shilling. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this is just trolling.

GuitarStv

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1064 on: April 26, 2018, 01:23:14 PM »
0/4 millennials on board the cryptocurrency train.  Surely we can find just six more?  :P

seattlecyclone

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1065 on: April 26, 2018, 01:56:42 PM »
0/4 millennials on board the cryptocurrency train.  Surely we can find just six more?  :P

Make that 0/5.

sol

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1066 on: April 26, 2018, 02:00:51 PM »
Ya'll seem to be taking this way too seriously.  Do we really expect someone recommending a newfangled get rich quick scheme to come here with reasoned arguments?  To respond to critique with thoughtful consideration? 

Shitposting is the order of the day here.  I say we let them have their fun.  You can argue all you want, but like any ponzi scheme the "true believers" are only here to stir up interest and generate buzz among susceptible new buyers.  Your informed opinions are mere distractions to that effort, because they're not really talking to you.

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1067 on: April 26, 2018, 02:10:19 PM »
Shitposting is the order of the day here.  I say we let them have their fun.  You can argue all you want, but like any ponzi scheme the "true believers" are only here to stir up interest and generate buzz among susceptible new buyers.

Well I don't disagree, but I think it would be a disservice to potential susceptible new buyers that may be reading this to just give up on the conversation entirely.

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1068 on: April 26, 2018, 02:51:14 PM »
Ya'll seem to be taking this way too seriously.  Do we really expect someone recommending a newfangled get rich quick scheme to come here with reasoned arguments?  To respond to critique with thoughtful consideration? 

Shitposting is the order of the day here.  I say we let them have their fun.  You can argue all you want, but like any ponzi scheme the "true believers" are only here to stir up interest and generate buzz among susceptible new buyers.  Your informed opinions are mere distractions to that effort, because they're not really talking to you.

Fair point; I do react poorly to bad faith arguments...

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1069 on: April 26, 2018, 03:15:48 PM »
0/4 millennials on board the cryptocurrency train.  Surely we can find just six more?  :P

Make that 0/5.

I'm a millennial. Currently 1% of my portfolio* is crypto the other 99% is in the stock market.

*I personally don't consider crypto to be investment or part of my portfolio, but I did some GPU mining and haven't sold off all of the proceeds yet.

So I guess we are up to .01/6

jambongris

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1070 on: April 26, 2018, 03:37:16 PM »
0/4 millennials on board the cryptocurrency train.  Surely we can find just six more?  :P

Make that 0/5.

I'm a millennial. Currently 1% of my portfolio* is crypto the other 99% is in the stock market.

*I personally don't consider crypto to be investment or part of my portfolio, but I did some GPU mining and haven't sold off all of the proceeds yet.

So I guess we are up to .01/6

Another millennial who doesn’t “invest” in crypto and I can vouch for several others that don’t.

The only person I know that has admitted to investing in crypto is a middle aged (definitely not a millennial) coworker who was buying bitcoin back in December. I haven’t heard anything from them since.

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1071 on: April 28, 2018, 03:45:38 PM »


Bicycle_B

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1072 on: April 29, 2018, 06:52:57 PM »
The entire marketplace is infected with a get-rich-quick mentality, mixed with a fairly unpleasant libertarian dislike of government, and the kind of thing that would be regarded as an absolute minimum standard in terms of business reporting is simply not bothered with.

This weekend I had some lenthly conversations with one of my friends who is an active crypto miner and "investor", and he made a pretty convincing case that cryptos are now played much like penny stocks.  He says no one views them as a serious investment.  They don't even attempt to deny the blatantly illegal pump and dump schemes that characterize the marketplace. 

All he see is a wildly fluctuating unregulated asset class rife with speculators, some of which are organized crime and some of which are clueless housewives, and he thinks there is money to be made (or potentially lost) playing the waves.  He doesn't have any illusions that cryptocurrency is going to supplant the USD.  He just thinks that, like penny stocks, this is a high-risk game in which you can 10x or 100x your investment in a matter of weeks, with a little bit of luck and slightly more knowledge than the average crypto investor (who has virtually nil).

From his perspective, this whole thing makes a lot more sense to me.  There is no future in it.  Of course it's a bubble.  It's 50% fraud and 50% pyramid scheme, and every serious investor should stay far far away.  But!  It's also a legitimate "get rich quick" scheme just like penny stocks are, if you can get in and out early on each artificially manipulated price wave, precisely because so many people are getting fleeced after buying into the hype.  HODL is for suckers.  Learn to watch the markets and time your exits, and there is real money to be made in the short term if you're morally flexible enough to embrace it.

I leave for a few months and as expected, you still still over here all salty :P
 
Hope everyone bought the dip! I plan to add to the equities bucket once we are down another 10-20%.

Cheers!

Tonyahu, you're back!

I keep wondering what happened to your plan to sell much of your then-almost-enough-for-FIRE crypto holdings, ending up with roughly even buckets of cash, stock, real estate, crypto and something I can't remember.  So what happened?

Did you sell any crypto?  What are the proportions of various asset categories now?  At current market prices, is your portfolio (including crypto since you still have some) enough to support your FIRE, supposing that the 4% rule applies to all portions of it?

(Yes, naysayers, I know the Trinity study didn't include any crypto.  I'm just curious about our OP here.)

LessIsLess

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1073 on: April 30, 2018, 07:35:13 AM »
These replies often come from the frame of mind that it's inconceivable for this new technology to have any long term impact or success, because of short term problems. 

Getting someone to change their frozen mind, might be harder than getting a space alien to visit Earth. 
Even if crypto had destroyed entire industries, the critics would still say it's a fraud.

waltworks

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1074 on: April 30, 2018, 08:00:17 AM »
Keep in mind that it's also possible to believe in the long term possibilities of the technology AND simultaneously that there's no way to invest in said future right now. Remember the entire historical return of the US airline industry? It's zero. Zero. You can be incredibly successful and disruptive - and not make your investors a dime.

-W

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1075 on: May 01, 2018, 12:29:50 AM »
These replies often come from the frame of mind that it's inconceivable for this new technology to have any long term impact or success, because of short term problems. 

Getting someone to change their frozen mind, might be harder than getting a space alien to visit Earth. 
Even if crypto had destroyed entire industries, the critics would still say it's a fraud.

Oh, if crypto had eaten entire industries whole, I'd be absolutely willing to listen to a valuation somewhere around 3-4% of where it is now.

Bitcoin is just shy of being a decade old. By the time Google hit a decade, they had taken a wrecking ball to the advertising industry, the print news industry and the concept of non-academic reference texts. They'd virtually wiped out the field of email account providers and were about to take a hatchet to Nokia and Garmin simultaneously by releasing the first Android phones. And they'd gone public in 2004 to boot.

Google stock has appreciated at about 25-30% annually since IPO. Bitcoin is somewhere in the region of ten to a hundred times that rate. But yeah, it's the crypto sceptics who aren't thinking properly.

sol

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1076 on: May 01, 2018, 12:51:34 AM »
Bitcoin is just shy of being a decade old. By the time Google hit a decade, they had taken a wrecking ball to the advertising industry, the print news industry and the concept of non-academic reference texts. They'd virtually wiped out the field of email account providers and were about to take a hatchet to Nokia and Garmin simultaneously by releasing the first Android phones. And they'd gone public in 2004 to boot.

See, you're still thinking in terms of fundamentals.  That's your problem.

Cryptos aren't valued the same way stocks are.  It's not about market penetration or upseting outdated business models or revenue streams or anything at all, really, except public perception aka hype.  The whole crypto business model is to publicly promote the idea until you convince new money (during a time in which the economy is flush with spare cash) to invest in a controlled finite supply, thus driving up the instantaneous price point to ridiculous levels and then using the single transaction price to estimate market cap.  Transactions are hard to execute on purpose and units are randomly destroyed all the time, thus depleting the supply and keeping the instantaneous price high.  This is how bitcoin can claim to be "worth" hundreds of billions of dollars based on a single buy order for $7k.  Even the most rudimentary business analysis reveals the absurdity of it.

So let all of that stuffy reliable analysis go!  Don't pretend there's a revenue stream or a use case, because it doesn't matter.  All that matter is finding a greater fool, which is why so many crypto enthusiasts are so keen to promote their ideas to an ever-widening audience.  Just like penny stocks, you can double or triple your money in a matter of hours, if you know what coin is being manipulated next, and this coordinated manipulation is exactly what turned a handful of 20-something trust funders with $10k burning holes in their pockets into multimillionaires in less than two years.  If they could actually liquidate at those crazy high prices they'd be genuinely rich, but of course the problem is that the price (and thus the value of your asset) decreases every time you sell.  Which is why HODL is the rallying cry, because they need to suppress sales as much as possible.

I think it's a fascinating business model.  These people may own ten million dollars worth of a crypto, but they can only sell a few hundred dollars per day without negatively impacting market prices.  They need to drip it out slowly to keep the price high, but they have real expenses to cover in the mean time, so every new youtube video they make that convinces another person to buy in is basically going right into their pocket as sales, and so from that perspective the "currency" side is totally irrelevant.  They're in sales like anyone else in retail, pocketing take-home cash buy convincing people to buy their product.  Generating a few hundred dollars per day off of $10k of original money is fantastic.  Doing it on ten million in current asset value is kind of disappointing.  Unfortunately, sales don't scale with asset price, and they need to balance those competing interest.

I've decided that I love cryptocurrencies.  They are everything that is wrong the modern age, embodied in a new speculative bubble that will be remembered for generations as a symbol of our folly.  Like Donald Trump, they are exactly what America deserves.

EscapeVelocity2020

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1077 on: May 01, 2018, 01:21:22 AM »
The BitCoin Achilles heel is that just about any reasonably funded private entity can start a currency on an equivalent playing level.  There is no moat, no barrier to entry, no intrinsic value.  Even Oscar-Mayer has jumped in.  What if Apple just decided one day that it wanted to be a real player and back-stopped it's 'I-currency' with both technical ability as well as real cash reserves.  What if a 3rd world country decided to use 'Wakanda' blockchain currency backstopped with it's natural resources? 

Just about anything could render BitCoin effectively worthless if a new Crypto overshadows or splinters the market.

trollwithamustache

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1078 on: May 01, 2018, 08:04:50 AM »
.  What if a 3rd world country decided to use 'Wakanda' blockchain currency backstopped with it's natural resources? 


well, to answer your last question it appears you have to cut the price of your crude oil by 30% as a teaser to get people to buy your  crypto and use that to buy your oil....

The BTC moat is its widespread usage, which is both incredibly powerful and potentially incredible weak.

talltexan

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1079 on: May 09, 2018, 12:32:25 PM »
Don't worry about Apple issuing its own crypto currency. Worry about Amazon doing it.

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1080 on: May 09, 2018, 02:23:46 PM »
Amazon are already starting to eat the banking industry, but from an entirely unexpected direction: they're offering loans to small businesses which sell their products on Amazon itself. It's a very shrewd move, because they have an incredibly detailed view of the borrowers' financials and operations, because they can utterly bury a business that refuses to pay what's owed, and because they get two bites of the apple by charging for the marketplace as well as for the financing. Those factors combine to produce a loan book that would make any credit risk analyst weep for joy.

There's money to be made in disrupting established banking organisations. Just not in fucking crypto.

onecoolcat

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1081 on: May 09, 2018, 08:42:40 PM »
The BitCoin Achilles heel is that just about any reasonably funded private entity can start a currency on an equivalent playing level.  There is no moat, no barrier to entry, no intrinsic value.  Even Oscar-Mayer has jumped in.  What if Apple just decided one day that it wanted to be a real player and back-stopped it's 'I-currency' with both technical ability as well as real cash reserves.  What if a 3rd world country decided to use 'Wakanda' blockchain currency backstopped with it's natural resources? 

Just about anything could render BitCoin effectively worthless if a new Crypto overshadows or splinters the market.

Bigger players will enter the crypto scene, thats for sure.  I don't think it will hurt the big players like Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum because most people involved in crypto appreciate the decentralized nature of it.  That's the primary reason Bitcoin was first created and it remains an essential aspect of cryptocurrency.  I think there will be successful decentralized and centralized cryptos.  Ripple is a perfect example of how they can both succeed. 

js82

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1082 on: May 11, 2018, 05:22:45 PM »
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/nasdaq-is-open-to-becoming-cryptocurrency-exchange-ceo-says.html

Just like you old farts had an entire generation buying equities with you in retirement accounts, it's easy to see where the millennial generation will be putting their (albeit less) money towards.

Look macro, play it accordingly.

I'm a millennial.  I see Blockchain as a useful technology.  I suspect there are uses which have not been significantly explored yet, for which it will prove its merits as a future.

When I "look macro", I prefer assets with intrinsic value, and ones that offer a return even in the absence of wild price fluctuation.  Shares of corporations offer that.  Smart real estate investment offers that.  Crypto?  Not so much.

Cryptocurrencies themselves are at best, a useful means of making a transaction, but with no intrinsic value.  At worst, they're an ecological trainwreck and their use is limited due to transaction costs/speeds(see: Bitcoin's electricity consumption and speed).

Do they have uses?  Sure.  Does a crypto-coin have intrinsic value in the way a share of a publicly-traded corporation does?  Heck no.  At best, by "investing" in crypto, you're doing the equivalent of "investing" in gold, in hopes of price gains over time from an item whose value(in terms of usefulness) is largely decoupled from its market price.  This is reinforced by the extent to which the overwhelming majority of cryptos track together - what we have right now is mass investing in the crypto "asset class", but with relatively little regard to the merits of many of the individual cryptocurrencies.  Most of the 1000+ "currencies" out there today are useless garbage, good for little other than speculation.

In the end, crypto isn't creating wealth(In fact, when you consider the absurd quantities of energy being expended on mining, it's delivering negative value).  It's a transactional process, pushing electrons around to benefit one party at the expense of another, much like the existing banking system.  The only difference is who wins and who loses, and the size of the transaction fees.  And given the sheer amount of energy it takes to process a single transaction for Bitcoin and Ethereum, crypto definitely isn't winning in the transactional costs department in the vast majority of cases - which is what the average end user will care about.

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1083 on: May 12, 2018, 08:05:21 AM »
In an interview with Warren Buffet earlier this week, he mentioned that if someone says they don't think Apple stock will do well, Buffet doesn't get angry about it.  He just has a different view.  But if you tell someone who owns Bitcoin you don't think it's a good investment, they tend to take it very personally.

Charlie Munger had even stronger opinions about the matter, but it would be practically be trolling to quote his comments here.

sol

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1084 on: May 12, 2018, 08:46:10 AM »
Charlie Munger had even stronger opinions about the matter, but it would be practically be trolling to quote his comments here.

Ooh ooh, let me!

Charlie Munger is a legend in the investment and finance world, and he thinks "Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold."

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1085 on: May 13, 2018, 05:46:58 PM »
An interesting read on the economics of ASICs.

It also answered a question I've been wondering about for a long time, which is why a company that built custom miners that turned a net profit would ever sell them, and why custom asics which didn't turn a profit would ever be purchased. It's all about timing.

Quote
In the case of Bitmain’s A3, a small batch of miners were sold to the public with a very fast shipping time, less than 10 days. Shortly afterwards, YouTube videos started circulating of people who had bought the miners and were legitimately making $800 per day off of their miner. This created a lot of mania around the A3, setting Bitmain up for a very successful batch 2.

While we don’t know exactly how many A3 units got sold, we suspect that the profit margins they made on their batch 2 sales are greater than the potential block reward from mining using the A3 units. That is to say, Bitmain sold over a hundred million dollars in mining rigs knowing that the block reward was not large enough for their customers to make back that money, even assuming free electricity. And this isn’t the first time, they pulled something similar with the Dash miners. We call it flooding, and it’s another example of the dangerous asymmetry that exists between manufacturers and customers.

https://blog.sia.tech/the-state-of-cryptocurrency-mining-538004a37f9b

TheSinner

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1086 on: May 14, 2018, 01:43:18 PM »
In an interview with Warren Buffet earlier this week, he mentioned that if someone says they don't think Apple stock will do well, Buffet doesn't get angry about it.  He just has a different view.  But if you tell someone who owns Bitcoin you don't think it's a good investment, they tend to take it very personally.

Charlie Munger had even stronger opinions about the matter, but it would be practically be trolling to quote his comments here.
Lol, some take it personally, most don't. It's the vocal people you usually hear/see (especially on the internet).

Buffet/Munger have been wrong plenty of times. Especially on (new) technology.

Telecaster

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1087 on: May 14, 2018, 04:45:53 PM »
Lol, some take it personally, most don't. It's the vocal people you usually hear/see (especially on the internet).

Buffet/Munger have been wrong plenty of times. Especially on (new) technology.

How about Bill Gates? 

Padonak

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1088 on: May 14, 2018, 05:41:57 PM »
Lol, some take it personally, most don't. It's the vocal people you usually hear/see (especially on the internet).

Buffet/Munger have been wrong plenty of times. Especially on (new) technology.

How about Bill Gates?

I'm not defending Crypto, but as far as I remember, Gates was wrong about the Internet and its potential.

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1089 on: May 14, 2018, 05:54:56 PM »
Lol, some take it personally, most don't. It's the vocal people you usually hear/see (especially on the internet).

Buffet/Munger have been wrong plenty of times. Especially on (new) technology.

How about Bill Gates?

I'm not defending Crypto, but as far as I remember, Gates was wrong about the Internet and its potential.

Bill Gates is enough of an antichrist to the open source movement (even though he seems like a perfectly nice man) that there are whole websites set up to track his bad predictions:

Quote
"We will never make a 32-bit operating system," Bill Gates said at the launch of MSX in 1983.

Gates declared in January 2004 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that spam would be dead in 24 months. Two years later, security firm Barracuda said that in 2007, 95-percent of e-mail messages were spam.

"This antitrust thing will blow over," Bill Gates was quoted as telling a group of Intel executives at a meeting on 11 July, 1995

There's also the famous "No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody" although it's not clear if he really ever said that or not (he now denies it).

....I don't know that this proves anything in particular, but there it is.

Telecaster

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1090 on: May 14, 2018, 08:09:38 PM »
Lol, some take it personally, most don't. It's the vocal people you usually hear/see (especially on the internet).

Buffet/Munger have been wrong plenty of times. Especially on (new) technology.

How about Bill Gates?

I'm not defending Crypto, but as far as I remember, Gates was wrong about the Internet and its potential.


You sure?  Here is Gate's 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo.  It seems to me he understood very clearly the direction things were headed:

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2006/03/03/20.pdf

That said, just because Gate's understanding of tech made him one of the richest human beings who ever lived, by itself, doesn't mean he is correct about crypto. 

But in my mind, if someone with that level of expertise has concerns, then it is reasonable to take those concerns seriously.  Same with Buffett and Munger.  Do any crypto proponents care to address their concerns?  Or is it simply enough to dismiss their points because they have been wrong in the past?

BattlaP

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1091 on: May 14, 2018, 11:23:34 PM »
Maybe it’s enough to ignore all the shit people talk on either side and just keep counting the days, months and years that crypto fails to revolutionise anything. There’s no steady progress here, just empty hype based on weaker and weaker evidence. I’m very happy that the wave of nonsense has receded out of pop media.

shinn497

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1092 on: May 14, 2018, 11:26:35 PM »
Can you guys seel me your GPUs. I want to build a deep learning rig.

runbikerun

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1093 on: May 19, 2018, 01:01:42 AM »
Interestingly, I've just read an article on how blockchain technologies may be affected by the EU's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Link here: https://medium.com/wearetheledger/the-blockchain-gdpr-paradox-fc51e663d047.

TLDR: as of the 25th of May, according to the link, holding any personal data whatsoever on a blockchain will be effectively completely illegal across the entire European Union. For those Mustachians resident outside Europe, or those within Europe who aren't particularly interested in European legal news, this is a Very Big Deal. The European court system is EXTREMELY serious about making sure that things within the EU follow the EU's rules, to the extent that a large part of European legal history consists of the union itself successfully prosecuting the absolute shit out of individual governments for pricking around.

If the article is correct, and it's impossible to make blockchain GDPR-compliant without turning it into a simple lookup table, then the number of potential blockchain applications in the EU has just gone to absolute zero, along with the number of potential blockchain applications that involve the EU in any way whatsoever.

sol

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1094 on: May 19, 2018, 08:31:49 AM »
If the article is correct, and it's impossible to make blockchain GDPR-compliant without turning it into a simple lookup table, then the number of potential blockchain applications in the EU has just gone to absolute zero, along with the number of potential blockchain applications that involve the EU in any way whatsoever.

That would be delicious, if a technology designed by privacy advocates was laid low by privacy concerns. 

Cache_Stash

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1095 on: May 21, 2018, 09:30:00 AM »
Way to big a thread to read it all. 

Has there been any discussion on the amount of electrical power draw currently being utilized to support bitcoin mining?  I read somewhere, very recently, by the end of the year bitcoin mining will have a consumption of 0.5% of the worlds current electrical demand. 

Anyone see a problem here?

I certainly do.  Especially if you hold strong beliefs in climate change, pollution in general, etc...

Seems like a can of worms is being opened.

Edited to Add:

The current technology doesn't seem sustainable.  I think it is a good first wack at something that could be greatly beneficial, but the jury is out on first mover advantage of Bitcoin and the other 5,000 crypto's out there now.  I would say the final winner of the crypto war (which I believe it is) will not be first mover.

(This post is not saying anything about block chain.   Block chain is the fundamental underlying technology.   It's about the current use of blockchain for crypto currency)
« Last Edit: May 21, 2018, 09:37:54 AM by Cache Stash »

Telecaster

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1096 on: May 21, 2018, 12:26:31 PM »
Way to big a thread to read it all. 

Has there been any discussion on the amount of electrical power draw currently being utilized to support bitcoin mining?  I read somewhere, very recently, by the end of the year bitcoin mining will have a consumption of 0.5% of the worlds current electrical demand. 

Anyone see a problem here?

I do too.  No ability to scale. 

Travis

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1097 on: May 21, 2018, 12:59:50 PM »
Way to big a thread to read it all. 

Has there been any discussion on the amount of electrical power draw currently being utilized to support bitcoin mining?  I read somewhere, very recently, by the end of the year bitcoin mining will have a consumption of 0.5% of the worlds current electrical demand. 

Anyone see a problem here?


Yes, it's been discussed. Repeatedly.

Syonyk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1098 on: May 31, 2018, 09:56:58 AM »
Can you guys seel me your GPUs. I want to build a deep learning rig.

I've got a few GTX980s I'm looking to part with, and could be convinced to sell a Radeon 290X.

zazpowered

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #1099 on: June 06, 2018, 05:46:01 PM »
Fidelity is working on a crypto exchange. https://www.ccn.com/breaking-fidelity-is-quietly-building-a-cryptocurrency-exchange/

Pretty good validation for the industry