Litecoin & Bitcoin

[NearlyThere]

Has anyone else given Litecoin or Bitcoin consideration for investments or even as an additional method for holding cash?

Just looking into it at the moment and would be grateful for your collective input.

Mjr FP

[tensile]

I made a small profit on Bitcoin - it's so volatile that it's sort of easy. Buy at 550 sell at 600... Repeat.

But recently a group was able to get 51% of the bitcoin mining. Reading up on it starts to hurt my brain, but basically a lot of people think this is a Bad Thing. So I took my money out until that resolves one way or another.

If you're going to do it, I recommend using this site: https://www.kraken.com/
I actually felt bad taking the money out because it's one of the nicest sites I've ever used. When you buy and sell you see it happen 'live' in little chunks. It's cool!

[waltworks]

Bitcoin and the various imitators are the Beanie Babies of the 2010s. If you want to play that game, be aware that the bottom could fall out anytime and you could be left with zilch. They're laughably useless as currency for a variety of reasons *beyond* the fact that they have not been widely adopted, they're not anything like as anonymous and under-the-radar as they are made out to be, and 99% of them are bought/sold by people who have no intention of buying actual goods or services with them but are buying to later sell. Definition of a speculative bubble, no?

-W

[arebelspy]

But recently a group was able to get 51% of the bitcoin mining. Reading up on it starts to hurt my brain, but basically a lot of people think this is a Bad Thing. So I took my money out until that resolves one way or another.

Wait, so you didn't understand what that meant, or that it could happen?  In other words, you were not only gambling, but gambling on something you didn't understand?  :P

There are multiple threads discussing Bitcoin.  Most of us are of the opinion that there are better places if you want to gamble, and MUCH better places to invest.

[ivyhedge]

Regard bitcoin and dogecoin as highly volatile currencies issued by unstable political regimes. It is an investment to be sure: just not one that many respondents on MMM acknowledge as such.


If you have the convenience, convert paper USD to bitcoin at an ATM. If you don't like the feeling when you add a twenty and receive digits on a receipt in return, then don't add anything else (we have an ATM about 250 feet from my offices so I realize that this tactic might not be available as a behavioral experiment for you).

[warfreak2]

The fact that the "50% of the processing power" boundary is still the one that appears in the news, demonstrates how uninformed people really are about it. It was shown last year that a dishonest participant doesn't need 50% to cheat, in fact the boundary for the protocol as originally designed was 0% (i.e., any computing power was sufficient to cheat), and it can't be improved beyond 33%.

[tensile]

Wait, so you didn't understand what that meant, or that it could happen?  In other words, you were not only gambling, but gambling on something you didn't understand?  :P

There are multiple threads discussing Bitcoin.  Most of us are of the opinion that there are better places if you want to gamble, and MUCH better places to invest.

I understood it until the guys on reddit explained it more (!) - as soon as it got into the nuts and bolts it became 90% jargon that I didn't feel like penetrating. I didn't know it (the 51% thing) was possible - as warfreak says, I'm one of the uninformed people. I originally bought some bitcoin to donate to a website that had its paypal account frozen, and bought a bit extra to play with.

But since discovering websites like this one I've changed my mind about how I 'invest' and that, plus not having the skills to understand bitcoin, led me to get out of the game.

[arebelspy]

I understood it until the guys on reddit explained it more (!) - as soon as it got into the nuts and bolts it became 90% jargon that I didn't feel like penetrating. I didn't know it (the 51% thing) was possible - as warfreak says, I'm one of the uninformed people. I originally bought some bitcoin to donate to a website that had its paypal account frozen, and bought a bit extra to play with.

But since discovering websites like this one I've changed my mind about how I 'invest' and that, plus not having the skills to understand bitcoin, led me to get out of the game.

Cool. 

I've "invested" in plenty of things in the past that I didn't understand.  I was speculating.  I'm glad to be past that, personally.  If you got out with having made a little and learned something, that's a huge win.

[Chuck]

Concurrency could be groundbreaking as an eventual cure to counterfeiting, if adopted by an actual government with force of law to back it up. As it stands it's a highly volatile way for child pornographers and drug dealers to exchange large sums of money, and for wannabe hacktivists to feel like they matter.

No thanks. 

[AssetGrinder]

I was very interested in getting in on this bit coin mania action. After some research I concluded itis just too speculative. Its comparable to playing penny stocks. Sure you can make 100 times your amount but also u can lose it all. One sticking point for me is the level of government regulation where the government can easily hinder its growth and very likely to do so.