Crypto Currency Thread

[p_k_n]

Joey Deacon said:

I bought 0.1 BTC in November, enjoyed the December FOMO, bought some ALT coins recommended on here

Edited by Joey Deacon on Tuesday 14th August 13:30

That explains everything

[Guvernator]

Joey Deacon said:

Don't know anybody who has even bought any let alone made money. I bought 0.1 BTC in November, enjoyed the December FOMO, bought some ALT coins recommended on here and then came to the conclusion if was headed the same way as the Dot Com boom in January. Sold for a £100 loss which is a cheap price for the entertainment and education it gave me.

There were people on here telling me how they did their research and invested in the undervalued coins while I was saying it was all nonsense. I get that it is a speculative punt, but it is more akin to going to the casino than investing due to research in a coin or whitepaper.

I personally think we are starting to see the realisation that the vast majority of these coins will come to nothing and people are getting out. BTC now has a 54% dominance so it is clear which coin people are starting to bet on making it big.

Personally if you have you money in any coin outside of the top 10 due to dominance then I think you will eventually lose all your money.

A solution that 10 years on is still looking for a problem.

The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee sold up in December, if that doesn't tell you something nothing will.

Edited by Joey Deacon on Tuesday 14th August 13:30

I've made some money from it, not a lot but enough to keep me interested in how it all pans out. A close friend of mine who has been mining BTC for years has 100 bitcoins. At current value they are worth nearly half a million quid.

There you go, that's two people you know now who have made money from it.

This current crash may well mean the end for lots of dodgy coins, I can only see that as good thing to be honest, hopefully the one's with decent development behind them will survive and go on to shake things up. You may not believe in this tech "a solution to a problem that doesn't exist" is how you put it but there are obviously people that do. There are about half a dozen people using digital wallets based on crypto currency technology in my current worksite as we speak. Banking has been stuck in a rut for ages, this technology could well be the thing that drags it into the 21st century.

[NickCQ]

Guvernator said:

I've made some money from it, not a lot but enough to keep me interested in how it all pans out. A close friend of mine who has been mining BTC for years has 100 bitcoins. At current value they are worth nearly half a million quid.

Presumably he is no longer making any money doing this.
Profitable bitcoin mining has been beyond the reach of the average Joe for quite some time.

[p_k_n]

Guvernator said:

A close friend of mine who has been mining BTC for years has 100 bitcoins.

Has he sold any and what is his long term plan for them?

[Guvernator]

NickCQ said:

Presumably he is no longer making any money doing this.
Profitable bitcoin mining has been beyond the reach of the average Joe for quite some time.

Nope he stopped doing it a few years years ago but he'd already made his 100 BTC by then, he's been sitting on them ever since. Told him to cash them in when they were worth abot £1.3m but he was and still is convinced they are gonna go higher. Personally I'd have taken the money and run but I guess when you have got them for virtually nothing and they've kept going up and up , you get into the mindset that they'll just keep doing that.

[Condi]

Guvernator said:

You may not believe in this tech "a solution to a problem that doesn't exist" is how you put it but there are obviously people that do. There are about half a dozen people using digital wallets based on crypto currency technology in my current worksite as we speak. Banking has been stuck in a rut for ages, this technology could well be the thing that drags it into the 21st century.

There are (worrying large) numbers of people who believe the earth is flat; doesnt make it so.

How is banking stuck in a rut? And what would you like to change about it?


Totally distributed 'worldwide' money is never going to become a thing. Ever. Governments and central banks would never agree to that because it removes a lot of economic tools from their arsenal. Look at how the Euro has made things difficult, and that is between a small number of quite similar economies. Also, an unregulated currency is, by its very nature, going to be abused by those who for whatever reason do not want to, or cannot, use a regular, regulated banking system - ie criminals moving dirty money. Dont think governments could never block BitCoin and the like, the tractability in modern banking is incredible sophisticated, and if there was a concerted effort to regulate it, it would happen.

[Behemoth]

Guvernator said:

I guess when you have got them for virtually nothing and they've kept going up and up , you get into the mindset that they'll just keep doing that.

You may be right. He may also understand it a lot better than most and is just following the insight he's acquired along the way. Once you've been through a couple of big bear markets & you understand how the technology & infrastructure are progressing, the current price isn't very troubling.

[Behemoth]

Condi said:

Totally distributed 'worldwide' money is never going to become a thing. Ever.

Distributed worldwide money has been mooted for a long time. Even Keynes proposed it at Bretton Woods. The IMF often circles around it (they already use a version - SDRs). Many nations are hugely frustrated having the US$ as the worldwide reserve. I wouldn't bank on the status quo.

[Condi]

Behemoth said:

Distributed worldwide money has been mooted for a long time. Even Keynes proposed it at Bretton Woods. The IMF often circles around it (they already use a version - SDRs). Many nations are hugely frustrated having the US$ as the worldwide reserve. I wouldn't bank on the status quo.

Its may have been mooted for a long time, but look at the Euro and how well that doesnt work. How could one currency be applicable to Vietnam as it is to Venezuela, and South Africa as it is to Sweden? The rise and fall of exchange rates perform very important economic functions.

As I've said many times, distributed ledger tech may have a future for moving money between currencies, and for international shipments, but as a replacement for the Dollar, Yuan, Pound and Euro? Not a chance.

[anonymous-user]

Condi said:

Guvernator said:

You may not believe in this tech "a solution to a problem that doesn't exist" is how you put it but there are obviously people that do. There are about half a dozen people using digital wallets based on crypto currency technology in my current worksite as we speak. Banking has been stuck in a rut for ages, this technology could well be the thing that drags it into the 21st century.

There are (worrying large) numbers of people who believe the earth is flat; doesnt make it so.

How is banking stuck in a rut? And what would you like to change about it?

I don't understand this either, I instantly pay for things using my debit card or people instantly transfer money to me. It just works. I never have to give a second thought to it. If I forget the PIN number to my account my bank don't turn around and say "Sorry you can't have any of your money until you remember the correct password".

If I want to send someone Bitcoin not only do I have to lose a percentage as fees but I have to wait until I have had six blockchain confirmations before I know they have the Bitcoin. Each of these takes a minimum of 10 minutes so that is a minimum of an hour before the bitcoin is in their wallet minus the fees.

Finally if I put $20k in a bank account in December I would still have $20k. If I had purchased a Bitcoin for $20k it would now only be worth $6k do I just shrug my shoulders and say "that's crypto for you, but boring old banks were stuck in a rut"?

How can you use Crypto for anything day to day when you have no idea what it will be worth in a day, week, month etc.? If I bought a house for $600k in December for 30 bitcoins is it now worth 30 bitcoins (i.e $180k) or 100 bitcoins (i.e $600k). If it is now worth 100 bitcoins then that just proves that worthless old fiat still controls everything.

Banking is all just made up numbers on a screen anyway, does it matter if it is government made up money or crypto made up money by some bloke who wanted a coin with a cute DOGE doggy on it?

[Behemoth]

Condi said:

Its may have been mooted for a long time, but look at the Euro and how well that doesnt work. How could one currency be applicable to Vietnam as it is to Venezuela, and South Africa as it is to Sweden? The rise and fall of exchange rates perform very important economic functions.

As I've said many times, distributed ledger tech may have a future for moving money between currencies, and for international shipments, but as a replacement for the Dollar, Yuan, Pound and Euro? Not a chance.

All world currencies look to the US$ as the de facto world reserve, whilst their governments would rather not have the Federal Reserve steering their economies.

"Distributed ledger tech" is obfuscating jargon from an industry that dare not utter the word bitcoin. The distributed ledger technology that has been invented is the bitcoin protocol. Ledgers are databases, and distributed databases have been around for donkey's years. Very few things in this world need the adversarial consensus that Bitcoin solves for, particularly any environment that has any form of central control. Invariably, such projects are proposing tanks when existing cars will do fine.

[Guvernator]

Joey Deacon said:

I don't understand this either, I instantly pay for things using my debit card or people instantly transfer money to me. It just works. I never have to give a second thought to it. If I forget the PIN number to my account my bank don't turn around and say "Sorry you can't have any of your money until you remember the correct password".

If I want to send someone Bitcoin not only do I have to lose a percentage as fees but I have to wait until I have had six blockchain confirmations before I know they have the Bitcoin. Each of these takes a minimum of 10 minutes so that is a minimum of an hour before the bitcoin is in their wallet minus the fees.

Finally if I put $20k in a bank account in December I would still have $20k. If I had purchased a Bitcoin for $20k it would now only be worth $6k do I just shrug my shoulders and say "that's crypto for you, but boring old banks were stuck in a rut"?

How can you use Crypto for anything day to day when you have no idea what it will be worth in a day, week, month etc.? If I bought a house for $600k in December for 30 bitcoins is it now worth 30 bitcoins (i.e $180k) or 100 bitcoins (i.e $600k). If it is now worth 100 bitcoins then that just proves that worthless old fiat still controls everything.

Banking is all just made up numbers on a screen anyway, does it matter if it is government made up money or crypto made up money by some bloke who wanted a coin with a cute DOGE doggy on it?

You are looking at the state of play now with crypto very much in it's infancy. Where you around when the internet was first introduced to the public? I was and it was rubbish. Using a telephone to "dial up" to a 9600k board, a static page with very few colours taking minutes to download line by line. It could take you hours to do anything and if someone picked up the phone inadvertently you got disconnected.

Now you can stream 4k movies almost instantly at the touch of the button. There are use cases for crypto currency or else so many people wouldn't be trying to do things with it. The volatility, lack of security etc are teething troubles. Once that stuff gets nailed down it will be useful, early adopters are using it now and putting up with the crapness, just like they did with the early internet.

Hardly any technological development arrives on the market fully formed and ready to go, it usually takes at least a couple of iterations for it to be right. I could be way off and it could be a fad, or it's quite possible that by the time we get to crypto 3.0 in 10 years time. almost everybody in the world will be using it.

[anonymous-user]

Guvernator said:

You are looking at the state of play now with crypto very much in it's infancy. Where you around when the internet was first introduced to the public? I was and it was rubbish. Using a telephone to "dial up" to a 9600k board, a static page with very few colours taking minutes to download line by line. It could take you hours to do anything and if someone picked up the phone inadvertently you got disconnected.

Now you can stream 4k movies almost instantly at the touch of the button. There are use cases for crypto currency or else so many people wouldn't be trying to do things with it. The volatility, lack of security etc are teething troubles. Once that stuff gets nailed down it will be useful, early adopters are using it now and putting up with the crapness, just like they did with the early internet.

Hardly any technological development arrives on the market fully formed and ready to go, it usually takes at least a couple of iterations for it to be right. I could be way off and it could be a fad, or it's quite possible that by the time we get to crypto 3.0 in 10 years time. almost everybody in the world will be using it.

But before the internet started there was no way I could watch a film other than renting it from blockbuster or listen to music other than buying a CD from a physical shop. The internet allowed me to do both of these things without leaving my house so it solved a problem.

If I want to store my wealth I can use a bank, if I want to pay for goods or services anywhere in the world I can use my Master card. The point I am making is I already have the ability to do this now, instantly and for free. Why would I want to use a slower and volatile way of paying for things that incurs fees? Surely this is a backwards step, like trying to pursuade someone that VHS is the future once they have discovered DVD?

I first used the internet at Uni but it wasn't until 1998 and Freeserve that I had the internet at home. It didn't take long before the internet took off and I was ordering computer parts from Dab.com. Coincidentally in 1999 Freeserve was valued at £1.5 billion..

So it wasn't the internet that had any real value but the companies that were using it. You could consider the blockchain concept as the internet and the coins as the companies as such. Freeserve isn't worth £1.5 billion today, infact virtually all of the dot com boom companies with their multi billion pound valuations due to having "dot com" in the title are long gone.

The same thing has happened with Crypto, all of these coins which were suddenly worth £billions due to having the words "Blockchain" and "Crypto" in a white paper are now going to be worth zero.

Blockchain/Crypto has been around for ten years and is still largely useless, the internet took off overnight and keeps growing.

The problem I have is that nobody can actually explain why blockchain is any use to anybody in real life. If you ask someone what it is for you will get lots of buzzwords but no real explaination.

[Behemoth]

Joey Deacon said:

the internet took off overnight and keeps growing.

The problem I have is that nobody can actually explain why blockchain is any use to anybody in real life. If you ask someone what it is for you will get lots of buzzwords but no real explaination.

It took many decades for the internet to develop until that adoption curve became exponential.

You may not need the blockchain in your life, but you'd think rather differently if you were amongst the more monied and technically adept classes in Turkey, Venezuela or Zimbabwe to name just the current crop. These states are failing economically because their governments have mismanaged their economies. I think the demand for a digital money that is separated from such interference is inevitable and will naturally spread, eventually creeping into all of our lives. Meantime, I think you can happily ignore it if you wish.

[Condi]

Behemoth said:

It took many decades for the internet to develop until that adoption curve became exponential.

You may not need the blockchain in your life, but you'd think rather differently if you were amongst the more monied and technically adept classes in Turkey, Venezuela or Zimbabwe to name just the current crop. These states are failing economically because their governments have mismanaged their economies. I think the demand for a digital money that is separated from such interference is inevitable and will naturally spread, eventually creeping into all of our lives. Meantime, I think you can happily ignore it if you wish.

But as soon as it becomes widely used to avoid government tax structures, or do things which governments 'dont like' they can and will clamp down on it. You cannot have an unregulated economic instrument available to everyone because society will break down. If I decide I dont like paying taxes, so use BitCoin for everything as then government doesnt see my income or expenditure, who pays for the NHS, the army, the fire brigade? So government steps in and regulates it. And you're back to the argument as to why is it better than what we already have?

The fact that rich people in the world want to do something makes it generally LESS acceptable to the general population and government, not MORE acceptable as you seem to be arguing. You also seem to underestimate the ability for it to be regulated and controlled if that is what is desired by those who run the banking and fiscal systems.

[Behemoth]

Condi said:

But as soon as it becomes widely used to avoid government tax structures, or do things which governments 'dont like' they can and will clamp down on it. You cannot have an unregulated economic instrument available to everyone because society will break down. If I decide I dont like paying taxes, so use BitCoin for everything as then government doesnt see my income or expenditure, who pays for the NHS, the army, the fire brigade? So government steps in and regulates it. And you're back to the argument as to why is it better than what we already have?

The fact that rich people in the world want to do something makes it generally LESS acceptable to the general population and government, not MORE acceptable as you seem to be arguing. You also seem to underestimate the ability for it to be regulated and controlled if that is what is desired by those who run the banking and fiscal systems.

Taxes are still due, whatever currency is in place. Governments will be powerless to stop bitcoin, although some will certainly try. Individuals will always strive to hold their own wealth. In the past this might have been done with gold, jewellery, art, what have you. But it's far easier to confiscate these things and they're very difficult to transfer & divide. Bitcoin is a divisible and easily transferable bearer bond and has remarkable properties as a money. In my view, there's a far higher than zero chance that it will succeed.

[Condi]

Behemoth said:

Individuals will always strive to hold their own wealth. In the past this might have been done with gold, jewellery, art, what have you.

Bitcoin is a divisible and easily transferable bearer bond and has remarkable properties as a money..

How many people do you know storing their life savings under their beds? Nobody. Nobody does that because individuals would rather hand their money to a trusted and insured institution. Thats why banks came about in the first place - because people didn't want to be responsible for their own money or valuables!

The most remarkable thing about Bitcoin is that despite the amount of interest and the amount of investment very few people are actually using it as money.

[dimots]

Condi said:

How many people do you know storing their life savings under their beds? Nobody. Nobody does that because individuals would rather hand their money to a trusted and insured institution. Thats why banks came about in the first place - because people didn't want to be responsible for their own money or valuables!

The most remarkable thing about Bitcoin is that despite the amount of interest and the amount of investment very few people are actually using it as money.

You really love banks don't you?

Banks that only guarantee savings up to £85k for personal savers and £75k for companies.

Banks that cost the US taxpayer $22 trillion (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/financial-crisis-cost-gao_n_2687553)

Banks that cost the UK taxpayer £850 billion (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/163850bn-official-cost-of-the-bank-bailout-1833830.html).

Can you see anything wrong with the banking system yet?

[Behemoth]

Condi said:

How many people do you know storing their life savings under their beds? Nobody. Nobody does that because individuals would rather hand their money to a trusted and insured institution.

I certainly do know people who store their wealth outside the banking system because they don't trust it. You don't seem to know anyone in the second or third worlds. Most of the planet does not look like the British high street.

[Condi]

dimots said:

You really love banks don't you?

Banks that only guarantee savings up to £85k for personal savers and £75k for companies.

Banks that cost the US taxpayer $22 trillion (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/financial-crisis-cost-gao_n_2687553)

Banks that cost the UK taxpayer £850 billion (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/163850bn-official-cost-of-the-bank-bailout-1833830.html).

Can you see anything wrong with the banking system yet?

I dont 'love' them, but they serve a purpose...

And please, if you are going to link to news articles at least try and understand what they're saying. The Independent figure it totally misleading. It includes bank guarantees (£250bn), which was never needed. Money spent on Lloyds and RBS shares - which the government will get back (or at least most of it) when those shares are sold. £200bn of 'liquidity support' which is very short term lending, and insurance on £280bn - insurance which was never called. Most of the outstanding support is in the form of shares in RBS, which is now delivering a dividend for UK tax payers, although I concede that the shares are still valued below what the taxpayer bought them at.

Beside that, the banking sector brings in about £30bn of tax receipts every year (about 5% of UK gov tax take), and financial services are one of our largest exports. https://www.pwc.co.uk/assets/pdf/total-tax-contrib...



Also, get rid of banks and who provides the liquidity for the country? Who offers the whole range of products that banks offer beyond just storing your money? In the world of business and government banks are an important form lending which cant be replaced by man on the street.



Oh, Dimots, remember that swop we have, Im short/you're long BitCoin at $6700. Not looking good for you...