Bitcoin

Ron Resnick

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Jan 24, 2015
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Who here has bought Bitcoins as an investment?
 

Folsom

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Yes, well, at least in cryptocurrencies. But I wouldn't say "Bitcoin" as I don't bother to hold it. Ethereum is my main interest as it has usefulness & longevity. I'm also interested in XRP. To lesser degrees a few other things, ICO's and such.

Problems with Bitcoin:

The nodes are ran by generous people that may have an interest in Bitcoin itself. Nodes get nothing for running a node, so there's so few that Bitcoin is sluggishly slow and can take up to a week to pass funds through, when the idea is basically instant... (nodes are where all the transactions occur, and information is stored "decentralized")

It's only profitable so long the cost of electricity to minting is good. This basically means it's forced to inflate more than it should, because it has to match the electricity for minting and then some. At some point this may because a serious problem. The only thing that works in it's favor is that it's all but impossible to get any real BTC unless you have an industrial-ish sized operation these days. In fact someone may have invested in solar power or something, so their ROI would become a reality.

It has no technology and it's not even very anonymous anymore. So it only works as a currency, and it has no ability to do anything. The Wave "crypto" and others are trying to use it as a currency but implement smart technology on top of it or something... seems like they're trying to keep a sinking ship afloat that gains mass constantly.

It's an ecological disaster. BTC has produced massive influx of manufacturing ASIC miners that use hordes of power. Any huge mining operation is using as much power as small towns.

Ethereum by comparison:

It is mined right now, to keep it having a reasonable inflation rate, or maybe deflation, in this case. In the future it will go to Proof of Stake. That means it won't be eating up massive amounts of power. The nodes that have enough ETH will get to vote on consensus for some things, and decided on how much ETH (ether) is used for transactions. So self preservation and compensation for running nodes will keep it in check. (some ETH will be burned during transactions that never comes back)

It has great technology. It can make smart contracts. The eliminate contractual clauses. They can have limits, dates, etc in them. Here's a place to start with them.

The system supports Tokens. Tokens can be used as seen fit, but ICO is the most popular use. Basically a company needs investors so they trade Tokens for ETH, with a big sale of them for a week or month or such. Once the company is up and running the idea is they'll buy back the Tokens and burn them. Whomever owns the Tokens is the company owners, so if enough are bought back (they're tradeable so they have their own prices) the amount of owners will be smaller. That way the owners can actually vote and make decisions.

The Big Threat to Cryptos:

Taxes. They're bat**** crazy. Utter nonsense. They're so dumb currently that no one even complies. I can go into some detail on this if you wish, but basically the gist is they're UTTERLY ignored because of incompatibility nonsense.
 
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Folsom

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Anyone watching may have noticed a great fluctuation recently. Currently a problem is that the whales (major holders) have so much influence they can make the market drop whenever they feel like it. As more people adopt cryptocurrencies it will become more stable so that the whales don't have as much sway.

If you look at the trend however I'll point out, say, Ethereum for the year whole down $40 at this exact moment, is still up $100+ from Januury .
 

hvbias

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Jun 22, 2012
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I started out buying Bitcoin as a way to pay for some web services, then slowly kept buying to hold it as part of my high risk portfolio. I am thinking about selling since more people are getting attracted to the idea of non-finite crypto like ETH. The run up I've seen on Bitcoin is greater than any other security I have ever held in my history of investing. Truly insane.
 

Folsom

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Yes. BTC may still increase. In China there's a lot of interest with using BTC specifically. It's just sad because it's such a dead horse. Basically they have to adopt other cryptos to use on top of the BTC. I mean... is everyone going to adopt a dieing infrastructure?

BTC is used as a medium to get into all the other cryptos, so for the short term it'll still be valuable. But things are changing. Plus if you want returns of factors of multiplying twice or better, there's other ways if you'll be active on it.
 

Folsom

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The trends are pretty simple. Watch news for all the cryptocurrencies, keep an eye on reddit etc. GDAX has no fees basically for limit orders. However you have to realize that sometimes there's a lot of automated bots on so they sorta gently roller coaster the price. Litecoin may prove easier for day trading since it's rather stable. Generally it's all going up so buying now for later instead of day trading it all works too.

Since you're in the UK you may be able to get on some EU exchanges and Coinbase (GDAX) for arbitrage. However I wouldn't try it with BTC because it takes forever to process. ETH or LTC or anything else moves fast enough. For whatever reason a lot of US people can't get onto most other exchanges, but out major one (Coinbase/GDAX) opens the doors to everyone else as they can. It's a bit annoying. I tried some Korean ones but either got no where, or they wanted a Korean telephone number...
 

Folsom

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May 24 when Ron posted:

ETH $181

Today:

ETH $254




This morning, Iconomi: $1.30 , right now $1.85





Also Nevada and New Hampshire have banned taxes on cryptos. The spike in ETH recently was when the creator had a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese became able to access US markets (they were trading higher).






Any of you with a little extra cash could be turning it into a lot. Got $7500 you could die without? If you had bought Iconomi you would have turned it into $10,673 just today. Maybe it could go down? Maybe, Iconomi hasn't even gone live yet and public found out it is launching this month or July.
 

Folsom

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Today: ETH $308 (this second)

You'd now have $12,620. Add a zero if you like to the figure.... think about it.

Iconomi is now $2.02
 

hvbias

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Jun 22, 2012
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Giving this thread a bump- what do people think of Ripple?

It has the third highest market cap, yet is still incredibly cheap. It seems like a long shot that it would ever get adopted by the banks.
 

Folsom

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Ripple is utterly amazing. It will be the backbone for all asian banks. It may take over all of them, frankly. Ethereum is more technology, and Bitcoin a currency.

Ripple can reduce moving assets around down 60% of costs. It can free up trillions of dollars that are required to be held up in asset reserves.

But you have to realize that there isn't the necessity exactly to make XRP for example become the face value of the other currencies/assets in order to move them. For that reason it while it may replace the use of trillions of dollars, it doesn't necessarily have to be worth trillions of dollars to do just that. The important part is that it's an immutable binary decentralized system. Point being is you can't fudge it or manipulate it in traditional senses, and it's a yes or not question everytime it is used so there isn't the "is it true we have the money" verification etc... And the security comes from being decentralized.

If Ripple tanked it price, I'd say buy as much as you can. But as is you might expect to see it double. But $300, $3000 ? Probably never. It doesn't really have that purpose.
 

hvbias

Well-Known Member
Jun 22, 2012
578
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New England area
Ripple is utterly amazing. It will be the backbone for all asian banks. It may take over all of them, frankly. Ethereum is more technology, and Bitcoin a currency.

Ripple can reduce moving assets around down 60% of costs. It can free up trillions of dollars that are required to be held up in asset reserves.

But you have to realize that there isn't the necessity exactly to make XRP for example become the face value of the other currencies/assets in order to move them. For that reason it while it may replace the use of trillions of dollars, it doesn't necessarily have to be worth trillions of dollars to do just that. The important part is that it's an immutable binary decentralized system. Point being is you can't fudge it or manipulate it in traditional senses, and it's a yes or not question everytime it is used so there isn't the "is it true we have the money" verification etc... And the security comes from being decentralized.

If Ripple tanked it price, I'd say buy as much as you can. But as is you might expect to see it double. But $300, $3000 ? Probably never. It doesn't really have that purpose.

Great analysis, that makes sense.
 

NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
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There are many videos about bitcoin. It will hit eventually 10,000 and even more...maybe it'll end up poverty on earth, and advance medicine science to cure cancer...

 

Folsom

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The technology will be the backbone of our financial world. But bitcoin is a dinosaur that will fizzle in value as is, because its basically useless given how long it takes to make a transaction, the cost, and no tech with it for uses outside of a currency.

Transactions are currently "illegal" for entirley illigitimate reasons with no juristiction. The USA is literally shooting itself in the foot with a bazooka right now.
 
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pikachu

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I started out buying Bitcoin as a way to pay for some web services, then slowly kept buying to hold it as part of my high risk portfolio. I am thinking about selling course on bitcoin. Since more people are getting attracted to the idea of non-finite crypto like ETH. The run up I've seen on Bitcoin is greater than any other security I have ever held in my history of investing. Truly insane.

100% agreed. The only thing more crazy would be Rosie O Donnel and Whoopi Goldberg dating each other (Sorry for the mental picture).
 

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