Bitcoin

marty

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
3,039
4,207
2,520
United States
If you are not watching today, down from ca 20000 to less than 11000, and keeps plunging today

Not exactly a good day on the bitcoin game board. Price plummets, trading suspended at 2 exchanges, planned bitcoin hedge fund cancelled. I don't know how some of you guys sleep at night, although I honestly do wish you well. Still happy to be an observer however.
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
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Corrections are normal. What is different is that they now take weeksto happen, not half hours.

A large Japanese company decided to start paying in Bitcoin... I wouldnt be so sure about the downfall.
 
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Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Not exactly a good day on the bitcoin game board. Price plummets, trading suspended at 2 exchanges, planned bitcoin hedge fund cancelled. I don't know how some of you guys sleep at night, although I honestly do wish you well. Still happy to be an observer however.

Correctiins are normal. What is different is that they now take weeks, not half hours.

A large Japanese company decided to start paying in Bitcoin... I wouldnt be so sure about the downfall.

I'm with marty on this one. Happy to watch from the sidelines
 

Pb Blimp

Well-Known Member
Oct 30, 2017
518
25
140
USA
The correction is just in the beginning stages.
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
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How do you figure?

Coinbase launched Bitcoin Cash at the same time as their agreements with the Chicago exchange went into effect. Basically the exchange is pissed, and so things have to get worked out now. The price is going up, despite Coinbase being offline.

Unless we see several weeks long of slow bleed, it would be very hard to believe Bitcoin will go and stay down.
 

Pb Blimp

Well-Known Member
Oct 30, 2017
518
25
140
USA
How do you figure?

Coinbase launched Bitcoin Cash at the same time as their agreements with the Chicago exchange went into effect. Basically the exchange is pissed, and so things have to get worked out now. The price is going up, despite Coinbase being offline.

Unless we see several weeks long of slow bleed, it would be very hard to believe Bitcoin will go and stay down.

You make me smile. We see the world very differently.
 

asiufy

Industry Expert/VIP Donor
Jul 8, 2011
3,711
723
1,200
San Diego, CA
almaaudio.com
Correctiins are normal. What is different is that they now take weeks, not half hours.

A large Japanese company decided to start paying in Bitcoin... I wouldnt be so sure about the downfall.

You meant the opposite, no? Corrections take half hours, not weeks...

That's what freaked me out, and I got out of the game. I had some, then the price plumetted one day, and I couldn't log in on the Coinbase website, as they obviously were being flooded with trades.

Now, it seems to have happened again. The infrastructure just doesn't seem to be there. You can't rely on these little startups, when the prices fluctuate as wildly as they do... An hour's downtime could make all the difference.
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
6,032
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Eastern WA
I mean the corrections take weeks to happen, not weeks to correct. It use to be you'd see the price rise in a matter of hours and then it would correct within a half hour. Now the price rises for weeks and it holds out a long time before the correction starts. People are using to seeing the rise and correction in a day, but Bitcoin hasn't been doing that.

The infrastructure is problematic if you're focused on day trading, solely on Coinbase. Other exchanges are not down at the same time. Traders don't generally rely on a single exchange, ever. If they did arbitrage wouldn't happen.

It's not like Coinbase won't grow and improve... it's clear we are still in early stages given that things are not set in stone and at capacity for any event. The big reality is all the panic sellers have lost money, and the hodlers have only shown overall gain, and the people who can trade without panic selling are through the roof.

The simple solution if you're afraid of an exchange is to transfer to a cold wallet. You can hodl forever that way.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I guess I’m in a hold forever when it comes to bitcoin or similar. Not good for my anal sphincter to see such fluctuations. There’s nothing I’ve read in this entire thread that would give me reason to be a Bitcoin player.
 

edorr

WBF Founding Member
May 10, 2010
3,139
14
36
Smyrna, GA
Now that there are futures contracts, some people make a lot of money if Bitcoin goes down. No doubt the players are trying to orchestrate to make this happen. But here is the skinny. Supply of coins is fixed. As long as there is money going into cryptos, prices will go up, even if there are massive up and down swings. People on the sideline were standing buy to get back in after today's drop and they already made 25% in one day. As long as this is happening, it will never crash back to earth.

How do I sleep? Easy. (a) Only put some money on the table you can easily afford to lose. (b) assume it will go to zero, (c) watch incredulously if it goes up instead.
 

edorr

WBF Founding Member
May 10, 2010
3,139
14
36
Smyrna, GA
You meant the opposite, no? Corrections take half hours, not weeks...

That's what freaked me out, and I got out of the game. I had some, then the price plumetted one day, and I couldn't log in on the Coinbase website, as they obviously were being flooded with trades.

Now, it seems to have happened again. The infrastructure just doesn't seem to be there. You can't rely on these little startups, when the prices fluctuate as wildly as they do... An hour's downtime could make all the difference.

I watched my portfolio go down 50% in 24 hours and never even tried to go in and sell. Never trade with the lemmings. It is back up some now.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I sleep pretty good as well and I’m doing pretty good in the market and have for many years. I pride myself in my investments which may not have such tumultuous swings. Are you the tortoise or the hare. Just remember which one crossed the finish line first. The fact that people are taking loans or mortgaging their houses to secure cash to buy Bitcoin only reinforces for me the memory of the housing bubble we had with subprime loans. We all know how that went. At any rate carry on as we are all cheering you on from the side lines.
 

edorr

WBF Founding Member
May 10, 2010
3,139
14
36
Smyrna, GA
I sleep pretty good as well and I’m doing pretty good in the market and have for many years. I pride myself in my investments which may not have such tumultuous swings. Are you the tortoise or the hare. Just remember which one crossed the finish line first. The fact that people are taking loans or mortgaging their houses to secure cash to buy Bitcoin only reinforces for me the memory of the housing bubble we had with subprime loans. We all know how that went. At any rate carry on as we are all cheering you on from the side lines.

Ironically, I am too risk averse to even own stock anymore. I'm 75% real estate generating around 7% rental income (plus significant appreciation) and very advantageous tax treatment, and 25% cash. Just for the heck of it, I took some of that cash and decide to gamble with it. If I lose every last penny of it I won't lose a minute of sleep. The notion of taking out loans, trade on margin or use money you actually need to speculate with bitcoin is insane.
 

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
6,774
1,198
580
Boston, MA
Perhaps it's OK to share this now... one of our production servers [for those technical enough, they are hosting dokku applications, as docker containers] was hacked not too long ago, and the hacker installed a bitcoin miner [docker instance]. It took us a while to figure that out, and only after the server host service installed machine-learning software, which eventually figured out certain patterns... talking about AI doing its job! We assume the hacker minted himself some coins. Again for those technical enough, the hacker gained access through the secure port 22, and we are not aware of any compromised private keys - so how the hell he did it is still unclear, but he must have exploited an sshd vulnerability that we are not aware of.

So when I said a month ago that any software can be hacked, well, like with all things music, I only speak when I have real personal data.
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
6,032
1,503
550
Eastern WA
Al,

You can calculate a rough idea of how much hashrate you can get out of CPU's in order to mine. Frankly it's unlikely they got anywhere near a single coin.
 

edorr

WBF Founding Member
May 10, 2010
3,139
14
36
Smyrna, GA
It was also my impression you need an entire server farm to mine coins, and a single server won't do the trick.
 

DaveC

Industry Expert
Nov 16, 2014
3,899
2,142
495
Lots of Bitcoin tears except for those that control most of the coins and sold for huge profits...

Real or virtual tears? :)

If the recent gains wasn't a manipulation to allow the small amount of people holding large % of cryptocurrency to divest I'm going to be surprised. Despite that, the enthusiasm for crypto may cause it to rebound to some degree... but I hope not, it's a waste of energy in more ways than one.
 

rockitman

Member Sponsor
Sep 20, 2011
7,097
414
1,210
Northern NY
Real or virtual tears? :)

If the recent gains wasn't a manipulation to allow the small amount of people holding large % of cryptocurrency to divest I'm going to be surprised. Despite that, the enthusiasm for crypto may cause it to rebound to some degree... but I hope not, it's a waste of energy in more ways than one.

Crypto tears.... ;)
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
6,032
1,503
550
Eastern WA
It was also my impression you need an entire server farm to mine coins, and a single server won't do the trick.

Servers are useless. They can't crunch SHA256/SHA256. It has nothing to do with how many, they are not made for doing the type of work.
 

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