Cryptocurrencies

[Overproof]

11 minutes ago, CrankYanker said:

BTC is closing in on $13k. What is the next one to take off?

 MIOTA to the moon!

XZC, XRP

[Iznogood]

I'm thinking in buying some ethereum and see where it goes.

[dominattorney]

My 2 cents, is that this whole thing is a bubble.  I would not make significant purchases of BTC at this juncture, nor would I consider the futures which are about to be offered for sale a good investment.  The bottom has fallen out of this before, it certainly will again.  I would steer clear of using CoinBase as I have several aquaintances who have had bad experiences with it, and have even heard that the security of their "wallets" is far from top notch, leaving you open to be hacked and robbed of your investment with little or no recourse to recover it. 

Personally, I have an internet business that is being set up to accept BTC as a payment method.  I consider this to be a far superior method of collecting the currency (at least to me, as the risk-reward ratio is skewed toward the black given that I have already recouped the initial investment on my inventory and not everyone wants to pay with BTC).  If you can swing it, I'd recommend going this route.  My business partner is also a computer genius and he is taking care of the "wallet" aspect personally so I consider our investment to be relatively safe from hackers. 

An additional thing to consider is investing in one of the newer currencies that is more affordable.  I am a big fan of Monero myself, but I am not big into this cryptocurrency game.  My big issue with it on the whole is once some government agency decides to invent its own crypto, the bottom will likely fall out of all of the independent coins overnight (i know this seems counter intuitive to the initiated, but most people are stupid and IMO the inflated value of BTC is based on the bubble effect of john q everymans jumping on a bandwagon headed in a direction they can't fully comprehend). 

[MPS]

Surprised this is the first thread on this here. It’s been an epic trip for me this year. Good luck to everyone in it. Remember the Honey Badger don’t care. Top callers REKT and dip buyers RAKE! Always BTFD and take profits along the way. 

[CrankYanker]

Close to $14k now as I speak. Since I'm in the US I cannot check out Pundi X until 42 more days. Seeing what the international market can find out for me. 

[Grateful13]

The mainstream FOMO on bitcoin is only just beginning...enjoy the ride 

I think I've had more people ask me about BTC in the last week than in the last six months.

[Overproof]

3 hours ago, CrankYanker said:

Close to $14k now as I speak. Since I'm in the US I cannot check out Pundi X until 42 more days. Seeing what the international market can find out for me. 

 

[Corylax18]

Catalyst?

http://www.businessinsider.com/nicehash-bitcoin-wallet-hacked-contents-stolen-in-security-breach-2017-12

I use nice hash, fortunately I only had about $20 in their wallet today building before my next payout. Some people had their entire wallet with these guys. Roughly $65 Million in a single hit, possibly untraceable, I can't wait for the movie. It will be very interesting to see how this develops. Watching thousands of people's wallets emptied, with no effective legal recourse, will definitely prompt some to sell. 

[Santiago]

Bitcoin has about tripled in value over the past month. Not too shabby a return! 

 

Gotta pay for those 24:24 somehow!

[MPS]

[CrankYanker]

LTC is on the rise recently.  I got in at the $100 mark and it is almost rising to $400.  I will always say it but I should have put more in.  Oh well....it's going to be another fun ride!

[CrankYanker]

It looks like Ripple made a decent jump in the past couple of hours. Could be some breaking news on Friday regarding this one. I am waiting for it to settle back down to buy in.  

[NSXCIGAR]

On 12/6/2017 at 5:03 AM, CrankYanker said:

BTC is closing in on $13k. What is the next one to take off?

Exactly. And when the next one takes off which could very well be superior to BTC BTC will fall right through the floor.

This is a huge problem for cryptocurrencies. Sure, each one is limited in supply but there can be an infinite number of competing cryptocurrencies that all have no intrinsic value and continually displace one another making them a terrible store of value--a serious hurdle for any argument that cryptocurrencies could ever be actual money. 

Now that many financial institutions are starting to offer services like gold money debit where your physical gold is kept safe and a Visa card is tied to it and the currency converted to weight in gold and it's sold instantly I just don't see how this isn't the future. Or even this service tied to the blockchain to keep it as anonymous as a cryptocurrency or to bypass the traditional payment processing services.

I think the blockchain technology is far more important than the cryptocurrencies that utilize it.

[Iznogood]

3 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Now that many financial institutions are starting to offer services like gold money debit where your physical gold is kept safe and a Visa card is tied to it and the currency converted to weight in gold and it's sold instantly I just don't see how this isn't the future. Or even this service tied to the blockchain to keep it as anonymous as a cryptocurrency or to bypass the traditional payment processing services

so "I'ma get medieval on your ass." is banks response to cryptocurrencies?

[TheGipper]

12 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Exactly. And when the next one takes off which could very well be superior to BTC BTC will fall right through the floor.

This is a huge problem for cryptocurrencies. Sure, each one is limited in supply but there can be an infinite number of competing cryptocurrencies that all have no intrinsic value and continually displace one another making them a terrible store of value--a serious hurdle for any argument that cryptocurrencies could ever be actual money.

I'll offer a different opinion, as I think this gets it completely upside down.

BTC has a critical mass in the crypto space similar to what Facebook has in social media space right now.  It has "mind share" that no other fledgling crypto will ever match.  My Space did get supplanted by Facebook, but Facebook acceptance now almost certainly puts it out of reach of some new thing coming along and toppling it.  The mutual acceptance component of Facebook is a barrier to competitors and has an analogue in the crypto world.  In my opinion, BTC is approaching similar dominance.

It's worth remembering that gold also has no "intrinsic value" either, except for its industrial utility (BTC arguably also has an analogous industrial utility).  But gold's industrial utility is a very small component of its market value.  Gold is dominant as a store of value almost purely because of a perception of value and mutual acceptance.  Palladium and platinum have even better industrial utility, yet it doesn't supplant gold.  Why?  Because of the mutual acceptance and broad perception of gold is so strong, it doesn't get overturned on the basis of technical or industrial usage (Sony Betamax also tells this story).  If it's a broad enough perception of value, then it's reality.  To at least some degree, that is already also true of BTC.

In my opinion, if BTC goes to zero, it won't be because ETH or LTC or something else took its place.  It will be because crypto as a store of value evaporated as a trend/idea.

[Lant63]

On 12/13/2017 at 7:26 AM, CrankYanker said:

It looks like Ripple made a decent jump in the past couple of hours. Could be some breaking news on Friday regarding this one. I am waiting for it to settle back down to buy in.  

Keeps going up.  I got cold feet buying in at .255 .... I feel like an idiot right now.  

[TheGipper]

Hmm, this smells like Coinbase is about to add XRP support.

[mbflash80]

25 minutes ago, TheGipper said:

Hmm, this smells like Coinbase is about to add XRP support.

too little too late IMO at least to make a real dent...the level of frustration trying to work through bitstamp and kraken to acquire Ripple has been downright maddening...but thats what I get for being on the sidelines for so damn long...who knew that the Bjorck bros had it right so many years ago when they started giving 10% discounts for bitcoin payment...lol

[Guest Nekhyludov]

52 minutes ago, Lant63 said:

Keeps going up.  I got cold feet buying in at .255 .... I feel like an idiot right now.  

Same here. I talked myself out of buying at $487 in Feb. 16. Now I hate myself every time I see an article about it.

[NSXCIGAR]

21 hours ago, Iznogood said:

so "I'ma get medieval on your ass." is banks response to cryptocurrencies?

Not exactly.  I don't think that financial institutions necessarily have a problem with cryptos but governments likely will, and they can regulate the institutions out of it. 

As far as the gold money services now appearing I think this is just a creative service and one that allows government-issued fiat currencies to be completely bypassed with ease. First, the anonymity of the cryptos is wildly overstated. Second, one of the main original selling points of the cryptos was that it was detached from fiat currency. Gold is also. And as it stands now, Visa and Mastercard are still much faster payment processing and are usually cheaper than crypto transactions. 

11 hours ago, TheGipper said:

It's worth remembering that gold also has no "intrinsic value" either, except for its industrial utility (BTC arguably also has an analogous industrial utility).  But gold's industrial utility is a very small component of its market value.  Gold is dominant as a store of value almost purely because of a perception of value and mutual acceptance.  Palladium and platinum have even better industrial utility, yet it doesn't supplant gold.  Why?  Because of the mutual acceptance and broad perception of gold is so strong, it doesn't get overturned on the basis of technical or industrial usage (Sony Betamax also tells this story).  If it's a broad enough perception of value, then it's reality.  To at least some degree, that is already also true of BTC.

Gold is a commodity, and specifically, is the most useful mineral on Earth, more so than palladium or platinum. It has endless industrial uses and is widely used in dentistry and jewelry and has been the most widely accepted medium of exchange for thousands of years. It has as much inherent value as steel or raw tobacco (which was also used as money as recently as the 19th century), and it carries additional value as an effective medium of exchange. It has actual value as determined ultimately by the prices of the finished products that utilize it. If gold has little intrinsic value then nothing does.

And the supply of gold is remarkably stable--even after enormous amounts of gold were discovered in the new world in the 16th century and brought back to Europe prices across the continent rose no more than 10%. We've had 10% price inflation since 2013. 

BTC doesn't exist outside of code. It's not a real thing. It's essentially a ledger of an arbitrarily determined supply of something imagined. It's the very definition of extrinsic value. I'm not sure what kind of industrial use something that isn't tangible has...

Of course, this is not to say that it isn't superior to any fiat currency which is also backed by nothing and that has a supply that can increase at the whim of politicians. At least BTC is limited in supply. But that doesn't mean it is a supply of something. It is a supply of nothing. If people can believe the US dollar is worth something they certainly can believe BTC is worth something, but both are ultimately doomed to failure. Fiat currencies will become inflated to death and BTC's ultimate fate will be supplantation by another crypto or by gold/silver. 

[Iznogood]

Gold will never lose its value that is one thing that is pretty definite, but I think we are way past as using it as money ever again.

I think cryptocurrencies with finite amount like Bitcoin will take over role of gold, and other like Ethereum will be used for paying. One thing that needs to be solved before that is speed of transaction.

[TheGipper]

12 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

BTC doesn't exist outside of code. It's not a real thing. It's essentially a ledger of an arbitrarily determined supply of something imagined. It's the very definition of extrinsic value. I'm not sure what kind of industrial use something that isn't tangible has...

Would we say that things like the email SMTP protocol, TCP/IP protocol, ACH payments, etc, have no industrial utility?  They are equally as intangible as BTC.

[NSXCIGAR]

7 hours ago, TheGipper said:

Would we say that things like the email SMTP protocol, TCP/IP protocol, ACH payments, etc, have no industrial utility?  They are equally as intangible as BTC.

I would classify these as systems, and used as such, do indeed have value. However, cryptocurrencies are not systems any more than a dollar or any modern currency is a "system". A medium of exchange is a very particular thing with very specific characteristics in the economic literature. It has never been described or categorized as a "system". I would consider the blockchain much more analogous to the systems in your above examples, but not BTC. I think the blockchain may have value but the cryptocurrencies that utilize it do not so long as cryptocurrencies are primarily considered media of exchange or stores of value. Perhaps some other use can be discovered for them, but as either of the above, they are nothing.

 

[TheGipper]

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I think the blockchain may have value but the cryptocurrencies that utilize it do not so long as cryptocurrencies are primarily considered media of exchange or stores of value.

How does one provide a broadly decentralized (and therefore robust against a 51% or other type of attack) ledger without the economic incentive of the attached cryptocurrency?  Perhaps generous Bernie Sanders voters who will offer up their computer cycles and electricity merely for the benefit of the Luxembourg Real Estate Title agency?  Let's see how that goes.

BTC (and ETH and some others) have a huge advantage in security because of the whoppingly huge distribution of consensus.  BTC is essentially invulnerable to a 51% attack at this point.  All because of the cryptocurrency incentive offered to participating nodes.  Take the attached currency away and it would wither away to be a highly vulnerable blockchain.

My money (some of it) is on the Adam Smith side.  Self-interest makes the world go 'round.  You gotta give something of value to get something of value.  I don't think we'll see BernieCoin supplant BTC.

Anyway, enough of my opinion.  I only have 160 posts here and don't opine in every single thread on this board, so I don't really belong here.

[Shaunster]

I was mining BTC and later LTC in 2011/12/13. I was making roughly 1BTC per month at the start, and later on roughly 3LTC per month. I stopped mining, but I guess like everyone who was mining in those days I now think I should have invested in more mining hardware and could be a multi millionaire now, such is life. Still I have some coins which are suddenly worth stupid amounts of money.