Crypto Currency (Bitcoin, Etc.)

[Braivo]

With BTC prices nearing $13,000.00, up over 1,000% on the year, has anyone jumped on this train? 

I threw $500 in when it was at $7,900. Needless to say I wish I had put a bit more. At the same time, this seems completely unsustainable. 

Share your crypto currency thoughts. Bubble? Legit?

[JetFan1983]

31 minutes ago, Braivo said:

With BTC prices nearing $13,000.00, up over 1,000% on the year, has anyone jumped on this train? 

I threw $500 in when it was at $7,900. Needless to say I wish I had put a bit more. At the same time, this seems completely unsustainable. 

Share your crypto currency thoughts. Bubble? Legit?

Bought several (edited out the amount sorry)  when they were like $300 haha. I use to trade these in 2013 or so for like a year, mining them and what not with my home PC. Insane what's happened with it. Cool thing. I was into all sorts of coins then, pretty weird world. Some coins I have are worthless now. It was a fun ride at the time, and is really fun now I guess you could say. 

Um, yea I have no idea what's gonna happen. I said four years ago that each coin would be worth about 50K in forty years. Looks like that might have been too conservative a guess. If it tanks, whatever tho. I really don't care. Just gonna hold on til the end or if I ever have to cash in.

As someone who I guess understands it to an extent, it's useful and has a place in the world. Whether a coin comes along that is faster and safer, I can't say. I guess that would be its biggest threat, unless you think gov'ts and banks can stop it, which it appears like they can't really, although if they tried, yea that'd obviously be a problem haha. 

Here's me talking about bitcoin from 2013: 

Edit: made my $ amounts more anonymous. sorry about that. 

Edited December 6, 2017 by JetFan1983

[klineka]

I've put a little in Bitcoin. I think that it will become more widespread and legitimate over time, but who knows just how high it will go. I've seen speculations anywhere from reaching 20k in 2018 upwards of like 50k. 

I have the mindset of this being no different than lottery tickets. If I make money, cool, if not, not the end of the world. 

Edited December 6, 2017 by klineka

[saevel25]

9 minutes ago, Braivo said:

I threw $500 in when it was at $7,900. Needless to say I wish I had put a bit more. At the same time, this seems completely unsustainable. 

Share your crypto currency thoughts. Bubble? Legit?

I believe Bitcoin has a finite amount. Which means that this currency acts more like gold versus actual monetary currency. This means that it will be pretty stable in terms of inflation and deflation. I do not foresee a bubble occurring because it can not be artificially increased or decreased like how governments manipulate monetary supply.

 

[JetFan1983]

Yea, I can honestly say I have no idea despite how much I've I guess followed it over the past few years. This family guy jokes still sums things up for me, even despite my history with it:

 

Edit: If i can add that this stupid thing is a roller coaster ride. I remember when it passed 1000 for the first time and then hit a high of like 1250 before imploding, and people were like "it's a bubble, run!" It wouldn't shock me in the least if it mega crashed to like 3000 or something in just a matter of weeks, with everyone freaking out. I actually prefer it when it's cheaper anyway. It's kinda stressful it keeps going up, I feel like I'm losing money just by sitting around and doing no day trading of it. 

But yea if you have money to burn, there are worse things to be gambling on these days... like horse racing for example. But this thing could implode any day, for any number of reasons. I really have no clue. Going on record with that: official statement, no clue. 

 

Edited December 6, 2017 by JetFan1983

[MacDutch]

Strange that it took that long to start a thread on it. I have 0.222 btc. Some say it will go up to 16k this month. But it could also implode any moment.

Blockchain I believe in it, but which crypto currency will survive, I have no clue.

[iacas]

I "get" it and don't "get" it at the same time.

Things are only valuable if people value them, and this was created from something with no value - it just "came to be" because the anonymous "creator" declared it to be.

And so… yeah. I'll stick with the stuff the government says has value and enforces the value.

I'm missing out, I'm sure, but… $5 is worth $5 and doesn't become $14 in three months, and then fall to $7 in three more months.

[klineka]

Blown right through 15k and now right around $16k. Crazy!

What do you guys use to monitor the price? I've looked at numerous different charts but they all seem to show different value. I buy/sell using coinbase but was looking for a more real time chart I could keep up on my computer.

Edited December 7, 2017 by klineka

[Groucho Valentine]

Bitcoins value is mostly derived from its supply among its peer groups. Its getting to a point where you're going to beed networked mainframes to mine new ones and the ultimate number is finite. Which is its greatest strength and weakness. It pretty much prevents people like warren buffet or something buying all of it and then dumping it to make profits. But things like coin base have sort of centrailzed what bitcoin was supposed to be, so a huge crash is inevitable as users move to another currency. I've used it in the past, its very transparent if you're good about keeping your ledger. 

[Lime Shark]

18 hours ago, MacDutch said:

Blockchain I believe in it, but which crypto currency will survive, I have no clue.

I suspect the major governments will crack down on crypto-currencies, as it hampers their ability to manipulate the money supply and values of their own currencies.

Blockchain has a lot of different applications. I listened to a podcast recently that discussed its application to real estate.  I suspect we better get used to hearing the word.

[Lime Shark]

17 hours ago, iacas said:

I "get" it and don't "get" it at the same time.

Things are only valuable if people value them, and this was created from something with no value - it just "came to be" because the anonymous "creator" declared it to be.

Where do you think paper currency gets its value? It is no longer backed by gold or silver. Heck, most of it isn't even printed on paper anymore, it is just 1's and 0's in a computer.

Blockchain is, in essence, a distributed general ledger system. It allows people to quickly verify who owns what, while at the same time being difficult to manipulate fraudulently. There's no reason it can't be used to track American dollars instead of bitcoins (at which point banks become superfluous) or who owns what piece of real estate (at which point the county records office becomes superfluous).

[Braivo]

Closing in on $17,000. Interesting times we live in right now. 

[JetFan1983]

17 hours ago, iacas said:

I "get" it and don't "get" it at the same time.

Things are only valuable if people value them, and this was created from something with no value - it just "came to be" because the anonymous "creator" declared it to be.

And so… yeah. I'll stick with the stuff the government says has value and enforces the value.

I'm missing out, I'm sure, but… $5 is worth $5 and doesn't become $14 in three months, and then fall to $7 in three more months.

Its anonymity is a primary source of value, IMO. Clearly there is a high demand for total buying freedom -- a libertarian vision of the world -- without the nanny state telling us what we can and can't do with our money. The moral quandaries within that are another discussion, but there is clear value there. The ability to send encrypted messages to vendors to negotiate sales of black market items and then making the exchange at the end with bitcoin is more powerful than people could have imagined. 

Now, it's no doubt a bubble though too. The vast majority of investors are just sitting on the coins, waiting for "their number" to hit. With the supply limited and the demand high, the price just can't stop increasing right now. It's amazing to see. But the vast majority of coin owners don't actually use the coins, so that has to be some kind of bubble situation. I think I read somewhere that only like 20% of the coins in existence are actually used to buy things. The rest just sit inactive somewhere. 

At the same time however, you have sizable shifts towards main stream usage that further solidifies its floor. Casinos for example are making dramatic shifts towards primarily using bitcoin for online gambling, and there are so many big names, firms or whatever else getting involved where an outright global ban of bitcoin seems unlikely. It's possible, but I think too many powerful people have gotten rich off it.

It's definitely a bubble though. When everyone decides to cash in and let it collapse to more reasonable levels I dunno, but I got my sell orders in place if the worst ever happens. And then I'll buy back in again when it calms down and take the ride once more. I bought more coins when they hit 7900, and that was A FEW WEEKS AGO. This is gonna crash at some point. I've experienced it before. Just gotta have your sell orders locked in at certain prices, just in case the crash occurs when I'm asleep. We all said four years ago, "it's the wild west!" Yea, it was. And it still is. Which is insane. 

[klineka]

43 minutes ago, JetFan1983 said:

It's definitely a bubble though. When everyone decides to cash in and let it collapse to more reasonable levels I dunno, but I got my sell orders in place if the worst ever happens. And then I'll buy back in again when it calms down and take the ride once more. I bought more coins when they hit 7900, and that was A FEW WEEKS AGO. This is gonna crash at some point. I've experienced it before. Just gotta have your sell orders locked in at certain prices, just in case the crash occurs when I'm asleep. We all said four years ago, "it's the wild west!" Yea, it was. And it still is. Which is insane. 

Which site/app do you use for the sell orders? I use coinbase at the moment and it doesnt look like they have sell orders in here.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Lime Shark said:

Where do you think paper currency gets its value? It is no longer backed by gold or silver.

It comes from the government saying it has value and enforcing that.

It comes from the understanding that everyone has, and a long history of the money having value through that common understanding.

Bitcoin came from nothing, and people don't trade anything of real value to "get" it. They mine it, but the mining itself isn't solving any real-world problems, it's just crunching numbers.

2 hours ago, Lime Shark said:

Blockchain is, in essence, a distributed general ledger system. It allows people to quickly verify who owns what, while at the same time being difficult to manipulate fraudulently.

I wasn't talking about blockchain.

[JetFan1983]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

It comes from the government saying it has value and enforcing that.

It comes from the understanding that everyone has, and a long history of the money having value through that common understanding.

Bitcoin came from nothing, and people don't trade anything of real value to "get" it. They mine it, but the mining itself isn't solving any real-world problems, it's just crunching numbers.

I wasn't talking about blockchain.

Yea, the mining aspect is interesting. There's still incentive to continue "powering" the coins. I wonder if it will ever not be economically feasible to continue. That probably wouldn't be for a while, but again, I ultimately have no clue. There are so many variables at play: gov'ts, Asia, confidence, main stream acceptance... who knows. 

2 hours ago, klineka said:

Which site/app do you use for the sell orders? I use coinbase at the moment and it doesnt look like they have sell orders in here.

If you want to play this game, it's stressful, just to warn you. I smoothed over a lot of that by saying "sell order at X." Here's the reality of that:

Download some apps to alert you of price shifts, and then have confirmed memberships on the various markets, of which there are many. You'd be able to unload your coins this way if you needed to in a relatively orderly fashion in the event of... something happening. 

Each of the markets themselves is subject to collapse as well, so keeping a large amount in any one market is obviously a risk, and probably not recommended. Most of it really is just periodically checking the price while having alerts set up to warn you if something big might be happening. 

I do like Coinbase, but their app and site are unreliable during high volume periods. I still have their app, and it's useful most of the time, but can be buggy with the alerts. A lot of these apps are. So you need several of them to make sure you get an alert if some of them fail. For example, my Coinbase price alerts are not working today for some reason. 

In terms of what markets I use to sell, there are many. They each have caps on how many thousands of $ I can sell per day, so I can't rely on any one market to get rid of all my coins if I want to. 

This is stressful stuff, no question. It's one reason why I don't really recommend this to people. I enjoy it, but I know I can handle it, for the most part. The least stressful thing to do has simply been to play the long game, where you aren't reacting really to any collapse. Keep it on a thumb drive and then forget about it. That's actually worked wonders as a play the last four years, even with all its price fluctuations thrown in. So if you believe in a decade it will be, I dunno, say, 30K a coin or something, then you don't have to get cute with it at all. 

But whether or not now is a good time to buy, I don't know. I'm simply not an expert nor a broker. I'm just someone who got introduced to it early on and got lucky. If I had to guess, I would imagine that 20K is the next obvious psychological barrier, but again, this thing is not something I'm confident in predicting at this point, whether it's right now or even four years ago. 

 

[David in FL]

I have some simple rules when it comes to investing.  If I don't understand it, I don't invest in it...

...Likewise, if I don't understand the forces that directly impact its value, I don't invest in it.

In this case, it's 2 strikes and I'm out!  

[JetFan1983]

1 hour ago, David in FL said:

I have some simple rules when it comes to investing.  If I don't understand it, I don't invest in it...

...Likewise, if I don't understand the forces that directly impact its value, I don't invest in it.

In this case, it's 2 strikes and I'm out!  

I agree. And to gain an understanding would require lots of reading and learning of new things. A time investment first. Even then though, you wouldn't be able to predict it very well. No one can really... well, I guess they can, but knowing who is right is impossible to say. I can tell you for a fact that places like Goldman Sachs four years ago would've told you not to touch this stuff with a ten foot pole. So does anyone really know?

One anecdote I can share is the story of Dogecoin. I used to trade these too, and they went through their own little rise and fall cycle a few years ago. At the time, it would have helped an investor to know why they were invented in the first place. Few people at the time understood that Doge was originally created to either replace or provide an alternative to the like button. Rather than giving someone a thumbs up for a solid post, you could instead tip them in dogecoin. Each coin is worth far less than a penny, but people thought it'd be a fun thing for social media sites and forums to adopt. 

It eventually crashed, but before it did, people went crazy with it, thinking it could be the next big thing. I'm not sure most people really understood its intended purpose at the time. If you did, you could have probably predicted its limitations. 

Anyway, oddly enough, Doge is going thru another bubble right now. I have millions of these things lying around on a thumb drive somewhere. I was involved heavily during that initial rise and fall in 2014. I have no idea why it has spiked so much now. I'm sure bitcoin's out-of-control rise in recent months is the primary reason (that and possibly a pump-and-dump). 

All cryptos revolve around bitcoin like planets around a star. But understanding some of these other coins can help one better understand bitcoin too, if one were interested in reading about it. It's a strange and fascinating world.