Explain Bitcoin Please

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Mtnmun

Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 6, 2017 - 01:03pm PT
Please explain Bitcoin to us. I have been researching it today and I need a layman's explanation.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 01:09pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 01:37pm PT
I direct you to Wikipedia re: Dutch tulip mania.
Bitcoin does have some utility for drug dealers and other money launderers.
Mtnmun

Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 6, 2017 - 01:38pm PT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFj72hrUZt4

Even after watching these two videos I am lost. You seem to make the most sense Reilly.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 01:48pm PT
Its the underlying distributed blockchain platform that is going to be widely adopted for a myriad of applications.

https://datafloq.com/read/what-is-the-blockchain-and-why-is-it-so-important/2270
Mtnmun

Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 6, 2017 - 01:54pm PT
This I understand and it is life changing. ^^^^^^
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 02:00pm PT
mun, had a couple of internationally known economists over for dinner Saturday. Ask them about Bitcoin and you’ll get double eye rolls, if they’re feeling polite! In theory Bitcoin looks OK but in reality it has more downside than upside, chief of which is adequate liquidity which is a fundamental, if not most important, attribute of an efficient market. In economic terms efficiency also means openness and fairness.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Nov 6, 2017 - 02:20pm PT
What Reilly said.

Blockchain technology does have legit uses. But at this point, Bitcoin is mostly about people who want to hide transactions, and speculators.
Matt's

climber
Nov 6, 2017 - 02:53pm PT
simple-- its an entity that you can speculate on.

WBraun

climber
Nov 6, 2017 - 02:56pm PT
Bitcoin is an attempt to get away from the criminal world Bankers people like the Federal Reserve in the US.

These criminal Bankers create artificial money (paper) and debt.
Norton

climber
The Wastelands
Nov 6, 2017 - 03:00pm PT
there are people who have made a tremendous amount of money buying bitcoin

the shares are gone through the roof

however, no less than the CEO of Morgan Stanley, Jamie Dimon, recently said that
bitcoin is a bubble because of lack of liquidity, but that is changing, becoming more liquid as more around the world hear of it and use it

go to wiki and put in bitcoin and read about it
Matt's

climber
Nov 6, 2017 - 03:01pm PT
i was climbing at donner summit a few weeks ago-- a climber was telling another climber how they had paid for something in bitcoin, but then felt stupid because the price of bitcoin rose $1000 over the week.

wild fluctuations in value is not a particularly good/useful characteristic of a currency...

i'm inclined to believe matt levine over at bloomberg, who said that "cryptocurrency is about re-learning all of the lessons of modern finance in a sped-up way"

best,
matt
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 03:03pm PT
Norton, wrong. I read that only 21 million bitcoins can be ‘made’.
That is not liquidity. Do correct me if I’m wrong. ;-)
Sula

Trad climber
Pennsylvania
Nov 6, 2017 - 04:00pm PT
Norton posted:
the shares are gone through the roof

Note that the bitcoins themselves are the only "shares".
ruppell

climber
Nov 6, 2017 - 04:27pm PT
Reilly

Only 21 Million BC will ever be produced. The whole concept is to stop monetary inflation. Once 21M coins are produced mining stops and that's a fixed point. Unlike the Fed printing money whenever the need arises. In theory I like bitcoin. Whether it makes it as a common currency remains to be seen. I'm still kicking myself in the ass for not getting a few when they where at 1000ish a coin though.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 6, 2017 - 04:56pm PT
And of course, once your bitcoins are stolen you have no recourse 'cause there's no bank, no nothing.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/kaspersky-lab-discovers-new-malware-that-stole-140000-worth-of-bitcoin/

Then there was the failure of the bitcoin site Mt. Gox where 800,000 bitcoins, worth something like $400 million at the time, vanished.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/29/16060344/btce-bitcoin-exchange-takedown-mt-gox-theft-law-enforcement

Anonymous 'currency'. Ain't no proof of ownership so you're out of luck.
Norton

climber
The Wastelands
Nov 6, 2017 - 04:58pm PT
Liquidity is not necessarily defined as the finite number of shares

when talking about trading, or bubbles, it is the volume of buyers and sellers that make a market

while there is a finite number of bit coins, now, price is largely determined by the ease, the liquidity that facilitates sales and price
nah000

climber
now/here
Nov 6, 2017 - 05:37pm PT
a few points:

re: tulipmania... as i understand it, the most recent theory based on direct archival research, of which i have admittedly not read from the horse's mouth here, says most of our common ideas of what happened during that time is a convenient but almost completely exaggerated myth.

re: liquidity... two points. 1. yes, it's an emergent mode of exchange so if you're looking to move your billions of u.s. dollars around, it is going to be tricky selling off that much in bitcoin. not because you can't sell it, but because relative to the market cap [currently at about 120 billion u.s. dollars] you are likely going to significantly push the price around with a sell off of that size. as of the last 24 hours the total volume of bitcoin to u.s. dollars moved around on just the largest exchange was about $1.6 billion worth. in total over the last 24 hours over $2 billion worth in u.s. dollars was moved around. to put this in perspective, just one year ago the total traded volume in 24 hours averaged in the low tens of millions of u.s. bucks... ie. Q: is it possible that bitcoin's use could become widespread enough in the near future that it'd become stable for billions of dollars to be pushed around without significantly affecting the sell price? A: it is certainly possible even at the same time that it is certainly not certain that this will happen... :) in short: for we plebs [or at least, those with less than a million dollars of u.s. cash to move around] liquidity is, in the most direct definition, currently not an issue.
2. Reilly are you seriously arguing liquidity has anything to do with "how many bitcoins there are"? cause if you are, as you seem to be to me, then no, you're mistaken on this point. [as others have pointed out while i was typing,] yes, there is a cap in the number of bitcoins. but that is kind of the whole point of bitcoin [ie. . it is a mode of exchange that by definition has a capped number of units of exchange] if/as this mode of exchange [bitcoin] becomes more in demand relative to other modes of exchange [the u.s. dollar for example], bitcoin's value will rise relative to the u.s. dollar [as it has done for the eight years that it has been in existence]. and in that way you just start moving smaller amounts of bitcoin around to move the same amount of say u.s. dollars around. ie. once upon a time it cost hundreds of bitcoin to buy a pizza, whereas currently it'd cost a hundredth of a bitcoin to buy a pizza. from the way i conceive of it, liquidity has to do with a. the ability to exchange an amount at will combined with b. price stability. with regards to the former a., as discussed in point one it depends on the size of the amount being moved: with no issue for the multithousandaires, or even millionaires in the room. with regards to the latter [b. price stability] bitcoin, as an emergent and still relatively small market is not by any definition stable. that said it has continued to become more stable over time. so as far as is bitcoin liquid? it depends on what "is" is.

re: an attempt at a plain english explanation of bitcoin. 1. bitcoin is a decentralized public ledger. 2. the recording of exchanges made on that public ledger are backed up by impossibly large to compute, math based encryption.

re: what, i suspect people are really looking for with regards to a plain english explanation: is bitcoin worth investing in? and this is an, imo, impossible to answer question. that's because at its heart we currently live in a world based in violence. as i understand braun to be alluding to, the idea that the current u.s. petrobuck is anything more than a collective hallucination backed up globally by, at its heart, u.s. nukes, is imesho, simply pleasant myth. as a fiat currency for the last 46 years, whose creation is both out of thin air and in the hands of private interests, to think the u.s. buck will be sacrosanct for ever and ever amen, is to not pay attention to history. will bitcoin be a/the replacement? it's impossible to know. at this point, the nukes back up the u.s. buck so i wouldn't bet on it being replaced anyday soon. but that's an end game answer. in the more short term, with regards to bitcoin as just an investment? again hard to say. because of the chaotic [by scientific definitions] interface between traditional currencies, governments, etc. it's hard to know exactly what will or won't become of bitcoin. not to mention all of the growing pains that new technology must go through. that said will a blockchain based currency prove useful and the value of its units of exchange continue to grow relative to nationalized fiat currencies? i wouldn't bet against it. i just wouldn't necessarily bet that bitcoin is necessarily going to be the long term winner. although a small bet can't hurt at this point given the last eight years.

re: There is simply no way to tell, no governing authority, no rules at all, other than the Prime Directive. this, in some regards, is true. except it's even more true of the current paper u.s. bucks. the prime directive with fiat paper bucks has, at its heart, always been who controls the making and enforcing of the rules. the prime directive for bitcoin is ultimately a publicly available to read bit of math. we humans are an ogreish bunch though, and so despite our outward niceties, i wouldn't necessarily bet on math, in this case.



as always, this is mostly off the cuff... so if i've made a mistake, please point it out, so i learn as well.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 05:46pm PT
If you think Bitcoin is sane economics then yer probably a Bernie lover.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 6, 2017 - 05:48pm PT
Do not listen to me, but consider what nah000 offered.


There are good reasons for almost anyone in finance to drive a stake through the heart of bitcoin.

Bitcoin seems unlikely to survive, but the idea may.


If governments get behind the program:

All financial transactions become public.

Taxes could be switched from an individual or corporate responsibility to an automatic small per cent of every financial transaction.

Individual taxpayers would save a lot of hassle and anguish filling out forms.



Way too idealistic for the real world, and I prefer secrecy and cash transactions, personally.



edit:

My dearly beloved cash would only be issued in denominations up to approximately $20 to help out street people and old fogies like me.

and the wealthy could still trade in gold and artwork in a shadow barter economy
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 06:05pm PT
I think nah000 covers it, but the basic technology is much broader than the currency application, and allows for tamper-proof information to be exchanged confirming the validity of that information without revealing the path that it took.

This is incredibly important for shipping, for instance, and even for banking where you will find the same technology applied in the coming years, which will provide a more secure way to transfer such information. It is not too hard to see a transition to cryptocurrency from just "normal" banking transactions made more secure.

As for the basis of a currency, we all (the entire world) buy into the idea that the Federal Reserve is the monetary regulator.

Ideas like cryptocurrency make it possible to decentralize the currency system. This may be advantageous in the long run, especially given the limited "lifetimes" of nations.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Nov 6, 2017 - 07:38pm PT
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.” (Misattributed to Everett Dirksen)

Just for comparison, the overnight repurchase market in the U.S. alone by the end of 2010 has been estimated to be about 8 trillion dollars. That’s every single night.

Value and money have a loose association. Money is worth what the market says it is, and that is a game of consensus among a great many people, most of whom are not aware that they are a part of the consensus. Both value and money are socially constructed.

Almost every effort that’s ever been made to control and stipulate the durability of the value of a unit of measurement has been met with failure—the Federal Reserve’s efforts not withstanding. (Perhaps the Gold Standard should be recalled as the monetary standard--just kidding.)

As for printing money, every bank does it with every loan. Loans create money (a multiplier effect).

Inflation occurs for a reason—not just a tangible reason. Ditto for the increase value in any commodity or investment.

A billion here and there won’t be making much of a difference anywhere.

I think Reilly has focused on the right parameter: liquidity. It will enable a buyer or seller to get in or out of a desirable or undesirable financial position.

It might be better to focus on what’s of value to one. I suppose it could be money, but that’s just a count of a unit of measurement.
Ghost

climber
A long way from where I started
Nov 6, 2017 - 07:52pm PT
nah000 has it as far as bitcoin is concerned, but the currently more relevant thing is the impact on pretty much everything in the world of the tech behind bitcoin.

Blockchain offers the possibility of tamper-proof recording of transactions, and, in the industry I work in (logistics) the potential is enormous.

As always, though, all this wonderfulness comes with a couple of caveats:

First, as far as I know, "tamper-proof" is a pretty short-term concept. Eventually someone will figure out how to tamper. But, even so, blockchain is a big step forward.

Second, regarding the original subject of bitcoin: Yes, there have been fortunes won and lost. But I still think you're better off investing in real estate. Cuz they ain't making any more of it.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 08:14pm PT
It's actually meaningless since the bitcoin holder has no access ascertain the security of the technology.

No, the holder can see everything that insures the security, and make assessments, it is a public ledger system.

As for the promise of quantum computing, so far we have little to worry as most practical systems do not perform much better than "classical" computing.

As for insecurity, oddly, humans are largely responsible...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/business/dealbook/phone-hack-bitcoin-virtual-currency.html

'...But Mr. Pokornicky said the virtual currency industry needed to alert new users to the added risk that comes with the new features of the technology.
“It’s powerful to be able to control your money and move things without any permission,” he said. “But that privilege requires a clear understanding of the downside.”'
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 6, 2017 - 08:40pm PT
The recent run up in the value of bitcoin was the direct result of big companies hording bit coin in case they had to pay off ransomware demands. Criminal activity mainly
nah000

climber
now/here
Nov 6, 2017 - 08:59pm PT
DMT: as per the first three lines of your argument... it seems to me your argument is predicated on the assumption that what/how money is/was organized in this day today is somehow necessarily rooted in what/how it originally is/was...

and so while you'll get no argument from me that there is a lineage, i'd argue that the lineage is kind of like the following image of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a...:


ie. there is a semblance of the original in the final, but damn... it's pretty distorted...

so no need on your part to assume any need from my perspective for the bilderburgers, masons, etc.

in no small part, because i ain't smart enough to know exactly how we got from a to b.



but here's what i do know about b.:

when the u.s. ran into troubles because of a bunch of a fUck ups directly at the hands of the financial authorities having "something vital and core to the[ir] authority" guess who footed the bill?

and how was that bill footed?

and as i don't have time to walk all of the way through it, i'll just stick to the most important conceptual distortion, imo.

we talk all the time about how the obama led government took on "debt". simply put, that "debt" that the u.s. took on at that point is as related to the common sense idea of "debt" [taking something that is owned and has therefore been earned by one person, so that they no longer have use of it and giving it to another person who doesn't own it because they haven't earned it] as the word "wench" [which once apparently meant "female child"] is related to the present usage. ie. we're seriously saying that financial private interests creating a ledger line, that did not exist before, then giving it to we the people, so that we can try to get out of the situation that said financial private interests got us into in the first place, is "debt" that we get to pay interest and principle back to the private financial interests on?

uh. ok.



to be clear, i'm not arguing that the way we do things is necessarily "wrong". there are pros to having centralized and privately held authority to modes of exchange that are quite literally created as ledger lines out of thin air.

only point i'm trying to make is that it hasn't necessarily been all peachy over the last bit.

ok i guess there are two points, with the second being that the terminology we use to describe our system is as related to what we common sense think it is, as old school wench is to the new school version.

and don't worry i don't think bitcoin, or the blockchain is necessarily "our lord, and saviour", either.



alls i am saying is that new modes of human organization will require new modes of human organization.

and blockchains [and bitcoin] are very early explorations of new modes of human organization.

that's it, that's all.





as far as: What about those alleged missing bitcoins out of that alleged bitcoin exchange? Who went to jail? Who paid up? Who did the peasants lynch below the castle walls?

who went to jail when those u.s. dollar banks "busted" recently [and to be clear in your example above it was the equivalent of a bitcoin "bank" and not bitcoin itself that went bust]? and all those people that lost their homes? who got lynched? who paid up?



anyway i could keep going but i have one final point: What we all need to remember is money is simply a representation of labor; that's it.

no. this is only true to us plebs.

as a whole money is simply a representation of value. that's it.

whether bitcoin comes to represent value in a way that threatens the u.s. or other national bucks is hard to say.

in no small part because if it did, i suspect, the dudes with the nukes will end it... or at least distort it, so that it becomes a facsimile of a facsimile of a facsimile of a...



time will... as always... tell.
nah000

climber
now/here
Nov 6, 2017 - 09:08pm PT
^^^^

if that's what you got from what i said, it looks like we're talking past each other.

all the best.
IntheFog

climber
Mostly the next place
Nov 6, 2017 - 09:09pm PT
I think Bitcoin enthusiasts are more like to go for Ron Paul than for Bernie. Among other things, Bitcoin makes it hard for the government to see how much you are spending, and on what. It's hard for the government to tax what it can't see. I'm not sure wiping out taxes works for Bernie's bros.

PS FWIW, Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is all about the computer currency/tax linkage. It was written long before Bitcoin or even Paypal, but it's full of insights, especially about the computer currency/taxes/war linkages. Taxes are, after all, the sinews of war.
Cole

Trad climber
los angeles
Nov 6, 2017 - 09:28pm PT
A lot of people in this thread bashing bitcoin like they're an expert or something. Blockchain technology and crypto currency are extremely complex and new, I seriously doubt anyone in this forum understands what is going to happen, so acting like you do seems a bit foolish.
nah000

climber
now/here
Nov 6, 2017 - 09:33pm PT
DMT: i was referring to this:

But enjoy, if that's what you want. Ask your employer to pay you in bitcoin. Cash em in down at the... oh wait. No bank! No cash. Good luck with your new ways to try to execute the same ole function.

as a response to what i wrote.

i'm pretty sure i pretty clearly stated the antithesis to a bunch of that...



as far as your quote of mine misrepresenting what you wrote.

even though i still disagree with you on that, it's possible that i might not have understood what you were intending for me to take away...

hence the we are talking past each other...
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 6, 2017 - 09:59pm PT
nahoo explained it? I explained it in 4 sentences, or was it 3? WTF?
Here, 8 words:
No liquidity, no accountability, no transparency, no regulation.
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Nov 7, 2017 - 12:17am PT
Bitcoin uses a lot of energy to solve useless problems, so the people who solve them have the chance to participate in a speculative investment scheme. A lot of carbon is going into the atmosphere in the process. Investing in heroin distribution may be better, from a moral point of view.
TomCochrane

Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
Nov 7, 2017 - 01:12am PT
The earth shaking technology here is uncrackable encryption.

Uncrackable encryption potentially takes away the ability of the banksters to control the populations of the world.

People just haven't assimilated the implications, as this thread well illustrates. As pointed out above, Neil Stevenson did a great job of thinking this through in his book Cryptonomicon. (I highly recommend all his books!)

The banksters are madly trying to obfuscate and circumvent the implications of this encryption technology breakthrough into the public domain. One of my author friends wrote a book that she is afraid to publish called Money, Power, and Purpose. She had several sessions interviewing and educating Alan Greenspan on this subject, until he saw the light and told her she was very dangerous and to get out of his office. She hid out for at least a decade after that.

As Ed pointed out up thread, Bitcoin is simply one of many applications for the major technology developments in encryption. It may have started out as a haven for gamblers and the sex trade. But you don't have to be a shady character to want to operate out of reach of the Fed. There are many other block chain currencies going to town out there, besides Bitcoin. The neocons took advantage of the 2008 crash to run off with about a trillion dollars of the public's money ... not likely stashed in US dollars.

A few decades ago I knew some math geniuses who were hired by the CIA to develop unidirectional algorithms which no amount of computer power could compute in reverse. My understanding is that they succeeded nicely.

This was followed by a couple of decades of the CIA/NSA trying to prevent this new encryption technology from getting out into the wild. They needed it to hide their massive collection of secrets. But they didn't want anyone to be able to hide from them.

Eventually they failed to keep the encryption cat in the bag. Bitcoin is just one of the many potential application domains, all of which bode poorly for the world's bankster controllers.

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 7, 2017 - 02:02am PT
A few decades ago I knew some math geniuses who were hired by the CIA to develop unidirectional algorithms which no amount of computer power could compute in reverse. My understanding is that they succeeded nicely.

The CIA? Seriously? No CIA or NSA was required (unless of course they managed to hire some Flemish cryptographers...) and it was never not out in the 'wild'...
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 7, 2017 - 06:17am PT
A good history and explanation of primes, factoring, modulo arithmetic and truncation, and public keys is in "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. It's written at a level even I can understand. The development of asymmetic ciphers was really done by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman at MIT in the late 70's. There is no known method of quickly factoring the product of prime numbers to the original primes, and that's the key to asymmetric encryption. The factoring idea was also independently developed by British Intelligence at about the same time, but was kept secret.

Check out today's Dilbert (11/07/17) for more discussion.

http://dilbert.com/
StahlBro

Trad climber
San Diego, CA
Nov 7, 2017 - 06:27am PT
Obfuscation

“This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material?”


― Marcus Aurelius
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 7, 2017 - 06:40am PT
Information, Marcus.
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Nov 7, 2017 - 07:16am PT
Energy consumption of bitcoin mining: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This wouldn't be so offensive if the "work" was solving some problem of interest or importance, but it's not, it's just serving to inject new bitcoins into the system.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 7, 2017 - 07:21am PT
Exactly. Ghastly inefficient and, as stated, anything but a 'green' currency.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 7, 2017 - 10:09am PT
Not sure how they come up with 240kwh per transaction, sounds like BS to me
Oplopanax

Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
Nov 7, 2017 - 10:24am PT
What is bitcoin?

TomCochrane

Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
Nov 7, 2017 - 11:42am PT
so Bitcoin is a bubble and the Fed's petrodollar is not??

what an intriguing perspective

is anyone here paying attention to the BRICS?
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 7, 2017 - 11:57am PT
I'm kind of astounded that this thread has focused so much on the reputation of bitcoin and what it's currently used for. With a few exceptions, most posters seem oblivious to, as Ed puts it, the broader applications of the underlying blockchain technology.

from https://www.raconteur.net/business/the-future-of-blockchain-in-8-charts

Canadian writers and researchers, Alex and Don Tapscott, authors of the new book Blockchain Revolution, explain that blockchain goes way beyond the second coming of the internet. The pair, like so many others, stumbled across blockchain via the bitcoin association, quickly realising the genie is out of the bottle.

For beginners, blockchain is essentially a database, a giant network, known as a distributed ledger, which records ownership and value, and allows anyone with access to view and take part. A network is updated and verified through consensus of all the parties involved. When something is added it cannot be altered and, if it looks valid to everyone, the update is approved.

“The first generation brought us the internet of information. The second generation, powered by blockchain, is bringing us the internet of value, a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. But like the internet in the late-1980s and early-1990s, this is still early days.”

also https://econsultancy.com/blog/68693-the-importance-of-the-blockchain-the-second-generation-of-the-internet

But what does the blockchain mean for businesses outside of the financial sector? The answer lies in the areas of - privacy/information control, disintermediation, and business processes.

As mentioned above, the blockchain offers consumers opportunity to achieve greater control over their information. This will impact on most organisations, as they increasingly rely on the acquisition and application of customer data.

The importance of privacy is obviously a sensitive issue. One current solution for consumers is the selection of ephemeral applications like Snapchat and encrypted messaging, but the future might lie in the anonymity of blockchain technologies.

Another change will affect business sectors where there are many intermediaries, for example travel and tourism. Here, the blockchain’s ability to simplify and speed up interactions, will likely lead to a process of dis-intermediation.

stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Nov 7, 2017 - 12:08pm PT
The US dollar and it's value is based broadly on the overall strength of the US economy and financial system. Not sure why you think it's strongly petro industry based. That sector is not that a big a slice of the US economy. Not like we're Saudi.

Pretty much all money is fiat currency. Even when we were on the gold standard, it's not as if gold is particularly useful compared to say iron. It just provides a tie to some fixed amount of thing. But that's really only useful when talking about inflation, which isn't really likely to be a significant issue any time soon.

Bitcoin isn't widely used and isn't really tied to anything of value. So I'd say to the extent that it has value, that's purely due to speculation.

All that aside, blockchain tech does potentially have real value for things like securing on-line voting, or secure exchange of medical records.
Oplopanax

Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
Nov 7, 2017 - 12:13pm PT
"Bitcoin must be good because blockchain" is logically equivalent to "A5 must be safe and easy because French free"
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 7, 2017 - 12:37pm PT
"Bitcoin must be good because blockchain"

Personally, I couldn't care less about bitcoin.

edit - some people can't see the forest for the trees....
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 7, 2017 - 12:43pm PT
All currency is just a placeholder until you piss it away on real estate, precious metals, cams, or blow.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 7, 2017 - 02:49pm PT
What network?

Specifically.

What database?

Specifically.

C'mon, Dingus, I thought once upon a time you researched all this, enough of it anyways.

For starters...
https://www.blockchain.com/

There IS a learning curve. Like algebra. Like climbing!
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 7, 2017 - 02:52pm PT
Bitcoin 101...

http://www.supertopo.com/forumsearch.php?s=s&o=&v=0&cur=100&ftr1=bitcoin+101&ftr2=&ftr3=&ftr4=#list

http://www.supertopo.com/forumsearch.php?s=s&o=&v=0&cur=80&ftr1=bitcoin+101&ftr2=&ftr3=&ftr4=#list

...

This thread's embarrassing. The signal to noise ratio is worse than on the mind thread - I didn't think that was possible.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 7, 2017 - 03:25pm PT
For now I will believe Reilly. He should know.


And it doesn't cost me anything.


?
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 7, 2017 - 04:03pm PT
What network?

Specifically.

What database?

Specifically.

http://bfy.tw/EuQ8 ;-)
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 7, 2017 - 04:09pm PT
haha, dingus, unlike Nature, I see you never spent your tip for coffee...

lol!

It's now worth $61.00!

https://blockchain.info/address/1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2266103&msg=2352530#msg2352530



You should play it forward and buy me a couple pizzas! lol
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 7, 2017 - 04:17pm PT
OK, Reilly.

Your measly liquidity, accountability, transparency, regulation, versus






Should I flip a coin?
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Nov 7, 2017 - 07:24pm PT
. . . platform [some innovation] that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. 

Oh, brother.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard this kind of declaration in the past 50 years.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 7, 2017 - 07:54pm PT
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard this kind of declaration in the past 50 years.

is this what you said about the internet, back in the day?
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 7, 2017 - 09:15pm PT
Ditto television and radio. Telegraph on the other hand did dramatically change the speed of business.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 7, 2017 - 10:57pm PT
Bottom line with security on the internet is there is no real security until the day you can tie biometrics to transactions and trace them across all the CPU's and network devices from origination to destination. That would require a wholesale change in the way we design all computing and network devices.

The downside of such a system is it would also act as a de facto national identity program so that doesn't get people super excited. But there you have it, a choice between two evils: an internet with no anonymity or one rife with fraud - there is no in-between.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 8, 2017 - 12:20am PT
The downside of such a system is it would also act as a de facto national identity program so that doesn't get people super excited.

that's the point of blockchain currency, it isn't centralized... no governments involved

so far the only major security problems with bitcoin are people blabbing about their wallets on social media and hackers taking over their cell phones which are used for multifactor identification and changing the passwords on all the victim's accounts... this is not a problem with the bitcoin security

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 8, 2017 - 12:30am PT
I'm not talking about bitcoin, or blockchain, which is far too computationally expensive to use outside of securing high-value artifacts such as currencies and contracts. I'm talking about what it would require to secure the internet in general. Bitcoin and blockchain operate within a an inherently insecure ecosystem and securing that ecosystem would entail the rather draconian measures I mentioned.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:20am PT
ecurity is elusive though, and in this stateless utopia who is going to protect the integrity of the system - whatever system, of money?

in a stateless utopia is there any money?

We can make all the interesting and intelligent speculations we want about the future. Passing judgment on this technology based on those speculations is to be expected, but I doubt any of us can see where it will go.

My feeling is that the utility of blockchain technology will find itself into the "logistics" sectors, including financial transfers.

If you think the computational resources for creating blockchain are large, what about mining, refining, storing and moving tonnes of gold around?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:23am PT
Dingus, I was just about to ask if you saw my post? but apparently you have.

Don't you have your wallet anymore? That $5 I tipped you (along w Nature) back in 2014 is now $70 in YOUR wallet.

You're just going to let it go to waste?

The fact that HFCS's 'cup of bitcoin coffee' is now allegedly worth $60 is not really a strong argument in favor of such a system. -dingus

and what's with the "allegedly"?!

Did you not even bother to click one link and see?
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:25am PT
Blockchain = useful
Bitcoin = blockchain
Step 3: Profit

Got it.

How come Dogecoin isn’t as valuable and desireable as Bitcoin?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:27am PT
well give it to your kids then, or one of their friends, perhaps they'll know what to do with it

1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj

Perhaps I'll retire on it if this growth continues.


smartass - so often the case

"allegedly"

the tell right there

...

My issue with some posters here (like on the God thread) is not that they don't know, it's that they pretend to knowledge or expertise they don't have. Heck of a value.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:38am PT
What's to keep the same from happening to bitcoin? What unholy alliances await humanity's future and what then, oh impotent countries of old, will you do in the next currency crash, when your country lacks any and all control to manipulate the currency to smooth out the lumps in the economy?

Much like President Obama did by printing a trillion bucks in paper money? Nyet!

And what horrors await in the code base? I know, some of you are enamored with secure transactions. Security is elusive though, and in this stateless utopia who is going to protect the integrity of the system - whatever system, of money?

Will you all rise up with your pitchforks and storm the, oh wait, no castle. No ruler. No country. No responsibility.

Wow. That certainty of expression! Your powers of seeing the future must be awesome!!!

...

At least Nature knew how to play along - the original intent in 2014 - using his as currency.

https://blockchain.info/address/1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj

You want to piss on the system and not partake, Mr. Certainty, you can always send it back. Only takes a couple clicks.

hfcs... 16mDuHSL3vdBJgRTEj2RahH7emZHa5V7aW

...


Personally, if somebody sent me a five spot for a cuppa a few years back and I hadn't gotten around to using it and just discovered it's now worth $70 I'd be kinda excited about that. But I guess me is not YOU.

:(
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:55am PT
A bit of reference and clarity. For future self if not others.

Dingus on a 2014 thread post asked how much 9 ten-thousands of btc was worth. Just for clarity sake, that was just a test amount, worth about $.25 at the time, to validate his new wallet address. As above link shows it was then followed, after getting validation here at ST, w a $5 "tip" (for a good story or two, or three, he's written over the years).

So that's how that bit of transaction worked. Above link shows two transactions from me, one worth about $.25 at the time and the other $5.00 at the time.

Nature played too. Year or so later, ledger shows he withdrew his.

Nature's...
https://blockchain.info/address/1GWkJCZHdqyabaLFXwemg6zwHvC6EQoWSu

EDIT: Correction: Nature transferred his tip to a new address. It now has a $40 balance.

https://blockchain.info/address/1H5h7vzJAdQnKmPRbsJkiv4TfKLuPLbXCx

Someone should let him know. :)

For ref: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2266103&msg=2352456#msg2352456

...

How about answering a question...

How about doing some research... How about showing due diligence... How about recognizing that some subject matter actually requires investment, even intensive investment, more than some other subject matter.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 8, 2017 - 07:57am PT
$300m in cryptocurrency accidentally lost forever due to bug

User mistakenly takes control of hundreds of wallets containing cryptocurrency Ether, destroying them in a panic while trying to give them back...
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Nov 8, 2017 - 09:28am PT
Here's an analysis of the economics of this stuff which argues a few points, including: that an equilibrium will exist such that the currency has a positive value, if there are enough buyers of the currency; and that the energy overhead of mining can be reduced as the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation becomes large enough.

https://www.chapman.edu/research/institutes-and-centers/economic-science-institute/_files/ifree-papers-and-photos/koeppel-april2017.pdf

There's not much economic theory developed on the topic.

I'd be pretty reluctant to invest in bitcoin itself, except with a small amount for speculative purposes. It seems to me that the chances of the bottom falling out of the market are not negligible. The technology behind it looks to be very promising, though.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Nov 8, 2017 - 09:36am PT
“Investing in money” is kind of a strange idea. Usually, it’s meant placing a bet on the relative economic performance of a country that fosters a currency.

Here’s it seems to be something different. Instead, it’s a bet on a technology, and with regards to that, that’s pretty much always a crapshoot. No one has been able to successfully and repeatedly been able to predict which technology will win in a competition among other technologies because it’s never been a question of which technology is technically superior. Social factors (which are often seemingly illogical or irrational) often end up choosing a technology over others. The books are full of stories about how so-called inferior technologies won.

I’m using one right now. It’s called the QWERTY keyboard.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 8, 2017 - 09:43am PT
Regardless of its implementation, currency is and will always be social construct. And as a software engineer I would have complete confidence in cryptocurrencies if they weren't written in software, wholly sync'd to human behavior, and embedded in an insecure digital world. As it is, it's reminding me a lot of any other speculative bubble, but with way more technological and social unknowns and risk.
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Nov 8, 2017 - 10:04am PT
The basic argument is that this stuff will be super useful "someday" and be an alternative or replacement for regular cash. It will be faster and more secure than moving money via banks. That is the value proposition.

The current value placed on Bitcoin and similar widgets does not really reflect this. Currently a transaction is not instantaneous or very cheap (averaging $6 a pop). Most people are hoarding it like a goose laying golden eggs, not actually spending it.

The real test would be if the value did stabilize like a real currency should and stopped growing at 100% a year. Would people actually spend it like money? Would they sell it and move to some other faster growing asset? Would miners stop being able to pay their electric bills and sell their graphic card farms for pennies on the dollar? Will governments continue to step in an ban the stuff? If a major terrorist attack is funded secretly with the stuff will it suddenly get a tainted image?

I can see it plummet to nothing easily, especially given the dozens of me-too crypto-currencies that exist, even if one takes root most will be doomed to the scrap heap. I cannot see it continue to grow on the current trajectory in perpetuity.
FRUMY

Trad climber
Bishop,CA
Nov 8, 2017 - 10:08am PT
^^^^^^^
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Nov 8, 2017 - 10:10am PT
The same way there are a lot of CPU cycles mining bitcoins, there are also probably a lot of them sending out messages to stimulate interest in bitcoin and to make us believe that its value will go up. With a slowly growing supply, and demand increasing due to actual usefulness and speculation fueled by spam, it's not surprising that the value is going up, at least for some length of time. There's no federal reserve injecting bitcoins fast enough to prevent deflation.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 8, 2017 - 10:18am PT
messages to stimulate interest in bitcoin


Yes.

Don't underestimate the importance of marketing.


Whatever you may regard as the value of anything, don't forget the way expert advertising can play a role. We live "under the influence in an age of persuasion" as ad-man Terry O'Reilly might put it. Yeah, the hockey player.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 9, 2017 - 10:31am PT
Sorry Dingus.

As something of a fan of this and similar innovations and where it all might lead (via a type of evolution of course) yesterday this crazy enthusiasm got the best of me and I posted over the top in the moment and too quickly. Sorry man.

By and large, lol, love your posts!
hooblie

climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
Nov 9, 2017 - 05:43pm PT
fresh air's terry gross topic: "understanding bitcoin" on her podcast today

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444908/fresh-air
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 9, 2017 - 06:44pm PT
Yeah, I always go to Terry Gross for financial beta. LOL
Jeremy B.

climber
Northern California
Nov 9, 2017 - 07:35pm PT
You can find a decent overview on bitcoin the currency and bitcoin the protocol at https://macro-ops.com/bitcoin-bubble-6000-pokemon-card/ (Yes, it's a newsletter site, no I have no relation to it.)
ECF

Big Wall climber
Ridgway CO
Nov 9, 2017 - 10:44pm PT
Ever go to Vegas?
Same rules apply, don't spend more than you can afford to lose.

That said, I have made money buying and selling bitcoin.
Its damn easy. Just don't sell when it's below a profit point.
Just wait, it will go back up.
This is a global phenomenon, USA centered thinking will make it seem foolish.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 9, 2017 - 11:21pm PT
Who said hope and aspiration couldn't be digitized...
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 10, 2017 - 08:50am PT
I might be stoopid, but I’m no crankloon. The dollar is being shorted today, time to go long before the Fed ups rates next month. Oh, Bitcoin, you asked?

LONDON
Bitcoin dropped below $7,000 on Friday to trade more than 5 percent down on the day, having fallen by well over $1,000 since hitting an all-time high on Wednesday.
Bitcoin dropped to $6,800 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange by 1200 GMT, before recovering a little to $6,870 just over 20 minutes later.
On Wednesday around 1800 GMT, it had touched $7,888 after a software upgrade planned for next week that could have split the cryptocurrency in two was suspended.
As bitcoin fell, Bitcoin Cash - a clone of the original that was generated from another split on Aug.1 - surged, trading up as much as 35 percent on the day at around $850, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.
Despite losing almost 7 percent this week, bitcoin is still up more than 600 percent so far this year.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly, Editing by Abhinav Ramnarayan)
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 10, 2017 - 11:50am PT
a software upgrade planned for...

Software as currency - pushing code to production should be a cause for monumental trepidation; disagreements significant enough to cause a given developer faction to fork the codebase even scarier. Who's in charge of this rodeo anyway...?

Happiegrrrl2

Trad climber
Nov 10, 2017 - 03:56pm PT
If nobody mentioned it, there was a segment about Bitcoin on "Fresh Air" last night. I only heard the last of it, but am assuming there was enough on the "basics of Bitcoin" to get a decent idea.

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/09/563050434/once-an-underground-currency-bitcoin-emerges-as-a-new-way-to-track-information
Bargainhunter

climber
Nov 10, 2017 - 04:31pm PT
Personal anecdote:

I bought my first bitcoin the day after Thanksgiving in 2013. It cost ~$1200.

Turns out, I had purchased at a peak and it proceeded to rollercoaster downward, then back up but mostly downward to the $300-400 range. The volatility was extreme, sometimes changes of 25% in a single day. Great if it's going up but not so great the other way.

I bought more during this time (hey, it's on a discount!), lots more, but ultimately got spooked by the volatility, and cashed out a year later with a hefty but tolerable losses, as I understood I was just speculating on a weird security and was basically gambling, not investing. I was aware all along that the money could vaporize at a moment's notice.

If I had held onto my original bitcoin in 2013 bought around $300, I would have seen more than 20x increases today. I could have retired early.

Back in 2013, I gifted my sister 0.10 bitcoin for her birthday, then worth $95. It's now worth $660+.

Pretty wild to think of the early adopters making millions just by the simple click of a few buttons, if one's timing was lucky, getting in on bitcoin when it was worth a few dollars, or pennies...
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 10, 2017 - 04:51pm PT
Pretty wild to think of the early adopters making millions

The creator, whatever name he, she, or they go by, did well, too.


Far as we know.



Reminds me of what a computer scientist friend of mine said years ago about the promise of things to come: "Some people in my field play a game of 'fleece the venture capitalist.'"
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 10, 2017 - 05:36pm PT
A young programmer I know retired, verrrry comfortably, at the ripe old age of 28. But he actually wrote code that people paid for because they saw actual value in it.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 10, 2017 - 06:17pm PT
he actually wrote code that people paid for


Sort of like Microsoft did, huh?



Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 10, 2017 - 06:21pm PT
Kinda, but he wrote stable code. 🤓
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 16, 2017 - 08:50am PT
Lest we forget:

Special Report: Twice burned - How Mt. Gox's bitcoin customers could lose again
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-gox-specialreport/special-report-twice-burned-how-mt-goxs-bitcoin-customers-could-lose-again-idUSKBN1DG1UC

24,000 suckers stiffed! Financial Darwinism, baby!
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 16, 2017 - 01:06pm PT
https://hackernoon.com/the-crypto-civil-war-40ee1ee9314f
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 16, 2017 - 06:26pm PT
^^^^^ This is a nerd's wet dream, a computer game that can actually make you rich. So what happens when the interwebs go down? It's amazing how much we have come to depend on the internet in such a short time. All my business transactions go through it; I'd be f*#ked without it. All the more reason for net neutrality.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 17, 2017 - 07:06am PT
You misunderstand me DMT, or perhaps I wasn't clear. All my communications re lab results and billing go through the internet. Snail mail would be possible but slow. Fax could work, but who has one now? Texting is okay for quick response, but not for technical stuff. Do you think Amazon might depend a bit on the interweb?

The internet isn't free. I pay $200/year for a web site and a domain name. Explain to me how the internet has not become very important, no, essential, for commerce worldwide. More and more entertainment is web based, as cable customers abandon the ship. It's critical that the net be neutral and not controlled by two or three companies who can pick and chose who they will speed stifle for their own benefit.

I wish I had some options as to a service provider, but have only a single choice. Since this is essentially a monopoly there must be certainty that my ISP not favor certain businesses or political views, that the internet be open and neutral.

Don't talk down to me without knowing what I do or how I do it. I pay $70/month for internet access; some of that money goes to infrastructure support via the provider.

And there's nothing wrong with free wine.

Edited to add:

DMT, a number of people on this site have gotten free wine from me just by asking. I used to have a policy that whenever someone asked they got a bottle via UPS. Reilly, I think you asked once and I messaged you for your address, but got no reply.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 17, 2017 - 07:36am PT
Wino, with all due respect, what does yer love of the intardnet got to do with Bitcoin?
Yer use of the net is legit.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 17, 2017 - 07:44am PT

Reilly, not a love story. What I was suggesting is that
So what happens when the interwebs go down?
bitcoins don't exist without the net. The way hundreds of millions of dollars of perceived value can simply vanish with the click of a button as it did with Mt. Gox is, or should be, scary stuff.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 17, 2017 - 08:26am PT
Ah, pre-coffee reading comp fail. My bad. ;-) Well, the world’s whole financial system is dependent on the web with the critical difference being all other transactions are (theoretically) backed up ad nauseum. Oh, there is that one other little difference - those transactions are real. OK, real as long as you think a credit default swap is real. :-)
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 27, 2017 - 11:10am PT

"Bitcoins are the new penny stocks."
-Reilly, 25 Feb 2014

"Can you say 'tulip mania'?"
Reilly, 8 Nov 2013


Hey Reilly, that Dec 2013 "bubble-about-to-burst" - see it there? barely? so your posts seem rather off-the-mark (charitable) now, eh?

...

"Regarding (virtual) values, let's recall just last week or so Annie's shotgun sold for $330K or so, lol!!" -hfcs 28nov2013

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2266103&tn=20


Yeah, and a davinci sells for $450M earlier this month...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/arts/design/leonardo-da-vinci-salvator-mundi-christies-auction.html
seano

Mountain climber
none
Nov 27, 2017 - 11:25am PT
I'm curious what caused BTC to spike to $9500 over the holiday weekend after puttering around $8000 for at least a few days.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 27, 2017 - 11:29am PT
what caused BTC to spike to $9500...

What caused the Da Vinci to sell for $450 million? :)
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 27, 2017 - 11:36am PT
seano, if yer looking for rationality yer on the wrong warpath.
B B B B U B B B B L E!
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 27, 2017 - 11:38am PT


"Bitcoins are the new penny stocks."
-Reilly, 25 Feb 2014

"Can you say 'tulip mania'?"
Reilly, 8 Nov 2013

...

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold on Wednesday night for $450.3 million with fees, shattering the high for any work of art sold at auction. It far surpassed Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in May 2015.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/arts/design/leonardo-da-vinci-salvator-mundi-christies-auction.html

"It's an historic moment; we'll wait."

...

https://blockchain.info/address/1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj
seano

Mountain climber
none
Nov 27, 2017 - 12:02pm PT
What caused the Da Vinci to sell for $450 million? :)
Russians? :-) A bubble tends to inflate gradually, then suddenly pop. The latest bitcoin spike seems like a reaction to some recent event. Rich preppers fleeing Mount Agung?
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Nov 27, 2017 - 04:23pm PT
FOMO - Fear of missing out

Bitcoin has been getting hyped as the latest get rich quick scheme. We are getting closer and closer to taxi drivers and shoe shine buys shilling for it.

It is not being used as a currency, but as an asset. An asset unbacked up by anything other than hype. I've yet to hear a single person claim to have bought it for the actual purpose of making a monetary transaction easier or more efficeint. Instead everyone is in Get Rich Quick mode.

Just a matter of time till some sanity hits it. Might be in a day, might be in a year. All I know is that I am pretty happy with my portfolio as it already stands, and it does not include bitcoin.
Wayno

Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
Nov 27, 2017 - 04:48pm PT
At least one of the local pot shops here in Seattle accepts credit cards. They use some kind of bitcoin transaction. It seems the banks have some issues with the "legal" pot business. Interesting discussion.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 27, 2017 - 07:18pm PT
The Da Vinci was the last one in private hands.

The last remaining Leonardo da Vinci painting in private hands is expected to fetch Ł75million at auction - 60 years after it was sold for Ł45. "Salvator Mundi" - or "Saviour of the World" - was painted by the Italian artist in around 1500, the same period he created The Mona Lisa.Oct 11, 2017

Bitcoin is baffling.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 27, 2017 - 07:31pm PT
Yeah Wayno, there are problems between the Feds and banks for 'illegal' at the federal level transactions. Since pot is still illegal federally banks have some real issues dealing with the state legal pot business; money laundering springs to mind. That's why the pot shops can't take anything but cash or now, I guess, bitcoins. The Silk Road drug site was a prime example of why bitcoins exist; untraceablity.

DMT, you are correct. The sale of that painting for more than $400 million was simply money laundering by Russian oligarchs. As were many of the Trump condo sales. Rinse, repeat.
Roger Brown

climber
Oceano, California
Nov 27, 2017 - 08:19pm PT
Today I watched the u-tube stuff and I think get it! No wonder the 1070 Founders Edition were over $1200.00 on Amazon when they sold out. My, just released, 1070ti Founders shipped from Nvidia today for their price. They had a limit of 2. I just wanted 1 to upgrade my simulator. I wonder how many folks sold the farm to build chain blocks for pay in Bitcoins? $10,000 a Bitcoin......."POP"
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 27, 2017 - 09:40pm PT
Wayno, as Wino noted the banks are hamstrung, not that only taking cash is
exactly breaking the hearts of the pot shops. They can then buy Bitcoins
with whatever they have left over that their accountants tell them is safe
to launder.

BTW, you seen that Yuge pot operation up by Aeneas Lake? They had major
money fronting them - everything is brand new and first class. Some forensic
accounting is indicated IMHO.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Nov 28, 2017 - 08:42am PT
Today I watched the u-tube stuff and I think get it! No wonder the 1070 Founders Edition were over $1200.00 on Amazon when they sold out. My, just released, 1070ti Founders shipped from Nvidia today for their price. They had a limit of 2. I just wanted 1 to upgrade my simulator. I wonder how many folks sold the farm to build chain blocks for pay in Bitcoins? $10,000 a Bitcoin......."POP"

It's not just the bitcoin farmers using GPUs. They are also proving very useful in machine learning/AI. Between the two uses, ATI and Nvidia are very busy. If you wanted an actual good investment, that would be one.
cavemonkey

Ice climber
ak
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:02am PT
`snore`
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:27am PT
All I know is that I am pretty happy with my portfolio as it already stands, and it does not include bitcoin.

Wise... although some fortunes were made in tulips too. I'd wager we're staring at a collapse of monumental proportions of wall street paper which might drive these tech-finance vehicles to the moon. Just get off before it hits the sun.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:35am PT
As opposed to Bitcoin tulip futures and other financial instruments actually have utility. The tulip futures did share some of Bitcoin’s negative attributes: lack of liquidity and almost a total lack of transparency. Even the popularly maligned collateralized debt obligation instruments offer those attributes in addition to bona fide utility.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:41am PT
I'd wager we're staring at a collapse of monumental proportions of wall street paper which might drive these tech-finance vehicles to the moon.

Just get off before it hits the sun.
Wayno

Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:05am PT
BTW, you seen that Yuge pot operation up by Aeneas Lake? They had major
money fronting them - everything is brand new and first class. Some forensic
accounting is indicated IMHO.

I'm not familiar with that one specifically but there are several huge farms in the area that seem well funded. Interesting because a lot of locals don't want the shops in their towns but the farms seem to be o.k.. They do employ a lot of locals and the climate is great for outdoor operations. One local grower told me that quite a few growers from the "Humboldt era" relocated here years ago and when it became legal already had something going. I would say that ninety percent of the properties I looked at in the last seven years had evidence of some kind of grow operation.

Sorry for the thread drift.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:12am PT
Further thread drift - according to ‘The Economist’:

But according to Paolo Bianco of Airbus...2018 will be the last year to start investing in quantum technologies. Arrive any later, he says, and “any early-player advantage would evaporate “.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. GET YER QUBITS NOW! 🤓
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:13am PT
Grow operation? Seems on-topic.
Darwin

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Nov 28, 2017 - 01:21pm PT


Sorry if this has been posted upstream: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609408/quantum-computers-pose-imminent-threat-to-bitcoin-security/
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 28, 2017 - 02:22pm PT
Going very mainstream?

Japanese bitcoin exchange bitFlyer is coming to the U.S

Like most exchanges bitFlyer will have tiered verification levels. The first level asks for personal information like your name and address and email and cell phone verification, and in return you can deposit and withdraw up to $2,000 in bitcoin per day and trade up to $3,000 in bitcoin per day. The second tier asks for additional information like bank account verification and proof of identity via photo ID, and allows users to deposit and withdraw up to $50,000 in bitcoin per day and trade an unlimited amount of the cryptocurrency.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/28/japanese-bitcoin-exchange-bitflyer-is-coming-to-the-u-s/

Bitcoin seems to be making history.
How much is a piece of history worth?
Mike Honcho

Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
Nov 28, 2017 - 03:06pm PT
At least one of the local pot shops here in Seattle accepts credit cards. They use some kind of bitcoin transaction. It seems the banks have some issues with the "legal" pot business. Interesting discussion.

I work in the Cannabis Industry here in Colorado. I've never heard of credit cards being accepted but a very few of the 100's of dispensaries now can accept a debit card, not credit card though. and like I said, that's super rare.

Everything is paid for in cash, the millennials who sell that sh#t all start at 15bux an hour with mad tip jars. On payroll day, the owner/manager just goes around with a suitcase full of cash and gets money orders for all the employees.

edit- I've heard on more than several occasions that if you pull the same amount of cash on the same day at the same place too many times, the Credit Union(and I've only heard of credit unions doing this), can trace the ATM and if they find out it's at a dispensary they'll block you from using that particular ATM!! ALL dispensaries have very popular ATM's in there.. sort of weird, but I don't smoke it pot, so not really a problem for me.

Caylor
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Nov 28, 2017 - 03:45pm PT
Wise... although some fortunes were made in tulips too. I'd wager we're staring at a collapse of monumental proportions of wall street paper which might drive these tech-finance vehicles to the moon. Just get off before it hits the sun.
Bigger fool theory. If you are lucky you can time markets and profit from bubbles.

I have poor luck. If I market timed I would most likely lose my shirt. If I bought Bitcoin tomorrow it would probably crash to zero an within a week.

My strategy is to buy the whole damn market via a total market index fund, and dilute that with a little total bond market index funds. I buy and hold, period. I don't have the time, energy, or luck to be able to be a betting man on Wall Street.
J Wells

Trad climber
Boulder, CO
Nov 28, 2017 - 03:59pm PT
Bitcoin has no intrinsic value itself: you can't eat it, build with it, sleep in it, etc.

The value of a currency with no intrinsic value is based on the confidence that another party will accept it in exchange for something with intrinsic value. No confidence, no value.

This was posted earlier:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609408/quantum-computers-pose-imminent-threat-to-bitcoin-security/

So how long will confidence in bitcoin last given security concerns? And what about governments? Will they let it grow large? You don't have to have an opinion on governments to know they hold the power right now and bitcoin could be a threat to their power.

Of course, we shouldn't have confidence in any fiat currency. Almost all of them have gone to zero in real terms over any longish timeframe.

The value of blockchain/distributed apps (other than currency) is another discussion.

Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 28, 2017 - 04:00pm PT
Bigger fool theory. If you are lucky you can time markets and profit from bubbles.

My (ex) wife had a small IRA when we got married, about $5k. She let me put it in a stock account and trade it. I bought into a startup biotech company and it sort of floated up and down, then one afternoon at work I checked the price; holy shit!!!!! That $5k was now, in the space of about 5 hours, $110k!!! There was some rumor floating around about one of their potential products. I sold it the next day for $80k before the whole thing crashed, which it proceeded to do over a few days. It can happen, but certainly not often.
seano

Mountain climber
none
Nov 28, 2017 - 07:14pm PT
I'm not sure I believe these clowns, but if they're right, then grab your popcorn... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15803864
Gene Pool

Trad climber
A trailer park in Santa Cruz
Nov 28, 2017 - 08:08pm PT
Wow. Very surprised at negative responses. Bitcoin can only be compared to the internet. Both are global, digital, open, decentralized (to some degree) networks. One deals with info, the other value. It's not about a digital token. It's about the network and protocol! Facebook is worth 500b. Bitcoin 150b. This has a significant chance of being the biggest opportunity of your life.

Do not miss this. You will regret.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:10pm PT
Gene Pool, learn the difference between investing and gambling.
By all means buy Bitcoin, if you can afford to lose yer 'investment'.
Let's say you made a million doing so. How you gonna buy a house with it?
I guess you could buy a bunch of pot and resell it for actual cash and then
buy yer house.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:38pm PT
Let's say you made a million doing so. How you gonna buy a house with it? -Reilly

Reilly what the hell are you talking about?

You better clarify because your credence just tanked.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 28, 2017 - 09:47pm PT
"Let's say you made a million doing so. How you gonna buy a house with it? I guess you could buy a bunch of pot and resell it for actual cash and then buy yer house." -Reilly

Better? Does anyone here know what Reilly's talking about?
Gene Pool

Trad climber
A trailer park in Santa Cruz
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:24pm PT
No need to argue. Just check back in in two years. I'll eat my humble pie it it's due, but my money's on a digital currency native to the internet that allows *anyone* to build off of it - unlike any fiat currency in existence. Think deeply about what permission-less/openness means in a global network! It means relentless innovation. Ever been to France? Remember the minitel? The private precursor to the www that got crushed. This is going to be one of the craziest stories of our century.
Gene Pool

Trad climber
A trailer park in Santa Cruz
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:29pm PT
For the curious, start with Walter Isaacson's podcast "dis-rupt - Cha ching" Then download the Satoshi white paper. It's surprisingly readable. Then if you want to go deep, watch Princeton Universities' lecture series on YouTube. Bad endings can happen, but something really special is happening here. I'd give it 75% chance you look back at 10k bitcoin and cry.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 28, 2017 - 10:50pm PT
There's no basis for argument here.

I simply want Reilly to explain his post.

I really don't know Reilly, I just hope he's not just another dime a dozen shitposter.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitposter


I just don't get why there are so many people / posters who pretend to knowledge they don't have and then post up about it.

Really, I hope I'm wrong about Reilly here.




I'm going to have to check in the morning, it's already past my bedtime.
Maybe he'll have an answer that explains his odd post by then?
Byran

climber
Half Dome Village
Nov 29, 2017 - 12:43am PT
The idea of bitcoin is definitely here to stay, so it might seem like investing in bitcoins is a safe bet, but that's only because right now bitcoin the only popular cryptocurrancy on the market. It's like how in 2005, everyone could say that social media was only going to gain in popularity. And that's true, it absolutely did. But the people telling you to invest in MySpace never could have guessed that everyone would jump ship to Facebook over the next few years. So bitcoin prices will probably keep going up until something else comes along to compete with it, and who knows when that will be.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 29, 2017 - 07:11am PT
crickets from reilly it seems

The facts: One can cash out his btc, whether it's 1 or 100, at any of a number of exchanges, Coinbase being one of them. It seems bitFlyer, cited above, is soon to be or is already another.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Nov 29, 2017 - 05:27pm PT
Wow!

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/bitcoin-plunges-18-percent-after-topping-11000-in-extremely-volatile-trading.html

Bitcoin plunges 18% after topping $11,000 in extremely volatile trading

The digital currency dropped more than 18 percent from a record high of $11,388.33 to current levels around $9,292 on Wednesday, according to CoinDesk.

Trading was extremely volatile as exchanges such as Coinbase's GDAX struggled to keep up with the surging demand.

"There's no fundamental value to any of this stuff and it's all based on ... supply and demand at any point in time," said Leigh Drogen, a former trader who now heads Estimize, a 6-year-old company that collects and publishes financial estimates for data such as earnings.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 29, 2017 - 07:25pm PT
18% in a day? LITE! I went toe to toe with the Hunt Bros on silver futures BITD.
You want free soloing? How about six figure volatility per minute! 😝
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Nov 29, 2017 - 07:53pm PT
Yeah, well the problem I see is the requirement for any cash transaction over $10k to be reported to the Feds. Even now, a lot of banks will not accept cash deposits at all if the depositor is not the account owner. It's illegal to bring over $10k into the country without reporting it. This is where bitcoin is going to have trouble; if I cash out 10 bitcoins @ $10k/each, get some cash or wire transfer, then what? How does the USD money get into the system? The Feds want their share.

As Reilly suggested, how do you buy a house?
Byran

climber
Half Dome Village
Nov 29, 2017 - 10:56pm PT
You pay your capital gains taxes on the profits you made trading bitcoin, then your money is "in the system" legally, and then you can buy your house. How is any of this different than buying/selling gold or stocks?

Edit: if you're talking about large values of bitcoins that were acquired illegally (selling drugs or contraband) then the money will still need to be laundered the same way a briefcase full of cash would. The best way to think of bitcoins is that they are "digital cash". It's not some magic currency that gets you out of paying taxes or let's you deposit huge sums of drug money into your Wells Fargo account.
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Nov 29, 2017 - 11:19pm PT
Pie in the sky?

[Click to View YouTube Video]

Bitcoin is not a unique thing, there are other cryptocurrencies. Precisely the volatility of bitcoin reduces it's usefulness as a medium of exchange, it becomes more of a speculative investment. If someone invents a cryptocurrency that has a value stability mechanism built in, then it could cause an implosion of bitcoin. Actually, this recent bubble is bound to pop at some point, regardless. I will bet internet bragging rights that bitcoin will loose 20% of value in a single day some time in the next 4 months.

EDIT: oops! That happened yesterday, hah, hah!
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 1, 2017 - 08:00am PT
No community, certainly not the bitcoin ecosystem, is immune from the bad actor...

[Click to View YouTube Video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1He1UFYIiY

Who said diversity is the spice of life? lol

...

Bitcoin is a fraud...
"worse than tulip bulbs,"

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Sept 2017
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 5, 2017 - 07:46am PT
Exciting!

Winklevoss twins become the first bitcoin billionaires

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-november-4-winklevoss-twins-first-bitcoin-billionaires-2017-12

...


Shall we?

Let's all watch the future history of Dingus's $5.25 investment in btc in 2014.

https://blockchain.info/address/1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj

$112.85 this morning.

Exciting!


...

PS

In afore link, if you click on the green button, the units expressed in BTC will change to units in dollars. Sort of a hidden feature.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 5, 2017 - 09:18am PT
OK, ‘Buttonwood’ of The Economist splains it succinctly:

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21731827-getting-out-such-illiquid-asset-can-be-harder-getting-bitcoins

“It is easy to muddle two separate issues. One is whether the “blockchain” technology that underpins bitcoin becomes more widely adopted. Blockchains, distributed ledgers that record transactions securely, may prove very useful in some areas of finance, and beyond. The second is whether bitcoin will become a widely adopted currency in everyday life. Here the evidence is weak.

A currency is also a unit of account for debt. Paul Mortimer-Lee of BNP Paribas, a French bank, tartly remarks: “Imagine if you had financed your house with a bitcoin mortgage.” This year your debt would have risen tenfold. “



“The top is hard to call. At some point, the urge to turn all those digital zeros into cars and iPhones will prove too great. Getting out of an illiquid asset—as this week, when exchanges struggled to cope with trading volumes—can be harder than getting into it. Some remember Nathan Rothschild’s remark about the secret of his wealth: “I always sold too soon.” “
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 6, 2017 - 07:29pm PT
Digital currency exchange NiceHash says bitcoin worth nearly $64 million hacked
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-nicehash/digital-currency-exchange-nicehash-says-bitcoin-worth-nearly-64-million-hacked-idUSKBN1E10AQ

Man, them crooks be lovin them sum Bitcoin!
They can steal ‘em and then hide ‘em in plain sight!
A win-win for the morally challenged.
beaner

Social climber
Maine
Dec 6, 2017 - 07:36pm PT
bitcoin is bad news

http://grist.org/article/bitcoin-could-cost-us-our-clean-energy-future/

Digital financial transactions come with a real-world price: The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has created an exponential demand for computing power. As bitcoin grows, the math problems computers must solve to make more bitcoin (a process called “mining”) get more and more difficult — a wrinkle designed to control the currency’s supply.

Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the U.S. for one day. And miners are constantly installing more and faster computers. Already, the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers combined.

The total energy use of this web of hardware is huge — an estimated 31 terawatt-hours per year. More than 150 individual countries in the world consume less energy annually. And that power-hungry network is currently increasing its energy use every day by about 450 gigawatt-hours, roughly the same amount of electricity the entire country of Haiti uses in a year.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 6, 2017 - 09:11pm PT
^^^^ All so a bunch of crooks can launder their ill gotten gains.
Mtnmun

Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2017 - 10:00pm PT
Locals told me Bitcoin is building a huge computer plant next to the new Google and Tesla Plants East of Reno.
nah000

climber
now/here
Dec 6, 2017 - 10:58pm PT
Who you gonna call when your bitcoin "exchange" goes bust?

same folks you call when you get ripped off by enron, by bear stearns, by lehmann brothers and etc.

ie. theft is theft whether it's crypto or not. and just like in the regular market, it's caveat emptor as it's usually the little guy left holding any bags that get emptied.



They can steal ‘em and then hide ‘em in plain sight!
A win-win for the morally challenged.

i'm confused... you talkin' about bitcoin or are you reading the panama papers more closely? or maybe the current president's words regarding federal debt from just a little over a year ago: "First of all, you never have to default because you print the money"



in general: you folks who rightfully point out the challenges that face bitcoin [and there are a plethora] without seeing the failings of the current system, are just pots blind to the absence of their color...



speaking of legitimate bitcoin challenges: great post beaner. interesting stuff.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 6, 2017 - 11:42pm PT
Bitcoin to start futures trading, stoking Wild West worries
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-futures-analysis/bitcoin-to-start-futures-trading-stoking-wild-west-worries-idUSKBN1E10J7

I’m gonna laugh my azz off when all these lazy azz hipsters loose their azzes.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 7, 2017 - 01:44pm PT
Dingus,
your $5.25 investment in btc in 2014 is now worth $154.
You may just get to retire early! lol

https://blockchain.info/address/1JGpHgrLoWweBFx4GLHxwTnG77CrmKj9Hj

Incredible!

...


Here's the site I've used for several years now...
http://bitcoinity.org/markets

Check out the 2yr scale... amazing! If only we had a time machine, eh?

You may want to bookmark it - to keep an eye on this incredible phenomenon taking place. There was this guy, Andresen, something like that, who several years ago I remember gave a lecture and uploaded to YouTube claiming that, in his opinion, bitcoin was sound enough in its fundamentals that it could hit $10k per btc. Proven right, he was.

I can only imagine the conflict speculators must be feeling today!!!
ruppell

climber
Dec 7, 2017 - 05:39pm PT
On Nov 7 when this thread was started bitcoin was selling for $7118 dollars a coin. It's now trading, a month later, at $17118 dollars a coin.

That's a 240 percent return in a month if you trade it. I need to take out a loan and quit my day job. lol
Rolfr

Sport climber
La Quinta and Penticton BC
Dec 7, 2017 - 06:21pm PT
Another 60 million dollar hack on bitcoin today. Let’s see the value tomorrow?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-60-million-worth-bitcoin-080857336.html
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 7, 2017 - 06:27pm PT
Rolfr, if someone cannot control his wallet, he tends to lose what's in it.
If btc, particularly large amts, are in cold storage, in other words, off-line, as they should be, they wouldn't be at risk.

$60M, particularly from this source, isn't even a pixel in the big picture of the CURRENT bitcoin ecosystem.
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Dec 7, 2017 - 06:49pm PT
That's a 240 percent return in a month if you trade it. I need to take out a loan and quit my day job. lol

It's almost too good to be true......

At least tulips were pretty until the moles ate your bulbs.

fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Dec 7, 2017 - 07:02pm PT
It was a way for me to heat my office to unpleasant levels whilst also driving my electric bill through the roof a few years ago. Unfortunately I dumped my tulips way too early before Gox imploded.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 7, 2017 - 07:26pm PT
Jody, think of it more like this...


[Click to View YouTube Video]
7SacredPools

Trad climber
Ontario, Canada
Dec 7, 2017 - 07:46pm PT
They say the power used by Bitcoin mining is still "less" than 1% of US consumption. That is an insane amount of energy. How is this viable? Or conscionable?
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Dec 7, 2017 - 08:27pm PT
Well, let's hope that most bitcoin mining is taking place in cold climates. I don't believe those electrical usage numbers; as time passes, bitcoins available for mining are asymptotically approaching a limit, the number of bitcoins that can 'exist'. No way will 1% or 5% or 50% of the electricity generated be used for computing bitcoins. The limiting factor is the number of computers in existence connected to the internet and their power consumption running 24/7. Seems like light bulb numbers to me.

At some point power costs more than reward.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 7, 2017 - 09:19pm PT
I know you tards don't read my post but here is a re-post.

OK, ‘Buttonwood’ of The Economist splains it succinctly:

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21731827-getting-out-such-illiquid-asset-can-be-harder-getting-bitcoins

"But it is worth remembering that the cost of using bitcoin is going up. Each transaction has to be verified by “miners” who need a lot of computing power to do so, and a lot of energy: 275kWh for every transaction, according to Digiconomist, a website. In total, bitcoin uses as much electricity a year as Morocco, or enough to power 2.8m American households. All this costs much more than processing credit-card transactions via Visa or MasterCard."
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Dec 7, 2017 - 10:02pm PT
^^
from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/434wzw/cryptocurrency-miners-are-using-old-tires-to-power-their-rigs-bitcoin-ethereum

"Cryptocurrency mining in general is the process that secures transactions and generates new tokens. It’s incredibly energy-intensive—for example, each Bitcoin transaction could embody enough energy spent mining to power the average US home for a week or more."

"The above figure has rightfully caused some alarm. Most cryptocurrencies’ overall electricity consumption is affected mainly by their price: As the price goes up, more miners will join to try to claim new coins as mining rewards, consuming electricity."
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 8, 2017 - 07:41am PT
(1) These concerns certainly make the future of bitcoin interesting and worth watching.

(2) These concerns are entirely irrelevant to those RIGHT NOW living the dream (living a rags to riches story).
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 8, 2017 - 11:08am PT
Don't take it from me, take it from her!


How the Blockchain Will Totally Transform the Economy

https://www.ted.com/talks/bettina_warburg_how_the_blockchain_will_radically_transform_the_economy
WyoRockMan

climber
Grizzlyville, WY
Dec 8, 2017 - 11:42am PT
https://www.theonion.com/bitcoin-on-path-to-functioning-just-like-real-currency-1821128169
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Dec 8, 2017 - 03:21pm PT
So there are 21 million bit coins (if everything was mined), at current prices they are worth 342 billion dollars. 40% of the total bitcoin is 8.4 million. The ONLY thing giving bitcoin value is demand for bitcoin. Current market volume is about 250k per day, with occasional spikes to 400k. Drop 8.4 million bitcoin on the market and you can pretty much figure out what will happen. The price will drop and the other 60% of owners will start selling. Market crash. Then again I could be completely wrong, this is uncharted territory.

so only 12.5 million bitcoins have been mined. It would still be quite a shock to the market if even 10% of them went on the market.
EdwardT

Trad climber
Retired
Dec 8, 2017 - 03:25pm PT
A Ponzi scheme we can watch implode.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Dec 8, 2017 - 06:03pm PT
Hey Jon, actually there are 16,728,100 bitcoins in circulation. Not that it really means anything.

http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/
seano

Mountain climber
none
Dec 9, 2017 - 11:17am PT
John McAfee

@officialmcafee
This is a guy who spent a good part of the past decade shacked up with hookers in Belize while blitzed out of his mind on bath salts. Just sayin'...
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Dec 9, 2017 - 12:06pm PT
McAfee is full of shlt, how could you model something like bitcoin.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 9, 2017 - 12:23pm PT
Explain, bitcoin? Sure.

First, get a barrel and fill it with pebbles (it can only hold so many you know)

Second, paint "the best pebbles ever - get'em while they last" on the side of the barrel

Third...
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 9, 2017 - 04:40pm PT
Why Siberia is a great place to mine bitcoins

Cheap electricity and frozen winters to cool massive computer servers

https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21732155-cheap-electricity-and-frozen-winters-cool-massive-computer-servers-why-siberia-great-place
Spiny Norman

Social climber
Boring, Oregon
Dec 10, 2017 - 01:50pm PT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 11, 2017 - 11:44am PT
In other words...

The compute load on the bitcoin infrastructure of everyone trying to cash out at once in the event of a crash would way outstrip the available computing power.
Mei

Trad climber
mxi2000.net
Dec 11, 2017 - 12:54pm PT
Not sure if anyone has posted this documentary:

Banking on Bitcoin

It's available on Netflix and Amazon.
TomCochrane

Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
Dec 11, 2017 - 04:38pm PT
Bulgaria Government Shocked To Discover It Owns $3 Billion In Bitcoin
by Tyler Dyrden, … for ZeroHedge - December 11, 20172399

Bulgaria’s GDP is about $52.4 billion (2016), so it is quite a shock that the Bulgarian Government is sitting on an approximate $3 billion worth of Bitcoins seized in an anti-corruption operation back in May. Putting this into a little more glaring context, Bulgaria is holding 18% of the national debt in bitcoins…

Bulgarian law enforcement jointly worked with the Southeast European Law Enforcement Center (SELC), a regional organization comprised of 12 member states, to bust a sophisticated organized-crime network, arresting twenty-three Bulgarian nationals and seizing a total of 213,519 bitcoins.

SELC described the organized-crime scheme as the hacking of Bulgarian Custom’s computers and allowing those associated with the group to skip fees for importing goods into the country. To make it work, the group recruited corrupt Customs officers to upload a virus into government machines, so that hackers could establish remote access.

The organized criminal group consisted in Bulgarian nationals having connections in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Hellenic Republic, Romania and Republic of Serbia.

The modus operandi used was recruiting corrupted Customs officers in all involved countries with the purpose to infiltrate a virus in the Customs’ computerized systems. Once the virus installed, from a distance, the offenders were able to finalize various transports, as in the Customs’ system appeared that the cargo was already checked and passed.

Further, SELC provided details of how the operation was conducted, involving a large-scale search of “more than 100 addresses, suspects, and vehicles.” Out of the 23 suspects arrested, 5 of them were Bulgarian Customs officers. Police seized “equipment, devices for communication, computers, tablets, and bank documents.”

As result of this criminal activity the damages recorded by the Customs Agency, only for year 2015, is around 10 million Leva.

Here is where things get interesting… Police also seized 213,519 bitcoins, at the time, worth $500 million. As of writing this article, the amount seized, is now worth approximately 3,676,583,661, according to CoinDesk.

As well, up to now were found in the virtual space bitcoin wallets of the main suspects with a total value of 213,519 bitcoins. As a reference, the value of one bitcoin is rating to 2354 USD. The offenders choose the bitcoin way of investing/saving the money, because it is rather difficult to be tracked and followed.

What remains a mystery to most, is what the Bulgarian government will do with the seized bitcoins? As mentioned in the beginning, the national debt could certainly be reduced. Have we just discovered a large seller that is ready to pour cold water on the party?
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 11, 2017 - 07:22pm PT
coinbase must know precisely what level of trading will crash their system...

The question isn't what level of trading will crash their system (and likely they run it close to the edge now), but rather the delta between that and the compute demand of a crash. And that's what they're warning about and saying there'll be certain levels of freezing and daily if not hourly transaction limits. It would get ugly quick.
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Dec 12, 2017 - 04:45am PT
Delhi Dog

climber
Good Question...
Dec 12, 2017 - 04:52am PT
I hear those pesky N. Koreans enjoys a bit of bitcoin too
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Dec 12, 2017 - 09:40am PT
Bitcoin prices have again more than doubled. Its price has now gone up over 17 times this year, 64 times over the last three years and superseded that of the Dutch Tulip’s climb over the same time frame.

What could possibly go wrong? Perhaps it IS different this time.

Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Dec 12, 2017 - 04:39pm PT


Bitcoin = Beanie Babies for millenials


Then again, who would have thought that there was so much free and loose "investment" money that a painting would fetch half a billion dollars at auction.

Maybe all that free and loose "investment" money will lift bitcoin from $20,000 to $20,000,000 before the bubble finally bursts.

Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Dec 12, 2017 - 04:56pm PT
Seems to me market makers and liquidity are the two big issues facing bitcoin from a transactional viewpoint. AFAIK there are no market makers for bitcoin, and the long transaction times will be a huge problem if there is a run to sell.

By the way, I'll soon be introducing 'Winecoins®'. To get in at the bottom message me with your debit card info and I'll make sure you get what you deserve.
seano

Mountain climber
none
Dec 13, 2017 - 06:29am PT
This seems like a pretty balanced take:
Today, each bitcoin is worth $17,000, and all bitcoins in circulation are worth a much more substantial $280 billion. That seems like a lot for a payment network that only processes about four transactions per second.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2017 - 08:03am PT
Bitcoin fever exposes crypto-market frailties
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-bitcoin-risks-insight/bitcoin-fever-exposes-crypto-market-frailties-idUSKBN1E7254

“In July, U.S. authorities shut down the website of the BTC-e exchange, saying it had "facilitated transactions involving ransomware, computer hacking, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking".
BTC-e, which is no longer operating, could not be reached for comment.
The top three exchanges out of more than 100 - Bitfinex, GDAX and bitFlyer - are home to more than 60 percent of all trading, according to data provider Bitcoinity.
Another issue specific to the market is the risk of hacking and theft. More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, Reuters has found, with the Mt. Gox heist accounting for the majority.
Last week, a Slovenian cryptocurrency mining marketplace, NiceHash, said it had lost about $64 million worth of bitcoin in a hack of its payment system.”

What a sh!t show. It’s like it’s run by a bunch of 15 year olds from their parents’ basements. Oh, wait, it more or less is.
seano

Mountain climber
none
Dec 13, 2017 - 08:37am PT
More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges,...
Given that Bitcoin is designed to only ever have 21 million coins, that's 4.7% of all the "coins" that will ever exist, which is absolutely nuts compared to the cost of FDIC insurance and credit card fees. And that's only the theft so far.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2017 - 09:03am PT
According to CNBC, " People are taking out mortgages to buy bitcoin."

Yeah, braj, sure beats working, huh?
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Dec 13, 2017 - 03:58pm PT
Tami,
Glossed over in that "article" is that even if crypto coins become the new currency, it says nothing about Bitcoin, any of Bitcoin's various forks, Doge-coin, or Pot-coin being of any value in a sea of state issued digital coins.

If the USA tomorrow made US-Dollar-coin's using the ledger technology but not Bitcoin itself it would undermine faith in existing stateless crowd sourced coins rather than bolster it. Would you rather have a coin backed by no-one or one you can use to pay your taxes with?

After all, other than the printing press being constrained Bitcoin is no better than Monopoly money it its inherent value.
kunlun_shan

Mountain climber
SF, CA
Dec 19, 2017 - 08:17am PT
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/08/chia-network-cryptocurrency/
A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. And considering he invented the ubiquitous peer-to-peer file transfer protocol BitTorrent, you should take him seriously.

Cohen has just started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Essentially, Chia will harness cheap and abundant unused storage space on hard drives to verify its blockchain.
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Dec 22, 2017 - 07:42am PT
Down 45% in a couple days. That hissing sound is the sound of a bubble losing air at an amazing rate.
i'm gumby dammit

Sport climber
da ow
Dec 22, 2017 - 09:35am PT
Coinbase stops transactions
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/22/coinbase-one-of-the-biggest-bitcoin-marketplaces-says-buying-and-selling-temporarily-disabled-amid-price-rout.html
Hardman Knott

Gym climber
Mill Valley, Ca
Dec 22, 2017 - 10:11am PT
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 22, 2017 - 11:01am PT
Bitchcoin down about 40% this week! Gotta be some noivous peeps out there.
'Pass the Pitons' Pete

Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
Dec 23, 2017 - 04:59am PT
As always, the major two factors that drive the market are greed and fear.

You have seen with greed has done to the Bitcoin. Now you are watching what fear is doing to it.

Is there anyone on this forum that was stupid enough to invest a lot of money in this stuff? Little little
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:40am PT
Down 45% in a couple days. That hissing sound is the sound of a bubble losing air at an amazing rate.

My numbers look more like 30%.

http://bitcoinity.org/markets


And if btc in six months is $40K, say, will you naysayers issue some kind of Statement of Stupidity?

Cryptocurrency is here to stay insofar as the internet is here to stay. BTC appears to be emerging stronger than ever as the historical flagship. How much is history worth?

Is there anyone on this forum that was stupid enough to invest a lot of money in this stuff?

:)


ref: dunning-kruger effect
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:43am PT
How is that relevant to the btc ecosystem, its worth, or to the discussion?


Bitchcoin down about 40% this week!

You've been on this riff since 2014. No chance of giving it a rest, huh.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:45am PT
Really? Alrighty then.

...

btw, brainiac, just what ARE my claims? Are you confabulating?
Do you see me saying: Invest in BTC? Get rich now!!

lol
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:48am PT
It's clear you don't really believe what you write.

Repeat: What did I write? What did I claim?


Give me an example. Or like some others here, you're just a waste of my time.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:51am PT
If memory serves, back in 2014 (edit: 2013) when I got into it - after a sh#t load of due diligence by the way - AT MOST at THAT time I claimed it was an innovation fun to play with. And it WAS fun to play with.

I had a good time. Both (1) as a minor but serious speculator for while and (2) as a spender (when transaction fees were ZERO and I felt sorry for the miners so I'd tip them).




QT Do YOU know what "due diligence" is? Does Pete? lol


Maybe slip back into your hole now?


....


I do have a personal prediction, now that I'm beyond the frivolous distraction above ...

In time BTC might become the go-to transaction medium for the filthy rich on the DL. This certainly seems the way the system is evolving (esp projecting beyond the point all coins are mined) and transactions are paid for by tipping.

What's a $500 tip/fee if the transaction is $30M?
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 23, 2017 - 09:09am PT
HFCS, I’m an investor, not a gambler. I trust yer sensitive to the subtle differences.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 09:29am PT
Of course.

*you're*
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 23, 2017 - 09:31am PT
Dood, I know how to spell ‘yer’.

Yer welcome.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 23, 2017 - 09:48am PT
If naive people are talking about it...

Naive people?

There are none of those here!
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 23, 2017 - 11:24am PT
I was trying to learn how to invest by making a virtual portfolio

Believe it or not we did that in high school. These days most kids can’t even balance a checkbook. If they can even spell investment they prolly think it is something a cardinal wears.
Ken M

Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
Dec 23, 2017 - 11:56am PT
And that level of dishonesty is why I never ultimately took the job. If they tell you to buy, they are selling. If they tell you to sell, they are buying. You are just a rube to be taken advantage of by smarter and richer men that actually have knowledge.

There is a book titled "Liars Poker" written by the great Michael Lewis, that describes in great detail his time as a stock trader, in which the above is described, exactly.

It kept me out of the market for many years
Ken M

Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
Dec 23, 2017 - 12:09pm PT
One thing that seems to be misunderstood about cryptocurrency is privacy.

If you use greenbacks to pay for something, there is no record of the transaction, unless you create one.

However, by the nature by which these new tools work, there must be a computer record of the transaction, or else there is no transaction. So a record IS created, automatically.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 23, 2017 - 12:23pm PT
Moose, the level of research required to make sound investments in equities is beyond any private investor.

Well, yes and no. If yer in it for the long run it isn't that hard to buy
quality and hold it. We have a nice amount of Procter & Gamble stock that
my wife's father bought when it was around $1/share. It is now over 90.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Dec 23, 2017 - 04:32pm PT
kingtut, interesting stuff. I've lost track, did the 'fiduciary duty' requirement get dropped for financial 'advisors'?

As I posted earlier, I did hit the jackpot once with the biotech stock Neorx. I dumped it the next day; it's since disappeared. Pure luck, not brains.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 23, 2017 - 06:56pm PT
some huge number have disappeared.
A huge number of the Dow have disappeared? Really, bro?
Remember, I said buy quality.

No one on Earth.
So what yer sayin’ is Warren Buffet is an alien?
seano

Mountain climber
none
Dec 23, 2017 - 08:16pm PT
Most likely, if you did buy it then (I am not interested enough to look up the price history of the stock) you didn't even understand what you were buying at the time.
Okay, you're lazy. So am I, but slightly less pathetically lazy than you. P&G was worth $1 back around 1980, and it cost me less than a minute to figure that out.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Dec 29, 2017 - 01:13pm PT
I owe you one, HFCS.


that bitcoin you sent sat there and I just took a look. the $3.24 turned into about $90 (there was some bitcoin cash on top of the bitcoin). Plus I had some money in a poker site that I just cashed out to bitcoin. So now I'm sitting on $225 and I'm about to put all of that into XRP.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 29, 2017 - 04:10pm PT
.they are fleecing grandmas and taking the knee caps off guys like Reilly on a daily basis.

You crack me up. You might be the new leader in StuporTopo Assumption Making.
1. Proctor & Gamble has been in the Dow 30 for how long? That might not be your definition of quality but it suffices for most people.
2. I was a commodities trader before you were in nappies.
3. It is true that my knees aren’t great, but that isn’t due to my portfolio. I wish I was crass enough to elaborate.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 01:36pm PT
Nature,

you are welcome! Good luck!!


http://bitcoinity.org/markets

...


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/business/bitcoin-investing.html?smid=tw-share

lol

I remember when its capitalization was 3 billion!

...

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/368047-dimon-i-regret-calling-bitcoin-a-fraud
Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 11, 2018 - 03:18pm PT
Here is a cryptocurrency that has gone up over 19,000,000% today.


https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/alaricoin
Mungeclimber

Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
Jan 11, 2018 - 04:50pm PT
Please let me know if anyone would like to purchase my "MungeCoin"

Dollars on the penny deal!


Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Jan 11, 2018 - 06:46pm PT
Hell Munge, at 19,000,000% I'm in for a buck, no, two! pm me address and I'll send it down ASAP. This reminds me of the dotcom days. Really, value out of nothing except great expectations. Maybe I should write a book .......
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Jan 11, 2018 - 07:02pm PT
I'm starting a better crypto-currency with a new Beanie baby blockchain technology called Tulipsa.....

Who's in?
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Jan 11, 2018 - 07:13pm PT
I'm looking for the discussion about what will happen to the currency in a few years when there are no more coins to be mined.

there will be no incentive to verify the blockchain.

how can they retain any value when the books stop being kept?

xCon is one of the few people on this thread making insightful comments specifically about bitCoin. I just watched the documentary on Netflix which is very good. The main technical question I walked away with is exactly what xCon asked.

From what I understand (perhaps incorrectly), bitCoin transaction validation depends on this distributed network of computers. They don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because the the code to validate transactions is part of the platform for mining to find new bitCoins. In other words, for the service of validating bitCoin transactions and running the decentralized infrastructure, they get the benefit/privilege of mining bitcoins to make money. This is all well and good until the supply of bitCoins has all been mined... then all the miners will abandon that activity and a new incentive will need to be created to validate bitCoin transactions- a service fee?

One other point I’ve seen nobody here mention: bitCoins were envisioned and created as a way of decentralizeinf power, to help people be less dependent on governments and large corporations, to increase privacy. Look at how that same dynamic has gone for email... the protocols enable peer to peer decentralized communication, and yet the markets evolved to create a few big bottlenecks controlled by big companies and subject to government scrutiny again (e.g. gmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, sbcglobal.net, etc.). Similar thing with bitCoin- make inroads to regulatory control and getting swallowed by “trusted” 3rd parties (which the technology was invented to circumvent), and the evils of an untrustable “trusted” 3rd party will of course play out as in every other market.

But, just like with email, you can still use bitCoin in an anonymous peer to peer fashion without the exchanges. That is, if you care about the fundamental reason that bitcoin was created and don’t just see it as a novel widget for speculation.

That fundamental ideology is what makes it profoundly threatening to our government. Institutions invested with a lot of power don’t look kindly on competitors, and this makes me skeptical of the future of bitcoin. On the other hand, our existing power structure is filled with greedy deceitful people who want the opportunity to get their own piece of the pie. This is a strong influence in support of bitcoin’s future. So place your bets on the balance of power between existing institutions and those who are cogs in that machinery trying to get ahead for themselves. That I think more than criminals outside of governments are what will determine the future of bitcoin. In other words, the legitimization/legalization of past ill-gotten gains by those in a position to regulate it, the desire to tax it (or rather- to tax a part of it used by joe-shmo normal people but not the elite who live outside the normal rules).

I didn’t pay attention soon enough- I’ve got no skin in the game and it’s way too late to start now for anything other than entertainment money.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Jan 11, 2018 - 07:53pm PT
I didn’t pay attention soon enough- I’ve got no skin in the game
But Nut, that's not the only point. Bitcoin, beyond people making some sort of financial killing by being there early, is supposed to decentralize and anomize transactions; mostly, as far as I can see for illegal activities. So if one was late to the game and didn't make a killing; what then? I struggle to understand how some blockchain calculation algorithm can add value to our physical world.

What is the basis for the value of bitcoin? Simply, in my naive, simplistic view, because people want to believe they can make a profit. But where is the actual value? How many 'cyber currencies' can be created? What value should they have? Yes, a market will determine a value, but what if the buyers don't know what they are buying? I'm investing $2.00 in Mungeclimber's MungeCoin currency because 19,000,000% value increase tomorrow, guaranteed, (assuming he sells me the coins). But where did the value come from? It's a pyramid scheme and doomed to fail.

Edited for English.
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Jan 11, 2018 - 08:40pm PT
Right, but my Tulipsa is different. What can I put you down for?

A form of currency beyond the control of thieving and warring empires is where the real value to humans is. It's a threat so bad that it will be destroyed by those same empires. What prevents central banks from literally printing fiat money and purchasing said cryptoblahs to drive the false demand through the roof? Nothing. And what a perfect way to destroy faith and stability in them right? Pump and dump.

Lather rinse, repeat. And the sheep will be back for more of their worthless empire coins, properly 'taxed' like good bleaters. Only nefarious sheep need anonymity of course... Baaaaaaad.

But an optimist would say that something several generations of development cycles like bitcoin is inevitable and very exciting. The technology behind bitcoin won't work for the volume and speed required. Think of it as akin to the first humans collecting and trading shells.
Mungeclimber

Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
Jan 11, 2018 - 09:05pm PT
In a way, paper money functions in the same way as a crypto currency. Just not digitally. It is a 'note' that can be redeemed currently and traded at value. Hell, the bills say "FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE"

What gives paper money its trusted status? A robust market and the full faith and credit of the US gov.

Cryptos have neither. Until that changes, cryptos will be purely based on speculation against the sheep that fear missing out, but bought in too late.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 16, 2018 - 06:44pm PT
Down 50% from its all time high today. Wait til S Korea bans it!
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 16, 2018 - 08:23pm PT
Let's Build the Tiniest Blockchain
Gerald Nash

to get an idea of what is involved...
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 16, 2018 - 08:47pm PT
maybe some of the questions are addressed here:
Bitcoin is going mainstream. Here is what you should know about it.

"The floor value of bitcoin is zero. It does not pay interest. There is no asset value attached to it except what the market gives it. It has no central bank supporting it.

Where can you trade bitcoin?

On bitcoin exchanges. There are lots of them. BTCChina. Bitstamp. Bitfinex. People can buy and sell using various currencies. Bitcoins are stored in digital wallets that exist in the cloud or on people’s computers."
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Jan 16, 2018 - 09:10pm PT
Bitcoin won't become any kind of widely used means of exchange until the value stabilizes.
Normal people wold be fairly annoyed to find out that the .2 bitcoins they saved to buy an iPhone on Friday will now buy two iPhones on Monday.
Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 16, 2018 - 09:41pm PT
Bitcoin is to cryptocurrency and blockchain as Netscape was to web browsers and Yahoo was to search.

There are over a thousand cryptocurrencies now. Most of them are pump and dump scams. The one I posted about that went up 19,000,000% in one day is based in southern Italy. 😗 Hmm.

But eventually things will sort out, and I think something paradigm shifting will emerge.

EdwardT

Trad climber
Retired
Jan 17, 2018 - 05:58am PT
A month ago, bitcoin was valued at $19,300.

Two days ago, it was around $14,000.

It's currently at $10,200.

Charles Ponzi was an Italian swindler and con artist
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Jan 17, 2018 - 06:54am PT
Actually $9415.41 at this moment.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 17, 2018 - 09:29am PT
No serious investor touches anything he doesn't completely understand.

in terms of bitcoin I don't think it is hard to "completely understand" it. The "it" is a computation entity that exists on a distributed set of servers that continually validate it, and share that validation to achieve a consensus, this is encoded in the blockchain.

It is a computational entity. It exists on the internet. It depends on the rate of validation/consensus being much higher than the rate of counterfeiting (which makes it susceptible to disruptive computational technologies like quantum computing could be).

But presuming it can maintain an identity, it is an entity.

In someways, bitcoin is a brilliant advertisement for blockchain technology.

Charles Ponzi was an Italian swindler and con artist

I think this is not an apt characterization of bitcoin. Bitcoin derives its value from what people are willing to pay for it, so much more like the Tulip example. A Ponzi scheme is quite different, basically a losing "investment" for which some set of investors, usually the early ones, get paid by the later investments. At some point the rate of incoming investments cannot sustain the rate of payout.

Bitcoin is something rare and a market has grown around it, its price is tied to that perceived value. Any number of investments are based on equally ephemeral properties.

Many of us have "banked" our labor in retirement investments we expect to be paid back to us at a later date.

Whether or not this is a Ponzi scheme awaits for some later time.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 17, 2018 - 10:02am PT
At best it is unregulated gambling. At worst it makes a Ponzi scheme
look good if it is in fact being secretly manipulated.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 17, 2018 - 05:08pm PT
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are here to stay and are part of the future. Historically, when new technology and innovation come along, the old guard ignore it at first, then mock and deride it, and finally try to join the party before its not too late. And we are seeing this happen with regards to Bitcoin and blockchain. CBOE, CME, NYSE, etc. are all investing heavily in blockchain technology and companies that use the tech. Goldman Sachs is opening a crypto trading desk this summer. Others will soon follow.

Financial and technological innovations take time to implement before widespread adoption takes place. Your average person in the early 90's thought internet shopping wouldn't take hold and that using your credit card online was crazy. Fast forward to 2018 and online banking/payments are routine and we all wish we had bought Amazon stock back in the day.

Yes, it is a volatile market. But that is because it is a young and relatively small market. Current market cap is 550 Billion. Taken on a global scale, that is small. As it grows, it will stabilize. Yes, 90% of altcoins are sh#t and will never amount to anything except to line the pockets of the developers and speculators. The others will become the Googles of tomorrow. If it all goes to sh#t in the future, you can say I told you so. But I'm betting that will never happen.

Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Jan 17, 2018 - 05:15pm PT
The New York Times ran this article last week:

NYTimes article on cryptocurrency culture


In case a reader is too young to remember the dot-com boom and bust, a big part of that time of irrational exuberance was the presence of outsized enthusiasm coming from an "insider culture" wielding faux-clever names, arcane terminology, promotional mugs and t-shirts, outrageously expensive project-themed parties, and outlandish-to-ludicrous predictions that defied simple economic logic.


In the NYTimes article, one of the interviewees says that he "does ICO's", meaning "Initial Currency Offerings". In other words, he helps people set up their own cryptocurrency, and then take it public in order to cash in. There have been thousands of these ICO's recently.

That is like people printing their own paper money, convincing others that it has value, and then taking it "public" with an IPO (initial paper offering). Use of a modern technology, such as color-shifting ink, may lend a tenuous air of legitimacy to such "currency", and make it harder to copy, but it would still be just paper and ink. Very few people would buy into a bunch of privately-printed pieces of paper that were claimed to be a "government-independent form of currency".

But, that is what cryptocurrencies are. The only difference is that it is much harder for someone to copy it himself, and add his inventory to the existing pile. And, the blockchain technology is, ostensibly, more permanent than a piece of paper, and that, supposedly, makes cryptocurrency a reliable store of value.



Last month, South Korea began regulating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This was following a computer security breach at a trading house that left its clients divested of their investments. The alleged security of the blockchain was unable to prevent the theft.

KOREAN BITCOIN TRADER BANKRUPT AFTER HACKERS STEAL MILLIONS

SOUTH KOREA REGULATES BITCOIN, AND OUTLAWS INITIAL COIN OFFERINGS



Here are three other recent instances of hackers stealing Bitcoin from dealers:


HONG KONG BITCOIN TRADER HALTS TRADING AFTER HACKERS BREAK IN

SLOVENIAN BITCOIN DEALER ROBBED OF $64 MILLION

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ONLINE BITCOIN THEFT


Other governments, including (especially?) the United States, can be expected to take regulatory action on cryptocurrencies. Despite being promoted as being "government-independent", trading Bitcoin for dollars in the U.S. would be relatively easy to control. Notice how easy it was for the U.S. government to ban online gambling, and use the FDIC as muscle against banks that issue credit cards that allow payment to offshore casinos.





The notorious Winklevoss twins (who once claimed to own Facebook) are heavily invested in Bitcoin. They were among the first to file for permission from the U.S. government to offer Bitcoin derivatives, such as options and futures. Responding to the current crash in Bitcoin prices, they have said they intend to keep their long positions, and expect Bitcoin to go up ten, or twenty, times in the near future.

Dave Chapman, Managing Director of cryptocurrency trading firm Octagon Strategy, sees the price of Bitcoin exceeding $100,000 before the end of 2018.



In keeping with those faux-sagacious investment predictions, here is one that is climbing-related:

When Valley Giant cams are no longer produced, they will become very collectible. I see the prices exceeding $100,000 at auction, with the earliest examples fetching up to $1,000,000 within a decade.


Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 17, 2018 - 05:24pm PT
I strongly encourage everyone to read Nobel laureate Robert Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance.
It thoroughly explains bubbles with a particular emphasis on real estate, but it is all the same.
ß Î Ř T Ç H

Boulder climber
ne'er–do–well
Jan 19, 2018 - 08:55pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Krease

Gym climber
the inferno
Jan 19, 2018 - 09:29pm PT
JP explains it best:
[Click to View YouTube Video]]
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 10:49am PT
the NYTimes Magazine has an article in it today which I think does a good job of examining the potential of the blockchain technology, especially as it pertains to the use of the internet.

Worth a read if you are following this thread:
Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble
by Steven Johnson

For all their brilliance, the inventors of the open protocols that shaped the internet failed to include some key elements that would later prove critical to the future of online culture. Perhaps most important, they did not create a secure open standard that established human identity on the network.

...

The paradox about Bitcoin is that it may well turn out to be a genuinely revolutionary breakthrough and at the same time a colossal failure as a currency.

...

First, Bitcoin offered a kind of proof that you could create a secure database — the blockchain — scattered across hundreds or thousands of computers, with no single authority controlling and verifying the authenticity of the data.

Second, Nakamoto designed Bitcoin so that the work of maintaining that distributed ledger was itself rewarded with small, increasingly scarce Bitcoin payments...This process has come to be called “mining.”

...

What Nakamoto ushered into the world was a way of agreeing on the contents of a database without anyone being “in charge” of the database, and a way of compensating people for helping make that database more valuable, without those people being on an official payroll or owning shares in a corporate entity. Together, those two ideas solved the distributed-database problem and the funding problem.

...

In this one respect, the Bitcoin story is actually instructive: It may never be stable enough to function as a currency, but it does offer convincing proof of just how secure a distributed ledger can be. “Look at the market cap of Bitcoin or Ethereum: $80 billion, $25 billion, whatever,” Dixon says. “That means if you successfully attack that system, you could walk away with more than a billion dollars. You know what a ‘bug bounty’ is? Someone says, ‘If you hack my system, I’ll give you a million dollars.’ So Bitcoin is now a nine-year-old multibillion-dollar bug bounty, and no one’s hacked it. It feels like pretty good proof.”

...

The blockchain worldview can also sound libertarian in the sense that it proposes nonstate solutions to capitalist excesses like information monopolies. But to believe in the blockchain is not necessarily to oppose regulation, if that regulation is designed with complementary aims. Brad Burnham, for instance, suggests that regulators should insist that everyone have “a right to a private data store,” where all the various facets of their online identity would be maintained. But governments wouldn’t be required to design those identity protocols. They would be developed on the blockchain, open source. Ideologically speaking, that private data store would be a true team effort: built as an intellectual commons, funded by token speculators, supported by the regulatory state.

Like the original internet itself, the blockchain is an idea with radical — almost communitarian — possibilities that at the same time has attracted some of the most frivolous and regressive appetites of capitalism. We spent our first years online in a world defined by open protocols and intellectual commons; we spent the second phase in a world increasingly dominated by closed architectures and proprietary databases. We have learned enough from this history to support the hypothesis that open works better than closed, at least where base-layer issues are concerned...

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 11:48am PT
HaHaHa! The Economist and the LA Times had better articles this week about the security
vulnerabilities and the LENGTHY LIST of the billions ‘stolen’ so far. Of course, technically
speaking how does one steal something that doesn’t really exist? 🤪
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:00pm PT
ironically, these "thefts" were not compromising the actual blockchain,

the compromises were due to the failure of trusted institutions, e.g. phone companies allowing phone numbers to be moved to other phones...


It doesn't surprise me, given your background, that you misunderstood this
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:11pm PT
I certainly don’t and never claimed but because I do understand economics I see no utility
in this nonsense unless you’re a drug dealer or tax evader hence I hope most people lose
their shirts. The Economist and LA Times articles indicate the problems are far more serious
and rooted in actual vulnerabilities within the blockchain.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:24pm PT
you didn't read the NYTimes article very carefully

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:27pm PT
I didn’t read it at all because I could care less about the technical minutiae. I read articles
about the economic and regulatory issues and gloss over the mumbo-jumbo. I operate
like I did when I had a real security clearance: it’s on a need-to-know basis. To me the many
Korean university students gambling away their financial futures is more important than the
bits and bytes issues.
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:29pm PT
So a currency that costs $20 everytime you use it, requires your compute infrastucture is hardened against hackers, takes days to clear transactions, and is subject to +/-2x value swings on a weekly basis. Where do I sign up?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 12:31pm PT
as I said, it isn't surprising given you background that you would focus on those issues, which are real.

as for the blockchain, the "minutiae" are important

Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 05:04pm PT
If you keep your Bitcoin on an exchange, you are a moron. Keep it in cold storage and you will be fine.

If it costs you $20 dollars and multiple days to complete a transaction, you're doing it wrong.

Ask a Venezuelan if they would prefer the short term volatility of Bitcoin or the hyperinflation of their native currency.

Ask a fleeing refugee or a person living under a repressive government if they appreciate the use of block chain technology.

Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Jan 21, 2018 - 06:09pm PT
I don’t live in Venizuela.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 06:42pm PT
the LATimes mentions a paper but doesn't cite it or provide a link, what's up with that?

It wasn't too hard to find it though,
A Survey on Security and Privacy Issues of Bitcoin
but I think it would be considered highly technical for most, and definitely in the "minutiae." An unsophisticated reader might conclude from the shear number of cases considered that it sounds dicey.

They might miss comments in the concluding paragraphs e.g.

"One of the major contribution of Bitcoin is the degree of transparency and decentralization, that it provides along with the adequate level of security and privacy, which was previously deemed impossible. The original concept of mining, which could be based on proof of work, proof of stake, proof of burns or some other scheme, not only secures the blockchain but it eventually achieves the distributed consensus. In particular, the most important steps that make the whole process so cohesive includes, the way these schemes binds the
votes to something valuable, give rewards in exchange to pay for these valuables, and at the same time controls the supply of the cryptocurrencies in the system."

This was a major part of the NYTimes report.

Finally, blockchain technologies are open source, which is a tremendous advantage when improving the security issues, as the ones so comprehensively described in the paper.

If you read far enough in the paper Section III E. Practical attack incidents on Bitcoin you find the relatively few incidents, and realize that the "then" value of the crypto-currency makes a difference when you quote the cost of the losses. Also, you find that there is some question as to the actual loss. There have been no exploits at the protocol level, though the paper explains how these might happen. The "minutiae" confirms the inherent security of the protocol. All bets are off if you loose your wallet someplace. If that happens, then just like in real life, the people who find the wallet can spend the money.

Maybe the difference is too subtle for the LATimes reporter to understand (if that reporter actually read that far into the paper).

Oh, and here is the LATimes article:
Hackers have stolen about 14% of big digital currencies
Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Jan 21, 2018 - 10:05pm PT
I watched the earliest Bitcoin documentary I could find, and what those early pioneers were focused on was its potential for use as an actual medium of exchange, as opposed to a speculative investment. Bitcoin was designed be be divisible into 100 million parts (a "Satoshi", or about 1/100th of a penny as of last week). So, any conceivable transaction can be accommodated.

The idea that you can exchange this new currency anywhere in the world, in any amount, and for negligible transaction fees sounds wonderful. Bypassing government control is whipped cream, and various Silk Road deliveries are the cherries on top. Anybody in America who doesn't hate banks, at least a little bit, isn't paying attention to how they conduct their business. Bitcoin promises freedom from the oppression of banks. It's almost too good to be true.


A mega-player who sends $10 million in Bitcoin to launder drug proceeds by purchasing a Malibu mansion will pay almost nothing in fund-transfer fees. And, a micro-player who wants to pay four cents to hear Limp Bizkit's new song can do that, too, because the transaction fee would not be 30 cents (like it would be for a bank card transaction). In a perfect Philip K. Dick world, you would show your Smart Ring to a Starbucks robot, and pay for your synthemesc latte with Bitcoin.


The problem with Bitcoin as a reliable medium of exchange, though, is its price volatility. A vendor who accepts Bitcoin runs the risk of it either going back down to $500, or going back up to $20,000. That sort of Lotto Economics doesn't work for most businesses. A stable, reliable business relies on at least some predictability. Using a currency that is wildly all over the place - - - up, then down, then up, then gone - - - is not conducive to business survival.

Also, the "free transaction" benefit of Bitcoin goes right out the window as soon as you want to exchange it for Dollars, Euros, Yuan, etc. Coinbase, which is one of the bigger cryptocurrency traders, charges several percent to convert Bitcoin into dollars, and vice-versa. And, their exchange rate for Bitcoin (according to their website) is based on the current market rate, how much your are exchanging, and - get this - how long you have been a Coinbase customer.


The biggest risk for Bitcoin is a false pollyanna of global independence from government control or interference. Any government that loses control over its medium of exchange can't survive for long. Controlling the money supply has been a primary function of government since before the Roman Empire. South Korea is already moving to control Bitcoin and other forms of VaporCoin. Unless you plan on exclusively trading Bitcoin with other Tor-browsing believers, you will have to submit to government regulation.



Warren Buffet says he would never buy, or even short-sell, Bitcoin. But, he says he would love to take a five-year put option. Maybe the Winklevoss twins will sell him that put option, backed by their Facebook fortune.







EDIT:


WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES THAT MAY PROVIDE CONTEXT TO THE DISCUSSION


Dutch tulip mania, 17th century

British South Seas Company stock mania, 18th century

Scottish Poyais land mania, 19th century

American Beanie-Babies mania, 20th century




eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Jan 22, 2018 - 09:20am PT
In the business section of the New York Times today is an article on the vast amounts of electricity needed to power Bitcoin. "The total network of computers plugged into the Bitcoin network consumes as much energy each day as some medium-sized countries". The main discussion point in the article is whether the high electricity consumption is worth it in light of global warming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/technology/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption.html
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 22, 2018 - 09:44am PT
^^^^^. Well, do enlighten us as to the reality, good sir. And while yer at it do explain why this
is not a huge waste of energy and its commensurate contribution to global warming.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Jan 22, 2018 - 09:49am PT
I think I'm pretty much with Ed here. Bitcoin provides a pretty decent proof of the potential utility of a blockchain. But it's pretty useless as a currency and really is more of a speculative investment and money laundering device at this point.

But the blockchain concept has other potential uses. One big one is healthcare records. There are very strong reasons to make healthcare records available to the individuals and easily transferable across the system, while still maintaining security and privacy. There are a lot of folks in the healthcare industry that feel like blockchains might be a good way to do this.
Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Jan 22, 2018 - 05:28pm PT
^^^^^^^^^^

The blockchain is a great invention. A secure, robust database that is maintained by a network of independent computers could wind up being THE killer application of the internet.


Ballo

Trad climber
Jan 22, 2018 - 06:22pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]

[Click to View YouTube Video]
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Jan 22, 2018 - 07:53pm PT
Side track from the bitcoin topic, but you are correct Jim. We burden our clinicians with too much other stuff. From complicated EMR systems to too many quality measures. Most these things are well-intentioned, but they sometimes have negative effects.
That said, the cost of unneccessary medical tests could be as much as $200B. And adverse drug-to-drug interactions are frequently caused by not all of a patients medical records being available.

The trick is to figure out how to address some of these issues without placing too much additional burden on the clinicians.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 22, 2018 - 08:02pm PT
I think the speculation in Bitcoin is hard to understand because there doesn't really seem to be a point to the blockchain associated with it, or the applications.

the NYTimes had this wonderful "what if:"

The blockchain world proposes something different. Imagine some group like Protocol Labs decides there’s a case to be made for adding another “basic layer” to the stack. Just as GPS gave us a way of discovering and sharing our location, this new protocol would define a simple request: I am here and would like to go there. A distributed ledger might record all its users’ past trips, credit cards, favorite locations — all the metadata that services like Uber or Amazon use to encourage lock-in. Call it, for the sake of argument, the Transit protocol. The standards for sending a Transit request out onto the internet would be entirely open; anyone who wanted to build an app to respond to that request would be free to do so. Cities could build Transit apps that allowed taxi drivers to field requests. But so could bike-share collectives, or rickshaw drivers. Developers could create shared marketplace apps where all the potential vehicles using Transit could vie for your business. When you walked out on the sidewalk and tried to get a ride, you wouldn’t have to place your allegiance with a single provider before hailing. You would simply announce that you were standing at 67th and Madison and needed to get to Union Square. And then you’d get a flurry of competing offers. You could even theoretically get an offer from the M.T.A., which could build a service to remind Transit users that it might be much cheaper and faster just to jump on the 6 train.

How would Transit reach critical mass when Uber and Lyft already dominate the ride-sharing market? This is where the tokens come in. Early adopters of Transit would be rewarded with Transit tokens, which could themselves be used to purchase Transit services or be traded on exchanges for traditional currency. As in the Bitcoin model, tokens would be doled out less generously as Transit grew more popular. In the early days, a developer who built an iPhone app that uses Transit might see a windfall of tokens; Uber drivers who started using Transit as a second option for finding passengers could collect tokens as a reward for embracing the system; adventurous consumers would be rewarded with tokens for using Transit in its early days, when there are fewer drivers available compared with the existing proprietary networks like Uber or Lyft.

As Transit began to take off, it would attract speculators, who would put a monetary price on the token and drive even more interest in the protocol by inflating its value, which in turn would attract more developers, drivers and customers. If the whole system ends up working as its advocates believe, the result is a more competitive but at the same time more equitable marketplace. Instead of all the economic value being captured by the shareholders of one or two large corporations that dominate the market, the economic value is distributed across a much wider group: the early developers of Transit, the app creators who make the protocol work in a consumer-friendly form, the early-adopter drivers and passengers, the first wave of speculators. Token economies introduce a strange new set of elements that do not fit the traditional models: instead of creating value by owning something, as in the shareholder equity model, people create value by improving the underlying protocol, either by helping to maintain the ledger (as in Bitcoin mining), or by writing apps atop it, or simply by using the service. The lines between founders, investors and customers are far blurrier than in traditional corporate models; all the incentives are explicitly designed to steer away from winner-take-all outcomes. And yet at the same time, the whole system depends on an initial speculative phase in which outsiders are betting on the token to rise in value.

“You think about the ’90s internet bubble and all the great infrastructure we got out of that,” Dixon says. “You’re basically taking that effect and shrinking it down to the size of an application.”


You could imagine the same thing for a "Credit protocol" where your credit information is stored in a block chain and you asked "I need a loan for so many $'s, who's interested in lending me that amount?"

Your credit information is your own, contained in your block chain, and the application members, the lenders, could have access to it for the purpose of deciding whether or not they want to make a proposal. They would have access to your credit record at that time with your permission, you control access to it, it is yours. They are assured you haven't hacked your credit record because it's encoded in the block chain and can be verified.

No worry that Experian/TransUnion/Equifax will collect this info without your knowledge or explicit permission and could loose it all in a security breach.

This creates markets for the tokens, and those markets would be more stable because the entire reason for the market is completely understandable.

You could imagine a "Health Care application" that does the same thing.

The point being that you control the information and can transfer access to anyone you'd like. "I need an X-ray" and you get bids for them on your app, the radiograph is encoded into your block chain and available to some other healthcare provider you choose to treat you next.




that's an amazing economic model
Mark Force

Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
Jan 23, 2018 - 07:08am PT
Warren Buffet wanting to buy a Put says it all.

Ponzi would have a good laugh over his new iteration.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 23, 2018 - 08:10am PT
While Buffet has obviously done extremely well on his investments, he is notoriously reluctant to invest in new technology. He even admits that his greatest regret is not investing in Google and that he never even considered investing in Amazon. I would take his bearish view of Bitcoin with an El Cap sized grain of salt.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 23, 2018 - 09:16am PT
it is, of course, impossible to see where this will all go.

those of us old enough to have actually lived through the technology development of the internet know this all too well.

certainly through the first decade that it existed, Google was criticized for its lack of a business plan, in the sense that no one then knew how it was going to make money. that was the period between roughly 1998 and 2008. there was absolutely no one who thought it would be the dominant player in the global economy in 2017.

the preceding decade saw the transition of an ad hoc distributed network built largely by the research community using government funds to a commercial network (you're welcome) used for commerce. the USG certainly had no idea what was going on for most of that time.

if you take the annual revenue generated by the internet in the US alone, it exceeds the total amount of money spent on high energy physics research for all time, including building major laboratory facilities like Fermilab, SLAC and Brookhaven. that's not a bad return on investment.

so whether or not Bitcoin as a currency actually makes sense, blockchain technologies have the possibility of transforming the economy. transforming to what is the question, and the answer to that question will make and break fortunes.

the motto of this new world has got to be "In Code We Trust"

pick your favorite utopia, or your most odious dystopia, reality will be so much more strange than anything we can now imagine

and remember, we live in a time when the Star Trek communicator is considered obsolete technology, just ask Siri (or Alexa, or whatever), "computer, plot a course to the future"
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 23, 2018 - 09:32am PT
And how is all this gonna benefit ‘the people’ when we can’t buy computers that don’t provide
a direct conduit from our precious date to the crooks and furrin gubmints?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 23, 2018 - 08:30pm PT
xCon, I couldn't parse you question.

in the "Transit app" described above, the developers create an application that uses the block chain technology to provide information about the people who desire transportation and the people who provide it. Both of these groups "buy into" the app using real currencies to purchase the Transit tokens.

The tokens are also mined, that is, the network supporting the block chain validation for the app is creating finding more tokens.

The block chain for the parties of the transaction provide information about their past transactions. In particular, fares can be paid in these tokens.

The notion is that as the app gains popularity, the tokens become valuable, and speculators might by them as an investment, betting that the tokens value exceeds what they paid for them. This supports the application.

Those who were first in see the value of their tokens increase. The increasing value of the tokens supports the application. The success of the application attracts more investment to expand it.

And you don't have to give all your information to some company, it is attached to your digital identity which you have control over. The increasing number of independent computers validating your block chain get paid by mining tokens that can be sold to those who want services, and increase the security of that information in the process.

Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Jan 24, 2018 - 08:31am PT
The original idea of the blockchain was that it would be funded by "miners" earning Bitcoin while providing the infrastructure. The blockchain, here, is intimately tied up with the cryptocurrency.

The extreme electrical consumption that Bitcoin requires to maintain its blockchain doesn't have to be an inherent feature of the blockchain concept itself. Bitcoin has an added burden of making the "money" difficult to obtain. Also, Bitcoin mining has built-in competition, such that the guy with the biggest server farm (and highest electrical bill) wins the race and gets the Bitcoins.


Maintaining a distributed database network wouldn't need to have the same computational overhead.


Etherium, which is ostensibly a blockchain proponent first, and a VaporCoin vendor second, has said they are looking into reducing their blockchain technology's electrical demand.




Real Bitcoin miners, today, are the people who go back ten years into their old hard drives, to see if they might have bought $20 worth of Bitcoin as a lark when it was trading at five cents on eBay. The Holy Grail would be finding a valid private key to the blockchain in a long-forgotten text file: 32 ASCII characters, or 64 hexadecimal numbers. Good Luck.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 24, 2018 - 09:15am PT
"The extreme electrical consumption that Bitcoin ..."

do we have any idea what the total energy consumption of that sector of the economy that block chain would replace consumes?

I think not, but when "gasping" over the "vast amounts of power" used by block chain technology we might consider that what we already do is probably not very efficient.

how many Joules/transaction?

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 24, 2018 - 09:25am PT
Let me get this straight. We’re all sposed to drive a Prius and only shower once a week but it is OK to ‘mine’ something completely useless, if not actually harmful?
Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Jan 24, 2018 - 11:57am PT
There is no question that modern computer systems consume a great deal of electricity. Big data means big server farms. Mechanical engineers in Silicon Valley make good money keeping those server farms cool, and their refrigeration systems consume even more electricity. Microsoft was looking into running their servers completely immersed in seawater to combat overheating.


But, Bitcoin's blockchain scheme is especially consumptive of electricity. The iterative numerical solutions necessary to validate and update each block are currently clocking in at about 50 trillion hash computations per second. Each new Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as an American family uses in an entire year (say, $800). The current rate of new Bitcoin production is 12.5 Bitcoin every ten minutes. So, that would be $10,000 of electricity every ten minutes, or about 100,000 kW-hr every ten minutes, or about 600 MW continuous consumption. That is just Bitcoin, and doesn't include Ethereum, VaporCoin, or the rest of the cryptocurrency schemes.


The Bitcoin blockchain mining and payment scheme has a lot of redundancy in performing the expensive operations. Only one server, out of thousands, is the first to solve the math problem, and thereby earn Bitcoins for updating the blockchain. All the other servers consume a similar amount of electricity, which is essentially wasted. The competitive process of updating the blockchain requires more than a thousand times as much electricity as the actual task itself, which is power-intensive in its own right.

The logic, here, can be compared to mailing a letter across town, but first there has to be an Indy 500 race with a thousand cars all burning up a thousand gallons of fuel. The winner receives the letter, and takes a victory roll up to the recipient's mailbox.



The blockchain concept requires multiple servers to ensure the validity of each new block in the chain, but the computational load doesn't need to be so intense. Some sort of voting scheme among numerous computers could ensure accuracy and validity in updating the blockchain.



There is Nothing Virtual About Bitcoin's Energy Appetite


MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 24, 2018 - 02:26pm PT
Gotta presume there is something here if it keeps Reilly posting.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 25, 2018 - 01:13pm PT
A simple wager for the Bitcoin bears, doubters and haters. In the unlikely event that BTC is up a year from now, I get paid( in Bitcoin of course) the difference from today's price. And if it crashes as the hyper inflated Ponzi scheme that it is, I pay you the difference. Who wants some EZ money?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 26, 2018 - 10:13am PT
block chain technologies were not initially intended to support anonymous transactions...

that is an added layer to the protocols
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 26, 2018 - 10:29am PT
The wired article is nothing new. Contrary to public perception and the perception of many on this forum, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If you conduct illegal activities using Bitcoin, you are a moron. There are privacy coins available if you choose to partake in such activities.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Jan 27, 2018 - 12:07pm PT
All I know is what I see and hear. Just heard that a Japanese crypto currency exchange just got ripped off for 500 million bucks.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Jan 27, 2018 - 02:11pm PT
The stolen XEM coins have been found and "tagged", rendering them basically useless. The majority of the stolen coins were actually owned by the exchange itself. The exchange will be reimbursing anyone who had their coins stolen because it was their f-up that allowed the hackers to gain access to the coins. A happy ending this time, but anyone who keeps a substantial amount of coins on an exchange is a moron. Cold storage people.
Darwin

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Jan 30, 2018 - 08:12am PT
I just came across this IBM e-publication. I've barley started, but for me it seems to be targeted to the right level (no jokes about Dummies please).

Blockchain for Dummies
https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=XIM12354USEN

from the into:
Blockchain, most simply defined as a shared, immutable ledger,
has the potential to be the technology that redefines those processes
and many others. To be clear, when I talk about blockchain,
I’m not talking about bitcoin. I’m talking about the underlying
digital foundation that supports applications such as bitcoin. But
the reaches of blockchain extend far beyond bitcoin.


And yes what Ed H said: Steven Johnson's NY Times Magazine Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble was good.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 30, 2018 - 09:43am PT
While block chain tech may prove useful for other things its application to bitcoin is like
applying nuclear physics advances to thermonuclear weaponry.
EdwardT

Trad climber
Retired
Feb 1, 2018 - 06:22am PT
A new cryptocurrency – ‘Shitcoin’ – has hit the market, offering investors an exciting new way to relieve themselves of their money.

Shitcoin spokesperson Jeremy Bourke said getting in on the new trend was easy. “When you take a sh#t, just pop a a gold coin on top and flush it down. Then stand back and watch it take off!”

He said it was a much more efficient way of losing money than with other cryptocurrencies. “You don’t even need a computer”.

Mr Bourke said thousands of new units were being created every hour, often in multiples, called blockchains. “I think I might be creating a blockchain right now,” he said, excusing himself from the interview.

The value of the currency is not tied to a central bank or institution, but rather the varying level of financial bullshit generated each day.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 1, 2018 - 10:21am PT
I have invested in Bitcoin and some other cryptos as a long term hold. I actively trade other cryptos for short term gains and the speculative opportunities that a young and emerging market like this one produce.
Bargainhunter

climber
Feb 1, 2018 - 12:03pm PT
I just cashed out my entire 401k and am going 100% long in Dogecoin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/technology/bitfinex-bitcoin-price.html

PS: Sarcasm people! Dogecoin was created as a joke coin; yet unbelievably, it's market cap is currently a half a billion. Still don't think people are speculating with crypto? Doh!
nah000

climber
now/here
Feb 5, 2018 - 09:25pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 5, 2018 - 10:31pm PT
Major credit card issuer banks are now prohibiting buying cryptos with their cards cause they
fear the obvious. How stoopid do you have to be to buy cryptos with money you don’t have?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 6, 2018 - 08:44am PT
Buying cryptos with a credit card doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the cash. People may not want to link their bank account to an exchange.

These same banks that are supposedly looking out for the best interests of the little guy had no problem giving out 500k mortgages to people who couldn't afford them.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 6, 2018 - 08:58am PT
^^^^^. A specious argument at best given most Americans’ debt status. More to the point
most bitchcoin buyers are millenials who should be investing for their retirement, not gambling
it away.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 6, 2018 - 12:09pm PT
I'm glad you have intimate knowledge of what millennial investment portfolios look like and how they should be investing their funds. All investing is gambling to one degree or another. It's up to the individual to determine what level of risk they are willing to take.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 6, 2018 - 12:31pm PT
I would refer you to a recent article to that effect in The Economist but I don’t want to
tempt you to take time away from your study of The Smarmy Digest.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Feb 9, 2018 - 05:55pm PT
Yeah well, xCon, but after the Zombie apocalypse when there's no more electricity or internet, you can still make a ring or a bracelet or something out of gold. Or false teeth. See bitcoin's up to $8927.94. Pretty wild ride.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Feb 9, 2018 - 06:17pm PT
Is anyone issuing puts and calls for blockchain funds yet?
Tom

Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
Feb 20, 2018 - 04:14pm PT
VICTIMS OF CRYPTO-COIN FRAUD ARE OFFERING A BOUNTY FOR THE ARREST OF THE SWINDLERS

THE REWARD WILL BE PAID WITH A NEW CRYPTO-COIN THAT THE VICTIMS WILL ISSUE THEMSELVES



"JusticeCoin" will be issued by an anonymous victims' group calling itself "Crypto Watchdogs".





Crypto-coin victims offer reward for the capture of swindlers









The Winkelvoss twins applied to the SEC a few years ago to offer "exposure to the Bitcoin marketplace". Their intention was not to just offer Bitcoin for sale, but a whole menu of fancy investment choices, like options and other derivatives.

stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Mar 23, 2018 - 09:50am PT
"You know the criticisms are just a failure of the imagination," Tyler Winklevoss told the media. "Cryptocurrencies aren't really important for human-to-human transactions... but when machines-to-machines trade economic value, they are going to plug into protocols like bitcoin and ethereum. They are not going to open bank accounts at JPMorgan... those were invented by bankers before the internet existed. Trying to use them as payments or money on the internet is a square peg in a round hole at best."

"Taking bitcoin in isolation… we believe bitcoin disrupts gold. We think it's a better gold, if you look at the properties of money. And what makes gold gold? Scarcity. Bitcoin is actually fixed in supply so it's better than scarce… it's more portable, its fungible, it's more durable. It sort of equals a better gold across the board," Winklevoss told CNBC.


So says the rich guy with a large position in Bitcoin. Not like he has a conflict of interest or anything.
mcreel

climber
Barcelona
Mar 24, 2018 - 01:55am PT
Using bitcoin appears to be a great way to gather spooks:

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-users-snowden-documents-reveal/

I guess this is like Tor: interest in this stuff means you probably have something to hide, so they look at you.

Stellarin

Sport climber
USA
Mar 31, 2018 - 11:46am PT
Woow, the last one is really well-explained. Thanks.
I found one interesting master course here (https://www.accessmasterstour.com/schools/programmes) which is about distributed networking, blockchain/bitcoin technologies and so on. Guys, how do you thing, is there any reason to spend my time and make this course or in future no-one will use it?
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 14, 2018 - 03:26pm PT
A good article from this week’s The Economist...
Barclays models it as an infectious disease. LOL

Catching the bitcoin bug

Oops, I have to log on to copy it but I’m too lazy. Basically they’re sayin’

IT’S OVAH, SUCKAS!



gruzzy

Social climber
socal
Apr 15, 2018 - 04:04pm PT
Bitcoin is an entity, not unlike a black hole, where money goes in but does not come back
Big Mike

Trad climber
BC
Apr 18, 2018 - 08:29am PT
Explain fiat please.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 18, 2018 - 08:42am PT
OK, Here’s The Economist’s Buttonwood article:

Catching the bitcoin bug

SINCE the heady days of late 2017 and January of this year, crypto-currencies have gone into retreat. Bitcoin, the best-known example, is now worth just a third of its value at its peak (see chart).

But there remain plenty of true believers in digital currencies. They point out that prices are still well above where they were in 2016. And interest from institutional investors is still strong enough for analysts to want to make sense of the crypto-phenomenon.

The latest bank to take a shot is Barclays, which devotes a lot more of its “Equity Gilt Study 2018” to the impact of technological change on finance and the economy than it does to either equities or gilts. Its report describes crypto-technology as “a solution still seeking a problem”.

It identifies four challenges in particular. The first is trust. In most countries, consumers and businesses have faith in the currencies issued by the government. The second is sovereignty: the potential for tax avoidance and loss of financial control means that neither governments nor central banks will be keen to see private crypto-currencies take off.

A third challenge is privacy. Although they can be used pseudonymously, crypto-currencies are less reliably anonymous than cash since the blockchain that lies behind them records all transactions. If a pseudonym is cracked, the user’s purchase history is revealed. A fourth relates to the ability to undo a transaction in cases of error or fraud—blockchain transactions are hard to reverse.

On top of all these problems is the fact that existing alternatives seem to work perfectly well. It is easy to make payments and transfer money in an instant.

So what is the appeal of digital newcomers? Private crypto-currencies can be attractive in societies where trust is low, or where governments are unwilling or unable to provide reliable means of exchange—in wartime or during periods of sovereign default, for example. Barclays also suggests that in countries where opportunities to invest are limited, “crypto-currencies may be one of the few ways to diversify savings out of domestic assets.”

None of these conditions applies in rich countries. But they hold in some emerging markets. There could also be demand in the developed world from criminals (although they now strongly favour cash). By making generous assumptions about the size of these low-trust and criminal markets, Barclays comes up with a maximum total value for all crypto-currencies of $660bn-780bn. That is roughly where they were priced at the beginning of 2018.

Maximum value is not the same as fair value. Surveys indicate that most people who buy bitcoin are doing so as an investment. Just 8% of Americans who hold bitcoin do so for purchases or payments. That suggests the main motive for buying crypto-currencies is speculation, which also explains their spectacular recent rise and fall, as with so many bubbles before them, from tulips to dotcom stocks.

Speculative bubbles are hard to model—how to find a rational way to assess irrationality? But Barclays uses the ingenious parallel of an infectious disease. A bubble starts with a small number of asset owners (the “infected”). New buyers are drawn in (or catch the bug) because they witness price increases and fear they will miss out. A large share of the population is immune and will never succumb.

Buyers use a combination of the current price and an extrapolation of the recent increase in price to estimate their expected target value. The faster the price rises, the wilder investors’ hopes and the more the infection spreads. Eventually the market runs out of potential participants and the price rise slows. Once it starts to fall, holders lose hope of big gains and start to sell. The epidemic dies out.

The Barclays model fits the history of the bitcoin price pretty well. And it suggests that the long-term outlook for the value of crypto-currencies is bleak. After all, plenty of people will have bought in the past few months, when enthusiasm was at its height. Some will have taken extra risk to buy the currency, via spread betting or other types of gambling. Instead of the riches they expected, they will be nursing losses. Some will be keen to sell their holdings. But new buyers will be harder to tempt now that crypto-currencies no longer look like a one-way bet.

All of this is good news. Perhaps the blockchain will turn out to be useful for other purposes—for example, recording property transactions. But it has been hard to think about such potential innovations when all the attention was focused on an ever-rising price. The crypto-fever has finally broken.

Apr 14th 2018


Big Mike

Trad climber
BC
Apr 18, 2018 - 12:02pm PT
 Fiat money does not have use value, and has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value.[1]

Thank you Tami that illustrates my point quite well.

I will extend it to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin does not have use value, and has value only because a people maintains its value, because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value and because it is scarce, price will only rise in the future.

edit
but yes it is volatile as f*ck.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 18, 2018 - 01:28pm PT
Didjyall read my The Economist article? It’s a bloomin’ virus y’all!
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Apr 18, 2018 - 04:02pm PT
It’s a bloomin’ virus y’all!



Sterilize the internet!
Big Mike

Trad climber
BC
Apr 18, 2018 - 05:20pm PT
Tami, I have studied up on the tulip mania. apparently it was the options contacts that really tipped the scale there. The commodity market was never really oversold. The nice thing about btc is it doesn't go bad like tulips so you just hodl it and trade to multiply it until it goes back up again.

better than stocks imho because i actually get to hodl the coin instead of paper that represents something.

Reilly, the internet was a virus too.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 18, 2018 - 05:23pm PT
Dude, take some advice: collateralized debt obligations. At least they’re real.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Apr 18, 2018 - 05:27pm PT
As climbers, we cringe when we read news reports about climbing. The reports are often laughably inaccurate and do a poor job of even grasping the basics of what climbing is all about.

Well, I cringe the same way whenever I see an article about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. They are just as funny and inaccurate, and some even come with a dash of deceit. That article that Reilly posted is just another example of a major financial institution trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Bitcoin is a threat to the big banks and they are doing their best to discredit it. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, those same financial institutions are furiously working on their own blockchains and are opening cryptocurrency trading desks to try to service the mountains of money that their clients are wanting to pour into the market. As always, if you want to know what is really going on, just follow the money.

Big Mike

Trad climber
BC
Apr 18, 2018 - 05:54pm PT
Reilly, debt sure is real. The fed has a ton of it, and the us treasury market is telling us that no one is buying it. how high will the interest rates go before they start pulling liquidity from the dow to buy them back down?

How much debt can you pile on debt before your creditors cut you off entirely? I prefer to have my savings in sound money like gold and crypto. Gold is about to explode and so will Bitcoin.

In the next five years the fed will be insolvent.

edit

In the early 2000s, CDOs were generally diversified,[7] but by 2006–2007—when the CDO market grew to hundreds of billions of dollars—this changed. CDO collateral became dominated not by loans, but by lower level (BBB or A) tranches recycled from other asset-backed securities, whose assets were usually subprime mortgages.[8] These CDOs have been called "the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain" for subprime mortgages,[9] and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make subprime loans,[10] leading to the 2007-2009 subprime mortgage crisis.[11]

hmm no thanks.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 19, 2018 - 01:56pm PT
The day that the world stops buying US debt will be the day we officially become a second rate country. Don’t hold yer breath. My point was purely illustrative (OK, and sarcastic) in that as arcane as CDO’s are they are bona fide tools and have value, at least as defined by economists, if not sociologists. I strongly suggest you read Nobel laureate Robert Shiller’s Irrational Exhuberance and his more recent Phishing For Phools if you really want to understand asset valuation and, hence, bubbles.

Stellarin

Sport climber
USA
Apr 21, 2018 - 04:28am PT
I think that time of the bitcoin stuff has gone and if you want to know about it just to make some money, it's better to go directly to Forexee and trade without taking a lot of useless stuff for your head. Plus it's easy to find any information, guides and everything about how to make money on forex on the internet...
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Apr 21, 2018 - 06:45am PT
If everyone could make money trading currency they would; if everyone could make sh#t grapes into great wine they would. There would be no bad wine or poor people in the world. There is some last greatest fool...........
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
May 7, 2018 - 03:20pm PT
"I like cryptocurrencies a lot less than you do," Munger said to Buffett. "To me, it's just dementia. It's like somebody else is trading turds and you decide you can't be left out."

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/07/investing/warren-buffett-bitcoin/index.html
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 7, 2018 - 04:33pm PT
Oh look. Dinosaur denigrating something he doesn't understand and doesn't care to understand while the world passes him by. Cool.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 7, 2018 - 06:18pm PT
Oh, yeah, Munger and Buffet have no understanding of markets.
A market is a market, whatever yer selling, until it isn’t, or unless yer selling turds.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 7, 2018 - 10:43pm PT
Of course they understand markets. And if I want advice on value investing, I'll listen to Warren and friends. But when it comes to technology and Bitcoin, something they don't invest in and have said they don't understand and don't care to understand, I'll pass. They also are heavily invested in banks and the financial sector. All the more reason to keep the status quo.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
May 8, 2018 - 08:18am PT
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/upshot/should-the-fed-create-fedcoin-to-rival-bitcoin-a-former-top-official-says-maybe.html

“Not that it would supplant and replace cash,” he said, “but it would be a pretty effective way when the next crisis happens for us to maybe conduct monetary policy.”

He added that blockchain technology, which allows reliable, decentralized record keeping of transactions, could be useful in the payment systems operated by the Fed, which enable the transfer of trillions of dollars between banks.

“It strikes me that a central bank digital currency might have a role to play there,” Mr. Warsh, who is now a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, told several reporters Thursday evening.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 8, 2018 - 09:33am PT
Banks, a key component of all, or most, economic functions is utility.
The blockchain technology has utility, Bitcoin does not, unless yer a money launderer.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 8, 2018 - 09:45am PT
Bitcoin has plenty of utility. As a store of value, as a unit of account, as a currency.

As for money laundering, our banks are the biggest money launderers around.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 8, 2018 - 09:57am PT
As a store of value

...to criminals and the criminal mafia who have access to massive amounts of electricity
necessary to ‘mine’ it. Electricity which could benefit millions of poor people. Bitcoin
has zero utility to 99.9% of us who choose to live legally, aside from the odd IRS entry.
Those evil banks, while not without their faults, do provide masses of utility to most of us.
In fact, the rise of micro-banks in the Third World has been a yuge blessing.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 8, 2018 - 10:38am PT
Miners mine where electricity is cheap and abundant. No one is taking electricity away from people in need.

2 Billion people worldwide are unbanked. In the good old US of A, there are 9 million households without a bank account. 24.5 million more households are underbanked. Seems like the current financial system isn't doing so well.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jun 7, 2018 - 09:45am PT
Bitcoin electrical consumption isn’t relevant?

Reuters:

Canada's Quebec halts crypto mining projects, may raise fees

By Allison Lampert | MONTREAL
Canada's Quebec province said on Thursday it has halted approvals for new digital currency mining projects to give it time to consider restrictions on their operations and raising the rates they pay for power.
The provincial government announced the move as state-owned power generator Hydro Quebec said it has asked the province to limit total power available to all digital currency miners to a block of 500 megawatts. That is about enough energy to run a single aluminum smelting plant, or a fraction of the 17,000 megawatts in capacity requested so far by miners looking to operate in Quebec.


Hmmmm... provide electricity for jobs and meaningful things or give it away so criminals can launder their ill gotten gains?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Sep 15, 2018 - 09:43pm PT
Here's a really insightful discussion on cryptocurrency, bitcoin and digital financial services, or so I thought, between Sean Carroll (Caltech) and Neha Narula (MIT). She's so clear. I wish somehow I could've heard this very same talk back in 2013 or so.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/09/10/episode-13-neha-narula-on-blockchain-cryptocurrency-and-the-future-of-the-internet/

One reason among others I wanted to listen to this was for more discussion on money as a "made-up" convention/invention we trust in (Harari's "fiction" or "story" we believe in). Thought one or two here might enjoy for any of several reasons. What a charming, pleasant voice she's got too.

I'm willing to bet cryptocurrency acquires a better name - digital something or other, perhaps - as this evolutionary development continues. We'll see.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Sep 18, 2018 - 06:04pm PT
The Blockchain: Boon for Bankers - or Tool for Tyrants?

https://www.wired.com/story/wired25-joi-ito-neha-narula-blockchain-banks/?mbid=social_twitter

"It took a while before the internet was ready for prime time. Blockchain is also not ready for prime time and needs a lot more work. And that work needs to happen without pressure from the established financial industry to conform to its own narrow goals."

Neha Narula, director of the Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 10, 2018 - 09:07am PT
Teuters:

Cryptocurrency theft hits nearly $1 billion in first nine months: report

Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Theft of cryptocurrencies through hacking of exchanges and trading platforms soared to $927 million in the first nine months of the year, up nearly 250 percent from the level seen in 2017, according to a report from U.S.-based cyber security firm CipherTrace released on Wednesday.

The report, which looks at criminal activity and money laundering in the digital currency market, also showed a steadily growing number of smaller thefts in the $20-60 million range, totaling $173 million in the third quarter.

Digital currencies stolen from exchanges in 2017 totaled just $266 million, according to a previous report from CipherTrace.

Bitcoin’s popularity and the emergence of more than 1,600 other digital coins or tokens have drawn more hackers into the cryptocurrency space, expanding opportunities for crime and fraud.

“The regulators are still a couple of years behind because there are only a few countries that have really applied strong anti-money laundering laws,” Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, told Reuters in an interview.

Jevans is also the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a global organization that aims to help solve cyber crime.

He said there are likely 50 percent more criminal transactions than those that were traced for this report. For instance, CipherTrace is aware of more than $60 million in cryptocurrency that was stolen but not reported.


The data also showed that the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges from countries with weak anti-money laundering regulations (AML) have been used to launder $2.5 billion worth of bitcoins since 2009. The top 20 virtual currency exchanges in terms of volume were analyzed for the report.

The CipherTrace report declined to name those exchanges.

These money-laundered funds represent transactions that CipherTrace was able to directly monitor and designate as criminal or highly suspect.

In estimating the $2.5 billion, CipherTrace looked at about 350 million transactions from the 20 exchanges and found 100 million of those with counterparties. From there, the firm was able to cross-check the 100 million transactions with its own data on criminal activity.

At the same time, these exchanges have also been used to purchase 236,979 bitcoins worth of criminal services, equivalent to approximately $1.5 billion at current prices, the report showed.

“All exchanges get these money-laundered funds. You really can’t stop them,” said Jevans.

“And here’s the reason why. We learn about the criminal stuff often times after it actually happened. So there’s no way to know in real time. You can know 80-90 percent of the time, but it’s impossible to know 100 percent,” he added.

Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Andrea Ricci

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Yeah, Bitcoin is da bomb!

looks easy from here

climber
Santa Cruzish
Oct 10, 2018 - 11:14pm PT
About 1%.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Oct 11, 2018 - 07:48am PT
Despite losses from delinquent accounts and fraud, credit cards are highly profitable, returning 4%. Retail banking returns 1.4%. Retail banking is like selling gas, the real money is in the mini-mart junk fod and drink. In banking the real money is in the "junk" (credit cards and other products)
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 11, 2018 - 08:19am PT
That $927 million in stolen cryptos is actually closer to 4% of cryptos’ market cap. That ain’t chopped liver and I rather doubt that 3% credit card loss figure that was tossed out as credit card companies do a much better job these days of stopping suspected fraudulent payments. With so much business being online now ‘stuff’ doesn’t go out the door before the dirty deed gets found out.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Oct 11, 2018 - 02:50pm PT
The current market cap of cryptos is 200 Billion, so that 927 million dollar figure represents .5%, not 4%.

Very simple solution to the theft problem......Don't leave your bitcoin/crypto on sketchy exchanges! And if you really really need to keep some on an exchange, use a U.S. based one.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Oct 11, 2018 - 03:54pm PT
With so much business being online now ‘stuff’ doesn’t go out the door before the dirty deed gets found out.

and the credit card companies delay payment to give themselves time to figure out if a transaction is fraudulent. My credit card is constantly asking me to verify transactions.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 12, 2018 - 08:46am PT
Banks, thank you. That’s why I’m typing this in the sponging-house.
Basic math does lay me by the lee at times. 🤡

Jon, yes, our card has an app which notifies us of every charge within seconds. It does make it hard to surprise the wifey. On the other hand just a few weeks ago we were able to deny payment to some trendy online boutique in Spain.

ps
And for those that think cryptos are significant compare the total market cap of all cryptos,
currently in low $200 billion range, to the daily FOREX volume of $5 TRILLION!!!
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 18, 2018 - 09:34am PT
Reuters:

Hacked, scammed and on your own: navigating cryptocurrency 'wild west'

Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke learned in January that hackers cracked a 40-character password and cleaned out their cryptocurrency wallet, they did not go to the police or alert the tokens’ issuer, the Berlin-based technology group IOTA.

They bought more coins.

The Cyprus-based German couple, who describe themselves as financial educators, figured they had no chance of recovering the coins and it was not even clear who might take up their case. Yet they took the roughly $14,000 loss in stride - something that comes with the territory when one bets on a new, exciting technology in a yet unregulated market.

“We really believe in cryptocurrencies. We have studied this for about a year before investing, so we are aware of the risks,” Peggy Lachmann-Anke said. “There was nothing we could do.”

Far from unusual, the episode is emblematic for a market where few rules apply and where investors’ faith in the blockchain technology goes hand in hand with the belief that it also helps criminals cover their tracks so well that trying to catch them is a fool’s errand.

Patrick Wyman, FBI supervisory special agent at the financial crimes section of the agency’s anti-money laundering unit acknowledges cryptocurrencies pose some unique challenges.

“A decentralized currency system like bitcoin, or another form of virtual currency is not governed by any entity, suspicious reporting activity, and any anti-money laundering compliance,” Wyman told Reuters.

Various estimates show cryptocurrency crime is on the rise, keeping pace with the market’s rapid growth. That forces investigators to focus on high-profile cases, security professionals and officials say, effectively leaving small investors to their own devices.

“We do not pretend that every law enforcement agency is devoting resources to every single crime. That would not be possible,” said Jaroslav Jakubcek, an analyst at Europol, which serves as a center for the European Union’s law enforcement cooperation, expertise and intelligence.

UNREPORTED CASES

Officials still encourage people to report cryptocurrency theft to local police like any other crime, saying failing to do so only emboldens criminals.

Yet because many victims simply do not see the point, cryptocurrency theft is far more common than any published estimates suggest, security professionals say.

According to financial research firm Autonomous NEXT and Crypto Aware, which works with investors affected by crypto scams, about 15 percent of cryptocurrencies have been stolen between 2012 and the first half of 2018, representing a cumulative $1.7 billion in value at the time of the theft and with a rising tendency. In the first half of this year alone, more than $800 million has already been stolen, according to the data. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2Nq3ngy)

Yet Lex Sokolin, a partner and global director of fintech strategy at the firm, estimates that as much as 85 percent of crimes go unreported and says the published statistics only represent publicly reported heists.

Reuters interviews with half a dozen victims paint a similar picture. Out of that group only two reported their losses to the authorities and one soured on cryptocurrency investments.

Armin Fischer, a Vienna-based IT specialist said he lost about $5,300 in ether coins in a phishing scam in the summer of 2017 and immediately alerted the local police just to find out that the duty officer had no idea what he was talking about.

He said it took many months of knocking on doors to get his case ultimately taken up by Vienna prosecutors’ office, but it is still pending. Fisher says by now he has had enough.

“I have seen firsthand how big the security leaks are.”

Others are more philosophical.

Dave Appleton, a blockchain developer for HelloGold, a gold trading app company in Kuala Lumpur, said he lost about $3,000 of ether coins when scammed by a fake site touting a startup’s token pre-sale. He said he just moved on, glad he did not lose more.

“The point is there’s no one to report the crime to,” Appleton said. “I am not sure what country or jurisdiction it would come under.”

According ICO tracker Coinschedule a record $21.3 billion flowed into new tokens so far this year as investors keep snapping up “initial coin offerings,” undeterred by high-profile heists, bitcoin’s and other currencies’ slide from late 2017 peaks, and government warnings of widespread fraud and theft.

MILLIONS AT STAKE

David Jevans, chief executive of cybersecurity firm CipherTrace in Menlo Park, California, estimates that even when exchanges or trading platforms get hacked, perhaps only a fifth of stolen coins is recovered because of the ease with which digital tokens can move across several borders.

“You have to get law enforcement in five countries interested enough, have time enough, and have evidence enough to open a case,” he said. “By the time they agree, get the information, do all the paperwork, the money has been moved.”

Security experts say in most cases millions need to be at stake to justify such an effort.

U.S. entrepreneur and long-time cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin, who says he got robbed twice, learned firsthand that not all hacks are created equal.

He said first time when criminals accessed his cellphone with stolen SIM card credentials, emptied a wallet connected to it, and tricked his friends into sending money by impersonating him on Skype, he contacted a friend at the FBI.

But once she learned that only $60,000 got stolen, she advised him to file a report via the FBI’s internet crime center website. Terpin said he did, but never heard back.

Then, when last January he lost almost $24 million in tokens from his mobile account, he went straight after the service provider AT&T, filing a $224 million lawsuit accusing it of negligence that allowed “digital identity theft,” a claim AT&T denies.

Undeterred, Terpin says he remains committed to blockchain comparing it to the early days of Amazon.com Inc when the online retailer faced much skepticism and even derision.

“That’s similar to today’s narrative that all ICOs (initial coin offerings) are scams and nothing will ever be developed of value because they’re not already fully deployed,” he said.

Steadfast commitment to the new technology and belief that it gives sophisticated criminals the upper hand mean that even some multimillion heists go unreported.

For example, when hackers stole about $9 million worth of ether tokens from a Zug, Switzerland-based company Swarm City in July 2017, the peer-to-peer digital platform did not report the theft to the police, business leader Bernd Lapp said.

“It’s impossible to track and return the funds. We live and die with this technology.”

Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Tomasz Janowski




Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Oct 18, 2018 - 11:59am PT
Just another article spreading FUD.

The first couple did something wrong(like expose their password) because 40 character passwords don't get broken. Also, anyone who actually studied crypto for a year, like they said they did, would know better than to invest in IOTA.

The second case was a phishing scam. Happens all over the internet to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Nothing unique to crypto.

The third case is also nothing new. The guy fell for a fake site. Next.

In the last case, its a split between the guy being a moron and ATT being negligent. Only an idiot would keep 24 million on a mobile wallet for the exact reason of what happened. Phone got stolen, thieves conned an ATT employee to change the SIM. Coins gone.

This isn't rocket science. Keep any substantial amount of money off line in cold storage. If you need to keep an amount on an exchange for trading purposes, use a US based exchange, not some sketchy overseas exchange.

Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 20, 2018 - 01:47pm PT
The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly looking into whether traders used another cryptocurrency called tether to bid up bitcoin prices during its 1,300 percent rally last year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/20/regulators-investigate-whether-bitcoin-price-was-propped-up-illegally.html

Really thats all you need to know about Bitcoin. And do not listen to the cheerleaders

Bitcoin bull Tom Lee stands by his reduced year-end $15,000 target despite nose-diving prices

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/20/fundstrat-tom-lee-stands-by-15000-dollar-year-end-bitcoin-target-as-prices-sink.html
rockermike

Trad climber
Berkeley
Nov 24, 2018 - 07:33pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 25, 2018 - 09:17am PT
Bitcoin payment usage has dropped 75% in the last year.
Not exactly the definition of a ‘currency’.
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Nov 25, 2018 - 11:02am PT
19k peak is down to the 3.7k, so the price is down over 75% as well. Burn baby burn and good riddens. Etherium is down over 90% from ~1400 to 108. Took longer than I expected, but still quite glad I steared well clear of the whole dumpster fire.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 11:35am PT
Bitcoin fell to as low as $3,519.94 on the Bitstamp platform, after earlier falling to a 14-month trough of $3,462,57, and was last down 12.6 percent. It has lost 74 percent of its value so far this year, after hitting nearly $20,000 in December last year.

Other digital currencies also fell sharply, with Ethereum’s ether down 7 percent at $106.69 and Ripple’s XRP falling 5.6 percent to 34 U.S. cents.

Cryptocurrency market capitalization plummeted to $122.3 billion on Monday, down 85 percent from its peak of nearly $800 billion hit in early January this year.

Mainstream investors have stayed clear of bitcoin, with concerns over scant regulatory oversight and undeveloped market infrastructure compounded by frequent swings in price.
Bargainhunter

climber
Nov 26, 2018 - 12:37pm PT
Bitcoin is a trash can that your tech savvy friends delusionally tell will double your money in no time. Their confidence and glittering eyes seduce you, until the garbage truck comes and your money disappears.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 01:14pm PT
Just another market cycle for Bitcoin....

June 2011 $30 Nov. 2011 $2 -93%
April 2013 $230 July 2013 $67 -71%
Nov. 2013 $1,147 Jan. 2015 $180 -85%
Dec. 2017 $19, 535 Nov. 2018 $3,448 -85%

People have been predicting and celebrating Bitcoins' demise for 10 years but it keeps on chugging along and going up. If you bought at 19k you are a moron. If you blindly bought into other cryptocurrencies last year, you are a moron. 99.99% of cryptocurrencies are either scams, bad ideas, or good ideas with poor management/execution. But some will survive with Bitcoin leading the way. This bear market has been a blessing in that it has given time to build out the necessary infrastructure to handle increased adoption. The dumpster fire you should be worried about is the central banking system and its fiat printing machine. The looming debt bubble is going to unleash the pain like never before.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 01:24pm PT
it keeps on chugging along and going up.

You have an interesting take on ‘up’, but I suppose that’s due to the KoolAid.
How do you explain that payment usage, in addition to the price, has declined 75% in a year? Retailers don’t want to deal with the hassle. Yes, it’s such a hassle dealing with dollars, pounds, and Euros. Those wild price swings of a penny or two are so draining!

Bitchcoin’s scalability is measured at a few million transactions per month!
VISA handles how million per hour? Or is it per minute?
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 26, 2018 - 01:25pm PT
Thirsty? have a big glass of refreshing Koolaid

John McAfee, whose fame exists rather heavily due to the software company he founded in the late 1980s, took to Twitter yet again on February 2, 2018, to reaffirm that he was indeed bullish on bitcoin. In an attempt to predict bitcoin’s price at the end of this decade, McAfee had previously stated that it would reach “$500,000 by the end of 2020”. In November 2017, he tweeted that the cryptocurrency had accelerated much faster than expected, causing him to raise his prediction to $1 million instead.

https://www.ccn.com/despite-bitcoin-crash-mcafee-holds-his-1-million-by-2020-bet/

Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 01:48pm PT
You have an interesting take on ‘up’, but I suppose that’s due to the KoolAid.
How do you explain that payment usage, in addition to the price, has declined 75% in a year? Retailers don’t want to deal with the hassle. Yes, it’s such a hassle dealing with dollars, pounds, and Euros. Those wild price swings of a penny or two are so draining!

Don't be obtuse. Something that started at fractions of a penny and is currently worth ~$4k(even with a 75% decline) is trending up long term.

Yes, I agree retailers don't want the hassle and as I said, the infrastructure is not yet ready to handle mass adoption. But solutions are being developed and tested with instant settlement for retailers so that they don't have to worry about price fluctuations. Credit card infrastructure and mass global adoption took decades. The internet took decades for mass adoption. Yet people want a revolutionary technical and monetary innovation to be done overnight. We are still in the dial up era of Bitcoin.

Edit: And your all mighty dollar has depreciated 95% in the last century, but hey, that's nothing to worry about.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 02:00pm PT
Obtuse? Oh, I guess “wild price swings” is obtuse? A retailer sells a widget for $10. He tries to get paid in Bitcoin but by the time the trade ‘settles’ he winds up with $5.
WBraun

climber
Nov 26, 2018 - 02:00pm PT
Get rid of those criminal bankers who put everyone in debt with their phony money system which is so dependent on wars.

St00pid people can't understand simple sh!t instead dive deeper than ever into global horse-sh!t ....
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 02:04pm PT
Get rid of those criminal bankers who put everyone in debt with their phony money system which is so dependent on wars.

St00pid people can't understand simple sh!t instead dive deeper than ever into global horse-sh!t

^^^^^The Duck gets it
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Nov 26, 2018 - 02:10pm PT
Reilly, reread what I wrote. I agree with you regarding retailers. I was referring to you questioning what "up" means. A ten year trend from fractions of a penny to $4k is "up" by anyone's definition. So yes, you were being obtuse.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Nov 26, 2018 - 02:50pm PT
The problem is that the increasing value of bitcoin is attributable to nothing tangible. Really it only has psychological value. Ebay may just exist on hard drives and through software, but there is a user base of hundreds of millions, good will is what they call it. The wild swings in value support the theory that bitcoin value is purely psychological
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 26, 2018 - 05:08pm PT
The wild swings in value support the theory that bitcoin value is purely psychological

The value of most assets has some basis in psychology. Hence the continuing psychological warfare over bitcoin. Why not just let it play out?

I have no bitcoin and don't expect that to change.
August West

Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
Nov 26, 2018 - 05:19pm PT
The problem is that the increasing value of bitcoin is attributable to nothing tangible. Really it only has psychological value.

Would you prefer something tangible that has mostly psychological value?

The world has spent centuries digging up gold. Most of that is now stored in underground vaults.

Gold has some residual value as a useful metal but based on supply and the amount used, it probably isn't worth more than copper.

The vast amount of its value is psychological.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 27, 2018 - 09:47am PT
LA Times today:

Bitcoin plunges again. Now the only currency worse than bitcoin is Venezuela’s

If nothing else, bitcoin was supposed to protect people from governments that were destroying their own currencies -- governments such as Venezuela's, where inflation is said to be somewhere around 49,000% right now.
Lately, though, bitcoin hasn't fulfilled that mission. Not unless you think being down about 80%, as bitcoin has been since last December, counts as "protecting" you from the 99.6% losses you would have taken on your Venezuelan bolivar during that time. (The virtual currency slid as much as 17% Monday, to $3,523.)

The fact of the matter is that bitcoin has been around for 10 years now, but we still haven't found one use for it. At its most grandiose, it was supposed to replace the U.S. dollar as the way people did business around the world. But at its most realistic, it was at least supposed to replace, say, the Zimbabwean dollar as the way people did business in places where inflation had spiraled out of control.
Why has bitcoin stumbled over even this lowest of bars? Because there's a paradox that lies at its heart.

The easiest way to think about this is that bitcoin wants to make it so that you don't have to trust banks to move your money, or governments to keep your currency from losing its value. Bitcoin does the first part by setting up a system where, instead of paying a middleman you know to process a transaction, the network pays a group of middlemen you don't know to do so. That's what bitcoin "mining" is. People race to be the first one to update the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions — cutting out the need for a bank to verify things — to try to win the new bitcoin that is given out to whoever hits that mark.
Which brings us to the second part, aimed at retaining the cryptocurrency's value: The total number of bitcoins that will ever be created has been strictly limited in advance to preclude any possibility of their value being inflated away.

But there's a problem. The reason bitcoin miners are willing to do the very real work of processing transactions is that they think the bitcoin they're getting paid with will keep rising in value. And what would make them do that? Well, the finite supply certainly helps, but at some point there has to be more demand for them too. Which means that people have to actually start using them.

But why would people use their bitcoins when, as we just said, they think their price is only going to go up? They wouldn't. They'd just hold onto their bitcoin as an investment and use their dollars for day-to-day purchases — which, of course, is more or less what has happened. Indeed, the total number of bitcoin transactions hasn't increased at all in the last two years.

So people mine bitcoin because they think mainstream adoption will make the price go up a lot more, but the fact that it's going up as much as it is means that it's not going to get adopted by anyone but the most fervent believers. It's getting hoarded instead. This, in turn, creates a natural boom-bust cycle that's been amplified by what a few academics say looks like repeated price manipulation.

The result is that, since the end of last year, bitcoin has been massively outperformed by the euro, despite the fact that Europe's central bank has been printing money that whole time; badly outperformed by the Turkish lira, despite the fact that the country's central bank has been forced to keep interest rates inappropriately low by the regime; and has only modestly outperformed the Venezuelan bolivar, despite the fact that Venezuela's central bank has been irresponsible on the kind of world-historical level we haven't seen since Yugoslavia in the 1990s or Zimbabwe in the early 2000s.

Now, losing a little less value than the worthless currency of a bankrupt government run by an economically illiterate drug cartel has — Venezuela's ruling class has also gotten into the cocaine trade — might not seem like much of an accomplishment. That's because it isn't. It's something that everyone, even countries like Turkey that are undergoing currency crises of their own, have managed to do. And at the very least bitcoin has too.
So maybe some sort of congratulations are in order: Bitcoin is a better store of value than the worst store of value there is.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bitcoin-venezuela-20181126-story.html

Hope this isn’t too obtuse.
IMHO it is cogent and well explained, if wanting a side of KoolAid.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Page 2:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When cryptocurrency issuers want positive coverage for their virtual coins, they buy it.

Self-proclaimed social media personalities charge thousands of dollars for video reviews. Research houses accept payments in the cryptocurrencies they are analyzing. Rating “experts” will grade anything positively, for a price.

All this is common, according to more than two dozen people in the cryptocurrency market and documents reviewed by Reuters.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian start-up Hacken was looking to promote its new coin after raising $3 million online in late 2017. Chief Executive Dmytro Budorin and his team identified a list of almost 200 cryptocurrency social media personalities they thought could help them, he said.

Hacken paid $7,500 for Christopher Greene, host of Alternative Media Television - a YouTube channel with more than 500,000 subscribers - to review its coin in a video, Budorin told Reuters. In the 25-minute video, published on June 22, Greene raved about Hacken’s coin and business, describing it as a “huge market opportunity” with “potential 1,000x returns.”
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Nov 27, 2018 - 02:07pm PT
Hope this isn’t too obtuse.
IMHO it is cogent and well explained, if wanting a side of KoolAid.

Matt O'Brien has been writing Bitcoin attack pieces for years. How convenient that he cherry picks data from the latest bear market while ignoring the full history of Bitcoin in order to try to make his point. And he even managed to make a tangential drug connection. Nothing new.

As for the Reuters blurb, most industries have a dirty underside of pay to play. Nothing new here either, especially in the crypto world which I have repeatedly said is full of scammers and sh#t coins.

If Bitcoin is dead, then why is the NYSE opening a Bitcoin futures market and exchange in 2019? Why has Fidelity been mining Bitcoin for years and have opened Fidelity Digital Asset Services to offer trading and custody of Bitcoin for their customers? Why is Wall Street talent leaving for the crypto space? Seems like the "smart" money sees a future in Bitcoin.
Roots

Mountain climber
Redmond, Oregon
Nov 27, 2018 - 04:28pm PT
...or a future in crypto...it just might not be Bitcoin that survives.

Who knows!??
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 6, 2018 - 05:35pm PT
Where are the fanboiz after yesterday’s 5.9% drop to $3668? November saw its biggest monthly percentage drop in 7 years -+40%!

The SEC said y’all can fuggetabout a Bitchcoin ETF.

Can you say ‘toast’?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 7, 2018 - 12:52pm PT
The SEC pushed back a decision on the VanEck ETF until the end of February. This was expected and is generally the norm. Far from the death knell you purport it to be. It would have been surprising if they actually announced a decision. It still may not get approved, but it is a much better product than previously proposed ETFs. And if this one doesn't get approval, one eventually will.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 7, 2018 - 01:23pm PT
Yes, Banksy, I’m sure yer sources are better than Reuters and Kiplinger.

When’s yer next art auction/shredding?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 7, 2018 - 01:28pm PT
Where does Reuters/Kiplinger say the ETF was denied?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 10, 2018 - 01:46pm PT
So about those sources? Reilly? Bueller?
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Dec 11, 2018 - 08:10am PT
Only two machines are profitable when mining bit coin. The best machine will make you 58 cents a day. Not a good ROI for a 2k investment

https://www.google.com/amp/s/cointelegraph.com/news/just-two-asic-bitcoin-mining-rigs-remain-profitable-in-current-markets/amp

As the price of bit coin drops the miners have to cash more coin further depressing the price.

1.3 million machines turned off.

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-mining-industry-under-considerable-stress-1-3-million-devices-switched-off/amp/
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Dec 11, 2018 - 12:40pm PT
Good riddance.
Blockchain may have actual uses in real world, but it's not clear to me that cryptocurrency is one.
As far as I can tell the only significant use was either people trying to hide dirty money from sketchy transactions, or people essentially just doing investment gambling.
And I'm fine if folks want to risk their own money on a modern tulip. But might be better for the global environment for that risk and activity was done using something that didn't require ungodly amounts of energy. Last I heard, something like the equivalent to all the electricity used in Denmark.

Bitcoin will never be successful as an actual widely used currency as long as transactional costs are high and processing is slow, as it is now.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 01:16pm PT
The problem with a currency not sanctioned by a government is that governments can declare them illegal and ultimately use military, police, cyber-force to shut them down or render them to the dark black market fringes.

Fighting for the success of bitcoin is akin to fighting against governments. Historically that is not a high probability winning position.
Rudder

Trad climber
Costa Mesa, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 01:20pm PT
Explain Bitcoin Please

Over the last year Bitcoin has been a great place to get rid of all your excess cash. ;)
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 01:32pm PT
The problem with a currency not sanctioned by a government is that governments can declare them illegal and ultimately use military, police, cyber-force to shut them down or render them to the dark black market fringes.

This is one of the main reasons for the existence of Bitcoin. No government can seize it or shut it down. It is a benefit, not a problem.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 01:34pm PT
No government can seize it or shut it down.

Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy too?
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Dec 11, 2018 - 02:12pm PT
Banks, you seem to be pushing Bitcoin kinda hard, you holding?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 02:39pm PT
Jon,
I've been holding for years. Just like when the media writes about climbing and we laugh and cringe at all the stuff they get wrong, Bitcoin is kind of the same. So I respond from time to time.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 02:40pm PT
Reilly: I don't believe in the tooth fairy. And I don't believe the government can stop Bitcoin. Any country that has tried to ban/outlaw it has just created a black market premium for it. It is supported by a global network. Just how is a government going to shut it down?

DMT: Great photo, great song. Bitcoin is in part a fight against the government and its monetary policies. And we don't want a sanctioning authority. My Bitcoin, my responsibility.

Rudder: You know you can short Bitcoin if you want.

SteveP: You almost hit Bitcoin Bingo with the tried and true complaints. Money laundering, speculation, energy usage, high fees, slow transactions.

Money laundering: Biggest money launderers are the banks and they are using good old cash. Don't see many people crying to outlaw money.

Speculation: Might as well shut down Wall Street.

Energy usage: Overblown and highly inaccurate. Most mining is done where energy is dirt cheap and in excess, like at hydro dams. More energy is spent on X-mas lights than Bitcoin mining, but again, nobody is complaining about the energy usage of X-mas lights.

High fees: Fees were high for a short time because wallets and exchanges were estimating fees incorrectly and the exchanges were not batching transactions. These issues have been fixed. I just sent some Bitcoin for less than $.01.

Slow transactions: Its a feature, it provides security to the network. Lightning network and other scaling solutions will provide instant transactions, while using good old slow Bitcoin as the settlement layer.


People tend to overestimate the effects of new technology in the short term and underestimate the long term implications. I'm betting that this is the case with Bitcoin. Only time will tell. I hope we all live long enough so that I can tell you all "I told you so". :P

NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 04:53pm PT
This is one of the main reasons for the existence of Bitcoin. No government can seize it or shut it down. It is a benefit, not a problem.

Elaborating on Reilly's retort to the above response....

1. While the technology of Bitcoin does in fact bypass banks and governments for price setting, it cannot bypass the realities of our world

2. One of those realities is that Bitcoin operates on a finite network of physical and or virtual machines, each of which is ultimately tied to a physical machine in a physical location that can be searched and destroyed.

3. Governments will have a large incentive to prevent the loss of their power to regulate currencies, manage taxation, etc. It is a national security consideration to prevent stuff like this from being too successful. That justifies:
 ordering all ISPs/telcos that want to continue operating in USA to block traffic on TCP port 8333 or perform other deep packet inspection as needed to isolate and drop Bitcoin traffic.
 coordinating with other countries that will order similar things within their own national boundaries for the same reason that USA govt wants it, and using sanctions, withholding support, or other diplomatic solutions to get other countries to cooperate
 planting viruses, rootkits, corrupting video card hardware manufacturing, etc. to corrupt the servers operating on the bitcoin network
 make a DDoS attack (distributed denial of service) against hosts that maintain the blockchain ledger.
 use threats and follow through to deadly force through official and unofficial channels against individuals who run systems that support Bitcoin or other electronic cash systems that may become popular
 cut off power, fuel, EMP pulses, etc. to disable datacenters that continue to harbor Bitcoin servers


In short, Bitcoin or any other e-cash system has an uphill battle to become a viable competitor to government-sanctioned currency. When people say a dollar or another country's currency is a "Fiat" currency with no underlying real value so it shouldn't be different than a Bitcoin, well that doesn't take into account the threat of physical violence that is the seat of power for every nation on Earth. We are a world ruled by a series of gangs, the most successful of which in the past formed countries, but are now formed as nested corporations to exert power beyond national borders in a virtual world.

Until Bitcoin can hang together as an institution capable of directing physical warfare (either through manipulation of the politicians of a legitimate government or simply hiring a mercenary military replete with modern weaponry) and engaging in full scale cyber and physical warfare with USA, China, Russia, etc... then it can't succeed in the long run.

It might succeed in the short run if other countries that hate USA want to just screw with us and prop it up for a while as a way of financially harming USA. Not many countries have the power to do that and survive. In any case, it will still be a criminal enterprise in USA, and have an economic impact similar to Silk Road. Not enough to derail our economy.

Now, if all the countries of the world got together without the USA and decided that Bitcoin as a global standard for currency was a good idea, then it would stand a chance. But notice how the USA spends as much on military as all the rest of the world combined? That is in part to not have to compromise on stuff like this.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 11, 2018 - 05:58pm PT
Excellent post Nut. I appreciate you putting together your own thoughts on the subject and looking at the big picture. I'll put together a post addressing your points specifically.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 12:00pm PT
Nut: I agree that Bitcoin is a threat to banks and governments, but it may be too late to do anything about it. Bitcoin is becoming more mainstream and becoming a part of the "traditional" financial system. You can buy options and futures on the CBO and Merc. NASDAQ will be offering futures in early 2019. Fidelity has been mining Bitcoin for years and offers exposure to Bitcoin for its clients. There is a decent chance of an ETF getting approval in Feb. If the gov't really wants to get rid of Bitcoin, allowing it to become a part of the financial system is a strange way to go about it.

As for actually physically shutting it down, that's a long shot at best. First you would have to make it illegal in every country. The legislative and legal battles will be a nightmare. Even if the U.S. bans it, I don't think getting the rest of the world to go along with the wishes of the U.S. is feasible. Besides some countries wanting to stick it to us, it may be in the best interest of some countries not to play along. Political pressure, economic pressure, physical force will not be enough.

Even if you get a coalition of countries who what to destroy Bitcoin, actually doing it is another matter.

First you will have to locate roughly 10,000 nodes spread across the world, many of which are private citizens using TOR and VPN, and simultaneously cut off their internet access. Not going to happen. BTW, there are also satellites orbiting the earth transmitting the blockchain. Going to have to disable those as well.

Viruses, malware. The code and transaction scripts are purposely limited. A virus on the blockchain isn't going to infect your computer. If you do manage to infect a node through other means, the rest of the network will just ignore it. The biggest threat of viruses is to Apps running on top of Bitcoin, not the protocol itself.

DDoS. Could work against a certain number of nodes, but again, you need to take down the whole network.

Power supply. You might be able to get big mining farms to shut down, but finding and targeting private citizens around the world? That is a logistical and legal nightmare.

What is the end game in all of this? Are we really going to go around the world threatening, coercing, arresting and possibly killing people for running a computer program? I think the powers that be realize that this is not a winnable strategy. There is no CEO to arrest, no physical asset to confiscate, no central database to infiltrate or destroy, no reasonable means to stop communications. Instead I think they have decided to try to control Bitcoin by having it become a part of the financial system like any other asset class. Kind of like a "keep your enemies closer" type of strategy. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the coming years.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 01:27pm PT
Governments will have a large incentive to prevent the loss of their power to regulate currencies

Hell, in Europe they’re actively working to abolish cash in order to shut down black markets and loss of tax revenues. Hardly anybody carries cash in Scandinavia. So if you don’t think they’re gonna crack down on Bitcoin if they deem it a threat to their tax revs then you definitely believe in the Tooth Fairy. Hell, those Sacramento libtards want to start taxing texting!
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 02:48pm PT
Reilly, I have stated many times that I believe Bitcoin is a threat. My point is that the government can try to crack down, but it will be very difficult, if not impossible to do so. China tried to do it and all it did was create a booming for the OTC desks and P2P transfers. If a surveillance state like China can't do it, good luck to other countries.

Now, if you'd like to actually put forth some arguments on how the great crackdown could happen, like NutAgain did, we can continue the discussion.

And I'm still waiting on your Reuters ETF Intel.
perswig

climber
Dec 13, 2018 - 02:56pm PT
Nut and Banks, thank you for taking your time to lay out thoughts and positions, enlightening!

Dale
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 03:54pm PT
Nutagain covered the technical side quite well.

So if cash becomes passé then how you gonna use yer Bitcoins? The gubmint will make it illegal for anyone to give you cash or credit for them and since no reputable businesses will be able to provide you with their services or products what good will yer Bitcoins be? You ain’t gonna be able to pay yer rent, food, or taxes. It’s not enough of a threat yet for them to invest the energy/money to shut it down but they will. Oh, sure, you’ll be able to buy Venezuelan or Argentine pesos but nobody will take those either.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 06:23pm PT
What legal argument are you going to use to ban it? But even if it is banned, you can give me US dollars and I can send you Bitcoin from my anonymous wallet to your anonymous wallet and the govt has no clue. Enforcement is impossible. How has Prohibition worked out for any govt in history? When there is a will, there is a way. Kathryn Haun, former Federal Prosecutor who founded the governments Digital Currency Task Force has said that there is no way that the government can stop Bitcoin. I'll take her legal expertise over yours.

As for your point that Bitcoin is not a big enough threat for the govt to do anything about it, I don't buy it. Sure, let's let this thing grow into an actual threat, then we'll try to take it out. B.S. As I said earlier, the govt is providing regulatory guidance and helping it become a part of the financial system. Why would they do that if they want it gone?

Nice punt on the technical questions.

And about that Bitcoin ETF? I'm still waiting. Or you could just admit you were wrong.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 06:31pm PT
DOOD! I’m not justifying it! Slavery was legal at one time, too. I’m just telling you the way it is. I quit trying to fight the gubmint a long time ago - waay too much pain!

Who the phuk cares about a Bitcoin ETF? Might as well have an ETF about Cosa Nostra futures. All cryptos’ market cap is now well below .002% of extant currencies. Yawn. If you have more than a few percent of yer net worth in that crap then you have a gambling problem.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 13, 2018 - 06:38pm PT
...gubmint...

Language. It is spelled "government".

You should show it more respect.

http://www.supertopo.com/forumsearch.php?ftr=gubmint


Not cool at all in my book.
Maybe you should read The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 06:41pm PT
I type slow - time is munny.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 13, 2018 - 07:20pm PT
Who cares about an Bitcoin ETF? You're the one who made the claim that the SEC denied it and that Bitcoin was toast. I corrected you about the ETF and you doubled down that I didn't know sh#t and that Reuters and Kiplinger knew better. I asked for proof and you ignored it like you often do when people call you out. And now you want to deflect and say it's no big deal anyway.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 14, 2018 - 10:57am PT
The main problem with bitcoin as a technology: 300kWh of electricity per bitcoin transaction.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Dec 14, 2018 - 11:10am PT
If you want an apples to apples comparison of cost of producing a currency transaction, bitcoin should include:
 electricity costs for compute
 costs for cooling (which may be electricity)
 costs for network transit (which may be amortized to almost nothing since the transit supports many other traffic types)
 costs for datacenter facilities

But then, what is the cost for a dollar transaction?
 35% of military spending in the world (per Wikipedia)

What is the cost for mining gold, transporting it, securing it, and conducting transactions with it?
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 14, 2018 - 11:23am PT
Ah, next to none of that is relevant.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 14, 2018 - 11:23am PT
Thank you, healy.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 14, 2018 - 12:01pm PT
Ah yes, Bitcoin is bad because it uses energy. What is the energy cost of printing, transporting and securing any currency in the world? The energy use of ATM's, banks, armed guards, data centers, computers, heating, cooling etc.? And as Nut pointed out, what percentage of the defense budget goes to securing the all mighty dollar?

Roughly 70% of the energy used by Bitcoin is renewable energy with most of that coming from hydro. The amount of hydro energy wasted is staggering because it is uneconomical to transport large distances and the supply often exceeds demand. Bitcoin helps solve that problem by using energy that would normally be wasted and actually stores the value of the energy so that it can be easily transported.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 14, 2018 - 12:19pm PT
Again, mostly irrelevant. And no, most of the energy for bitcoin is not coming from renewable sources and further, miners have been pulling all kinds of shenanigans on unsophisticated and unsuspecting power utilities across the country.

Bitcoin backlash as ‘miners’ suck up electricity, stress power grids in Central Washington

P.S. How did you come to this conclusion?

The amount of hydro energy wasted is staggering because it is uneconomical to transport large distances and the supply often exceeds demand.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 14, 2018 - 01:58pm PT
Actually, yes, most energy is coming from renewable sources, mainly hydro. . Have you seen where all the major mining operations are? Not too tough to figure out what they are using for an energy source.

Don't blame Bitcoin miners if the utilities are unsophisticated and unsuspecting as you say. If the miners did something illegal, then get rid of them. Otherwise tough. The utilities are in the business of producing and selling energy. They are not complete idiots.

I'll try to clarify my energy waste comment. Many dams don't have enough local demand to allow them to run at or near capacity. To try to fill that gap, they transport electricity. Except that becomes more expensive and more uneconomical the farther you go, so that can only fill the gap so much. If dams are not capturing the energy potential, that is waste. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, form 2010-2016, global hydro capacity was 49%. So yes, a lot of energy is being wasted.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 14, 2018 - 02:13pm PT
Well, our hyrdo is powering you down there and the costs of transmission are not "expensive" - the nation's transmission infrastructure is what it is and it costs what it costs regardless of the power source.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Dec 14, 2018 - 02:32pm PT
When you pay your electric bill you are paying an energy component and a distribution and transmission component. Here in San Diego it is split 50-50 between them. Retail power at the lowest tier is around 30 cents a kWh, wholesale it is around 4 cents a kWh.

A Google server farm uses around 80Mw of power, that is a significant portion of the output of a power plant. I understand that they build them next to power plants so they get choice rates and less distribution losses. System inefficiency amounts to losses of 8-15%.

The best rates will be directly at the source.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Dec 14, 2018 - 03:27pm PT
Well put Jon. Thanks.

Healyj, the transmission loss of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is 3% per 1000km. For High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) is 7 % per 1000km. So yes, it does get "expensive" to transfer electricity long distances. And as Jon confirmed, electricity is cheaper at the source. So no, it doesn't just "cost what it costs regardless of source"
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Feb 4, 2019 - 02:23pm PT
Yeah, this makes cryptocurrency sound like a good deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/04/quadrigacx-canada-cryptocurrency-exchange-locked-gerald-cotten

Oops. Nothing Mickey Mouse about that at all.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 4, 2019 - 02:51pm PT
A greedy sucker is born every minute - zero sympathy.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 4, 2019 - 04:53pm PT
Any worthwhile exchange would have multi-sig wallets which would require several people out of a group of authorized signers to sign their keys to a wallet to move any significant amount of Bitcoin. The fact that only one person had access to the exchange funds is highly suspicious. It is more likely an exit scam than incompetence. That being said, stop leaving your Bitcoin where shenanigans like this can happen. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin.
Bargainhunter

climber
Feb 4, 2019 - 05:56pm PT
I wonder if he faked his on death? Watch the blockchain for a cashout.
JBoone

Social climber
NC
Feb 4, 2019 - 08:51pm PT
Random tax fact.

Crypto miners, even individuals, are subject to ordinary tax rates plus self employment tax to boot (on mined bitcoin).
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Feb 4, 2019 - 10:38pm PT
Crypto miners, even individuals, are subject to ordinary tax rates plus self employment tax to boot (on mined bitcoin).

maybe or maybe not, the statement is an over simplification, when in fact it is far more nuanced.

If mining is a hobby then no self employment tax.

Does a landlord have to pay self employment tax on rental income?
Only if the rental is a business, begs the question when does it become a business?

Does a gambler have to pay self employment taxes on net winnings?
Only if you are a professional gambler, whatever that is

Any smart miner is going to mine the bitcoin as a separate entity such as a corporation and eventually cash out as capital gains scam at a lower rate.
Rudder

Trad climber
Costa Mesa, CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 03:37am PT
Another take on Bitcoin:

I believe that anyone that has held Bitcoin since it's inception in 2009, for at least 3 years, has multi X'd their money. Even now, if you had bought it 2 years ago and held until today you would have tripled your money.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 07:38am PT
That says nothing unless you are one of the lucky few. I would wager good money that
most people have lost money. And if you put more than a few percent of yer net worth into
it you were gambling, not investing. Well, it doesn’t matter how much you put in, it was
still gambling.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 11:33am PT
That says nothing unless you are one of the lucky few. I would wager good money that
most people have lost money. And if you put more than a few percent of yer net worth into
it you were gambling, not investing. Well, it doesn’t matter how much you put in, it was
still gambling.

Most types of investing are gambling to one degree or another. Saying that buying Bitcoin is just gambling and bad, while much of what goes on in Wall Street is "investing" and good, is disingenuous at best.

There are more than the lucky few. There has been(and still is) plenty of opportunity to make money in Bitcoin. The Bull/Bear cycles have made it quite simple, you just need to not be a moron. This scenario has played out several times in my years in Bitcoin:

Bear Market
Me- You should consider buying some Bitcoin
Friend- No way, its a scam.

Top of Bull Market
Friend- I'm thinking of buying some Bitcoin, can you help me?
Me- Don't be stupid. Not now. Wait.
Friend buys Bitcoin anyway.

Bear market
Me- Now would be a good time to buy some Bitcoin.
Friend- No way. Its a scam. I got wrecked last time.

New ATH for Bitcoin
Friend- I'm thinking of buying some Bitcoin.
Me- Face palm.
Friend- FU. You just got lucky.
Me- Yep, its just luck.

A greedy sucker is born every minute - zero sympathy.

Why do you invest in anything? To make money of course. Why do people invest in Bitcoin? Many do because they believe in the philosophy and technology behind it and of course because they hope to make money.

Why is your pursuit of gains ok yet the person who chose to invest Bitcoin a greedy sucker?
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 12:05pm PT
Why is your pursuit of gains ok yet the person who chose to invest Bitcoin a greedy sucker?

Who said anything remotely close to that? A sacrosanct law of ‘investing’ is that you NEVER put more than 5% of your ante in any one thang, unless you’re comfortable with losing it. I aver that a lot of those into Bitcoin are in for over 5%. If you don’t know about the 5% Rule then you’re not an investor.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 12:39pm PT
Who said anything remotely close to that?

You did. You responded to stevep post about investors possibly losing their funds from a Canadian Bitcoin exchange. You said you had no sympathy for them and called them greedy suckers. You have no idea how much of their portfolios they allocated to investing in Bitcoin. Your constant attempts to portray Bitcoin investors as greedy gamblers is akin to your average touron thinking climbers are just adrenaline junkies.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Feb 5, 2019 - 01:06pm PT
Well, I'd say there's some difference between investing in the stock of a company that actually produces things. You can look at the company's performance, composition and the market that they are in.
That type of analysis is much harder or impossible for cryptocurrencies. Level of risk and volatility is much higher.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 5, 2019 - 01:32pm PT
Bitcoin was born in part as a response to the banking crises in 2008. Many people who invest in Bitcoin are tired of central bank shenanigans and the devaluing of fiat currencies. There is value in having a borderless,permissionless, decentralized, censorship resistant form of currency. What is that value? I don't know, only time will tell,but I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 10:13am PT
JPMorgan Chase Moves to Be First Big U.S. Bank With Its Own Cryptocurrency

'In 2017, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, declared Bitcoin a “fraud” and said that any employee caught trading it would be fired for being “stupid.”

On Thursday, JPMorgan became the first major United States bank to introduce its own digital token for real-world use, the latest step in Wall Street’s evolving approach to the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether.

Despite questioning Bitcoin’s legitimacy, Mr. Dimon has said he recognizes blockchain’s potential in the future of the global financial system. And JPMorgan has already released a blockchain platform, Quorum, that several institutions are using to keep track of financial data...'
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 10:53am PT
Your constant attempts to portray Bitcoin investors as greedy gamblers is akin to your average touron thinking climbers are just adrenaline junkies.

Yer inability to see the truth in both those portrayals shows there’s no hope for you. Sorry.
Yes, banks suck, but at least you can usually get yer money out of them.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 12:11pm PT
Yer inability to see the truth in both those portrayals shows there’s no hope for you. Sorry.
Yes, banks suck, but at least you can usually get yer money out of them.

Yes, there are people in Bitcoin just hoping to get rich quick just like there are climbers who are adrenaline junkies. But there is a whole lot more going on with Bitcoin just like there is a whole lot more to climbing than just what the public thinks. Perhaps it is your inability to see past the click bait headlines that is holding you back from seeing the bigger picture.

Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 12:22pm PT
JPMorgan Chase Moves to Be First Big U.S. Bank With Its Own Cryptocurrency

'In 2017, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, declared Bitcoin a “fraud” and said that any employee caught trading it would be fired for being “stupid.”

On Thursday, JPMorgan became the first major United States bank to introduce its own digital token for real-world use, the latest step in Wall Street’s evolving approach to the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether.

Despite questioning Bitcoin’s legitimacy, Mr. Dimon has said he recognizes blockchain’s potential in the future of the global financial system. And JPMorgan has already released a blockchain platform, Quorum, that several institutions are using to keep track of financial data...'

Yes, pretty funny but not unexpected. I had mentioned last year that all the negative talk from bankers about Bitcoin and crypto was just a smoke screen while they were feverishly working behind the scenes to get in on the action.

Of course, JPMorgan Coin has nothing to do with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is permissionless, trustless, decentralized and borderless. JPMorgan Coin is permissioned, trusting, centralized and bordered.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 12:52pm PT
it is your inability to see past the click bait headlines that is holding you back from seeing the bigger picture.

Dood! Grab a paper bag and breathe into it! Nice and easy. Yer taking this way too seriously! Besides, what you are also missing is that I’m trying to help you. Really!

The “big picture”? That nitcoin is gonna save us from the evil banks?
Banks are just a fact of life - deal with it.

The “big picture” that zitcoin is a rational investment? What else am I missing? Do tell.
If it is so clear to you then you should be easily able to explain it to a crankloon.
Start with why I need (or should want) Bitchcoin. Remember, make it simple.
EdwardT

Trad climber
Retired
Feb 15, 2019 - 01:27pm PT
Yes, there are people in Bitcoin just hoping to get rich quick just like there are climbers who are adrenaline junkies. But there is a whole lot more going on with Bitcoin just like there is a whole lot more to climbing than just what the public thinks.

I have no idea about what's going on with bitcoin, other than it's steadily dropped in value over the last 14 months.

Bitcoin futures began trading on 12/17/17. It traded right up to $20,000 on that date. Today, it's trading at $3555.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
Feb 15, 2019 - 01:39pm PT
Chase is using a blockchain technology to back a method for doing very large international monetary transfers faster and in a more on-demand way than is possible with SWIFT.
This is not a cryptocurrency and is neither a consumer tool or an investment vehicle.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 15, 2019 - 02:50pm PT
EdwardT- Nice cherry picking just like in the climate change thread. Bitcoin started 10 years ago at a fraction of a penny. It continues to make higher highs and higher lows during it's cycles. It's doing just fine.

SteveP- I agree. Calling it a crypto is a joke, but they sure are marketing it that way. Replacing Swift is long overdue. XRP was hoping to do that, but now is dead man walking(which is a good thing), with Chase entering the field.

Reilly- I get that you like to troll, but when you post lazy, incorrect articles or say a bunch of nonsense, I'm going to respond because there are people who read threads for information. You may think it's a bunch of crap, but others may not. Heck, even the doubters may learn a thing or two.

You say "banks suck, deal with it". Well, other people don't want to just deal with it. We believe there is better concept of what we call money and how the banking system works. Every generation from now on will grow up in a digital world and look back on current money and banking like we look back at trading beads and shells.

Why Bitcoin? Because I don't need anybody's permission for how, where, when and why I use it. I don't need to trust someone else to hold it for me. It is censorship resistant and can't be confiscated. It is borderless, I can take it anywhere. You may not care about any of these things, but plenty of do.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Feb 21, 2019 - 01:43pm PT
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/


Look carefully at the 51% hacks, and what that means for who is going to best be able to game the system.

This concept would seem to indicate that the largest cryptocurrencies are going to be the most protected from these attacks and thus more safe place to park money. It would indicate some market pressures for different exchanges to consolidate for the protection of scale.

But look how the U.S. military outspends the world to effectively deal with the same thing- to be able to maintain control. Don't you think someone is out there trying to do the same thing with even the biggest cryptocurrencies? If you combine brute force compute with espionage to control other bitcoin miners, seems like someone with a lot more money than moral inhibitions and a decent vision can make a huge multiple return on their investment.


Even if currencies try to roll back to an earlier time point before a hack, there are going to be winners and losers and not all participants will want to roll back, and it will trigger a fork like the Etherium vs. Etherium Classic. This process itself renders all participants more vulnerable to future attacks because it takes less compute power to dominate the two smaller distributed databases that remain.
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
Feb 21, 2019 - 02:24pm PT
Why Bitcoin? Because I don't need anybody's permission for how, where, when and why I use it. I don't need to trust someone else to hold it for me. It is censorship resistant and can't be confiscated. It is borderless, I can take it anywhere. You may not care about any of these things, but plenty of do.

Is this so? Exchanges and places that sell coins in general have restrictions on who can trade/buy there and want to ID the person even heavier than banks do for new accounts now. Many won't deal with Americans at all.
Coins can be confiscated for sure...in a sense that court can order to pay USD, and then it's your problem if you want to cash out your coins or get the money somewhere else: they'll get it. Taxes on multiple currencies trading are going to be a nightmare, since recently, by the way. Governments ain't fools to let the shadow economy get too big and let tax revenue escape... If cryptocurrencies stay, they'll be regulated and tracked as much as regular currencies, eventually.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 21, 2019 - 03:56pm PT
Is this so? Exchanges and places that sell coins in general have restrictions on who can trade/buy there and want to ID the person even heavier than banks do for new accounts now. Many won't deal with Americans at all.
Coins can be confiscated for sure...in a sense that court can order to pay USD, and then it's your problem if you want to cash out your coins or get the money somewhere else: they'll get it. Taxes on multiple currencies trading are going to be a nightmare, since recently, by the way. Governments ain't fools to let the shadow economy get too big and let tax revenue escape... If cryptocurrencies stay, they'll be regulated and tracked as much as regular currencies, eventually.

Coinbase alone has over 25 million accounts, so plenty of Americans are willing to deal with the hassle to own some Bitcoin. That being said, there are plenty of ways to buy, sell, trade Bitcoin without ever having to dox yourself.

Nice try on "confiscating" Bitcoin.

Of course the government wants their piece, and they will get some by blending it into the fabric of Wall St. But Bitcoin has no CEO, no corporate HQ, no nation or board of directors. You might be able to regulate it somewhat in between your own borders, but good luck with the rest of the world.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 21, 2019 - 04:53pm PT
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/


Look carefully at the 51% hacks, and what that means for who is going to best be able to game the system.

This concept would seem to indicate that the largest cryptocurrencies are going to be the most protected from these attacks and thus more safe place to park money. It would indicate some market pressures for different exchanges to consolidate for the protection of scale.

But look how the U.S. military outspends the world to effectively deal with the same thing- to be able to maintain control. Don't you think someone is out there trying to do the same thing with even the biggest cryptocurrencies? If you combine brute force compute with espionage to control other bitcoin miners, seems like someone with a lot more money than moral inhibitions and a decent vision can make a huge multiple return on their investment.


Even if currencies try to roll back to an earlier time point before a hack, there are going to be winners and losers and not all participants will want to roll back, and it will trigger a fork like the Etherium vs. Etherium Classic. This process itself renders all participants more vulnerable to future attacks because it takes less compute power to dominate the two smaller distributed databases that remain.

Nut, good question and this is where the game theory of Bitcoin comes into play. The current hash rate of the Bitcoin network is about 44EH/s. That's 44,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. To accumulate the necessary hardware and electricity from scratch would cost Billions. Not going to happen.
Bribe enough miners to join your attack? They have a financial incentive to continue their own mining. They are not going to kill the golden goose.

But even if you are successful in your attack, once it is realised after the first block, you will be kicked off the network. You can continue mining your worthless NutCoin chain after having spent a billion dollars to mine one block while the rest of the world continues on with Bitcoin.


Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 22, 2019 - 12:36pm PT
Nut, to add to yesterday's post, a 51% attack is an expensive and poor way to try to make money. Once an attack is realized, and it will be immediate since everyone is watching Bitcoin, the exchanges will halt trading. Good luck trying to double spend when the exchanges won't let you. Meanwhile, you have expended a lot resources for very little, or no return. Its like a bank robber robbing a bank, only to find out that at best he got a bag of cash and at worst he got a bag of monopoly money. Meanwhile, the bank and all the accounts have moved elsewhere. A 51% attack is not a hack at all. It's just an attempted armed robbery. SHA 256 has not been broken. Bitcoin marches on.

As for the lesser coins, many in the crypto space are ok with them being attacked. The reason they are vulnerable is because they are sh*t and don't have the value for people to care enough about them to protect them like Bitcoin. If they go under, that's ok, it helps clean things up. Survival of the fittest.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Feb 22, 2019 - 01:58pm PT
If they go under, that's ok, it helps clean things up.

But what about the chillun?
Bargainhunter

climber
Feb 24, 2019 - 07:20pm PT
A cogent argument for bitcoin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/sunday/venezuela-bitcoin-inflation-cryptocurrencies.html?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Feb 24, 2019 - 08:31pm PT
Bargain-Yes, was going to post the article myself. Part of the problem is that people view Bitcoin thru "American" eyes and have a hard time seeing the use cases for it. But the reality is that a large portion of the world's population is unbanked/underbanked and/or living in politically and economically toxic situations. Bitcoin is a valuable tool to help people escape their dire situations.
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 08:31am PT
Coinbase alone has over 25 million accounts, so plenty of Americans are willing to deal with the hassle to own some Bitcoin. That being said, there are plenty of ways to buy, sell, trade Bitcoin without ever having to dox yourself.

Nice try on "confiscating" Bitcoin.

Of course the government wants their piece, and they will get some by blending it into the fabric of Wall St. But Bitcoin has no CEO, no corporate HQ, no nation or board of directors. You might be able to regulate it somewhat in between your own borders, but good luck with the rest of the world.

CBOE is pulling bitcoin futures...

Isn't Coinbase requiring heavy verification pretty much like anyone else? They have verification, even for address not just identity.

Do you know Kraken was previously not releasing funds to Americans asking for proof of how initial investment was earned (they didn't ask this for deposit...asked later for withdrawal)? They'll be reporting to IRS too now.

I don't think anyone with US IP can do anything crypto anonymously, and vpn addresses will be rejected I'm pretty sure on that one. (yes, I'm only talking about US persons here but pretty sure everyone else will be tracked in the same way soon....governments ain't fools). Banks in many countries do electronic info exchange now on fund movements (sooner or later one will need to cash their coins) and citizenship/residency data...good luck for regular Joe/Kumar moving anything unnoticed unless they're using banks so shady they might never get their funds back from them. One can't cash the coins in signifiant amounts without using good old bank system (unless they like cartel option)...and bank will freeze it all asking to explain where the funds are coming from (and non-US banks do this just fine).


people view Bitcoin thru "American" eyes and have a hard time seeing the use cases for it. But the reality is that a large portion of the world's population is unbanked/underbanked and/or living in politically and economically toxic situations. Bitcoin is a valuable tool to help people escape their dire situations.
I'm sure they have access to secure computers and networks and money to buy coins (and meet transaction minimums). Hope they won't buy the cheap ones that will be de-listed next day. I'm also sure they're educated enough to be able to secure their pwds or keys. You just described hacker's dream. Since they don't have access to banking system to begin wth, I wonder how will they cash their orders...and or are they going to hold volatile asset (I hope not). If they can opt to hold onto anything it'll be USD cash I assure you (I know life in non-banked system and under hyperinflation well).

If there's any kind of anonymity left in crypto...one better use it now cause it won't be there tomorrow. (may be one can dump 1st world country citizenship for St Kitt and Nevis one and move to Bangladesh, though, to keep their privacy a little longer)

On another note... looks like pump'n'dump is running...it'll be a million by the end of the year :) Any guesses where the large order came from? Anonymity = market manipulation
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 12:28pm PT
CBOE is pulling bitcoin futures...

Isn't Coinbase requiring heavy verification pretty much like anyone else? They have verification, even for address not just identity.

Do you know Kraken was previously not releasing funds to Americans asking for proof of how initial investment was earned (they didn't ask this for deposit...asked later for withdrawal)? They'll be reporting to IRS too now.

I don't think anyone with US IP can do anything crypto anonymously, and vpn addresses will be rejected I'm pretty sure on that one. (yes, I'm only talking about US persons here but pretty sure everyone else will be tracked in the same way soon....governments ain't fools). Banks in many countries do electronic info exchange now on fund movements (sooner or later one will need to cash their coins) and citizenship/residency data...good luck for regular Joe/Kumar moving anything unnoticed unless they're using banks so shady they might never get their funds back from them. One can't cash the coins in signifiant amounts without using good old bank system (unless they like cartel option)...and bank will freeze it all asking to explain where the funds are coming from (and non-US banks do this just fine).

CBOE is pulling Bitcoin futures because the CME has been kicking its ass in the futures market.

Any exchange operating in the US will be doing KYC/AML and plenty of people don't mind doing it, thus 25 million Coinbase accounts. Lots of people just want exposure to Bitcoin and will use it in conjunction with current banking systems. But Bitcoin also provides the option to transact anonymously if one desires. If you think that one needs to expose ones IP to transact in Bitcoin, then you really need to do more research.

I'm sure they have access to secure computers and networks and money to buy coins (and meet transaction minimums). Hope they won't buy the cheap ones that will be de-listed next day. I'm also sure they're educated enough to be able to secure their pwds or keys. You just described hacker's dream. Since they don't have access to banking system to begin wth, I wonder how will they cash their orders...and or are they going to hold volatile asset (I hope not). If they can opt to hold onto anything it'll be USD cash I assure you (I know life in non-banked system and under hyperinflation well).

If there's any kind of anonymity left in crypto...one better use it now cause it won't be there tomorrow. (may be one can dump 1st world country citizenship for St Kitt and Nevis one and move to Bangladesh, though, to keep their privacy a little longer)

On another note... looks like pump'n'dump is running...it'll be a million by the end of the year :) Any guesses where the large order came from? Anonymity = market manipulation

LocalBitcoins does over $1 Million USD in Bitcoin transactions per week in Venezuela. This is done to escape hyperinflation and potential confiscation.

Betty Wambugu, a Kenyan woman, made enough money investing in Bitcoin to buy a hotel and restaurant in rural Kenya. She calls it Betty's Place. She regularly holds Bitcoin meetups and accepts Bitcoin for payment.

These are two real world examples of where Bitcoin is working to improve the lives of the underbanked and oppressed.

As for manipulation, what do you think the Fed does by changing interest rates and printing money out of thin air? That's manipulation. All markets are manipulated to one degree or another. The gov't pumps up the stock market thru its policies and thats ok. Bitcoin pumps and its that evil manipulation! Got it.
EdwardT

Trad climber
Retired
Apr 3, 2019 - 12:34pm PT
Banks - you seem to have a major attachment to Bitcoin.

Have you made any money investing in Bitcoin?

More than a few thousand dollars?
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 12:50pm PT
EdT-I've been in Bitcoin since early 2013, so I'll let you do the math. Just like we laugh at all the inaccuracies when a mainstream article about climbing comes out, I laugh at all the nonsense that some posters write because they read an article or two about Bitcoin and think they have it all figured out. I respond to provide information to those people on the forum who may be interested in learning more about Bitcoin.
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 12:57pm PT
LocalBitcoins does over $1 Million USD in Bitcoin transactions per week in Venezuela. This is done to escape hyperinflation and potential confiscation.

Betty Wambugu, a Kenyan woman, made enough money investing in Bitcoin to buy a hotel and restaurant in rural Kenya. She calls it Betty's Place. She regularly holds Bitcoin meetups and accepts Bitcoin for payment.

These are two real world examples of where Bitcoin is working to improve the lives of the underbanked and oppressed.
Man, this sounds like an ad....:)))
There're a few people all over the world (but not the "regular" folks in 3rd world countries, especially not the "un-banked" which you brought up) who'd made money off bitcoin either investing early and exiting on time or scalping off its volatility. This was not a subject of the discussion (at least not the points in my postings). I'm not from the US originally, FYI, and while some shrewd folks back where I'm from made some on BTC I assure it doesn't apply to any "regular" people and will NOT be in any foreseeable future.
Venezuela trading you mentioned is probably the corrupt doing away with stolen oil money + scalping (by the same types of people). I wonder why Venezuelans even complain at all with all the btc riches flowing... (and they could have traded fiat on forex instead)


As for manipulation, what do you think the Fed does by changing interest rates and printing money out of thin air? That's manipulation. All markets are manipulated to one degree or another. The gov't pumps up the stock market thru its policies and thats ok. Bitcoin pumps and its that evil manipulation! Got it.
Oh I'm highly against government manipulation of the stock market as I mentioned in other threads. Two wrongs don't make it right. You're making too many assumptions.


CBOE is pulling Bitcoin futures because the CME has been kicking its ass in the futures market.
...
If you think that one needs to expose ones IP to transact in Bitcoin, then you really need to do more research.


Will see how long the scalping party lasts.
As to IP -- I think you need to do more research. Good luck with darknet, shady exchanges, vpns (I believe soon won't be possible to use them with any trustworthy exchanges or brokers) and all (especially with cashing out the 1s and 0s eventually)...if the law man needs to find you: they will, and transparency will only increase over time. Or, the criminals will, before the law...of course one can just keep it all in the hard ledger and take it to the grave.

To reiterate, my points were/remain that bitcoin is: a) not anonymous (and will not be) b) fun for scalping c) will be highly regulated and tracked by all governments and has its place and (limited) usefulness under such conditions
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 03:51pm PT
Former- I personally know people in Venezuela using Local Bitcoins and AirTM and they are most definitely not using it to launder oil money, they are using it to survive.

I agree with you that Bitcoin is not totally anonymous, being tracked to a certain degree and will be regulated to an extent. And most people are fine with that. But I also have the ability to chose the level of anonymity that I want, and that has value to me and many others. And yes, that includes not exposing an IP address if I don't want to. You know you can send Bitcoin over radio frequencies, right?
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 04:01pm PT
Former- I personally know people in Venezuela using Local Bitcoins and AirTM and they are most definitely not using it to launder oil money, they are using it to survive.

I agree with you that Bitcoin is not totally anonymous, being tracked to a certain degree and will be regulated to an extent. And most people are fine with that. But I also have the ability to chose the level of anonymity that I want, and that has value to me and many others. And yes, that includes not exposing an IP address if I don't want to. You know you can send Bitcoin over radio frequencies, right?

Yes... HAM radio (but one can intercept and decrypt), or can just strike a deal with someone in person or over the phone (well, they can cheat, no guarantees). Then you have to pay cartel to hunt them down. All these are STHF situations.
And in Venezuela it's SHTF...not everyday event of our lives. So all means are good - dollar cash, physical gold, bitcoin, forex (if one can get on it), barter....canned food too. And bullets (sometimes). One reason bitcoin's better than physical cash or gold (in this kind of situation) is it's harder to get killed for it...but on the other hand, if cartel asks you for the password, if the word is out you got stuff...you'll give it out. Better than being tortured with hot iron. (I know all about life in this kind of enviornment). The key is to be there where you don't need to resort to the lifeboat but never know if you might need to.

By the way, regarding coinbase - I couldn't even pass their verification because of some technical glitch and heard a lot of the same, including already verified people getting locked out or their withdrawals frozen and having trouble to be re-verified. And this selfie/with id verification is worse privacy intrusion than in-person banking because they'll put your face into some database with unknown future use (like facial recognition) and unknown people having access to your ID info on a system with likely not superb security/not comparable to US bank security.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 05:19pm PT
Take a look at what GoTenna is doing, especially the TxTenna app for Bitcoin transmissions. I'd like to see someone intercept and decrypt a transmission.

As far as SHTF scenarios, you keep several wallets and give the bad guys the smallest balance. But that is a far fetched scenario.

Coinbase is crap. Like most US exchanges, I don't think they'll run off with anyone's money, but I don't trust them with anyone's information. Especially after Coinbase decided to hire former Hacking Team members.
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
Apr 3, 2019 - 05:57pm PT
Take a look at what GoTenna is doing, especially the TxTenna app for Bitcoin transmissions. I'd like to see someone intercept and decrypt a transmission.

Go/TxTenna is some good stuff. By intercept/decrypt I meant I guess far very fetched sceanario involving insiders from the company itself.

As far as SHTF scenarios, you keep several wallets and give the bad guys the smallest balance. But that is a far fetched scenario.

That wasn't far fetched when I was younger, I mean in STHF type of life...saw it happening a lot and is still a concern in some places. If they know how much money you got (say you sold real estate) they won't stop until they get it all. Realtor, bank, government registrar would be the one to rat you out. Business partner situation, etc. But yes in this kind of extreme situation one might lose their life anyway, even after giving out money access.

Coinbase is crap. Like most US exchanges, I don't think they'll run off with anyone's money, but I don't trust them with anyone's information. Especially after Coinbase decided to hire former Hacking Team members.
Yes, exactly...Hacking Team becoming insiders, and also they're crappy overall including the mess with verifications/lockouts. The US ones are least likely to run off with money - but if they "fall to hacking" (which might be organized with their own help) - then never know, probably no liability/no assets anyway, especially if happens during recession, in murky water.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 31, 2019 - 05:08pm PT
Short the bankers, buy Bitcoin.
stevep

Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
May 31, 2019 - 08:42pm PT
Bitcoin will save Supertopo.
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 31, 2019 - 10:52pm PT
Short Tesla, Buy Bitcoin
Banks

Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
May 31, 2019 - 11:58pm PT
Bye SuperTaco, Buy Bitcoin.
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