bitcoin

[Winnow]

Kind of liking this bitcoin thing so far.

Back in August I set up a bitcoin account with Coinbase with the intent of using it for buying sketchy stuff like file sharing service subs, foreign game based items/money etc.

I only put $150.00 in there to try it out. I spent a total about around $50.00 in bitcoins back in August. All went sell. Most places have the square bar code thingies you can scan with your phone and use iOS/Android App (Coinbase in this case) to send payments. The ones that don't provide a bitcoin ID string that's valid for a few hours. You hop on your Coinbase account (or whatever you use) copy the string to the "send to" field, send it and you're done.

Anyway, 4 months later, I still have $150.00 worth of bitcoin in my account because the value of bitcoins has gone up about 33%. Nice, I've gotten everything for free so far.

Paypal, Apple Pay and Bitcoin make buying stuff online really nice/secure.

I just sent 0.102881 bitcoins ($44) to renew my file sharing service of choice for another 6 months. So now I'm down to .25711266 bitcoins ($110.42)

Takes about a week or so to get funds into bitcoins to start with and you need to use your bank account info, not credit card so that's probably the biggest leap of faith to start with. Also takes several days to get more money xferred into bitcoins each time you deposit so probably best to have at least a small balance for shady/sketchy/online stuff you might purchase.

For the first couple things I used bitcoin to buy, (using barcode scan method) they were processed fast within a few minutes. This last purchase I had to use the coinbase site to send payment by ID string thingy. Before I even sent the payment my account was renewed. Doubt most places are that trusting (they would just shut it down within a few hours if not received I suppose). Payment still sitting in pending on my bitcoin account. Coinbase, as with all banking type sites, tracks your buys and sells very well.

Another note. While I've made $$ from my initial bitcoin purchase, bitcoin value is like volatile stock so I probably wouldn't put too much in there in case it heads the opposite way (unless you planned to use it all right away on a purchase) 100-200 probably good amount for subscription/game based crap. I've made more % gain on bitcoin than any other investment over the past 4 months although that's not saying much considering the market.

As with Apple Pay, I really like being able to buy stuff without my identity/cc/bank info being transmitted. On that note, I finally had one of my credit cards info stolen a few months back. They maxed it within a few days and I didn't even notice for a week or so since I had been using that particular card mostly just for sketchy online stuff. USAA, awesome as always, took care of it and I didn't pay a dime but I'll never use a CC online again if at all possible. Amazon has my CC info but places like Newegg, Best Buy etc, take paypal and that's what they'll get.

[Funkmasterr]

I don't have any interest in bitcoin, but regarding your other points: I like Android pay for the same reasons, and use it whenever possible (including NFC stuff at stores). For anything else online I still use a check card, but I have a second bank account setup for online transactions - so when I need to buy something I transfer the money I'm going to spend into it and that's it. That way if that card is compromised, the account typically has a zero balance so there's minimal harm that can be done. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. I don't use credit cards at all (don't even have one currently).

[Aslanna]

I finally had one of my credit cards info stolen a few months back. They maxed it within a few days and I didn't even notice for a week or so since I had been using that particular card mostly just for sketchy online stuff. USAA, awesome as always, took care of it and I didn't pay a dime but I'll never use a CC online again if at all possible.

Zero liability is pretty much the standard with most banks so USAA isn't any more 'awesome' than anyone else.

I'll stick with Credit Cards, thanks! They are certainly better than debit (check) cards.

[Winnow]

Zero liability is pretty much the standard with most banks so USAA isn't any more 'awesome' than anyone else.

I'll stick with Credit Cards, thanks! They are certainly better than debit (check) cards.

True about credits cards. USAA is awesome in general though. They have been outstanding on the insurance side of things as well.

bitcoin will always be better than using a CC (and of course a debit card if you're forced to use one of those online). Having zero personal financial information given to merchant is the best option. Even big merchants have their data compromised from time to time.

Apple Pay (and whatever Android uses) is the next best thing or maybe equally as good since bitcoin valuation fluctuates. Paypal providing a buffer between you and the merchant is also nice.

Regarding bitcoin. A currency free from national ties is kind of cool. Merchants that use the square bar code thingies make it easy to pay using bitcoin.

I operate basically cashless. Next step not having to use physical plastic credit cards.

If you have an iPhone and haven't setup one of your credits cards on Apple Pay, you should. It's as easy using your camera on the phone to detect the card, Apple does the rest in the background and verifies the card for future use. I use Apple Pay on the rare occasion I buy something from a vending machine. No need to carry loose change/bills and no need to swipe a credit card and give that info out.

It's almost there already, but your phone will be all you need to carry with you.

[Funkmasterr]

It's funny we're still edging towards the "you can do everything with your phone" thing. Japan has been there for 10 years.

[Winnow]

It's funny we're still edging towards the "you can do everything with your phone" thing. Japan has been there for 10 years.

Yep. US was late with that and even with the security chips in credit cards.

[Aslanna]

bitcoin will always be better than using a CC (and of course a debit card if you're forced to use one of those online). Having zero personal financial information given to merchant is the best option. Even big merchants have their data compromised from time to time.

Apple Pay (and whatever Android uses) is the next best thing or maybe equally as good since bitcoin valuation fluctuates. Paypal providing a buffer between you and the merchant is also nice.

Regarding bitcoin. A currency free from national ties is kind of cool. Merchants that use the square bar code thingies make it easy to pay using bitcoin.

I operate basically cashless. Next step not having to use physical plastic credit cards.

If you have an iPhone and haven't setup one of your credits cards on Apple Pay, you should. It's as easy using your camera on the phone to detect the card, Apple does the rest in the background and verifies the card for future use. I use Apple Pay on the rare occasion I buy something from a vending machine. No need to carry loose change/bills and no need to swipe a credit card and give that info out.

It's almost there already, but your phone will be all you need to carry with you.

Good luck with bitcoin, or any of those other payment methods, at the gas pump.

[Aslanna]

On Friday, Bitcoin dropped by over 10% after Mike Hearn, one of the cryptocurrency’s lead developers wrote in a blog post he was ending all involvement with it and selling all remaining holdings he had because it failed.

Hearn, one of 5 senior developers who spent over five years working on the currency that is web based, said he no longer would take part in its development.

He wrote that despite knowing bitcoin might fail the whole time, the conclusion that is now inescapable that it actually has failed saddens him.

Hearn said that the bitcoin network would run out of its capacity soon due to the volume of its transactions increasing. When that takes place, said Hearn, the network would become less reliable with the payments not able to be processed and it would become vulnerable to fraud.

Sounds like a great system.

Sell! Sell!

[Winnow]

While I've made $$ from my initial bitcoin purchase, bitcoin value is like volatile stock so I probably wouldn't put too much in there in case it heads the opposite way (unless you planned to use it all right away on a purchase)

Bitcoin works well for short term purchases. I mentioned it's volatile. Not surprising that part wasn't comprehended in my post!

[Aslanna]

While I've made $$ from my initial bitcoin purchase, bitcoin value is like volatile stock so I probably wouldn't put too much in there in case it heads the opposite way (unless you planned to use it all right away on a purchase)

Bitcoin works well for short term purchases. I mentioned it's volatile. Not surprising that part wasn't comprehended in my post!

Not surprising you don't comprehend what my post was about. Wasn't simply about it losing value. Good job.

[Aslanna]

Microsoft has ended its 15-month work with bitcoin but didn’t explain the reasons.

Microsoft will no longer accept bitcoin as a form of payment in the Windows 10 and Windows Mobile stores. The official announcement says: “You can no longer redeem Bitcoin into your Microsoft account.

Existing balances in your account will still be available for purchases from Microsoft Store, but can’t be refunded.” That means the end of Microsoft’s cooperation with the cryptocurrency that lasted for 15 months.

Microsoft added bitcoin as a payment option to purchase apps, games, and other digital content from the Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox Games, Xbox Music, and Xbox Video stores in December 2014.

Perhaps Microsoft couldn't comprehend Bitcoin either.

Sell! Sell!

[Winnow]

The value of Bitcoin keeps going up! I'm making money $$$. It was in the $200 range when I got it, now it's $413+

doubled my moola!

Don't trust it long term but for the small amount I have of it, it's been great.

[Winnow]

Microsoft will continue to support Bitcoin in the Windows Store

In a statement, the company said its updated FAQ suggesting otherwise was a mistake.

oops!

[Winnow]

The value of Bitcoin keeps going up! I'm making money $$$. It was in the $200 range when I got it, now it's $413+

doubled my moola!

Don't trust it long term but for the small amount I have of it, it's been great.

Bitcoin currently up over $1000/coin. The chart above, kinda cut the bottom off, goes back to Sept 2015. Big time volatility but steady climb. For example, it could drop $200/coin in a day and still be in an uptrend.

I bought in the 200's, 400's and 600's going back to the beginning of the chart above. By far my best investment. Anything else quadruple in value over the past year?



Chart above (if doesn't red-x) might give you an idea why bitcoin keeps going up.

Some speculate it could go to $20,000/coin relatively soon. It would take balls the size of church bells to invest big in it but so tempting.

The use of bitcoin is exploding and it's becoming harder and harder to make new bitcoins.

Bitcoin wallet secures landmark approval in Switzerland

Along with it's increasing usage, it's also being looked at as an approved currency.

Bitcoin is the fastest/easiest currency I use on the internet.

Think about this. If you had known about bitcoin (which wasn't a secret and anyone could have learned about it) and used your computer to farm bitcoins a few years back, you'd be a millionaire right now. Early on, it didn't take much computing power to farm the coins. Now you need a room full of PCs to do it.

Bitcoin was completely made out of "thin air" with no backing of the currency of any sort.

I've read up on blockchains a bit and they are extremely secure. I think bitcoin will remain volatile but the overall value is moving steadily up and fewer things will be able to crash it down. The latest was when China mentioned tougher regulations on bitcoin which dropped the value several hundred dollars but it recovered in less than a month.

There is a lot of appeal to bitcoin. It's not tied to a government for one thing. Highly secure. Anonymous (depending on how you conduct your transactions), and fast. Besides increasing usage, other things that could move it up would be big corporations (like Apple for example) deciding to put some of their 280+ billion into bitcoin. That sucks up more of the available bitcoin.

You're not going to get an unexpected load of bitcoin dumped on the market (say like a monster vein of gold discovered doubling the worlds gold supply for example) The amount of bitcoin available is known and the process for creating new bitcoin is known and increasingly difficult.

The mystery of who created it may become legendary.

Two days ago I bought a subscription that was 19.95 it cost me .019592 bitcoin. Bitcoin was 992/coin , it's now 1,025/coin as I write this. I probably should be hanging onto the bitcoin I have since it's blowing up in value, but it's also so useful to use. That 19.95 sub actually cost me $11-12 based on when I purchased by bitcoin.



When I look at the above chart, I see a lot of room for growth. That's why $20,000/coin isn't as crazy as it sounds considering the high rate of increasing transactions.

[Winnow]

Bitcoin $1,132/coin

I keep spending bitcoin but my dollar balance remains the same as it skyrockets in value. It's like a magic pot of gold.

For you Trump haters, it might be worth considering cashing out your stocks while they're at an all time high (thanks Trump!) and buying bitcoin. If it goes to 20K/coin you'll be rich plus have a currency not tied to the U.S. if you think Trump is going to destroy everything.

[Winnow]

1 Bitcoin is currently worth more than 1 ounce of gold. Not bad for an imaginary currency! It's increased in value about $300/coin over the past month. Close to $1,300/coin now.

[Winnow]

$1,665/coin today. (up $1,199 since this time last year)

My pot of gold continues. I keep paying for stuff like my VPN etc but my balance keeps going up instead of down. At this point, I'm set for multiple years for stuff like VPN/Download services, etc. at a 75% discount.

At this point, I've already spent more than I originally paid for my bitcoin at the time of purchase. It's a free ride from here.

[Winnow]

The world’s most popular cryptocurrency is now worth over $2,000 per coin. That’s according to a range of bitcoin exchanges, including Coinbase and Kraken. That valuation puts the total market cap of bitcoin — the total number of coins in circulation — at $32.92 billion.

When we wrote about bitcoin (and ethereum) hitting all-time highs back at the end of April, you could buy a bitcoin coin for $1,343. Now, some three weeks later, the valuation is up 50 percent. The price of a coin rose 12 percent over the past week alone.

While increases of 10x in a month would typically be an obvious sign of a bubble, it’s a little different with cryptocurrencies because no one really knows how much they should be worth. Unlike a company there are no assets or revenues we can use to assess a predictable valuation. So in one sense, a total cryptocurrency market cap of $70B is insane – considering there is no tangible value behind it.

But on the other hand, if (any of) these cryptocurrencies actually replace or supplant a global store of value like gold, then $70B is nothing. For example, the total estimated value of all gold mined is around $8.2 trillion USD. Meaning that right now all cryptocurrencies put together don’t even equal 1% of the world’s gold reserves. Similarly, there is currently about $1.5 trillion USD in circulation, meaning that all cryptocurrencies today are still worth less than 5% of USD in circulation.

The currency is in unchartered waters at $2,000, but some pundits believe it has the potential to reach $10,000 (or more). To achieve this the community would likely have to sort out the scaling issue, which would give investors confidence that bitcoin’s infrastructure be able to support it as it grows.

bitcoin 2,063/coin. It's got to come down to earth or at least slow at some point but it's going up like a rocket ship. It's about doubled since February.

Really interesting to follow this. It's incredibly easy to use (if you use coinbase or some other bitcoin service). Easily could go to 20,000/coin considering how fast it's being adopted and used. Has so much room to grow vs Visa/MC.

Unlike a stock, you can't short bitcoin. It's safe from the asshats of wall street. Other factors could bring it down but at least not the usual suspects. 32 billion isn't a lot for the total amount of bitcoin. If a government or large corporations decide to get in on bitcoin, it will go up even faster as they try and get their share of it. What company wouldn't want to be paid in bitcoin right now? Sell something a few weeks ago and it's like you received double the payment. At least for recent (6 month trend) companies have to be taking a serious look at accepting bitcoin as a form of payment....Microsoft has accepted bitcoin for awhile now...but then again, they're a super smart company that makes a shitload of money no matter what they do.

Wish I had bought more. Even now it's tempting but below 1K it looked really good. As it stands, I'm pinning my hopes to 50,000+ shares of a boom or bust stock I own.

[Winnow]

less than a week later: bitcoin $2,467/coin

up $648 the past week. $1,206 over the past month (doubled in value)

$1000 invested in bitcoin in 2010 would be worth $35 million today. Not bad.

[Winnow]

Many predicted that the world would soon lose interest in bitcoin. Yet, eight years after its inception, its surprisingly robust Blockchain tech and prominence on the darkweb has led to the cryptocurrency trading at an all time high. This success hasn't gone unnoticed in the financial world, and now bitcoin is being integrated into one of America's largest brokerage company -- Fidelity Investments.

Later this year, Fidelity's clients will be able to check their cryptocurrency balance straight from the company's website, providing they store it on Coinbase -- one of the leading bitcoin exchange sites. Despite the cryptocurrency being around for almost a decade, this very public bitcoin recognition makes Fidelity just one of a handful of big investment companies who have chosen to integrate it into their website.

$2,784 this morning.

[Winnow]

24 hours ago the cryptocurrency was trading below $3,700. About an hour ago it surged passed $4,000 and has no signs of stopping. It’s now trading around $4,135.00. For reference, a week ago Bitcoin hit an all-time high as it passed $3,000 for the first time.

Madness. My little bitcoin pot of gold keeps on chugging. I keep spending it and it's still worth way more than I paid for it originally. That $20K/coin prediction mentioned earlier in this thread looks less and less crazy.

You'd think it would have to stop at some point. I mean only a week ago it was at $3,000/coin. As I type this it's at 3,992 4063.99 so has retreated a little.

For my average buy-in price, $4k/coin = A 10 bagger. Anywhere else you're making 10x's your investment in a year or so?

March 3, 2017 I posted one bitcoin is worth more than ounce of gold. 5 months later it's closing in on being worth 4 times an ounce of gold.

You'd think it would stop...but it's really easy to use once you setup your initial account. Anyone that does have bitcoin knows this. When I buy things on the net, bitcoin is my #1 payment option. Bitcoin has so much room to grown when you compare transactions using credit cards to bitcoin.



That chart is the best argument for why bitcoin probably will continue to skyrocket (along with the exponential increase in use of bitcoin chart I posted earlier as well) barring any weird shit happening.

$1000 invested in bitcoin in 2010 would be worth $35 million today. Not bad.

Make that around 50 million now. Although for a shorter term example, if it goes to $20K/coin, a $10K investment in bitcoin last year would make you around a million dollars.

I mean, just look at all it has going for it. ANY citizen from an unstable or oppressive government (China, etc) = buying bitcoin. Any person worried about identity theft = buying more bitcoin. Companies freaking love bitcoin. They're making assloads more from sales because it keeps going up after the sale. Companies are jumping on the bandwagon for this reason.

It may stabilize at some point but there's little reason for it to drop significantly in value. $500/coin swings in price in a day aren't unusual. The beauty of bitcoin is the price is only good for 10-20 minutes. You have that long to make your transaction based off bar codes scanned by your phone on your PC screen so buyer/sellers are relatively safe from someone holding onto a quoted price and then executing it pending bitcoin increasing or decreasing in price.

[Winnow]

Bitcoin is $5,600/coin as I write this.

I Keep spending and have double the value of what I originally bought 2 years back.

A note about my experience with bitcoin.

I had one purchase that I had had to be refunded. It was with no hassles.

I recently requested a 19.95 purchase that was paid for from a generated code I scanned on my PC. $20 in bitcoin is like .00322 (made up the number) but the code generated sent .041929 (made up number)...well one decimal place with bitcoin is a huge difference so I sent $226 instead of $19.95 worth of bitcoin.

Bitcoin transactions are irreversible.

I didn't have much hope of getting my money back but sent an email explaining the over payment. It took a day but got response asking me for an address to send the excess amount to. Coinbase generates a new bitcoin address every time you make a payment so I have many addresses and any of them work for sending bitcoin to my account. I sent one of my bitcoin addresses (a super long hexidecimal looking string) and my bitcoin was return within a day. Nice.

Moral to the story is when you use the online temp codes, look at the actual bitcoin being sent before you hit "send". a couple decimal places and you could end up sending thousands of dollars instead of a few bucks. In this case I don't think it was intentional but it could easily be done.

According to my rough estimates, If you bought $1,000 of bitcoin 4 years about you'd have $1,000,000 today. Nice return on investment.

[Winnow]

Kind of liking this bitcoin thing so far.

Back in August I set up a bitcoin account with Coinbase with the intent of using it for buying sketchy stuff like file sharing service subs, foreign game based items/money etc.

I only put $150.00 in there to try it out. I spent a total about around $50.00 in bitcoins back in August. All went sell. Most places have the square bar code thingies you can scan with your phone and use iOS/Android App (Coinbase in this case) to send payments. The ones that don't provide a bitcoin ID string that's valid for a few hours. You hop on your Coinbase account (or whatever you use) copy the string to the "send to" field, send it and you're done.

Anyway, 4 months later, I still have $150.00 worth of bitcoin in my account because the value of bitcoins has gone up about 33%. Nice, I've gotten everything for free so far.

Paypal, Apple Pay and Bitcoin make buying stuff online really nice/secure.

I just sent 0.102881 bitcoins ($44) to renew my file sharing service of choice for another 6 months. So now I'm down to .25711266 bitcoins ($110.42)

Above is from my first post on this thread back in Dec 2015.

That remaining .257 bitcoin I had, at the time worth $110 is now worth $1,800 today.

11/3/2017 - $7,346/coin

I'd say it's either going to $20,000/coin or will crash. Either way, some people have made ~2000% on their investments over the past two years. I've only made my internet subs, sketchy vendor purchases, etc free for the next few years but still better than nothing! It could crash to zero but I've already spent 4X my original purchase price.

Back in March of this year 1 bitcoin was worth 1 ounce of gold (which was very impressive at the time). Now it's worth 5.5 ounces of gold 8 months later.

[Winnow]

A month ago, bitcoin $5600

today: $8,200

pretty nuts.

I'd actually be kind of bummed about not buying more but my potential moonshot stock is up 90% in the past week. Couple 1000% to go to match bitcoin's increase!

[Winnow]

A month ago, bitcoin $5600

today: $8,200

pretty nuts.

and nine days later it's at $10,965/coin. It's doubled in value the past 40 days.

Was going to make a post about it crossing 10K and it's already almost to 11K.

Looking at the 1 year chart: Bitcoin last Dec $734 today: $10,955

[Winnow]

A month ago, bitcoin $5600

today: $8,200

pretty nuts.

and nine days later it's at $10,965/coin. It's doubled in value the past 40 days.

Was going to make a post about it crossing 10K and it's already almost to 11K.

Looking at the 1 year chart: Bitcoin last Dec $734 today: $10,955

8 days later bitcoin $14,339/coin

20K/coin closer and closer. Still think will level off there if doesn't crash beforehand.

[Winnow]

jesus,

$16,900/coin now less than 12 hours later? It's up $7,000 over the past week alone.

[Winnow]

Sold my bitcoin last week for 500% more than I bought it for (on top of the 4-5X the original value in purchases I've made with it over the past 1.5 years)

Did a lot of research on block chain/alt coins. Ethereum is the coin to own. Bitcoin is first generation and has major scaling issues. Can only perform a 3-5 transactions per second which is much too slow.

I'm actually invested now instead of just buying for small transactions. ETH market cap is already 90 billion so I don't expect huge gains. Plan to use the ether to buy other block chain coins.

There is a ton to research on the subject. I wish I had a year earlier when ETH was at $9/coin. A year later (today) , $10K of Ether would be worth $1 million.

there are hundreds of block chain/crypto coins.

Here's a list of the top 100: (which can be expanded to top 250)

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Look at the market caps. There's about 1 trillion US equivalent dollars in crypto currency so it's not just a few nerds tossing around money.

It's still in its infancy even with one trillion already invested. With the kind of money being made, it's probably worth at least learning a bit more about it. Block chain is full of promise but there's still room for a new block chain tech or one of the smaller coins to emerge.

For those that are anti government/corruption, greedy banks/wall street etc, this stuff should be right up your alley.

I'm not here to pump any particular crypto currency. I'm not even sure of what my strategy will be beyond being invested in multiple crypto currencies. Whatever part of your portfolio is tagged for "high risk" in stocks etc, might be worth moving over to crypto after doing some research.

Here's a good video from a year about covering crypto currencies/block chain to start with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy5mk5jjeTs

It's from before the explosion late this year in value so make for interesting retrospective.

[Winnow]

Sold my bitcoin at $16,000, it's now at 13,750.

Bought Ethereum at $960-$1080, it's at $1,335 after less than a week.

So far so good.

Crypto market is unstable to say the least. After researching crypto the past few weeks, I can see why there's a good chance Bitcoin continues to fall while Ethereum remains more stable or increases in value. At some point, Ether will surpass Bitcoin in market cap (130 Billion vs 230 Billion currently)

Very basics:

Bitcoin:

extremely low transactions per second. Used only for financial purposes.

Ethereum:

A block chain platform. Much faster transactions per second than Bitcoin. Used as currency and also to "fuel" other block chain technologies based on the Ethereum platform.

It's also needed to buy other smaller crypto currencies. Only Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin can typically be purchased with traditional money (US dollars, etc). People, me included, buy Ethereum, and then transfer it to a crypto exchange where you can use it to buy other crypto. As people buy and sell these (now more than 1000+ different coins) currencies, they move their "money" back into one of the big three. Since bitcoin takes for fucking ever (hours) to clear transactions now, Ethereum is the fastest way to move your money between crypto coins.

Most of the general public has only heard of Bitcoin. You'll be hearing Ether more often as investors begin to understand things a little better.



Plus, this is the guy behind Ethereum. 1000% pure nerd genius. I mean, just look at him! That guy, Vitalik Buterin, 23 years old, has a bazillion dollars.

Vitalik Buterin is the boy genius behind Ethereum, the world’s second-most valuable cryptocurrency network behind Bitcoin. The twiggy, Russia-born software developer is arguably as successful an entrepreneur as Evan Spiegel or Brian Chesky. His visionary project has rocketed to a market cap of nearly $30 billion—as high as the private valuations Airbnb and Snapchat achieved—from $1 billion a year ago, when Fortune first placed him on its 40 under 40 list.

That was 2 years ago, now it's 130 billion.

Here's an interview with him from last year. He explains a bit about Ethereum as well as in comparison to Bitcoin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... SN5BaCzsbo

What other billionaire wears shirts like that. Awesome.

I'm really really pissed I didn't read up on this a year earlier. It's not too late to invest but it's too late for 100-1000X gains. Still foresee a double, triple, or quintuple in value short term though.

[Abelard]

hey winnow, what sorts of sources do you usually use when you're looking for investment opportunities?

[Aslanna]

Bitcoin fell below $7,600 in some trades as its heavy slide continued into Friday.

The charts for cryptocurrency market capitalizations are a sea of red right now. In the 24 hours ending at 6:45 a.m. ET Friday, Bitcoin fell over 17%, Ethereum fell more than 32%, Ripple was down 38%, and Bitcoin Cash was down over 27%.

A sea of red!

Good. Maybe this will discourage "miners" (not minors) from buying up all the graphics cards and driving up the price for everyone else.

[Winnow]

A sea of red!

Good. Maybe this will discourage "miners" (not minors) from buying up all the graphics cards and driving up the price for everyone else.

I agree with that. Really sucks about the GPU prices. Unfortunately, there are 1,500+ different coins/tokens now and growing. Mining isn't going to stop anytime soon. It takes about $24,000 to mine one bitcoin right now so no one is mining those, but most of the others can be mined for profit if you're into that, which plenty of Canadians, Chinese etc are.

I'm having fun with Crypto trading. +- 20% changes in value that would cause panic attacks on the stock market, seem to happen on a regular basis. There's a lot to know about the various crypto currencies. First thing you learn is that Bitcoin is not what you want to own. For the most part, I think the 100-1000X gains are over. Lots of trading bots, whales, etc. Still, way more opportunity with the any high risk funds that someone might be investing, to research crypto a bit and invest as opposed to the stock market.

The crypto market may become a mess, but the tech is here to stay. Platforms Like Ethereum, Stellar and Neo will stick around.

All the coins sorted by current market cap:

https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

The top 25 all have +$1 Billion USD market caps

The low for bitcoin predicted awhile back was $8,000. It bounced off that earlier today. If it can't hold 8K, it would/will be pretty worrisome.

Ethereum is starting to decouple from Bitcoin. Up to this point, whatever Bitcoin did, gain/lose, every other crypto mirrored it. Last few days, Ethereum is starting to rise and fall on it's own. It's a really good thing for the crypto market. Right now, you have to buy/sell the smaller cap coins either using Bitcoin or Ethereum. Some new exchanges are working on allowing trading of between all, or at least many more crypto currencies so Bitcoin won't have as much influence over the market.

You have to be very very careful trading crypto. If you fuck up a decimal place, you might sell or buy a coin for 1/10th of it's value or worse. You're not trading in dollars so you see things like .000354 which is either the value of the coin compared to bitcoin or ethereum depending. .00034 ethereum is .30 cents right now, which continuously changes. When you see your currency increase or decrease, it's relative to the price of Ethereum. So, if Ethereum is going up in value, your coin doesn't have to increase in value compared to Ethereum for the dollar value of it to increase. There's no recourse if you screw up your numbers. Along with that, if the exchange you use folds, you're out your money. So you have to have your crypto in one of the exchanges in order to trade, but if you are ready to hold for awhile, you need to transfer your crypto to an offline "hard" wallet to reduce the risk of losing it.

In terms of pullbacks, this is nothing (yet). Bitcoin dropped from $266 to $76/coin in six hours, ending the day at $160 in 2013. Craziness! I wonder how many thanked their lucky stars when it got back to $266 and sold.

The GPU shortage is a real problem. For now, it makes consoles like the Xbox One X a lot more attractive to the end user since they aren't paying crazy markups for the high GPU power.

hey winnow, what sorts of sources do you usually use when you're looking for investment opportunities?

With crypto you really need to do your own research. There so much speculation out there, it's not worth taking advice from anyone.

That said, I own quite a bit of Request Network (REQ) as one of my long (moonshot) type coins. In short, it's a blockchain replacement for something like paypal, but being able to use any crypto coin or currency as payment/conversion. Ethereum (ETH), Stellar (XLM), Neo (NEO), 0x (ZRX), are a few that have caught my eye. Those aren't suggestions and my opinion changes almost daily. They are a nice starting point. No "shitcoins" in that bunch. "Safest" crypto IMHO would be to buy Ethereum and hope to double your money in a year. Best approach would be to immediately write off anything invested in crypto as a 100% expected loss. Hell, you can write off $3K on your taxes so, you could think of it as a 3K write off with the chance to be a $300,000 gain.

Reddit has a lot of leads/info on crypto. Beware, lots of shilling of coins (pumping).

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/

https://www.reddit.com/r/RequestNetwork/new/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/

You can track down individual reddit forums for most of the top 100 or so crypto currencies.


Coinbase is what I used to deposit my Fiat and buy ETH.

Binance is the exchange I use to trade after transferring the ETH from Coinbase's GDAX exchange.

If you just want to watch Bitcoin and Ethereum trade in real time on GDAX in USD:

https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD

https://www.gdax.com/trade/ETH-USD

[Winnow]

The low for bitcoin predicted awhile back was $8,000. It bounced off that earlier today. If it can't hold 8K, it would/will be pretty worrisome.

It didn't hold 8K. All bets are off for short term.

[Winnow]

In 1948, 90% of people thought of stocks as "not safe", "a gamble", or something they wouldn't invest in because they are "not familiar with [it]." From "The intelligent Investor"- Benjamim Gragam.

Crypto's in the same boat right now.

I was actually able to increase my holdings during the plummet by day trading between coins. So far, it's been a lot easier to day trade crypto than stocks. Super high risk but fun.

[Aslanna]

There haven't been as many updates in here lately. I wonder why...

Bought Ethereum at $960-$1080, it's at $1,335 after less than a week.

So far so good.

Oopsies! Hope you sold at that time. Under $405.00 now. Thanks Obama!

[Winnow]

There haven't been as many updates in here lately. I wonder why...

Bought Ethereum at $960-$1080, it's at $1,335 after less than a week.

So far so good.

Oopsies! Hope you sold at that time. Under $405.00 now. Thanks Obama!

Would suck If wasn't daytrading it back and forth with other crypto currencies! I just might break even with my $65.00 pirate payoff from Sony! Thanks Geohot!

[Winnow]

Back in the black/green with my crypto! Better than crappy Stock market! Thanks Trump!

[Aslanna]

There were daily updates when things were going up... It's like a ghost town here now.

Bought Ethereum at $960-$1080, it's at $1,335 after less than a week.

Hope you sold that, too!

Ethereum, in particular, has led the crash by depreciating even lower than its mid-2017’s bottom. For a coin whose value improved on notorious ICO-mania, the 76 percent crash in 2018 points to record-low market demand and abject failure of most of the Ethereum-based projects.

If he's "1000% pure nerd genius" hopefully he got out himself.

Even better news, people can actually buy graphics cards again. Maybe even some cheap 1080s from all those farmers selling them trying to get some money back.

[Winnow]

I don't think Vitalik Buterin cares about maximizing profits. He's a true nerd that cares more about the long term success of the platform

Buying and holding is definitely not a good idea right now. I just made a good trade earlier today from OMG back into Etherium!

Used Litecoin to purchase something on the net directly from my Binance account earlier this week.

Crypto/blockchain is the future, just like buying games online instead of those stupid store bought boxes was the future. It just took some companies and people longer to realize it than others!

[Winnow]

Etherium up 23% since yesterday's trade! Guess it's all a matter of timing and not sticking with trades for long.

There are minuscule transaction fees in crypto on Binance so buying/selling often is stress free.