Bitcoins

markz said:
Back in 2010 I would have invested all I could at the time, which would be a grand or two, so $130M to $260M, a more planned approach is to obtain the highest limit credit card you could at the time, which could easily be a few grand if not $5K, in which case you'd be getting $650M which is a comfortable sum to live on ;) 8)

My real point has nothing to do with if I knew then what I knew now. I was investing, but of course in things that make sense. I was watching some of the movement but still not taking it seriously. But if I'd taken maybe a lottery ticket attitude. . . .

I'm sure I'd have sold before it got to this point. Another old saying is "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered." It's when you try to time the market so you can get it ALL that you sell too late. My $500 becoming $5 million would have been sufficient. Or I sell off what would have started at a dollars worth to "Take profits" at several thousand and guaranteed it was a success no matter what happened to the rest. REAL high risk investing strategy, not fantasy.

Hmmm, what do these mining computers make these days? If it still paid off in the amount of bitcoin that it did to start with. . . .
 
Yeah I dunno, its good to dream though. :wink: Like when I see a large jackpot for the lottery, currently at $15M for Lotto Max and $5M for 6/49 or the Daily Grand, which you get $1K per day.

I have no idea what crypto-currency miners are making whether its the average Joe with a spare computer or them warehouses full of mining computers. All I know is that there is overhead for electricity and heat management.

Ah wouldn't it be nice to get paid doing zero work.

That is why investing in stock and bonds has always interested me, but perhaps what interests me the most is real estate rentals, not residential but commercial industrial. Another angle is flipping houses.
 
markz said:
I have no idea what crypto-currency miners are making whether its the average Joe with a spare computer or them warehouses full of mining computers. All I know is that there is overhead for electricity and heat management.

Ah wouldn't it be nice to get paid doing zero work.

That is why investing in stock and bonds has always interested me, but perhaps what interests me the most is real estate rentals, not residential but commercial industrial. Another angle is flipping houses.

I can tell you that a single $400 graphics card is making me $1.57/day right now, and costing me maybe $0.25 of electricity at the moment. If what i am mining ( ethereum ) remains fixed in value ( unlikely ), my payback point for the electricity and purchase of the graphics card is around a year. the profit comes later. If ethereum jumps to $1000/eth and beyond, then i really profit..

Why do i mine then? well.. i have spare hardware lying around, so why not?

My biggest money maker this year is my vanguard index fund. It's returned around 10% this year. I love it because it requires the least attention.. whereas most other forms of investment require time and attention and emotional energy.
 
I bought a tiny bit of bitcoin to play with and I couldn't believe how crap it is.
If you just want to transfer $5 worth of bitcoin it can take like 30mins because the exchange miners priorities based on size, and to complete the transaction they take a massive bite out of that due to the electricity/mining costs so much for using to buy a cup of coffee etc as visioned in the future.

Bitcoin has shown how people are just suckers for buzzword technologies.
Its a fact that bitcoin after all these years of under the hood engineering and modifications still only does about 3transactions per second https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem This allows for around three transactions per second maximum capacity rate.

and each transaction per second uses a massive 200KWh because all the miners are fighting it out looking to verify the block to complete the transaction and get the reward. This is no model for the future, Bitcoin is garbage, any other cryptocoin looks saner not that I am any more interested in them.

I met a guy who bought ripple last year and it increased in value by 40times, so well done to him and I guess thats what happens when you buy a coin thats actually technology competent and has gained popularity.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/electricity-required-for-single-bitcoin-trade-could-power-a-house-for-a-month-2017-10?r=UK&IR=T
 

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Thats the downside Beastie, the time it takes to confirm, maybe because its group and not single central, its beyond me. If you are making that kind of money, and it takes a year, spare computer why not, its a gamble if the price increases.
 
I find it increasingly interesting that it's the graphics card that's so important. Is it possible to load more than one card into todays' computers? I rememeber running multiple cards for video editing and the like. What I've seen of todays' innards is there is nowhere to plug in ANYTHING anymore.

So I take it you're not exceeding your providers bandwidth with the mining. Is so there's another cost. I don't think $1.57 a day would motivate me, dang, people want outrageous things in television and they're unwilling to pay that much, though.

So I wonder what will be the trigger to end tulip currency. Are you guys' going to have all yours spent before then?
 
TheBeastie said:
I bought a tiny bit of bitcoin to play with and I couldn't believe how crap it is.
If you just want to transfer $5 worth of bitcoin it can take like 30mins because the exchange miners priorities based on size, and to complete the transaction they take a massive bite out of that due to the electricity/mining costs so much for using to buy a cup of coffee etc as visioned in the future.

Bitcoin has shown how people are just suckers for buzzword technologies.
Its a fact that bitcoin after all these years of under the hood engineering and modifications still only does about 3transactions per second https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem This allows for around three transactions per second maximum capacity rate.

Yes, you do not want to make small transactions on the core chain. That's what bitcoin cash is intended for. Other cryptos have WAY lower transaction fees, and core still has a huge scaling problem due to it's huge adoption. The truth is that core bitcoin is 100% speculative / a store of value right now. There is also a lot of infighting about what/how to fix the scaling problem.

So yes, it has zero value as a useful currency. Bitcoin core is a game. I'm sorry you did not get the memo..

There are, however, several blockchain technologies that appear to be capable of handling insanely fast transaction rates. Nobody is talking about these in the media because the casino that is bitcoin values is more appealing. As with bitcoin in 2011.. these technologies ( called 'altcoins' ) are still nascent and have huge growth potential but also huge risk.. within one of these altcoins is another $1 to $5,000 value rise. Wanna play that game?

TheBeastie said:
and each transaction per second uses a massive 200KWh because all the miners are fighting it out looking to verify the block to complete the transaction and get the reward. This is no model for the future, Bitcoin is garbage, any other cryptocoin looks saner not that I am any more interested in them.

I wouldn't believe claims like that from large banks without further examination.
That's an estimate, and there is no research paper linked.. they can claim whatever they want. And banks have a conflict of interest.
What they are probably doing there is taking an estimate of all the energy bitcoin uses, and dividing it by how many transactions happen per second.. conveniently forgetting the fact that most of the computing power is actually mining new blocks instead of confirming transactions, and the fact that slow rate has not always been the case, but hey..

Actually, traditional banking uses shit-tons of energy. Think about all the ATMs, high rise towers, bank branches, shipping of documents, cash in armored trucks getting transported, customers driving cars back and forth to the bank, etc that the traditional financial system uses..
If you were ever able to do the math, i would bet that a fully digital economy would use far less energy.
If not, it could, and will do so.

Ethereum's proof of stake for mining is pretty promising as it would dramatically lower mining electricity requirements, for starters.

Anyway.. don't invest in anything you don't fully understand. Any investment will have a time overhead of researching and watching it beforehand. And if you've heard about it on the news, it's already too late..
 
I have a computer sitting in the corner, its a X58 chipset, with a i7-920 cpu in it, but I did buy a Xeon 5650 I belief it is for $20 just so I could say I swapped in a cpu. I have 1TB of HDD, its running W7, and I have an old 650 gpu, not the new 970 type, I forget the letters that go in front of it. Probably would need $500 worth of gpu's to get started, or one of those specialized mining only cards.
 
Instructables.com has raspberry pi mining systems, they say they start at $15. Since I've never built one, I wouldn't know. I have seen ads for $400-500 miners, sounds like there's software there, but how good I don't know. The ads talk about their bitcoin rate, not how much real processing they do.
 
I would not get into bitcoin mining unless you are looking to buy ASIC hardware. However this hardware may end up useless if bitcoin ever changes protocol or goes away.

Newer graphics cards are the only way to go.. mining coins like ethereum, litecoin, and other altcoins is the most profitable.

Start reading up if you're looking to get in the game.. there is a lot to learn.
 
The Winklevoss twins have become the world’s first bitcoin billionaires.

That’s right, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — who in 2004 famously sued Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their idea for Facebook — have ridden a 10,000 percent rise in the cryptocurrency to a 10-digit net worth.

In 2013, the twins used $11 million of the $65 million they pocketed when they settled the suit against Zuckerberg to buy bitcoins.

https://nypost.com/2017/12/04/winklevoss-twins-become-worlds-first-bitcoin-billionaires/
 
I needed to think of it as a high risk stock. But I never could have because I look for companies that actually do things.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/07/technology/bitcoin-explainer/index.html

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/06/investing/bitcoin-rally-hits-14000/index.html
 
rojitor said:
Seems steam will no longer allow to pay with bitcoin. Unstable and oversized fees.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/6/...-game-store-payment-method-crypto-volatility
Thats a good one, great example of a company going out of there way to support so called "newer, better technology" and just being sick of its failings.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613
"For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week"
I noticed the same problems when I had a play with Bitcoin, it really just punches you in the face that its a pretty crappy technology compared to the pounding we get from mainstream media saying its the future with cheesy videos showing how easy it is to buy it from a vending machine or buy a cup of coffee with it etc.
Talk about hyperbole. I just couldn't believe how long it would take to do a transfer or how much the fees were. The reason the fees keep going up is that it can only do around 3 transactions per second thus the miners would rather concentrate on people who want to buy a large amount of bitcoin as the reward vs the electricity spent is more worth their while.

The other thing people should note is that the new CME bitcoin futures are that its purely settled in cash, meaning no money ever goes in or out of bitcoin in the trading, its purely betting on the future price. The main idea of it is so that large amounts of money can invest in it and not have actually touch bitcoin itself or worry that it will disappear from their account like bitcoin has known to do.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bitcoin-futures-cme-terms-2017-11?r=US&IR=T

One dubious theory I had was the reason why Bitcoin is going up is that if in the massive futures market with 100's of times more money is going to be put into betting where its going then it could be its being bought up so massive shorting can be made more profitable via futures price betting than bidding it up.
 
One of the problems with transaction fees is that a lot of bitcoin apps / clients don't easily let you set custom fees. The default fee that an app shows you might be $20, but you could choose to pay a smaller fee if the client was set up for that.

For moving between personal accounts and things that aren't urgent, fees can be set much lower. It will take longer for the transaction to get confirmed, but we're talking about the difference between a $20 fee and a $1 fee.

There are other promising improvements like SegWit:

"Segwit introduces the concept of block weight which changes the way the transaction size is computed by splitting the signatures in a different area — you can typically save 35% of the fee paid when sending a transaction immediately. When computing a Segwit signature, the previous transactions do not need to be processed by the device, and each input is only processed once during the signature process, leading up to a 60% time optimization in the signature process."

Another interesting development is the Lightning Network:

"It is expected that normal use of the Lightning Network consists of opening a payment channel by committing a funding transaction to the relevant blockchain, followed by making any number of Lightning transactions that update the tentative distribution of the channel's funds without broadcasting to the blockchain, followed by closing the payment channel by broadcasting the final version of the transaction to distribute the channel's funds."
 
TheBeastie said:
One dubious theory I had was the reason why Bitcoin is going up is that if in the massive futures market with 100's of times more money is going to be put into betting where its going then it could be its being bought up so massive shorting can be made more profitable via futures price betting than bidding it up.

Not sure it's so dubious, maybe you've found the specific motivation to 'Why now?' Maybe I should have looked into buying an option when it was $800. But that's gambling, I'd rather stick to investing. I don't know that there's a stock to option anyway.

The basic concept is 'Investor Pressure.' Tulip Mania, the only reason for it was people just HAD to have them. Apple tends to be 'Over Bought,' so the price is always above the practical market value. This causes some volatility but the long term direction remains up, as long as you can miss the occasional dip in a bad economy. Someday Apple won't seem so kewl anymore. What happens to your overbought stock then. . . ?

Basically what's making it go up so fast is the fact that it IS going up so fast. People tend to buy too late. But there's so many buying to late that there's the next succor to sell to, so you accidentally make money. The moment someone like me bows to investor pressure and buys before it's too late, that'll be when it's already too late.

So if I tell you I couldn't help myself and I bought some just for a few weeks or something, that'll mean you've got to sell while you're reading my post. If it isn't already too late to sell it ever. Once everyone is trying to sell, it'll drop like a rock. Try reading about when Volkswagen became the highest market cap stock on Friday at closing and the long weekend those who held the stock suffered through. But the people who got it sold before closing on Friday were happy.
 
Came across this article from Bitcoin.com, it talks about how Bitcoins network is struggling. Never thought I would see a quite negative article on Bitcoin on Bitcoin.com
I also saw this good interview on CNBC where the presenter constantly asked these "crypto coin" experts, "if some of the 1000's of other cyrpto coins are faster and safe and better than Bitcoin in everyway, why would I bother buying Bitcoin?". And they basically didn't have an answer, it was pretty much just funny, their only answer was Bitcoin is more well known and well thats what happens.

https://news.bitcoin.com/200000-unconfirmed-transactions-pile-another-crazy-day-bitcoin/
Exchanges overloaded. DDoS attacks. Huge price spikes, flash crashes, and order cancellations. Over 200k transactions queued, some for more than 24 hours, in the mempool – despite paying high fees. Just another crazy day in bitcoin, a land where every day seems to be wilder than the last, including higher highs, bigger swings, and record-breaking numbers across the board.
 
TheBeastie said:
"if some of the 1000's of other cyrpto coins are faster and safe and better than Bitcoin in everyway, why would I bother buying Bitcoin?"

One reason is that bitcoin's software changes and bitcoin can adapt. If other cryptocurrencies have features that would be advantageous, bitcoin can adopt them.

Not to mention, most other cryptocurrencies are probably only faster because they aren't experiencing the huge demand that bitcoin is.
 
TheBeastie said:
]And they basically didn't have an answer, it was pretty much just funny, their only answer was Bitcoin is more well known and well thats what happens.

But that really is the story. When you hear a stock is "Overbought" it means that it is priced above its' value but investor pressure drives it up. That's what has been going on with Bitcoin, no question.

I feel like I should check the news before I post a question like "So what happens next?"

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/07/technology/nicehash-bitcoin-theft-hacking/index.html?

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/07/technology/bitcoin-energy-environment/index.html
 
I think it will go MUCH MUCH higher. If the Value of Bitcoin takes over as the main currency for the planet it is positioned to be in the neighbourhood of 20-100million/coin. Even higher as the value of the USD or what every old fake currency gets deflated as people loose interest in the old shit...

The trick is to sell off enough of mine to pay off our house before the back quits accepting the CDN dolar ;)
 
Arlo is right, I think its best to hold onto to it, and figure out how to pay off your inital investment. I keep thinking of those ex-Facebook founder twins who dumped $15M into Bitcoin from their $65M fb judgement. Just have to pay attention and time it just right so you dont lose too much by selling off a portion too early.

1 Bitcoin is worth $22,192usd

2013 that they owned almost $11 million worth of bitcoins. If they retained that stake it would be valued at more than $1.7 billion today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
 
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