Official Cryptocurrency Thread

[revo]

I invest in some cryptos, even if I know almost nothing about them, lol.

Here's my issue:
if the point of a cryptocurrency is supposed to eventually replace the dollar.....then they absolutely cannot fluctuate even 1/10000th as much as they have. In just the last 48 hours, some cryptos have declined by nearly 40% but rebounded some since the Saturday Night Massacre. Can you imagine going to bed one night and waking up to your nest egg being demolished by 40%? Ya, I can't. There's no way that cryptos can walk both tightropes as an official currency and an investment.

[umjewman]

I still remember when I lived in Jersey City and Bitcoin was very new. I went into a breakfast shop and they were accepting Bitcoin for coffee or food as payment. Can you imagine paying Bitcoin back then for like an egg and cheese sandwich and then seeing what it is worth now?

[revo]

I still remember when I lived in Jersey City and Bitcoin was very new. I went into a breakfast shop and they were accepting Bitcoin for coffee or food as payment. Can you imagine paying Bitcoin back then for like an egg and cheese sandwich and then seeing what it is worth now?

This is exactly what I mean. With these cryptos fluctuating WILDLY, why would anyone want to pay with it, and why would any business want to accept it? Both are taking extreme risks. That egg and cheese sandwich likely cost that bloke $25,000. But for businesses who accepted crypto on Saturday, they took a 25% haircut by Sunday. How can any business survive that?

For cryptos to become accepted as a currency, they need to stabilize. If only for investments, then fine, but I don't see what the point of it would be if it was investment-only.

[Hornsby]

My favorite part of Cryptos are the people who forgot their password, and have a LOT of money locked away and not accessible. There are people with millions of dollars tied up that have only a few chances left to get their password correct, or the account locks forever.

[revo]

There's also the guy who threw out his computer server with 100 bitcoins on it like 10 years ago and is STILL lobbying the town to go through the dump to look for it. They won't let him.

[TranaGreg]

Keeping in mind that money only has value if people trust that it does ... I think the biggest challenge with cryptos is simply the concept of it ... I can wrap my head around the idea that paper money is a sort of IOU, representing value of effort (I spent a day working on your farm so you give me X which I can then take to the market & use that X to get stuff) ... but the concept of that X being the result of a bunch of computer processes running for no reason other than to create currency - well if I have trouble with that concept (I'm fairly computer literate) I fail to see how the average person will trust it.

And to revo's point, I've always been told that markets love stability & predictability - disruptive technology has its place but I just don't see the demand for cryptos being anything other than niche.

[Sam]

I invest in some cryptos, even if I know almost nothing about them, lol.

Here's my issue:
if the point of a cryptocurrency is supposed to eventually replace the dollar.....then they absolutely cannot fluctuate even 1/10000th as much as they have. In just the last 48 hours, some cryptos have declined by nearly 40% but rebounded some since the Saturday Night Massacre. Can you imagine going to bed one night and waking up to your nest egg being demolished by 40%? Ya, I can't. There's no way that cryptos can walk both tightropes as an official currency and an investment.

Do you have any recommendations on what website to use to invest? Coinbase, Robinhood, etc.?

[revo]

Do you have any recommendations on what website to use to invest? Coinbase, Robinhood, etc.?

I use Coinbase and Paypal. Coinbase has far more than Paypal does. Robinhood is the only one that has DOGE listed.

[Sour Masher]

There's also the guy who threw out his computer server with 100 bitcoins on it like 10 years ago and is STILL lobbying the town to go through the dump to look for it. They won't let him.

It was 7500 bitcoins, worth over $400 million today. If true, I'd be at that dump every damn night looking for it. And every treasurer hunter in the world should be there too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/man-...-him-look.html

[Sour Masher]

I invest in some cryptos, even if I know almost nothing about them, lol.

Here's my issue:
if the point of a cryptocurrency is supposed to eventually replace the dollar.....then they absolutely cannot fluctuate even 1/10000th as much as they have. In just the last 48 hours, some cryptos have declined by nearly 40% but rebounded some since the Saturday Night Massacre. Can you imagine going to bed one night and waking up to your nest egg being demolished by 40%? Ya, I can't. There's no way that cryptos can walk both tightropes as an official currency and an investment.

I don't think most people think of bitcoin as a replacement for fiat. It is more hoped to be a replacement of gold, but with a vastly worst environmental impact. I cannot get past how needlessly wasteful it is. The fact that Elon Musk is obsessed with going electric and green, but pumped Bitcoin is crazy to me. Mining bitcoin uses more dirty energy than many countries do.

But the attraction of it is that it is allegedly finite. Once it is all mined, there will never be any more. Scarcity is one driver for it. If Bitcoin really did completely replace gold as a safety net to inflation for nations and investors, it could be worth nearly 500k per coin, which is what hodlers tell themselves.

[Sour Masher]

I regret missing this crazy ride several times. The first time I seriously wanted to buy bitcoin, it was at around $300. If it was as easy as it is now to buy, I would have bought some then. It was not and I gave up. I keep thinking it will tank, and it just keeps surviving and climbing. It is crazy, really. It has not intrinsic value, it is wildly expensive and polluting to mine, it is not an effective digital currency--many newer cryptos are improvements. But it is the original, was invented by a mystery man, and holds the most allure.

For me, long term, I'd still bet quantum computers crash crypto prices before man made gold makes gold worthless. We are a lot closer to the former than the latter (I doubt it would ever become cheaper to transmute lead into gold than to mine it, actually).

[Sour Masher]

Another thing that makes me skeptical about bitcoins (though I am still mad I did not get on this crazy train early) is how centralized it is. Far too few own far too much of it for institutions and other major players who own little or none of it and actually run things to allow it to take over. At least that is what I tell myself and I kick myself for not buying a few way back when.

[revo]

It was 7500 bitcoins, worth over $400 million today. If true, I'd be at that dump every damn night looking for it. And every treasurer hunter in the world should be there too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/man-...-him-look.html

At this stage, he should offer the town $400 million to look for them. He could still be happy with $50m.

[revo]

But the attraction of it is that it is allegedly finite. Once it is all mined, there will never be any more. Scarcity is one driver for it. If Bitcoin really did completely replace gold as a safety net to inflation for nations and investors, it could be worth nearly 500k per coin, which is what hodlers tell themselves.

This is the part I don’t understand. Why is it finite?

[Bene Futuis]

There is language in Bitcoin’s source code that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Not 100% sure if every cryptocurrency is set up the same, but I think most are.