Bitcoin or other Crypto? Anyone into it?

[High Lord Tolkien]

I just bought some Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Just a couple of hundred worth to see what it's all about.

I'm using Coinbase to manage it all.
It has a nice interface.
It's been an hour and I've already made $3.26

Any tips?
Any horror stories?


Seems a lot like penny stocks to me.
But what the hell, I'm in.

[Avatar]

Nah, never got into it. Let us know how it goes. You mining or just speculating?

--A

[aTOMiC]

HLT, I use coinbase and Robinhood.
I bought dogecoin early last year when it was at .003 and ended up with about 25,000 doge. I didn't think at the time anything would come of it but when the price jumped above .10 I made a healthy profit. Of course now I wish I had held onto it a bit longer since it has continued to rise to a peak of .69 a week ago.
I have a small amount of Bitcoin and have bought other crypto as speculative investment. The next target is Safemoon which is still hard to get and requires a number of steps and apps to buy.
So far for me crypto has been a fun and positive investment experience.

[Fist and Faith]

My daughter just had a cryptocurrency assignment in her economics class. She didn't understand it, and I tried to help her. That's some confusing assignment she had!

[High Lord Tolkien]

Fist, yeah I'm trying to explain what crypto is to my wife. I get a few sentences in and then I don't understand it anymore either.

Tom, I'll have to check out Safemoon.

Also, literally 24 hours after I got into this whole thing the market tanked. and Elon Musk came out against Bitcoin

I'm the kiss of death.



(It came mostly back up since then btw)

[peter]

I sort of get it, but as I understand it the trick is to get into mining a new currency in its early days. With bitcoin I think it might be a bit late in the day; the cost of the currency itself is too high for it to be a viable investment option for most people, and the possibility of loosing value (when for instance someone like Musk publicly dumps their coin, too high). Mining activity in the early days of an emergent currency seems to be potentially profitable (if I have it right, you are 'solving' the encryption codes for each transaction in so doing, for which you are paid in the currency). If you hit it right, the currency you are mining can skyrocket in value, like to the tune of thousands of times, in which case you hit serious paydirt. What I don't get is why mining is such an energy consuming business (the reason Musk apparently pulled his investment - I bet there was more to it, like he was shorting his own stock or something)? Apparently it is a seriously non-green activity, which renders crypto as a questionable form of investment to be entering at this particular time.

But with the major economies printing money like there is no tomorrow and borrowing across the world up into the gazillions a period of hyperinflation and currency collapse is almost inevitable in short order and as a safe(er) harbor to protect against this, even the risks of cryptocurrency may be worth a punt.

[Linna Heartbooger]

Bitcoin or other Crypto? Anyone into it?

Woah, it's so funny that you ask that just now... just this weekend, I became FASCINATED with a type of NFT ("Non-Fungible Token" - a kind of Virtual asset!) that one typically buys just with cryptocurrency.

I'm so obsessed/curious in fact, I've been having dreams that feature cryptocurrency! ("what have u been dreaming lately?" thread.)
...including a dream that was literally about posting on this thread.
(gahhh - maybe that's more about me missing the Watch than about Bitcoin!!)

Weird thing is, I still don't get it...
...cryptocurrency is like this word that's a label for something...
...but what the heck it actually is, I still haven't quite wrapped my head around.
(Fist, I'm with you!)

About that...
i was talking to some total geek peeps who -have- done some research and I -think- are more clued-in about this than I am.
I confessed my ignorance, and one was like, "well. you could read the original Whitepaper. By Satoshi Nakamoto."
I searched up the website, thought about it...
...and now I've put a hold on a library book that's like "Cryptocurrency for Dummies."
<sigh>
(Hilariously, the author seems to be listed by a one-word internet handle?)

Also, is anyone else FASCINATED by the backstory with Satoshi putting the idea out into the world and then "going dark"? Intriguing.

Seems a lot like penny stocks to me.
But what the hell, I'm in.

Booyah!
Rocket... to ...the moon, baby?
(*sniff* )

Rigel and and I JemCheeta had a fun convo. about like, "wut is up with cryptocurrency mining, ETC.?" recently!

So yeah, I'm mostly interested in it from a "analyze what on EARTH is happening with this new technology and how it's impacting the world" perspective than "I'm planning to get skin in the game" perspective.

ALSO!

I bought dogecoin

Atomic, this is sooooo you!
lol, dogecoin. you bought dogecoin.
anyway, more seriously, (b/c money is a very serious topic, rite?) 0.003 --> 0.10 --> 0.69 ...woahhhh.

[Rigel]

Crypto in a nutshell:
Imagine we go back to the gold standard except there's not any actual gold and, just for kicks, we make it so computationally intensive to send a payment that you have to burn a gallon of oil every time you do.

[Skyweir]

Seems reasonable enough ... but Ive always held the belief that it is a get rich quick initiative that in reality delivers at best modest reward.

More power to you all who give it a crack ..


I have limited resources and am not interested in investing in financial risk. If I had bags of money .. then maybe Id be more keen ..

I tend to think if it sounds too good to be true, and looks too good to be true .. the probability IS likely too good to be true

[Skyweir]

Plus I got irritated by the bitcoin proselyters on social media and calling .. to sell me a windfall that Ill regret not taking.

That turns me off cold.

My son however, has had some small success with his investments in bitcoin/cryptocurrency but only after a short loss.

[Rigel]

Bitcoin bubble bursts overnight, dragging down stocks

The title is a little misleading; while there was an overnight drop, it's really just down quite a bit over the last few weeks.

This brings us to one of the main problems of crypto: stability. With massive fluctuations in price like this, you can't hold it for any length of time.

[Skyweir]

Precisely why I’m not keen to invest what little coin I have in an unstable market.

[Skyweir]

Bitcoin yoyos wildly dipping 30% in one single day - opportunity or cause for fiscal caution?

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/ni ... ning-point

Meanwhile, bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency evaporates if the price can yo-yo wildly within a single day. And, in the background, there’s the worry that central banks simply won’t allow their monetary systems to be usurped by free-wheeling anonymous payments systems, a point China would seem to have confirmed. Even if the underlying blockchain technology is brilliant, regulators matter.

[High Lord Tolkien]

Bitcoin yoyos wildly dipping 30% in one single day - opportunity or cause for fiscal caution?

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/ni ... ning-point

Meanwhile, bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency evaporates if the price can yo-yo wildly within a single day. And, in the background, there’s the worry that central banks simply won’t allow their monetary systems to be usurped by free-wheeling anonymous payments systems, a point China would seem to have confirmed. Even if the underlying blockchain technology is brilliant, regulators matter.

The fact that China was against bitcoin was one of the reasons it appealed to me so much.
It was out of their control.

[Skyweir]

The party-poopers turned out to be Elon Musk and the People’s Bank of China, an unlikely combination.

The former said in February he’d take payment for Teslas in bitcoins, then changed his mind last week and worried (correctly) about the hideous carbon footprint left by miners of the cryptocurrency.

The latter on Wednesday told banks and other financial institutions not to accept digital coins, saying they are not “real currency”.
Really, though, the prod could have come from anywhere.

The challenge in viewing a cryptocurrency as an “asset” or “hedge against inflation” is that there’s no internal income, or rate of return, to use as a valuation yardstick.

That is also true of gold, the crypto crew’s preferred comparator, but gold has been prized as a store of value for a few thousand years, which is a critical difference. In the longevity stakes, strings of computer code are barely out of the blocks.

[aTOMiC]

I believe that anyone investing large amounts of their cash into crypto as a long term investment is asking for trouble.
Anyone dropping a few bucks into crypto as a speculative hobby investment may be in for a lot of fun provided they accept that they could lose it all.
I've had a blast but I only invested pocket change.
At that level it's all good

[Skyweir]

100% right Tom my hubs is a hobby investor too and it is literally for fun with pocket change lol I guess it’s akin to gambling, but not

[Rigel]

Well Elon apparently changed his mind when informed of the environmental cost.

According to Ars, the carbon footprint of a Model 3's worth of bitcoin is 400 metric tonnes, while the footprint of the car itself (including both manufacture and expected use over its lifetime) is only 8.9 metric tonnes.

That's quite a carbon premium to pay.

[Skyweir]

wow it sure is

[Avatar]

What I don't get is why mining is such an energy consuming business (the reason Musk apparently pulled his investment - I bet there was more to it, like he was shorting his own stock or something)? Apparently it is a seriously non-green activity, which renders crypto as a questionable form of investment to be entering at this particular time.

Electricity Peter. It uses a lot of electricity.

The fact that China was against bitcoin was one of the reasons it appealed to me so much.
It was out of their control.

Eh...only nominally. It's all very well to have "unregulated" currencies but it's only a matter of time before governments decide to regulate them. I think here they're about to make them taxable, didn't pay much attention.

As for other NFT stuff, it's just fashionable right now. Maybe when we all move permanently into VR it'll be different, but I suspect right now its just a geek cachet.

--A