blonde poker forum

Who got in early on Bitcoin and who is suffering from Bitcoin regret?

Who got in early on Ethereum and who is suffering from Ethereum regret?

What is the next Altcoin to blow up and grow massively?

Who has no idea what I'm talking about???!

If you're in today then you're early. For anyone who is suffering with regret from not being involved yet then the next couple of weeks are a good time to do it. Lots of very important news is coming this month and therefore a lot of early investors are selling as well as newer investors being apprehensive about buying, therefore I think the price of most coins won't change a lot for a month. It doesn't take long to learn how to invest and there is plenty of information on the internet.

For me Bitcoin is always king and I will always have a lot of my portfolio weighted around this (about 50%). Initially I was invested in Ethereum pretty deep too and whilst it will always do well I just think that with the potential of so many other alt coins, that ethereum isn't that far ahead of the game anymore.

I've spread the rest of my portfolio between 5 other alt coins which are Antshares (NEO), stratis, waves, gamecredits and monaco (new, just hit the market). Also punted on another ICO but that's all it is, a punt.

I don't know a heap about all of these coins although I would say I'm best informed on BTC ETH GAME and monaco.

I'm interested to see how much action this thread gets, I imagine to begin with very little but by the end of the year it will pick up some traction :).

I sort of know what you're talking about but I need the concept of bitcoin explaining to me 5yo stylee.

If I bought one, or part of one, what would I get?

Who says how many there are?

Why can't they be forged?

Can they be stolen/confiscated?

You are all doomed.

Even the old farts were getting excitable in Vegas.

I found out that a relative of mine is the co-founder of LISK, which is an altcoin based on Berlin. Pretty cool!

I sort of know what you're talking about but I need the concept of bitcoin explaining to me 5yo stylee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1si5ZWLgy0&app=desktop

This is the best video out there to help explain bitcoin to newbies

If I bought one, or part of one, what would I get?

You would own some bitcoin


Who says how many there are?

The pre-determined algorithms

Why can't they be forged?

Because the information on the blockchain (where all the information is stored) is shared among all bitcoin users, it is timestamped too so any forged bitcoin would automatically be rejected.

Can they be stolen/confiscated?

Oh yes. Just like money in other forms. The safest way is to store it "cold" or offline on a ledger that is not connected to the internet. A bit like putting money under your mattress but even safer. You can store it online with wallets or on an exchange but this is riskier since it is pretty much unregulated at the moment.

I am not the best at explaining this subject as I am by no means an expert.

Yeah I've had a bit of bitcoin for ages and play poker with it, but I've decided that I don't want to have altcoin regret so I'm going to spread around a bit of money and hope a few more take off.

What method do you use to buy/sell/trade? There are a number of exchanges like Polonex, Bitrex, Kraken

Yeh I use those exchanges, they are the most trustworthy and reliable IMO.

I've never really understood this - just seems like a punt on a bubble with no underlying.  Sterling and Bitcoin are both determined by market sentiment I suppose but if pound gets annihilated against all other currencies I can still go and buy UK produce.  If Bitcoin gets destroyed I can't use it for anything?

If a hard currency did collapse then the money you've saved would also become worth a lot less or worthless. Would be hyper inflation, the currency would be devalued, You'd be taking a suitcase of fivers for a few pints. See Germany early 1920s, Zimbabwe 2008.

If my currency devalued then it is because there is no demand for it.  Why would that cause domestic hyperinflation?  The reason for hyperinflation would be if the original cause of the devaluation was printing money like a bandit hence making it unattractive which was the cause of both incidents you mention.  The pound has almost halved against the Dollar the last decade and domestic inflation in U.K. has been non existent.

My two favourite crypto currency factoids:

If you had bought bitcoin using the the biggest exchange at the beginning - you would have nothing as it went tits up and they all vanished. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox)

Etherium mining uses more electricity that Cyprus.  http://uk.businessinsider.com/ethereum-cryptocurrency-electricity-usage-bitcoin-2017-6?r=US&IR=T (http://uk.businessinsider.com/ethereum-cryptocurrency-electricity-usage-bitcoin-2017-6?r=US&IR=T)

To put my original question another way my currency can be effected by all sorts of things.  Demand, economic performance, government being a bellend etc.  Seems to me a bitcoin is only impacted by demand.  There is nothing else behind it?  Or is it wrong to think of it as a currency and it is more a commodity?  But even then golf is physical and makes pretty bling.  Apart from hype and bubble like behaviour I don't understand what gives bitcoin it's currently high value apart from the asset bubble it occupies.  I must be missing something!

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=67602.0

Not completely related to this post, but that was my position.

I now have £870 worth of Bitcoin and Eth, about 0.2 of a Bit and 2 and a bit Eth (Everything i've read on Eth suggests that it might overtake Bit as the main currency someday, whether that's because Bit crashes or this rises, I don't know, was up to 330 a coin a few weeks back iirc). Then i've got 150,000 Redd still. Which haven't done too well recently. But considering it started from about £20-40 quid a few years back It's gone well. I bought the laptop i'm writing this on with Bitcoin from aria, and have also sorted a couple of amazon giftcards from somewhere online which got us a few presents for random kids birthday parties from my daughters school.

The point of Bitcoin is that it's decentralised, it seems that people seem to consider it like Gold in that whatever happens to the local markets there will always be a value to it. There's a finite amount of Bitcoin available and it's harder and harder to mine them, so it's a limited currency.

I believe the latest bubble was because of Japan listing it as an official currency (?) Or something similar to that

I've been using Coinbase since I moved my Redd into Bit, and it's fine for transfers etc... But they still haven't registered my bank account so I currently can't withdraw anything. Very frustrating, and it's also the most crash prone website I've had to use in quite a while, the second it gets busy. It crashes.

I need to move to somewhere else I think.

Okay, but scarcity on its own doesn't create value.  If so people would churn out a new currency every day and it would be worth a fortune as long as you limited supply. 

Isn't decentralised a negative?  Real currencies are worth something in part because they have genuine value behind them?  They are issued by a Government presiding over an economy which produces and exports.  All things being equal if you hold USD then you know someone is always going to have demand for them and there will always be liquidity.  I don't see how that can be said for Bitcoins necessarily in the future.

Two of the main reasons for crypto currency demand recently has been

the Chinese govt banning purchase of foreign currency, so the Chinese people bought bitcoin then sold that to buy sterling / aus dollars to buy London/ Sydney property.

Japanese investors (mrs Watanabe as they are known) need to buy pension funds but 10 year bonds yield 0.08% per year! So they gamble on currency speculation and bitcoin is the latest part of that.

The intrinsic value of crypto currencies is zero.

In early 1637 you could have swapped one tulip bulb for:

Two lasts of wheat (448 florins)
Four lasts of rye (558 florins)
Four fat oxen (480 florins)
Eight fat swine (240 florins)
Twelve fat sheep (120 florins)
Two Hogsheads of wine (70 florins)
Four tuns of beer (32 florins)
Two tuns of butter (192 florins)
One thousands lbs. of cheese (120 florins)
A complete bed (100 florins)
A suit of clothes (80 florins)
A silver drinking-cup (60 florins)

By the following year, you may as well give them away.

(I am not a fan, if you can't guess)

Government controlling currency is a good thing?

Real currencies worth something because they're backed by what?

FWIW crypto is so much more than just money. There are multiple advantages.

There are of course negatives I can think of over regular money:

Zero regulation means lack of trust
Confusing technology
Difficulty in buying crypto
Not many retailers are even close to accepting it as a payment
Volatile market

These are problems that can and will be resolved as time goes by. Cryptosceptics should watch the video I posted on the first page and it will help you understand a little more about it.

Blockchain technology is internet 2.0

The first recorded asset bubble I believe?  Tulipmania!

A Government issuing a currency is absolutely a good thing.  Real currencies are backed by underlying economic activity and hence demand.  If a currency is the accepted medium of exchange for an economy of any reasonable size then you can be reasonably sure that someone will always make you an offer for it.  Accepted there will be fluctuations.

If investors suddenly decide the crypto stuff is no longer flavour of the decade then it is worth zip.   What underlies it?  Nothing - it's all just based on investor perception.

It's not fair to compare Bitcoin to a currency though - it's a commodity.

State and money ought to be separate though. Currently the government controls money and it's the best system we have had so far.

It is possible that bitcoin one day becomes worth nothing but the same goes for the pound euro and dollar. It is possible that the economy is one day in freefall and the value of these currencies drops dramatically. It's happened before. I think the reason that a lot of people don't think this is possible is because it CAN'T fail. I mean, if it fails there is anarchy. Banks are constantly being bailed out and there were rumours last year that Deutsch bank needed a bailout last year. They lost half of their market value. If in the hypothetical situation a bank so large fails then it's hypothetically possible that there will be a domino effect.

Now I am not saying that crypto is the answer to all this because it's all very new at the moment, but just because the pound and dollar have been around for so long, and that banks have existed for donkeys, doesn't mean that it can't fall. There are many problems with the monetary system (obviously) and combined with the potential of crypto other than monetary value, is one of the reasons for it's surge in the past few years.

I bought 15 lite coin for £18.50 each in late May. Worth £40 each as of today. Got 0.50 bit and 2 Eth as well. Mainly bought for a long term high risk, very high reward investMent after a discussion with a friend.

I liked this article: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/bitcoin-price-forecast-hit-100000-in-10-years.html

Yes that's true I suppose.  My argument is that people deciding crypto isn't supported by fundamentals is much more likely that the US dollar being wiped out in an anarchistic revolution when they all go back to barter economy. But I suppose upside is more on crypto.  Still feels like a massive bubble to me but I don't begrudge the great returns some have had.

I am pro crypto (obv) but in general it's difficult to know what to read. Anything about speculation or decline is best to avoid and just focus on articles that talk about the technology and the economy etc.

Most investment and banking sites or anything linked to big media are massively anti-bitcoin. The banks are definitely shitting themselves though. They love to write shit about bitcoin but on the side have been running surveys and questionnaires regarding cryptocurrency.

Good thread.

Was thinking of starting one of these myself.

I have so many friends who are such huge believers in Bitcoin.

I got into Bitcoin 4 years ago and have followed it ever since. I think it could be the future. I also think it could be a huge bubble. I hope it's the former.

@lucky_scrote I like the ICO's you're holding. In particular Waves. I know less about Antshares (but it's like Ethereum in china right?) and a lot of my friends seem very excited about it. I think Waves could moon.

Antshares is more exciting that Ethereum for me, it's definitely something I would recommend. https://www.reddit.com/r/Antshares/comments/6iyjv9/why_i_bought_antshares_neo_at_25_cents_and_never/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/Antshares/comments/6iyjv9/why_i_bought_antshares_neo_at_25_cents_and_never/) is a good read.

I have to admit that I know next to nothing about waves and that all of my investments have been suggestions by people much smarter than me. I research most of the coins but waves I honestly know nothing about waves :(.

BTW ICO means initial coin offering and that is what they are called before they hit the market for trading. You usually get special benefits for investing before the market since the risk is much higher (some ICO's are scams).

Why would the banks shit themselves?  I just don't see how bitcoin/crypto impacts on their revenue in any major way.  Unless people are going to move over to lending and borrowing in bitcoin/crypto then I just don't any major impact.  And surely you'd have to some serious issues to want to borrow money in a currency that swings so wildly?  

People who invest see something with no intrinsic value.  Even when most people invest in China or the US they don't just hold dollars or Renminbi, they hold US or Chinese assets.  It just wouldn't occur to me to just hold on to dollars as an investment.  Why hold on to them for 40 years and just have a dollar, when I can hold a US property, bond, share and expect to end up with much more.  

We have seen similar before, whether it be ostrich eggs, tech shares, commodities, oil explorers, junk bonds etc.  One day they are going to be worth something bad wiill happen and they will inevitably end up worth something close to their intrinsic value.  Sure people will have made fortunes; people always will from the current big thing; but I don't see any need for regret for missing out.  If you have a more diversified strategy, there are always going to be people who have taken bigger risks, and are far richer than you...  and there will always be those who have taken those bigger risks and lost the lot.  

Good luck everyone, I just can't see my ever investing.  Just isn't my kind of thing.  

I urge the people that think this is all about investment and keep talking about crypto having no intrinsic value to separate the money side from the crypto and learn about the technology. Investment and money aside blockchain technology is amazing. One thing that is uncertain is how much 1 btc is worth in the future, but one thing that is absolutely 100% is that the blockchain technology will be internet 2.0. One of the biggest assets of blockchain technology is the removal of a third party. Having third parties is every day life at the moment since blockchain technology isn't implemented. They have the job of being the adjudicator and making sure everything is fair. There are many problems with third parties. They add costs, they can be corrupt and they are timely. Most organisations are not corrupt, most organisations aren't terribly expensive and some/most are timely. The way blockchain works is that it is very fast, requires no middle man and with a well implemented blockchain they are impossible to fuck with.

It is feasible that you can buy a car from someone using a crypto currency in the future and the code in the transaction will prove that you are trading a car for your crypto. It will be instant and that information will be available for the world to see. Currently, for this to happen it will take weeks, countless paperwork and it has to be paid through taxes or direct costs.

I know I've gone on about it, but it's not just about the money. What I'm sure of is the technology is going to take over every day life and whether 1 BTC is going to be worth $100k in 10 years who knows, but it seems like a really good investment to me.

(https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Bbsb.png)

My personal thoughts on these kind of things are basically that as soon as someone as low down the financial food chain as me finds out about it it's already too late. The only reason I'm now getting a chance to get in on the act is that it's the final phase of the originators of whatever it is making their billions.

I imagine a few of people are going to make a countless amount of money out of this. Sadly that's going to mean that countless people are going to lose a lot as well.

It doesn't create anything, doesn't build anything, doesn't manufacture anything. There are a finite number of bitcoins that have increased in value enormously somehow. The people who already own them are going to do alright by the looks of it but somewhere down the line people are going to have to lose exactly the same amount of money between them that the bitcoin people have made. There's no other possibility unless money somehow just disappears completely. It may be that bitcoin makes another currency crash. That means that the poor guy who owns that particular currency has now lost everything he/she owns.

The creators are making out it's some kind of revolution but I can't see any reason they created it other than to make themselves insanely rich. Now they just have to get it out to as many people as possible as quickly as possible to maximise their own personal wealth.

Not that I'm a cynic or anything :)

Buying drugs, guns and people is a lot easier now tbf.

In!

Have a v small amount of BTC purchased towards the end of 2016.. Been reading up quite a bit lately and looking to get a bit more involved in others.. will keep an eye out on this thread thats for sure!

Don't have any but will invest as soon as I can as it seems the future

This is an excellent podcast about the topic, really explains it well. I'd recommend 2 or 3 listens to digest it all.

Naval Ravikant is one of the most fascinating people  around and would urge anyone to seek out more of his thoughts.

http://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/ (http://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/)

Why do people think early adopters won't have taken fiat? Its possible to cry bubble but I just beat almost any index in the world with under 25% of my total position being sold.

Amazed by the number of outright negatives compared to unsures. Lots of big presumptions in the topic for a 100bn industry. (dont buy yet)

But blockchain tech and bitcoin are separate right?  The blockchain is the way to allocate and transfer bitcoin.  Like an electronic register of ownership and transfer?  If the blockchain is going to be applicable in the future couldn't we transfer bananas just as easily as bitcoin?  If so isn't it the blockchain asset you want to invest in and the bitcoin is just an asset that happens to currently trade on blockchain?  Or have I misunderstood?

And this is where potentially the banks come in - can they used blockchain tech and ignore the bitcoin element?

The % of money being used fraudently and to buy drugs is close to 0 with cryptocurrency compared to FIAT money.

This. One the bitcointalk forum section on ethereum someone made a thread asking about how many ethereum millionaires there were since that forum is full of early adopters. Just like you said almost everyone cashed out at one point or another because it's only been recently that trust has increased. There are definitely some people out there who are wealthy because of crypto alone but this seems limited to people that were way ahead of the curve and totally dedicated to the technology. As for the rest of people who bought a load not knowing what they were doing ended up losing their coin by not storing it properly or getting hacked. My friend told me he got hacked for 45BTC in 2013 which makes me kind of sick to think about it. The reason? He used the same password for everything :/ 

If someone hacks and takes Bitcoin won't that not show up on the blockchain and hence be invalid?

There just seems to be something a bit 'boiler room' about people who hold crypto having an evangelical zeal about telling everyone about how it's a sure thing for the future.

I have no issues with crypto as a thing - it's just that in order for it to be a good investment I'd need to hear about why it's underpriced now. Bitcoin has doubled in value in the last 3 months - why is it still value?

I remember when Bitcoin hit $1000 back a few years ago and then more than halved in value and it took 3 years to recover its value.

This was the impression I got from watching the recommended youtube video and then several videos that you get linked to from there.

It only becomes valuable the more people know about it and want it from what I can see.

What happens with it when it comes to taxes? If you buy a car with bitcoin do you have to pay the VAT with normal money?

Surely that's going to be a big stumbling block to it becoming mainstream?

I am looking at Iconomi, which essentially is a basket of other cryptos. But I am waiting for its price to fall before I invest anything. I like the principle of diversifying risk and will only drip feed a few hundred pounds at a time if I do dabble.

Also watching EOS which has just recently had its ICO. Went from $1 to $5 in a matter of days and back down to $3. Not for the faint hearted!

Cryptocurrency like most other forms of investments are subject to CGT.

You have to steal bitcoin from a particular user. You can "hack" in to their computer or whatever but you can't hack into the bitcoin algorithm and just create your own.

If you managed to take control of someone else's wallet and sent their coin to your own wallet, it would appear to be a genuine transaction that can't be reversed.

Is there a record of what Wallet it went to?  Is so can't I just phone the police as I am a victim of cybercrime?  If not then how can I ever offer proof of purchase if I buy something genuine?  Apologies about the volume of questions.

Yes there is a record. If you don't take proper measures to secure your money then it's tough shit. Just like, if you were to leave your wallet in your back pocket with £5k in it and someone pickpockets it, you aren't getting that money back unless the thief is caught. If someone leaves their wallet online (not advisable if you have a lot of crypto) and your computer/phone is infected then you are at risk. If you use a simple password to your wallet then you are increasing your risk furthermore. Crypto isn't regulated or centralised so if someone steals your money, it's your fault.

The proof of purchase question is fantastic and is probably what makes crypto so amazing. Say I want to buy something from amazon using bitcoin. I make the purchase and a timestamp is actually printed into the algorithm of that bitcoin. It cannot be tampered with. If there were to be a problem that Amazon have with me, I can say "hey, I paid you on this date". There is no possibility of charge back with crypto unlike the charge-back system you have with Visa for disputes. Currently the consumer is protected with fraudulent activity such as someone obtaining our credit card information by VISA, obviously this comes at a cost...

With other crypto it is possible to write code/contracts into the blockchain meaning that the moment you pay for something it will legally become yours, say a car or a house.

And thank you for the questions and open-mindedness :)

Time for some actual news. ANS (Antshares or NEO) are an alt coin that has shown a lot of interest recently. I posted a link to it on the first page. It seems that someone was poking around one of the exchanges (liqui) and noticed a test trade for BTC/ANS. The lack of trading opportunities has undoubtedly held back the price of it (it's currently on bittrex only) and I would like to think there is a chance that once that market goes live it will have an increase. It is worth considering that Liqui are no way near as big as Bittrex though, so perhaps this is unworthy news.

Why is there a need for more than one crypto currency - surely it would gain traction faster if there was only Bitcoin?

Tomcoin, Dickcoin and Harrycoin are only going to muddy the waters and make Joe Public think this whole thing is nerdy geekshit.

Tom, Dick and Harry clearly need their own bandwagon to hop on as they're too late for bitcoin. I'd imagine that the creators of these algorithms circulate a billion or whatever units at a cost of 1p each or whatever and keep half themselves at a cost of nothing. There's plenty to go around if it takes off and then they become a multi billionaire for writing a bit of software.

I think they used to call them Ponzi schemes or some such like.

It genius really, can't fault them. It's all powered by greed of course same as anything. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, without greed we'd all live in wooden shacks built by our own fair hands.

Interesting on the purchasing.  In the thief example though don't they know who the thief is though due to the blockchain?  So can't the police just get it back and arrest him even if my computer is infected?

Is bitcoin even legally a thing? What's the crime?

Theft is theft whatever the property is.  Guess there may be issues over where it took place?

If I can pay CGT on it (as someone said earlier) then it is legally an asset?  So theft of property?

people who have Bitcoin: it's amazing. It's the future. Buy buy buy shill shill shill.

People who don't have Bitcoin: it's a bubble. It's a clever ponzi. Burst burst burst.

There isn't proof he is a thief.

I send you 20 bitcoin now. I call you a thief for hacking me.

You hack into my computer and steal all my data and passwords, access my wallet and send yourself 20 bitcoins.

Both are exactly the same.

I think this is a good post.

I found the link below during my googles for other articles. Its probably a better summary then I could give.
*https://thecontrol.co/cryptoeconomics-101-e5c883e9a8ff

Part of the problem is it is new technology. Blockchain as a thing is definitely here to stay, however, this doesn't necessarily mean cryptocurrency as a whole is a thing. It is no surprise to me that online poker players are early adopters of bitcoin. Its also why people in the real world might not necessarily understand that currency transfers between markets can be both expensive and time consuming. I have sent and received many deposits and withdrawals to poker sites in weird and wonderful places at almost no cost. This is the value it provides.  In theory, bitcoin will be most useful as an economic tool once the price has settled. However, because the potential of the currency is unknown then it is extremely hard to value. It is a long way from mainstream adoption, even at this point, and the technology has been improved upon in the other forms of coins which could mean bitcoin loses out. The main issue surrounding whether bitcoin is "value" right now is extremely complicated and way over what I can easily explain. Basically, the overall network has gotten too big for its own good, which leads to increased fees and slower transaction times. The difficulty surrounding the "proof of work" system that verifies the block chain transactions is extremely high. This has led to people investing in huge mining operations in China, with cheap hydroelectricity. This has led to problems in bitcoin governance, which uses mining nodes to signal for future development changes. The relationship between developers, users and miners is at its murkiest right now. August 1st is a sort of deadline for this because one of the sides of the scaling issue has said he will take action on this date. This is why bitcoin has lost a lot of its dominance in the market.

*https://bitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/

*https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/a-primer-on-bitcoin-governance-or-why-developers-aren-t-in-charge-of-the-protocol-1473270427/

*https://thecontrol.co/cryptoeconomics-101-e5c883e9a8ff

Most of the other coins in this space seek to solve a different sort of problem that builds on the decentralized nature of bitcoin. This typically involves promises of some sort of high tech promise like cloud storage or a super computer. These coins then launch an ICO, or Initial Coin Offering. This is just a form of raising capital, and should be looked upon with extreme caution in my opinion. In almost all cases the same task could be accomplished without the token. These will be the things that bubble out of control and possibly send btc into a spiral (or a pump up i suppose). A lot of the ethereum growth came from holding ICOs on that platform due to the functionality of smart contracts. One of the positives of the token system is aligning the token's developers goals with early supporters. Everyone can benefit from this system. Personally, I'm not sure why a company would need to raise millions for some of the ideas but I guess that happens in every market.
 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-03/goldman-sees-bitcoin-soaring-high-3915

Bitcoin is psedo-anonymous. For example, we can check the wallet behind Wannacry and see that the bitcoin sent there hasn't been moved. However, I don't think that means we will be able to track whoever actually took the coins unless they make a mistake moving them. There are coins in the market which use something called zero knowledge proof of work. This allows coins to work in the same way as bitcoin without a publicly exposed blockchain. (tech gets complicated and I cant explain, included nerdy link)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof


Honestly, Evilpie your ideas on cryptocurrency are amazingly off base. It seems like you have absolutely no understanding in this area at all. Why wouldn't you bother to read something before posting? Its really off putting to be relatively happy to discuss something only to have someone with zero knowledge just shout ponzi before you. Its not that your even necessarily that wrong, lots of the smaller coins are revived projects from the last boom which bring little economic or technological value and are just desperately trying to jump on the train. They are also probably worth about 2% total of the overall space.

Yes but what happens now if someone hacks my HSBC account and transfers 10k to a named account?  HSBC refund me but presumably they go after the named person who did it?

This is exactly how I feel.

One silly thing I don't like is the term ICO. A lot of people perceive an ICO to be another currency when it's more of a block chain based company/idea etc

For me with Bitcoin I think there's two viable options.

1) short term buying and selling based on inside news, articles, whispers, patterns, buying when dipping and selling when rocketing

2) put 5-25% of your net worth in and just let it be and hopefully be rich

I see so many people with let's say less than 10 bitcoins who are just thinking and reading and chatting all day about it and spending infinite time on it.

If you're fully invested, like 50%+ I get it.

I don't mass ivory believe in Bitcoin or overly doubt it, I don't even read too much about it. I think the way I see the world changing over the last 5 years or so and how politics is changing both in Britain and internationally is that people don't believe in governments, they don't trust banks. The new generation are very tech/computer savvy and people like to follow things that are fashionable. Every year there is more people working freelance and people are more than ever reliant on using things that are easy. People don't like having to call banks to give passwords or codes or wait 15 minutes to verify transfers and people don't like paying fees/vigs. In Eastern European companies like Hungary you will be surprised at how difficult it is to transfer money to another bank internationally without the government getting involved and without spending 30 minutes explaining the transfer or verifying it's actually you. Countries like Greece have very little faith in their banks and government.

All above to me makes very logical sense why a crypto currency will be successful.

The biggest thing Crpyto has taught people is variance and dealing with swings. I have a friend in Vegas and on his app (blockfolio) he has all his Crpytos set up how much he has etc and it shows you your wallets worth, he has around $2m in it and every day his app shows him winning/losing between 10-50k (sometimes more Ofc) somebody who successfully manages to make good decisions with crpyto will likely be able to be very successful in lots of other things in future.

Why would you invest like 50%+ without doing all the reading, researching and talking that you described formerly? That's how I started I guess. Invested a bit as a punt. Saw some crazy returns, read and talked a bit and decided to invest more.

Tell me what it's actually for then? It seems to have huge potential for buying and selling goods across different currencies. I can see how incredible that is of course I can and in that case it could and probably should be the future.

Unfortunately all I seem to read about is people buying them purely in the hope that the value will go up and they can make a killing selling them. By doing this aren't they discouraging the real 'purpose' of bitcoin by making it seem more like a commodity than a currency?

How much bitcoin is used for actually purchasing stuff as opposed to being trading purely to make money? Are those figures out there?

Don't get me wrong I understand that all currencies are trading massively and this is no different. I'm just trying to understand bitcoin specifically.

Oh and by the way I referred to Ponzi a bit tongue in cheek. I know (think) this isn't a Ponzi scheme but the way some people push it doesn't half make it do a bloody good impression :D

What will the value of bitcoin be on 12/31/17?

$3,001 or more  -150
$2,001 to $3K  +115
$1K to $2K  +660
$1K or less  +1700

prices from @bookmaker_eu

FYP

What are the max bets on those?

Hey guys, wheres the best place to get some btc from... looking to buy a few altcoins on friends recommendations for a punt... maxed the card limits on coinbase and coinmama fees seem ridiculous (as you can tell im a total noob to all this) but lets have go anyway  ;D ;D ;D

The multiple different coins thing is definitely where it's all getting a bit weird. Without knowing a lot about the possibilities of the technology will make it seem pointless since most people who aren't involved think that bitcoin and crypto is just all about currencies and spending money, hence why it would seem daft to have so many different currencies.

The reason why there are multiple different coins is because different coins have different technologies. Some coins are created to counter problems that other coins have stumbled across, what often happens though is that you just have a lot of coins that have lots of problems. Some of them are outright scams too, just people trying to cash in, these are usually labelled shitcoins.

I can imagine in the future, say 10 years, there are only 3 or 4 different coins. I strongly suspect bitcoin will be one of them, but as for the others who knows.

Another negative thing about this craze is the amount of nonsense and lack of knowledge floating about. I know next to nothing compared to some people, but most people just read whatever they want to read and go with that. I think poker players have a great advantage of separating the emotional attachment of money and trying to make good decisions, but even then I find myself making rash decisions (I have dived into new coins without knowing about them, getting too excited and suffering with FOMO (fear of missing out). There is definitely going to be some crazy variance in the markets short term, the next 6 weeks could be really sickening.

One thing I am very confident of is that it is not a bubble. We are all people that use message boards and frequent the internet so we are seeing a lot more of this crypto hype. A lot of poker players are also involved meaning most people on this forum are going to have heard people talking about it. The amount of money being invested into crypto and the amount of new users is growing very very rapidly. Whereas the userbase in crypto has been rising exponentially in the past 3 months, the prices have not. Bubbles often occur when the opposite is true.

This is definitely where having regulation is an advantage. If you get money stolen from you (providing you weren't incredibly negligent) then you get it back.  Banks and 3rd parties like visa have to make their money by charging the consumer though, so the consumer pays overall for this, and it's the most careless that get stung on average. I think I've been done for 50 quid at a petrol station before because the owners of the garage had a fake pin thingy set up, but you aren't going to get me by sending me a phishing link. Still, I am not really putting up a good argument here, and I think that this is something that will take some work for a lot of people to get into cryptoland because of the apparent higher risk and lack of regulation.

BTW to answer a previous post about BTC being stolen and it being considered property because you have to pay capital gains on it- you have to pay taxes if you cash out back to a "real" currency and make profit on it. I think legally crypto is considered just lots of 0's and 1's at the moment. Don't quote me on that!

I don't think there is a set way on how much people should invest. I always say to only invest what you're prepared to lose. I was lucky that I had some smart friends that I could rely on tell me what to do, then I spent the next few months reading up as much as I could. I don't have 50% of my net worth in it but I find it all very interesting and I have the time to take in as much information as possible.

Short term and crypto is mighty tough at the moment, especially since a lot of the exchanges crash when crypto starts to freefall. I wouldn't recommend anyone to do it, and people that do trade short term and make a killing certainly wouldn't be posting on the internet about it :D.

Your friend with 2m in crypto must be a very good friend and trust you not to tell anyone who he is, because anyone that exposes themselves as being super rich in crypto are putting themselves at risk, it's not quite like walking down the street with 2m in your pocket but you make yourself a target to hackers. People have spent a lot more time and effort going for a lot less! Unlike poker people in crypto are a lot more humble and hush hush :). BTW there would have been two occasions in the past 4 weeks where your friend would have lost up to 500k in a day depending how his portfolio is spread. :O

It's a lot more than just buying and selling across different currencies and countries. That is definitely one of the perks though.

I would imagine that the amount being traded massively outweighs money being spent. Hardly any vendors accept bitcoin currently and the cost of small transactions is extortionate. If a day comes where vendors accept it like they do visa currently then the price will be huge. There will be some challenges to get this far, but the day will come.

I can direct you towards a company if you have a euro account but that's all I can offer. I know kraken is another popular exchange for Europeans but when I last looked on there I wasn't sure if they were accepting GBP anymore.

Ahh I've sorted it thanks mate :)

https://uetoken.com   ;angel;

Amazing!

Isn't it more likely that VISA will just develop their own version of crypto currency/blockchain and with their globally known and trusted brand just eclipse the market? Could they just be letting bitcoin and shitcoin run all the beta testing before buying one of them for billions and making it their own?

A lot of what I've watched talks about how amazing the instant transactions are and how much better it is than cash. I don't remember last time I had to make a UK based transaction that wasn't instant. Credit cards are now contactless and it's just a beep and you're done. Were some of these videos perhaps made in the early days of bitcoin when instant transactions were a bit more difficult?

 

I think I read somewhere that VISA was trying to recruit programmers for blockchain technology. The problem is they are going to have to pay someone $5m a year to do it. If VISA came out with their own coin it would probably be regulated and if bitcoin or other coins are already established and trusted, then people won't care if VISA have their own coin because they won't trust it.

The transactions aren't instant at all. The only thing that is instant is that you make a purchase with your debit card and the pin machine says "accepted". That payment will take up to 5 days to reach visa. This isn't particularly a problem for the consumer obviously, problems for the consumer start when you want to make transfers of your money to someone else that isn't a visa merchant, or transferring money from one of your accounts to another.

Yeah bitcoin needs to become established before a 'name' get there without doubt. Lolz at it not being trusted if the VISA name gets attached to it though. You really believe that?

I'm pretty sure I can transfer up to £20k instantly to someone else's bank account if I need to. Any more than that is more awkward but I can't see how that's a problem for 99.99% of the population, myself included.

Still struggling to see what bitcoin can do for me that I can't do already other than be an investment which may go down as well as up?

People who currently understand how blockchain works will steer away from a centralised or heavily regulated coin. I can't speak for the masses though.

How many peoples accounts can you transfer £20k instantly to? I would say people who live in England that share the same bank as you, a couple of hours for people who are in England that don't share the same bank as you, about 24 hours in Europe and up to 5 working days or more outside of Europe.

The fact that no-one seems able to explain the value in any kind of meaningful way makes me ever more certain that this is a religious cult.

One day you gonna wake up and yr bitcoin will have the value of a little bit of your coin, like a really little bit. This is FACT - reminds me of just one of a series of heavily ramped shares in the late 90's - one that I was thoroughly enamoured by was the well named Monticello. True a number of people made a lot of money trading the share for a year or so but in the end, anyone who 'invested' eventually lost the lot. Of the heavily ramped shares that survived, well guess what my friends, they actually had a business worth investing in.

Did you read the articles I provided? Have you read any further articles?

Even though I have, I don't really need to as I am something of an expert, hence the use of FACT

Nice to see FACT making a comeback.

I miss M3boy.

You will enjoy the next Forbes cover, although i imagine you've already seen it.

I've tried to be helpful in this thread and offered both sides of the coin (ah-hem). Crypto has enormous obstacles to overcome. I'm not in here saying "you fools should get involved, you're stupid for not seeing the bigger picture etc" although it would sadistically give me a bit of pleasure after your post.

Let's forget about the investment side of it. If money was somehow not currently tangible to crypto at the moment then it would be an insanely hot topic because the nay-sayers would all be interested.

I've spent an enormous amount of time trying to learn about the technology and it's going to have to take you more than one person posting on blonde poker to become enlightened and grasp it. Do you think in 1997 every man and his wife understood the internet? We've come a long way since then. My mum now sends messages from one person to another by clicking 2 buttons on her smart phone followed by text, whilst in 2007 she genuinely did not know how to turn a computer on.

Bitcoin whitepaper (created in 2011 I think) https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

As for everyone calling it a bubble- personally I don't know how I feel about it all. If there is a relationship between how blockchain is to be implemented in our lives and the value of crypto then I am as sure as anything that we shouldn't keep all our money in fiat money (government money). The markets seem wild and there are many uncertainties. This month and the next is expected to see some increase in volatility in all crypto markets (last 24h have not been pleasant viewing). The increase of exposure and interest in crypto has gone through the roof this year and if history teaches us anything we can often be wildly off with valuation. Look at the dotcom bubble of 2000-2002.

(http://i.imgur.com/djrKAoW.jpg)

CC's (crypto currencies) are like money in some ways so they have to fulfill 3 parts (warning economic 101 lesson)

Medium of exchange - this is a way of transferring a sum of wealth from one entity to another, this could be me buying a mars bar from a shop and paying with it for cash, or transferring £50 to a friend via PayPal. CCs are good at the second of these but not the first at the moment.

Store of value - if I put £100 in a bank account for 1 year at 1% I know I will get back £101 in 365 days. If I buy gold or a share in Apple or some CC I don't know what it will be worth in 1 year - it may go up or not. CC is not a reliable store of value.

Unit of account - this is 2 parties knowing how much something is worth using money as the describing factor. CC is arguably good at this in the short term if both parties know it's current price.

Some discussion of CCs does not clarify which of the features of money CCs are trying to fulfill. They are better at some than others.

About that store of value thing, Etherium down 24% in the last 24 hours

https://coinmarketcap.com/ (https://coinmarketcap.com/)

You have been helpful despite your zeal and on the balance of probabilities the pure technology angle seems likely to be a winning thing in some form or another. There are lots of examples where expertise and acquired knowledge in a single area leads to success in ways that weren't the original intent.

A company like GE was so good at making money by making things that they develop a division, GE Financial services, which became their most profitable division (nb, this was true at one time but my knowledge is outdated). McDonnell Douglas, huge power users of CAD/CAM, general  and network computing to support their core activity become so expert that they can spin off an international Information Systems division. Lots of car companies exist primarily as a major financial services provider on the back of the core activity. I am sure there are many better examples.

It will be interesting to see whether spin off functionality starts to drive some huge new businesses barely related to crypto currency per se.

FYP

Haha, my bad

This one looks a cracker. 

https://uetoken.com/ (https://uetoken.com/)

Love the symbol. 

Intrinsic value = 0.  FACT

Apologies for the absense of technobabble. 

Still occasionally see Paul in Luton, he's much less grumpy than he used to be

Yes. He and I used to clash a lot but he's mellowed and I've grown up a bit since then.

PS- Is it He and I or him and me? Has to be he and I surely?

If it ever manages to stabilise a bit to somewhere in line with normal currency fluctuations I can see it being hugely beneficial. Whilst it remains so swingy I think most people would rather know that they're being charged a 1% transaction fee than take a gamble on a 5% or more daily swing.

Say someone wanted to send me 150,000 Transalvakian rupees which currently trade at £1 = 1TVR.

As it's a rare currency which some of you may never have heard of it's going to take a while via the banking system and no doubt cost me a few quid.

If I decided to do this through bitcoin is there a method that they can purchase 150,000TVR worth of BTC send that to me and I sell my BTC in a short enough time frame that I can pretty much guarantee getting my full £150,000?

If that can be done it's pretty awesome. Any delay though even if it's a matter of minutes could cost (or of course gain) thousands and possibly put me off and make me wait the 5 days and take the £1500 fee on the chin.

100% he and I or you could talk like a normal person and say 'We'

Lol. It never even occurred to me to say we.

Hmm yes and no. I'm not saying that this is all possible right now but he could buy some bitcoin pretty quick and send it. Currently it's not instant in fact there are problems that will be sorted in the future but yes, it will be very fast (5 minutes). It would also probably cost you about £2 in fees. Another problem occurs that you'll never get the perfect rate if you're transfering from your own currency to another because your bank/credit card will charge you somehow and/or the company you are buying the coin from won't give you a perfect rate. One way this is being worked on is a credit card that can be used in any currency with a very small charge (the credit card is somehow linked to a crypto, it's a work in progress).

So short answer: yes. Not quite as short answer: we have some serious obstacles.

New exchange Binance just went live.... https://www.binance.com

Should interest you Dan as it has AntShares/NEO as one of 5 coins on there along side BTC / LTC /ETH /BNB.

In both Chinese and English.

So it's been dying recently...

Bubble burst or good time to buy?

I'm gutted I invested my maximum already otherwise I would most definitely be investing more. Many alternative coins are bloody cheap now!

Of course it could be tulipmania like some people say :)

Random co launches an ICO, to be paid for with etherium - hacker takes over website and points buyers his his wallet. $6m plus later he is discovered.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-17/coindash-says-hacker-stole-7-million-at-initial-coin-offering (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-17/coindash-says-hacker-stole-7-million-at-initial-coin-offering)

Yep absolutely shocking. Not really positive news for crypto but it was overdue with the amount of blind money being thrown at ICO's. There needs to be something done about the countless ICO's and the ease of scamming involved with them. In my opinion this "hacker" was in on the job.

Coindash CEO Alon Muroch has been involved in a scam previously having been on the development team for GetGems..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1905500.0

I think I am going to create a tulip ICO - must be in the valuation range of this:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DE-cuLQVoAAmE0M?format=jpg&name=large)

finally got bored of trying to get my bank account verified on coinbase to withdraw some GBP and sold some bitcoin on localbitcoins.com. Was a very easy process. Signed up, clicked on sell, picked a seller with 15,000 trades and 100% feedback, got money transferred into my bank account, released the coins to him. Took a whole 5 minutes. Excellent.

His twitter feed was incredible yesterday. BTC to 500k within 3 years, Jesse Slyvia and a few other poker players were talking about bets.

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/887012614131372032

Unless they have some kind of pricing restructure that's got to be impossible. The value increasing to that level surely depends on it becoming mainstream and with that level of volatility it can't become mainstream.

I hope I'm wrong for the sake of the people who've bought some but it just can't be that easy.

Not going to happen in 3 years, very unlikely to hit that number within 10 years but it's definitely possible.

I would eat my underwear if it hits 500k in 3 years.

mcaffee is legit mentally insane   ;dingdell;

He seems to have forgotten what his qualifications were or anything that he learned whilst studying them.  Zero chance you can predict price movements in any asset class with any accuracy using any method. 

You can model the distribution and get ranges, confidence levels etc.  Giiven the volatility, you are going to get massive ranges with any cryptocurrency, and no accuracy at all. 

Would also add a lot of mechanical systems fall apart in the real World.  You look at a few years data and think you have a useful model.  3 years later you start again.

1.01 I have spent more time on this than John McAfee.



 

Titty wins the thread

Seems like something you might say if you were having an ICO

It's all going to end in tears with Crypto's. I have been doing loads of research on these investments over the last few months.

When the tech bubble burst, many shares lost over 90% of their value, the same will happen to Cryptos. Just like in the tech boom, we have ICO's coming out every week rocketing on the basis of hot air. It seems in this unregulated environment, pretty much anyone can get an ICO off the ground at the moment. Prices are being pumped from SM, youtube, facebook and twitter spawning a generation of "experts" who know nothing about investments, all they care about is ramping the price

The fact that the price of ETH shot up 50% in relief on news of BTCs planned fork just shows how insane this market is. Perpetuated by greed in my opinion. That famous Warren Buffet quote is more relevant to Cryptos than any other asset class right now, even Tech Stocks are not this overvalued.

ETH started the year at $8, it's currently $210. If you made your money by getting in at or near the bottom, good luck to you but personally I wouldn't touch cryptos with a bargepole at todays prices.

Why would someone who wanted to sell something destroy their credibility so spectacularly?

The masses of ICO's have certainly hurt the crypto economy along with the scamming that has been involved. Hopefully it stops people from throwing their money so relentlessly (greed).

It could definitely end in tears, yes. I am aware of that myself, the future is often unknown.

Each day that passes new businesses and services are trying to implement bitcoin, this is going to increase the value of it. It's not like it's been mainstream for 20 years, it's still a relatively new technology and the fact that a lot of people and businesses are trying to learn, own and implement crypto/bitcoin is making it more valuable.

One way you have to think about it is that there are a lot of nay-sayers with crypto. It's natural because there are a lot of negative things happening and a lot of it is not understood. On the other side of the coin you have people who don't have a clue about it and are greedy trying to just make a quick buck. Well, the truth is despite the increase in price of crypto over time, a lot of people haven't made money. People who are greedy are often very panicky and the amount of people trying to make short term trades unsuccessfully is staggering. Not to mention the people throwing unfathomable amounts of money at new coins without a contract involved or having a clue what is going on.

The greed, panic and nay-sayers is what is keeping the price where it is (low, imo of course). I don't expect prices to hit an all time high for a very long time and I think people who are smart and in it for the long run will reap the rewards.

We've heard a lot about the good aspects of cryptos, and how they can bring benefits to financial transactions, but who stands to lose out if cryptos go big - who would have a vested interest in them failing to go mainstream? Also, who would have enough power/influence to actively throw a spanner in the crypto works. I'm thinking governments/central banks/corporations etc.

So I am going to sell you an apple today at 27x the price it was in January. Would you say that apple was good value? What has changed to ETH that makes it worth that much more today? How is it the market cap of ETH is the same or similar to that of Citi Corp, one of the biggest banks in the world.

Cryptos are ridiculously overvalued, it's nothing to do with the technology it's market sentiment. For many months off the back of a tide of ICOs followed by new investors seeing cryptos as a get rick quick scheme, the price of every coin has exponentially rallied. This is 97-99 all over again. In history every asset class that has got ahead of itself has come crashing back to earth with a bump.

The fact that cryptos are now mainstream (regularly featured on Bloomberg TV) and the man in the street is starting to take interest should worry anyone that invests in this space. As I mentioned previously George Soros and his cronies have been shorting cryptos recently. You can't fight the institutions remember the UK government tried in 1992 and failed, so what chance has anyone else.

  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40654194

Could you source the soros claim?

Its just marketing. He claimed he'd eat his own dick on tv too. He's a little larger than life. Take the last line of the bbc article.

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/bitcoin-will-move-500000-within-three-years-predicts-john-mcafee/

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40517417

http://cryptowhat.com/soros-the-enemy-of-freedom-and-his-attempt-to-destroy-bitcoin-and-our-plan-to-profit-off-his-back/

I read something more concrete than this in a financial publication a few weeks back, but can't find the link. Regardless, forget about Soros. Hedge fund managers circle around anything they think is overvalued and use shorting strategies to make money for their clients.

The problem with crypto currencies is they operate in a completely unregulated environment, so if institutional investors decide to attack BTC, ETH or any other coin there is nothing the authorities can/will do to stop this. It's already happened over the last 3 weeks with brutal consequences for anyone that bought in June.

As someone who has worked in the investment world for many years, I see this as almost a replication of what happened to tech in 97-99 when anything and everything soared in value much in the same way as cryptos did. Then between 2001-03 the house of cards fell down and nearly every tech stock good or bad fell at least 90%.

There are a lot of younger investors getting into cryptos, people are borrowing money to buy cryptos and this is classic bubble territory behaviour. Pure greed before the inevitable.


 

How do you short bitcoin?  Presumably there is no stock borrow market for it?  Or is there a futures market in bitcoin now?

You can trade CFDs to short BTC and ETH for sure. I am not sure about other coins, but the prices are quite closely correlated. If the main crypto's tank, usually all the others follow suit.

Okay cheers.  Had no idea it was possible.  Will look into it.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

I am a veteran of shorting the tech bubble.  Shorting is brutal at times, things can easily get to multiples of 20 a more times the underlying value.  If you start at 5x the real value and there is a lot of pain before you are proved right.  I am guessing a lot of these coins are even more volatile, and ofc you may not be right.

Survival of the fittest. I think Soros and most hedge fund managers pockets are deep enough to weather market turbulence either way.

Soros made £1bn in 1992 shorting the £. I am sure that in todays money that would be more than the current inflated value of ETH. It's small fry. 

I am not an idiot. 

There is a huge difference between shorting sterling and shorting ETH or tech stocks.  The volatility of ETH is many multiples higher.   Sterling is never ever moving to $10 from here in a couple of months.  ETH could be worth 10 x as much or 10% of today's figure.  You want to short that on margin good luck to you.  You can easily get wiped out shorting something that is worth 10% of its current value in a couple of years.  I know many people who made and lost huge money in the tech boom and its aftermath. 

Been there, done that, it is brutal.  I was a winner, I wouldn't do it again.  There is no upper bound to a short.  There is no upper bound to your margin payments.  And if the market gets very volatile, you may get closed before you can make a margin payment. 

Good luck to those who short. 

I started to watch the video in the article but when I saw this was one of his other videos, I decided it wouldn't convince me. Cryptowhat wasn't especially convincing either. I agree re; people borrowing are stupid but this feels a lot like the early days of online poker to me. Some of the ridiculous scams you see are amazing. Its the Wild West out there.

Also I'm not sure if you could do OTC shorts, I can't quite think of a reason you couldn't in this business but surely it would be ridiculous to organise through everything and it would be hard for Soros to get enough action on? There are plenty of places to short/long or buy.

@bitmexrekt and @WhaleCalls for some carcrash viewing.

WIKILEAKS: PEDO HOUSE- Was Obama Really A Pedophile?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83qWnMkAsX8

I am not talking about shorting as an individual, I am referring to hedge funds. When you are stuck trying to close your position these people are long gone. I never go short on stocks, much prefer to see real assets appreciate. Unfortunately Cryptos are not real assets they are subjectively valued and not transparent.

That makes them ripe for a shark to short the life out of them, at the expense of newbies getting caught up in the hype. It happens all the time.

The video is pretty lame tbh, but that's not my point. Investors should be aware that cryptos are not a get rich quick scheme and if you didn't get in prior to this year you are taking a huge risk holding these assets. That is the reason hedge funds are circling as I alluded to in my other post.

I give up.  I clearly am not a fan of these assets, just read my other posts on the thread.  I never have made any points here about them been undervalued, I think the whole thing is a bit crazy.

DungBeetle enquired about shorting, and I was just trying to get over how risky it is with something like this.  I did it in the tech boom, and even though I ended up, I still have the scars.  Unless you are really lucky with your timing, you get so beaten up by the large margin calls, that you are happy to take any profit in the end.     

You came up with some irrelevant point about Soros shorting an asset that behaves much more differently.  Sterling is a much less risky short, because it isn't going to make the violent moves that crypto currencies make any time soon.  Even if Brexit is a shambles and/or John McDonnell literally spews tons of money on a whole bunch of idiotic projects, then sterling is still going to be more stable than the crypto currencies for the forseeable future. I'd ago as far as to say that shorting cryptos is likely to be a riskier strategy than buying them.  There are plenty of other assets you can make decent returns on without the huge risk involved in shorting an asset like this.   

FWIW Hedge funds can't really make an asset fall in the long run, as they have to buy back the assets some day.  Assets fall in the end because they are overvalued.  The shorters frequently get the blame, but the buyers usually cause their own losses by paying too much for the assets they buy.   But many people are much happier if they can find somebody else who is at fault for their losses.  No doubt, poorer in the long run, but happier.  And cryptocurrencies aren't subjectively valued, they are real buyers paying the price and real sellers selling at that price.  It isn't somebody sat in a room declaring they are worth $2000 today.  If more people want to buy than want to sell, the price will go up. 

The issue with them is we are on page 9, and nobody has explained why bitcoin are worth $500, $1000 or $10,000.  Picking numbers off some extrapolated random walk doesn't make an explanation.   I could produce a reasonable explanation of why the assets I hold are worth what they are.  It just seems to be a bit tougher with cryptos currencies. 

I don't really disagree with what you say tbh doobs. Like you I cannot see a logical way of valuing a crypto currency in the same way as say a publicly listed company. With regards to shorting I have never personally shorted a stock/asset, but studied the technique so I will bow down before your practical experience.

What worries me is that this topic has a life of its own and always seems to gain more traction than the rate my shares thread.  A lot of people who invest in cryptos have never had any experience of investing in stocks, yet seem quite happy to take the much higher risks with cryptos.  The appreciating price of cryptos seem to be largely as a result of momentum rather than fundamentals, when the momentum goes against you and it has done quickly in this asset class over the last few weeks it can be costly.

Much better to get wealthy slowly and hold onto it than be rich for a few minutes then skint the next!

(puff)

Bitcoin and Crypto-Currency Make Poker Players Millionaires

Why would poker players be at the forefront? For a few reasons actually…

https://www.pokertube.com/article/bitcoin-and-crypto-currency-make-poker-players-millionaires-2

The big business revolution: why the future is blockchain

https://reaction.life/big-business-revolution-future-blockchain/

A crypto-catastrophe seems to have been averted

Has the bitcoin civil war come to a peaceful end?

A split in the digital currency has been narrowly avoided

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/07/economist-explains-20?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/hasthebitcoincivilwarcometoapeacefulend

More than $140,000 (£105,000) worth of bitcoins paid by victims of the WannaCry ransomware outbreak have been removed from their online wallets.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40811972

idiot question: what's going on here?

Bitcoin is traceable, they moved it to another cryptocurrency called Monero that is completely anonymous.

A pretty wild and exciting ride the past 4 weeks in crypto land. Overall the progress with bitcoin is extremely positive. Thumbs up to all people who held on to their bitcoin during these times :).

ANTshares has been rebranded to NEO and has recently released an official statement that they are going to be backed by the Chinese government. Unsuprisingly NEO has shot through the roof. This official statement isn't news to people following NEO closely and I might have posted some reddit threads about this about a month ago.


A redditor recently describes why bitcoin was here in the first place and some of the problems it is trying to overcome with the current monetary system: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6rr6ph/just_a_quick_reminder_why_bitcoin_was_invented_in/

Got involved almost immediately after this thread started.


Picked up some BTC/NEO on the 10th July after doing a fair bit of research. Have since added OMG / BNB (Binance Coin - on the day the exchange opened) and picked up some DELTA during the ongoing Agrello ICO. TenX is one Im starting to look into. Would love to hear your thoughts on any of these, OMG and TenX in particular.

Back on the subject of NEO... Did you pick up any GAS at any point? Has rocketed since hitting Binance. 1st ICO launched off the NEO platform today; Red Pulse Token (RPX) - Da Hongfei (NEO CEO listed as advisor)... As for the statement, all they did was retweet an article which was like 2 weeks old.. deleted it after ~8 hours or so and issued an apology... pretty weird they retweeted it but it was good to see them own up to an honest mistake.

Anybody on here ever used Local Bitcoins? Could use some help!

Very results orientated thread this one, a flurry of activity when the prices recover but nothing when the prices are tanking. I still won't buy cryptos because they are overvalued, have no transparency and the are relentlessly ramped on SM by people who have a vested interest in newbies buying at inflated prices especially ico's.

The market is predicated by greed, and as we know with most markets it usually goes tits up when people don't think rationally.

I'm still for buying tech stocks, took a punt on a company called EGS that operate in the automated back office market. Robotics and AI will huge wealth creators for people who back companies early. At least you know what you are buying with company stocks.

Ohh and no one can steal your shares, unlike cryptos that you need to go through ridiculous processes to secure your currency and prevent criminals from hacking into your wallets and making off with the proceeds.

A lot of people who have got into this space, know nothing about investments. The lesson will be learned the hard way, history has a habit of repeating itself. 1928, 1987, 2001-03, 2007-09.

If you have your own NEO wallet then you will slowly accumilate GAS without buying it. If you keep it on an exchange you can't claim your GAS and currently it's worth about 8-10% per year of your entire NEO holdings.

Can't help with local bitcoins I'm afraid.

Quite the contrary. In fact, when this post was extremely active crypto sunk so hard it hurt. No posts were then made for about 3 weeks apart from news bot tighty in which time my portfolio and many others have risen 30-60%. When you post something like this it just discredits what I think about your other posts, and I am one for trying to take both sides of the coin. All of my posts and ramblings have opened up about all the negatives and hurdles crypto currently faces.

Good for you and good luck. At least you know what you're buying, because clearly nobody in crypto has a clue.

Yes, I have to agree, it is not anywhere near as safe as it should be. This is because markets and trading sites aren't regulated and this area is very new. If you're smart and know what you're doing and take all of the necessary steps it's so unlikely you're going to be unsafe. Who do you think pays when idiot Joe next door gets £10k stolen from his bank account because his computer is infected after downloading seal porn? Don't say the bank, because the bank doesn't pay :D.


I finally agree with something you say, a lot of people do indeed have no clue what they are doing. You will find that there are lots of big private groups of friends and what not follow each other with what coins they buy and how they split their portfolio. Mostly it will just be say 5% of the group doing all the work and others following suit. If you are following smart people then you will be ok, but if you're not smart enough to know if the guys suggesting what to do are smart or not, you're in trouble.

I do believe that there will be many crashes along the way and probably a really nasty one that could take a year to recover. The market is currently very over-valued depending how you look at it but the markets are based more on future value and implementation. This may sound like a way that I am trying to justify the value of crypto but it's true. There have been many crashes in the past and huge swings time and time again.


Please be a little open minded and don't just disregard it all as nonsense, greed and a market full of idiots. The way you come across is that you are being a stubborn and closed-minded individual and I can accept that attitude if you have a past background in investments and are refusing to even scratch the surface of crypto.

I just meant as an investment.. I know about the dividends... the transaction fees also. Low circulating supply (~3mil.. rising to ~5mil) by end of year.. NEO is now ready to be built upon since yesterday's upgrade and the gas is scarce.. especially when it's all the exchanges who will be holding a lot of it as a short term investment it seems interesting?

I am not close minded, I have worked in the Financial Services industry for decades and seen all of this before. There is going to be a crash, who knows when but it will make the tech stock crash of 2001-03 look like small fry and take years to recover.

A great quote from Warren Buffet - "Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money". How true is that when it comes to cryptos!

.

CLARIFICATION

Sometimes, the "quote" function on blonde does not work properly.

The post made by acegooner at the foot of the previous page was not easy to see, so this is what he wrote;


I defy anyone to come on this thread and give a rational argument for holding cryptos, apart from it being nothing more than a pure punt. With the recent rise in BTC, its market cap is now more than half the FTSE100 constituents. Sorry for me the emperor really has no clothes on.

Thanks Tikay, it's worrying that people put their money into instruments they don't really understand. Warren Buffet for exactly that reason didn't partake in the tech boom between 97-99 and subsequently kept his shirt.

^^^^

Well I guess you know I'm a HUGE Warren Buffet/Berkshire Hathaway Fanboy, think I've got more books about Warren &/or Charlie Munger than any other topic.

I have been on the sidelines during this debate, but that does not mean I don't have a very strong view on it all.

And here's the thing which, perhaps, Dan (Lucky Scrote) - who is, I like to think, a pal of mine, perhaps forgets too easily. MY resistance to all this crypto currency stuff is quite simple - I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT.

Acegooner - also a friend, though more a virtual one - mentioned the FTSE constituents this morning.

And here's the thing.

I completely understand how the FTSE works, & I know my investments are backed by genuine value. I have x,000 shares in Rolls Royce, for example, & I can PROVE, & see with my own eyes, the assets that back that share price. Hell, I can go to Heathrow & see "my" engines working, or pop up to Victory Road Derby or Hucknall & see the RR factories.  And I can look at their Balance Sheet, & take a view on future prospects by observing their company statements.

But because I don't understand Crypto AT ALL, I can't see the assets that back them up. Or understand the principle of asset backing to Crypto currencies.    

I can go to Wiki, of course, but stuff like this is not easy to comprehend;


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency


I'm sure Crypto Currency will cope without me, & I'm deffo not dissing it. I just don't understand it, as simple as that.

I mean, this is a so-called "hashcoin mine". WTF?

Oh - & I'm almost certain that it's an age related thing.

The older generation, generally, won't be Crypto Currency fans, the younger generation will.

And it's probably best not to get into a debate about the comparative wisdom of the two age groups, is it?

Tikay do you listen to podcasts?

There's a great one called econtalk


It's hosted by Russ Roberts and I think it might be your thing. It gives an hour to a subject each week and it's given a serious treatment in that hour. Some great debates and topic from economic policy to why milk is at the back of a store via economics of prison gangs.

Theyve done numerous crypto currency episodes in the past which explain a lot to us interested lay people.


http://www.econtalk.org

I am somewhere in between being a whipper snapper and an old sage ;).

But what I find really frustrating about crypto's is people try and talk about them in a position of authority/knowledge. I have financial planning qualifications and been an active investor since the "tell sid" era, and you know what Tikay having studied cryptos for quite a few months now I have to say, they are totally lacking in transparency.

More importantly due to the lack of regulation, if you do not secure your crypto currencies properly in a hard wallet, Joe Bloggs can hack into your computer and make off with your crypto's and there is nothing you can do about it. No FCA redress, no accountability from the platform that you purchased your crypto currency, nothing.

People say that Bitcoin will take over the USD as the worlds default currency, really? Tell me where in London that I can go to a cashpoint machine and convert Bitcoin into a currency that is accepted at my local supermarket.

The astronomic valuations of crypto currencies are also not justified in my opinion. How does Ethereum go from $8 to $300 in 7 months and yet people still say there is more upside. What has happened to the fundamentals that change the value so much in such a short space of time?

Social Media has a lot to explain here in my opinion, because especially on youtube you have these crypto "gurus" who are doing nothing but ramping the price up of both existing and new coins.

Would I personally invest in cryptos? No way at current levels, but if there was a crash I would be happy allocating a small proportion of my invested wealth into this space (less than 5% for sure). Even then I could not hand on heart say it was anything else but a punt.

What worries me is that cryptos are now main stream, as soon as your taxi driver starts talking about Bitcoin, you know there is a bubble waiting to burst.

My advice to anyone looking at this area is to build a solid portfolio of real investments before you start looking at this space. As I said before I am a big fan of AI, robotics and VR as investment themes. All of the investments I have made in these areas over the last few years have increased exponentially. People are saying tech stocks are overvalued at present, thats probably correct but nowhere near as much as cryptos imo.

To quote Warren Buffet again, "be fearful when others are being greedy, and be greedy when others are being fearful". I use this quote all the time when I talk about investing money. Buffet is a genius with the way he explains things in such simple plain english, and what he says rings so true here.

Quite a few places by the look of it?

https://coinatmradar.com/city/92/bitcoin-atm-london-uk/

I often have a look on here for shits and giggles.

Bitcoin more than doubled in value in the last month from $1900 of July 16th to $4316 today. Ethereum in the same period gone from $150 to $299 today

Whatever happens it's a wild f**king ride for you guys who're invested :D

To be honest I wish I'd bought some just for the fun of seeing how much money I could win and lose without moving my arse. Would probably cure my need to gamble elsewhere.

EDIT: Sorry it's now moved to $4302 as I've been typing.

Amazing :D

 

Seems to be at a huge spike at the moment. Any of you guys thinking of selling or is it long term hold?

It's the new Larry the Lobster.

Thanks Teddy.

No, never listened to a Podcast to be honest.

Thanks for the tip.

PS - Yup, I know why & how Product in Supermarkets is strategically placed. Now that is something I can understand. ;)

Actually it turns out that milk is simply placed at the back as it gets into refrigeration faster than storing it in the front. The Machiavellian  idea of getting people through the store past other products is a myth, or a happy by-product at best.

Listening two serious economists and academics investigate and debate it for an hour was surprisingly rivetting

You stand more chance of finding an electric plug point for your car than a bitcoin atm. London is one of the largest cities in the world and it has a whole 20 places, where you can convert your coins into proper currency ie sterling. Not to mention the eye-watering charges for selling......

I get why people would use cryptos, I get the blockchain, I even get the mining bit.  It is rational to use cryptos, so it must be rational to hold them.

All I want to know is why they are worth $4000 dollars each.  The dollar is a very useful bit of kit and is seen as the strongest currency in the World, and is used in huge proportions of the World's trade.  Yet it is worth a dollar. 

Fast forward 50 years in to the future......

I get why people still use dollars, I get the bills, I even get the banks bit. It is still rational to use dollars so it must be rational to still hold them.

All I want to know is how they are still worth 0.000023 BTC each? The bitcoin is a very useful bit of kit and is seen as the strongest transaction medium in the World, and is used in huge proportions of the World's trade.  Yet it is worth a bitcoin.
 

But, the dollar has no real valuem, it is just a unit of exchange.  Many of the reasons given for the huge value of bitcoins aren't reasons why it should be so valuable.   They just seem to be reasons why it is useful.

What are the reasons why cryptos should be so valuable and what are the reasons it should be worth $4000 (or $200 or $50,000)? 

There are going to be a total of 21m bitcoin in circulation, say they are worth $1000 each there will be people who want to equally buy and sell for that price. If someone doesn't own a bitcoin and they want it, they can buy it. If nobody wants to sell at $1000, the price goes up.

I get acegooners stance tbh, he has a background in finance and has a decent knowledge of many things that most won't. Crypto comes along and a lot of people have made a large turnover in a very short amount of time without having a clue what is happening. I think that can be quite infuriating and I would want it to fail and for the foolish people to suffer. I think that's human nature to see a fool that is getting lucky to fail.

I am going to ignore other crypto and talk just about Bitcoin and why it's a great investment for the time being and why it has the possibility to take over non-crypto currency.

Store of value

1. First it was the land you owned and the resources you developed on that land

2. Then it was metals such as gold and silver. Difficult to exchange, difficult to transport if you had a lot of it (ancient greek world problems). Paper currency followed long after this and was backed by gold.

3. Electronic currency. Easily transportable but high transaction fees and zero privacy.

4. Next generation is Cryptocurrency. Easily transportable, little to no transaction fees*, no human intervention between payor and payee, high anonymity and functionality. Money evolves.

*This could be argued that currently with bitcoin transfer fees are high for small transactions.


We live in a world where the current monetary system could probably be explained by less people than could the crypto monetary system. People invest their money in many channels such as shares, savings account, premium bonds, gold, antiques you name it. Anyone who has the privilege of not being in debt and able to save money doesn't have a clue what to do with their money and does not understand what are the best paths to take. I think most people put their money into their savings account which stores their money in a FIAT currency. It's ironic that it's called a savings account since quite obviously your money is diminishing every year but the "amount" goes up slightly.

A lot of people don't understand bitcoin and IMO you don't have to if you don't want to, I would suggest anyone wanting to invest to do so in bitcoin and no other alternative crypto. The majority of people on message boards on reddit and such are mostly looking to make a quick buck and it's carnage in some of those subreddits. They are mostly flooded with 20 year olds who are investing $50 and trying to spin it up. There are also a lot of people who invest decent chunks into alternative crypto without any knowledge whatsoever. If it gives you some kind of satisfaction acegooner, a lot of people have done their nuts this way.

Sorry that I am remembering previous posts and that this is structured but I also remember gooner saying that if you don't get it in an offline wallet that you will be scammed and be stolen from. This is just not true. Cryptocurrency has private keys with most (all) of your coins. When you receive them you can write them down on a piece of paper if you wish which does have it's risk just like paper money does. You could always just make two copies and hide them in separate locations if you wish, or in a vault. You can also have a desktop wallet which is safe unless your computer is compromised, if you take precautions then your wallet is very safe. It's a good idea to not tell people that you have $2m in crypto for this reason because then it might be worth it for a team of 50 hackers to have a bash and hacking you. You can leave it all on an exchange which is also pretty damn safe but probably the riskiest choice. In 2013 or so an exchange one day decided to steal everyones bitcoins. GG.

All we are waiting for is adoption really. Currently some big merchants accept bitcoin online. The Dutch version of just-eat.co.uk has been accepting it since 2013. There are 60 or so ATM's in London (not 20) where you can withdraw or buy bitcoin, the fees are really high though atm at 6% and I can only assume that is because there isn't much demand for it. One of the things I am excited for in the future will be the disgusting costs that the likes of western union charge people. Many immigrants move to countries with better opportunities and regularly send money back to their home to give their family in the poor country a better chance. Currently the only option is to use western union/moneygram since a lot of people in poor countries have no access to banking. These companies charge 20% (and up to 40% to some of the poorest countries). With a complete implementation of bitcoin all these people need access to is a smartphone (which even the poorest of people own or will own in the future) to be able to receive bitcoin, go to a local vendor and trade their bitcoin for their local currency. Since it will be so easy for a person to become a bitcoin vendor by then, rates will become extremely low and competitive.

We live in a world where up until now the economy has it's rules that has been created by the people at the top. The economy and monetary system is obviously a complicated thing but with bitcoin we have set up our own rules that can and will be beneficial in every way compared to the current system.

Finally, I have blabbered here and I probably have some holes in my points. I am not an expert in the economy or bitcoin.

I think these are valuable questions to answer and it bothers me I'm struggling a bit. I've also had a beer or two, so if anything doesn't make sense, I will try to clarify.

 If i changed bitcoin to gold, would you (or investors) be able to answer it? I can (currently) send thousands of dollars in value across cyberspace, extremely quickly, in a divisible manner. I could send Doobs .1 btc and Tikay 0.01 btc. Bitcoin has a greater value if Woodsey also agrees to accept 0.01 btc for a 10$ debt. If I told you Jade had a value of 100$ per lb in Macau, it seems reasonable to expect you to pay me $95 for a lb of Jade on the mainland, as you have to pay a price to bypass the capital controls. Similar could equally apply to bitcoin and poker players. I know many poker players who traded bitcoin for cash or cash for bitcoin to either dodge or lessen the burden of the US border force.

As an aside this is where bitcoin truly came to fore, and why bitcoin had historically gone down when Darknet Markets had been sezied.(Silkroad 2013/Alphabay 2017) This could also been seen earlier in the year, as Korean and Japanese people were willing to pay a significant premium to enter the bitcoin market. I believe a proportion of that was "tulip mania" but people do value a decentralised way to send thousands of dollars across the internet. Admittedly this is a bit of a house of cards thing, but I believe the same theoretical argument does apply to the $ for example. This would also argue in favour of a parabolic increase in terms of $. It is less useful for me to move hundreds of dollars worth of bitcoin into the EU than it is to move thousands of dollars.

I put this last as I think you need to believe in both the usage of bitcoin and the network effect to get here. When we moved away from the gold standard, we proved that humans can assign value to something without this underlying need for an asset. As a network of humans or markets, we agree that the $ has x price vs the £. And because bitcoin has a limited supply, it has a natural scarity, increasing btc value over time.

Fees are also really low also. It can be hard to understand when you've just used the English banking system but I'll pay approximately 1.5% to send Euros around. Just seen Dan's post and would add WU were the case study that got me excited about crypto.

G'wan then, I'll have a punt if it's not too late.

I reckon $7000 is the line for 31/12/17, $20k for 31/12/18

I had to talk about alt coins in a separate post despite covering them a little in the previous post. Some coins want to try to do the same thing as bitcoin but with different rules, most of them have failed miserably and some of them are still going strong. I firmly believe that in a very short time only a few coins will own most of the total market cap; one of them will be Bitcoin. I think there will be an alt coin crash soon, people will realise that having more than say 5 coins in the future isn't going to work very well and bitcoin is just going to go on a rampage.

A lot of other cryptos have been designed for other purposes. Despite being called a cryptocurrency they aren't directly a currency. What I mean is, their sole purpose is not to trade tokens for something of a monetary value although that happens eventually. I was about to go into detail on how ethereum works, but I am just not very good at explaining things I don't know enough about. I posted an image about it on page 2 or 3 about how it works though.

Many new coins hit the market this year and given the influx of foolish people looking to make a quick buck, most were blind-sighted by people making huge promises and collecting absolutely outrageous amounts of money without even offering a business address! Madness! Without much of a surprise, a lot of people got scammed like this. A lot of fools got stung. I have invested an extremely small amount (1% of portfolio) in two new ICO's 3 months ago without knowing anything about it just so that I could have a reason to follow them and learn a bit more about them. The ICO scene was definitely a madhouse and most people were just gambling hoping to find the new bitcoin. People love to gamble. Turns out one of the coins has done ok (not lost money) and the other one is just pathetic and hasn't gone anywhere. I'll be investing in some of the new ICO's that will be starting soon with NEO and I'll be spending a heap of my free time there.

If this is genuinely what you think then I'm assuming you've got bloody loads of them.

Good luck, enjoy the ride, hope you make the world  :)up

For proponents, if we take the price of any altcoin out of the equation.

If you had  £100K knocking around (perhaps you do) - would you swap it all for alt coins

£500K, swap it ?

It's 90% hope and 10% wishful thinking.

I don't understand what you really mean

Another thing I don't get about BTC, in particular, over the last week the US and NK have been throwing barbs at each other posturing for a potential war.

So the stock market sells off and the price of Gold rises, which is pretty self-explanatory. Yet the price of most coins especially BTC rises like nothing is happening! If there is a war in SE Asia, or indeed the wider world BTC should behave in exactly the same way as more conventional stocks.

People talk about BTC becoming a default currency much like the USD. Given the limited amount of BTC in circulation, how are we supposed to pay for our basic staples (sorry to come across as rude but I did LOL at the BTC map of London) if we struggle to get our hands on a currency that is spiralling out of control?  Central Banks have the ability to print more currency, you can't just magic new BTC out of thin air. Traditional currency values do not move by large amounts day to day, even the pound has only fallen just over 10% since the EU referendum which means when we use our currency to pay for things, you don't get a nasty shock.

Think about the consequences of BTC becoming a mainstream currency, if it fell by 50% over say a week, how damaging would that be to the global economy with the price of everyday goods and services going through the roof! We all know how devastating inflation can be to our personal wealth.

There are many unanswered questions in relation to crypto currencies, I just fear for people who are throwing money at them through nothing more than FOMO rather than making rational informed judgements.

It's badly put but simple really. If you had 100k cash in hand, would you swap that 100k for however many bit coins that buys today

Warren Buffet has a view on Bitcoin, it seems;

"It's a method of transmitting money. It's a very effective way of transmitting money and you can do it anonymously and all that. A check is a way of transmitting money, too. Are checks worth a whole lot of money just because they can transmit money? Are money orders? You can transmit money by money orders. People do it. I hope bitcoin becomes a better way of doing it, but you can replicate it a bunch of different ways and it will be. The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view."

From here;

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/14/buffett-blasts-bitcoin-as-mirage-stay-away.html


He also said;


He said he'd advise people to "stay away" from bitcoin because the cryptocurrency is a "mirage" without any intrinsic value, although it's an efficient way to transfer dollars.

From here;

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/14/warren-buffett-on-cnbc-berkshire-has-eliminated-most-of-its-us-catastrophe-insurance-business-due-to-low-rates.html

In fact, here's the man himself putting forward his view on BitCoin; (this was in March of this year).

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahEdXocgAc

Warren, on why, in his view, BitCoin is not a currency. He explains this opinion here;


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTxPfxmkLIY

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is a bubble.

Blockchain itself is the future (whatever that is).

Can both those statements be true?

Yes. The first is reasonably likely and the second is 100%.

I find your extremely balanced views on bitcoin very refreshing. One post you predict they may be worth $7000 in 4 months, another post you accept they may have disappeared almost completely.

As an aside; Is it possible to be 'extremely' balanced?

Its grown so quickly it will naturally crash down. I think a lot of alt coins will vanish into thin air which is a kind of crash. I can't predict if or when a bubble is going to happen. Bitcoin has already crashed several times in the past and lost a lot of its value. In my phone so can't check now but I believe on more than one occasion in the past its lost 80% of its value. How much of its value does it have to lose to be deemed a crash and for how long does it have to stay under its value when in the bubble?

What's caused the recent huge increase? I read something a short while ago about a crisis of some kind being averted, is that it? If that is I then when will the next crisis come along? A crisis seems to be great for bitcoin. Most thing just stay as they are if they avoid one, bitcoin rockets :D

I put in a % of my money into bitcoin when I started. It was an amount that suited me at the time and was an amount I was comfortable saying goodbye to if all goes tits up. As time goes on the confidence in crypto rises, as does the value and as does the % of my net worth it is so I don't really need to invest anymore.

Right now if 100k fell on my lap I would probably put 25% of it into bitcoin. The shameful thing is I would put the rest In a "savings" account just simply because I need access to money as a poker player and because it's easier to buy things with fiat currency. For now.

It's quite insultive to say people would want cryptos to fail so that foolish people lose money. Personally I don't like people being exposed to investments where they do not understand the risks they are taking, hence trying to offer a voice of reason. In the financial planning world when you are advising clients risk assessment is key for any recommendation, to do this effectively you have to explain in lay mans terms how risk and reward works.

The problem with cryptos and I find myself repeating myself is they are totally unregulated, to the extent you have criminals using them as bargaining chips e.g. the recent NHS hacking attack.

With regards to storing cryptos yes you can do this offline, but why should you even have the threat of someone hacking into your wallet and stealing your assets, again a regulatory issue.

Did you watch or read what Warren Buffet said about crypto currencies, you would do well to take notice of what he is saying rather than make pie in the sky predictions on BTCs future value. Buffet doesn't get it wrong very often.

Saw someone had MCO on here... hope you held!

Anyone interested in any other projects atm?

Personally I think; NEO / TenX / Populous / Bytom / OMG are all nice projects... Binance Coin (BNB) is also taking off at the minute (used to pay fees on the Binance exchange at a discounted rate)... Binance itself is becoming a very competitive marketplace... daily trade volume has already been exceeding $100m and its barely a month old! Creates a nice bridge between east and west... great interface... very efficient... (Will be the first exchange to trade Hshares (HSR) which I think could be another interesting project - https://h.cash/ - is the website link).

A couple of longshots / potential projects for me are; SOMN and XtraBYtes (currently in the process of 'rebranding').

A couple of ICOs I think are interesting:

Agrello (DELTA)... recently closed.  - https://www.agrello.org/

Propy - https://propy.com/

And am very interested in Aventus - https://aventus.io/ for an upcoming one... Really useful!

Anybody any thoughts on these projects I'm open to discussion!

Burger King launches WhopperCoin crypto-cash in Russia - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41082388

price has gone up $2k since thread started on July 4th

They are basically setting up the rewards program on a blockchain. I think its only a matter of time before others follow. The next couple of years are going to be very interesting.

@youthinkzr I've been holding MCO yeh but didn't really go mental at the ICO. Only 1% portfolio. I've not looked at any icos recently but I'm going to spend all my time looking into all the NEO icos once I'm back from my hols :)

 :D :D :D

Brilliant, I don't need an excuse to buy a burger from BK again! Truly comical!

Apparently, Warren Buffet goes to Macdonalds every morning for his breakfast, someone tell him where he is going wrong :)!!!!

Bitcoin market capitalisation comparison

Any chance we can change this thread to the deluded investor? The fact BTC market cap is around 7/8% of Apple is enough reason to know it's overvalued. There are lots of quality companies in both the S&P 500 and FTSE100 who are much more of a solid investment that
and do not have the same market cap as BTC.

Most crypto currency speculators usually don't bother looking at stocks and shares, they want the crack cocaine of investments imo.

You must be revelling in the latest slump Acegooner. The world is a changing place, embrace it.

https://valueandopportunity.com/2017/09/03/book-review-attack-of-the-50-foot-blockchain/

This isn't a slump. If the US/North Korea go to war all risk on assets will fall but cryptos will be smashed off the face of the earth. Is that the change you are talking about?

This is the biggest emperor has no clothes on story for years. How can China banning ICOs cause a 40% fall in ETH because of it being  the platform of choice for ICOs. I love change and technology, but it has to be in real assets that are tangible, understandable and not difficult to value. Think of a number and multiply it by 100 doesn't work for me.

http://alephblog.com/2017/09/05/where-money-goes-to-die/

From the article:


This does worry me. Well, I disagree everything is going to go to zero, but I agree that because crypto is new and that there are a lot of newbies and scared money involved that as the swings get bigger and bigger that when there is a big crash there will be ultimate panic. I think we are still in an early enough stage where a lot of people who have bought bitcoin to hold or other cryptos are people who plan to hold for many years, but that there will always be new fresh blood- people that don't do any kind of research on what they are getting into. I went from the learning phase to investing stage in 6 months but I know for a fact quite a lot of newcomers only invest after their mate told them to buy, or when they see people making "mad returns" and want in on it.

There is constant short term panic whenever news comes out, for example china announces they want stricter rules on ICO = 15% drop in market. I wish the market would also grow slower, the growth has been exponential and it creates a lot of volatility in the market.

I really think there is a high chance that bitcoin or whatever the leading crypto will be in years to come will be worth a lot of money, but I can only imagine it's going to be a rough ride. I don't plan on converting my crypto into fiat for a long time so if everything drops 80% tomorrow then in theory I've not lost anything. I've not gained anything yet either. TBH an 80% drop would be a great thing if it were to recover in a couple of years as it might stop all the greediness which feeds the wicked cycle. Well, humans tend to forget hard lessons that these things teach us- 1929, 1987, 2008.

I have no idea if this is fake news, or the real deal.



Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, told a Barclays banking conference in New York that bitcoin “is a fraud. It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed.”

The warning from the regulator came separately as investors counted their losses after I2 Investments, a fund said to be investing in bitcoins, told customers that 95 per cent of their money had been wiped out after its trading strategy went awry at the start of the month.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/bitcoin-is-a-fraud-warns-jamie-dimon/news-story/ca6aa9dc8ee2e63b738b38bb37983e2f

I saw this reported on Bloomberg and CNBC last night Tikay. Jamie Dimon went as far to say if he caught any of his staff trading Bitcoin he would have them fired.

It's amazing how much denial there is about cryptos at the moment, without labelling, it seems that generally, this is the preserve of younger males that like a punt and have seen the values of these currencies increase so much they want some of the action. There is not necessarily any financial expertise behind their decisions. I do not deny some of them do understand the technology of blockchain and how everything works, but to say that the values of these currencies will continue to increase without abatement is naive, to say the least.

Because I question the validity of BTC/ETH and other currencies online, I have personally been accused of being a hater. I am a capitalist with a capital C, I believe in a laissez-faire economy where spirit and enterprise are rewarded. Yet after analysing cryptos in a lot of detail from a financial planning perspective, incorporating the risk versus reward argument, cannot justify adding anything to my portfolio without a huge correction. Even then with many years studying investments, I couldn't honestly say hand on heart that I would be making a good judgement.

It's such a shame the "rate my shares" thread doesn't attract more interest. There's some cracking companies around right now, even in the tech sector that are ripe for investment. I have just bought some shares in a company called Gfinity. With e-gaming going mainstream they are well placed as an event facilitator/hub. It's almost becoming a sport, with gambling companies such as betway opening books on each event. Very niche, but one to follow.

don't trade cryptos just repackage debt as the worlds biggest scam, knowingly push through as many trades as possible to profit off commission and bonuses and then retire.


Much smarter!



it's not like 99% of those involved in tech can spell HTML. That's not stopped anyone ever.


The recent breach of 140million individuals info from equifax (most of whom never even used the companies services) just shows that no one has a literal clue.

My nan at 90 years of age knew to change a password from admin/admin and not click links emailed to her. Those basics were WELL ABOVE this 'reputable company' charged with so much valuable information. How their stock price didn't drop more especially with the CFO/CTO and all these twats selling shares the moment they were informed of the breach but waiting ages to inform the public about the damage to their security is a classic they wont get in trouble lolz disgrace.

The only problem with selling repackaged debt is now its a lot harder to get away with, given the increased awareness, of what caused the financial crisis. Not to mention the regulation that has been put in place to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Still in 2017, you have the equivalent of the so called "experts" taking to social media ramping up the price of cryptos leaving their affiliate links all over their material so they can have a piece of the action. Perhaps this is the next financial scandal to hit the markets.

yeh for sure but im not listening to these charlatan shits who've just been allowed to get away with fucking everyone repeatedly for personal profits (even if ironically they should know a beautifully profitable scam when they see one).

Dimon calls it a bubble every few years like the traditional forms of media. Here he is in 2015.
2015
http://fortune.com/2015/11/04/jamie-dimon-virtual-currency-bitcoin/
2013
http://m1.marketwatch.com/articles/BL-MWTELLB-11892?mobile=y%2Cy&tesla=y&tesla=y
2014 link.
https://www.google.hu/amp/s/www.rt.com/document/100000000000001000139100/amp/139100-chase-ceo-bitcoin-terrible-downfall-100
Failed patents
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-15/jpmorgans-bitcoin-alternative-patent-rejected-175-times?page=1

He literally waited until cryptos had some of the worst news this year, with more reports of China clamping down on btc/cny trading as well as a return of funds raised through icos. Probably the best point in btc to go short with an Otc app in China confirming it was indefinitely suspending training.

You really killed this thread ace. Your warnings are appreciated but it's just regurgitated information with little value that shows a complete disconnect from the space. Of course it is mostly young males. Same as most risky endeavours and gambling in general. I would also imagine shareholders are typically male? What's your point. So was online poker? Your warnings would come across as a lot more genuine if it wasn't for the subtle negging in every post. The fact that most of your analysis comes from saying something is up 8x in a year will probably come day is truly enlightening.

It's impossible for you to correctly evaluate cryptocurrency and it bothers me you say you tried. Traditional financial planning wouldn't involve investing in newly developing asset classes like this with such asymmetric returns. Of course if you don't see the need for cryptocurrency it's a bubble.

P.s next support 3600 and after is 2700. Could be a painful week.

The long term bull case for bitcoin seems to reside on people exchanging it for goods. In order for this to happen it needs to stabilise (vs fiat) to have similar characteristics to a currency. Can you imagine if the USD went up several hundred % in a year?

Right now bitcoins usage are almost exclusively trading the coins themselves and the exchange of illegal goods/services. People will point to the odd retailer here and there adopting it but these are a drop in the ocean as of yet.

Transactions are processed by people mining i.e. using CPU power. These people are rewarded on a diminishing basis - it is literally modelled after the gold rush. It will become less and less economical for people to mine bitcoins and so if volume grows transactions could take a considerable time to process.

I don't doubt that the technology is useful as a security tool, but until a practical application is created (a currency form isn't it - perhaps MA/V would be interested) I won't be investing.

That's my understanding.

If you include circumventing capital controls under the illegal services then I like your post. If it includes only hiring hitmen, its a bit of a media myth. For example, see the difference in bitcoins reaction to the closing of Silk Road in 2013, and the closures of Alphabay and Dream/Hansa this year.


https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/4xVX2cFq-Bitcoin-Collapses-Following-Silk-Road-Shutdown/

Can't find an easy link to DNM shutdowns because it simply didn't affect the price this time. (July saw a 10% increase overall, didn't investigate further) You can even see the more privacy orientated coins such as Monero start an uptrend during this time. I didn't try counter the speculation argument because its hard to disagree with but moving money around with bitcoin is a thing. Lots of poker players received dollars for btc this year in the US.

 

poker players are hardly a normal or indicative market tbf.


much of the 'it's all illegal stuff' is just shitty lazy media rubbish.

TBH I couldn't give a hoot what Dimon thinks, he is a banker and we all know what that rhymes with. But the fact that a few words from him caused the value of the BTC to fall as it has done over the last 24 hours says a lot.

So Warren Buffet has also dismissed Cryptos, are you going to pull every link you can find about something that he has said to dismiss his point of view as well?

Crypto currencies are not currencies in the traditional sense, they hold no intrinsic value as a medium of exchange. You say it's impossible for me to evaluate cryptos (in terms of who is behind each one and the underlying value that they create), yes you are right but that goes for every other human being on this planet. Anyone who says otherwise is nothing short of deluded.

Are you a chartist by any chance, because where you get a support level of $3,600 is beyond me. Amazing how people don't like hearing what they want to hear. The thread has been killed because there isn't anyone who can come up with a constructive reason for holding cryptos as part of a balanced portfolio, nothing else.

Sorry I must not have made my point effectively.

Here is why bitcoin went down.

https://www.google.hu/search?q=china+bans+bitcoin+2017&oq=china+&aqs=chrome.2.69i59j69i61j69i59l2j69i60l2.3294j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Dimon calls bitcoin a bubble, again, after this news. My point was he is absolutely irrelevant. He possibly had a minor effect on the market at best, but I would be very skeptical. The recent orice contraction has largely come from Western exchanges moving towards the Chinese price, as Chinese markets contracted earlier on the banning news, but Western exchanges held.

You seem to believe every person involved in cryptocurrency is wildly bullish and blindly firing off which is incorrect. Often, people do get excited, and poker players are a prime candidate to be a bit blase with their capital. Overall, your message of caution should be extremely valid in this market, but it comes with such overbearing tones that it becomes ignored or makes the recipient angry and therefore unable to listen. Similar to how my posts are perceived by you. I'm stating to think you didn't  read my post properly, as I stated about China beforehand, and I don't believe you think Dimon is a bigger influence then that.

I do not need to post links to Buffet calling cryptocurrency a bubble because I value his opinion, and I don't think he regularly calls it a bubble. You are giving credit to someone who repeats the same thing every year. Furthermore, as I posted earlier in the thread re; Goldman Sachs reporting on bitcoin, they seem to believe in cryptocurrency, as I believe the attempted JP Morgan patents show they do too.

Not a chartist but I do look at other people charts. It was more of a throwaway comment to show I do expect bitcoin to go down sometimes and because I thought people might be interested. A friend actually told me today he believes the previous resistance around 3000 is more likely to be the support level than either of the two numbers, but its also a matter of time frame.

You are quite annoying. I enjoyed posting in this thread but I got frustrated with your approach to posting in this thread so I just started replying to other people instead. I repeated myself and answered questions you kept asking. That did the job in slowing the thread down.

Warren Buffet refused to invest in technology because he didn't invest in it, does that mean we shouldn't invest in technology, or that technology investment is a bubble? Anyway, didn't he once surprise everyone and invest billions into IBM a decade or so ago?

FWIW I am mostly interested in the technology and could care less if the prices revert dramatically right now because in the long term I know it's a great investment. The huge price drops are great for the types of people that invest their money in this technology. The quality of posts on reddit deter dramatically when in a bull market proving there are a lot of immature investors out there. I also remember reading back in 2011 when someone tried to implement bitcoin into several markets and the creator of bitcoin (goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto) pleaded not to because it would destroy bitcoin. It's still in early stages and there are going to be many ups and downs. It's impossible for bitcoin to go completely mainstream and be a huge part of our society until there are dramatic changes. One thing is for sure, the technology is out there and the implementation will one day be successful. Innovation is not disruption.

Yes you are spot on about China, that's come up on my radar over the last hour. My bad, yes I was wrong. To a degree, Dimon is good fake news for the media to jump on, and we should take more objective opinions when assessing the validity of crypto currencies.

Let's take this back a level, and I have said this before in 1997-99 exactly the same thing happened. I made money but also got burnt. I would like to think that a lesson was learnt. This has so many similarities as what happened during the tech boom.Just like now,the lack of transparency was the main issue, but people just ploughed their money in because it was then the get rich quick, thing to do.

I guess I shouldn't be bothered if people want to speculate on these instruments, but I would rather people heard things from the other side. Would I buy cryptos? Yes but not until a serious correction, and I am talking about a minimum of 75-80% downside and even then I would only buy BTC and possibly ETH on a drip feed basis.  Even then it would be a pure punt with a very small % of my portfolio.


 

Buffett didn't invest in tech because it was outside his "circle of competence". Here is his quote on Crypto:


Aside, I can understand the case for a fundamental backing of crypto (even if I strongly disagree with it). What I can't get on board with is people using technical analysis indicators as reasons to buy or sell. I agree there is a broader market sentiment aspect in current prices, but just because someone has a big order at some price point lower than current price (or sell order at higher price) or because the price has tended to not go below/above some price in the last year/month/day/hour/minute does not make it a support or resistance point nor present a valid discussion for investing IMO. Everyone's a genius in a bull market.

Regarding illegal exchange of goods - admittedly I don't really know anything about BTC volumes - it was just a hunch. There was no option to buy my lunch with BTC today. In fact no places I regularly buy from accept any form of crypto. Due to the nature of typical transactions placed, cryptos are highly susceptible to regulation.

I looked into the possibility of accepting BTC orders for a website that convert straight to £. The cost (1%) was similar to accepting USD that convert straight to £. Uninspiring for someone that doesn't want to hold BTC (or USD).

Buffet invests in companies that will make real money either now or sometime in the future. He currently holds IBM and Apple.

His problem with technology in the 90s was that he did not understand what each of these relatively young companies actually did, and what their path to profitability was. Funnily enough most of these companies don't exist anymore. As I mentioned in my other post the similarities are striking.

Now if Warren Buffet doesn't understand these things (ie cryptos) what chance have the rest of us?

You believe in an investment/currency that is at the mercy of the Chinese blocking ICOs or any other trading activity in Cryptos. You are at the mercy of an army of North Koreans who are religiously hacking into wallets and stealing the value. The lack of regulation is something clearly that doesn't bother you or the impact it will have on the future value of any of these instruments. The list is endless.  Too many unknowns in my opinion for anyone to say they are a good long term investment, or anything but a punt.

You are annoyed, because you don't like what you are saying is being scrutinised.

I think it's fine to not be worried about short term drops in investment value, and in any case, it's an entirely personal choice about where we choose to invest/trade/gamble and we all have different attitudes to risk. You should really consider the bolded bit though I think. It's not possible to 'know' anything in such an immature market. It's not that easy to know the direction of lots of established investments and markets - a quick review of the FTSE 100 20 years ago and today tells us this.

Anyhoo, not mentioning it in a finger wagging old guy sense but it's quite dangerous to 'know the long term is great' because it exponentially increases the possibility that you do nothing if things did go badly. If the amount is insignificant in terms of the original investment or lost profit taking opportunity then fine. But if it's in anyway significant then it's worth having a plan B I think

As someone with no fiscal interest at all, think this thread has been far from spoiled.

I find the fact that there are such widely opposing views very interesting, and the fact that it hasn't descended into 2p2 style abuse, is a credit to the people that have contributed.

Great fun to follow, much like the politics/donald threads, and they save me having to read about concrete and train stations ;)

Agree 100%.

EDIT - Make that 80%. The last sentence is shite. Also, as Warren Buffet has been mentioned a few times, he likes trains - he owns a monster train set.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway

 :)up

Quite interesting the impact the Chinese are having on cryptos at the moment, as opposed to the concurrent tensions in the Korean peninsula which seem to have a negative impact on global stock markets, and a positive impact on the price of gold.

To me, anyone who holds cryptos should be far more worried about what chummy has planned with his nuclear arsenal, over anything else that revolves around the crypto currency space.

It is definitely interesting and gives an outlook on the maturity of the market and investors. China represented 13% of the crypto market but we have seen a 40% drop in the entire market cap. With the extreme bullish market we have been experiencing and all new investors wanting to make a quick buck it's inevitable something like this was going to happen. What I can't believe is something as small as this has caused it, it really isn't THAT bad that China are stopping their exchanges on the 30th Sept (not ban, just put on hold).

I guess if news like this has caused such a dramatic drop then there must be quite a lot of "new" money in crypto. Impossible to say what is going to happen in the next 2-4 weeks, definitely interesting times. I find it very exciting because I don't really see my "investment" going up or down because I plan on holding for the long term but it is definitely funny seeing absolute panic in the cryptospace.

Bitcoin value plummets after China orders trading in currency to cease

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/15/bitcoin-value-plummets-after-china-orders-trading-in-currency-to-cease?CMP=twt_gu

amazingly the sense of entitlement in crypto might actually be more than that of poker players!

13% seems a pretty low figure and doesn't China have a much bigger proportion of exchanges and miners? 

Up 500% on this time last year doesn't feel very apocalyptic yet.  If only all my investments did so badly.

Guess we'll see how it plays out.

   

China was 13% of trading volume. I believe Chinese can still trade but they can't use Chinese trading sites meaning they cannot use CNY. The big players will still be involved as they will find another way I'm sure. As for mining I don't know what difference it is going to make financially or whether the Chinese are still allowed to mine.

Market cap is now up 25% up in the last 24 hours so that crisis yesterday is just a spike on the graph now. I can only assume that there are a lot of overly invested new investors that act like sheep and panic. Is this a sign that if crypto markets are to react like other markets historically that we are in a bubble?

Just the fact that the Chinese Government have the power to stop it has to be a huge negative to a means of exchange that's supposedly bypassing central banks and Governments?

I'm sure I've hugely oversimplified that but from my reading in this thread and the few other things I've read the freedom from outside interference was supposed to be one of the biggest benefits.

Crypto hasn't been banned. Actually nothing has been banned yet but Chinese exchanges have been stopped until further announcements. Regulation is coming so exchanges will probably be back. The exchanges are third party after all so they can be banned. Decentralised exchanges are in the pipeline and do already exist.

Haha just brilliant:

(https://i.redd.it/em287wvf6amz.jpg)

One story tho.

JPMorgan said in its patent application – which dates back to 1999 but was recently updated

https://www.ft.com/content/e230307a-61c4-11e3-aa02-00144feabdc0 (https://www.ft.com/content/e230307a-61c4-11e3-aa02-00144feabdc0)
 

Pfft using the block chain for banking is old hat, this is the kind of thing that ICO's are now into - child aftercare clubs!

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ7a2KAVwAArwxD.jpg:large)

I had an advert for an ICO in container shipping earlier in the week, I need to look at better websites to get google to give me different adverts.

Lmao. I am trying to figure out what the point is in starting an ICO on an already existing business that is only using the blockchain for a referral and rewards program. I only spent about 2 minutes reading their site but it seems pointless. When all major companies start using blockchain for their rewards and referral program (think tesco, BA etc) they aren't going to run an ICO!

I just think of ICO as internet con opportunity.

Stock exchange / securities regulators rightly ban penny stock boiler room operations to protect naive investors, they need to do the same with some of the ICO's out there.

Block chain has a number of advantages, but will always be limited by some of its features, its connections to the  international financial system and its speed, the best uses of it will be applications which evade these.

China have basically put their foot in the door with this. ICO's have to be approved now. Also, for a while many ICO's have not permitted customers from certain countries from participating, suggesting they are aware of potential regulation or getting into trouble.

https://baswisselink.com/articles/dear-john/
Mistakes from Mcafee

https://simpleweb.co.uk/the-future-of-the-blockchain-interview-with-ethereum-co-founder-gavin-wood/

Medium length interview with an Ethereum cofounder, talks about some of the philosophical ideas around cryptocurrencies and their governance as well as the bubble and uses cases that aren't financial such as Land or Art registry.

Holy shit my car could make money for me by trading its own energy!

Mind blown!

I feel like I'm missing something. Maybe its just the exclamation marks.

"Couple that with things like batteries, which need to be charged but can also be discharged. Imagine an electric car parked in your driveway, then it becomes very interesting, because the car can also have a wallet and your car can then make money by trading energy; buying it when it’s at a low price and then selling the battery back when it’s high."

Thought this was an awesome concept.

Bitcoin is fiat money, too

https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2017/09/not-so-novel?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/

http://woobull.com/data-visualisation-118-coins-plotted-over-time-this-is-why-hodl-alt-coin-indexes-dont-work/

China is turning against cryptocurrencies

(https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/914896347995820037/XQIiL4Zh?format=jpg&name=600x314)

https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/10/daily-chart-0?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/

It's not turning against them at all. In fact they are probably the leader in terms of regulation and future implementation.

Somehow that blue line is mis-leading but I don't yet know why. Possible reasons could be that exchanges offered vig free trades in China meaning bots just continuously passed money to each other.

Two things about China, firstly like India the economy is subject to vast swathes of corruption and secondly the Chinese have been burnt before in other asset bubbles such as property and the stock market, which may be one reason the government is looking at putting a lid on future ICO's

The Chinese are heavily leveraged, and the last thing the government wants is people taking out loans etc to fund the purchase of crypto currencies. Personally, I wouldn't trust an ICO that appeared out of many parts of Asia as far as I could throw it.

OMFG!!!

I agree

Isn't this akin to saying we should buy high sell low?  Past ourperformance is a pretty bad indicator of future performance in in more standard investments.

I get a bit nervous when shares do really well.  I accept this is fairly non standard, as most people flap when they lose.  I am sure I have it the right way round though.

This is a conversation between two friends of mine; Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase.

It is excellent. I highly recommend it, particularly for those that want to make sense of crypto and what is happening in this market.

https://soundcloud.com/a16z/cryptocurrencies-networks-tokens

Credit to Fred Wise and his blog which can be found here; http://avc.com

------

Bit of a followon to Doobs

https://medium.com/@cburniske/cryptoasset-valuations-ac83479ffca7

What is AVC?

Warnings grow louder over cryptocurrency as valuations soar https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/08/cryptocurrencies-bitcoin-ethereum-bubble

This sort of thing will fall on deaf ears for those that have fallen for the great crypto con trick. Like in poker being results orientated only carries any credence if you are making +ev decisions.

How do you measure the equivalent of EV in crypto currencies, the answer is you can't. And for that reason I am out until they correct to more sensible levels.

You're going to wait until they start going down before investing. Smart move  :)up

If you're talking long term investment then I get what you're saying but for now as they keep soaring punters' gonna punt.

Good read on blockchains: https://singularityhub.com/2017/10/08/building-the-blockchain-to-end-all-blockchains/amp/

A Venture Capitalist I guess.

He isn't called Fred Wise, and Horowitz and Ehrsam are his friends and not friends of rfgqqabc.  At least that is what it looks like if you read the blog.

Yeah your right Doobs. AVC is Fred Wilson's site, where I found the post/interview originally. In retrospect, I should have included the title at least.

"Audio Of The Week: Why Crypto Tokens Matter"

AVC has an about page Red which should help. It came highly recommended to me from several sources and this was one of the first posts i got to.

I wish you could be a little more constructive with your posts because I would like to learn from yourself. I do genuinely believe crypto is going to have multiple crashes but I don't think the instigator will be because it's overvalued at all.

What sort of price would you buy in at if/when it crashes?

Despite the recent tumble, there is a very good argument to carry on investing in crypto-currencies http://bit.ly/2y6o3GG

 ;cheerleader;

Didn't take long for you to recover lasts nights apprentice losses ;)

#bitcoin5k

New cryptocurrency finds unlikely fan in Harry Redknapp

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/12/harry-redknapp-cryptocurrency-electroneum-twitter?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews#link_time=1507833371

If that takes off then Rosie will be the richest dog in the world.

Funnily enough, human nature/psychology causes people to buy investments when they are going north. It might sound like a simple statement to wait for a correction, but it takes balls to put your money on the table when everyone else is heading for the exit door.

Regardless, in my opinion, cryptos should form a very small part of any portfolio, and that's only if you are prepared to lose the lot. Sadly FOMO, has meant a lot of people have gone deep into cryptos with no consideration for diversification. Essentially they are reliant on newbies forcing the prices higher.

Some people don't even consider the tax implications of holding cryptos. Next time someone raves about cryptos, ask them if they know what their CGT allowance is this tax year.
 




 

Probably the dodgiest man in football gets involved in arguably the riskiest asset class on the planet right now. Mmmmmmm.

Pretty sure I made money somehow during Jeff's shitshow :)

Doug Polk
As of today I am excited to announce my next project. Today is the official launch of my CryptoCurrency news site https://t.co/r7Y1Pd0zpD!

Adam Ludwin‏
@adamludwin
Follow Follow @adamludwin
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I wrote a letter to Jamie Dimon (and anyone else still struggling to understand cryptocurrencies)

https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

Very valuable read for anyone who is interested in the cryptocurrency space, both as an investor or as an outsider.



My friends research firm published their first report today. Its a bearish piece on what is effectively and reasonably wordy, but its also the best report I think I've read on a singular cryptocurrency. Any feedback would be welcome.


https://lighthousecrypto.com/veritaseum/

Just seen this.  Reading his twitter, I saw this. 

Naturally anyone who writes for us is invested in major cryptocurrencies, however interests will be disclosed for less mainstream cryptos..

Presumably if I sold all my shares, I'd "naturally" have nothing useful to say on equities at more.  I strongly suspect that would be the time I'd be saying my most useful stuff. 

Kind of sad to here about Doug, he has produced such good content for poker, and even though the site looks nice, I don't see this as positive for his "brand".

bitcoin gonna bitcoin today :)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/FtdMPQl2npCw/giphy.gif)

$6k!

Mastercard Will Now Let You Pay With Blockchain—But Not Bitcoin

http://fortune.com/2017/10/20/mastercard-blockchain-bitcoin/

Thanks for posting this, it's nice to read a balanced view from the "inside" so to speak. I haven't read all of it but will have another look when I get a spare moment.

Where are the haters ?

America?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haters

I'm still pretty excited about the future of crypto. To look at the bigger picture, the actual market cap vs the role crypto is going to take in the future is just a fraction. However, all investments are just speculative as the technology isn't at all implemented. If crypto disappeared tomorrow then the world will still function just fine.

I'm glad I invested when I did as the longer I spend in crypto space the more uneasy I feel. It's impossible to value something that is so far from being implemented right now. My personal opinion and feeling is that crypto isn't over-valued right now, but that it is going to continue to grow exponentially (bitcoin is has continued to grow exponentially) until a bubble bursts. History has a tendency to repeat itself and it's the reason why more veteran investors don't like to invest in crypto. About 3 months ago I no longer encouraged people to invest in crypto as it's not a solid investment but I think if someone enjoys swings and has an amount of income they are prepared to set aside, then fine. The risk reward is ultimately worth it but most people don't like to have much risk when investing.

1 bitcoin to be worth $25k
1 bitcoin to be worth $1k

Both seem as likely to me in 2018. A crash won't even be a bad thing and it will recover just like the tech market ultimately ended up doing as crypto will eventually be a part of every day life be it for monetary reasons, decentralised apps or contracts.

when's it gonna be worth £5k a coin? flittering around for weeks, I WANT FIVE KAYZ A COIN YO.

Think you're the only pidge who sweats bitcoin in GBP mate

25k  ;pokergods;

https://twitter.com/CMEGroup/status/925361721757327362

Presumably if Bitcoin hits $25k on here we'll start calling them cranberries.

:D

Having a regulated way of accessing an investment in bitcoin is a game changer for me. I still wouldn't buy bitcoin at these levels, just waiting for the sharks to circle and short the life out of BTC and get it back to more sensible levels. Then we can start looking at the fundamentals rather than momentum which seems to have the upper hand right now.

When you say sensible levels, if bitcoin reached say 20k next April then plummeted down to 6.5k by May (the current value) would you be looking to buy then?

(https://media.giphy.com/media/KxNVVwaUioisg/giphy.gif)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/SUFuaOfn7qXaE/giphy.gif)

Proper lol'd.

I sold all my alts a few days ago for btc. It's an absolute bloodbath out there for alt coins right now and right at this moment I am considering going 90% alts again just until before the fork. When there's blood on the streets...

£5k a coin!!!!!

OIOIIIIIIIIIII

£s are the queens currency, $'s are trumps currency :)

$7k a coin oioi!

Why not wait until after the snapshot has been taken?

I'm so pleased I haven't got any of these coins because I really wouldn't have a clue what to do with them. Selling seems to be a good idea in case there's a bubble due to burst but they just keep going up so why would you?

Can't fault anyone who's riding the wave and I truly hope it continues for you all.

Think I'm just going to stick to my 1.5% annual return from a savings account. It's just easier :D

I think its a bit loose to not be selling some % of your portfolio. I've done it all the way up and not regretted a single sell, even though the price has doubled from here. Its easier to maintain emotional control and therefore overall results by selling some, even if you don't achieve maximum gains, I don't think it can be a leak. No one goes broke selling on a double (insert multiple here).

Crazy movements last night, I was awake for the new high we touched 6940 on Bitmex before I went to bed we'd settled around 6840 or so. Korea went absolutely nuts, they are at a 5% premium atm, 7400 compared to 7050-7100 on the Western exchanges. Curious to see if 7k can hold, the last wave has been meteoric and I'm pretty scared as the downside is usually even quicker.

Lots of funky action going on at the moment too. Many people on twitter have been excited by the top contract holders getting liquidated during the surges but its possible to hedge yourself neutral vs btc and collect the tokens from the next fork for free. The futures on Bitcoin Segwit 2x is approximately 0.14 btc atm, so a pretty tasty arb if you can work through it all. I had it explained to me but its kinda complicated and I don't think i could explain how to do it properly. I think it involves some of the exchanges supporting forks and others currently refusing.

I would convert back to btc before the fork.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/373488574219157507/375609796499341321/unknown.png)

^ 5 min candles from earlier.

BTC is overpriced today, so I don't know where you get $20k from by next April apart from sticking your finger in the air thinking of a number multiplying it by 4. If your prophecy did come true and we are sat here next April with BTC at the dizzy heights of $20k, then my entry point would be after it has fallen 75%. Even then in a falling market, I wouldn't have a clue where the bottom is (who does) but averaging down when everyone else is heading for the exit is a good strategy to have.

If BTC does carry on going north, I am not going to lose any sleep over it. As I said previously there are lots of other interesting more transparent investments out there. Investing in Robotics and AI is far more credible to me right now than cryptos and even with a position in BTC, I wouldn't hold the coin itself rather use a tracker within a tax-free wrapper. It would also form part of a BALANCED portfolio. There has to be nothing worse than making a million and paying HMRC a couple of hundred grand in tax because you haven't planned properly. I suspect the money has already been made in the crypto currency world, and mainstream adoption should worry anyone that is balls deep with these investments.

 

Yes, this is exactly what I did, I was speaking hypothetically.

The Isle of Man has granted a licence to an Ethereum blockchain based lottery

https://www.coindesk.com/isle-man-grants-license-ethereum-based-lottery/

Three reasons why bitcoin could go to $100,000
Over to Dominic in a minute, but first just a quick rundown of pieces you should take a look at on the website today.

David C Stevenson looks at a couple of intriguing peer-to-peer lenders and if today’s piece gets you all excited about cryptocurrencies, Dominic has written previously on how and where to buy bitcoin.

Want to try before you buy? Get your first four issues of MoneyWeek, absolutely free, right here.

Now over to Dominic...

$100,000 bitcoin!

I thought that would get your attention.

A stupid, unfounded prognostication?

Probably.

But here are three reasons it could happen.

How to justify an extraordinary headline

When competing for readers in the ultra-competitive universe that is the world wide web, it pays to have sexy headlines. And one of the delicate tightropes my editor, John Stepek (who writes them) has to walk is to make the headline alluring, while staying truthful to the piece.

Get this wrong (and he very rarely does) and yours truly gets the headline fired back at me two years later by petty trolls anxious to undermine my every utterance.

So just to qualify this headline (which actually happens to be one that I did write), I am describing why bitcoin could get to $100,000. I am not saying that it will.

1. Portfolio allocation and career risk

Cash, stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate, gold – these are different asset classes. There is crossover between them, of course, but they are each in themselves classed as different assets.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a new asset class. They have qualities of cash, qualities of gold and, as the ICO (initial coin offering – launches of new cryptocurrencies) movement grows, they will have qualities of shares too, but they are in themselves an asset class. As the space grows, crypto could become a core feature of portfolios, just as other assets now are.

With the market currently rising as it is, investors will demand it of their fund managers and financial planners, who will then have to deliver, or many will take  their business elsewhere.

It’s a process that financial blogger Josh Brown, aka The Reformed Broker, calls “institutional ass-covering”. He argues that the career risk involved in not being in an asset-class that is rising, is what fuelled the hedge fund mania of the 1990s and the commodities boom of the 2000s.

More and more crypto products will be invented to meet this rising demand, including, eventually, a proper bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) of some kind (we’ll get there eventually). This is the gradual institutionalisation of the space.

The total value of the global stocks is around $80trn. The government bond market is perhaps twice the size. The current bitcoin and crypto market cap is sub-$200bn. It’s tiny in comparison.

My colleague Charlie Morris points out that by the end of its 70s bull market, the global gold market reached a value equivalent to the size of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The same happened with Japan by the end of the 80s, dotcom by 2000 and commodities by the end of the bull market of the 2000s.

It’s pretty clear that crypto is the bull market of this decade. The current value of the NYSE is around $20trn. Even if the market cap goes to a fifth of the size of the NYSE, then at $4trn, that would make the crypto market 20 times bigger than it is today, with bitcoin comfortably surpassing $100,000.

It “only” needs to rise around 14 times from today’s price of $7,100. Cripes it’s gone up 14 times enough times in the past!

2. “It’s another one of those”

This brings us to bitcoin’s “previous”. What it has done before is often a guide to what it might go on to do in the future. It’s why technical analysts look for “fractal patterns” – chart patterns that repeat.

If you read my piece last week, you might remember billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s principle of asking “which one of those is it?”



Click on the chart to see a larger version.

Fractal patterns, in a way, follows that principle. Below is a log chart of bitcoin since shortly after its inception. Log charts measure percentage gains rather than price.

I’ve marked the major highs in bitcoin’s evolution – $30, $200, $1,200 – with round numbers. I’ve put little red curvy lines marking the crash lows, which have followed (notice how it always seems to make a double bottom).

On a log chart, the current move, compared to those in the past, looks almost sober. If it were to enjoy a final spike such as in 2011 when it went to $30, or 2013 when it went to $1,200, lord knows where it would take us on the chart.

You can see that it went from $2 in late 2011 to $1,200 in 2013. A move of similar percentage magnitude from the 2015 low of $200 would take it over $100,000.

3. Satoshi Nakamoto, the architect of bitcoin, was a gold bug

Nakamoto understood gold’s role in the history of money: the value of its scarcity; the importance of its independence; the energy-intensive process you have to go through to produce it and so on.

He intentionally designed bitcoin to be a digital replica of gold.

Gold, much as I love it, is an analogue asset in a digital age. It’s why it’s often described as a barbarous relic (although this is in fact a misquote – Keynes was actually talking about the gold standard when he made the remark).

Nevertheless, bitcoin is digital gold. (By the way, searches for “bitcoin” on Google already exceed those for “gold”.)

There are roughly 190,000 tonnes of gold in existence.  The value of a tonne of gold is about $40m. Thus the value of all the gold in the world is currently around $8trn.

Let’s say all the 21 million bitcoins there will ever be are mined. If the value of those 21 million bitcoins were to match all the gold that has ever been mined, you’re looking at a price of $380,000 per bitcoin ($8trn/21 million).

Once upon a time – in fact even at the beginning of this year – the idea of one bitcoin exceeding the price of an ounce of gold seemed far-fetched. The ultimate target for die-hard bitcoin bugs must be market cap parity.

Then again… a swift reality check

Folks, I’ve enjoyed writing this article. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Please don’t take these price projections too seriously. Yes, bitcoin could go a lot higher. But sentiment is also monumentally frothy. Given previous corrections, bitcoin could fall below $1,000 as easily as it goes to $10,000.

I’ll enjoy looking back in five years time and considering how stupid or prescient these projections are.

Until next time,
Dominic Frisby

Got a comment on this article? Tell us what you think on the MoneyWeek website.

Dominic Frisby,
MoneyWeek
@DominicFrisby
FUNDS
Be brave and venture into emerging Europe
Parts of Eastern Europe may be cheap for a reason, says David C Stevenson. But that doesn’t necessarily make them bad investments. READ MORE ▸

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/07/parity_wallet_destroys_280m_ethereum/

There's a lot of hair-pulling among Ethereum alt-coin hoarders today – after a programming blunder in Parity's wallet software let one person bin $280m of the digital currency belonging to scores of strangers, probably permanently.

Segwit2X fork called OFF as of a few minutes ago https://www.coindesk.com/2x-called-off-bitcoin-hard-fork-suspended-lack-consensus/.

Price currently rallying, almost £6000 a coin :o

https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester/status/928312928150982657/photo/1

Segwit 2x fork no longer going ahead. Markets going crazy, Bitmex just sold some futures for 51320$ lols

(http://www.tradingview.com/x/VnVUFhHr/)

Yesterday's Parity bug is pretty scary. The actual smart contracts were locked by a random developer sending kill messages to the global smart contracts instead of his own locking all of them. (Toned down technical explanation, might have made a mess of it)

Luckily for the general public most of the funds in these multi-sig smart contracts belonged to icos, so the individual hasn't lost too much, directly at least.

Low of 7013 lol back to where we started today.

(https://media1.tenor.com/images/0b1a6ee449a5f2408b10380999bd1911/tenor.gif?itemid=5894654)

Haha yep.  Everything is all over the place.  Just like peoples opinions on this stuff.  You type "bitcoin" into google and you get a massive of articles in the UK press screaming BUBBLE BUBBLE BUBBLE CRASH IMMINENT.  As if they can predict that, what a joke.  Then you get articles on bitcoin websites screaming how its the future and its going to $500k a coin or something.  Again unpredictable and a joke.  The world cannot make up its mind.

What a day wow. Just over a week ago I sold almost all my btc for alts and was planning on not holding btc for the "snapshot" to take the 2x coins since I expected alts to go on a dramatic bull run. Put a chunk in ethereum because it's the more stable alt and the rest in NEO.

This evening when I saw btc go from $7000 to $7700 in a moments notice I nearly shit myself and was wondering what I had gotten myself into, but money FINALLY pouring back into alts now.

If your portfolio is down today, then you should just quit crypto :P.

out today

The Economist‏

People are buying Bitcoin because they expect other people to buy it from them at a higher price. This is foolish

https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/11/greater-fool-theory-0?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/thebitcoinbubblegreaterfooltheory

Not read this thread other than first couple of pages but I'm in the old fart brigade.

When you have a currency that is built on nothing tangible other than sentiment then you have a recipe for disaster at some point.

The whole premise of a currency is a promissory note issued by a trusted institution.

If we learn anything from history then its only a matter of time before the values come crashing down. Might not be now, this year or year after but it will happen.

Its a speculators dream - the George Soros's of this world will be rubbing their hands with glee. If I had significant profits I'd be taking some to protect my position.

It will be the small investors that jump on the band wagon too late that get really burnt.

Wtf is going on today - Bitcoin tanking but Bitcoin Cash surging. 

The reason old farts think in this way is that we have seen it all before. Younger people invest with no fear and are immune to what could happen to cryptocurrencies. The average age of a Financial Adviser in the UK is now well into late 40s/early 50s. There is a reason for that, people with money want to talk to someone who has life experience and understands the perils of investing in any market.

There was an analyst on Bloomberg this morning saying BTC has some way to run, but when it does crash it won't be a pretty sight. Do crypto geeks even watch Bloomberg or CNBC?

The smart money is sitting on the sidelines IMO.

Makes perfect sense. It will depend on someone's risk tolerance levels as to how much they should invest in speculative investments. Vast, vast majority of people shouldn't be investing more than 5% of their assets in this unless they are aggressively speculative IMO. I wonder what percentage of their assets the guys on here invest in Bitcoin etc?? I have a feeling it will be a bigger number.

Harry Rednapp now promoting the cryptocurrency - enough said

Pretty much any crypto being endorsed by a celeb is a fail. Don't touch these.

This endorsement happened a while ago and is very very funny.

.

So yeah, makes sense that he's now lumping in on Crypto.

Charts to the left of me, CNBC to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

I mostly use tweetdeck as twitter is the best resource for crypto. I think its similar for the traditional markets too, surely mainstream media is too slow.

Electroneum is in the scam category for sure.

As this is a poker site I would say all in. There probably is very little consideration to asset allocation , geographical spread or risk tolerance. 

Lol. Your acting like professional poker players don't know how to handle risk or variance.

Where are the best places online to keep up to date with crypto? I find this all really interesting even though i've currently not invested, can't wait to see in a year if i'm going to regret missing out or not :D

I just follow this thread :D

https://www.bloomberg.com/europe

https://www.cnbc.com/world/?region=world

....................

https://www.coindesk.com
Decent resource.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

not used this before but it seems okay.

http://www.zerohedge.com/search/apachesolr_search/bitcoin?solrsort=created%20desc

 need to filter for cryptocurrency stuff but its fine, picks up some of the weirder less corporate stories.

coincap.io for a quick overview of price and marketcap/btc dominance.

reddit is great for crypto excluding bitcoin and bitcoin cash

https://tokeneconomy.co

these guys are good too.

Bitcoin going mental in Zimbabwe

Cliffs :

$13k a coin there

$1m in volume last 30 days - In comparison during the whole of 2016 there was $100k of transactions on the Golix exchange.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2017-11-15-bitcoin-surges-in-zimbabwe-after-military-seize-power/

www.coinmarketcap.com

Amazing to think 200  bn plus of market cap, across these crypto,  and I ain't got a scoobies why. Guess I'm never gonna  apply myself to learn why but it is extraordinary

Uk government should launch a brexcoin to settle up with those pesky Europeans.

With a coup d'etat in progress, Mr Mugabe effectively locked up, & many of the Government Ministers about to experience the smell of burning rubber tyres at close hand, these are the perfect conditions to encourage speculators to join the fun.

Anyone fancy a trip to Zimbabwe to sell a load of bitcoin to em for $14k a coin?

Very good, but would John Claude Gooner or Hans Von Gooner attach any value to them?

If only there were more sub 30 yr old poker players at the helm

Waded in- i  own .00445299 bitcoin

ffs, just spent .0033 btc, only got about .001 left

Hypothetically speaking if I cashout x amount of bitcoin from a poker site, the bitcoin increases by y amount in value so that capital gains tax would need to be enforced, but I also use that bitcoin to play poker on various other sites where I win/lose z amount, is there any way for the IRS to prove that I have to pay CGT on the bitcoins I have held? So for example I withdraw $100k worth of BTC to my exchange, I redeposit $70k of that, lose $20k but the $30k I have in the exchange increases in value by $10k does that qualify? Is there any way for the IRS to prove this? Are they in contact with the exchanges?

I would say you only pay cgt on assets held in a wallet on an exchange. As soon as you deposit into the poker site it's no different to purchasing a loaf of bread. Even though you could lose half your roll while playng poker, if BTC doubles you have effectively parred your losses.

In saying that the US tax system is totally different to the UK so you would really need to clarify this with an accountant over there.

If there is a poker site that accepts American players into an international player pool please spill the beans. I miss playing the Americans and I was a raging fish back then so feel as though I missed out!

Crypto poker is here
https://uk.pokernews.com/news/2017/11/coinpoker-pre-ico-to-launch-nov-16-29118.htm

Bitcoin breaks $8,000 barrier amid speculation over spin-off

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/17/bitcoin-breaks-8000-barrier-amid-speculation-over-spin-off?CMP=twt_gu

I had lunch with my accountant recently, and he said bitcoin and tax was super simple, like you say CGT fully applies. Also you don't pay capital gains tax until you turn them into cash, if you bought 100 bitcoins for $10k and now they are woth $800k - there is no CGT due until you turn them into money, even if they are worth $100k a coin, there's no CGT due until you sell one as its not technically considered as money in the govt eyes.

Also there is 0% chance that HMRC or any Govt revenue service will be able to see your crypto wallets even on exchanges, contray to popular belief without cause to do so they cant even look in your bank account. No way to prove what you paid for them I think you can probably just fill out a tax return with a believable capital gain # and they'd have to take your word for it, they'd probably just be jolly happy someone volunteered some tax on it, certainly isn;t worth them investigating, all you wanna do if you're taking a big number out of BTC is prevent a spot where they do investigate you and you risk them making some assumptions about your capital gains from BTC which might end up being aggressive and there's not a lot you can do about that with the nature of BTC.

Why wouldn't you just pay the tax? 

I'll be paying my tax but it's so easy to dodge that if one wants to save themselves some dosh they can just tax dodge.

So say I deposit 1 BTC (at $5k a coin) on a site. Win 10 coins at various values throughout a few months, then cashout 11 coins at $8k, do I pay CGT on the 1 coin (3k increase)? Or just sack it off as there is no way of keeping track of what each coin won has increased/decreased in value?

Surely sack it off. You wouldn't have to pay CGT if the dollar surged to parity to the pound and you cashed out from stars. Or if you went to Vegas with $100k and by the time you came back was worth £100k.

I think the line is when you are viewed to be trading it. Where that line is who knows.

I'm sure someone will tell me I'm talking out of my arse, but since crypto is a currency, not a stock, if you just hold it then sell it months later (rather than trade it daily for e.g.) then surely you aren't subject to CGT?

lol.

Classic Doobs

Why not spread bet the price and you know you won't pay tax on profits

No need to bother with online wallets etc

Just make sure you have enough on account to cover any volatile gap trades

Nah you'd be liable for CGT. It's treated exactly the same as a stock (most stocks are bought and held for a couple of years).

You'd also be a complete idiot not to pay your taxes due. Just to be clear: this is tax evasion.

It depends on your location, but in the UK, yes – any profits made when bitcoin moves from one party to another are subject to capital gains tax.

Spread betting on bitcoin is tax free, however, as you won’t have to pay any capital gains tax or stamp duty on your profits.

the biggest danger of not declaring for CGT on btc profits is if HMRC calculate it/the fines for you, you could get royally f**ked.

They could very easily just take the earliest point they can estimate you bought a coin, and assume you bought every coin at that price, then it would be back on you to appeal the decision and prove you actually paid more for them, and given the nature of BTC there's a very good chance you won't actually be able to to that sufficiently.

Because Cryto is on the border of a Currency and a stock (not considered a currency by HMRC, but traded between people as a currency) if you are going to sell BTC into cash, you should pay for as many things/settle as many debts etc in BTC as you won't be liable for CGT until they come to cash.

It is an asset though, and the tax form says "any asset", so it is liable for CGT on my understanding.  You can make £11k or so before tax each year in capital gains, so most people aren't going to have to pay CGT.   

Back in the day, when I traded shares a lot more aggressively, I used to do a lot of spread betting to avoid CGT, but even if I hadn't, I'd have been pretty much ok most years.  You may think you are going to make five figures each year or whatever, but the reality is usually different for most.  And even if you do have a really good year, you can usually avoid selling or split it over an April.  If you make way more than 5 figures, you shouldn't be grumbling about paying tax anyway.

I think you are right on teh poker account/gambling rules for this situation.  I expect if you held it in a gambling/poker account, you used for gambling/poker, can show you did lots of gambling/poker, then you wouldn't have to worry too much.

It was a serious question to Dave about tax.   I have been self employed/run companies for 15 years or so, there is a good chance I could get away with paying less tax, but I am pretty good with it.  We get a good deal tax wise when compared with a lot of people who are quite a bit poorer, so I try and do the right thing.  Been able to get away with it seems bad reasoning.               

I've no doubt you pay a fair share of taxes, I wasn't suggesting not to pay taxes on BTC profits, the main point in my post was just directly passing advice from my accountant who said if you do liquidise a large amount of money from BTC then defo declare something otherwise you might end up having HMRC do the calcs for you and with such an unpredictable thing as BTC you're very likely to end up being hugely screwed over.

His suggestion, which I think is a good one, is to be completely honest about your BTC profits and just use any legitimate methods to reduce your tax exposure, that way you are paying slightly less taxes but still operating in the bounds of the tax law.

Obviously people should all want to pay their taxes without needing the risk of a fine to encourage them, but this isn't a ethic discussion its a crypto currency discussion.

Could you set BTC losses against your tax bill?

You can offset capital losses against capital gains elsewhere.  Maybe this is a better question for crytpto investors going forward? 
   
I don't think you can do it against income.  I think traders in shares used to get treated differently, though I have no idea if this is still true.  So if your job was bitcoin trader, then there  may be a difference.  I am not a tax man, so don't take this paragraph as gospel. 

No.

https://www.gov.uk/capital-gains-tax/losses (https://www.gov.uk/capital-gains-tax/losses)

You can report losses on a chargeable asset to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to reduce your total taxable gains.

Losses used in this way are called ‘allowable losses’.
Using losses to reduce your gain
When you report a loss, the amount is deducted from the gains you made in the same tax year.

If your total taxable gain is still above the tax-free allowance, you can deduct unused losses from previous tax years. If they reduce your gain to the tax-free allowance, you can carry forward the remaining losses to a future tax year.

Reporting losses
Claim for your loss by including it on your tax return. If you’ve never made a gain and aren’t registered for Self Assessment, you can write to HMRC instead.

You don’t have to report losses straight away - you can claim up to 4 years after the end of the tax year that you disposed of the asset.

Your accountant is missing one huge issue here. Whilst the assets are stored in a wallet, yes I agree there's no way of HMRC picking up on this.

However, practically speaking there's not much you can buy with BTC at present, so the only way of utilising your gain is to sell your BTC and covert back into GBP. If you have made a small gain it's going to fall within the annual CGT allowance, but if you have made a large gain and all of a sudden tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of pounds hits your bank account all sorts of money laundering alarm bells will be triggered.

Somewhere along the line you will have to explain the source of your wealth. As soon as that happens expect government agencies including HMRC to come into the fold.

It is quite surprising an accountant misses the Money Laundering issues that can associate themselves with holding and realising cryptocurrency. Certainly in my time working for an accountancy firm in London they took their ML reporting obligations very seriously.

One good thing for the future though, there are a number of providers who are looking to offer BTC ETFs, which mean that you will soon be able to track the upside (or crash) of the currency in a tax free wrapper such as an  ISA or a SIPP. Indeed Hargreaves Lansdown already offers Bitcoin trackers, albeit in Euros rather than GBP.

http://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/x/xbt-provider-ab-bitcoin-tracker-eur

We are getting towards the final stages of the bull run, BTC is mentioned every day on Bloomberg which brings more people to the party. It's not a question of if but when the biggest crash in the history of any asset class happens imo.