Official cryptocurrency thread (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin)

[scotty77]

Largely the mainstream media is terrified of crypto. Mainstream media outlets are by and large owned by very rich old white men who are very happy with the status quo which has got them to where they are today. Mainstream media outlets would like to protect the way things are. They don't want a new technology to come in and disrupt and change things drastically. They produce sensationalist articles and play into people's existing confirmation biases. Also note how people who have made a lot of money out of crypto are also ridiculed in the mainstream press - as if that kind of person doesn't deserve to become successful and rich. Decentralised money and the separation of state and money are coming and ten years on from the financial sector being bailed out by world governments, they are now afraid of the speed and the growth of crpyto. Of course what they'd like more than anything is to get in on the action themselves and leverage a position where banks and big business make all the money and get all the benefits.

This is an excellent point.  I've been spending quite a lot of time learning about Crypto and it is does feel to me that there is some kind of agenda in the MSM.  The recent big Crypto stories have been that they are eating up huge amounts of energy and Mr Buffett's comments, mainly in the negative.  I think a lot of it is due to the journalists not really understanding what they are writing about, much like how when a big poker story goes mainstream.

It is a bubble; like the dot com one.  But after that burst no one stopped using the internet, and internet based companies are now valued at even more than their counterparts of the early 2000s.

Sadly I can't be really be an active investor right now, but this is still a technology that is in its infancy and I think it is a prudent measure for anyone to take the time to really try and understand what is going on.  Blockchain is not going away.

Naval is probably my favourite speaker on the technology as a whole and this is a really good and quick watch about the technology.

https://twitter.com/GoldmanSachs/status/951906924240531458

[mikeymike]

Warren Buffett is at least consistent, he gave the same speech two decades ago about internet companies. The simple fact is that as he says if he doesn't understand  the business  he doesn't invest.

He is still a very very smart bloke.

[scotty77]

Warren Buffett is at least consistent, he gave the same speech two decades ago about internet companies. The simple fact is that as he says if he doesn't understand  the business  he doesn't invest.

He is still a very very smart bloke.

Yes, exactly.  The understanding part is key.  The MSM focused on him saying that Crypto would have a bad ending, which was only a small part of his interview.  And he is right, a lot of people will have a bad ending to their Crypto journey.

He and Charlie Munger are genuine legends.

[nirvana]

Let's say this is another internet and use the often cited examples of Amazon and Google, you could have sat on the sidelines for say 10 years in Amazon's case, 10 years plus from the first round of serious search engines through to say the advent of google, sat on the sidelines for Googles first 5 years after IPO and still made fortunes from 2010 to now. It would take some stock picking skill still but you could miss out on 5-10 years of activity, see pretty clear winners emerge and then invested and still filled your boots.

[DMorgan]

Novel format, enjoyed it as an interested observer

#Invalid YouTube Link#

[nirvana]

Forgot to post this incredible end to my previous brill post:

FOMO is exactly what drove the dotcom bubble (even though there was tons of clear evidence all around that the Internet and broadband telecom was going to change our lives completely and was already improving them immeasurably it was still a bubble)

FOMO is driving the irrational valuations today and I don't think grand concepts like the global democratisation of money or any real utility accruing to people in their daily lives is proven yet. I'm happy to wait and see and not trust so many overnight experts just yet.

[bergeroo]

Let's say this is another internet and use the often cited examples of Amazon and Google, you could have sat on the sidelines for say 10 years in Amazon's case, 10 years plus from the first round of serious search engines through to say the advent of google, sat on the sidelines for Googles first 5 years after IPO and still made fortunes from 2010 to now. It would take some stock picking skill still but you could miss out on 5-10 years of activity, see pretty clear winners emerge and then invested and still filled your boots.

Exactly, the best/most successful coin or token might not have even launched yet. Just because the ones at the top on Coin Market Cap were the first in, it is no guarantee at all that they will be around in five or even one year.

[DMorgan]

Novel format, enjoyed it as an interested observer

#Invalid YouTube Link#

[Doobs]

Let's say this is another internet and use the often cited examples of Amazon and Google, you could have sat on the sidelines for say 10 years in Amazon's case, 10 years plus from the first round of serious search engines through to say the advent of google, sat on the sidelines for Googles first 5 years after IPO and still made fortunes from 2010 to now. It would take some stock picking skill still but you could miss out on 5-10 years of activity, see pretty clear winners emerge and then invested and still filled your boots.

Nirvana speaks the truth.

You couldn't invest in Google or Facebook pre the dot com crash.  The Google IPO was 2004; Facebook, 2012.  You could invest in Amazon, but it would be unlikely for anyone over here, as they were listed in the US.  There was so much absolute dross around at the same time over there.  Over here you could invest in the likes of Emblaze, Baltimore and Marconi.  Thank feck boo.com never made it to an IPO.

There was one big success over here in Arm Holdings, and they became World leaders in chip design.  You could buy their shares for a tenner each before the crash, and you'd have been able to sell at £17 a share in 2016.   A gain of a massive £6 in 16 years if you'd picked the big winner, and the company really did become much bigger in the intervening years.

Warren Buffet was massively right on the dotcoms around in 2000.  This is the first article I found...  You could just lift it, change a couple of words, and pass it off as his current thoughts.  I am not convinced many on twitter would be any the wiser. 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1217716.stm

"After a heady experience of that kind," he said, "normally sensible people drift into behaviour akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.
"They know that overstaying the festivities... will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice."

Mr Buffett noted that investors had been hypnotised by the staggering ascent of tech stocks and ignored everything else, including whether the businesses they were investing in were making money.
...
Without naming them directly, Mr Buffett aimed some of his harshest comments toward dot.coms, those internet-based businesses which issued shares in widely anticipated floats only to shut up shop a few months later
..
"Value is destroyed, not created, by any business that loses money over its lifetime," Mr Buffett wrote.
 
He was referring to the business model all too many dot.coms employed - to enrich investors through rising share prices rather than profits.

"The fact is that a bubble market has allowed the creation of bubble companies, entities designed more with an eye to making money off investors rather than for them."

FWIW You could buy Arm Holdings for 40p a share in the afternath of the crash.   More haste, less speed.

[acegooner]

Let's say this is another internet and use the often cited examples of Amazon and Google, you could have sat on the sidelines for say 10 years in Amazon's case, 10 years plus from the first round of serious search engines through to say the advent of google, sat on the sidelines for Googles first 5 years after IPO and still made fortunes from 2010 to now. It would take some stock picking skill still but you could miss out on 5-10 years of activity, see pretty clear winners emerge and then invested and still filled your boots.

Nirvana speaks the truth.

You couldn't invest in Google or Facebook pre the dot com crash.  The Google IPO was 2004; Facebook, 2012.  You could invest in Amazon, but it would be unlikely for anyone over here, as they were listed in the US.  There was so much absolute dross around at the same time over there.  Over here you could invest in the likes of Emblaze, Baltimore and Marconi.  Thank feck boo.com never made it to an IPO.

There was one big success over here in Arm Holdings, and they became World leaders in chip design.  You could buy their shares for a tenner each before the crash, and you'd have been able to sell at £17 a share in 2016.   A gain of a massive £6 in 16 years if you'd picked the big winner, and the company really did become much bigger in the intervening years.

Warren Buffet was massively right on the dotcoms around in 2000.  This is the first article I found...  You could just lift it, change a couple of words, and pass it off as his current thoughts.  I am not convinced many on twitter would be any the wiser. 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1217716.stm

"After a heady experience of that kind," he said, "normally sensible people drift into behaviour akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.
"They know that overstaying the festivities... will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice."

Mr Buffett noted that investors had been hypnotised by the staggering ascent of tech stocks and ignored everything else, including whether the businesses they were investing in were making money.
...
Without naming them directly, Mr Buffett aimed some of his harshest comments toward dot.coms, those internet-based businesses which issued shares in widely anticipated floats only to shut up shop a few months later
..
"Value is destroyed, not created, by any business that loses money over its lifetime," Mr Buffett wrote.
 
He was referring to the business model all too many dot.coms employed - to enrich investors through rising share prices rather than profits.

"The fact is that a bubble market has allowed the creation of bubble companies, entities designed more with an eye to making money off investors rather than for them."

FWIW You could buy Arm Holdings for 40p a share in the afternath of the crash.   More haste, less speed.

Yes and as a shareholder of ARM Holdings I was rather disappointed that Softbank bought them out at £16+ a share despite making a tidy profit. The thing that disappoints me most about this company is we had a British world leader in chip design, nearly every smartphone on the planet has an ARM chip in it.

Now turning to crypto currencies, personally, I have never disputed the technology. My issue is with the valuations that are ridiculously out of line with the fundamental value of these assets. I have started using the word asset, rather than currency because all of these instruments do not behave like currencies, nor are they a medium of exchange.

How many people who are invested in Crypto, genuinely understand how blockchain works or are just in it to make a fast buck.

[acegooner]

Largely the mainstream media is terrified of crypto. Mainstream media outlets are by and large owned by very rich old white men who are very happy with the status quo which has got them to where they are today. Mainstream media outlets would like to protect the way things are. They don't want a new technology to come in and disrupt and change things drastically. They produce sensationalist articles and play into people's existing confirmation biases. Also note how people who have made a lot of money out of crypto are also ridiculed in the mainstream press - as if that kind of person doesn't deserve to become successful and rich. Decentralised money and the separation of state and money are coming and ten years on from the financial sector being bailed out by world governments, they are now afraid of the speed and the growth of crpyto. Of course what they'd like more than anything is to get in on the action themselves and leverage a position where banks and big business make all the money and get all the benefits.

This is an excellent point.  I've been spending quite a lot of time learning about Crypto and it is does feel to me that there is some kind of agenda in the MSM.  The recent big Crypto stories have been that they are eating up huge amounts of energy and Mr Buffett's comments, mainly in the negative.  I think a lot of it is due to the journalists not really understanding what they are writing about, much like how when a big poker story goes mainstream.

It is a bubble; like the dot com one.  But after that burst no one stopped using the internet, and internet based companies are now valued at even more than their counterparts of the early 2000s.

Sadly I can't be really be an active investor right now, but this is still a technology that is in its infancy and I think it is a prudent measure for anyone to take the time to really try and understand what is going on.  Blockchain is not going away.

Naval is probably my favourite speaker on the technology as a whole and this is a really good and quick watch about the technology.

https://twitter.com/GoldmanSachs/status/951906924240531458

Hey Ryan hows it going?

Interesting comments you make about mainstream media, and I have to say as an active investor during the late 90s I disagree with the comments about rich white men happy with the current status quo. It is not in the media's interest to go against a fad, and that's exactly cryptocurrencies are.

If anything, the media are responsible both now and in the 90s for ramping up the price of each asset to unsustainable levels. When a Daily Mail reader hears about people making millions from buying and holding a basket of coins within a matter of months/a few years, naturally FOMO is going to kick in.

Personally, I take the MSM with a pinch of salt, as I also do the same with reddit. You will learn more on Bloomberg/CNBC about cryptos and get more balanced opinions from their guest analysts ( both for and against).

[acegooner]

Let's say this is another internet and use the often cited examples of Amazon and Google, you could have sat on the sidelines for say 10 years in Amazon's case, 10 years plus from the first round of serious search engines through to say the advent of google, sat on the sidelines for Googles first 5 years after IPO and still made fortunes from 2010 to now. It would take some stock picking skill still but you could miss out on 5-10 years of activity, see pretty clear winners emerge and then invested and still filled your boots.

Nirvana speaks the truth.

You couldn't invest in Google or Facebook pre the dot com crash.  The Google IPO was 2004; Facebook, 2012.  You could invest in Amazon, but it would be unlikely for anyone over here, as they were listed in the US.  There was so much absolute dross around at the same time over there.  Over here you could invest in the likes of Emblaze, Baltimore and Marconi.  Thank feck boo.com never made it to an IPO.

There was one big success over here in Arm Holdings, and they became World leaders in chip design.  You could buy their shares for a tenner each before the crash, and you'd have been able to sell at £17 a share in 2016.   A gain of a massive £6 in 16 years if you'd picked the big winner, and the company really did become much bigger in the intervening years.

Warren Buffet was massively right on the dotcoms around in 2000.  This is the first article I found...  You could just lift it, change a couple of words, and pass it off as his current thoughts.  I am not convinced many on twitter would be any the wiser. 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1217716.stm

"After a heady experience of that kind," he said, "normally sensible people drift into behaviour akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.
"They know that overstaying the festivities... will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice."

Mr Buffett noted that investors had been hypnotised by the staggering ascent of tech stocks and ignored everything else, including whether the businesses they were investing in were making money.
...
Without naming them directly, Mr Buffett aimed some of his harshest comments toward dot.coms, those internet-based businesses which issued shares in widely anticipated floats only to shut up shop a few months later
..
"Value is destroyed, not created, by any business that loses money over its lifetime," Mr Buffett wrote.
 
He was referring to the business model all too many dot.coms employed - to enrich investors through rising share prices rather than profits.

"The fact is that a bubble market has allowed the creation of bubble companies, entities designed more with an eye to making money off investors rather than for them."

FWIW You could buy Arm Holdings for 40p a share in the afternath of the crash.   More haste, less speed.

Yes and as a shareholder of ARM Holdings I was rather disappointed that Softbank (a Japanese Tech conglomerate) bought them out at £16+ a share despite making a tidy profit. The thing that disappoints me most about this company is we had a British world leader in chip design, nearly every smartphone on the planet has an ARM chip in it.

Now turning to crypto currencies, personally, I have never disputed the technology. My issue is with the valuations that are ridiculously out of line with the fundamental value of these assets. I have started using the word asset, rather than currency because all of these instruments do not behave like currencies, nor are they a medium of exchange.

How many people who are invested in Crypto, genuinely understand how blockchain works or are just in it to make a fast buck.

[typhoon13]

Yet another interestingly barmy 12 hours

[acegooner]

.

[typhoon13]

BTC 40% off its high