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[JamesCorella]

I saw one thread about Ethereum and Cats LOL and another thread about crypto that was from 2014. So I wanted to make one about all types of coins not just one, so that more peeps can share their thoughts.

Personally I had invested into Bitcoin when it was at 1200 US dollars, but ended up withdrawing when it got to like 2500 Boy was I regretting that move, when it just kept going up and up and up and now its at 15,000 USD . It was like at 17,000 a few days ago, but it keeps changing. Any one got any thoughts, or experiences to share? Anyone investing? Anyone Mining maybe? So what do my 12th Bayers think bout Cryptocurrency?

[wierd]

The original purpose of crypto currencies is to facilitate anonymous purchases.

This category is dominated by two types of purchase:

Ones that would cause social or political upset if they were known about (Outfitting one's private sexual torture dungeon, etc)
Ones that are outright illegal (Buying a huge batch of blow for that "Private VIP party", and or-- for illicit resale.)

Cryptocurrency advocates speak up for the former, and denounce the latter, but the reality is that both occur with about equal prevalence, and there is really no way to prevent the latter.

There is a good outcome from the technology though, and that is the blockchain technology they use; It as built in record keeping and assures that counterfeiting cannot occur.

Like most fads in the financial world though, it is currently enjoying a very dangerous bubble.

[JamesCorella]

Thats true man, I remember when I was a young teen, and I had first found out about the darkweb ,I remember seeing drugs ,guns, hitmen, and there even was some guy who would send a swat team to raid a house of your choosing, for like 20 bucks worth of bitcoin, I remember everything was paid with bitcoin. Then I googled what the hell bitcoin was, and all I remember is that it was like 300 US for 1 coin. So I was pretty surprised when now, many years later It started being talked about more commonly, cuz I just thought it was some sort of illegal thing that only criminals or people that knew about the darkweb used, I even think some had said that only millionaires trying to hide their money from being taxed by the government used it.

[Telgin]

I don't have any particular opinion on the uses of cryptocurrencies, but I will say that they're much too volatile for me to invest in any of them.

I'm also leery of using any for now.  While the idea of blockchain is probably sound, I'm concerned that there will be vulnerabilities found for the specific algorithms used for various currencies, that if broken, might allow forgeries or other problems that ruin its value entirely.

Presumably any kind of attack like that would have to outcompete the mining network for forged transactions to be accepted or something.  I don't know the real details on how any of it works.  I'm still somewhat skeptical for now, and would be more apt to pick it up after it's been truly mainstream for years.

[Loud Whispers]

It's a bit pointless right now, with people using it for speculation and as a store of value instead of as money. Which is dangerous because it has no value, thus is only as valuable as the next dood is willing to pay for it. No millionaires would put their wealth into bitcoins though, it's just a lot harder to convert bitcoins back into cash than it is to do in reverse, though there is one floating casino being built in Macau which will be uniquely positioned to launder money without anyone being able to trace it, especially since it can float to wherever it legally needs to be to make such transactions or gambling. The founder of the hotel denies any connection with the gangster convicted for loan sharking and money laundering who showed up to the opening lmao

[Reelya]

I mined some Dogecoin when it was only a couple of months old, got over 50000 DOGE. It's quadrupled in price recently, mine are now worth about $US900. I'm gonna hold onto them, hope they end up worth some real money. I'm glad I didn't cash them in when they were worth $300. They broke the 1-cent per Dogecoin barrier recently, now they're headed towards 2 cents per Dogecoin. Definitely going to keep an eye on that as it could help with my financial situation. I mined them for fun, never expected them to be worth this much, I would have mined a lot more if I knew.

Basically with the issues around transaction bottlenecks with Bitcoin (the thing was only designed as a proof-of-concept, it wasn't meant to be a thing in itself) investors are starting to really diversify.

[Max™]

There's going to be a lot of bubbles and a lot of diversity, this isn't just a fad anymore, shame I never had cash to throw at it way back when. Some of the guys I remember trying to get people interested in it are up tens of thousands of dollars or more.

[milo christiansen]

Just think: Back in 2009 I had $2800 free. If I had bought BTC I would be a millionaire now...

[Reelya]

Yeah, same here. But I'm guessing just about everyone on the planet has that same thought. These types of windfalls generally rely on you being one of the few people who took the punt. If everyone jumped on Bitcoin back then, then something else entirely would have an investment bubble right now.

[Reelya]

However, "millionaire" is underestimating exactly how far the price has exploded.

I seem to remember that back then, someone bought two pizzas for 10000 bitcoins. EDIT here's the story:

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bitcoin-pizza-10000-100-million-2017-11?r=UK&IR=T

So, back then you'd get roughly a $10 pizza for 5000 coins, each coin was worth about 1/5 of a cent. When that above story was written, the price was $US10,000 per coin, or an inflation factor of about 5 million per coin. With $2800 worth back in 2010, you'd now be worth $14 billion dollars, placing you around #110th place on the Forbes list of richest people in the world. If you'd bought $20K worth of bitcoin back at those prices, you'd be worth over $100 billion today, making you the world's #1 richest person. This is how unpredictable things are in the modern economy.

EDIT: BTW, the guys Zuckerberg ripped off for the Facebook concept sued him and won, around 2013 I think, then they invested the millions they got into Bitcoin, and are now billionaires.

[WealthyRadish]

It surprises me that bitcoin has kept its price this long; it does seem very much like a bubble. I would think that there's nothing stopping the concept from being repeated ad infinitum with zillions of other cryptocurrencies, but I suppose new currencies under a similar generation system would be aggressively horded by speculators, resulting in an even lower volume of transactions and preventing them from competing with more "established" currencies like bitcoin (creating somewhat of a natural monopoly for now).

I think the bubble will pop when either:
1) Some big holders try to cash out and realize that those bitcoins worth "billions" don't actually have enough prospective buyers to liquidate, and news of their quiet trickle of sales triggers a panic and flood of sellers
2) The blockchain system is compromised somehow and ruined overnight (seems unlikely, but who knows)
3) An Amazon-type massive tech multinational creates a cryptocurrency that they will accept in transactions, it gains wide usage, and the bitcoin speculative bubble pops as it loses that natural monopoly effect

[Reelya]

I wonder whether the sub-dividability of Bitcoin is one of the factors allowing such a sustained growth. Traditional commodities aren't sub-dividable like this stuff is. Each bitcoin is divisible into 100 million parts, known as a Satoshi, so effectively, the price could keep rising, yet new investors won't be completely priced out of buying bits and pieces until the Satoshi itself becomes the limit.

That could be very different to e.g. a property market. You can't really sell half a house, you need to find someone willing to buy the entire house, and when the speculator money dries up (e.g. no one investor can afford the whole house) then the market prices plateau and then fall as people start selling to invest in something else. Company shares are the same: you can only buy them in integer amounts. If houses and/or shares were sub-divisible, then with a price rise, you never know what difference that would make. if you're always able to buy e.g. $1000 worth of house then of course, property bubbles would most likely continue on far longer than they actually do.

So, with bitcoin, no matter how much the price, it's always possible to e.g. buy "$300 worth" or whatever other amount is acceptable for people willing to take a punt on the market. Theoretically, the price could keep rising, until the point at which the Satoshi itself becomes the bottleneck to buying or selling reasonable amounts.

However, what's most likely to happen is that after some time, a clearly superior crypto-currency is developed, at which point people start to mass-migrate over to that blockchain leaving the original bitcoin blockchain basically as a deserted backwater, full of wallets with lost keys, and diehard geek fans tinkering around.

[Max™]

I think you folks are kinda late on your skepticism. There are literally oodles of other coins, there are many with numerous advances/fixes/dev paths that make them superior to bitcoin in all but one way: they didn't come first and thus have to catch up.

Finding the right ones now is a decent way to pop in for some cash/losses/possibly absurd gains (toss in what you can lose, be happy if you don't) but you also gotta deal with all the different exchanges having various issues with shit like everybody trying to jump into the game now and overloading signup servers.

[Tack]

I bought ripple at 70c so i’m happy.

[Sheb]

PTW.