Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old December 20th, 2018 #1
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default #1 Crypto Thread (formerly #Bitcoin)

[posted w/o comment]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5084077.0
 
Old December 24th, 2018 #2
O. Pierce
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 40
Default

Bitcoin is legal tender nowhere and not redeemable for any commodity. It isn't backed by military force, either. The whole network uses a ridiculous amount of electricity to perform futile computations. How is this not just an elaborate Ponzi scheme? You're hoping that someone will want to buy your waste heat receipts in the future because.... of Bitcoin brand name recognition, I guess? The supply of crypto is not limited if anyone can just copy the bitcoin (or litecoin, monero, or whatever) source code and start minting his own coin.

It seems to me that the future of crypto is to keep the blockchain technology but to ditch the "mining" process. Use the blockchain for trading digital depository receipts of hard assets that exist in a vault somewhere. For example, a company buys a million ounces of gold and creates a million bitgold tokens on its network. The company then sells its bitgold tokens (for dollars, bitcoin, or whatever else it will accept). This company, however, would be legally obligated to withdraw gold from its vault for anyone with a token who shows up at its office. Obviously, this wouldn't be happen very often. And the company needs to exact transaction fees in order to keep the vaults and offices staffed.

It turns out that several Gold-backed cryptos exist. (https://www.agau.io/, https://ekon.gold, https://onegram.org/). (Disclaimer: I don't own any of these and I'm not trying to hawk them, but I'm posting the links for those who are interested because I think this is the future of crypto).

This model could be extended to ownership of companies (e.g., tokens redeemable for units of S & P 500 ETFs), or to futures contracts for commodity delivery (of oil, wheat, etc). Furthermore, a company could create its own composite coin by combining several assets that have inverse price correlations (that is, one moves up when the other moves down). Now, you have a currency that has two very appealing properties: it can't be created out of thin air and it can be redeemed for utility goods.
 
Old December 26th, 2018 #3
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

I don't know...you have too much emotion against it, which tells me you feel there is something to BitCoin.

It's easy to point out what's wrong with real ponzi schemes, undeniable. social security, madoff and such.

All money is based on faith, there's more reason to have faith in BitCoin's underlying technology than in the dollar.

Both are valuable and figure to be valuable in the future, is my guess.

The difference between dollar and bitcoin is that bitcoin is based on solid and developing technology, whereas dollar is based on US Govt. which is essentially a global empire that is running out of quality people.

Russia, China and others are working to create options besides SWIFT and the dollar as currency reserve. I don't think the long-term future for the dollar is solid, altho I'm sure it will retain value for some time.
 
Old December 26th, 2018 #4
Dan Hadaway
.
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,923
Default

Quote:
Just one year has passed since bitcoin enthusiasts forecasted that the cryptocurrency would hit a price of $1 million.

But that was then. With the price of bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.72% having fallen almost 80% from its peak, and now trading well-below the support level of $6,000, everyone is wondering where it goes from here.

The answer is, a swift and painful drop to zero.

In a MarketWatch column I wrote last April, I explained what it would take for bitcoin to become worthless. Bitcoin is getting close to that point. As I argued, once Bitcoin’s price falls below its cost of mining, the incentive to mine will deteriorate, thrusting bitcoin into a death spiral. That is, without the mining activities supporting the ledger that maintains the records of who owns what — bitcoin is, after all, a set of encrypted numbers that cannot establish the ownership of anything — bitcoin will become worthless.

A typical asset has a set of cash flows, and its value is driven by investors’ expectations of those cash flows. Bitcoin has no cash flows. In that respect, it is more like gold, in that its value is driven to some extent by its desirability and potential uses, but mostly by its cost of mining. While there are many estimates of bitcoin’s cost of mining, most suggest it is close to $5,000 per coin. Furthermore, even though traditional commodities like gold require significant investments, with limited technical knowledge and capital, anyone can mine bitcoins. Thus, the price of bitcoin must be close to the fully loaded cost of mining it (meaning you are modestly compensated for your time and capital outlay). So, one would expect the price of bitcoin to fluctuate somewhere around that point.

X
See Also
See This Drone Deliver Coffee and Divide an Australian Suburb

Moreover, there is one additional complication: Unlike gold, which, probably due to a historical accident, is universally accepted as a store of value, bitcoin is a digital commodity with no such universal acceptance as a store of value. While the original buyers and miners of bitcoin were true believers in the paradigm shift they thought it promised, and were willing to make the necessary investments for future gains, the more recent buyers and miners have been run-of-the-mill, greed-driven investors.

Their greed has been further fueled by futures trading, which was introduced when bitcoin prices were booming and the sun appeared to be perpetually rising on the horizon. With bitcoin prices well above the cost of mining, they saw an obvious arbitrage opportunity: Mine bitcoin and sell it for a higher price in the futures market for guaranteed arbitrage profits.

Not surprisingly, traditional investors took notice, with many investing in mining operations, and the bitcoin that were expected to be generated by mining were sold in the futures market. As more arbitrageurs entered the market to exploit this opportunity, bitcoin prices were pushed down close to their cost of mining (with a small return) and led to a long (in bitcoin world) period of stable prices. It also changed the complexion of the miners, and a higher proportion of them are now fair-weather miners looking for a quick buck who would quickly disappear once the opportunity dissolves.

Yet the cost of mining bitcoin is not a fixed-dollar amount. There is a feedback mechanism in mining any commodity that applies to bitcoin: as the price of bitcoin increases, new miners enter the market, increasing the effort required to mine a bitcoin, as its reward will be shared among a larger group of miners. Similarly, when the price of bitcoin falls and miners exit, the cost of mining decreases. However, the number of miners cannot fall below a certain level, because without the miners providing the computing power to maintain the ledger, the bitcoin blockchain will not remain viable.

Mining at a cost higher than the cost at which you can sell in the futures market destroys value. So, any rational investor — even one who strongly believes the price of bitcoin will rebound — has no incentive to mine if the cost of mining is higher than the future price and is better off buying in the futures market. And unlike gold, which can retain its value even if mining activity stops, bitcoin can have no value absent the mining activity that maintains the ledger of who owns it. Absent the mining activity, bitcoin is a just a set of encrypted numbers with no value.

Death spiral

So, it appears bitcoin is now entering a death spiral: If the price continues to drop and the cost of mining does not fall correspondingly (the cost of mining will algorithmically decrease, but not necessarily to same extent as the decline in prices), bitcoin will quickly go to zero.

Bitcoin proponents will argue that bitcoin’s price has dropped by large percentages before. Except this most recent decline is different in three significant ways. First, the magnitude of the recent decline dwarfs the magnitudes of past declines. Second, the losers in the recent decline are new investors who will likely retreat until there is more clarity around bitcoin’s use cases. Third, the futures markets have changed the game, enabling miners to estimate their mining losses and profits at the outset — if you can buy in a futures market at a price below my mining costs, why mine for a sure loss?

Many will argue that bitcoin becoming truly worthless is extreme. Sure, looking at some memorable fads and bubbles, tulips still trade for $10 a bunch and Beanie Babies are fairly priced at $5.

And it looks as though the Blockchain economy is here to stay, where many of our transactions will be processed on the blockchain and use cryptocurrency for daily transactions. Indeed, while the world maybe forever be indebted to Satoshi Nakamoto for giving us a viable cryptocurrency, bitcoin may cease to exist. An improved coin might evolve, or governments might start issuing cryptocurrencies. History is full of examples of innovative companies that went bankrupt, and the “me-too” companies becoming the best investments.

And after all, I can still give my wife a bouquet of tulips and make her happy. And I can still give Beanie Babies to my grandchildren to play with. But what am I going to do with a set of numbers that I cannot prove makes me an owner of anything?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bi...ess-2018-12-03
 
Old December 26th, 2018 #5
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

i hope it keeps falling. would love to see it under 1k, last i saw it was over 4k again
 
Old December 27th, 2018 #6
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

what's a dollar? paper and ink. no inherent value. value is it's backed by the USG. which allows it to be debased continually for 100 years. as the US empire dc

bitcoin or some alternative currency based on blockchain will work because there is a market for non-inflatable currency and private value exchanges not trackable by govt, completely outside the banking system. bitcoin is the first and most famous, if it's not the best in other ways. there are only 21,000,000 bitcoins that can exist, that's how the creator set it. some of them are lost forever.

just watching now, but keiser and herbert discuss it, i think in this dec 27 episode


Last edited by Alex Linder; December 27th, 2018 at 10:07 AM.
 
Old December 29th, 2018 #8
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

VentionMGTOW
13 hours ago
I'm an old prepper/silver stacker. I just treat bitcoin like another kind of precious metal. I buy some every payday, lock it in the bank box and go on with my life. I doubt I'll ever sell a large percentage of my bitcoins. When the demand for bitcoins increases and they reach the point where it pencils out that I can retire on them, I'll do so. Then I'll sell my paid off house (store the 300k I should get for it, in vaulted gold) and use that as a buffer for the bull and bear markets. When bitcoins are doing well I'll draw my expenses from bitcoins. When they're having a year like this year I'll draw from what I can get for selling the house. I'll keep the amount of bitcoins I cash in under 38,600 a year. Below that level no capital gains taxes are due. I live very comfortably on way less than that right now (income from my mechanic job 4600, spending 1400, and my surplus is usually over 3000 a month). I buy some bitcoin every payday, drop it into the bank box, and it's totally painless. I can keep this up for years if necessary.

I love how compact and weightless Bitcoins are. If I needed to travel anywhere on foot with my silver it would be way too heavy to go very far with it, and I certainly couldn't travel overseas with it. With bitcoins however, I could get on a plane, fly to one of these low cost countries and live many years on those bitcoins (even at the current price of 3600), and there's nothing customs can do about it because I wouldn't need to even have them with me. I could just stash them onto encrypted cloud storage and i'm good. LOL, I probably would have done that if Hillary were elected, But as long as Trump is in office I'll stick around, keep fixing trucks for a living, and keep buying bitcoins.
 
Old December 29th, 2018 #10
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

this is a serious thread. you can use this forum to whine about niggers, that's fine, but doing that will do nothing for you personally, or for the cause. endless whining or even just describing shit doesnt really do much in the end. wealth is a form of power open to us. take advantage of it. work, invest and speculate, and do them all HARD.

absolutely crypto is real, serious and a 'thing' that will make many, many people very, very rich over the next generation. it already has.

now is the time to buy.

most men are pufferfish. full of air. weak little arms. they are cowardly, they are scared. they are essentially females with dicks - they follow the crowd. they dont have enough internal stuff to critique themselves honestly. when things go well, they credit themselves. when things go poorly, they screech at others.

YOU are responsible for making a success of your life NO MATTER the circumstances. that's iron law of reality. that's individualism, the reality. it cant be gotten away from. no collective can absolve you of responsibility, nor should it try. that way lie niggers. but we can work together as a TEAMWHITE to figure this stuff out and mutually enrich our understandings and pocketbooks. can you think of another group that works like that?

now is a good time to buy BC. that's my financial advice to you. (there is never a bad time to buy gold, not really. i advise you buy gold too. but BC is in a big dip right now, whereas gold is not.)

but i also advise - just buy and hold or HODL which is their joke term for holding.

dont try to day trade this shit. that will only drive you crazy.

just buy this stuff. buy gold and silver. hold some cash too.

BUY & HOLD YOUR WATER.

this shit will go up and down MANY more times. and the same shriekers and cheerleaders will be there at every point. the gimlet eye to these clowns. just buy and hold and dont listen to anything too much. find a few smart men, read what they say. the financial guys that lew rockwell knows are solid. max keiser is worthwhile. others on youtube too.

you buy this stuff and you wait. you dont trade around like a jackass, very few and 99% not you can make that work. there is nothing including sex that people lie about more than their investments, so you only want to pay attention to people you know actually have money doing what they say. and these people will say just what i'm saying to you.

so right now, starting 2019, is a great time to buy bitcoin. dont worry about the price. this is something you buy, and then you see where it is in a decade.

Last edited by Alex Linder; December 29th, 2018 at 12:03 PM.
 
Old December 29th, 2018 #11
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

bitcoin guy says huge recession is coming

he's says that's what "ignited" BC after 2008 crash

seeing the fucking JEWbanks bailed out

a money that can't be dis-integrity'd the way zogbucks and all paper can

THAT is the purpose and meaning of BC and similars. to reduce that to wasted heat is silly

a way of exchanging value that cant be controlled by the jewstaat or jewbaanks
 
Old January 10th, 2019 #12
remnant
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 947
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Linder View Post
Interesting stuff. I remember reading a post maybe on MR , long ago ,before the big run up last year- Bowery stating he did the coding for all the
early active exchanges ( e.g. Mt Gox). Not really something to boast about since the functionality of all these exchanges was, and still is, horrific.
I just recall thinking he must have been paid in BTC and should have made a large fortune if he didn't sell it all off along the way.

FWIW, I am looking to start buying BTC ~ 1500 .Expect prices in the 1000 -1200 range, ideally by this Summer. Looks like the next downleg to sub 3000 just started, I guess the ETH fork next week is the catalyst. Have to disagree about Gold; BTC and Gold are in direct competition for funds.They should not trade up or down together.
 
Old January 10th, 2019 #13
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by remnant View Post
Interesting stuff. I remember reading a post maybe on MR , long ago ,before the big run up last year- Bowery stating he did the coding for all the early active exchanges ( e.g. Mt Gox). Not really something to boast about since the functionality of all these exchanges was, and still is, horrific. I just recall thinking he must have been paid in BTC and should have made a large fortune if he didn't sell it all off along the way.

FWIW, I am looking to start buying BTC ~ 1500 .Expect prices in the 1000 -1200 range, ideally by this Summer. Looks like the next downleg to sub 3000 just started, I guess the ETH fork next week is the catalyst. Have to disagree about Gold; BTC and Gold are in direct competition for funds.They should not trade up or down together.
appreciate your comments. i hope you're right about the price, i'm getting into it this year, soon as i "process" a vast amount of work i got to get done.

i guess in theory BTC and gold compete. maybe once reserve currency shifts to BC, as keiser seems to think. but this will take a long time, and in the meantime gold is something more real than FRNs.
 
Old January 10th, 2019 #14
remnant
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 947
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Linder View Post
appreciate your comments. i hope you're right about the price, i'm getting into it this year, soon as i "process" a vast amount of work i got to get done.

i guess in theory BTC and gold compete. maybe once reserve currency shifts to BC, as keiser seems to think. but this will take a long time, and in the meantime gold is something more real than FRNs.
Two old-timers worth listening to:
Two different methodologies ; both have similar targets around 1000 for btc



Clif is a little out there, but a certified genius type . Not in Bowery's league, but up there. I have been following his data mining work since 9/11

Last edited by remnant; January 10th, 2019 at 11:51 PM.
 
Old January 10th, 2019 #15
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by remnant View Post
Interesting stuff. I remember reading a post maybe on MR , long ago ,before the big run up last year- Bowery stating he did the coding for all the
early active exchanges ( e.g. Mt Gox). Not really something to boast about since the functionality of all these exchanges was, and still is, horrific.
I just recall thinking he must have been paid in BTC and should have made a large fortune if he didn't sell it all off along the way.
yes. craig cobb claims Bowery is Satoshi. i dont believe that. it's similar to his claiming donnie in ohio is one of those SPLC guys. bowery himself denies it. maybe i posted that on here somewhere. i hope bowery made some money, but his comments didnt make it sound like it.
 
Old January 10th, 2019 #16
Jimmy Marr
Moderator
 
Jimmy Marr's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Jew S. A.
Posts: 3,679
Default

Craig Cobb is self-evidently Elvis.
 
Old January 11th, 2019 #17
Emily Henderson
Intellijintly Dezined
 
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Pre-Rapture, USA ⚛️
Posts: 3,871
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Marr View Post
Craig Cobb is self-evidently Elvis.
I told Elvis that you asked me to ask him to give you a ring a while back.

I asked him a couple of days ago if he'd done so and he said no, he didn't want to bother you in case you were inundated with calls after being sick.

I've lived the Bowery discovery situation since day before Thanksgiving and I understand why Craig came to that conclusion, though I of course don't know enough to say for certain. He's talked to me about Bowery since before we met in real life, he greatly admires him.

I don't care who invented it personally but Bowery sent Craig bitcoin in the very early days, he's one of the first to get it and this is one of the reasons for him coming to that conclusion. The mining thingamajig was not working correctly and it is still sitting there to this day, on a PC Craig sold.

It would've been worth a fortune if taken out at a peak time for Bitcoin, so I get why that's a disturbance.

For me, life right now matters more. One can make or lose money. But you can't get days back once they're gone.

As for Crypto--it's not going away.

Much of it is a pump and dump. Even with the pump and dumps, there will be some who benefit. Some who lose.

Some things will be integrated into business, like the company 'Smart Containers' is doing, which I saw at the Beekeeping Convention and Craig had already mentioned a week or so ago.

And many things will go away completely.

Here's some prediction related to BC.

My opinion is that it doesn't hurt to get some and hold on to it, as long as you don't blow your whole wad, or get into the pump and dumps with any foofy ideas that don't stack up with the reality that it could go 'poof' and you're not on the pump end but the dump end.

Also the middle man aspect is really disturbing to me.

To buy and trade you rely on others who are sometimes really questionable--this is one reason I haven't personally done any crypto stuff yet.

If you do, look into who you are dealing with, with a cautious eye.

https://smartereum.com/3330/bitcoin-...19-fri-jan-11/

Also noticed some thread on here re phone numbers in relation to crypto.

They can be used to steal, so watch it. They do it with "SIM swapping” to steal phone numbers and use them to take crypto.

AT&T was sued for $224 million after some hackers used the SIM swapping method from a cryptocurrency exchange.

Once hackers get access to your private keys, they own your money and you’re screwed,” says Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/18/cryp...e-numbers.html

The key to it is learn, learn, learn, be skeptical, and do what makes sense in relation to what you can afford to do, and with a truthful outlook on what can and can't happen in the future, which is quite a wide swath of possibilities.
__________________
"Inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception."--Richard Carrier

Last edited by Emily Henderson; January 11th, 2019 at 08:28 PM. Reason: you're vs. your. omg.
 
Old January 13th, 2019 #18
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

The question remains: is there a 100% secure way to acquire but more importantly store BitCoin.
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:06 PM.
Page generated in 0.18309 seconds.