bitcoin - investors

[njdevilsfan87]

Anyone heard talk of making bitcoin less resource intensive? I've seen some say 620 kwh for a single transaction. That could power a house for a month. Would it lead to another hard fork?

Ethereum is the next biggest player in the market and is transitioning to Proof-of-Stake by ~2022 or so, and thus be green.

People new to the crypto should only be investing (or speculating if you want to still call it that) in two things: 1. Bitcoin and 2. Ethereum

In my opinion, Ethereum is the only project that could over-take Bitcoin in market capitalization in the future. It's addressing some of the major issues of Bitcoin, and because it will be able to scale well (sharding, eta ~2022) the Ethereum network will serve as the backbone to so many applications. It's going to come down this: "you want to build something that can utilize blockchain - use Ethereum as your backbone". People will think I'm crazy, but I think we will see a $5000 Ethereum by 2025. It's like how Nvidia has cornered the machine learning and AI market with CUDA, that's what Ethereum will do for all decentralized applications. Nobody is going to start from the ground up (especially when very few have the knowledge to) when there will already be a great working solution because the former will be far too expensive in comparison.

 

[Train]

Anyone heard talk of making bitcoin less resource intensive? I've seen some say 620 kwh for a single transaction. That could power a house for a month. Would it lead to another hard fork?

I don't see how that number is possible. Considering a transaction costs an average of 30 cents, and even factoring in the block reward, electricity would have to be near free to make mining profitable. A quick google search says electricity in China is actually more expensive than in the US. That 620kwh cost might be for large blocks of transactions?

 

[ultimatebob]

Personally, I think that we'll end up some some government regulated cryptocurrency to replace USD (as we know it) at some point, which will be super boring to own because it's value will rarely change. Of course, that's what you really want in a currency... stability.

 

[drnickriviera]

I don't see how that number is possible. Considering a transaction costs an average of 30 cents, and even factoring in the block reward, electricity would have to be near free to make mining profitable. A quick google search says electricity in China is actually more expensive than in the US. That 620kwh cost might be for large blocks of transactions?

I guess that was worded poorly. I think they are taking total estimated power consumption for the bitcoin network and dividing it by the number of transactions per yr(?) or whatnot.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index - Digiconomist

The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index provides the latest estimate of the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network.

digiconomist.net

My number was off, 750kwh is the estimate. Ouch. I wonder if that is just mining power or if they also add in cooling cost for the rigs?

 

[Train]

I guess that was worded poorly. I think they are taking total estimated power consumption for the bitcoin network and dividing it by the number of transactions per yr(?) or whatnot.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index - Digiconomist

The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index provides the latest estimate of the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network.

digiconomist.net

My number was off, 750kwh is the estimate. Ouch. I wonder if that is just mining power or if they also add in cooling cost for the rigs?

That's even more impossible, 750kwh is easily over $100 USD in most of the world.

 

[Fritzo]

Bought some Etherium and XRP. Hearing "things" on Twitter

 

[ultimatebob]

You want to make some real money with crypto? Here's how:

1) Sign up for a Coinbase account
2) Watch all the promotional videos for the various shitcoins they're promoting. Take the quiz, and get about $6 worth of the various shitcoins as a reward for watching them. There is about half a dozen of these videos for different shitcoins now.
3) Sell the various shitcoins for cash. Yeah, you'll lose about a dollar in commission by selling each one. But, it's better than holding onto a shitcoin and watching it go to zero over the next year. Trust me on this.
4) Cash out your holdings. Congratulations, you're now about $30 richer for about 90 minutes of "work". Better yet, you're not going to be holding the bag when Coinbase eventually gets hacked and "loses" all of your crypto.
5) Alternately, you could buy a cryptocurrency that might actually hold its value like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but then you still have to worry about Coinbase getting hacked and "losing" all your crypto.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

6) Transfer crypto off Coinbase to either a password encrypted software core wallet, or hardware wallet and no longer worry about losing all of your crypto due to exchange hack.

It looks Bitcoin may test all time highs much sooner than anyone expected. A lot of people included myself didn't think a new high (>$20K) would come until 2022-2023, but it may actually happen by the end of this year at the rate things are going. If it does test a new high we will likely see a significant pullback as there are no established support and resistance levels between $13.8-$20K.

Long shot prediction: if we do actually break $20K with momentum, I see a short-term peak of $27-$28K coinciding to Bitcoin's market cap hitting $500B, followed by a plunge to $15K or so and then continued movement upward. We are now in the institutional investing phase: $100K+ is no longer a matter of if, but when. This is the final phase worth doing any sort of speculation on. Beyond this there is no more room for explosive speculative growth and different than that investing in gold, stocks, etc.

 

[Train]

Personally, I think that we'll end up some some government regulated cryptocurrency to replace USD (as we know it) at some point, which will be super boring to own because it's value will rarely change. Of course, that's what you really want in a currency... stability.

Dollars are already digital and tracked. Beyond finally banning cash (the idea has already been floated several times in both US and EU) There would be no point.

 

[Train]

knocking on the door of all-time highs on several exchanges today.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

This is now the 8th day in a row Bitcoin has seen prices >$18K. The blow off top in 2017 saw only 4 days >$18K in comparison.

 

[ultimatebob]

This is feeling like a repeat of 2017. I just hope that nobody here is buying at this point, and they're ready to dump their holdings the moment things start looking bad once we get over $20K again.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

This guy has a pretty good risk analysis of when to buy/sell Bitcoin: Link

Long story short - it's not a great time to buy right now, but it's also not a good time to exit in the long-term scheme. If you're buying, wait for a better risk ratio (<0.5) and if you're selling, wait for a higher risk risk ratio (>0.8). Right now it's around 0.6-0.7.

 

[ponyo]

This feels way different to me than 2017. Way more orderly march and less of FOMO. I think if it breaks $20k, it can run lot further. Like $30-40k. Or even $50k. Just my gut feeling.

 

[Train]

This feels way different to me than 2017. Way more orderly march and less of FOMO. I think if it breaks $20k, it can run lot further. Like $30-40k. Or even $50k. Just my gut feeling.

Ya once the news of all-time highs hit the mainstream news, it could shoot to 30k. But at that point, a lot of people (me included) will dump. Could crash back to 15k or lower, who knows.

I agree with njdevilsfan87, Not selling yet, but not buying more either.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Over $21K now - well beyond all time high now. Anyone who has ever bought any Bitcoin ever and held is now in profit. HODLers win again.

 

[Train]

Sold about 25% of my BTC at $22k, figure I should trim some. Will probably put all that cash back in if it goes under 20, or sell more if it goes over 25.

 

[brianmanahan]

i bought some a couple months ago for the heck of it

and it's freaking doubled

i might just sell it all today

 

[ponyo]

i bought some a couple months ago for the heck of it

and it's freaking doubled

i might just sell it all today

Sell half and play with house money. But since it's short term gain, profits will be taxed at your income tax rate. So figure that into your selling equation.

 

[brianmanahan]

Sell half and play with house money. But since it's short term gain, profits will be taxed at your income tax rate. So figure that into your selling equation.

yeah that's a good idea

luckily i got 5 figs of tax harvesting mutual funds losses in march/april, so that'll more than cover the gains

 

[njdevilsfan87]

My tax free Roth IRA has been 100% GBTC since $10-$12, so that's been working out nicely. Tax free gains there. Same with my HSA which was 100% ETHE, but I pulled out after a quick 150% gain in it (should have longer, oh well looking for the next play there).

Still holding long, there's a lot of price discovery ahead. If retail took Bitcoin to $20K, who knows where institutions will take it.

 

[Train]

welp, selling at $22k and waiting to buy back at 20 was a bust. BTC just flew past $26k

 

[brianmanahan]

welp, selling at $22k and waiting to buy back at 20 was a bust. BTC just flew past $26k

lol same

i only sold half though and am not going to touch the rest

(well maybe at 50$k i would)

 

[ponyo]

This feels way different to me than 2017. Way more orderly march and less of FOMO. I think if it breaks $20k, it can run lot further. Like $30-40k. Or even $50k. Just my gut feeling.

Bitcoin up another $3,369 today and now trading at $32,479. Move in 2017 was retail driven. The move in 2020 was institution joining the party. Institutions have lot more money.

 

[manlymatt83]

What do folks think of MSTR?