Wow. Bitcoin is almost $1,500

[Red Storm]

A friend of mine wants to purchase a rig from someone else, and I've been rather hesitant on suggesting that he go with it. My biggest worry is that I don't know what's going to happen to this landscape of altcoins. I hear a lot of remarks like, "This is just like the drop that we got a few years ago. It all went back up!" The problem is that I think people are forgetting that the world of cryptocurrency is NOTHING like it was three years ago.

I'd argue that we're in a glut of altcoins... especially when you consider that it takes almost no effort to make a new coin. You can literally take an existing coin's source code, change the name, and bada-bing-bada-boom... you've got a new coin! Just make some fancy website, give it a "purpose", and you're good. The problem is that some of these coins are made as jokes, but people don't care. They're literally buying them and hoping that the price goes up -- i.e. looking for the "next big thing". The creators of Dogecoin don't seem to understand why their coin keeps gaining value when they haven't worked on it in years. Ponzicoin was made as a joke, and yet it has been gaining value.

To me, there has to be a point where people step back and say, "Wait a minute... what the hell is this mess?"

Shitcoins will crash and burn eventually, just don't know when. This what you get with an unregulated market. There's a lot of shady behavior going on and a lot of people are being scammed into buying these shitcoins (aka alt coins that serve no purpose other than a quick pump & dump for those who are in on it).

But Etherium is not a shitcoin, so I wouldn't be worried about that aspect. I would worry about the switch to POS which I believe means no more mining for it. I considered buying hardware to mine, but in the end it made more sense to me to find a good, solid project early on and invest in them, and just sit back and check on the value every now and then. Already made thousands this way with no rigs to run, extra electricity to pay for, etc.

 

[ultimatebob]

A friend of mine wants to purchase a rig from someone else, and I've been rather hesitant on suggesting that he go with it. My biggest worry is that I don't know what's going to happen to this landscape of altcoins. I hear a lot of remarks like, "This is just like the drop that we got a few years ago. It all went back up!" The problem is that I think people are forgetting that the world of cryptocurrency is NOTHING like it was three years ago.

I'd argue that we're in a glut of altcoins... especially when you consider that it takes almost no effort to make a new coin. You can literally take an existing coin's source code, change the name, and bada-bing-bada-boom... you've got a new coin! Just make some fancy website, give it a "purpose", and you're good. The problem is that some of these coins are made as jokes, but people don't care. They're literally buying them and hoping that the price goes up -- i.e. looking for the "next big thing". The creators of Dogecoin don't seem to understand why their coin keeps gaining value when they haven't worked on it in years. Ponzicoin was made as a joke, and yet it has been gaining value.

To me, there has to be a point where people step back and say, "Wait a minute... what the hell is this mess?"

If it's so easy to make an Altcoin, how come we don't have an ATOTcoin yet?

 

[Aikouka]

But Etherium is not a shitcoin, so I wouldn't be worried about that aspect. I would worry about the switch to POS which I believe means no more mining for it. I considered buying hardware to mine, but in the end it made more sense to me to find a good, solid project early on and invest in them, and just sit back and check on the value every now and then. Already made thousands this way with no rigs to run, extra electricity to pay for, etc.

I'm not as worried about Ethereum in and of itself, but rather what psychological effect these garbage coins will have on people. The surge in pricing was largely fueled by more and more hype pushing people to buy to try to make a quick buck. (Keep in mind that coin prices are based upon what people are paying for them on exchanges.) If people lose faith in the market due to garbage, will they even consider coins that are arguably viable? It's sort of like how Steam is utterly worthless to browse anymore now that it's filled with tons of shovelware.

 

[fleshconsumed]

If it's so easy to make an Altcoin, how come we don't have an ATOTcoin yet?

Everybody's neffing too much.

 

[Red Storm]

I'm not as worried about Ethereum in and of itself, but rather what psychological effect these garbage coins will have on people. The surge in pricing was largely fueled by more and more hype pushing people to buy to try to make a quick buck. (Keep in mind that coin prices are based upon what people are paying for them on exchanges.) If people lose faith in the market due to garbage, will they even consider coins that are arguably viable? It's sort of like how Steam is utterly worthless to browse anymore now that it's filled with tons of shovelware.

You may think Steam is utterly worthless, but there are many people and companies that don't, and so money is being made and value is there. Same thing applies to the crypto market. I personally don't care if random Joe Smiths get scared of buying crypto, VEN is geared towards the enterprise market and should do well there.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Bloodbath on stock markets today and bloodbath on crypto markets. Brutal day.

 

[Zeze]

Bloodbath on stock markets today and bloodbath on crypto markets. Brutal day.

Yea, I made two distinct waves of investment in crypto. The first wave made in December is untouchable now - it's always up.

The second wave was made just two weeks ago. That one is in the negative because of this dip.

Overall, I'm still more than double in unrealized gains today. Crypto will recover and put my second wave in black.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Bloodbath on stock markets today and bloodbath on crypto markets. Brutal day.

Black Monday #2? Can two over-leveraged markets tank at once?

 

[Hugo Drax]

Well until the first wave liquidate into real currency that can be used to buy goods and services they still got squat.

If they early holders were smart they would liquidate as fast as possible into hard currency like dollars that can be used in all kinds of transactions around the world. Like paying off the mortgage etc..

I laugh everytime the media trots out the story of the bitcoin millionaires living in a squat with shared rooms and bunkbeds to the others living in the parents basement thinking they are scrooge mcduck waiting till they become trillionaires.

The second wave are morons who will be living under a bridge once they lose their house used to take a second mortgage to load up on bitcoin at 20k

 

[pete6032]

 

[AdamK47]

Vanguard index funds seem good right about now.

 

[IEC]

Totally did not see this coming. /s

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...itfinex-tether-said-to-get-subpoenaed-by-cftc

 

[Ns1]

Totally did not see this coming. /s

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...itfinex-tether-said-to-get-subpoenaed-by-cftc

LOL

“Given the excruciatingly detailed procedures Friedman was undertaking for the relatively simple balance sheet of Tether, it became clear that an audit would be unattainable in a reasonable timeframe,” Tether said.

"They said they were going to trust us, but then they wanted to verify, so we told them to go fuck themselves".

 

[Yakk]

Every January is a bloodbath for crypto, it's crypro shopping month, check the histories. February/March usually starts picking up slowly.

 

[AdamK47]

Every January is a bloodbath for crypto, it's crypro shopping month, check the histories. February/March usually starts picking up slowly.

Except now you have the mainstream masses piling onto crypto currency. That substantially changes things. You can't expect to have any pattern.

 

[momeNt]

The claim in the bloomberg article "Trading the token for Bitcoin at Bitfinex has helped drive up Bitcoin prices", is a dubious claim.

They are alleging, either mistakenly, or without clear proof, that not every token of tether used to buy bitcoin was previously a USD deposited through bitfinex. They acted as a fractional reserve bank used to pump the price, when the main aspect of tether is it is 100% reserve, Bitfinex receives a deposit through wire or ACH, transfers to USDT, and in turn USDT issues a token. USDT cannot pump the price in a full reserve, as there is no extra demand coming from nowhere.

 

[brianmanahan]

If it's so easy to make an Altcoin, how come we don't have an ATOTcoin yet?

it's called NEFCOIN and the ICO starts this friday

 

[ultimatebob]

Everybody's neffing too much.

Come on, how hard can it be? Do a git clone on your favorite crypto's repository, do a search and replace on the product name, build it, and post that sucker on a shiny Squarespace template website promising massive profits.

it's called NEFCOIN and the ICO starts this friday

I didn't get my invite yet! Come on man, I was the brainchild for this thing!

 

[Yakk]

Except now you have the mainstream masses piling onto crypto currency. That substantially changes things. You can't expect to have any pattern.

It's remarkably right on cue. Crypto has a very particular trading pattern and is following it diligently. The extra people just seem to make the dollar figures bigger, but the percentages are pretty consistent.

Example; an 80%+ drawdown has happened a few times before and people that have be around a while expect it to, so far we are at roughly only 50% from ATH.

It can get a lot bloodier, don't want it to, but it certainly could.

 

[Hugo Drax]

Sorry Yakk but i am avoiding bitcoin like the plague. At least trading the S&P 500 i can hedge my risk, have deep markets and lots of liquidity. So if you want to liquidate 500K of bitcoin into cash deposited to a sweep account how fast and easy is it. The whole bitcoin market microstructure is a mess, multiple disconnected exchanges etc..

Can i just liquidate 50 bitcoins at 10K a pop on coinbase and have the cash in my bank account.

 

[destrekor]

Sorry Yakk but i am avoiding bitcoin like the plague. At least trading the S&P 500 i can hedge my risk, have deep markets and lots of liquidity. So if you want to liquidate 500K of bitcoin into cash deposited to a sweep account how fast and easy is it. The whole bitcoin market microstructure is a mess, multiple disconnected exchanges etc..

Can i just liquidate 50 bitcoins at 10K a pop on coinbase and have the cash in my bank account.

Those kinds of moves happen all the time on the large exchanges. Getting that amount of USD out of an exchange though (whether it's like a trading exchange terminal/platform, or more like the simple approach Coinbase uses (they source it through GDAX, Coinbase's full proper exchange) is going to require serious identity verification. And depending on verification level there are caps/limits. You can do it all actually quite fast though, the only time limits will be transferring any BTC if they aren't already on the platform where you would sell them. The top exchanges often see, daily, 9-figure trading volumes, some breaking into the billions from time to time. The longest wait would be the actual money transfer though, from the exchange to a personal bank account or any other investment account for that matter. A couple days, as is typical of ACH. My experience, wire transfers are no better even though they tend to have fees -- but that could just be USAA, which always has a check deposited into my account the day before it is scheduled (say Friday is pay day, unless holidays screw it up I'll have it available to spend on Thursday at the beginning of the banking day).

 

[FelixDeCat]

With all the Initial Coin Offerings going on the criminals are fleecing the sheep left and right now:


https://pageone.ng/2018/01/25/investors-lose-least-2-4-million-benebit-ico-turns-scam/

Hundreds and if not thousands of token investors are counting their losses as Benebit, an initial coin offering has turned out to be an outright scam.

Owners of the scam have immediately taken to their heels making away with at least $2.4 million and perhaps up to 4 million, according to analysts estimates.

The chicken came home to roost after someone who researched into the pedigree of the people behind Benebit project was phoney individuals who are using stolen pictures from a British boys’ school website.

It is now clear that Benebit was a well carried out scam. The website, social media accounts and all eletronic content used officially sell the ICO have now dissapeared from the Internet.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I remember when day trading stocks was the can't-lose way to get rich quick, with gurus selling the systems to have you swimming in cash. Someone less lazy than me could probably find old ATOT threads on how we were all missing out by not day trading. Good times.

I think I'll just continue to buy and hold index funds for decades. Boring, safe, get rich slowly.

 

[destrekor]

I remember when day trading stocks was the can't-lose way to get rich quick, with gurus selling the systems to have you swimming in cash. Someone less lazy than me could probably find old ATOT threads on how we were all missing out by not day trading. Good times.

I think I'll just continue to buy and hold index funds for decades. Boring, safe, get rich slowly.

That hasn't changed. Day trading, pump and dump groups, "boiler rooms" etc all continue to exist in some fashion or another. There's just a new market available now that is even more easily manipulated due to the lack of regulation.

 

[SKORPI0]

[url=https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/01/30/facebook-bans-ads-for-cryptocurrency-icos-bitcoin.html]Facebook bans all ads for cryptocurrencies, ICOs and binary options[/URL]