Wow. Bitcoin is almost $1,500

[DrMrLordX]

My dislike of it comes from two factors. The increase of video card pricing and the droves of mainstream buying into it at all time highs based off of hype and greed.

Bitcoin, in particular, does not affect video card pricing, nor has it since 2013 or so. And all crypto projects are about a year out from their previous ATHs. So rejoice, problem solved for you pal!

Of all those other crypto projects that use PoW, the majority are moving away from it (perhaps not quickly enough). I think the only one still on PoW with GPUs for the foreseeable future is XMR. So go hate on XMR if you like. Never mind that sometimes you get better bang/buck mining XMR with CPUs.

My dislike of crypto is mainly from its being a bubble, no 'real value'. governments back currencies as imperfect as they are, nothing backs crypto value.

Aside from Bitcoin and its clones, most/all the other crypto projects are either centralized currencies backed by a central issuing organization (XRP in particular) or "utility" tokens intended to represent time slices on a global computer network (ETH, EOS, NEO).

In fact, the vast majority of the crypto world today, sells itself based on what you can do with it. The tokens are not monetary units of barter. Nobody is meant to "back" their value since they are not units of currency at all.

A secondary concern is that wasted energy.

So can you tell the difference between the projects that waste a lot of energy and those that don't (or won't, once the lazy-ass developers finish their work)?

 

[Craig234]

Aside from Bitcoin and its clones, most/all the other crypto projects are either centralized currencies backed by a central issuing organization (XRP in particular) or "utility" tokens intended to represent time slices on a global computer network (ETH, EOS, NEO).

In fact, the vast majority of the crypto world today, sells itself based on what you can do with it. The tokens are not monetary units of barter. Nobody is meant to "back" their value since they are not units of currency at all.

So can you tell the difference between the projects that waste a lot of energy and those that don't (or won't, once the lazy-ass developers finish their work)?

If there are some that are not just bubbles, that might be ok. This isn't about 'telling the difference', it's about a broad issue that at least some seem guilty of.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Unfortunately, they are all bubbles (with the possible notable exceptions of EOS/its subprojects and XRP/its derivatives) since their valuation is based on expected future performance as utility tokens. EOS and XRP are supposed to be fully-functional, but XRP isn't decentralized at all (making it kind of iffy) and EOS is semi-centralized due to having only having 21 parties that can actually verify transactions. They "cheat" to get higher throughput, and it shows. EOS has had some major transaction cost problems and XRP is mostly just for banks. It's surprising that XRP hasn't gained more traction since, you know, people are actually using it right now, unlike EOS/NEO/ETH that have a lot of future potential but very little to show for it currently. EOS is particularly embarrassing since it it has 3000 tx/s throughput right now and yet nobody has managed to leverage it for . . . pretty much anything.

I think it is important to know the difference between the energy consumption profile of different projects. Bitcoin is obviously the main offender, since it soaks up maybe 1% of the world's power output to sustain a blockchain that is worth "only" $90,573,536,251 as of the time of this posting. And that value is falling. Ha ha! Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, on top of all that, Bitcoin is infected with piles of ASICs which are really nothing more than SHA256 hashing computers. That's gonna be a lot of e-waste as older ASICs are mothballed. If/when Bitcoin finally goes under, all of those miners will go into the trashcan. You probably won't be able to resell them on eBay at a discount, unless someone else is crazy enough to try to run a blockchain project with the same hash algorithm.

Ethereum is the second worst offender, with a mixture of ASICs and GPUs soaking up a fair amount of power (I don't know how much power Ethereum's blockchain requires right now compared to Bitcoin, to be perfectly honest). At least the Ethereum Foundation has made attempts to get away from PoW; sadly, that was supposed to have happened already. Instead we not have delays until 2021 or so. Blah! So slow. We have 2-3 years of Ethereum continuing to soak up power for PoW with no intermediate relief.

Outside of that, you have the wannabe Bitcoins like Litecoin, BCH, and others. Plus XMR as I mentioned above, and its cousins. But in terms of power consumption (and blockchain value), they are bit players in comparison.

Almost everyone else, by this point, is pushing something similar to PoS. Which is interesting, since the EF is having so much trouble rolling out a PoS system that they think is sufficiently decentralized. Most of the PoS/PoS-alikes used by other projects seem to have some ugly flaws (do some reading up on EOS, it's actually kind of ugly what has happened/is happening in their world).

 

[DrMrLordX]

What a difference six hours can make. Er less than six hours?

Bitcoin has shed ~$4 billion in market cap since my last post. Yowza.

Looks like "experts" are predicting it'll fall to $1500. What then? Who knows?

 

[Ns1]

wow Eth $150. Maybe it can sub <$100 so I can at least DCA a little bit. I still have some more good money to throw after bad (if the price is right).

 

[VirtualLarry]

1 BTC = 4369.90 USD was used.

Kind of weird to watch one's mining earnings between payouts DECLINE instead of INCREASE.

Poor Red Squirrel, he's probably taking a bath on all of this too.

 

[ponyo]

Damn. It's bloodshed. Current bitcoin price is $4,634. Current ethereum price is $134. And the altcoins are crashing hard with it. I'm not surprised at the crash but am surprised how long it took to get here. I thought it would've happened lot sooner.

I do feel for people suffering real heavy money losses. I feel your pain having gone through really bad dotcom stock crash back in 2000 and difficult. market crash of 2008. Memories of the dotcom crash and the immense pain I went through is what kept me out of joining the crypto party. For people who are still holding on, you have to take the good with the bad.

 

[ultimatebob]

I can’t feel TOO bad for people who invested in Bitcoin when it was over $15,000. They should have Read a history book and found out with a “Speculative Bubble” was... lord knows that there were a ton of us that were warning about it.

 

[ponyo]

I can’t feel TOO bad for people who invested in Bitcoin when it was over $15,000. They should have Read a history book and found out with a “Speculative Bubble” was... lord knows that there were a ton of us that were warning about it.

I feel bad for anyone who lost any major money. Whether in stocks, housing, Vegas casinos, bad business deals, whatever. It's bad karma to wish or to take delight on misfortune of others. As for "Speculative Bubble", it's matter of perspective. After bitcoin crashed back in around 2013 or so and later and was trading at around $250-300 per bitcoin, I entertained the thought of buying some. But almost everyone told me bitcoin bubble had popped and I would be stupid to buy bitcoin at $300. So I didn't and bought gold instead back in 2015. Even when I first started this thread last year and bitcoin had just passed the price of gold, people were saying bitcoin was in massive speculative bubble. So maybe it is. But it's all about perspective and timing. People who bought at over $15,000 probably thought it was going to $30,000 just like people who bought at $1,500 when I started this thread thought it was going to $3,000. When bitcoin was $15,000-20,000, it sure felt like it was going to $30,000.

 

[DrMrLordX]

1 BTC = 4369.90 USD was used.

Kind of weird to watch one's mining earnings between payouts DECLINE instead of INCREASE.

Poor Red Squirrel, he's probably taking a bath on all of this too.

Hope you aren't getting hit too hard by all this. I know you're on fixed income and all. It's gonna get worse, too, though if you keep hashing, you'll see things even out with time. I experienced it in 2016 with the ETH crash. Hashpower will go offline, and you'll be back in the thick of it, so long as you keep your machines running. At least until ASICs ruins your day (which they may not, depending on what you're actually mining these days).

Damn. It's bloodshed. Current bitcoin price is $4,634. Current ethereum price is $134.

BTC down to $4744. ETH has leveled off at $133 (which is surprising; not sure what's holding it up). I predicted a retrace to March 2017 price levels and it looks like we're headed there.

I'm not surprised at the crash but am surprised how long it took to get here. I thought it would've happened lot sooner.

It should have happened sooner than now. The offshore banking, the shady stablecoins, the delays in major blockchain updates . . . it's been quite a mess in 2018. What's funny is the number of people who assume that this current bear run is related to the BCH fork (which is a joke in and of itself). What's next, a Bitcoin Diamond hard fork?

Anyway, all this mess should have played out in August. Some idiots HODLed too long, and some other idiots pumped money into the system to prop up prices.

I do feel for people suffering real heavy money losses. I feel your pain having gone through really bad dotcom stock crash back in 2000 and difficult. market crash of 2008. Memories of the dotcom crash and the immense pain I went through is what kept me out of joining the crypto party. For people who are still holding on, you have to take the good with the bad.

I'm fascinated by those still holding tokens by this point. Maybe if they bought the highs, I can understand it. But the signs of major market decline have been there for months. Who really thought we were going to see an upswing? I mean, it's gonna turn around eventually, and I know it's hard to catch a falling knife. But damn if you bought BTC at $19k or ETH at $1.4k and you had a shot to sell your BTC at $9k or ETH at $500, why wouldn't you do that so you could buy in later to increase your stack?

If they keep HODLING, some of those tokens will go back up to their ATHs. Some of them won't. Best not to HODL the eventual failures.

I feel bad for anyone who lost any major money. Whether in stocks, housing, Vegas casinos, bad business deals, whatever. It's bad karma to wish or to take delight on misfortune of others. As for "Speculative Bubble", it's matter of perspective. After bitcoin crashed back in around 2013 or so and later and was trading at around $250-300 per bitcoin, I entertained the thought of buying some. But almost everyone told me bitcoin bubble had popped and I would be stupid to buy bitcoin at $300. So I didn't and bought gold instead back in 2015. Even when I first started this thread last year and bitcoin had just passed the price of gold, people were saying bitcoin was in massive speculative bubble. So maybe it is. But it's all about perspective and timing. People who bought at over $15,000 probably thought it was going to $30,000 just like people who bought at $1,500 when I started this thread thought it was going to $3,000. When bitcoin was $15,000-20,000, it sure felt like it was going to $30,000.

Many thought ETH would hit five digits and BTC would hit six. But man, for that to happen, it would have taken massive investment in crypto, which still hasn't happened. And the institutional investors do not want to pay that much per token when many of us got in on the ground floor. They want in on the ground floor too.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hope you aren't getting hit too hard by all this. I know you're on fixed income and all.

Well, I haven't been HODLing at all, really, just cashing out for fiat every week or so.

So while the mining performance is disappointing, it's not entirely unexpected, and won't hit me too hard.

I just need to decide when to stop mining, really. I'm probably close to ROI of the cards I purchased specifically for mining at this point. (We're talking about 4-5 RX cards, nothing too major.)

I do miss the mining returns from Jan. 2018, those were nice.

 

[ultimatebob]

I dug up my Bitcoin price prediction post from last year, and it looks like I was projecting a $2,500 price by the end of this year:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/so-where-will-bitcoin-be-at-the-end-of-2018.2532360/

Wow... if the price keeps going in the direction it's going now, I might actually be right! I'm not sure if I got the reason right (the Bitcoin regulation crackdown wasn't as hard as I expected), but the result seems to be the same.

 

[Blackjack200]

10 days ago I was all

Bitcoin and Ethereum have been pretty stable lately. Current Bitcoin price =$6,386. Ethereum = $212. It looks like it's basing here. If you're early adapter, you're still up huge even after this year's crash. I would feel pretty good at this point about the legitimacy and future of crytocurrency.

But now I'm like

Damn. It's bloodshed. Current bitcoin price is $4,634. Current ethereum price is $134. And the altcoins are crashing hard with it. I'm not surprised at the crash but am surprised how long it took to get here. I thought it would've happened lot sooner.

I do feel for people suffering real heavy money losses. I feel your pain having gone through really bad dotcom stock crash back in 2000 and difficult. market crash of 2008. Memories of the dotcom crash and the immense pain I went through is what kept me out of joining the crypto party. For people who are still holding on, you have to take the good with the bad.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've been in the Tulip Mania camp since day one, so I'm (Grumpy Cat) "good."

Digital beanie babies have no value, unlike our "fiat currency" which is backed by land, courts, armies, nukes, and armies of tax collectors.

Some of the tech might be useful (though often blockchain press releases seem more about marketing than value) but the useful parts aren't controlled by anyone.

The basic research wasn't patented, and any minor twists people attempt to add on and patent will possibly either be too weak to hold up to a challenge or too narrow to stop other approaches.

 

[AdamK47]

Is now a good time to start mining ETH?

 

[IronWing]

Is now a good time to start mining ETH?

There’s never been a better time to start mining ETH.

 

[AdamK47]

I'm going to extreme mine it!

 

[IronWing]

I'm going to extreme mine it!

You're gonna need one of these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cocg1u0nwbI

 

[DrMrLordX]

Some of the tech might be useful (though often blockchain press releases seem more about marketing than value) but the useful parts aren't controlled by anyone.

The basic research wasn't patented, and any minor twists people attempt to add on and patent will possibly either be too weak to hold up to a challenge or too narrow to stop other approaches.

You're missing the point behind open source blockchain research. When you do the work and build the initial codebase, you get the userbase which is what makes blockchain tech valuable. Take a look at Ethereum (for example): anyone can fork it. Hell I can go fork Ethereum today. So where are the nodes? Where are the transactions? There aren't any for a useless fork like that. Ethereum built the tech and got the users to go along with it. People are voluntarily running nodes in the thousands to support Ethereum. Ultimately they give value to the blockchain, through their willingness to use it and their demand for the utility tokens that make it work (ETH). You don't need patents or anything of the sort. It's the same story for Bitcoin or any of the other big chains out there. Though in the case of Bitcoin, people have forked the hell out of it with hilarious results.

If you're looking at the ICOs then maybe you have a point. I can also copy their work, issue my own ERC20s (or whatever alt tokens on any given chain) and compete head-to-head with them. Maybe I can out-develop them using the initial codebase as a starting point. At that point it's a matter of which token people will choose to use on that given blockchain. That was one of the major points against RDN. It was supposed to be a "free" upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, but instead became just another ERC20 like the rest. What's stopping people from forking Raiden and switching the code around to burn ETH tokens instead of RDN ERC20s? Nothing. Nothing at all.

You can also create "private" blockchains based on open-source blockchain tech. That's sort of the goal. Not everything has to be carried out over the public chain that is already supported by the community. If you want to move assets between private blockchains, though, you're gonna want to go out over a public, trusted chain.

In the meantime, there is more blood in the streets. Bitcoin below $4k and heading for $3700 or lower.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In the meantime, there is more blood in the streets. Bitcoin below $4k and heading for $3700 or lower.

Aww, geez. Didn't cash out my last two payouts for fiat yet, was hoping it would "bounce back" to $6K+.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Aww, geez. Didn't cash out my last two payouts for fiat yet, was hoping it would "bounce back" to $6K+.

It might, but it's gotta go down before it goes up. The chart traders are calling for a bottom of $3k, though a few days ago they were calling for lows in the $1.5k range. Hard to say since chart traders are a little crazy.

edit: BTC is now trading below $3500 on CoinBase Pro. ETH just dipped below $100. Wheee dawgies!

 

[ultimatebob]

It might, but it's gotta go down before it goes up. The chart traders are calling for a bottom of $3k, though a few days ago they were calling for lows in the $1.5k range. Hard to say since chart traders are a little crazy.

edit: BTC is now trading below $3500 on CoinBase Pro. ETH just dipped below $100. Wheee dawgies!

Well... if the price dips below $1,500, at least the title of this forum post will be accurate again

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well... if the price dips below $1,500, at least the title of this forum post will be accurate again

Damn right. Should be interesting to see what happens if that comes to pass.

 

[evident]

glad i cashed out of most of this nonsense earlier this year... took me forever to figure out how to do it though. i guess im an old fogie.

 

[IronWing]

How's Coolcoin holding up? Got my retirement riding on it.