Wow. Bitcoin is almost $1,500

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destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
That's called investing in a nutshell - obviously the goal is to make money so you hope to buy low and sell high. There are always winners and losers, because someone has to do the buying while the price is at the top or even in free fall. The ones who buy while it's falling are hoping for it to bounce back and they are looking for a low entry - when it keeps dropping, they get screwed too.

That does not make a ponzi scheme. Normal investing could be boiled down to sound like a ponzi scheme, but obviously it's not.
 

OverVolt

Lifer
Aug 31, 2002
14,278
89
91
The fact that the wealth is concentrated among a small group of people does not make it a ponzi scheme.
Its a defacto ponzi scheme when the profit mostly comes from new adopters. Its not really a scheme intentionally, but that is how it was used. It was a speculative asset, this is what speculative bubbles do. Nobody should be shocked.

When everyone was huffing and puffing their chest and you looked around at the other posts on social media and couldn't spot the idiots it was you.

I have no doubt some people bought at $40 and still made it rich. I'm not here to shit on people trying to make a buck. I'm just saying this was one of many predictable outcomes and nobody should be as shocked as they are. I personally knew I didn't have the nerve for this. I only find it funny the people who didn't have the nerve for it, but did it anyway. :)

If you think it'll be worth $100k in 3 years for the next run up then hold it. I literally don't care. If you have something else you think you can better use your money on between then, by all means go do that. We're all individuals here.

For awhile though they were selling this sort of digital elitism.... like if you just sit on the coins long enough you had it made and the no coiners would be peasants. For starters since very few of the crypto founders ever sold out the "peasants" were still sitting on all the real world assets :). There is a huge disconnect between that ideal and how the real world works. This is literally like people who tried to get rich just buying shares of the south seas company.
 
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destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
It'll never be mainstream. Whats mainstream is the current clearing houses that banks use daily.

Cryptocurrency is a tool. Hell, I bet even some entire countries are moving funds around the world globally with bitcoins on the down low specifically to avoid banks. But it will never replace banks.

One reason is the same reason for bitcoins scarcity: you lose it and its gone. Screwups happen and banks are able to adjust their ledgers to make good on mistakes and fraud. Money out of thin air as people complain. Bitcoin will never be like that. It is entirely at your own risk.

[shit... my dog hit my keyboard and the quote got all screwed up and I lost the intro. I can't even remember what I wrote, so this may not flow as well, oh well]
BTC set out to be a currency, but I think if people want it to stick to these high levels, the currency aspect needs to be dropped.

But then there are the cryptos that are better described as utility tokens. They can be traded in retail but they are actually more specifically made for concepts like smart contracts, and platforms like Ethereum and NEM could easily have a Ripple-like token on them that banks use to move currency around.

I mean sure there are clearing houses, but they are relatively slow in the grand scheme of things. Those same transactions can be initiated in cash, and the banks basically use a distributed ledger and it's utility tokens to actually issue the transfer instructions immediately and verified by all participants. It could effectually replace the entire clearing house system, at least in some respects. Clearing houses and central banks will still play a role but even further up the chain, all the bank to bank stuff can skip it entirely until regular settlement periods, but due to the immediate verification system, banks don't have to "hold" the digital representation of funds until settlement. They'll all eventually settle regularly with the central banks but the banks don't have to make the customers wait for settlement.

Hell, that could actually make the regular asset markets faster too!
 
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Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,413
1,570
126
b51335f69bd23056b66998a32cb7a6f9.jpg
 

Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,078
996
126
Ugh wtf does guy know.

Based on what I hear LN is a cumbersome workaround that can never compete with these newer coins (raiblocks, icon).

I think bitcoin is now a decade old dinosaur
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,413
1,570
126
Ugh wtf does guy know.

Based on what I hear LN is a cumbersome workaround that can never compete with these newer coins (raiblocks, icon).

I think bitcoin is now a decade old dinosaur

BTC going to the moon! 100k!
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,501
136
Ugh wtf does guy know.

Based on what I hear LN is a cumbersome workaround that can never compete with these newer coins (raiblocks, icon).

I think bitcoin is now a decade old dinosaur

You mean Nano
 

Yakk

Golden Member
May 28, 2016
1,574
275
81

Yeah, I would agree it doesn't look like we are at capitulation yet. Charts will tell when we are. After that 28K+ would be a first target. Otherwise BTC would likely be in for a hybernation period like happened before.
 

Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,078
996
126
I kinda want this crash to be really meaningful in that it seriously decouples altcoin pairings.

Netter now than later.
 
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pete6032

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2010
7,443
3,004
136
I think the lightning network is overhyped. It's basically the real world equivalent putting money in an escrow account and at some point in the future agreeing with the other person what the balance is. People aren't going to want to have their money frozen in a payment channel. That severely limits its usability.
 

Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,078
996
126
I think the lightning network is overhyped. It's basically the real world equivalent putting money in an escrow account and at some point in the future agreeing with the other person what the balance is. People aren't going to want to have their money frozen in a payment channel. That severely limits its usability.
I really want to ask a Bitcoin technical expert- WTF is bitcoin aiming to do today?

- It simply won't be used as an alternative currency anymore. It has a severe scalability issue that rock them to their core. What is it , 7 transactions per second? LOL that can't even support the 5 houses in my street nevermind global scale.

-Visa handles 24,000 transactions per second FYI.

-So what's the use-case of Bitcoin today and future? Can anyone tell me?
 

Yakk

Golden Member
May 28, 2016
1,574
275
81
Lightening Network doesn't really have a traditional transaction per second limit due to the nature of its network channel implementation. If you really want to put a number, it would be capable of millions of transactions per second.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,501
136
Lightening Network doesn't really have a traditional transaction per second limit due to the nature of its network channel implementation. If you really want to put a number, it would be capable of millions of transactions per second.

Lightning, not Lightening. I hate to be all grammar Nazi about it, but you'll make Elizabeth Stark cry. :p
 

pete6032

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2010
7,443
3,004
136
I really want to ask a Bitcoin technical expert- WTF is bitcoin aiming to do today?

- It simply won't be used as an alternative currency anymore. It has a severe scalability issue that rock them to their core. What is it , 7 transactions per second? LOL that can't even support the 5 houses in my street nevermind global scale.

-Visa handles 24,000 transactions per second FYI.

-So what's the use-case of Bitcoin today and future? Can anyone tell me?
I don't think there is a use case for bitcoin anymore. I think a lot of its value is in name recognition only. Several altcoins (Iota, Nano) have made extensive progress in overcoming the limitations of bitcoin (high electricity costs, slow transactions, transaction fees, limited network capacity). But nobody in the main stream knows about these coins and nobody in the main stream really seems to understand, or want to understand, what the limitations of bitcoin are. Most people know what bitcoin is, but beyond that, they don't know anything else - how it works, what its major problems are, etc.
 

Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,078
996
126
I don't think there is a use case for bitcoin anymore. I think a lot of its value is in name recognition only. Several altcoins (Iota, Nano) have made extensive progress in overcoming the limitations of bitcoin (high electricity costs, slow transactions, transaction fees, limited network capacity). But nobody in the main stream knows about these coins and nobody in the main stream really seems to understand, or want to understand, what the limitations of bitcoin are. Most people know what bitcoin is, but beyond that, they don't know anything else - how it works, what its major problems are, etc.
So you're also basically admitting that bitcoin will die sooner than later.
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
234
106
Most people know what bitcoin is, but beyond that, they don't know anything else - how it works, what its major problems are, etc.

It doesn't end with just bitcoin, they also don't know anything about other alt coins, blockchain, etc. It's amusing to hear from the people who assume everything is "bitcoin"
 

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
19,689
2,811
126
You guys are crazy if you want bitcoin to die. If bitcoin crashes, every altcoins will suffer even worse fate than bitcoin. Like it or not, bitcoin and eth are the market. If they go down, it's going to take everything with it and no altcoins will be spared. None.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,583
10,785
136
Apparently, it's better to transfer from tether based exchange to another non-tether exchange, and then cash out to real currency bc if you take too much out of bitfennix, the real currency might not make it to your bank account.

Bitfinex has questionable banking, to say the least.

going up...

Sorry, went back down. US drove it up, foreign markets drove it right back down to lower lows. Though ETH hasn't gone back to the $700 range yet.

Oh my god, I looked at BCH price history in Coinbase. They 'deleted' that $9000 spike LOLOL WTF??? All-time high of BCH is $3400, WOW.
.

They don't want you to know about that.

I hope to one day open up a BBQ joint called "OMG WTF BBQ"

OmiseGo would happily handle your point-of-sales system.

Banks will ban and/or treat crypto purchases using credit cards as cash advance. It's crazy they allowed you to buy coins using credit cards in the first place. I hope everyone took advantage and bought the coins using credit cards and will leave the banks hold the bag when the bubble burst.

I have never once needed to buy crypto with a CC. I just used bank transfers.

Blockchain is efficient? I thought the way it worked was that in order to authenticate a single block you had to authenticate every preceding block going back to the beginning. That seems like a huge overhead that grows over time.

. . . no

Why were you guys not interested when it was in 300 dollars and under wager? Its always the same kind of person who waits till the top of the bubble before getting in.

I am not a BTC investor, but I got into ETH at ~$12.

Cryptocurrency has no utility.

Didn't we just go over that a few pages ago? Seriously?

No one is going to conduct buisness with a currency that has massive daily swings and thin markets with nothing backing it.

Outside of maybe BTC and its forks, nobody is asking you to do conduct business with crypto. The best projects are using crypto as a utility token for blockchain fees, among other things.

The only utility it seems to have is for buying weed,hookers,coke and paying cyber ransom.

That's what XMR is for . . . or actually, for hookers/etc there's still like PINK and SpankChain.

I don't see any use for it if it can't scale. Look at this:

Don't trust spam like that. XRP and the like are centralized, so high throughput is easy. It's also easy for them to modify/eliminate entire transactions at a whim or shut down the entire currency network by nuking the control servers.

Also where they get 50 tx/second for LTC is anyone's guess. Currently the decentralized blockchain handling the most tx/second right now is Ethereum:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth-ltc-doge.html#3m
 
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destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
You guys are crazy if you want bitcoin to die. If bitcoin crashes, every altcoins will suffer even worse fate than bitcoin. Like it or not, bitcoin and eth are the market. If they go down, it's going to take everything with it and no altcoins will be spared. None.

To be fair, the idea is for the good ones to get decoupled from BTC, prior to any death of bitcoin. I also don't envision bitcoin actually dying though, but it won't be achieving the original intent, not unless they start making solid fork proposals that all the market can get behind without much controversy.