mjnaus

33 minutes ago, Dario said:

I just read about Ledger Nano S hardware wallet, it seems to be the best available on the market. When I check on Lazada Thailand, the retail for 3'990 THB.

If you're planning on buying a Ledger Nano; you should ONLY buy this from the manufacturer's main site or their official Amazon shop. The company itself warns people not to buy the wallet through sites like Ebay or other untrusted sellers, as there's a risk the device might have been tempered with. I ordered mine from the official company's site, in France. It'll cost you slightly more, but if you're planning on stored large amounts of currency, I definitely would not want to take the risk.

18 minutes ago, Dario said:

Thanks for the advice! So, after I bought, I transfer my coins to a hardware wallet. So, they won't be on the exchange and I can't sell them. Plus. I guess, every transfer must be paid. What I usually do is: after I bought, I leave my coins on the exchange and put in a sell order and wait until the sell order is met. Then with the money I buy again. Can you please enlighten me and the community, I would be very grateful to you. By the way, I have sent you a private message.

15 minutes ago, Dario said:

I have the impression that the vast majority of (smaller) traders don't use a wallet to keep their valuables simply because for the average guy and gal it just seems to difficult to do this correctly.

Everyone uses a wallet to store your coins; albeit in a wallet at an exchange or a private wallet (like a hardware wallet or a waller on your computer/phone). My process is as follows: I transfer fiat currency into an exchange and purchase coins. Those coins are automatically placed inside a wallet hosted at the exchange. As soon as the coins appear in that wallet, I will transfer them to hardware wallet. This entire process takes around a minute or (mind you I not trading Bitcoin, with it's huge transaction costs and transaction time, only doing Ether, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash). Once the coins are safely in my hardware wallet, I can transfer them back into the wallet at the exchange (or any wallet with any exchange for that matter) within a minute if I decide I want to sell them. 

You're correct in assuming that a large part of people new to handling crypto's are simply using their coins at the exchange. In doing this, they are exposing themselves to huge risks. Doing a few minutes reach will quickly show that numerous exchanges have been hacked or otherwise compromised resulting in millions of $ worth in crypto being stolen. Even using supposedly more reliable exchanges like Coinbase have their occasional technical difficulties. It's not just the security concerns, but many of these exchange often struggle with scaling issues resulting in exchanges being down from time to time. Now, if you have your coins in a hardware wallet or private wallet, you can simply send them to another exchange and continue trading there.

4 minutes ago, Dario said:

I never, ever said or mentioned anywhere that I consider myself an experienced trader. In fact, I'm still a newbie.

My bad buddy; I guess I automatically assumed that after you mentioned you're trading around the clock. In that case, consider this a valuable piece of advice; never leave money, be it cash or coins at at any exchange. Transfer money in, buy your coins and transfers those coins to your own wallet, preferably a hardware wallet (assuming you're doing large amounts). 

40 minutes ago, Dario said:

You're a lucky guy. I'm trading around the clock.

If you're an experienced trader, then why on earth would you leave large sums of money at an exchange? It's crypto trading 101; none of these exchanges have their security in order and get hacked like clockwork.

On 12/24/2017 at 2:03 PM, soomak said:

You are comparing the Thais to western people, that's not the right comparison IMO.

Compare them to Thais in 1960, you will be amazed at the difference in the standard of living, especially in urban areas.

 

My ex-gf managed to buy a small townhouse (on a mortgage, but still), own a car, and even bought another small condo for investment, and all that from working in a bank.

 

I would say that's more than most people in my home country can accomplish.

And all of that on loans most likely... Easy credit does not equal prosperity or wealth.

3 minutes ago, mitsubishi said:

I think any online fivvrr worker or other such bugman worth his salt won't give this 'professional' visa the time of day.

 

Seriously you are going to spend so much money on a visa like that how will you even make ends meet trying to earn money online? Unless you are some international architect or top level consultant liking Thailand enough to partially relocate this is a milking scam. The Elite Visa is probably more their style.

You don't seem to realize that there people on Fiverr earnings millions, do you? Yep, millions. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how-these-3-people-make-6-figures-a-year-on-fiverr/#5c2885001df2

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to-make-1-million-on-fiverr-secrets-from-the-sites-top-earner/#6fb9fc2131f8

http://moneyconnexion.com/14-fiverr-sellers-are-making-full-time-income-on-fiverr.htm

I bring this up, just to proof a point. A large chunk of people here on the forums, seem to be totally out of touch with reality. There's a large and rapid growing number of young people that are making a killing online, and for a large part they are indeed location independent. This isn't anything new either; 5 years ago I was earning low 5 figures ($) a month selling code on certain market websites. I also started a community on Slack of people doing the same thing; we currently have about 2,000 members, of which close 100 are living in Thailand. And these are all people earning significant money on a monthly basis. And that's just my small corner of the world. 

These are not people who run a travel blog nobody cares about or sell yoga courses in Chiang Mai; these are serious professionals and business owners who have the freedom to choose where in the world they establish their home base, and yes, many choose Thailand for a variety of reasons. 

If you're still not convinced, I would advice you to pop around the Conrad hotel in Bangkok somewhere in October next year. Every year, there's a large event held there for location independent entrepreneurs and professionals. It's membership based, and there's an income requirements of at least $5,000 per month to become a member of this community. 

Back to the visa matter; you mention it's "high cost", however actual costs have not yet been published (that I am aware of). Feel free to share a link discussing the costs the for Smart Visa. I personally doubt the costs will be high, even if this were to be sat 20.000 for the 4-year duration, that would still be very reasonable. In case you're confusing the income requirements with costs, well... they're obviously two different things. Even if there were to be a "money in the bank" requirements, it's still not part of the actual costs. 

Do I really need to point out the obvious difference between the Elite visa and the Smart Visa? The Elite visa will set you back 500.000b (for the cheapest, 5 year plan). The Smart Visa, although not officially known yet, will likely be significant less (I am expecting something around 20,000 for four years, but that's just a wild guess).

On 12/27/2017 at 5:59 PM, SicTransit said:

As seen today on Khaosod:
 

 To be eligible for the Smart Visa, a foreigner must earn more than 200,000 baht a month in specialized industries such as tech, robotics, health care and more. 

Members of this forum worried about hordes of digital nomads peeing in their coffee and gobbling up their free wifi can probably relax.

If that's all it takes, than count me in! I can see how this would stop the yoga-course touting wantrepreneurs in Chiang Mai from being able to use this visa, however for serious location independent entrepreneurs who have been in business for years as well as remote professionals, that income requirement is very reasonable. 

Do you have a link to the article?

All everyone can do at this point is speculate, since it appears no official details about eligibility have been released yet. If all it takes is proving one earns a yearly income of say $50,000, there will be a significant number of location independent professionals and entrepreneurs who would quality for this visa, including a bunch that would fall under the "digital nomad" umbrella I guess. 

I guess we'll know in January.

Please don't take this the wrong way, I honestly have nothing but good intentions with the following... don't get into crypto's unless you know what you're doing. I would not buy anything else at this point, instead I would take a week or two and do some solid research into general crypto currency technology followed by some research into some of the different coins currently available. Use that research to form an opinion on which of these coins you believe will still be around in a 5 years time.

29 minutes ago, FritsSikkink said:

"Rolling the dice" ? 

If you do that your hiring policy/staff is not up to standards.

No matter how effective and efficient your hiring process, hiring new staff ALWAYS has an element of uncertainty. Some hires work out, others don't. So yeah, with every new hire, you follow your process, do your diligence and then you role the dice, hoping the hire turns out to be good one. 

50 minutes ago, FritsSikkink said:

Hire good Thai staff, there are loads around. You don't get them for peanuts though.

Been there, done that and will never bother again. Having access to literally a world of awesome talent, rolling the dice with Thai staff just isn't worth it. 

That makes more sense I guess but I don't know why you wouldn't just get a work permit then and hire people if you're so "serious". From the news I thought this was more a formal way to acknowledge this new category of people who have various streams of income and afford to live in Thailand but don't technically work on Thai soil as such. The bar to entry is too high from my experience with these people and myself, but what do I know.

1 minute ago, Thaidream said:

That's probably why I am not wealthy-afraid to take the chance.

I'd say that's an accurate assessment.

13 minutes ago, Thaidream said:

While I can see the utility of this nomad Visa- and I like the idea of freedom etc from horrid companies and bosses-  there is a certain reality that bites.  If one chooses this lifestyle their earnings will be adequate for year by year living but what are they going to do when they reach retirement age and they have not earned any credits for a government pension, such as Social Security or pension schemes for other countries.  

As much as I would have loved to do this when I was younger- I figured out that I could make alot more money and build retirement working for a Western Corporation. Getting old in Thailand without a firm pension coming in every month is not recommended .

If you could not have envisioned a scenario where you ventured out on your own, were 100% in control and would have won big, than you made the right choice sticking with the conventional career path. To each his own I guess...

In my early 20's, I was literally ready to kill myself while considering being a corporate slave for the next 40 years, hoping someone else would at some point decide I was allowed to retire. I envisioned I would be better served being fully in charge of my own life.

1 minute ago, genericptr said:

I'm too poor to be in Thailand I guess. No one I know back in the US has 20k unless they're working hard at their job and not messing around in Thailand like I am. :)  I love Thailand but if I had more money I would only be here 3-4 months out of the year (bad driving, pollution, noise affects life quality too much) and in which case just use tourist visas. Just my thoughts.

We live in interesting times, don't we? These days, it's very possible for people to be working hard at their jobs while messing around in Thailand. I realize it's hard to grasp for people who have spend their working live in a more conventional manner though...

Even if you were to go the tourist visa route, you wouldn't be allowed to continue working. Which imo would the biggest issue this new visa could deal with.

11 minutes ago, genericptr said:

So they want you to have ~20k USD in the bank? If you have 20k then why are you messing around in the 3rd world on your laptop when you could be back home making good money in the west? I don't get who this visa is going to help.

Judging by your post; it won't be for you :)

There's plenty of people making decent money being self-employed who love spending several months a year, or more, in Thailand. And it looks like this visa will be helping them doing that legally.

If this visa goes through; I am definitely going to be looking in signing up.

9 hours ago, VBF said:

And sadly for those with Bitcoin holdings...... Bitcoin loses more than a third of value over a week

It's therefore well below where it was when this thread began.

I think the rout has started but would be happy to be proved wrong. 

 A quick look at Bitcoins history will quickly tell you it's seen several massive percentage declines after a period of price increase. During virtually everyone of these corrections, all the skeptics were quickly to jump on the "bubble has burst" wagon, only to see Bitcoins price increase pick up again after a short while. Will this time be different? I doubt it, I guess only time will tell :) 

5 hours ago, sanemax said:

Has the Bitcoin bubble burst ?

It seems to be in freefall

It would appear to be healthy correction to a more sane level for now. This has happened several times since it's inception; a rapid increase in a short period is often followed by a slight correction. After which, typically, it will continue rising... Who knows, only time will tell :)

On 12/20/2017 at 10:26 PM, dpdp said:

Is Coinbase any good to keep your bitcoins ?

 

Keeping crypto currencies in a wallet at any exchange, including Coinbase, is always a terrible idea. Before buying any cryptos, you'd be best served by reading up on how to properly store your coins (hardware wallets are the best). History teaches us exchanges are struggling to keep their security in order and get hacked like clockwork. 

17 minutes ago, punchjudy said:

Can't be long now until this sucker pops and makes a mess

Those who missed the boat have been claiming that for a long time now... Meanwhile Bitcoin is up another 12% the past 7 days 

Those who aren't in it for a short term gain, which I believe is still the majority of those holding Bitcoin, won't be selling theirs during the next correction. So the amount of trading does not necessarily have to spiral out of control during the next correction. 

Where were all these do-gooders in the years leading up to the last financial meltdown? Not a single warning from any of them.. Don't these morons realize they have lost virtually all credibility with people that have at least one iota of common sense? Central bankers don't like Bitcoin; big surprise...

3 minutes ago, lvr181 said:

"google" rice and arsenic

Right. Because if it's on the Internet, it must be true...

I truly believe most micro brewers would love to make their beers available to a wider public by offering lower prices. Unfortunately, there are some b*llshit laws in place in Thailand prohibiting smaller brewers from legally brewing and selling their product (I believe you're only allowed to brew beer in excess of 100,000 liters per year in order to receive a permit, could be wrong on the exact number though). 

It's a damn shame too, since Thailand has some extremely talented brewers. As pointed out by another poster, these brewers are now forced to operate their breweries abroad (some are located in Cambodia, Vietnam and Australia) just to be able to perform their craft. When they import their beers into Thailand, they're slapped with ridiculous import taxes resulting in the rather high prices.