I just bought $200,000 of Bitcoin

[Neeranam]

21 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

BTC is still 3 times what it was worth 2 years ago. Asset values are going to crash below what they were then.

BTC is the obvious investment for me. I sold a house 2 months ago and have been DCA since in went under $18.6 k. It's funny(and boring) how they naysayers cherry pick numbers to attack it. 

 

 

[ozimoron]

39 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

BTC is the obvious investment for me. I sold a house 2 months ago and have been DCA since in went under $18.6 k. It's funny(and boring) how they naysayers cherry pick numbers to attack it.

Hardly cherry picking when that was almost the first time it rose above that value, apart from a brief excursion up to 20K and down again. Good luck.

[Sametboy2019]

On 11/17/2022 at 3:56 PM, lkn said:

Then please quote that answer. The question was: What can crypto/blockchain do faster/cheaper than J.P. Morgan.

 

Bitcoin does 3-4 transactions per second, and that is a technical limitation. MasterCard does around 5,000 and has never had a congestion issue, i.e. they can scale it based on demand, Bitcoin has regularly seen congestion, and in turn, high transaction fees.

 

Also, SWIFT is a messaging system, it does not move money, it ensures that banks can communicate in a secure and authenticated way. Banks are introducing delays, e.g. a bank may flag all payments above $10,000 and/or which goes to certain countries, and require manual verification of these before they are processed. They might even be required to do some of this due to regulation.

 

I think it is pointless to continue this thread if this is where you’re coming from.

Picking the slowest and most expensive blockchain v Mastercard is hardly a fair comparison!

ADA can process about 1 million transactions per second (TSP)

Cosmos (ATOM) can process 10,000 transactions per second with an average confirmation time of 2-3 Seconds

Avalanche offers a throughput of 5000 TPS with an average confirmation time of 1-2 sec

Many other also.

Im aware what swift does and the change to iso2002 incoming. 

[lkn]

2 hours ago, Sametboy2019 said:

Picking the slowest and most expensive blockchain v Mastercard is hardly a fair comparison!

ADA can process about 1 million transactions per second (TSP)

Cosmos (ATOM) can process 10,000 transactions per second with an average confirmation time of 2-3 Seconds

Avalanche offers a throughput of 5000 TPS with an average confirmation time of 1-2 sec

Many other also.

Im aware what swift does and the change to iso2002 incoming. 

These things have “foundations” behind them that sit on huge amounts of their own token and it’s based on consensus with whoever holding the most tokens, having the most votes, and also getting the largest share of new tokens.

 

You really think that is a better system than what we have?

[lkn]

4 hours ago, ozimoron said:

BTC is still 3 times what it was worth 2 years ago. Asset values are going to crash below what they were then.

Current price: $16,570 / 3 ≈ $5,523. You need to go back to May of 2019 to reach that price, so more like “3 times what it was 3½ years ago”.

 

I’m making no price predictions though, but a lot of dominos have fallen over the last 6 months, and I would be surprised if more are not to come down. Take Tether, they have almost $70 bn. in liabilities which they claim are secured by matching assets, they had exposure to FTX, Celsius, etc., they claimed to hold commercial papers on their balance sheet, and they have apparently had zero loss during 2022? That would make them the world’s greatest investors, but if you look at who actually run the place, it’s just a couple of people with a real shady past.

 

Look at the reporting coming from FTX, they seemed to actually wanting to run a legit business, they thought they had assets of $9 bn. or so, but it turned out it was closer to zero…

[Neeranam]

3 hours ago, ozimoron said:

Hardly cherry picking when that was almost the first time it rose above that value, apart from a brief excursion up to 20K and down again. Good luck.

I didn't mean you were cherry picking, but the haters do. For example saying BTC is down 70+% in the last year, which is what it does, they don't talk about the 100s of 1,000s of % over 10 years or so. 

[Neeranam]

9 minutes ago, lkn said:

Current price: $16,570 / 3 ≈ $5,523. You need to go back to May of 2019 to reach that price, so more like “3 times what it was 3½ years ago”.

 

BTC dropped to $3,800 or so in March 2020.

 

$16,500/3,800 = 4.3.

 

AS I just said, the hater like cherry picking and giving false data. 

 

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/03/13/bitcoin-price-briefly-dips-to-12-month-low-in-overnight-trading/

 

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Neeranam

[Sametboy2019]

57 minutes ago, lkn said:

These things have “foundations” behind them that sit on huge amounts of their own token and it’s based on consensus with whoever holding the most tokens, having the most votes, and also getting the largest share of new tokens.

 

You really think that is a better system than what we have?

Before you were only concerned with what the tech can do. 

 I'm presuming you are talking about crypto exchange tokens and all the nonsense that has gone on with FTX and others

I wouldn't personally buy any exchange tokens or leave my tokens on a exchange as I believe they will all be targeted and most will go bust, be hacked or be regulated out of existence. 

There will be a few more scandals in crypto for sure but it doesn't bother me. 

Do I think it's a better system than what we have?

It's irrelevant. You or I won't be asked!

I only know this technology will be used so I'm positioning myself accordingly.

 

[lkn]

59 minutes ago, Sametboy2019 said:

Before you were only concerned with what the tech can do. 

But those chains can’t do anything which can’t be done faster/cheaper by a central authority. They are “better” than the fully decentralized version, but that is only because they are partially centralized, a few of them even rely on central nodes.

1 hour ago, Sametboy2019 said:

I'm presuming you are talking about crypto exchange tokens

No, I am talking about governance tokens or the “native token”. Every chain has its own token, you need some way to incentivize people to run the software, this is done by giving them some token, and they try to give this token value by providing “yield” when staking it, or burning tokens to decrease supply (in some misguided belief that scarcity alone gives something value).

1 hour ago, Sametboy2019 said:

Do I think it's a better system than what we have?

It's irrelevant. You or I won't be asked!

But no-one will use it, if it is not a better system. Practically no-one currently is using it. it’s just a speculative non-productive asset, I think it was @happydreamer above who admitted that it serves no purpose what-so-ever, but they still invested because “what if…”, i.e. thinking that in the future, it will take over the world.

 

Many people mistakenly think that there is value there, and that is why they invest, and they think that because we have people like the proponents on this forum who talk like it is a revolution, not realizing just how bad crypto actually is, and also not realizing that many of the things they claim about the existing system, is just not true, i.e. it does not take five days and cost twenty dollars for me to send money abroad with the existing system. These people tend to forget they probably have a Apple or Google Pay on their phone, and they can pay with that in majority of stores in majority of countries, and the amount is instantly deducted from their account, even with a currency conversion, if required, and they think having to show a QR code, wait ~20 minutes, and pay an unknown amount of money for the transaction, which depends on the current network load, is a better system…

[Sametboy2019]

18 minutes ago, lkn said:

But those chains can’t do anything which can’t be done faster/cheaper by a central authority. They are “better” than the fully decentralized version, but that is only because they are partially centralized, a few of them even rely on central nodes.

No, I am talking about governance tokens or the “native token”. Every chain has its own token, you need some way to incentivize people to run the software, this is done by giving them some token, and they try to give this token value by providing “yield” when staking it, or burning tokens to decrease supply (in some misguided belief that scarcity alone gives something value).

But no-one will use it, if it is not a better system. Practically no-one currently is using it. it’s just a speculative non-productive asset, I think it was @happydreamer above who admitted that it serves no purpose what-so-ever, but they still invested because “what if…”, i.e. thinking that in the future, it will take over the world.

 

Many people mistakenly think that there is value there, and that is why they invest, and they think that because we have people like the proponents on this forum who talk like it is a revolution, not realizing just how bad crypto actually is, and also not realizing that many of the things they claim about the existing system, is just not true, i.e. it does not take five days and cost twenty dollars for me to send money abroad with the existing system. These people tend to forget they probably have a Apple or Google Pay on their phone, and they can pay with that in majority of stores in majority of countries, and the amount is instantly deducted from their account, even with a currency conversion, if required, and they think having to show a QR code, wait ~20 minutes, and pay an unknown amount of money for the transaction, which depends on the current network load, is a better system…

You are actually grouping all crypto together when they are not all the same.

I'm not here to change your mind or win anything.

I know what I hold and I appreciate all your concerns and points.

I guess as they say "The proof will be in the pudding".

Let's see how this rolls out over the next few years

[lkn]

44 minutes ago, Sametboy2019 said:

You are actually grouping all crypto together when they are not all the same.

Mention one crypto that provides actual utility, i.e. creates actual value, solves a problem (that we actually have) faster/cheaper than existing solutions, etc.

 

Common for all of them are, that no-one can answer this. Take the video clip that was posted, interviewer asks, and the response is just that the haters spread FUD, rather than address what problems crypto actually solves.

 

I have blocked @Neeranam so I don’t know if his posts have improved, but he also just used to rant about “the haters” and tell us we were just jealous because we had missed the boat, etc.

 

A few posters did actually try to explain where value was coming from, but it was done by referring to various yield farming schemes and play to earn games, of course we now know for sure that these schemes were not sustainable, but even back then, if you had just a bit of knowledge about math and economics, it was clear that in the best case “value” was just transferred (zero-sum game), no value was being created.

 

Where value is created is in regulatory arbitrage, for example Thailand has currency controls, so it’s hard to move money out of Thailand. This can be done via crypto, and imagine I have made millions in Thailand that I need to get out of the country, but I do not have proper documents, I might be willing to pay 10% for someone to facility this, and indeed, I can do that, but those 10% (of the money I move) do not go to people who “invested” in coins years ago, it goes to those who “help me”, that is the exchanges and the miners, the exchange fee is easy to find, the transaction fee depends on the blockchain, and some also have block rewards, so basically everyone holding the token pays indirectly for my transfer (via inflation), this is something few people understand, but a transaction on e.g. the Bitcoin blockchain costs hundreds of dollars (if not more), because it is such an inefficient network, I may only pay $2 for this, the rest is paid by issuing new tokens to the miner (block reward), but that increase the total supply, which should actually devalue the token (I know Ethereum also burn coins to counter this, but it’s still an “unfair” system).

[Sametboy2019]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

Mention one crypto that provides actual utility, i.e. creates actual value, solves a problem (that we actually have) faster/cheaper than existing solutions, etc.

 

Common for all of them are, that no-one can answer this. Take the video clip that was posted, interviewer asks, and the response is just that the haters spread FUD, rather than address what problems crypto actually solves.

 

I have blocked @Neeranam so I don’t know if his posts have improved, but he also just used to rant about “the haters” and tell us we were just jealous because we had missed the boat, etc.

 

A few posters did actually try to explain where value was coming from, but it was done by referring to various yield farming schemes and play to earn games, of course we now know for sure that these schemes were not sustainable, but even back then, if you had just a bit of knowledge about math and economics, it was clear that in the best case “value” was just transferred (zero-sum game), no value was being created.

 

Where value is created is in regulatory arbitrage, for example Thailand has currency controls, so it’s hard to move money out of Thailand. This can be done via crypto, and imagine I have made millions in Thailand that I need to get out of the country, but I do not have proper documents, I might be willing to pay 10% for someone to facility this, and indeed, I can do that, but those 10% (of the money I move) do not go to people who “invested” in coins years ago, it goes to those who “help me”, that is the exchanges and the miners, the exchange fee is easy to find, the transaction fee depends on the blockchain, and some also have block rewards, so basically everyone holding the token pays indirectly for my transfer (via inflation), this is something few people understand, but a transaction on e.g. the Bitcoin blockchain costs hundreds of dollars (if not more), because it is such an inefficient network, I may only pay $2 for this, the rest is paid by issuing new tokens to the miner (block reward), but that increase the total supply, which should actually devalue the token (I know Ethereum also burn coins to counter this, but it’s still an “unfair” system).

XRP. Fast 2-4 seconds. Fees are almost nothing. 

Not a retail option as this already exists. For banks to transfer the money  swift now handles.

Eliminating nostro/vostro accounts.

 

[Neeranam]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

I have blocked @Neeranam so I don’t know if his posts have improved, but he also just used to rant about “the haters” and tell us we were just jealous because we had missed the boat, etc.

So why tag me?

 

Principal cherry picker. 

 

 

[Neeranam]

20 minutes ago, Sametboy2019 said:

XRP. Fast 2-4 seconds. Fees are almost nothing. 

Not a retail option as this already exists. For banks to transfer the money  swift now handles.

Eliminating nostro/vostro accounts.

 

This hater has had umpteen examples of how crypto has utility, yet can't handle a grown-up debate. 

[lkn]

39 minutes ago, Sametboy2019 said:

XRP. Fast 2-4 seconds. Fees are almost nothing. 

Not a retail option as this already exists. For banks to transfer the money  swift now handles.

Eliminating nostro/vostro accounts.

The Ripple network uses 35 trusted validators to verify transactions, i.e. this network works with centralized authorities. You cannot run a Ripple node and start validating transactions. There is absolutely nothing new about this, e.g. the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), which was created 40 years ago, is also a distributed database with more than one authority.

 

As for fees: You think it actually costs any meaningful amount of money to transfer money in the existing system? Most of my banks offer me free transfers. If you have high transfer fees then the issue is lack of competition, not actual cost of moving the money.

 

As for eliminating nostro/vostro accounts, this is a good point/advantage. But this comes from all operators agreeing on using the same ledger. In Europe banks sort of already do this with ECB, so within Europe we can transfer money between arbitrary banks (in EUR) because they just move their reserves within the ECB’s ledger.

 

With Ripple, all banks would instead need to store their balance on the Ripple network, so it’s not really different, and the issue is not technical, rather, most banks do not want to move all their transactions to a ledger controlled by a private company.

[suzannegoh]

In retrospect that $200K investment wasn't very well timed but if it's any consolation, people who "understand" bitcoin tell me that it doesn't matter if the price of Bitcoin goes down because 1 BTC will always have a value of 1 BTC. 

[pomchop]

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/fx/BTCUSD/historical-prices

 

feb 15 bitcoin 44,000

Nov 15....bitcoin 16,000

[Neeranam]

9 hours ago, pomchop said:

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/fx/BTCUSD/historical-prices

 

feb 15 bitcoin 44,000

Nov 15....bitcoin 16,000

What's your point?

 

Do you think BTC is a stable asset?

 

 

[suzannegoh]

32 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

What's your point?

 

Do you think BTC is a stable asset?

 

 

As bizarre the claim is, some do argue that.  Goldbugs argued that about gold too when it tanked after peaking out sometime around 2012.

[Neeranam]

21 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

As bizarre the claim is, some do argue that.  Goldbugs argued that about gold too when it tanked after peaking out sometime around 2012.

I bought gold in 2001 when I got married as I thought it a safe investment. Sold at x4 in 2012 ish.

Wish I'd bought BTC with it then! 

[happydreamer]

On 11/19/2022 at 5:50 PM, lkn said:

But those chains can’t do anything which can’t be done faster/cheaper by a central authority. They are “better” than the fully decentralized version, but that is only because they are partially centralized, a few of them even rely on central nodes.

No, I am talking about governance tokens or the “native token”. Every chain has its own token, you need some way to incentivize people to run the software, this is done by giving them some token, and they try to give this token value by providing “yield” when staking it, or burning tokens to decrease supply (in some misguided belief that scarcity alone gives something value).

But no-one will use it, if it is not a better system. Practically no-one currently is using it. it’s just a speculative non-productive asset, I think it was @happydreamer above who admitted that it serves no purpose what-so-ever, but they still invested because “what if…”, i.e. thinking that in the future, it will take over the world.

 

Many people mistakenly think that there is value there, and that is why they invest, and they think that because we have people like the proponents on this forum who talk like it is a revolution, not realizing just how bad crypto actually is, and also not realizing that many of the things they claim about the existing system, is just not true, i.e. it does not take five days and cost twenty dollars for me to send money abroad with the existing system. These people tend to forget they probably have a Apple or Google Pay on their phone, and they can pay with that in majority of stores in majority of countries, and the amount is instantly deducted from their account, even with a currency conversion, if required, and they think having to show a QR code, wait ~20 minutes, and pay an unknown amount of money for the transaction, which depends on the current network load, is a better system…

Never thought it would take over the world.  Part of my investment strategy is to explore speculative products.  Its as simple as that.  I've worked in tech 25 years, when I was first exposed to BTC I had a few spare laptops lying around my house and ASIC miners were relatively simple to get a hold of.  Setting up the mining pool and hardware was a fun thing for me to do.  I had no idea what it was when I started doing it....I just thought it was interesting.  2017 rolls around and all of sudden those laptops and miners were money printers..  Thats when I did my first cash out..

 

My run with it from 2019-2021 wasn't a fun time at all until it peaked but I had no where near what I had in 2017 so my profits were marginal at best.  This last year has been a <deleted>-show.  Utterly disappointed with how the story ended (for now) this last time.

 

Still interested to see what becomes of it, and am not ruling out giving it a look in the future if the landscape looks different.

 

For now it's back to equities and long term holds on "safer" assets.  The thing is that after this debacle you need to readjust your risk management pain points.  Cuz if you have them set to crypto tolerance you're gonna blow your portfolio quickly.  Happy trading everyone.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by happydreamer

[aldriglikvid]

Here we go: The US calls for "Game-changing regulation" in Crypto. Taking the same stand as India, China & Japan. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2022/11/20/joe-biden-leads-critical-call-for-game-changing-global-bitcoin-and-crypto-rules-after-shock-ftx-collapse/?sh=12ca7167f170

 

Bitcoin is down -15% in USD in only one month. It will continue down. 

[jack71]

On 11/19/2022 at 12:48 PM, Sametboy2019 said:

Picking the slowest and most expensive blockchain v Mastercard is hardly a fair comparison!

ADA can process about 1 million transactions per second (TSP)

Cosmos (ATOM) can process 10,000 transactions per second with an average confirmation time of 2-3 Seconds

Avalanche offers a throughput of 5000 TPS with an average confirmation time of 1-2 sec

Many other also.

Im aware what swift does and the change to iso2002 incoming. 

But they are all sh%t coins. You cannot compare them to bitcoin at all. Ridiculous comment.  

[Celsius]

8k bitcoin by February. Day after day of new scam and new lie. It would be about 50 links if I post them here since the last post.

[ozimoron]

BTC will continue going down as long as interest rates keep rising and access to money gets tighter. Only when interest rates start coming down and stimulus money is injected into the economy again will I sit up and take notice. Same goes for stocks, housing and gold.

[jvs]

Here is a nice video about the rise and fall of FTX.

They went all out on a lot of things including big contributions to politicians.

 

[Walker88]

Another exchange---Genesis---is talking about bankruptcy due to the fallout from FTX. Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group, which also owns Greyscale Investments (which owns Greyscale Bitcoin Trust). Genesis was a big loaner to Three Arrows Capital (already bankrupt) and FTX (bankrupt last week).

 

What seemed apparent in the manner in which all these coins traded now looks as if it is being exposed:

 

They all propped up each other's coins via exchange subsidiaries and trading subsidiaries, and they all seem to have taken advantage of zero regulation and did not segregate customers coins stored on their exchange. They all borrowed money, pledging their coins and customer coins as collateral.

 

Thus, when any coin that is the major holding of any exchange starts to go, the daisy chain of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" is collapsing. Cold storage isn't going to save anyone when the coin itself is collapsing. Holders will just have access to their falling knife, vs those who held on exchanges and will have their coins locked in the bankruptcy court for years.

 

While retail 'get rich quick' types helped some insiders cash out, the meteoric rises in coins in 2021 looks to have been the result of cross holdings and cross ramping.

 

Can Michael Saylor be far behind?

 

I suspect after Genesis blows up, Binance will be next. Microstrategy will come later.

 

All the money that could be made in crypto has been made. Now it's just finding out where the bodies are buried.

 

Sam Bankman-Fried was either the #1 or #2 "most respected" name in crypto, and he was a fraud all along besides being incompetent. I wonder what the financial press will be saying about Saylor in another few months?

[lkn]

5 hours ago, Walker88 said:

Sam Bankman-Fried was either the #1 or #2 "most respected" name in crypto, and he was a fraud all along

To elaborate a bit about your points: A lot of coins are paid for by stable coins, this could e.g. be USDT issued by Tether.

 

Tether have repeatedly claimed they were backed, i.e. that the coins are not just made out of thin air. Granted, everything Tether has said and done indicates they are, but SBF was actually one of the few people who vouched for Tether, and FTX / Alameda did buy and redeem Tethers.

 

In practice this would mean sending USD back and forth between Tether and FTX / Alameda, but here is an Alameda representative being asked the simple question: “What bank are you using to wire the money?”, judge for yourself if you think any actual money was ever sent between the two entities:

If Tether is a fraud (which it most likely is) then there is another $69 bn. worth of value about to collapse. Then add all the other stable coins.

 

Another thing is the Binance Blockchain. A lot of tokens are “wrapped” and used in this ecosystem, but recent revelations seems to indicate that these might also not be fully backed.

 

A giant house of cards… but who could have foreseen that you can’t just create money out of thin air with no underlying economic activity? ????

[jvs]

5 hours ago, Walker88 said:

Binance will be next.

Binance started this by calling the FTX bluff,FTT proved to be worthless.

[Sametboy2019]

21 hours ago, jack71 said:

But they are all sh%t coins. You cannot compare them to bitcoin at all. Ridiculous comment.  

Alert! Maxi in the building