Bitcoin Pyramid Scheme in Thailand - help requested

[impulse]

4 hours ago, Shaunduhpostman said:

300 days ago Bitcoin was at $380/BTC

At the moment it is at $4724/BTC

 

Many expect it will at least go to $5000 before the bubble bursts.

 

But for now that is pyramid scheme like money, but it is not a pyramid scheme, anymore than the pyramid emblazoned U.S. dollar is anyway, for which you'd probably be right saying it was.

 

The 2 key words in your post are "bubble" and "bursts".   It may go up to $10,000, but I don't want to be one of those holding the bag when it happens.  Unless I got in at $5.00, but it's way too late for that.

 

I get a kick out of an ad that plays on CNN, claiming that a cabbie in BKK got paid 300 baht in bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I was in China, the same ad had a cabbie in Beijing getting paid 100 RMB in Bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I turned on my VPN through Prague, it was a cabbie in Prague getting paid a few CZK in Bitcoin and now he's a millionaire...  

 

I love the concept of a digital currency, but Bitcoin's been hijacked by the worst kind of get-rich-quick charlatans.

 

More bad news for Bitcoin fans:  http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-trading-china-yuan-remnibi-2017-1

 

 

[sead]

Guess soon she will have some cash but need xx dineros to take it out lol. Atleast they target the right people. Thai superstition etc

[ThailandLOS]

10 hours ago, Takeprofit said:

Bitcoin is a global Pyramid Scheme.

Speaking of scams, there’s this altcoin “Dollar” some outfit named “Federal Reserve” released – premised, no coin cap, shady as heck. It’s centrally controlled with zero transparency steer clear. Also every major “upgrade” was disappointing, to say the least. Plus the developers allocated 99.9% of the released coins to themselves and their banking buddies. Ponzi? MLM scam?

[ThailandLOS]

1 hour ago, impulse said:

The 2 key words in your post are "bubble" and "bursts".   It may go up to $10,000, but I don't want to be one of those holding the bag when it happens.  Unless I got in at $5.00, but it's way too late for that.

Nobody having major cryptos will be "holding the bag" - there is a major transfer of wealth going on as we speak, one of the largest in history of mankind.

 

No more asking for permission where to send funds and pay outrageous fees - and then wait a few days for everyone in the transfer chain to take their cut.

 

No more SEC's to decide what people are allowed to invest in and when.

 

No more governments inflating the value of peoples work (and pretending that inflation is eradicated)

 

No more credit score companies selling peoples private lives.

 

No more Google/Youtube/FB censoring content at will.

 

These are just a few of the implications from blockchain - and you can be sure there will be more.

 

[impulse]

2 hours ago, ThailandLOS said:

Nobody having major cryptos will be "holding the bag" - there is a major transfer of wealth going on as we speak, one of the largest in history of mankind.

 

So, what you're saying is that it's different this time?

 

[janclaes47]

2 hours ago, ThailandLOS said:

there is a major transfer of wealth going on as we speak, one of the largest in history of mankind.

 

You're right about that, and one of those that is a benefiter of that new wealth hung himself in a Thai jail a month or so ago, while another is sitting a life sentence in a US jail.

[Meljames]

10 hours ago, ThailandLOS said:

11 hours ago, impulse said:

 

Nobody having major cryptos will be "holding the bag"

 

Why?

[ThailandLOS]

56 minutes ago, Meljames said:

 

Why?

Because funds are currently shifting from fiat currency to crypto on a massive scale - just have a look at the USD index to get an idea. Less and less major players participating in buying USD & US bonds to keep the recycling game going.

 

The same people that are telling you that gold is just a pet rock (and simultaneously artificially holding it's price down) - will tell you that crypto is a bubble and you should hold fiat. See how that is working out in e.g. Venezuela currently - where people are surviving thanks to crypto.

 

 

 

[ThailandLOS]

8 hours ago, janclaes47 said:

 

You're right about that, and one of those that is a benefiter of that new wealth hung himself in a Thai jail a month or so ago, while another is sitting a life sentence in a US jail.

Well - I would say the majority is neither in jail or considering hanging themselves.

 

I bought Bitcoin in 2015 - then started to get interested in the coins/tokens that have more elaborated business models than just being a vehicle for payments.

 

E.g. take OmiseGo, which is a Thai subsiduary of the Japanese payment vendor Omise with 50.000+ merchants on their records ready to adopt the OMG token in Q1-2018 - and will cater for the 70%+ unbanked people of SEA that will be able to access electronic payements and cash in/out solutions. This is an example of a very real business model that will be coming to a place close to you very soon.

 

I bought 10.000 tokens at 0.26 USD when they released a few weeks back. Now they trade at 12 USD - you do the math on that.

 

For that I get a cut of their network and get paid dividends that no bank in the world is close to matching.

 

Now tell me how crypto is a bubble and people adopting it are criminals and suicidal.

[Meljames]

16 minutes ago, ThailandLOS said:

Because funds are currently shifting from fiat currency to crypto on a massive scale - just have a look at the USD index to get an idea. Less and less major players participating in buying USD & US bonds, to keep the recycling game going.

 

Same as illicit drugs or any black market item; working outside the mainstream economy doesn't make it invulnerable to economic factors. Eventually, the new will wear off, other crypto-currencies will emerge etc, and the price will flatten and fall, leaving some people with poor returns on their investment.

 

 

[ThailandLOS]

1 minute ago, Meljames said:

Same as illicit drugs or any black market item; working outside the mainstream economy doesn't make it invulnerable to economic factors. Eventually, the new will wear off, other crypto-currencies will emerge etc, and the price will flatten and fall. 

 

 

No one said that crypto is invulnerably to basic economic factors - although a lot of those factors have been manipulated to benefit the top 1% - this can not be done as easily in decentralized crypto economy where you can't simply print money at will.

 

E.g. the cyclic transfer of wealth that we have seen over and over again: cheap loans -> inflated property and business prices -> manufactured crisis -> banks and governments step in and buy below fair value

 

Abt other cryptos emerging, well in that case you could say that abt any major corporation in the world in which people are buying stocks.

Time to market, a strong business model and liquidity is everything - those are the basic economic factors.

[Meljames]

6 minutes ago, ThailandLOS said:

No one said that crypto is invulnerably to basic economic factors -

 

 

You did when you claimed no one would be left holding the bag.

 

Bitcoin and the others  just the latest investment gimmick . It has it's upsides and will have an impact on global economics. The people behind it will learn to manipulate it to protect their wealth, people will get rich, others will go broke trying to get rich with it. Nothing new under the sun here. 

[ThailandLOS]

1 minute ago, Meljames said:

 

 

You did when you claimed no one would be left holding the bag.

 

Bitcoin and the others  just the latest investment gimmick . It has it's upsides and will have an impact on global economics. The people behind it will learn to manipulate it to protect their wealth, people will get rich, others will go broke trying to get rich with it. Nothing new under the sun here. 

No, your missing my point - it can not be manipulated to any significant extent since the cost would be too high. There are no "people behind it" since it's totally decentralized and transparent, in contrast to the "mainstream economy".

 

BTC and other will have it's ups & downs - but it's here to stay.

[janclaes47]

1 hour ago, ThailandLOS said:

I bought 10.000 tokens at 0.26 USD when they released a few weeks back. Now they trade at 12 USD - you do the math on that.

 

So you can today receive 120.000 USD in cash for your 10.000 tokens?

1 hour ago, ThailandLOS said:

E.g. take OmiseGo, which is a Thai subsiduary of the Japanese payment vendor Omise with 50.000+ merchants on their records ready to adopt the OMG token in Q1-2018 - and will cater for the 70%+ unbanked people of SEA that will be able to access electronic payements and cash in/out solutions.

 

So those 70% SEA people who are not clever enough to open a bank account, all trade bank accounts.

 

How does a individual who has no bank account have access to electronic payments? I thought online banking and credit cards were linked to bank accounts.

 

 

[impulse]

1 hour ago, ThailandLOS said:

No, your missing my point - it can not be manipulated to any significant extent since the cost would be too high. There are no "people behind it" since it's totally decentralized and transparent, in contrast to the "mainstream economy".

 

BTC and other will have it's ups & downs - but it's here to stay.

 

Cannot be manipulated?  Any market can be manipulated.   Decentralized and transparent?  Did you realize that well over 90% of Bitcoin transactions are now happening in China?   Where they throw people in jail for reporting how much money they've printed.  If I could print money, not tell anyone how much I have printed, and throw anyone who does tell in jail, I'd be buying Bitcoins at a rate that would drive the price up astronomically (with my newly printed cash) and dump it all when I've had enough fun.  

 

Leaving all the suckers "holding the bag".

 

 

[ThailandLOS]

1 hour ago, janclaes47 said:

So you can today receive 120.000 USD in cash for your 10.000 tokens?

Yes I can sell the lot on the exchanges right this moment, but would never trade it to fiat currency unless I need to - and especially not USD, unless it's e.g. for buying physical gold or property at fair value.

 

1 hour ago, janclaes47 said:

How does a individual who has no bank account have access to electronic payments? I thought online banking and credit cards were linked to bank accounts.

Omise Merchants and others (e.g. McDonald's Thailand signed up a few days ago) will adopt electronic wallets accessing the OMG blockchain (basically an immutable ledger database). Solutions for cash in/out without any need for bank account are coming early next year. This will also be a trading platform for bringing together various type of loyalty program points and redeem into tokens or cash.

 

The processing rate on the OMG blockchain will be very fast - and thus suitable for micro payments (where for example Bitcoin or common credit cards can not compete).

 

Primary target markets at the moment are Japan, Thailand and Malaysia. Note that BTC is already legal tender in Japan, so no need to even exchange for cash there.

[ThailandLOS]

21 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Cannot be manipulated?  Any market can be manipulated.   Decentralized and transparent?  Did you realize that well over 90% of Bitcoin transactions are now happening in China?   Where they throw people in jail for reporting how much money they've printed.  If I could print money, not tell anyone how much I have printed, and throw anyone who does tell in jail, I'd be buying Bitcoins at a rate that would drive the price up astronomically (with my newly printed cash) and dump it all when I've had enough fun.  

 

Leaving all the suckers "holding the bag".

 

 

So you would volunteer to cause hyper inflation and social chaos in order to take crypto down?

 

What one doesn't want to understand one can not understand. Good luck with your fiat currency anyway.

 

 

[janclaes47]

23 minutes ago, ThailandLOS said:

Omise Merchants and others (e.g. McDonald's Thailand signed up a few days ago) will adopt electronic wallets. Solutions for cash in/out without any need for bank account are coming early next year.

So I presume the electronic wallet is linked to under your mattress.

[ThailandLOS]

1 hour ago, janclaes47 said:

So I presume the electronic wallet is linked to under your mattress.

Have no need for any wallet since I'm not moving the funds around - just a crypto key and the blockchain address. The funds are secured in the blockchain which is replicated by millions of computers.

[Shaunduhpostman]

19 hours ago, impulse said:

 

The 2 key words in your post are "bubble" and "bursts".   It may go up to $10,000, but I don't want to be one of those holding the bag when it happens.  Unless I got in at $5.00, but it's way too late for that.

 

I get a kick out of an ad that plays on CNN, claiming that a cabbie in BKK got paid 300 baht in bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I was in China, the same ad had a cabbie in Beijing getting paid 100 RMB in Bitcoins and now he's a millionaire.  And when I turned on my VPN through Prague, it was a cabbie in Prague getting paid a few CZK in Bitcoin and now he's a millionaire...  

 

I love the concept of a digital currency, but Bitcoin's been hijacked by the worst kind of get-rich-quick charlatans.

 

More bad news for Bitcoin fans:  http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-trading-china-yuan-remnibi-2017-1

 

 

 

 

 

Don't mind me, I'm going to indulge in one of my favorite pasttimes a bit of recreational public drivelling.

 

Whatever you may think of Bitcoin, my point, which perhaps was not made very plain, was that there's no need for getting middlemen and their agendas involved by handing your money over to them to "help" you make money using Bitcoin.

Its just a currency, of course it can be used by charlatans, so can the fiat currencies we all use and we don't see people complaining about the evil of the Thai baht because acquiring it is what motivates all the corruption and organized crime in Thailand. 

 

The OP's friend, if she indeed did get scammed, at least has the possibility of getting her money back doing it all herself, depending on her timing, competence, grit, desire, bankroll  etc. Of course if she got into bitcoin yesterday she'd be getting hammered by the crypto currency sell off in progress, but as I am sure you well know it is a bit more complicated than just buying some Bitcoin and waking up on morning next month a millionaire next month. So, why make it even more complicated riskier and more complicated by allowing other people to do "invest" for you what you could do yourself, which is really the whole beauty of crypto currencies is that there is much you can do yourself.

 

Anyone can buy and sell currencies and with the smallest of bankrolls. Why play video games when you can you take 50 bucks and try to make into 150 bucks? Trade commisions are miniscule and it is liberating knowing you are trading directly with others rather than asking some employee of a brokerage to trade for you. I am as poor as many Thais and things like FOREX markets are prohibitively expensive for me to get involved with.

 

Its rather tragic that the media gloms on to scam stories and how absurdly over valued  Bitcoin is rather than the news that the average person now has great potential for opportunity that you  can to some degree manage and control yourself, vicissitudes of the crypto-currency markets not withstanding. There is also micro loaning to other crypto investors you can do, you can actually mine and mint various coins yourself using video game graphic cards. It is not something the avergae person has even a remote chance of doing with fiat currencies. Do we hear about any of that, of course not, haha!

 

So, That's what I was thinking when I read this post and what I would try to impart to my friend, rather than just say "See, ya got scammed! Too bad! Nothing you can do! Guess you learned your lesson about BItcoin and trying to invest your money! Just don't even go there dood! Forget it! Why don't you stop being lazy and greedy and go sell some papayas in the market like good honest people do. "

 

Bubbles and bursting bubbles and hype go with the territory and you accept those risks or don't, but that's not the same as people who take your fiat currency and tell you they are going to make you millions on Bitcoin. What I suppose additionally galling me about the guys who scammed the temple  was that the scammers offered to give them such a small return that it seems the scammers, had they actually put the money towards Bitcoin, which they probably didn't, could easily have made the 300 percent and kept a mere piddly 600 percent for themselves and everybody'd be happy. That's just the facts of the matter, bit coin did during one 300 day period go up about 1000%. 

 

As to whether or not that incredible run is finished or whether you or I too could make a lot of money on Bitcoin or other altcoins is, after some good timing, up to our guts,  intelligence,  research and decision making ability. I would assume I don't have to tell you that.

 

But Bitcoin, on its own is far from being just a scam or an instrument for people to scam people with and little to nothing else. What is really a shame as well  it seems it won't be too long before many governments will start conflating scams with crypto-currencies and making them illegal under the pretext of looking out for people's well being, which of course we all know they are so good at, as though there were something inherently wrong with cryptos.

 

[ThailandLOS]

1 hour ago, Shaunduhpostman said:

Its rather tragic that the media gloms on to scam stories and how absurdly over valued  Bitcoin is rather than the news that the average person now has great potential for opportunity that you  can to some degree manage and control yourself, vicissitudes of the crypto-currency markets not withstanding. There is also micro loaning to other crypto investors you can do, you can actually mine and mint various coins yourself using video game graphic cards. It is not something the avergae person has even a remote chance of doing with fiat currencies. Do we hear about any of that, of course not, haha!

Totally agree on that - anything disruptive to the current status quo will inevitably be the target of mainstream media.

 

Like all great things that empower the people like free energy, free speech, the free internet, crypto currencies and peer-to-peer blockchain-based application will be attacked/undermined/regulated/infiltrated/sabotaged ferociously by the powers that be once they they start making significant inroads into the fabric of society and thus changing the status quo.

 

But due to its decentralized P2P architecture, blockchain-based software solutions will become and remain a very disruptive, mercurial, creative, game-changing, world-transforming technology platform far ages to come.

 

Once computers were developed, the internet was bound to be created. Once the internet was established, block-chain based applications couldn’t help but cropping up and overgrowing the whole digital world like a tropical forest.

 

And the same type of uninformed skeptics are now seen on the sidelines as during the breakthrough of public internet.

[tryasimight]

On 9/1/2017 at 9:46 AM, KittenKong said:

 

You're wrong. I do.

Perhaps time to leave Thailand.......and this forum??

 

No point in staying bitter and twisted in life.......unless that is the only life you have.

 

Contrary to the old saying misery loves company on the web only in farang bars full of sad old men

[tryasimight]

On 9/1/2017 at 10:23 AM, simon43 said:

 

 

 

Getting an annual return of 364% with Bitcoin sounds quite realistic...

says the man posting from Myanmar after all of his businesses went broke........no thanks....don't need financial advice from you

[tryasimight]

45 minutes ago, ThailandLOS said:

Totally agree on that - anything disruptive to the current status quo will inevitably be the target of mainstream media.

 

Like all great things that empower the people like free energy, free speech, the free internet, crypto currencies and peer-to-peer blockchain-based application will be attacked/undermined/regulated/infiltrated/sabotaged ferociously by the powers that be once they they start making significant inroads into the fabric of society and thus changing the status quo.

 

But due to its decentralized P2P architecture, blockchain-based software solutions will become and remain a very disruptive, mercurial, creative, game-changing, world-transforming technology platform far ages to come.

 

Once computers were developed, the internet was bound to be created. Once the internet was established, block-chain based applications couldn’t help but cropping up and overgrowing the whole digital world like a tropical forest.

 

And the same type of uninformed skeptics are now seen on the sidelines as during the breakthrough of public internet.

And one decent sunspot, or a nuke, event wipes out all . I'll keep my cash under the bed thanks

Even when/if the banks mainframes are stuffed I'll still have negotiable currency. I may even be a billionaire in that world. Craptocurrency ....non existent.

Google magnetic pulse..

 

One thing I have learnt on my years on this earth, generally speaking, is that you don't get something for nothing....you have to work for it.

 

[ThailandLOS]

20 minutes ago, tryasimight said:

And one decent sunspot, or a nuke, event wipes out all . I'll keep my cash under the bed thanks

Even when/if the banks mainframes are stuffed I'll still have negotiable currency. I may even be a billionaire in that world. Craptocurrency ....non existent.

Google magnetic pulse..

 

One thing I have learnt on my years on this earth, generally speaking, is that you don't get something for nothing....you have to work for it.

 

Are you saying that the people creating blockchain solutions and ones supporting them by investing haven't worked for their money?

 

I don't need to Google something that is taught in elementary school - and have yet to see a magnetic pulse that wipes out all the computer records in the world, especially since very few are kept on magnetic media nowadays.

[tryasimight]

Oh dear ....you really are a  tech head......but not an electrical engineer are you?

I am.

[ThailandLOS]

17 minutes ago, tryasimight said:

Oh dear ....you really are a  tech head......but not an electrical engineer are you?

I am.

Actually I have a masters degree in electrical engineering and been working in IT industry for quite some years - hope that satisfies your curiosity.

[tryasimight]

I have no interest in your background and zero curiosity.

I surmise from you comments that you haven't learnt much about the relationship between electricity and magnetism have you?

 

Your Masters was obtained in Thailand?

 

Perhaps go revise First Principles?

[ThailandLOS]

I have no intentions of spending my Saturday evening exchanging insults with you - however, you might want to google how cold storage of data is done nowadays.

[tryasimight]

I am familiar with concept. All are miniaturised transistorised memory. Call them what you like.....they are ALL affected by electro magnetism.

Do you recall how the Pentagon were criticised some moths ago about how the programs for the nuclear missiles were still on floppy disks?  Ancient technology but probably the most secure.....hard to hack a disk whats not in the pc.

 

There is NO secure storage