The Cryptocurrency Thread
Title says it all. I know I don't particiapate much these days on the forum, but I know that this forum is full of internet-y type people. Just wondering what your take is on various types of cryptocurrency whether it be Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, etc. I have put in some small money and have made some modest gains. just wondering what other peoples' experience has been. Wouldn't be surprised if there are some early adpopters on this site, kudos to you!
Comments
(no tax guidance existed yet, and job/security conflicts could have created a real headache if the stuff ended up banned due its early association with Silk Road)
I stayed out of the next wave due to having relatively little trust in the system, in the wake of the MtGox hack soaking a bunch of early adopters.
Once some trustworthy (and insured) players like Coinbase arrived, I stayed out because despite the price having had a rocket-like trajectory, the room for additional major gains starts to pretty quickly defy reasonable understandings of economics. (i.e. 1MM+ valuations for single bitcoins would be total bizarro world when you start looking at BTC market cap ratio to the actual real wealth of the planet)
I also recognize that there is absolutely no way I would have held those early BTC to today's valuations.
If I had bought in for $1000 at $1/BTC, I would have happily sold them all off when it reached $100.
I PROBABLY would have sold most of them when they reached somewhere in the $20-$50.
So it's not like my avoidance of it "cost me" millions in missed opportunities, rationally.
More like a few tens of thousands, which in the larger scheme isn't really a big deal, especially when balanced by the perceived legal risks I was considering back at the time.
I don't have much to contribute to this tread as of yet but hoping to gain a better understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency and how it has and could potentially affect our global economy.
Good idea on starting this.
I stayed out of the game for some of the same reasons as arc_8ngel
What site did you go through to buy your bitcoin gavmasterflash?
Anyway, I am/was RLH over at BitcoinTalk.org which shouldn't be surprising. I had some remaining funds back in May for an ICO I'd been holding out on. It was iota. I sold it off because I got tired of the general crypto drama (and let me tell you, if you try to help this burgeoning philosophical idea called crypto currency, you will experience drama) which I'd been a part of since late-2010. Anyway, I sold off my iota stake for 20BTC back in May through the iota Slack based exchange. That same stake is worth over $10,000,000. The absolute biggest "mistake" of my life, but I honestly don't have much regrets about it. I've since stayed away from the crypto community because I got out with good reasons (personal sanity.) But, seriously, of all my endeavors the one that would have really paid off the best was the one I let go of just a couple months to early.
The only proof I could submit is that I still have the keys to my original wallet. I'm to lazy, though, to figure out out to regenerate my original address since they made significant changes to the trinary hashing algos after the funds were all distributed to the beta client. Anyway, that whole experience makes me feel like the "bitcoin pizza" guy of iota. Oh, and for a time, I was helping the team develop a second client written in C#. The main developer would share his evolving code, but it was evolving so much, I couldn't make the changes quick enough since it was a hobby for me. It was fun times. He was a great time, and working with him and a few others over the years really helped me to appreciate Russia and it's people. I may not be fond of their political structure but all of the ruskies I met were really cool guys.
Anyway, I am/was RLH over at BitcoinTalk.org which shouldn't be surprising. I had some remaining funds back in May for an ICO I'd been holding out on. It was iota. I sold it off because I got tired of the general crypto drama (and let me tell you, if you try to help this burgeoning philosophical idea called crypto currency, you will experience drama) which I'd been a part of since late-2010. Anyway, I sold off my iota stake for 20BTC back in May through the iota Slack based exchange. That same stake is worth over $10,000,000.
The price chart I am looking at only goes back to June for Iota. (price has only apparently tripled in that time)
Anyway, I am/was RLH over at BitcoinTalk.org which shouldn't be surprising. I had some remaining funds back in May for an ICO I'd been holding out on. It was iota. I sold it off because I got tired of the general crypto drama (and let me tell you, if you try to help this burgeoning philosophical idea called crypto currency, you will experience drama) which I'd been a part of since late-2010. Anyway, I sold off my iota stake for 20BTC back in May through the iota Slack based exchange. That same stake is worth over $10,000,000.
The price chart I am looking at only goes back to June for Iota. (price has only apparently tripled in that time)
Another "solved" problem was the issue of "blockchain" size. Historical records are pretty important, but I'd also designed a way to keep limited sets of data that could be utilized on simpler devices like smart phones. They could still validate transactions but wouldn't have to house an entire chain on one device, but only one small portion of it.
Edit, there were some other innovations too and, to be clear, most of these problems have been solved, however, I've not seen them yet solved with one coin.
Well, yes, there is no way you can exchange crypto for fiat, without a gateway even if that's face-to-face at a pub. What I mean is that we lowered the barrier for sending funds immediately, guaranteed, without confirmations plus in my own personal notes I developed a way for there to be "handshakes" in place so that if people even "stole" your funds, you could have an integrated form of 2FA. This was designed into my personal protocol, that I was modeling on top of the Microcash discussions we were having back around 2011 and 2012.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the "middleman"/"brokerage" model of getting money into the system to deal with other otherwise-anonymous people that you want to buy and sell currency with.
I had the impression that the major delays with Coinbase were:
Well, yes, there is no way you can exchange crypto for fiat, without a gateway even if that's face-to-face at a pub. What I mean is that we lowered the barrier for sending funds immediately, guaranteed, without confirmations plus in my own personal notes I developed a way for there to be "handshakes" in place so that if people even "stole" your funds, you could have an integrated form of 2FA. This was designed into my personal protocol, that I was modeling on top of the Microcash discussions we were having back around 2011 and 2012.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the "middleman"/"brokerage" model of getting money into the system to deal with other otherwise-anonymous people that you want to buy and sell currency with.
I had the impression that the major delays with Coinbase were:
Well, on the iota piece, it's probably for the best you were able to get out, anyway, since in looking around on that one it sounds like there are some serious horror stories about how the wallets work (or IF they work) and people are all stuck with their coins sitting on an exchange somewhere waiting to go tits-up in a MtGox-like implosion.
Yeah, I mean, they had some revolutionary ideas but there were some unknown, potential flaws. Iota should theoretically get stronger with more nodes that are out there. More node = faster confirmation times. However, I'm not sure how well that was actualied. The biggest red flag I saw was that it consumed a TON of data. While in test, the DAG (distributed acyclical graph) which is iotas version of a block-chain (but very diffferent) managed to get in the range of about 10-15GB if I recall. The project might have been in beta, but the chain was suppose to have been official so... yeah. That alone meant that full nodes would have to be mega servers once the transactions started to flow.
Well, on the iota piece, it's probably for the best you were able to get out, anyway, since in looking around on that one it sounds like there are some serious horror stories about how the wallets work (or IF they work) and people are all stuck with their coins sitting on an exchange somewhere waiting to go tits-up in a MtGox-like implosion.
Yeah, I mean, they had some revolutionary ideas but there were some unknown, potential flaws. Iota should theoretically get stronger with more nodes that are out there. More node = faster confirmation times. However, I'm not sure how well that was actualied. The biggest red flag I saw was that it consumed a TON of data. While in test, the DAG (distributed acyclical graph) which is iotas version of a block-chain (but very diffferent) managed to get in the range of about 10-15GB if I recall. The project might have been in beta, but the chain was suppose to have been official so... yeah. That alone meant that full nodes would have to be mega servers once the transactions started to flow.
Aside from all of the "wasted" data duplication, the part of the whole cryptocurrency thing that is mindblowing is that as of today, with the relatively low adoption rate that it all currently as, it consumes MORE ELECTRICITY THAT ALL OF IRELAND (or any of 150 other countries).
It something like 0.1% of all global electricity right now.
That is insane.
I'll say this. Bitcoin was, and is, revolutionary. I've also written about this years ago back in 2011. Bitcoin is like living in 1890 and seeing a "horseless carriage" putting along downtown for the first time-- it's undeniable that what you are looking at has just changed the world. In 1890, you may have no clue how this new device will change and innovate, but you know you've just witnessed the beginning of something revolutionary...
However, in 1890, no one fought to keep those buggy like devices going, and as they were, creeping along at 2MPH and capable of carrying only 1-2 people up and down the street. Bitcoin has failed to innovate, and it needs to let the movement progress. In other words, Bitcoin needs to die because people need to innovate and improve upon the concept. I'm not talking about forking the code base and modifying the "magic numbers" that they system was built on, which is what we saw in the early days with coins like Litecoin.
No, people need to see what blockchains have done and re-imagine them, solving problems that prevent us from needing Proof-of-Work AND massive amounts of disk space AND 20-60 transaction verifications, etc. Innovation has taken place but, unfortunately, 90% of it is duct-taping onto the same underlying concept additional features (cough, Ethereum, cough)
To take my analogy above even further, instead of making a better "automobile" by making the vehicles bigger, faster and more efficient, they have mostly kept that original carriage, added a turbo buster to it, painted it and added an A/C unit to the thing even though it doesn't even have an enclosure yet?!
Iota was a good, forward innovation but as you have even noticed, I think it might be to broken to be viable. I hoped/hope I'm wrong because I like the idea of a micro-transaction crypto, but I'm not sure if it will work in the end.
I do love the idea of crytocurrencies, but have always invested in real estate. I'll put the earnings towards another multi family when the opportunity arises.
I jumped in and jumped out all within 30 days. Made a cool five figures doing nothing.
I do love the idea of crytocurrencies, but have always invested in real estate. I'll put the earnings towards another multi family when the opportunity arises.
cool. sounds like you must have had to put down an amount in the five figures in the first place. did you do this on the recent upswing in Bitcoin or earlier this year on Ethereum, or something else entirely?
I'm subscribing to this thread!
I don't have much to contribute to this tread as of yet but hoping to gain a better understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency and how it has and could potentially affect our global economy.
Good idea on starting this.
I stayed out of the game for some of the same reasons as arc_8ngel
What site did you go through to buy your bitcoin gavmasterflash?
Coinbase is the most reputable one right now.
I jumped in and jumped out all within 30 days. Made a cool five figures doing nothing.
I do love the idea of crytocurrencies, but have always invested in real estate. I'll put the earnings towards another multi family when the opportunity arises.
cool. sounds like you must have had to put down an amount in the five figures in the first place. did you do this on the recent upswing in Bitcoin or earlier this year on Ethereum, or something else entirely?
It was a five figure investment, but I felt that it was fairly safe given how things were going. Every downturn could be linked to an cause/event (cancellation of X2 fork, the whale that dumped 4,000 coins when it hit $11,400, Coinbase going offline for a short period of time, etc). I figured I’d sell now while things were fairly stable and potentially buy back in if there’s a dip around the CME futures going live. If there isn’t, I’ll just cheer BTC on from the sidelines.
The investment was all in Bitcoin, but I have a small amount in Litecoin and Etherium. Nothing close to what I had in BTC though. Just shits and giggles money.
Hey BeaglePuss, what sort of tax implications come with buying and then selling for profit in such a short amount of time? I've heard that you need to wait at least a year to avoid big taxes (similar to stocks), but really don't know enough about that stuff, just curious if you have more info given your experience? Thanks,
According to the IRS they are capital gains, so short term is taxed at ordinary income rates, long term is taxed more favorably.
Part of the crazy thing about bitcoin is that since you can spend it, you potentially realize gains at the time you make a purchase, and need to track all sorts of stuff you would never bother with if the government actually treated like a currency.
Will everyone lose everything?
So what happens if Coinbase gets hacked. These bitcoins aren't traceable right?
Will everyone lose everything?
Yes but they should have security measure in place to distribute the keys for everyone's wallets, so that if some funds were lost, they could redistribute losses reserve funds.
However, there is nothing saying that a sofisticated, well coordinated attack couldn't compromise their system OR their isn't much proving that they have reserve fund or stron security measures, other than Coinbase word that they are doing it well. They might be security audited, which is would be very beneficial in validating that they say they do what they say they are doing.
The rules for crypto have always been the same though. If you want to secure your funds for a long time, generate a paperwallet offline and print it. Add money to that address and put it in a lock box. This is as secure as it can get and your only chance of loss is if you lose the paper wallet. I have created many paper wallets and it works well.
However, if you really want to keep your funds accessible, the best recommendationnis that you simply distribute your funds across 3-4 exchanges. More or less depending on how much crypto funds you hold.
I no longer hold much but I keep my funds on a crypto exchange and coinbase. Just two, because I don't have a lot. However, before my dumping of funds, I had it across 3-4 plus multiple wallets and some paper wallets.
So what kind of ROI percentages are people getting with this? How aboot the few people who have posted here, what are your percentages over what period of time. No need for dollar amounts.
Dont get caught up in thinking past performance indicates future performance, other than the massive volatility.
So what kind of ROI percentages are people getting with this? How aboot the few people who have posted here, what are your percentages over what period of time. No need for dollar amounts.
i think most people on this site were talking about roughly %100 returns. which is an incredibly unhealthy growth rate, but is excusable due to the infancy of crypto. i dont htink bitcoin is due for a crash anytime soon. early adopters are just being rewarded emminsley for stepping out on that limb, and more of the population is beginning to realize that crypto is most likely going to be the currency of the future.
that being said a %10 annual return is a good rule of thumb for healthy growth rate in any investment. when you get wild swings of %100 growth it is usually an indication of an unhealthy market and possibly what you are investing in is subject to a boom or bust growth cycle.
If this is to be believed then this chart is interesting.
It shows the volume of sales history for bitcoin. Not the price but the volume that was bought and sold.
In 2016 it was at an all time high and then in 2017 it dropped levels not seen since 2014.
https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/all?c=e&r=month&t=b