Bitcoin - Anyone Investing?

[knight1fox3]

Just curious if anyone on here has already invested and/or researched Bitcoin looking to invest.

https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptocurrency-markets-trend-higher-commanding-300bn-this-week/

 

[Supe]

Have a really hard time sinking money into something purely speculative with zero intrinsic value...

 

[Bonsai]

Bitcoin is an eternal search for the bigger bag holder. Do not buy, and if you got in early, sell and take your profits.

 

[Jbone27 PE]

I made some cash off of Ethereum yesterday (alternate crypto currency). Not retirement money but enough to buy myself a toy or two. My BIL got in really early and even built several mining rigs.  Think he did really well. 

Now just waiting for the price to adjust to get back in. 

 

[knight1fox3]

Bitcoin is an eternal search for the bigger bag holder. Do not buy, and if you got in early, sell and take your profits.

Thanks for the feedback. And what is your justification for this out of curiosity?

 

[Bonsai]

Everything about the major exchanges is sketchy as all get-out, and rife with risk. For example, one of the major exchanges, Tether, was hacked for 30m in assets as recently as last week. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, so that money is simply gone. Besides that, none of the money is backed by banks; you have to take it on faith that an exchange has the assets it says it has, and that they will be available to you should you decide to withdraw. The markets are also rife with manipulation, particularly wash trading. 

It should say something that two of the primary uses of Bitcoin at this point are money laundering and drug purchases.

Blockchain is a potentially useful technology, but ripe for abuse and frankly wasteful in the enormous amount of electricity it uses. I would spend my money at a casino before I tried to conduct transactions on an opaque, irreversible market.

 

[mudpuppy]

As you can tell from my avatar I don't mind gambling, but I have no desire to throw money at cryptocurrencies either.  No one has any idea what their actual intrinsic worth is at this point.

 

[Road Guy]

I don't know anything about it and that tends to leave me to stay away from it

 

[knight1fox3]

As per usual, I'm aligned with like-minded individuals here. I've been researching it, but I have the same concerns with "imaginary currency" so haven't actually pulled the trigger on anything.

 

[Ble_PE]

I think we are all about 7 years too late to have benefited from investing in Bitcoin. That being said, there's no way I'm going to gamble my money with it. 

 

[Bonsai]

As per usual, I'm aligned with like-minded individuals here. I've been researching it, but I have the same concerns with "imaginary currency" so haven't actually pulled the trigger on anything.

If you want to play with it and get a little more familiar with the concept, nothing wrong with throwing $100 and seeing what happens. I just wouldn't expect a profit.

It's fiat, just like most most currency -- the difference being that traditional currency is backed by banks, governments, and is accepted by pretty much everyone, everywhere. Crypto is volatile, hackable, irreversible, accepted primarily by wannabe technocrats/criminals/scammers, and has very real technical limitations, especially Bitcoin. Example: Since the block size is 1MB and only expands once every 10 minutes, Bitcoin, being the most popular crypto, has already hit it's transactional limit (the amount of transactions that can be stored in 1 block), after which additional transactions are queued for the next block -- can you imagine checking every 10 minutes to see if your transaction went through?

 

[Jbone27 PE]

Well the cheese stands alone. I think that crypto is a new technology and therefore there are going to be a lot of bumps in the road as far as hacking or fly by night exchanges but that doesn't speak at all to the tech. That is simply the trading. I got into ethereum because I think that the technology has huge potential. Most blockchain is expanding past just being a currency and will be used for smart contracts, data transfer, and a number of things. Not trying to sell it but you can't judge it on the reliability of the exchange. 

 

[Dean Agnostic]

Just curious if anyone on here has already invested and/or researched Bitcoin looking to invest.

https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptocurrency-markets-trend-higher-commanding-300bn-this-week/

Wow, $100Bn in just 24 Days and it's not regulated by the US Federal Reserve. 

Read this NCEES 2016 Annual Report  and proceed to page 41: 2016.nceesannualreport.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/02/AR-2016_reduced.pdf

(The NCEES Gods are fully invested in mutual funds and securities, and there's probably bitcoin in their portfolio)

 

[Bonsai]

That's fair. Maybe someday there will be a regulated, fair, and secure market. I will admit that it's not entirely fair to judge a concept based on early adopters, which tend to be idealists and criminals for the obvious reason that it's just not on society's radar yet.

However, despite the potential social/tech merits, I do want to assert one reason that I personally believe blockchain is unsustainable in widespread use: Energy use. "Mining" for crypto entails billions of billions of repeated useless calculations that do nothing but waste electricity in the hope of obtaining the rights to the next batch of coins. Even when you put aside currency as a use for blockchain, every transaction requires that the ledger be propagated throughout the network, which, instead of being logged a few times in a database, has to be logged in literally every user's device. That may sound inconsequential, but make no mistake, it uses a massive amount of electricity relative to traditional, centrally-serviced transactions. Electricity is cheap, but it's not free, and we shouldn't treat it like it is.

When electricity is freely available to everyone and has zero environmental consequences, I may change my tune.

 

[Dean Agnostic]

At that rate, it is going to exceed the real estate market value. 

@Bonsai, did you invest in Bitcoin? What Company? Which platform/broker?

 

[Jbone27 PE]

That's fair. Maybe someday there will be a regulated, fair, and secure market. I will admit that it's not entirely fair to judge a concept based on early adopters, which tend to be idealists and criminals for the obvious reason that it's just not on society's radar yet.

However, despite the potential social/tech merits, I do want to assert one reason that I personally believe blockchain is unsustainable in widespread use: Energy use. "Mining" for crypto entails billions of billions of repeated useless calculations that do nothing but waste electricity in the hope of obtaining the rights to the next batch of coins. Even when you put aside currency as a use for blockchain, every transaction requires that the ledger be propagated throughout the network, which, instead of being logged a few times in a database, has to be logged in literally every user's device. That may sound inconsequential, but make no mistake, it uses a massive amount of electricity relative to traditional, centrally-serviced transactions. Electricity is cheap, but it's not free, and we shouldn't treat it like it is.

When electricity is freely available to everyone and has zero environmental consequences, I may change my tune.

Yeah you are correct there. The mining rigs a family member built required their own panel and cooling was huge concern drawing even more power. It was a constant juggling act between power cost vs. mined coin value.

The logistics aren't 100% there yet but I see a lot of potential. The ones just jumping in to make a quick buck are giving it shady vibe but hopefully some good comes out of it.

 

[knight1fox3]

Yeah you are correct there. The mining rigs a family member built required their own panel and cooling was huge concern drawing even more power.

:blink:

I need specs/photos! ldman:

 

[kevo_55]

... I have some magic beans that I would like to sell.

 

[Ble_PE]

How much?

 

[kevo_55]

It's a steal. 5 Bitcoins.