The truth about Bitcoin (I think this is accurate)

Saving Private Ryan wrote:

thoughts and prayers wrote:

Matt Damon wants me to buy Bitcoin. How could I say no?

Of course he likes Bitcoins. Bitcoin was invented Asia. Matt is part-Asian. His parents are tartars from Russia. Matt has very Asian facial features like most Russians.

Lol. Are you the guy to whom errybody is asian? Too much asian porn for you my friend.

Zcash is going to explode in value. It could easily reach $1,000 per coin next year. There are only 21 million of those too.

used to run in college wrote:

Blockchain technology has uses to keep records and secure transactions. That's every bit as useful as gold.

you can make an infinite number of blockchain ledgers for financial transactions, why would you need BTC or any other specific cryptocurrency. While there will only be 21 mill bitcoins, which people tell you is part of the value of it that its capped and cant be diluted, there's nothing special about it that can't be replicated millions of times over. There are tons of new crypto projects every day. The difference only is Bitcoin was first and it's Bitcoin while the others get labeled sh1tcoins.

used to run in college wrote:

Blockchain technology has uses to keep records and secure transactions. That's every bit as useful as gold.

Are you investing in the technology though?

So I get why you'd want to create blockchain and why the technology around it is useful. But why invest in Bitcoin and not the computers that create the blockchain?

The Bitcoin is the 'reward' for getting a computer to create the blockchain. It seems the blockchain is what's wanted not the Bitcoin.

America's fury wrote:

It's quite likely that some unscrupulous people are using it for very bad things, but that idea doesn't fit the typical anti-american conspiracy narrative promoted by the resident trolls on LRC.

You mean drug kingpins and criminals never used cash to do bad things? You are blaming a currency for a societal problem essentially akin to...

Bad people---use bitcoin--- for bad things--- therefore bitcoin is to blame for bad people doing bad things

Whilst also inferring..

Bad people--- use cash--- for bad things--- but cash is not to blame for bad people doing bad things

Cash and bitcoin are both pretty anonymous-ish. In fact, Bitcoin transactions are actually all tracked and publicly available to everyone so suspicious patterns and transactions can be noticed much easier than cash. Cash on the other hand works differently, only one country in the World actively registers and tracks banknote serial numbers which is the Netherlands therefore making cash more anonymous than bitcoin so don't buy into the propaganda.

I have a feeling that your issue is more with so called darkmarkets and governmental regulation but guess what, the government created the Tor browser to access these unindexed and private networks which I feel runs against your agenda.

Tatar... wrote:

Maybe...... wrote:

What do you do with Gold...lets say you buy some, what are you going to do with it ?

There's a market for gold because there are people who use it to make jewellery and use in electronics. Different precious metals are used in dentistry, soldering and for ornaments. Other commodities like oil is used for energy.

You make money by investing in commodities because if there's demand in the market you are the person that's owns the supply.

Gold’s value is not tied to the usefulness of it. It’s value is based on that it is precious metal and there’s demand for the limited supply.

You’re right about the meaning of Ponzi scheme.

I agree about all trading is based on people expecting the price to fluctuate. As well as people pouring money into losing company as they think it will go up. I agree that Bitcoin is no different in this regard.

At least with a “losing company” I have audited financial statements to look at to make my own assessment as to what I think a company is worth. With cryptocurrencies there is nothing. Nothing tangible to back it up other than what people are willing to pay. It’s basically Just crooks and dipsh*ts and what will probably go down in business school textbooks as the beanie baby type bubble

Oh and if I lose my password with an FDIC insured bank or if my credit card gets stolen I can easily flag it for fraud. With stocks I trust the SEC.

With Crypto if you lose your wallet it’s like having a $100,000 Rolex and having it land somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with no way to ever get it back. No insurance and no way for the authorities to go after someone for hacking your account and/or for other criminal activity

To me it seems almost like bidding up the price of checks, which as a service is just a medium of exchange so you don’t have to carry around the US dollar. Checks leave a paper trail of course and an electronic trail with the banks. Like cryptocurrencies The paper checks don’t have inherent value other than that they are paper, probably have a watermark to show they are legit, have a routing number, a check number and there is some decentralization in that any other bank in the USA financial bank system can check the routing number to see that it’s legit and see if there’s enough money in the FDIC insured account of the other side.

With cryptocurrencies Do you REALLY think the computer programming is that complex and innovative? I doubt it. I talk to many expert programmers and many of them think there is nothing to it other than technobabble.

What about a prescription pad from a doctor with a watermark so you can’t forge prescriptions? Do you expect all that sh*t to be written in crypto someday? Do you think the DEA is going to have that kind of a system (maybe on the backend they already do ) and why would it be worth anything in terms of inherent value? If some fckhead steals a doctor’s prescription pad and writes a prescription for opioids they’re going to jail. we don’t need crypto to figure that out.

weorijfdvm wrote:

used to run in college wrote:

Blockchain technology has uses to keep records and secure transactions. That's every bit as useful as gold.

you can make an infinite number of blockchain ledgers for financial transactions, why would you need BTC or any other specific cryptocurrency. While there will only be 21 mill bitcoins, which people tell you is part of the value of it that its capped and cant be diluted, there's nothing special about it that can't be replicated millions of times over. There are tons of new crypto projects every day. The difference only is Bitcoin was first and it's Bitcoin while the others get labeled sh1tcoins.

No, it's typically because it's accepted, and most of the others actually are sh1tcoins. There's a number of useful and potentially useful coins/tokens out there, but there's a lot of bloat too. The ones that last are the ones with more utility.

Why do you need Bitcoin ? Because it has a reasonable store of value (in the crypto world), and people have to buy it to get access to other coins & tokens. Sure, that's in part because it's first, but I don't see any issue with that. I suspect it won't be the top one in a few years, as its hindered by resource hungry mining, whilst others are using or moving to things like Proof of Stake which don't need mining.

I think current estimates are less than 1% of trades from illegal activity.

Sure, if you lost your access to the keys (and you shouldn't have a single place for this), you are pretty much screwed. Don't lose them. If you have your example $100,000 Rolex and leave the door open, you aren't getting it back.

bitcoinz z wrote:

Tatar... wrote:

There's a market for gold because there are people who use it to make jewellery and use in electronics. Different precious metals are used in dentistry, soldering and for ornaments. Other commodities like oil is used for energy.

You make money by investing in commodities because if there's demand in the market you are the person that's owns the supply.

Gold’s value is not tied to the usefulness of it. It’s value is based on that it is precious metal and there’s demand for the limited supply.

Yes of course it's a rare metal and that limited supply means people are going to have to pay higher to own it. But they want to own it also because it has qualities that differentiate it from other metals.

Even if gold was solely valuable because of its rarity, what's rare about Bitcoin? New blockchain can be created forever but supply of Bitcoin is artificially limited. What's to stop someone creating a cryptocurrency with exactly the same mining process? What would differentiate newBitcoin from Bitcoin?

Is it just like the value of a first edition book? I know people invest in artwork but it's a terrible way to store wealth because it's easily damaged and notoriously unpredictable - not good qualities for currency or an attractive asset class. The art market is also full of speculation with people looking to own the next van Gogh. Lots of parallels here, maybe this is the future of cryptocurrency - as a digital art?

Tatar... wrote:

used to run in college wrote:

Blockchain technology has uses to keep records and secure transactions. That's every bit as useful as gold.

Are you investing in the technology though?

So I get why you'd want to create blockchain and why the technology around it is useful. But why invest in Bitcoin and not the computers that create the blockchain?

The Bitcoin is the 'reward' for getting a computer to create the blockchain. It seems the blockchain is what's wanted not the Bitcoin.

Depends what you mean and to who. Who is going to run the blockchain if they aren't getting paid ? How are you going to maintain a secure distributed system so that no one can take control ?

No harm in investing in the computers that keep the blockchain running. Some people have been wise to that. As crypto slowly moves to proof of stake and similar, rather than proof of work though, it may not be the wisest investment long term.

Lol can I call the police if I lose my keys and what will they do? Where does Steve the addict keep them on his drive? My guess: In c:/documents and setttings/user/SteveTheAddict/cryptocurrencies/keys/turds.rsa

stare at it all day

The same arguments that are being written here were written from the same people 5 years ago when BTC first entered the zeitgeist at 1/50th of it's current exchange rate. I imagine it will be the same people with the same opinions when it cracks 6 figures too.