Cryptocurrency Discussion

[THCDDM4]

I got into Bitcoin early and paid a friend to mine a good bit for me, invested in some more a few years later and then sat on it until this year.

When it hit $55K earlier this year I divested and moved it all into gold, silver and platinum. Some lead/copper too.

It was a great investment and I’m glad to be out at this point.

Blockchain and crypto is the future- in the worst sort of way.

[okie]

I got into Bitcoin early and paid a friend to mine a good bit for me, invested in some more a few years later and then sat on it until this year.

When it hit $55K earlier this year I divested and moved it all into gold, silver and platinum. Some lead/copper too.

It was a great investment and I’m glad to be out at this point.

Blockchain and crypto is the future- in the worst sort of way.

That's why I'm into BTC. It's so brilliantly evil it almost has to succeed. I basically see investment in it as a form of self defense.

[themonk]

I think you first have to decide if you are going to day trade with it and if you are going that route you will need an exchange that can do automated buys and sells as it will be difficult to time the market and you would have to be looking at a screen all day. Coinbase pro and Binance are good places to start. You may have that ability through your brokerage account to buy and sell which in my mind gets you to my next requirement.

If you wanting to hold to Cryptos for the long term as you should not think of them as currencies as they are not, they are appreciating assets. So in my mind you want to be able to pull your crypto off exchanges and put them in some kind of offline wallet like Ledger or Trezor. Otherwise you account could be hacked and all your crypto could be stolen. In my opinion you must be able to control you private keys. Any account just offering purchasing of cryto without this feature is just like a brokerage account. RobinHood is a good example of this. You can buy crypto but its linked to their account and their exchange. If you just want to buy and pull your cryto off the exchange, coinbase is a great app and very easy to get the hang of.

My 3 must own are (start price would be ideal if there is another pull back in the market):
BitCoin - buy @ 25k - 30K
Ethereum - buy @ $1500 - $2000
Cardano - Buy @ $1 - $1.30

[themonk]

It’s a Ponzi scheme.

Would you care to elaborate?

[The_War_Wagon]

It could get to the point where if you are considered "a domestic terrorist" for thinking the way you do, guess what?

I'm ALREADY considered a "domestic terrorist," for having the audacity to think that THIS stuff is, "constitutional money!"



So I stick with the "terrorist" money I can hold in my hand...

[Coal Dragger]

Would you care to elaborate?

Crypto currencies are a Ponzi scheme. The first ones in to the confidence game make a profit and eventually suckers are left holding the bag of nothing. They’re based on nothing. There are no governments backing them as a currency. They are not a tangible asset you can physically hold. Owning them doesn’t give you a share in a business with tangible assets.

[okie]

Crypto currencies are a Ponzi scheme. The first ones in to the confidence game make a profit and eventually suckers are left holding the bag of nothing. They’re based on nothing. There are no governments backing them as a currency. They are not a tangible asset you can physically hold. Owning them doesn’t give you a share in a business with tangible assets.

um akchually...

You're basically buying a share of the largest financial network on earth. So yes, it does in fact give you a share in a business with tangible assets. You're also buying the security of the proof of work system, which isn't cheap. There's a strong correlation between the price of BTC and the cost to mine one, which is why the prices tend to follow a four year cycle.

Is it speculative? Yes, but that doesn't make it a ponzi scheme. It simply makes it a startup. Although considering its age, security track record, and network size, it's definitely in the latter stages.

[sandsunsurf]

I totally understand trying to make money in it, but digital currency is the ultimate control end game. Once we are conditioned to accept it, it will be controlled for the sake of "security". Having the government know what you buy, when you buy it, how much you bought, and where you bought it is not good. You won't even be able to buy things from anyone personally without them knowing about it and even taxing it if they want.

It could get to the point where if you are considered "a domestic terrorist" for thinking the way you do, guess what? You can't buy anything. Account locked. What prevents big companies from blacklisting you from their products for your views? Nothing. They can refuse to sell to anyone - now they can control who gets what. Dangerous territory.

You are making the argument FOR crypto, but my guess is that you haven’t learned about the decentralization aspect (and usually core belief) of Bitcoin and others. Especially privacy chains, such as Pirate Chain, z-cash and Monero. The idea is that without a single point of control, a government can’t censor or control your assets.

[sandsunsurf]

XRP is said to be backed by precious metals, but it is hearsay from the folks who follow??

False. 100%. XRP is not truly decentralized, either. It has some big backing and the potential to make some money for people, but it does not embody the spirit of cryptocurrency. Think of XRP and many other cryptocurrencies as penny stocks- they can go up a lot and make you some money, but they are also a risk. And you don’t have to belief in what they’re doing.

Think of BTC as the granddaddy of cryptocurrency. It has a lot of built in trust that it won’t suddenly change direction, but it also is missing out on future technologies that can make a cryptocurrency super powerful.

Ethereum and some other modern blockchain differ a ton of features and ability to actually do computing on the blockchain. Some aren’t really decentralized, which means that censorship or broad change is possible.

[kerplode]

So I pulled the trigger on a small purchase of BTC and ETH yesterday afternoon. After doing some more reading, I'm fully on board with moving both off of Coinbase and onto a private hardware wallet.

Anyway, I've been looking at the Ledger Nano S. It's not prohibitively expensive and seems to have good support for both BTC and ETH (as well as others, but I'm mostly interested in these two for now). It seems to be getting a lot of bad reviews, though...They die, they reset themselves, they won't talk to the computer reliably, the software doesn't work right on Win10, etc. Have any of y'all that use a Ledger Nano run into any of this?

The thing is $60, so if it dies, its not like I'm out all that much...Unless I lose my assets it's holding keys for. Not sure how that works yet...