Topic: The official NWR Bitcoin Thread: It's highly profitable if you don't get scammed

[ThePerm]

Yeah, i signed up for Kraken, but the damn verification process seems to be disabled. I wonder if it is only active certain hours of the day. I wanted to do ripple too long ago now.

As far as what drives up the value. It's scarcity. That's why it goes down in value every time a whale sells. Initially Bitcoin wasn't scarce, but now you need an impressive setup to mine it. People have bought condos with it. It's like buying a condo with rare magic cards. Gold has value because of scarcity. Aluminum for instance is quite common.  If you google it comes up as $0.00 a pound. Gold is worth about $21,136 a pound. The most gold mined in history is only about 370,000,000 pounds or $7.8 trillion dollars. The US national debt is $19.8 trillion  or 2.5 times the amount of gold ever mined in history.

[Order.RSS]

The US national debt is $19.8 trillion  or 2.5 times the amount of gold ever mined in history.

"But we need to return to the gold standard! Things were better back then!"

[lolmonade]

Yeah, i signed up for Kraken, but the damn verification process seems to be disabled. I wonder if it is only active certain hours of the day. I wanted to do ripple too long ago now.

As far as what drives up the value. It's scarcity. That's why it goes down in value every time a whale sells. Initially Bitcoin wasn't scarce, but now you need an impressive setup to mine it. People have bought condos with it. It's like buying a condo with rare magic cards. Gold has value because of scarcity. Aluminum for instance is quite common.  If you google it comes up as $0.00 a pound. Gold is worth about $21,136 a pound. The most gold mined in history is only about 370,000,000 pounds or $7.8 trillion dollars. The US national debt is $19.8 trillion  or 2.5 times the amount of gold ever mined in history.

If scarcity is the only driving value of bitcoin, then I definitely think this is a bubble that'll burst.  Then you're basically talking about timing the market of when to sell.


Gold has value because it is scarce, but there are also practical applications for it.  A government's currency has value basically because it's backed by that gov, which is also part of why with a stable gov, the value of the currency doesn't fluctuate all that much. 


Cryptocurrency's a store of value that seems more akin to stocks in that there can be wide variances in value, except stocks in theory have an explicit purpose of letting people buy-into a company so that company can raise funds to either invest in their company or help pay off debts.  Crypto's (and namely, bitcoin) demand seems to stem solely from a notion that they want a method to make transactions without a government store of value or a current financial institution. 


Maybe that's enough for some, and enough that cryptocurrency will retain an amount of value over time.  I'm still considering this more as a pet project/curiosity rather than a legitimate way to grow personal wealth, but what harm does it do to have your computer mine some coin if it's basically on all day, anyway?

[ThePerm]

The bitcoin bubble already burst in 2013. That was 4 years ago.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-bitcoin-crash-20131207-story.html


It was shortly after that guy bought that condo, and was probably because that guy bought that condo.
https://gizmodo.com/man-forgets-about-buying-27-of-bitcoin-is-now-worth-a-1454150399

[lolmonade]

Look, i'm not trying to convince anyone one way or another.  I just think anyone that invests actual dollars into bitcoin or any other crypto currently is playing the market like someone might do with buying individual stocks.


For me, letting my computer run to mine Ether when i'm not using it is extremely low-risk, because i'm already paying the electricity cost to run my computer through the day.  Worst-case scenario, a year from now when I have 1 ether coin, it's not gonna make too much a difference if I'm able to cash-out at $500 or $5,000, because it'll still be a net gain.

[Stratos]

That seems to be the only way you should look at crypto-currency, as a low cost experiment or hobby that could net you some cash.


For anyone actually looking to reliably save for retirement, mutual funds are where it is at. The market made over 20% last year (my 401k made 22%). Its been tried and true, so I'll stick with that, but I have thought about dabbling around in mining for fun for the same reasons Lolmonade does. Though I usually get intimidated by the "scammy" feelings I get from most of the learning material I look at online.

[ThePerm]

Don't spend more than you're willing to lose. That's why the amounts I'm talking about are like $30 to $100 dollars. Low amounts as a hobby. Not a good idea to mortgage your house and try to make it back on bitcoin. Currency trading has existed since before botcoin. It isn't new. Currency fluctuates all the time and if you pay attention to trends you can make or lose money. Currency used to be stock in a country. You used to be able to trade in your dollars at the treasury and get gold and silver back. Now with systems like bitcoin a lot of what would be handled by governments and banks are now handled peer to peer. No banks. Though, currency exchanges are effectively banks.