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Bitcoin up $30k in a month...
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philip gosling
Posted: 27 December 2020 22:46:07(UTC)
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Neminem Laedit;143532 wrote:
Bitcoin was not hacked. An exchange was, many moons ago.

Did you abandon cash, gold or diamonds because of Brinks Mat or Hatton Garden or a thousand other high-profile thefts?

And of course cash, gold and diamonds can be counterfeited, whereas Bitcoin most certainly can't be.



Comment - Is this advertizing?

Really - I thought billions was also stolen out of a Japanese Company "vault" - and China confiscated hundreds of £billions from some billionaire that fell out with the Communist party.

Do you still use an original mobile phone? No! Do you know anyone who does? No! But a hard wallet storing "bitcoin" is just like an old calculator - it has a battery, it has electronics and if they fail you have an empty wallet don't you? Do not drop it or lose it or your password - is there anyone who hasn't lost their password?

At least with gold you can wear it as many do in the world - can you buy bread, potatoes, milk and meat with "bitcoin"? - be really expensive with many companies charging minimum fees - OK for thoses able to go to Harrods I suppose.

Used to be 1 "bitcoin" currency now there are many many cryptocurrencies all made up or invented out of thin air by companies and people no ordinary person has ever heard of and like the Black Tulips they will fade away - buying cryptocurrency is not investing it is like CFDs, trading and just gambling and next week there could be millions of currencies one for everyone with a computer.

I'll stick with my gold watch, coin and bars.
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4 users thanked philip gosling for this post.
ANDREW FOSTER on 27/12/2020(UTC), Tim D on 27/12/2020(UTC), Easyrider on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC)
Neminem Laedit
Posted: 27 December 2020 23:06:38(UTC)
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philip gosling;143535 wrote:

Really - I thought billions was also stolen out of a Japanese Company "vault" - and China confiscated hundreds of £billions from some billionaire that fell out with the Communist party.



And Captain Blood stole the Crown Jewels, and Roosevelt banned Gold.

The difference is to suppress Bitcoin, you would have to dis-invent the Internet... Lol.

There will always be a haven somewhere to instantaneously send and store your Bitcoin.
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lenahan on 28/12/2020(UTC)
ANDREW FOSTER
Posted: 27 December 2020 23:06:42(UTC)
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Neminem Laedit;143532 wrote:
Bitcoin was NOT hacked. An exchange was, many moons ago.

Did you abandon cash, gold or diamonds because of Brinks Mat or Hatton Garden or a thousand other high-profile thefts?

And of course cash, gold and diamonds can be counterfeited, whereas Bitcoin most certainly can't be.


There have been many examples of bitcoin hacking, exchanges, wallets, fraud etc.

It matters not if it was an exchange or the protocol or whatever, people lost a LOT of money with zero protection.

One doesn't even have to be the victim either, a major scam might easily trigger disinvestment by the big players and trigger a run.

That makes it uninvestable for me.

The difference with Hatton Garden? I didn't have assets in there either 😉

But hey it's just my take, you feel confident or lucky, go for it. Just understand the risks rather than deny they exist.
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dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC)
Neminem Laedit
Posted: 27 December 2020 23:13:12(UTC)
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You should burn all your money, because nasty criminals really love it, and always have loved it,

So it must be worthless and dangerous...
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ZoliG on 08/01/2021(UTC)
King Lodos
Posted: 27 December 2020 23:35:48(UTC)
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$1.7bn was stolen from Bitcoin users in 2018 .. $4bn in 2019 .. Not got 2020 yet, but it's probably going to be over $3bn.

With a market cap of $350bn, it's losing about 1% a year to theft.

Equivalent to a $100bn gold heist every year
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5 users thanked King Lodos for this post.
Tim D on 27/12/2020(UTC), Guest on 28/12/2020(UTC), ANDREW FOSTER on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC), Harland Kearney on 01/01/2021(UTC)
MikeT
Posted: 27 December 2020 23:40:53(UTC)
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I used to laugh at Bitcoin as a ridiculous concept with little in the way of practical utility.

I ended up putting in £100 a month for a bit of fun ...I still don't understand it and everything screams 'bubble' to me.

I'm happy to ride the train though until it either comes off the rails or 'goes to the moon'...i'd bet on the former.
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ANDREW FOSTER on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC)
Joe Average
Posted: 28 December 2020 00:08:30(UTC)
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King Lodos;143533 wrote:
You still need to be able to answer why it's a better store of value than gold .. Some negatives could be:

– Volatile;
– Potential to be regulated out of existence;
– Easily reproducible (anyone can create a cryptocurrency);
– No tangible value;
– Bitcoin cold storage is considered 'safe', but a memory card at home is nowhere near as safe as gold in a Swiss bank.

The pattern is: speculators buy Bitcoin, then go online and talk it up to get other people buying it .. That is what's happening .. That's a ponzi scheme .. That doesn't mean it won't find a use .. But you need convincing arguments – not buzzwords and low-effort promo


I'm no tech guru and I will try and give a fuller answer here when I have time to go back over my notes.

But as a starter :-

> volatility will flatten out in time, once the market cap is big enough to absorb large buy/sells (it's very early days)
>Once the institutions are in - you can forger it being regulated out of existence - and they're here and growing.
>The network effect has made Bitcoin the winner, many other reproduced coins will blow about like a crisp bag in the wind but they do not have the adoption of Bitcoin.
>Digital currencies are coming, telegraphed by IMF amongst many others. The future has started already, it will become the norm. Most people pay by card on almost every transaction right down to a pint of milk & loaf of bread, without any difficulty.
>Gold will still play a vital role, but the younger generation have no qualms when it comes to investing in digital assets.

Call it a gamble, call it a bubble, call it a hedge, call it insurance, call it a ponzi, call it Pascal's wager, its your call, but to dismiss it, is folly imo especially when a lot smarter folk than me are hodling !

That's what makes a market.

Joe
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Guest on 28/12/2020(UTC), lenahan on 28/12/2020(UTC), stephen_s on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC), ZoliG on 08/01/2021(UTC), Guest on 08/01/2021(UTC)
Tim D
Posted: 28 December 2020 00:43:10(UTC)
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Joe Average;143546 wrote:
>Digital currencies are coming, telegraphed by IMF amongst many others. The future has started already, it will become the norm. Most people pay by card on almost every transaction right down to a pint of milk & loaf of bread, without any difficulty.


Surely that one's an excellent reason to avoid the current crop of cryptos, including BTC. As soon as there's a viable, efficient CBDC that actually does all the things BTC purported to do (but doesn't) that ordinary folks might want to do with it, BTC (and all the rest) will have even less reason to exist (other than as a volatile, manipulatable platform for scammers and gamblers) and all the cashflow will be to the CBDCs instead.
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King Lodos on 28/12/2020(UTC), Joe Average on 28/12/2020(UTC), Foxtrot on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC)
Jonathan Godden
Posted: 28 December 2020 01:25:19(UTC)
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To me the appeal of gold is that it is a physical asset like a cask of whiskey or a Maserati. Its value is the fact that it exists in an empirical sense as much as it commands a desire to own it. I struggle to extrapolate that to the ownership of an unregulated digital currency.
A duck can fly, walk and swim but it has not made it the dominant species.
Just because something has an unique set of properties does not make its utility indispensable.
I am obviously missing something but it is not through want of trying
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3 users thanked Jonathan Godden for this post.
King Lodos on 28/12/2020(UTC), ANDREW FOSTER on 28/12/2020(UTC), dlp6666 on 28/12/2020(UTC)
King Lodos
Posted: 28 December 2020 01:37:09(UTC)
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It's Bitcoin as a usable alternative currency I have the biggest problem with.

The enormous energy usage goes completely against our climate aims, and with a limit of 4.6 transactions a second, it would struggle to handle transactions in a reasonable-sized shopping centre.

You're paying an astronomical compute overhead to avoid using a database – and no one's been able to explain to me why this would improve buying coffee and paying for taxis .. We're building 5G infrastructure into everything – there just isn't a problem that avoiding databases seems to solve (unless you're ISIS).

The other problem for me is, if we had an alternative economy, just between us and global corporations, it would be unregulatable.

China won't let that happen .. And if the west do, it'll be the end of democracy and capitalism as we know it
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2 users thanked King Lodos for this post.
Tim D on 28/12/2020(UTC), ANDREW FOSTER on 28/12/2020(UTC)
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