Cryptocurrency thread

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

11 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Interesting, but whatever that cap is for that level of interest with bitcoin and etherum I don't imagine I have anything close to that especially with that line about bitcoin and sub-55K($55000USD?)  I could probably throw $500 at something.

To earn interest on Voyager requires owning 0.01 BTC, 0.5 ETH, or 100 USDC.  There are other coins which also earn interest, but those are the most stable, in my opinion.

7 hours ago, Link said:

This. Does anyone see this ever, ever being anything but gambling on trends? Will it ever not be highly volatile? Are consumer markets irl going to start accepting crypto en masse? Never mind the 7,000 different kinds of coins already available?

It’s hilarious to me that superfans of this stuff talk trash about fiat currency, when crypto is the extreme extrapolation of the concept of baseless worth. 

Between crypto, collectors’ items, and lumber I feel like everything is super wack right now with no end in sight.

This is the most boring dystopia ever. We get global / interplanetary transportation transformation led by a psychopathic humorless jackass who will host SNL tomorrow, but no arcologies or data gloves? Still farming enormous fields of crapcorn and oppression by wages or law enforcement but 0 pills to feed you for a week or bikes flying between megatowers? Give me a break. 

I'm definitely not a crypto super fan, but I am a realist. It's perfectly fine to stay out of crypto for now, but as more time passes, it will be harder and harder to stay away. Billions of dollars of institutional money is flowing into crypto which means that people with serious economics and financial cred believe it has long term value and utility. Putting money into Tesla, Square, PayPal, and a growing number of banks means you are indirectly investing in crypto, whether you like it or not.

Crypto and blockchain technology have a ton of potential to change banking and all sorts of industries. I'd highly recommend reading more about them before dismissing as a fad. Bitcoin is basically digital gold meant to hold value. Some of the projects being created with Ethereum technology are truly amazing. Cardano is being looked at as a digital currency solution for the governments of many small countries. Polkadot and Chain Link also have some very interesting use cases.

Even if you don't see any value in those projects, many governments are salivating at the idea of introducing digital currencies with blockchain technology. The fact that they can trace a dollar from creation in perpetuity is a dream come true for tax collectors and law enforcement. China will be introducing a digital currency as soon as next year. The US is way behind in this front due to bureaucracy, but expect something in the next five years.

This stuff is legit. You certainly don't need to directly invest in it to be involved, but I really wouldn't sleep on it.

Edited May 8, 2021 by DoctorEncore

[MiamiSlice | 3,096]

8 hours ago, Link said:

This. Does anyone see this ever, ever being anything but gambling on trends? Will it ever not be highly volatile? Are consumer markets irl going to start accepting crypto en masse? Never mind the 7,000 different kinds of coins already available?

It’s hilarious to me that superfans of this stuff talk trash about fiat currency, when crypto is the extreme extrapolation of the concept of baseless worth. 

Between crypto, collectors’ items, and lumber I feel like everything is super wack right now with no end in sight.

Well real estate was considered to be stable for a long time and then the junk mortgage / house flipping / retail investing boom happened which caused prices to skyrocket until the market crashed in '08. Lumber was also pretty stable and reliable for a long time until the COVID supply crush threw things out of wack. And COVID is a once-in-a-century event, it is supposed to feel wack. 

As for volatility, the common theory among Bitcoiners is that we are still in the speculation stage before mass adoption happens and so prices will be volatile until Bitcoin reaches its true value, which could be 6 or 7 digits per coin (think higher than the market cap of gold). All those other crypto currencies are irrelevant to this theory - they may come and go. Some might see adoption but probably most will be fringe. 

And as for volatility implying something is wack, have you seen fiat currencies lately? Please, sir, look at this chart: 

This is EUR/USD. i.e., the forex market for trading Euros vs US Dollars. In 2008, 1 Euro was worth $1.56. 5 years later, in 2017, 1 Euro was worth $1.08. That's a drop of almost 33% in value. If Bitcoin fell 33% in value you would say "see? baseless worth!" But when the Euro does it, no one bats an eyelash. Why? 

Here's another chart: 

Can you guess what this is? It's not Venezuela. It's Argentine Pesos vs USD. Please understand, Argentina is not Venezuela. This isn't a "failed state," it's one of the better nations in Latin America, all things considered. In 2004, 3 Argentine Pesos would buy you a dollar. Today? An Argentine Peso is barely worth more than a penny. This is a drop in value of 97%. This is a currency that has just been bleeding value for almost two decades. Anyone in Argentina that had their cash sitting in their local currency was making a mistake. This isn't even baseless worth. This is no worth. This is being robbed repeatedly. 

OK, here's one more chart: 

What could this be? It's not gold, lumber, or oil. It's... wheat. Something we have pretty much perfected as commodities go. Outside of a catastrophic agricultural event, we have no issues harvesting wheat. USD is the native currency in the epicenter of wheat production. We can make as much as we want. So... what is going on here? This graph is CFDs, so wheat futures, which is a bit more extreme in volatility than spot prices, but the swings are pretty much the same. You can see typical market cycles (the true elasticity of our money value) from '71 to 2000... as much as you might have thought value didn't change, there were times that the prices would shift from $300 to over $500 in 5 to 10 years (but this is a CFD, so the swings for spot were much smaller). Then things got messy. At the peak of the '08 market crash, wheat prices went way out of range. On spot, the price for wheat doubled... which means the US dollar lost half its value. There were two more big swings, while the fed gov was spending wildly to prevent a depression and stabilize the economy again. And look where we are now? Almost back to the ‘08 low in terms of value!

So yes, crypto is gambling like most investments. But that doesn’t mean it has baseless value. The market is finding a value for Bitcoin right now. And even if it dropped 50% from here, I don’t think that would negate anything.

Edited May 8, 2021 by MiamiSlice

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

4 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

Well obviously "safe" is a relative term when referring to crypto. Tanooki already clearly stated his understanding of that fact, but I've updated the previous post so it's clear to new readers. In all markets, there are some strategies which are safer than others and what I suggested is a relatively safe investment strategy for crypto long term. BTC dropping 5k is only around a 10% loss which is an acceptable level of risk to most who are investing into growth stocks or crypto. Could it drop more than that? Of course, but BTC has shown remarkable stabilization over the past several months. Additionally, I recommended the USDC investment as a hedge here.

And if we're looking for the safest of safe options, you don't have to accept any more risk than you would with stocks. Coinbase Pro has a stop loss function. Decide the max amount you're willing to lose, put a stop loss order in, then go live your life. If you lose the amount you declared acceptable, call it a failed experiment and move on with your life.

Smart crypto investing doesn't have to equate to putting your life savings in DOGE at its all-time high.

As for how Voyager makes money, that's easy. They are a publicly traded company and you can look up their financials. They take the bid/ask spread (similar to Robinhood) which is extremely profitable in its own right. They also reinvest your money and profit from their own investments (similar to banks).

I've read a little more about it, and basically, if any of these places get into financial trouble (or the people THEY lend money to get into trouble), the people who were trusting them to hold their funds and pay interest are at the very end of the line for who gets paid.

So the "trade" is that you, as the "lender" are getting compensated for some amount of counterparty risk.  The question then comes down to whether you think that is enough compensation for the risks, or not.

 

While not quite the same thing, this reminds me of pre-GreatFinancialCrisis when people were going apeshit for savings account rates in Iceland.  That didn't end well.

Edited May 8, 2021 by arch_8ngel

[Link | 2,714]

6 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

crypto

 

4 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

anything.

Thanks for the explanations. Still can’t buy anything but other money with it and that’s my block. I don’t use my phone at a cash register. I guess this is like the early days of credit cards. Does anybody still take Diners’ Club?  

What really kills me is 9 or 10 years ago, people were talking about bitcoin on a computer forum I used. Some were experimenting with it. I played it safe and believed those who said it was unreasonably expensive in electricity to mine. If I knew then…

I bought $121 of eth last night and I’m supposed to get free $5 btc after somebody verifies my ID, which I guess will be after the weekend? I was  mainly trying to buy some doge to flip after SNL, but there was a big process with the keys and I gave up. It would have been easier on a desktop.

I bought 125 but there was a fee so I got 121. It’s already up by $10   

[Gloves | 11,790]

1 minute ago, Link said:

 

Thanks for the explanations. Still can’t buy anything but other money with it and that’s my block. I don’t use my phone at a cash register. I guess this is like the early days of credit cards. Does anybody still take Diners’ Club?  

What really kills me is 9 or 10 years ago, people were talking about bitcoin on a computer forum I used. Some were experimenting with it. I played it safe and believed those who said it was unreasonably expensive in electricity to mine. If I knew then…

I bought $121 of eth last night and I’m supposed to get free $5 btc after somebody verifies my ID, which I guess will be after the weekend? I was  mainly trying to buy some doge to flip after SNL, but there was a big process with the keys and I gave up. It would have been easier on a desktop.

I bought 125 but there was a fee so I got 121. It’s already up by $10   

ETH has done me quite well so far, I'm up I think 12-15% from it.

[Link | 2,714]

oh FFS

 

[Gloves | 11,790]

1 minute ago, Link said:

oh FFS

 

I didn't understand half those words.

[Link | 2,714]

1 minute ago, Gloves said:

I didn't understand half those words.

Do you know what NTSC and ATSC are? ATSC 3 is coming 

Think of when IP upgraded to v6. They’re updating eth, I presume to add more capacity. And if you say you’re staking your claim on something, that means you have confidence in its future value. But I don’t. There could be a crash. I accept that crypto will be here but eth specifically? Who knows. And “temporarily” is a little too vague for me. 

I like games, but gambling with real money has never appealed to me.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

59 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I didn't understand half those words.

It sounds like a kickstarter that pays interest.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

1 hour ago, Link said:

oh FFS

 

 

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

I didn't understand half those words.

I'm not a big fan of staking Ethereum. It puts your tokens in a very prolonged state of limbo. Basically they are upgrading the verification system from proof of work to proof of stake. This changes the way transactions are verified and requires people to commit their tokens as part of the project (I don't totally understand the computer science behind this part). The point of the upgrade and staking is to reduce the gas fees (aka transaction fees) by reducing energy requirement since fees have been going up and up and are getting out of control.

Finalization of ETH 2.0 is expected to take another 1-2 years, but it could easily take 5 years if things go off the rails. If crypto comes crashing down, which it definitely could in 5 years, you'll have no way of selling. And even though Coinbase says they will offer a way to trade your staked coins, they don't have to give you the actual value of unstaked Ethereum in those trades (you'd basically be trading on credit). And they could just completely pull the ability to trade staked tokens if they start to lose money due to rapidly declining value of ETH. Not worth it in my opinion.

Edited May 8, 2021 by DoctorEncore

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

16 hours ago, Link said:

This. Does anyone see this ever, ever being anything but gambling on trends? Will it ever not be highly volatile? Are consumer markets irl going to start accepting crypto en masse? Never mind the 7,000 different kinds of coins already available?

It’s hilarious to me that superfans of this stuff talk trash about fiat currency, when crypto is the extreme extrapolation of the concept of baseless worth. 

Between crypto, collectors’ items, and lumber I feel like everything is super wack right now with no end in sight.

The problem disappears when you realize how each coin is different and useful in its own way. I covered this in a previous post but do you know why Siacoin is worth less than Bitcoin? Siacoin is a technology built on Ethereum that provides external data to smart contracts, it's actually quite useful. Bitcoin's only purpose is to provide a decentralized currency, they're not the same thing.

Ether will never be used as a currency to pay for things, that's not its purpose. It provides a blockchain to deploy decentralized applications and anyone that wants to deploy one of these applications needs to pay ETH in order to do so.

I also explained the difference between proof of work and proof of stake a few pages back. The beauty of proof of stake is that there's no more mining so the nature lovers will rejoice. If you stake your ETH and a transaction of 2 coins needs to be verified, it'll take your 3 coins to verify the transaction. If verified honestly, it'll give you back your 3 coins plus some extra gas which is how you make your 6%. If you verify a false transaction, they take your ETH and you lose it, that's how they know transactions will be verified properly.

You also don't need to lock your coins in for any period of time, you can do it for a year or an hour, it's up to you. Stake for as long as you want.

[OptOut | 8,889]

3 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

The problem disappears when you realize how each coin is different and useful in its own way. I covered this in a previous post but do you know why Siacoin is worth less than Bitcoin? Siacoin is a technology built on Ethereum that provides external data to smart contracts, it's actually quite useful. Bitcoin's only purpose is to provide a decentralized currency, they're not the same thing.

Ether will never be used as a currency to pay for things, that's not its purpose. It provides a blockchain to deploy decentralized applications and anyone that wants to deploy one of these applications needs to pay ETH in order to do so.

I also explained the difference between proof of work and proof of stake a few pages back. The beauty of proof of stake is that there's no more mining so the nature lovers will rejoice. If you stake your ETH and a transaction of 2 coins needs to be verified, it'll take your 3 coins to verify the transaction. If verified honestly, it'll give you back your 3 coins plus some extra gas which is how you make your 6%. If you verify a false transaction, they take your ETH and you lose it, that's how they know transactions will be verified properly.

You also don't need to lock your coins in for any period of time, you can do it for a year or an hour, it's up to you. Stake for as long as you want.

I don't really understand any of this stuff. The only time I'm gonna get into crypto is in like 20 years when the government makes cash illegal and everyone is FORCED to exchange their real cash for virtual gov-bux! 

[Tanooki | 4,934]

On 5/8/2021 at 12:20 AM, OptOut said:

So you can see my confusion about what you're trying to get out, right? Is it to the moon growth, or a retirement fund?

The $500 you're acting like the only deposit ever, I never said that.  I was thinking drip feeding more when when there's more to feed it.  Thing of it as a crypto investment fund on the side, another way to just let it ride and accrue some nice interest and growth...not a six week circle jerk into a fortune like I've seen some do where they got in at like .005 or 1US penny/cent and bought like a thousands worth, then when it hit like .50 sold it and got a nice chunk.  That ship sailed, at least on the doge stuff.

[Link | 2,714]

6 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

problem disappears

It does for you. None of these use cases are actually useful for me. Crypto is a series of financial instruments. Fiat currency, though it is no longer fully backed by gold or whatever tempertantrum complaints some may hold against it, is made to be exchanged for goods and services. This ephemeral stuff is/not, except as far as fiat is a good. Financial instruments for their own sake, nothing further. Interesting and useful in a programming context, but with wide-ranging economic effects based on bluster and the [Myth of Meritocracy (as far as what it takes to gain success in this space)]

6 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

If verified honestly,

…

that's how they know transactions will be verified properly.

What’s the honest or proper verification? Sounds to me like something backed by something real (á la the old gold/fiat relationship), but where is that when neither of those components are considered valid in this system? Is it based on the unique key? If you have that you have it. If the key can possibly be dishonest or improper or counterfeited then this concept loses its whole claim to legitimacy. 

I read back through a number of your prior replies. Repeat refrains or don’t as you wish. I don’t begrudge you success in this space, but to me it’s all just a river of bullshit that highly benefits people who have the resources to navigate it, much like the big short or the modern stock market in general, leaving everyone else out in the cold. 

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

51 minutes ago, Link said:

It does for you. None of these use cases are actually useful for me. Crypto is a series of financial instruments. Fiat currency, though it is no longer fully backed by gold or whatever tempertantrum complaints some may hold against it, is made to be exchanged for goods and services. This ephemeral stuff is/not, except as far as fiat is a good. Financial instruments for their own sake, nothing further. Interesting and useful in a programming context, but with wide-ranging economic effects based on bluster and the [Myth of Meritocracy (as far as what it takes to gain success in this space)]

What’s the honest or proper verification? Sounds to me like something backed by something real (á la the old gold/fiat relationship), but where is that when neither of those components are considered valid in this system? Is it based on the unique key? If you have that you have it. If the key can possibly be dishonest or improper or counterfeited then this concept loses its whole claim to legitimacy. 

 

Think about gold. Gold itself isn't worth anything but I buy it as an investment and then sell it to you, also an investor. You then sell it to another investor, this is exactly like cryptocurrency. The reason both have value is because there's an external market outside investors that come in to buy it because they require it for their business needs. Gold is required for industry use and also the jewelry market. Cryptocurrency is required by developers launching applications. Their value works the same. You're right that something only sold between investors will never gain value but it's this external market that gives each one value and causes that value to increase.

It's called a blockchain because it's a chain of validated blocks that persist until the end of time. Every single transaction that ever occurred on a blockchain is still on the blockchain so it's ever increasing in size. If someone sends you 2 coins, I could validate that transaction and then the transaction block gets added to the chain. All other nodes pick up the new transaction and add it to their chains as the next block so that all chains mirror each other. If the block is validated dishonestly (I faked the transaction), then the other nodes will notice this, ignore the block and continue on without my node being validated. If I validate honestly, my transaction is added to the chain and all nodes copy it to their own chains.

The entire purpose of the system is it validates itself, there's no key, no key holder, it all works autonomously. There's nobody that can wave a wand and reverse a transaction, once the chain is in motion, it cannot be stopped and every transaction made will exist forever (with few exceptions). Currently if a rogue PayPal employee wanted to, they could go into your account and drain all your money, then fly to the Bahamas, right? Obviously PayPal would fix it for you but why is that even a possibility? If PayPal was on the blockchain *cough*RIPPLE*cough*, then that would be impossible. There is no company, there are no employees, there is only blockchain which runs itself. That's why it's called decentralized.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

9 hours ago, OptOut said:

I don't really understand any of this stuff. The only time I'm gonna get into crypto is in like 20 years when the government makes cash illegal and everyone is FORCED to exchange their real cash for virtual gov-bux! 

I don't think it will be 20 years. I'd be surprised if it takes 10 years given that China has digital currency already. 

[MiamiSlice | 3,096]

So did everyone sell their Dogecoin yesterday?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

1 hour ago, MiamiSlice said:

So did everyone sell their Dogecoin yesterday?

I would have if I had any. My guess is that it peaked on the news that Elon was hosting SNL and would likely mention it. I didn't expect anything he did to make it go up even more short of actually encouraging people to buy it.

[Link | 2,714]

21 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Think about gold.

I really appreciate your explanation. A lot of it makes more sense to me. That said, I just increased my cornholio portfolio 30 USD in so many minutes by watching some videos.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Link

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

For anyone that likes money, Bitcoin Cash (not the same as Bitcoin) is blowing up and here's why. Last week it was $700, this week it's $1400 and it'll probably keep going. This Saturday they're going to do a hard fork of the code set which will remove some limitations of the technology and make it more useful. Leading up to Saturday and after Saturday, people are going to continue investing in it. I just bought some myself.

I also bought Cartesi for anyone interested in my advice. It just got listed on Coinbase last week, blew up from $0.6 to $1.9 and looks pretty useful. 

And I bought ETH at $3900 a few hours ago, it's already at $4050. I find Mondays the market usually does the most magic so it'll hopefully keep momentum through tomorrow.

I got all this information by following Coinbase on Twitter, simple stuff.

[Tanooki | 4,934]

That's impressive.  I have no idea if that's normal or dumb luck, but it makes me wish I had the tools and stuff to dig a little into it myself just to experiment, see what works and maybe use it to grow a little egg on the side.

[MiamiSlice | 3,096]

Cartesi looks nice

[Link | 2,714]

On 5/9/2021 at 11:20 PM, Code Monkey said:

I find Mondays the market usually does the most magic so it'll hopefully keep momentum through tomorrow.

not this week, lol

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

6 hours ago, Link said:

not this week, lol

It looks like everything is down, even the stock markets.

[OptOut | 8,889]

36 minutes ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

It looks like everything is down, even the stock markets.

About time! Can we have our nintender tapes back yet? Or do the investors still need them to clamber up into their freshly strung nooses?