# Bitcoin #

Challenge accepted:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/01/cryptocurrency-scam-site-disappears-l...

It’s amazing the power that the image of a penis has on the human condition.

I’ve spent some time in a situation that was 99 percent men in an isolated environment and everywhere you looked was a penis scrawled on any surface that could be reached.

Statistically and anecdotally, the vast majority of those men would have been heterosexual. So why was there not pictures of breasts or vaginas everywhere , as opposed to bulging, veinous cocks ?

Sure I’d make an allowance that the limited artistic abilities of some wouldn’t provide scope for the rendering of a decent vagina , but that certainly doesn’t explain just how many dicks there were.

Why , why , why ?

Why? Indeed!

One for the psychologists perhaps.(and I'm not one)

If I may theorize,
perhaps,
maybe,
blokes just like competition. Even drawing competitons.

Once the first one was drawn, it was on.
The subject matter mattered not.

My guess is that in your situation these males were aged between 18 and 28, and around those ages (including all teenagers), in certain environments for some reason, drawing the biggest baddest cock and balls is what you do for a laugh.

I do wonder though what the connection to Bitcoin is ?

bump to thread
BTC getting absolutely smashed at present (indeed market futures are strongly red too)

I guess if you keep forking the damn thing you lose public confidence in it being limited in supply and thus valuable?

Yeah bit different to last year, i knew November, December would either go one or two ways.

IMHO all downhill from here this is where 90-95% of cryptos will die in the arse and become completely worthless, and even those that survive with real life business use XRP etc are going to take years to hit previous highs.

Oh well its been fun, easy come easy go, would have been nice if i wasn't so greedy and cashed out in January, but can't complain 90% of what i put in was money i never worked for and I've had a pretty good yeah financially otherwise and in what I've achieved personally.

To be honest i miss the buzz more than anything I've watching things go up.

Who could have seen this coming..

Aahhh yes. Some magnificent advice in this thread... sprinkled among the 'intermediate but expert' 'specialists' glut of all time, magnificent stupidity!!! Raising the unmatched, all time ludicrous stupidity is banned however... imagine reading the ludicrously, hilarious, sniveling emails...

More unbridled stupidity:

'https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-eyes-double-bottom-reversal-after...'

Who the fuck listens to brokers if you want to make a living trading... well... in a nutshell... that's another bit of information banned...

https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin

Anyway, speaking of all time ludicrous stupidity, perhaps the feral goats, that good 'ol uncle whitey brought out, when the first fleet landed and started clearing everything in sight, are to blame for the collapse... 'vem farkin' stinkun' goawts dun it aye mmmaaaayyyte!!!' In a nutshell.

Hey where is the other Bitcoin boys, come on time to come put of hiding :D

Donweather, Topsy!

Here's a WOW story.

"QuadrigaCX, a cryptocurrency exchange in Canada says it’s unable to pay most of $262 million in holdings back to clients as its founder, Gerald Cotten, died in India unexpectedly in December 2018.

Cotton was the only person who had the password to the cold storage where the crypto funds are stored."

https://blokt.com/news/crypto-exchange-founder-dies-with-only-password-l...

Yeah what a cock up.. People on Reddit wondering if it's a setup as well and if he's really died. Surely has!

Hey indo, glad to hear you are still here. I stopped checking here because people seemed to lose interest. I am still in and making money, just not as quickly. I am trading more actively lately. I feel like I have good control over fear and greed which is the key. I wont trade until I find a setup that is exactly the way I want it.

Cool, yeah i see people are still making money and often good money trading.

I probably should join a signal group or something and get into it just to break even, but it is tiring and draining sometimes following the ups and downs 24/7

I keep it pretty simple and stress free. Lately I have only traded every 2 weeks or so on average, that is enough. IMO most people over trade. I just let the trades come to me when the time is right. If I miss some too bad. I also always set a stop loss. It is a heavily manipulated market but the whales are kind of predictable.

Below Cut and pasted from elsewhere, if true i cant see how Bitcoin can survive, maybe it is what is needed for that 5% of cryptos to survive and thrive, ones that are sustainable energy wise, much faster than bitcoin, scaleable and have proper business use cases, rather than an airy fairy going to replace fiat thing.

The price of Bitcoin is nudging $4,000 once again. It needs to break thru 4k and hold above that level if it's got any chance of staying in existence. It's hard to fathom that the price would fall back further to say $3,000, or even $2,000.

Because if the price reached that low then it would no longer be viable to mine new Bitcoins. If that happened then the whole thing would just collapse.

Mining is the term used to create new coins. Each time a transaction is done on the Bitcoin network these transactions need to be verified. The computers that do this job earn their owners new Bitcoins, or portions of coin. It costs thousands of dollars to mine a single new Bitcoin. In some cases depending on the country it can cost over US$10,000.

The cost is due to the electricity consumed to run the servers doing the verifying plus the air conditioning required to cool down those servers. So the cost of power is very relevant to how much it costs to set up a profitable Bitcoin mining operation. On average mining a new coin costs about US$3,000.

The big players obviously spent a lot of money to set up warehouses that stored hundreds, and even thousands of these servers. I'm sure that quite a few of these players borrowed the money to set up their warehouses so I dare say there's a lot of unhappy lenders out there. It's only in the poorest countries where the cost of electricity (compared to wages) makes mining Bitcoins still quite profitable at the current price.

I wonder how long this can go on? With a large number of mining operations not set up in the poorest countries, how long will it be before the creditors say... ENOUGH!?
As time goes on the cost of mining Bitcoins becomes more expensive. Bitcoins are mined in blocks. Each block contains 12.5 coins. When BTC mining started in 2009 the mining reward was way more because a block contained a whopping 50 Bitcoins. Then it halved to 25 and has now halved again to 12.5. Soon the reward will fall to only 6.25 BTC per block.

Once a mining operation becomes unprofitable, I dare say that operation would be put on "hold" until the price rises again. With less miners this will make transaction times slower. This could have a catch 22 effect by turning people off using Bitcoin. So the price falls further, hence more miners are put on hold, hence even slower transaction times etc.

So for Bitcoin to survive in it's original concept, and even thrive, the price needs to go much higher again and continue to go higher over the years. Otherwise the whole Bitcoin experiment will simply fade away into nothingness and vanish.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when the block reward halves again which theoretically means the cost of mining will double to $6,000 per coin. At current estimates this will be in 2021.

@indo Both of the Bitcoin halvings have driven the price up in the following year. The first one by 10x and the second 4x. The general opinion seems to be that the next one will be similar. There will always be someone to pick up the slack if the big time miners drop out.

Yeah i guess its just wait and see, I'm not so confident.

BTW. if this is true then its already non viable to mine in most countries https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-mine-a-sing...

There seem to be a few pretty big players dropping out of mining. I have not been following it that closely, I dont see it as much of a threat, but competition drives the mining difficulty and therefore the cost up. Less miners mean lower competition. It should all balance out in the end. It is fodder for the litany of sensationalist clickbait writers. I hope that proof of stake can be sorted asap, electricity consumption is a big issue but for environmental issues, not for the survival of the industry at this point.

Is anyone still hodling this gear ?

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/bitcoin-s-sudden-surge-propels-i...

Yeah i saw that jumped 1k today.

Will probably drop 1K tomorrow though.

Good for traders though.

I refuse to sell. Not for the dollars lost but because it’d make me the shoe shine boy. Waiting patiently...

@shoredump good choice. Its a cycle. I hope people are starting to see that. If it dumps again it will still be part of the cycle, although I am sure that a few armchair experts will be calling me out if it does.
At the moment people are starting to think “hey Bitcoin has not gone to zero. Its not dead. Maybe I was wrong to write it off. Maybe the mainstream media is manipulated, full of shit or both” Then some will start buying in again, then more will follow them. Next thing you know there is another bubble etc etc

If you hold now - GTFO.

This is the dying throes of those inherently invested in Bitcoin. The ultimate dead cat bounce.

Bitcoin is dead in the water. It’s name will be as relevant to future cryptocurrencies as space invaders is to Assasins Creed. Get over it. Get out.

Not financial advice. DYOR.

@Blowin thats what I like to see. Nothing like a bit of balance. I think you are wrong but one sided discusions are pretty boring. Hope you have been well and catching a few :)

BTW I am definitely not talking about Bitcoin only

Shall I pass your advice onto my mates Blowin, who are currently (edit)$6,000 in front, and have never been behind??

Up to their stomach for risk

Not at all. Play money that could bring early retirement. Spends way more on alcohol, which is a guaranteed loss

The best thing you can do to put a spanner in that one, Topsy, is pay everything in cash.

OK time for some fun:

First up Exter's pyramid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Exter

Guess what central banks are buying up as fast as they can? They became net buyers in 2009.

Second up, a really good story, with Cowboys on planes full of silver:

https://www.gold-eagle.com/article/money-then-and-now

Now where does BTC fit into all of this?

Please continue.

Yes, please do

Would love to, but concerned the reply might go over the line to 'financial advice'... Is there a differentiation between that and opinion on these forums?

Just put in the usual disclaimer with such comments.

I’ve been reading about Russia and China buying all the gold. Would like to hear your opinion.

OK, shooting from the hip my 2c (and NOT financial advice, just some bloke's opinion, take it as such) is that BTC is an excellent way to work around capital controls, etc. A hard drive on a plane is more convenient than a 1kg Gold bar for example. Incredible wealth was gained by the early adopters (and a pizza restaurant owner lol). In the crypto world it occupies the role of 'gold' - it's limit of 21million coins and slowing rate of mining into the 21Mn coins give it a bit of an exclusivity.

However, like all mediums of exchange/stores of wealth there are some limits: what if power goes off? What if solar flare or EMP - is your storage protected in a Faraday cage, in time of chaos will your pathway to convert into other assets be open? I've heard some news that other files can be attached into it in the blockchain, would you want those on your hard drive? Exchanges have gone bust so it's not infallible if you store with others. Humans being human, people will bitch at each other and Forks will appear in the chain, sigh. BTC is now futures traded too, look how silver was smashed by regulations and controlled by naked shorting on these exchanges - is bitcoin now just as easy to manipulate?

The fact that the blockchain will record every transaction will be incredibly convenient for those who wish to make a version that encompasses all trade, the eye of Sauron kind of thing, bye bye black economy.

Unless an AUD$50 note has an RFID in it (does it?) when you spend that, you have your privacy. Yes it is decreed by fiat and represents only a debt to be repaid with interest to the issuer, but people seem to accept it as a commodity that can buy things... Try paying for Maccas with a couple of pre WW2 Australian shillings (92.5% Ag) for example.*

Lastly, look to the CBs, they are in a scramble to buy Au. As were the kings before them. My take is if we get this reset that has been threatened for a very long time, everything will have a sucky conversion rate into the 'new fiat' currency which will be blockchain, maybe it will have a gold weighting backing it, maybe it will be global. As soon as this occurs, they will try to use one interest rate to control the world's economy and as we saw in WA mining boom (resource states boom and you should raise rates while the SE flounders and you should lower, but you can't differentiate as it's one rate) or the Euro (many different countries with different speeds of economy now have one currency peg and one interest rate, you are surprised when southern Europe goes bust while BMWs are on sale 30% off worldwide!) - this will create carnage and be unmanageable, but they will think that they can manage it because sociopath. Interesting times ahead.

*Interesting also is how the currency people held was devalued historically. We know of the Romans clipping the coins as the Empire waned. In the UK, they were bust after WW1, so the % of silver in their coins Crowns to threepence went from 92.% to 50%. In Australia we weren't, so the Commonwealth's coins were 92.5% up till just after WW2, when they became 50% iirc. The conversion to decimal saw the ending of real silver in our coins - except one coin, the initial round 50c coin which was 50% I think? Events of the late 60's (De Gaulle calling in France's owed USD in Gold) saw the market price of Gold rise above it's $35 USD peg on the London Gold Market, silver rose as well I suppose, and the humble round 50c AUD coin was now worth more than it's face value. Apparently the Japanese bought up a whole heap of them and smelted them for a profit. If you have any, they are quite a good coin to keep :) Of course, the Americans couldn't keep up this gold peg and Nixon defaulted in 1971, unleashing more than my lifetime worth of fiat chaos. (That's where you place the 1973 fuel crisis - Sheiks wanted to be paid in same weight of gold - and the Hunt Brothers attempting their corner by the late 1970s.)

*Also note FDR's calling in of Gold in the US in 1933, it was $20.67oz, then revalued to $35 an ounce - an effective devaluation of the USD to juice their economy in an attempt to follow Keynes' playbook. There's another fantastic story of the 1933 Saint-Gaudens American Gold Eagles, how these were ordered to be destroyed, but 10 or 20 escaped the mint and have been hunted by the USGov ever since... Apart from being a truly beautiful coin, these are now the 'holy grail' of coin collecting:

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/1933-saint-gaudens-gold-double-eagle-768788

Again, enjoy your easter with a bit of monetary reading, history is more fascinating than fiction, all this is meant as my opinion only, not financial advice.

Excellent.

Got any reading to recommend ?

Yep I'll check the library later and suggest a few.

For starters this is excellent and gives a good monetary history while describing the cyclical madness of the current world:

https://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/the-next-bubble/

Interesting read, guess we will wait and see.

"Wall Street Analyst Screams ‘Buy Bitcoin’ Before It Hits $20,000 Next Year
https://www.ccn.com/wall-street-analyst-screams-buy-bitcoin-before-it-hi..."

BTC currently sitting at about $5,794.00 USD (hit a low of $3,350.00 USD early December)

Yeah the guts and the glory of it all!
Wouldn't be surprised of it going much higher as now rising above a rising 50dma and 200dma. And yes it's hackable.

Some book titles I promised above:
Murray N Rothbard "What has government done to our money" - relentless logic
Murray N Rothbard "America's Great Depression" - first link of Fed monetary easing to 1920's boom, then pulling back seeding the bust - a link many people accept nowadays.
Nathan Lewis "Gold the once and future money" - forget the title, it includes a very good monetary history of the West. Published a while ago before last Gold run.
Von Mises "Human Action" if you can get through it
JK Galbraith "The Great Crash 1929" - wonderful read, "the market reacted like a zoo where all the animals had gone mad" is one of my favourite lines :)

I could include Graham, and Fisher's tomes on fundamental analysis, but not sure this works anymore. You need to suss where the govco incentives are coming from eg Tesla, as much as traditional fundamentals.

If you want to blow up a hedge fund,
Cordier & Gross "The complete guide to Option selling" - this fella just nuked his whole fund (&more) on natural gas futures late last year, doing exactly as prescribed in the book. Essentially naked short options and their management, scares me silly - and in his case looked like naked strangles that got destroyed one way, then destroyed the other. Beware the fat tails at the end of any bell curve. lol

oooh yes, this one I would love to read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed

The ensemble cast included Myron Scholes, one of the Nobel Prize winning mathematicians responsible for the Black-Scholes option pricing model. I like the idea that where a normal intellect can create a normal sized catastrophe, extreme intellect can nearly take down the financial system.

Bitcoin now holds the record for the bounciest dead cat ;-) (I think its pretty fair to say that it is not going to die anytime soon) Up 90-100% from recent lows. The market seems to be brushing off negative news quickly. (Binance etc) Interesting times ahead. *Not financial advice*

Hey indo, hope you held. I think you did :-)

BTC price now at $11, 500.00 AUD

Yeah Topsy still have my stash only alts though but most top ten.

Not getting too excited with recent increases though, im still, pretty pessimistic.

@velocityjohnno
Have a listen to this if you have the time, I think you will enjoy it
https://stacks.co/podcast/episodes/3
Episode 2 is a good way to lay the groundwork (at least for me it was) for episode 3 (which left my head spinning).

Sell.

Haha

Thanks Topsy I will have a look at it
Other important things going on:
RBA effectively dropped interest rate below rate of inflation - that's a huge happening
and it has consequences

Over $15,000 AUD now

@velocityjohnno have you read any of George Gilders books?