# Bitcoin #

Corrections in the market are normal and healthy.

Personally i look at them as a buying or trading opportunity I sold out 1K worth near the top yesterday after the first drop and re bought on the bottom and have already made money on that and Bitcoin and most other alts are sitting at about the price they were 2 weeks ago and my account is only down a little. (but still about 5K up on my investment)

Ive also got more money sitting in my account as apparently we might see a bigger drop and i don't want to miss out on getting some bargains.

Blowin. I've generally only purchased cryptos that actually have or appear to have the potential for real world uses. Power ledger is one of those. I actually don't have a lot of BTC. I have more invested in 7 other cryptos.

So yes I'm in it for the short term gain but when the collapse comes and it weeds out the majority of the altcoins I'm hoping I've selected cryptos that can serve a purpose in the long term.

The best thing about crypto-currency is that it's sucking all the idiot money away from the stock market.

GTFO I reckon.

There is so little security in exchanging legal tender for something so ethereal

Eggzackerly ... The one thing that isn't so ethereal is the money paid to the crypto-dealer to buy (or sell ) the coins. They've got you coming and going.

The best thing about crypto-currency is that it's sucking all the idiot money away from the stock market. ---- Eggzackerly

There you go I quoted you twice

Im happy to be an Idiot, maybe you guys are very very clever and can pick stocks with a few thousand percentage returns?

But i can't i would have no idea how to find them, to me it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

But i can pick Cryptocurrencies with hundreds to thousands of percent yearly returns.

For example i bought some IOTA at about $1.25 at it's high it hit $7.70 (516% increase) currently at $5.70

or Cardano at 5c at it's high it hit 70c (1500% increase) currently at 62c

Unfortunately hindsight is a beautiful thing and I only had small amounts on each at these prices, but none of the cryptos i have purchased are at lower prices now than when i purchased them and most have increased greatly in price.

I think you guys are just hoping this market fails because if it doesn't and it continues to grow, you will kicking yourself.

The reality is nobody knows the future, but currently there is very good money to be made.

All power to you ID. 

If you do well out of this flurry of activity then that's awesome - personally, I'm not a share market kinda guy, and don't have any interest in cryptocurrencies. I'm just fearful of all of the experts that have seemingly appeared from nowhere over the last month or two, clogging up general news and social media with claims about how easy it is to get rich.

This is the sort of speculation (also currently seen in property, shares etc) that happens when money has no or very little value i.e. offical interest rates are at or near zero %. Historically we know interest rates are abnormally low and when the rise as they must at some stage we will be completely in unchartered waters. There has been so much money printed to ease the GFC and that has flowed into stocks and property forcing prices well above tried and tested earnings ratios or valuations and now the gamble is in coins. How many consecutive years has Australia had positive growth? 26? 27? ... so the majority of us smart investors have never seen a recession, mmmmm.

So true Indo, they are the ones speculating. The facts are that if they put a lazy thousand on bitcoin at the start of the year they would be buying 4 mentawai boat trips for Christmas. Ouch. Nothing is forever of course, but in 2017 the facts are that the smart money was on crypto. Merry Christmas ID, thanks for the inspo

Even under conditions we have seen over the last few days with Bitcoin dropping thousands of dollars there are coins that have bounced back with huge gains.

For example Sia coin

A month ago it was at just over half a cent for most of December it sat around 1c.

It rose a little before bitcoins big falls to 2 to 3c, then has bounced between 2 to 4 cents during the last few days, this morning it nearly hit 5c

Plenty of opportunity during this time to make decent money just on this coin alone buying low, selling high on each cycle.

If its a coin you don't care or beleive in long term and you sell then it doesn't dip again and it runs away from you, its still no loss you still walk away with profit you have gained..

Yes it takes time to monitor these coins, but thats why it's best to use a proper exchange to trade and put in buy and sell orders at different prices.

Good luck Indo. I just think these kinds of investments that shoot up exponentially are certain to crash at some point. You can clearly afford your potential losses but I would think that there are people in the market for whom that is not true. The other aspect of this is that it is a non-productive investment and that means it is ultimately a zero sum game. To call it a currency at this stage is misleading since most transactions are buying and selling Bitcoin itself. If it is to become a functioning currency it will have to become much more stable.

How long until a hacking outfit fights their way into a crypto-currency minting process and lets loose a couple of million counterfeit coins on the market?
What happens then?

I think thats true for Bitcoin, its a crap coin slow transaction speeds, high fees etc

IMHO it has a used by date in my mind it's the Myspace of Cryptocurrency.

But countless other cryptocurrecys have a real life value (many will change the way we do business etc through the use of block chain tech and things like smart contracts)

I'm looking into now using cryptocurrencies in a practical way

I transfer money to Indonesia a fair bit, using banks is costly about $20+ per transaction, no matter the amount and it often takes days, plus i lose on crappy exchange rates etc

At say a time of year like now when banks are closed, transfer times are even worst

I can use a decent crypto like say Lite Coin and the money will be in Indonesia in less than 20 minutes and the transaction cost are cheap (like 20c), and it's irrelevant that it's Christmas and banks are closed.

There will still be some cost at the other end withdrawing etc but from my research it will still provide a much quicker and cheaper way to transfer money.

Lets remember for international bank transfers we still use the SWIFT system that dates back too

Much of what cryptocurrency is about is about taking the middle man out of the picture and decentralising things, as we know the banks hold much power over us and governments.

@Peter

Sorry you obviously don't understand the tech.

You can't hack or mint new coins it's not possible to do so means changing the code, which is possible because coins like Bitcoin are open source, but if you change the code it becomes something different it's no longer a bitcoin, hence forks and new coins like Bitcoin Gold, Bit coin cash etc

The middleman is the fellow who controls the minting procedure ... he pushes a button when it suits him, out comes the crypto gold and everyone dives in.
Simple enough?

Don - do you know if your broker is passing your trades through to the market or do they take the other side? Do they have their own financial services licence or just a white label? Slippage around news events shouldnt be much but if there were huge delays I'd have alarm bells going off.

Indo, I understand money.
For instance, if I ring a bank manager on Tuesday and ask if he will ok a mortgage on a house I want to buy worth 1 mill using my crypto stash of half a mill for collateral he'll be negative, so I have to sell the stuff to get the real thing.
Is that how the new currency system works for you?

For what it’s worth ID, I’ve got some close friends, a lawyer and a currency exchange business owner, who are in deep, early, and aren’t going anywhere soon either.

ID, just putting what you said last into individual points:

"You can't hack or mint new coins"

"it's not possible - to do so means changing the code"

"which is possible because coins like Bitcoin are open source"

"but if you change the code it becomes something different it's no longer a bitcoin"

That to me sounds like a problem. You've said it can't be hacked, but then said that actually it can be done, but if it happened then the cryptocurrency would turn into something new.

Isn't that a concern?

I admit I've done zero research on cryptocurrency, and I don't understand how it works at all. But that little passage above on its own has the alarm bells ringing at my end.

when they say "hacking" do they mean breaking and stealing the private crypto keys or do they actually mean hacking the blockchain itself. two very different things in my basic understanding. i assumed that latter was not possible unless you owned 51% of the total mining resources.

You have to remember Peterb we are in a very very early stage of cryptocurrency and many of the banks are currently freaking out, it's like the taxi industry and uber.

But yes there will come a time when you can purchase a home with cryptocurrency through a lender.

Property even now is being bought and sold in Cryptocurrency. http://bitcoin-realestate.com

@ Malben its complicated.

You can be hacked in the sense you can have cryptocurrency stolen that aren't stored safely.

But if we are talking about haking to say make more Bitcoin you can't just change the code of a cryptocurrency and create more, you can only create something that is similar, a new cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin.

Im not 100% how it works but if enough minners get together they can do this and create a new Cryptocurrency, its called a Fork, where they agree to change something in the code to change something like make the transaction speeds faster etc i think they do this by changing the size of the blockchain or something, or can alter things to make easier to mine or something.

On the counterfeit thing, here is a basic video that explains it

I checked the Bitcoin Real Estate site, thanks, and there are some properties are listed in both USD and Bitcoin ... which means anyone holding another type of crypto and who wants a Bitcoin priced house badly will have to either cash-up or swap currencies, meanwhile the daily crypto price falls and rises are out of range of any of the forecasters.
So now the Bitcoin holding homebuyer has to deal with yet another middleman in his quest to buy the property. As if lawyers, real estate agents and bankers aren't enough.

ID, who are the miners who have control over things, who can ‘get together’ and ‘create a new cryptocurrency’?

Udo, and here's another thing: where does a company put its crypto accounts in the balance sheet? This is another type of asset, a new category.

@ Ben Not all cryptocurrency are based on Bitcoin only about half a dozen are and it's only really Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin gold that have become popular, some exchanges don't even list some of the other Bitcoin spin offs (called hard forks) as most people are not a fan of them unless they have been created for a real purpose like faster transactions etc otherwise most look at them as just trying to cash in on being associated with Bitcoin.

Those who mine Bitcoin can create forks but I'm not sure exactly how they decide or agree.

@Peter

Actually in the future cryptocurrencies/ blockchain technology and smart contracts are more likely to cut out the middle man.

Indo wrote:

"But i can pick Cryptocurrencies with hundreds to thousands of percent yearly returns."

Nothing you have written here so clearly says that you haven't quite worked out what is happening Indo. That statement is balls out delusional.

You are the shoe shine boy!

Sorry. Really, but you know, a friend is someone who lets you know when you have gone off the deep end. The shoe shine boy is an historical reference already alluded to by another poster. I don't wish to see you lose your money.

Would you like to buy a tulip? Tulip futures perhaps? A bit of a read of the history of markets might be a better investment.

On an only slightly related matter, national currencies are largely just zeroes and 1's on a thousand servers, and in that sense already crypto-currencies. Actual cash is almost an anomaly these days. I'm with Blowin in that I prefer to trade in cash where I can, but only out of a personal desire to move against the trend, buck the system, not play along as far as possible. Have considered taking most of my savings out of the bank to just have cash lying around, hidden in nooks and crannies all over the place. (Something to give me a laugh if I croak it unexpectedly, I'll leave some clues around to send the kids on a hunt.)

Going back to the great crash analogy, the really huge money was made by the people who had cash in their hands when everything had crashed. They bought up big and monstrous fortunes were made. Because they had cash, on hand.

Reading a really interesting book at the moment, 'Radical Technologies' by Adam Greenfield. He devotes quite a chunk in the book to crypto currencies, well worth a read.

Biggest problem with bit coin is that it is designed to chew up electricity, and as such is adding significantly to carbon emissions, for the purpose of creating something that we didn't really need.

Capitalism at its finest, creating shit that nobody needs and destroying the planet along the way. Couldn't happen to a nicer species.

bitcoin mining. estimates have it as 0.2% of total global energy consumption. as the blockchain grows & gets harder to solve there are predictions it could hit 2%, especially if the price and thus "reward" keeps going up and up.

in a world where countries are struggling to make dents in their emissions its relevant IMO. particularly if its all for shit.

Those who get involved in an early stage of adoption are generally the ones to benefit the most, yes 1000% even 100% returns are not sustainable, as prices rise the % returns will slow.

For instance i personally don't think Bitcoin will see anywhere near the rates of growth we have seen, going off a price of $20K id personally be surprised if it hits $40K next year, i think it will bounce around the 20 to 30K mark.

But many other cryptos will see huge returns and when you get in at less than a $1 especially in the point cents range and have thousands of coins even when prices hit $10-$20 dollars you could be rewarded in very big money.

On the mining thing, i personally think cryptocurrency that doesn't need mining is the future like IOTA

But as i think Blowin pointed out all money has negative environmental impact, first Gold needs to be mined, then money is made from metals, paper or plastic and then transported and then kept in buildings with all kinds of energy use by workers and companies and then it continually needs to be minted.

There is also benefits cryptocurrency brings through mining though, much mining is done is developing countries where electricity is cheap providing income where it otherwise wouldn't be.(basically creating a transfer of wealth)

Blockchain technology will also bring environmental benefits in numerous other ways, there is even tokens etc aimed at environmental issues, there is even an Australian based one called Power Ledger that is even receiving support and trial use by the Australian government i think at a state level.

Id say intangible assets on the balance sheet Peterb. Pretty laughable place to have your cash too!

..

@Indo, how much time a day do you dedicate to your little coin collection, actively managing and research?

I actually like the idea of taking some power away from the big banks. Next question though is who fills the gap? Another monopoly?

Whats the difference between the bid and ask price indo?

I'd be keen to know the true transaction cost as a %.

Merry Christmas all!

Merry Cryptmas!!!

Ripple making more waves than SE Qlds seen all summer!!

I can't believe it's no 2 Market cap now, i had quite a bit of ripple weeks ago when it was about 30c, but thought with it's huge supply it would only rise slowly and sold most to buy other cryptos, thinking i could just buy back as it slowly rised in price, only have about 100 now, oh well.

Ripple I believe has a long way to go, don’t be afraid to step back in. This could still prove to be early days yet...
My mates have made $70,000, profit, in a month.

Ripple is 10 times at what I bought in at just over a month ago. But I sold a reasonable amount of ripple when I doubled my money to get my initial investment out. Still happy with where it's headed.

Im sure it has a big future and will keep rising but i still think there is better cryptos for better returns.

It was about 30c a few weeks ago almost hit $3 that's a big return (10X) but it's market cap has also raised from about 10 billion to 100 billion.

Imagine if any other market cap had increased that much.

If it hits the same market cap as Bitcoin (300 billion) it will only triple it's price to about $9.

So it's pretty unlikely it's going to ten times again in a hurry.

I mean yeah sure that's any return is great, but IMHO there is other coins that have heaps better return potential, just need to go digging.

For example i missed out on this one don't have the cash to spend at the moment, but a few days ago Ember Coin had an increase from 0.000024c to 0.001085c in 24 hours it was a pure pump and dump but still if you got in and out, that was a 4420 % increase or if you had put in $50 you would have got 40 times profit $2,000.00 (think thats right)

Okay okay I'm just making excuses and spewing i didn't keep or buy more when it was 30c :(

Don't think i will buy more though, but i won't sell what i have just incase.

& I wish I had more on and earlier, that seems to be part of the game doesn’t it. Got to look at what you’ve got not what you haven’t got. I totally agree on getting on those micro ones I’ve got one am waiting to trickle a few more on that type of thing, though I can’t at the moment on coinspot. I’m hearing from the same guy who told me to take on Ripple, they think Naga will do well..

Shoredump..

Uhhhh what, $70,000 in a month????

SD, the creators or NAGA hold/own 45% of the Naga coins/tokens. That can't be good in my opinion as almost half of the tokens can be sold off in one big hit crashing the price instantaneously at the whim of the creators.

Yeah, shared amount though. They started with $12,000 all on Ripple. I text my mate today asking how’s his nerves. He replied he’s not getting out till it’s a game changer. My account is a fraction of that, but I’m keen to pump a few thousand into some small early ones. Paying off the mortgage seems not totally unrealistic, if you find the right one

@DW ahh ok, good to know. I’m a novice, I gave up trying to understand crypto as it was causing me to freeze in my actions. I decided to just be oportunistic and go along for the ride. He did say it would be a short term one, maybe that’s why I’m not sure

Good on them, hope it turns out well. Gotta be in it to win it

I guess if your investing good money you can get good returns, but i think it's a different game when you are risking that kind of money on just one or two cryptos, it could also go the other way if you made a bad choice especially in ICO's.

To be honest i thought that Naga coin as an ICO at $1 was a rip off, but i just had a look at it's price now and it's at $2.64

Ive got a good solid portfolio now that I'm quite happy with on Coinspot, i think I'm just going to take a long term Hold (hodl) approach with that one and try not to mess with it to much, but i have also been buying other cryptos on Binance and Crytopia, i think i might just get 1K and start trying to get into coins early and just try to ride from one to the other, more risk but more reward.

Ive also got to get into this ICO thing but seems even more risk and more reward.