# Bitcoin #

Here's an interesting stat.

If you invested US$1000 into Ripple on 1 January 2017, you would have had US$349k on 31 Dec 2017.

Heres the article :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-03/banks-unwilling-to-work-with-bitco...

I think the problem is: (and i have no idea how this is possible)

There has been reports of people transferring money from banks to places like Coinspot, it shows as being transferred, money in Coinspot, but then the actually payment gets stopped or reversed or something from the bank, so the person gets free money and coin spot then has to obviously deal with the banks to get the money that is often already spent.

Obviously the banks are losing big money and the growth of cryptocurrency market is huge.

The reality is you can't regulate these things, if they try to shut down Australian cryptocurrency providers and exchanges, all that will happen is myself and others will use offshore exchanges (actually i already do) but i also use Coinspot which is an Australian business employees Australians and pays tax in Australia etc

I mean really it's ridiculous the banks saying how we can spend our money?

I mean what a joke, they want to stop me investing in cryptocurrency but they have no problem if i blew all my money at the casino etc

BTW. I've actually had no issues transferring money via B-pay

Hindsight is 20/20 Don.
I could say the same about last nights Oz Lotto numbers

What's your point Roy? Everything about trading is hindsight after the fact. I've put my money where my mouth is and have invested in ripple. I'm merely pointing out that bitcoin is not the only crypto that has given amazing returns.

Im up big time this morning almost hit $14K :D

Missus started an account, thinks she is going to buy car put in $300 yesterday already up $90 in less than 24hrs.

I'm just trying to point out that yes the potential returns are significant, but being able to point out ridiculous returns in hindsight doesn't reduce the risk of trading and could make you less objective about the decisions you are making.

I have mentioned before how ethereal this crypto trading seems to be - what are the real fundamentals that these currencies provide? If you can't answer that with evidence then this is all speculative trading - which you can make money from (happens on the share market every day) - but you need to turn you paper profit into real currency at some point - hopefully you have already to cover your initial investment - and then guess when you might sell off to maximise profit.

play a hypothetical with yourself - what will be more disappointing - selling at x times your initial and enjoying the profits made, but seeing the currency go higher? OR not taking profits and seeing all of it worthless if it falls spectacularly?

i wish you luck with the caution that anything that seems so easy to cash in on may not be what it seems.

i played the stockmarket many years ago, it was a bit of fun. my boss got pissed off though when he realised i was spending as much time watching the charts as I was doing actual work. but i remember at the time a good investor once told me "buying is the easy part, knowing when to sell is the hard part". in otherwords; emotional attachment to your asset will be your downfall.

Market is absolutely on fire today.

All holidays was dead, now it's like its making up for lost time.

In less than 48 hours there has been 1 billion dollars added to the cryptocurrency market.

And the crazy thing is its not going into Bitcoin, most of 2017 Bitcoin held about 50% of the market now it's at an all time low only making up 33% of the market.

What about Hypto Kryptos? They still got any currency?

Hahaha

ID....Ripple and XEM went gangbusters today. ETH moving somewhat now too. Fair to say most crypto's going good thanks to Paypal man buying up big yesterday.

Ive got no Ripple or XEM (cashed my Ripple out the other day when it was up for Einsteinium which was down, actually done quite well out of it)

But I've got heaps of ADA and Power and Stellar that gave me big gains today.

Missus opened an account now too (wants a new car), but I'm managing it for her just started with $300 yesterday but came close to doubling it today not bad return for under 48 hours (bought her mostly Tron and a bit of Quantstamp)

Einsteinium .

Tron.

This ain't going to end well.

Not talking about you Indo , just the whole episode with people paying real money for these flights of fancy. I reckon you've done well so far and I hope you and your lady keep doing well.

But ....Einsteinium ? For fucks sake.

Einsteinium

Is actually a currency that acts like a non profit organisation that raises money for scientific research.

How's that work ?

A currency that is a fund raiser ? So a percentage of each coin returns to its creator as a tax like a GST ? Who would ever use such a thing ?

ID, I'm struggling to really get the whole crypto-currency thing as it is, but your definition of Einsteinium is a curveball that's blown things way out of proportion.

No miners mine coins they make the money, but when one is mined a small percentage goes to a foundation that funds scientific research..

There is then other incentives for miners to mine this coin that make up for that small loss.

Mark Zuckerberg posted something interesting this morning.

"Every year I take on a personal challenge to learn something new. I've visited every US state, run 365 miles, built an AI for my home, read 25 books, and learned Mandarin.

I started doing these challenges in 2009. That first year the economy was in a deep recession and Facebook was not yet profitable. We needed to get serious about making sure Facebook had a sustainable business model. It was a serious year, and I wore a tie every day as a reminder.

Today feels a lot like that first year. The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do -- whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.

My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory.

This may not seem like a personal challenge on its face, but I think I'll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate. These issues touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government, and of course technology. I'm looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics.

For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands. (The first four words of Facebook's mission have always been "give people the power".) Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force.

But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.

There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.

This will be a serious year of self-improvement and I'm looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together."

https://www.facebook.com/zuck?hc_ref=ARRt0ZcVbZcOV7VfGj5M-DFfFSQsdJ_Js34...

Mark Zuckerberg - who has done anything mortally possible to ensure his business is an omnipotent global monopoly - is concerned about technology centralising power.

Okay.

"There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands".

Which people have the power now?

Indo, I asked over xmas how many hours per day since your 1st purchase have you invested in trading and researching, you may have missed it but do you have an answer?

Another question. When you sold coins did you actually get the physical cash in your Australian savings or cheque bank account or was it retained in some coin trading account you have set up?

Have you ever got any real money back?

As an aside ......... a mate got heavily into online poker a few years back. Got a free membership and played tournaments for what I thought was "play" money and a hoax although he insisted it was real. Anyway in one tournament he won over $1,500 US and after that cashed in his membership, he waited and waited for his cheque and it arrived, it seemed real and it turned out it was .... boom. That funded a few months in South America.

Haha..

"......one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands. "

cryptocurrency needs government regulation to become a mainstream currency. that means banks. currency needs to have stability, just imagine if you wanted to buy something and that very day the coin just lost half its value forcing you to wait 10 days to recover your losses....it doesnt work.

I think you are missing the point happy. The main value of cryptocurrencies is that they are a store of value beyond the control of banks or national regulators and so useful to criminals and tax avoiders. I suspect the current boom is simply those same groups manipulating the market to make a killing by drawing people in to a speculative bubble whic will be popped at the moment of maximu advantage to those controlling the market.

Not a bad supposition BB.

But where is this assumption that the Crypto s are the eminent domain of criminals originating?

I thought it was untraceable ?

Are you sure it's not those with a vested interest in maintaining the financial status quo that are promoting this potentially exaggerated exploitation of the alleged lawlessness of crypto s ?

It's not like criminals have any real problems utilising regular currencies.

Even our PM blatantly dodges the tax system that he's overseeing to no consequence . How hard would it be for some one out of the spotlight ?

And as has been pointed out , once the criminal transaction has been completed in Bitcoin the criminal has to exchange it for regular currency to spend it anyway and if they can hide that from the authorities then they didn't need the bitcoin in the first place . So what is the point ?

I suspect it is a lot trickier to hide the proceeds of serious crime than you think Blowin. I am thinking Russian mafia etc. people get caught , they go to prison, anything that provides more cover is an advantage. Then there is the added advantage of manipulating the market. How much has Bitcoin gone up,this year? That's a pretty good return!

It could turn out to be the crime of the century.

Literally.

BB. nah i get the point, and yours, and I agree too. although I say that the main value of cryptocurrencies in their current form is not what it will be into the future. there will always be 'bitcoin' like 'store of value' similar to the concept of gold, but acceptance by the mainstream is probably in actual non-volatile tradeable currency.

https://theconversation.com/the-bank-of-england-is-planning-a-bitcoin-st...

I'm holding out till I can start mining unobtainium on Pandora. It's legit... I saw it in a documentary by some guy called Cameron. Just have to get rid of the pesky Navi first

@Guy

Not sure how much time i spend on it, it depends if the market is up or down, if its up I'm checking things a few times a day and if it's down, i just check it once then forget about it.

If i have money to put in, i get amped and research what i might buy watch a few you tube vids etc.

But to me it's a hobbie that makes money.

Yes when i say cash out, i just mean online to my account then i buy more, I haven't cashed out into physical money yet, i might take out what I've initially put in at some stage, otherwise i don't plan on taking out money for quite some time.

I do know people that have cashed out their money into fiat though, it's pretty easy to do.

Kaiser - I was this close to writing the same thing this morning .

Classic .

My friends shared 12k account early December touched on 159k yesterday, but has retracted back to around 130k today. My small $850 deposit 3 weeks ago could buy me an Indo boat trip today. Happy to hang on for a lot more than that though. My gut feeling is all of January will continue with these rapid gains as the hype continues to spread more mainstream. @GS thank you for posting that link on the psychology of rapid gains and paralysis. I passed it on to my mate to keep it in mind. An exit strategy, like you mentioned Blowin, is key. I’m already succoming to it and ratcheting up my goals.

SD that's impressive from a $12k investment only back til early Dec. would be keen to hear what they've invested in to get that such big return in such a small time frame.

All on Ripple DW. Bit of a roller coaster the last few days hey.
I’ve tripled my personal outlay on it today.

That's crazy...it was crazy and totally unexpected how Ripple sat around 30c and didn't move up or down for ages, then the next day it was a $1 then $2 the $3 then $4.

With it's huge supply its just so unexpected to have such big gains so quick.

Hindsight is such a bitch sometimes, I'm happy with my gains, but i think i over diversify to much, sure it's less risk...but putting your money all on black can sometimes pay off.

Im just too much like a kid in a candy shop, i just want everything .

BTW. Imagine if they had swapped their Ripple for Tron around the 30th Dec got out of ripple at $3 then into Tron at 4c then rode it until it hit 40c on the 5th Jan.

If they had got ripple at around 30c they would have made ten times their money roughly $120K then put that on Tron and ten times it again too $1.2 million.

How crazy is that, just that it could be possible.

For want of a better word, the whole buy low sell high game seems quite easy, if you had the balls to go big. In this volatile climate, there are several highs and lows to pick from. It’s pretty straight forward really. Just buy into companies quickly that are undervalued and deliver some promising news or result.

Been doing cryptos for most of 2017. Happy to answer any questions. Skimmed the comments here and one thing I will say is that it is waaaay beyond criminals and money laundering although that did help get bitcoin moving in the beginning. The tech is awesome and it is clearly more secure than traditional money. Traditional money is lent into existence and recorded electronically, so is it really much different to crypto? The NPP is about to be launched in Australia so the days of cash are numbered.
BTW I dont hold bitcoin and dont intend to. Altcoins are where its at
...and I’m not a financial advisors arsehole, but I think most financial advisors are :)

@Shoredump Kind of, i mean you need good money to start with and then you have to find the real winners, i mean currently any crypto will rise in price but to get quick crazy prices rises like that is much harder to pick.

And i don't think it's about quality, people say research the coin read the white paper etc but really much of it is babble.

Take just a basic coin for example, every coin claims to have the fastest traction speeds, cheapest to use, best privacy and best new tech and so hard to compare properly.

I think so much of what is successful is just hype driven, someone does a vid on youtube says its the next best thing will go ten times in 2018 and next minute it's hot.

The more research i do, the more overwhelmed i get, Coinspot is kind of good it limits you to a certain number of cryptos so heaps easier to choose.

Yesterday i transferred a Litecoin to Binance and one to Crytopia and i had a list id made up of cryptos from vids, i focused on promising sounding ones with as low supply as possible, but also just a few super cheap ones that don't seem too crap.

Ha ha i ended up buying about 20 different cryptos just put about $30 to $40 on each one.

Heres what i bought.

Binance
-More Wabi
-Bread
-Genesis vision
-Modum
-SONM
-Monetha
-Ethlend
-Cindicator

Then on Crytopia

-Paccoin
-Zoin
-Bulwark
-Social send
-Upfiring
-Clearpoll
-Oyster pearl
-Linda Coin
-CoinonatX
-Publica
-Cannabis coin
-Pot coin

Maybe doest get me rich this way, but I've done okay already from this approach got Tron and QST dirt cheap only got about $30 of each now worth much much more and as they started taking off i bought more, with many I've purchased i will do the same and just top up each coin in dips.

@Topsy

Nice, what cryptos are you currently into?

“Just buy into companies quickly that are undervalued and deliver some promising news or result.”

It all sounds so easy!

So how do you know when a company is undervalued?

And how do you know when the “promising news” isn’t bullshit? SurfStitch issued an enormous amount of promising news over the space of many months, lifting the share price from under $1 up to a peak of $2.13, to become the “darling of the ASX” at one point (direct media quote).

But look what happened shortly afterwards?

@themalben That's exactly how it is and it's crazy how many cryptos there are and more and more coming Coinmarketcap.com has about 1400 listed but there is so many not listed there, id say total is more 2000 plus and countless more coming out, by end of 2018 i think there will be tens of thousands, going to get harder and harder to pick those gems before they tale off to the moon.

But it's a bit different to shares at the moment currently the money and growth is just so big, if anything rises in price and then falls, it's soon lifted back up in price.

We are not even at a trillion dollars yet and many predict by the end of 2018 we will be many trillions of dollars worth market.

Firstly, it is definitely about the tech, white paper etc. This technology is real. I buy in at ico usually with the exception of Cardano and a couple of others. There are so many icos running at the moment and nearly all of them will fail. They range from half arsed projects created by illiterate idiots (great for a laugh, but also time wasting), businesses trying to “jump on board the money train” to awesome cutting edge projects that take off. Fortunately in the current climate the dodgy ones find it hard to get any traction but they do get money from a few poor unsuspecting people. I usually use youtube to help sift through the shit, but ALWAYS do my own research. White papers are usually long and technical, so my own research starts with googling “origintrail ico” then checking out blog and reddit (where the geeks hang out) posts. Steemit posts are also good. If the ico looks good make sure that you get straight on to their whitelist (this is like joining the queue to invest) most of the well run icos lately have whitelists, joining does not commit you to investing. Dont worry, its not all that hard to pick the good ones, it just takes a bit of research and common sense. So much more I could write but its getting hot and I need to get wet. Origintrail is one that I am considering at the moment. Will post more info and new ones when I can and happy to check out others that you guys find, but please do a little bit of research yourself so we are not wastinf too much time, it is limited in such a crowdedd space.
...youtube is just a starting point and many youtubers are doing paid endorsements. There is a guy called Hudson Jamieson who is a good, honest guy and a well known programmer. He has only endorsed a couple of icos but said on Reddit that he is regulatly offered 4 figure sums for no work, all he would have to do is allow an ico to use his face on their website

Ben , You do your due diligence and research as much as you can about the company's board - their experience and history , the market the company is operating in , the financial and operational plan of the company , current fundamentals and cash reserves , quality of product or service they provide and any internal and external factors that may influence their ability to succeed.

Maybe pick an emerging market whereby the companies are speculative and cheaper to buy. Think of areas of potential future demand ie Marijuana , robotics , Premium grade food providers , tech . These areas will see exponential growth in the near future. Pick a company with sound management and a good plan and take a punt.

No riskier than starting up your own Surfing website in Australia.

If you're chasing a very quick return you can keep an eye on upcoming events or announcements that will affect the share price of a company and get in then GTFO when it's risen a bit.....don't be greedy that way you won't be left missing out on a seat when the music stops.

- Buy the rumour and sell the fact . Say a company has an upcoming announcement or event , keep an eye on it for a few weeks prior and watch for any trends. The share price will often rise as people anticipate good news and want to get in early. Buy on the run up then get out before the news is released if you want a reduced risk return. Stick to low percentage gains to be safe. Preserve your capital at all times.

- Read price sensitive announcements on the ASX. Some have obvious legs and the share price of a company will see a prolonged and substantial rise. Again - get in then GTFO with your percentage.

This is called momentum trading. A euphemism for ponzi trading.

It's a short term ponzi that happens day in , day out on the ASX.

This shit takes time that you may not have, but can be very rewarding.

This is in regards to shares , not cryptos.

As to " what is promising news ? " the Australian government announced last week that it plans to become the world's largest exporter of marijuana. ASX Pot stocks rose across the board substantially ( > 50 percent in some cases ) Listen to the news at night and think how world events will affect certain markets .

Even better - preempt any announcements by determining for yourself the direction that the world is taking. Using marijuana as an example again , it's obvious that medicinal and recreational pot will be HUGE in a few years. The big companies are scared of dabbling as it's still illegal in many places and the idea of this can affect their big institutional shareholders so they wait on the sidelines for the speculative pot companies to do the ground work and then they buy them . Great time to be looking at that market.

It's like buying alcohol companies towards the end of prohibition. But alcohol never revolutionised the pharmaceutical world and the veterinarian world as well !

So Indo how do you actually get into this from the start.

To learn about the blockchain go to udemy.com and do ethos learning’s free beginners course. Suppoman also does some good beginners courses for around $15. For youtubers I like boxmining, datadash, suppoman and crypto daily. Suppomans number one crypto is bitquence that has now been rebranded to ethos. At ico a couple of hundred dollars would have got you 5000 ethos. Shingo Lavine is the ceo of ethos and the guy who does the free udemy course that I mentioned above. ICOs can be thought of as crowdfunded venture capitalism

Coinmarketcap.com is where all the coins that are trading on exchanges (post ico) are listed.

Can I post url links here? Just articles and stuff, nothing for personal gain

this is exactly what "dot.com" was, but infact its worse. much much worse.

when the Ripple CEO is worth more than Zuckerberg in a matter of 12 months you know something is not right with this picture.

predatory capitalism perhaps?

It's crazy that nothing is being produced , no service is being provided and the pretence that its actually a valid currency is a joke.

People are going to be burnt when the wheels fall off .

In the meantime ....good luck gents.