Bitcoin and altcoins, anyone here following or use them?

redrumloa

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I blew off Bitcoin for years thinking it would not get widely adopted. I have officially been proven wrong as Bitcoin is starting to get widely adopted, and any prior gov pushback is ending.

I'm now on the Bitcoin bandwagon fully. I'm even starting to get involved in mining. I find it to be at a really good time to get involved. Anyone else here interested yet? Or have you been involved for some time already?
 

Robert

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About five or six years ago I ran a little mining client on a very under-powered PC for a few weeks. Never made enough to cash out a penny before I lost interest.
 

JoBBo

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A buddy of mine sent me an interesting article the other day, worth a read in my opinion.
Thanks. There are some good points in there. That said, I found the paragraph arguing how digital currencies are all pyramid schemes and must be outlawed quite unconvincing.

How many "limited edition" products are out there that are sold new at premium prices and are specifically manufactured in fixed quantities only to generate "artificial" scarcity? Nowadays, there are quite a few people that treat these commercially designed "collector's editions" as investment opportunities (sports sneakers, toys, etc). Yet, with the vast majority of these products, it becomes harder and harder to resell them to new owners thereby reducing each product's aggregate value over time until it will eventually near zero, which fits the author's overly simplistic definition of pyramid schemes.

While an art dealer is legally allowed to sell a white piece of canvas with a red triangle on it for millions of dollars to an "art investor", it is difficult to morally justify the prohibition of tools that allow everyone to mine digital keys that you may or may not be able to trade for hard currencies at some point.
 

JoBBo

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I find it to be at a really good time to get involved.
Given the recent surge of the Bitcoin value and widespread media reporting about it, it looks like another bubble is forming and will likely burst in the not too distant future. It happened before (last year?). Of course, for miners, this is less of a concern than it would be for strategic investors converting hard currencies to Bitcoin.

In any case, both from a mining and investment perspective, "a really good time to get involved" would have been years ago :) Newer currencies like Ethereum might be more profitable. The challenging part is picking the right one :)
 

ilwrath

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I've used some BitCoin, mined a tiny bit, and followed along with mild interest. I'd question the assumption that now is a good time to get into it, though. Beyond government interventions, there is the very real problem of needing a stable exchange. A way to buy in and sell out of BtC. A method to exchange currencies. The big banks don't want anything to do with it, so far. In their place has sprung up a number of private BtC exchanges. And those exchanges have a very poor track record, indeed. It's not a question of if they'll default and bug out with everyone's money... It's when. And without a stable exchange infrastructure, I just don't see BtC ever becoming a useful currency. And, worse, the assumed benefits of anonymous transactions would also be questionable in light of the realizations of the depth of current internet monitoring.

And, as JoBBo said, the time to mine was early. And while it would still be early for may of the alternate coin systems, they all face worse versions of the same problems facing BtC.

There may well be some good gambles to make money in the short-term, but, personally, from what I can figure out, I'd consider them Vegas odds, at best.
 

redrumloa

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Thanks for the replies. I'm a bit surprised the reactions lean towards negative here. IMO the arguments against it are an anachronism at this point. Governments and companies have grown to accept Bitcoin is here to stay. I mean, you have Goldman Sachs fully involved with Bitcoin now. The list of major companies accepting Bitcoin as payment is skyrocketing.
  • WordPress.com – An online company that allows user to create free blogs
  • Overstock.com – A company that sells big ticket items at lower prices due to overstocking
  • Subway – Eat fresh
  • Microsoft – Users can buy content with Bitcoin on Xbox and Windows store
  • Reddit – You can buy premium features there with bitcoins
  • Virgin Galactic – Richard Branson company that includes Virgin Mobile and Virgin Airline
  • OkCupid – Online dating site
  • Tigerdirect – Major electronic online retailer
  • Namecheap – Domain name registrar
  • CheapAir.com – Travel booking site for airline tickets, car rentals, hotels
  • Expedia.com – Online travel booking agency
  • Gyft – Buy giftcards using Bitcoin
  • Newegg.com – Online electronics retailer now uses bitpay to accept bitcoin as payment
  • Dell – American privately owned multinational computer technology company
  • Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia with 4 570 000+ article
  • Steam – Desktop gaming platform
  • Alza – Largest Czech online retailer
  • The Internet Archive – web documatation company
  • Bitcoin.Travel – a travel site that provides accommodation, apartments, attractions, bars, and beauty salons around the world
  • Pembury Tavern – A pub in London, England
  • Old Fitzroy – A pub in Sydney, Australia
  • The Pink Cow – A diner in Tokyo, Japan
  • The Pirate Bay – BitTorrent directories
  • Zynga – Mobile gaming
  • 4Chan.org – For premium services
  • EZTV – Torrents TV shows provider
  • Mega.co.nz – The new venture started by the former owner of MegaUpload Kim Dotcom
  • Lumfile – Free cloud base file server – pay for premium services
  • Etsy Vendors – 93 of them
  • PizzaForCoins.com – Domino’s Pizza signed up – pay for their pizza with bitcons
  • Whole Foods – Organic food store (by purchasing gift card from Gyft)
  • Bitcoincoffee.com – Buy your favorite coffee online
  • Grass Hill Alpacas – A local farm in Haydenville, MA
  • Jeffersons Store – A street wear clothing store in Bergenfield, N.J
  • Helen’s Pizza – Jersey City, N.J., you can get a slice of pizza for 0.00339 bitcoin by pointing your phone at a sign next to the cash register
  • A Class Limousine – Pick you up and drop you off at Newark (N.J.) Airport
  • Seoclerks.com – Get SEO work done on your site cheap
  • Mint.com – Mint pulls all your financial accounts into one place. Set a budget, track your goals and do more
  • Fancy.com – Discover amazing stuff, collect the things you love, buy it all in one place (Source: Fancy)
  • Bloomberg.com – Online newspaper
  • Humblebundle.com – Indie game site
  • BigFishGames.com – Games for PC, Mac and Smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows)
  • Suntimes.com – Chicago based online newspaper
  • San Jose Earthquakes – San Jose California Professional Soccer Team (MLS)
  • Square – Payment processor that help small businesses accept credit cards using iPhone, Android or iPad
  • Crowdtilt.com – The fastest and easiest way to pool funds with family and friends (Source: crowdtilt)
  • Lumfile – Server company that offers free cloud-based servers
  • Museum of the Coastal Bend – 2200 East Red River Street, Victoria, Texas 77901, USA
  • Gap, GameStop and JC Penney – have to use eGifter.com
  • Etsy Vendors – Original art and Jewelry creations
  • Fight for the Future – Leading organization finding for Internet freedom
  • i-Pmart (ipmart.com.my) – A Malaysian online mobile phone and electronic parts retailer
  • curryupnow.com – A total of 12 restaurants on the list of restaurants accept bitcoins in San Francisco Bay Area
  • Dish Network – An American direct-broadcast satellite service provider
  • The Libertarian Party – United States political party
  • Yacht-base.com – Croatian yacht charter company
  • Euro Pacific – A major precious metal dealer
  • CEX – The trade-in chain has a shop in Glasgow, Scotland that accepts bitcoin
  • Straub Auto Repairs – 477 Warburton Ave, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706 – (914) 478-1177
  • PSP Mollie – Dutch Payment Service
  • Intuit – an American software company that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals.
  • ShopJoy – An Australian online retailer that sells novelty and unique gifts
  • Lv.net – Las Vegas high speed internet services
  • ExpressVPN.com – High speed, ultra secure VPN network
  • Grooveshark – Online music streaming service based in the United States
  • Braintree – Well known payments processor
  • MIT Coop Store – Massachusetts Institute of Technology student bookstore
  • SimplePay – Nigeria’s most popular web and mobile-based wallet service
  • SFU bookstore – Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada
  • State Republican Party – First State Republican Party to accept bitcoin donations (http://www.lagop.com/bitcoin-donate)
  • mspinc.com – Respiratory medical equipment supplies store
  • Shopify.com – An online store that allows anyone to sell their products
  • Famsa – Mexico’s biggest retailer
  • Naughty America – Adult entertainment provider
  • Mexico’s Universidad de las Américas Puebla – A major university in Mexico
  • LOT Polish Airlines – A worldwide airline based in Poland
  • MovieTickets.com – Online movie ticket exchange/retailer
  • Dream Lover – Online relationship service
  • Lionsgate Films – The production studio behind titles such as The Hunger Games and The Day After Tomorrow
  • Rakutan – A Japanese e-commerce giant
  • Badoo – Online dating network
  • RE/MAX London – UK-based franchisee of the global real estate network
  • T-Mobile Poland – T-Mobile’s Poland-based mobile phone top-up company
  • Stripe – San Francisco-based payments company
  • WebJet – Online travel agency
  • Green Man Gaming – Popular digital game reseller
  • Save the Children – Global charity organization
  • NCR Silver – Point of sales systems
  • One Shot Hotels – Spanish hotel chain
  • Coupa Café in Palo Alto
  • PureVPN – VPN provider
  • That’s my face – create action figures
  • Foodler – North American restaurant delivery company
  • Amagi Metals – Precious metal furnisher
I think it's here to stay.

 

JoBBo

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In 2005, you could have compiled a much longer list of companies with a MySpace page... Things change.

Adding a payment plug-in for a particular digital currency to your website is not a one-way street. You can easily remove it if there is too little revenue to justify related maintenance costs.

Am I saying that Bitcoin will go away anytime soon? No, I am merely pointing out that this list does not prove anything. More businesses accept Bitcoin today because there are now tools that make it easy, thus inexpensive to do so. Unfortunately, they are usually provided by Coinbase, a company that raised 120 million USD of funding with a valuation of 1 billion USD despite lacking a clear profit strategy. The best-case scenario for Coinbase is that they will eventually be bought out for cents on the dollar by a bank. The worst-case iscenario s that they will crash and burn publicly, like Mt Gox just for different reasons, and tempoarily harm both the value and acceptance of digital currencies.
 

redrumloa

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Bitcoin surges above $6,000 for the first time on heavy trading volume
  • Bitcoin climbs to a record above $6,000 as investors bet on future gains for the digital currency, especially as events in the next few weeks could remove major overhangs .
  • Trading volume in bitcoin also far surpassed that of other digital currencies, indicating high investor demand.
  • The gains come despite greater scrutiny of bitcoin from regulators and strong criticism from major bank executives.
 

JoBBo

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Steam Ends Support for Bitcoin

In the past few months we've seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network
For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.
 

redrumloa

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In other news, Bitcoin hit $14,000 today.
 

redrumloa

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For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.

If they were smart, they'd move to Bitcoin Cash or even Litecoin. Both offer faster transfers with transaction fees of pennies. Heck, there are dozens of options out there.

Traditional Bitcoin is a dog with flees at this point compared to it's own hard forks and some other Alt-Coins, but nothing seems to be stopping this bull rally. If it keeps this course it will indeed be "Digital Gold" and not "Digital Currency". Something else will fill that void.
 

ilwrath

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Traditional Bitcoin is a dog with flees at this point compared to it's own hard forks and some other Alt-Coins, but nothing seems to be stopping this bull rally. If it keeps this course it will indeed be "Digital Gold" and not "Digital Currency". Something else will fill that void.

Past $15,000 now. There sure was some money to be made in the short term if you could find an exchange that would actually cash you out at these prices.

I gotta think this is a bubble that is going to pop in an astonishingly huge way, soon. There's just too much craziness and insanity in the whole process.
 

redrumloa

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I blew off Bitcoin for years thinking it would not get widely adopted. I have officially been proven wrong as Bitcoin is starting to get widely adopted, and any prior gov pushback is ending.

I'm now on the Bitcoin bandwagon fully. I'm even starting to get involved in mining. I find it to be at a really good time to get involved. Anyone else here interested yet? Or have you been involved for some time already?

When I posted this on June 8th, Bitcoin was about $2,800. My personal prediction was always Bitcoin would hit $10k by the end of the year. I figured it would touch it, and have a pullback with consolidation period. Most people I told that to, including people in cryptocurrency, scoffed at the idea. Little did I know being one of the biggest bulls out there, I had waaay underestimated.

Since I posted this I have gone from just learning the ropes to being fairly well versed in all things cryptocurrency. Since then we have seen several hard forks off Bitcoin too. The original Bitcoin, which is still just called Bitcoin, is not the best cryptocurrency out there for commerce. Actually, it is terrible for commerce now. The first hard fork Bitcoin Cash is much better, as with many altcoins such as Litecoin, Dash, Vertcoin and others. none of that matters though. I learned this the semi-hard way as I was in some alt coins primarily for a good part of this run. When i saw it getting near $10k, i expect a pullback and consolidation. Silly me.

Bitcoin has been called digital gold for some time now, and that is what it is becoming. In the long run one of the forks or another alt coin will win the bulk of commerce (unless Bitcoin fixes it's scaling problem). Regardless, Bitcoin is going to $1M minimum by 2020. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Even at about $16,000, it isn't mainstream. But... Mainstream is officially coming, later this month.

Bitcoin Rips Past $13,000 Amid Interest From Institutional Investors

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for example, said it would launch Bitcoin futures come Dec. 18, while days later, rival Chicago Board Options Exchange said it would launch its own version Dec. 10. Not to be outdone, Cantor Fitzgerald’s exchange has been planning a Bitcoin derivative, while the Nasdaq is said to be looking at Bitcoin futures for 2018.

There’s also a sense that bullish investors are trying to get in before institutional investors find more ways to come in and potentially drive up the price of the asset. If enough investors enter into a bitcoin futures contract, it may pave the way for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The CME and CBOE have also recently told Fortune that if there is indeed enough liquidity in the market, they may even consider offering Bitcoin options.

“The idea is futures will add ETFs which will bring institutional money and further demand,” says Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare.


I could ramble on for hours here. I'll spare you of that. I will say that my underestimating Bitcoin has cost me dearly. When I started off, I made a big investment in mining hardware. That initial investment quickly paid for itself, but those proceeds where re-invested into even more mining hardware. While my daily mining revenue is decent now, about $70-$80/day, and my re-investment has almost paid for itself, If I had simply bought Bitcoin directly I would have been much better off. As a matter of fact, my Bitcoin wallet would be in 6 figure.

Bitcoin isn't going away. At some point there will be a nasty pullback, but it will be temporary like all the rest. i doubt there will be a big one the rest of this year or from these levels but it could. If you see a pullback of 50% or more in the near future, buy with every spare penny you have. If i had to guess, I'll go out on a limb and say this will rally to $50k early next year, they have a pullback / flash crash to about $24k. it would then recover over the next 3-4 months and make new highs.
 
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redrumloa

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Study: 45 percent of Bitcoin exchanges end up closing

"A study of the Bitcoin exchange industry has found that 45 percent of exchanges fail, taking their users' money with them."

That's why if you have any Bitcoin of significance, you buy a damn hardware wallet! If you don't hold your keys, you don't own your money! As a matter of fact, Nicehash was just "hacked" and I lost about $350 in today's value of Bitcoin. That happened yesterday morning. Nicehash is not an exchange, it is a service to sell has power or to buy hash power. They were the biggest open markets. My $350 is likely gone forever. It wasn't likely a hack either, more likely an exit scam. The $350 was mining revenue in their internal wallet. I was literally planning on cashing out that morning when I found out about the "hack".

What's amazing is they were long established for like 3-4 years and must have been racking in the $$$. If it was an exit scam, it was a "long game".
 

ilwrath

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Well, Mt. Gox was a hell of a long game on exit scam, too. Most companies associated with Bitcoin implode spectacularly.

Though, if left to current forces, Bitcoin, itself, could continue to grow for quite some time.

But ultimately, I have my doubts that will happen. I think more likely that major governments will declare it illegal and firewall it. There is a very renewed interest in the US flexing it's muscle and showing exactly how much capability they have to make that happen. All the pieces are being set in place. The US already has a firewall network for the country that would make China green with envy. They have just been using it to passively collect data. But the march to change that is coming. Soon.
 

redrumloa

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But ultimately, I have my doubts that will happen. I think more likely that major governments will declare it illegal and firewall it.

This was my thoughts when Bitcoin was in it's infancy. I figured there was no way governments would allow it, so I blew it off. If only I would have bought 100 Bitcoin for $1.00 at the beginning just for the hell of it. I'd be a millionaire.

When I finally started paying attention to it earlier this year I was surprised at the adoption of it and the acceptance by nearly every government around the world. Now we are starting to see Wallstreet firms reversing course and adopting Bitcoin at a breathtaking pace. The US is not going to go to battle with the biggest financial institutions. Almost every politician is a puppet of the big banks. Cryptocurrency and blockchain in general is here to stay. It will be the wild west for a couple more years to come and we may see some legislation regulating it, but it ain't going away.

-Edit-
Bitcoin is going to $1M minimum BTW, you can bank on it. Consider this following statistic below.

Credit Suisse said in the same year that there were roughly 35 million millionaires worldwide, and was expected to reach 53 million by 2019.

I believe that number combines millionaires and billionaires. With mainstream adoption skyrocketing, let's each of those 53M people try to diversity their portfolio by an average of one single Bitcoin. There is not enough and will never be enough supply to accommodate. This is where we are going also. Why would they hold fiat currency when by design they are all inflationary? With USD that means holding the currency you lose on average 3% per year in buying power.

Don't fight the trend. Even if it is only a tiny amount, buy some Bitcoin. If I'm wrong, you lose your tiny amount. If I'm right, that tiny amount could become a life changing amount. Were at about $15,000 per btc at time of this writing. A $1000 purchase of Bitcoin at these levels would become about $63,000 if Bitcoin goes to $1M. Most Bitcoin bulls including John McAfee and others think this will happen by 2020.
 
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