Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency Discussion (And Predictions)

[Kevin88660]

At this present stage most coins are casino chip. If you join in their telegram groups most discussion are about trading and price targets.

Because the basic economic is the space is “casinomics”. The developing technology are focused on how to build a better casino. Defi is capturing this market building a trading and exchange platform that does not need to do kyc (know your customer).

You collect fees on the trades and the projects are instantly profitable.

Most lucrative or perhaps the only viable business model in the space is still building better tools and user experience for speculation. Million dollar digital art is another example.

Agree. I find that to transact anything crypto related, I find myself needing to understand extremely technical terms. Till now, I still can't grasp the concept of blockchain. It feels so abstract. And then there's all there terms like "staking", "NFTs", "uniswaps", and a whole mess of computer science protocols. Does one need a double masters in financial engineering + computer science + trading experience to understand these? Because I sure as hell am not going to touch anything I don't understand if it's money related.

Unless you're able to get the rural-living, 68 year old grandma who does nothing but sews all day long to understand all these, crypto in its current form will not get mainstream adoption lol.

With fiat, it's simple. I take out a $5 note, made of paper, to exchange that chicken burger of yours. No complex "bitcoin addresses", "hashes"......and I don't need 10+ mins to figure out, install and setup some shitty Google Authenticator app on my phone which the Binance app requires.

This area is a huge gap, ripe for disruption. The next person who can solve this need will be f*cking rich. Imagine : a world where using crypto is as simple as buying candy at Walmart or sending money via PayPal.

You do not need to be a technical expert to use crypto, trade, invest and make money from it. It is like learning how to use apps with more complicated user interface.

You can always start with learning how to deposit, withdraw and trade in centralised exchange like binance.

Then you can learn more complicated stuff like using hot wallet like metamask to do the more complicated things like staking or earning yields on decentralized trading platforms.

It is a hell lot of work for sure. Why bother? I forced myself to scribble some digital art to sell for a few cents just to learn through the entire process of minting and listing nft.

One thing is for sure if there will continue to be money made in this field. Saying that crypto economy is a casino is not trivializing it. Gambling business is much much more profitable than “real” business. We live in a world that a lot of socially respectable business are hard to make money. You can just contribute a tiny bit to the crypto ecosystem and the reward is insanely high relative to your output.

There was a 20 plus young man in Singapore who started with low six digits of family money and made 9 digits as an early stage defi adopter. Granted that It is a one in 1000 story with strong survivorship bias. But there is no other industry that can come close to that.

From bitcoin to ethereum to defi and nft, if you want to catch the next big thing to invest or project to take part you have to get your hands dirty as early as possible.

 

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[Musashi]

You can always start with learning how to deposit, withdraw and trade in centralised exchange like binance.

Then you can learn more complicated stuff like using hot wallet like metamask to do the more complicated things like staking or earning yields on decentralized trading platforms.

It is a hell lot of work for sure. Why bother? I forced myself to scribble some digital art to sell for a few cents just to learn through the entire process of minting and listing nft.

One thing is for sure if there will continue to be money made in this field. Saying that crypto economy is a casino is not trivializing it. Gambling business is much much more profitable than “real” business. We live in a world that a lot of socially respectable business are hard to make money. You can just contribute a tiny bit to the crypto ecosystem and the reward is insanely high relative to your output.

There was a 20 plus young man in Singapore who started with low six digits of family money and made 9 digits as an early stage defi adopter. Granted that It is a one in 1000 story with strong survivorship bias. But there is no other industry that can come close to that.

From bitcoin to ethereum to defi and nft, if you want to catch the next big thing to invest or project to take part you have to get your hands dirty as early as possible.

Hes not interested in all that. He is not here to learn but to rant against crypto and wish people invested in crypto misery. For whatever reason...

 

[Timmy C]

 

[Xeon]

You do not need to be a technical expert to use crypto, trade, invest and make money from it. It is like learning how to use apps with more complicated user interface.

You can always start with learning how to deposit, withdraw and trade in centralised exchange like binance.

Then you can learn more complicated stuff like using hot wallet like metamask to do the more complicated things like staking or earning yields on decentralized trading platforms.

It is a hell lot of work for sure. Why bother? I forced myself to scribble some digital art to sell for a few cents just to learn through the entire process of minting and listing nft.

One thing is for sure if there will continue to be money made in this field. Saying that crypto economy is a casino is not trivializing it. Gambling business is much much more profitable than “real” business. We live in a world that a lot of socially respectable business are hard to make money. You can just contribute a tiny bit to the crypto ecosystem and the reward is insanely high relative to your output.

There was a 20 plus young man in Singapore who started with low six digits of family money and made 9 digits as an early stage defi adopter. Granted that It is a one in 1000 story with strong survivorship bias. But there is no other industry that can come close to that.

From bitcoin to ethereum to defi and nft, if you want to catch the next big thing to invest or project to take part you have to get your hands dirty as early as possible.

Regarding NFTs, I can draw and make art (similar to the type like cryptokitties). Is this a matter of just uploading it onto NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and hope someone will purchase it? Or do I need to do my own marketing and drive traffic to OpenSea? Kinda like Amazon and Etsy?

 

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[Timmy C]

Everyone in the world right now.

 

[Kevin88660]

Regarding NFTs, I can draw and make art (similar to the type like cryptokitties). Is this a matter of just uploading it onto NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and hope someone will purchase it? Or do I need to do my own marketing and drive traffic to OpenSea? Kinda like Amazon and Etsy?

Marketing is optional. I have experience using Mintable app which you can mint an artwork for free. It is like ebay where you create an account to buy and sell.

 

[Sethamus]

View attachment 37226View attachment 37227

If she was really smart she would get together with all her playboy friends and mint some original nfts and sell that shit. People buying digital sneaker skins for stupid money, they 100% would buy an original digital playboy poster.

 

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[nitrousflame]

The complexity argument is another one of those arguments that is easy to pick up and run with, but implicit within the argument is the assumption that complexity won't change over time.

Email was once too complicated to use for anyone other than engineers and complete nerds. Even in the late 90's, many email clients were still terminal based. Anyone remember PINE? It was getting long in the tooth when I was in college, but I very much remember using it:

Imagine thinking then that email was doomed to fail because the user interface left a lot to be desired! The impressive thing about email is that much of its underlying plumbing has remained unchanged since then, yet now even my technophobic mother can send emails. I will leave you to come to your own conclusion about the future complexity of using cryptocurrencies.

 

[theag]

Cathy Wood just provided this data-backed ammo for the energy consumption argument:

View attachment 37221

Note: This is not a survey based on what people think energy consumption is, but what it really is.

EDIT: Link to original article: PoW is Efficient

I haven't read the article, but isn't this comparing apples to oranges?

A useful comparison would be banking system vs bitcoin (or whatever blockchain) running the same amount of transactions. Not mining vs transactions.

 

[csalvato]

(Duplicate)

 

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[csalvato]

I haven't read the article, but isn't this comparing apples to oranges?

A useful comparison would be banking system vs bitcoin (or whatever blockchain) running the same amount of transactions. Not mining vs transactions.

No it's not apples to oranges. Read the article.

 

[theag]

No it's not apples to oranges. Read the article.

No. I don't care enough.

 

[csalvato]

No. I don't care enough.

OK, I'll be sure to quote this post when you try to berate someone in the future for their well informed beliefs, which is almost an inevitability based on your posting history.

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

What exchanges do y'all use? Or if you don't use an exchange, how do you buy and store your crypto?

The exchanges like Coinbase seem super sketchy to me, and they have all the regular rules and requirements (and risks) of a stock brokerage or traditional bank. They ask for your SSN and ID, which tells me the idea that crypto is "anonymous" is kind of a joke...Unless you can do it somewhere else.

The blockchain is cool, but to get to the blockchain you have to go through other companies that pose all the same problems the blockchain is supposed to get you free of.

Is there another way?

 

[csalvato]

What exchanges do y'all use? Or if you don't use an exchange, how do you buy and store your crypto?

The exchanges like Coinbase seem super sketchy to me, and they have all the regular rules and requirements (and risks) of a stock brokerage or traditional bank. They ask for your SSN and ID, which tells me the idea that crypto is "anonymous" is kind of a joke...Unless you can do it somewhere else.

The blockchain is cool, but to get to the blockchain you have to go through other companies that pose all the same problems the blockchain is supposed to get you free of.

Is there another way?

When it comes to anonymity, KYC and AML laws make it difficult, but not impossible, to remain totally anonymous. It's still possible, just more difficult.

I personally buy on Coinbase or Gemini, and transfer my funds to a cold storage wallet immediately.

I use a Ledger Nano X, so that every Tx uses a different address, so knowing which address is me, specifically, and how much I have from chain analysis alone is difficult/impossible.

Most commercial wallets come with the same feature, which helps greatly with privacy and anonymity.

You can also do something like a BTC ATM or LocalBitcoins, but, even then, if you are being a criminal, the FBI looks at the wallets that yours interacted with in the past, and puts the heat on them to snitch on you.

BTC solves many issues: easy P2P transactions, a fixed supply when fully realized, immune to supply dilution because of printing/quantitative easing, etc

Privacy/anonymity isn't really one of the problems it solves. The FBI loves when criminals use Bitcoin.

If privacy is of paramount importance to you, buy your bitcoins from an exchange (not ideal) or on LocalBitcoins (ideal) and change them over to Monero or Zen ASAP.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

When it comes to anonymity, KYC and AML laws make it difficult, but not impossible, to remain totally anonymous. It's still possible, just more difficult.

I personally buy on Coinbase or Gemini, and transfer my funds to a cold storage wallet immediately.

I use a Ledger Nano X, so that every Tx uses a different address, so knowing which address is me, specifically, and how much I have from chain analysis alone is difficult/impossible.

Most commercial wallets come with the same feature, which helps greatly with privacy and anonymity.

You can also do something like a BTC ATM or LocalBitcoins, but, even then, if you are being a criminal, the FBI looks at the wallets that yours interacted with in the past, and puts the heat on them to snitch on you.

BTC solves many issues: easy P2P transactions, a fixed supply when fully realized, immune supply dilution bc of printing/quantitative easing, etc

Privacy/anonymity isn't really one of the problems it solves. The FBI loves when criminals use Bitcoin.

If privacy is of paramount important to you, buy your bitcoins from an exchange (not ideal) or on LocalBitcoins (ideal) and change them over to Monero or Zen ASAP.

Yeah I'm definitely not going to risk breaking the law in any way, I was just disappointed to find out everything is reported automatically to the IRS and they have all of your information.

The stories I heard about crypto made it sound different.

 

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[theag]

OK, I'll be sure to quote this post when you try to berate someone in the future for their well informed beliefs, which is almost an inevitability based on your posting history.

Looking forward to it.

 

[csalvato]

Yeah I'm definitely not going to risk breaking the law in any way, I was just disappointed to find out everything is reported automatically to the IRS and they have all of your information.

The stories I heard about crypto made it sound different.

Well this isn't exactly true.

Your transactions are not "reported to the IRS" automatically. All transactions are on a fully public ledger, which means the IRS can do chain analysis to determine how and where money is flowing.

But not all wallets are KYC'd. You can KYC your wallet on an exchange and not KYC your cold storage wallet.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, doing chain analysis like this is getting more and more difficult when more privacy features built into wallets, such as rotating addresses.

For example, in my case, when looking at the activity on the ledger for my KYC'd wallets on Coinbase and Gemini, it appears that I send every Tx to a different wallet.

Without doing a more thorough investigation on me (including personally interviewing people who own the KYC wallets with which I interact) , there's no way to know if all those Tx are to me, or all to other people, or some mix.

 

[MaxKhalus]

How do you define a bubble pop?

Bitcoin has been through several dot-com magnitude bubble pops in its history. I didn't make it out before the last two popped, and I'm guessing I won't make it out before this one pops. I must be doomed.

Then why did Bitcoin revive after falling from $17K?

 

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[csalvato]

@Timmy C

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1372256950730170375

View: https://twitter.com/cmsintern/status/1372256950730170375?s=20

 

[nitrousflame]

Then why did Bitcoin revive after falling from $17K?

Why did it revive after falling from $1200? Or $260? Or $30? Or any of the many other times it has crashed more than 30%?

I wish I could point to a nice polished crystal clear answer, but such a thing does not exist. My guess is that it's not one thing, but rather countless. From the hard-coded programmatic deflationary issuance schedule known as block reward halving events, to central banks around the world debasing their currencies to monetize debts, to anything in-between.

The moral of the story is: don't buy bitcoin, because it crashes a lot.

View: https://youtu.be/XbZ8zDpX2Mg

 

[Deleted78083]

Cathy Wood just provided this data-backed ammo for the energy consumption argument:

View attachment 37221

Note: This is not a survey based on what people think energy consumption is, but what it really is.

EDIT: Link to original article: PoW is Efficient

Yes, but it is pretty meaningless as the banking system is processing x times more transactions than the blockchain.

It would be much better if we could have an energy consumption/transaction basis to compare, or if we could predict how much energy would bitcoin mining take if the entire banking system was on the blockchain.

Side note: I operated my very first crypto transaction today (moving crypto form one wallet to another) and it was very exciting!

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

Yes, but it is pretty meaningless as the banking system is processing x times more transactions than the blockchain.

Yeah exactly. This is due to sheer volume. It’s comparing the amount of dirt in America to the amount of dirt in Wisconsin.

 

[csalvato]

Yes, but it is pretty meaningless as the banking system is processing x times more transactions than the blockchain.

It would be much better if we could have an energy consumption/transaction basis to compare, or if we could predict how much energy would bitcoin mining take if the entire banking system was on the blockchain.

Side note: I operated my very first crypto transaction today (moving crypto form one wallet to another) and it was very exciting!

If you read the article, it's clear why energy consumption/transaction is not a fair comparison.

 

[Timmy C]

It's a 99.99% chance that gold loses most of it's monetary premium over the next 10 years.
Just my opinion.

 

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[MitchC]

It's a 99.99% chance that gold loses most of it's monetary premium over the next 10 years.
Just my opinion.

Going to have to agree here.

people (who have never tried to buy Bitcoin) talk/whine about how hard Bitcoin is to invest in.

I TRIED to invest in gold this year.... You pay way over what the spot price is for physical gold. There’s a heap of places to choose from so who do you choose. They all have the same complicated verification process as the big Bitcoin exchanges. Then you have to figure out how to store it safely. Either pay the company you bought it from to store it or pay to ship it to your house, install a safe, etc or ship it elsewhere. And then when you want to sell it you have to find someone to buy it or sell it to a company at below spot price. Pay to ship it again. What the F*ck. I bought Bitcoin instead and it took me about an hour to work it out and get verified. The fees were higher than I expected but I didn’t shop around for exchanges. Oh yeah and I made way more returns than I would have with gold and when I decide to sell its instant and easy. Oh and if I decide to move house I don’t even have to consider how I’m going to move all my bitcoins and the safe that contains them with me.

 

[Timmy C]

If gold doesn't recover in 1-3 years, given the increase in money supply/spending, then it has failed as an SOV asset.

At that point, you would have to be smoking crack to ever buy gold again in my opinion.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

If gold doesn't recover in 1-3 years, given the increase in money supply/spending, then it has failed as an SOV asset.

At that point, you would have to be smoking crack to ever buy gold again in my opinion.

Or you know, be a manufacturer of computer chips or medical tools or other electronics that use gold...

(as a store of value, gold isn’t going anywhere unless we discover a whole lot of it very fast. Possible, but not likely in the near term)

 

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[Sethamus]

I can see where y’all are coming from, but more billionaires own gold atm than btc. Until that changes (and it may very well in the next 3 years) gold isn’t going to be easily replaced.
Look at where gold was Jan. 2020- 1500s. Btc was 9kish. If one of these drops back down to those levels which is going to most likely be accepted by the public?

I see the btc bull run topping and when it pops, people running back to gold. Gold could go down to 1500 right now and investors would be worried, but I think they are scared more of the crypto volatility and their lack of knowledge. Ask anyone why you own gold and why it is valuable and they will give you an answer whether right or wrong. They believe they understand it more because it has been talked about they started to learn about investing.

I think we will learn a lot once there is a big enough correction to BTC and then the real battle between the two starts.
I own both, currently more crypto, so I’m just trying to make sense of why gold hasn’t moved up from it’s previous high of 2k.

 

[GPM]

Gold/silver are not Bitcoin. I don't think the two can even be compared.

Why not have both? Or just Bitcoin if that's your thing. Gold/silver have massive industrial application, they are not just used as a store of value.

And yes physical is more expensive than spot, because spot is based on a digital product that does not even exist. Spot is for a baseline, you then pay a premium based on mining and minting costs. You can also sell your product at over spot all day every day to private buyers.

Why would a company buy your product at over spot? They need to then turn around and sell it to make a premium. The same goes for any used product anywhere. If you are selling it to a middle man they need to make money on it as well or they won't buy it.