Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

[renim]

the answer literally was
"money is what money does"

then went on to talk about sea shells in pacific islands for currency
and presumably rum in Australia
etc etc

and if I had taken the course later, it would included the various Iraq/Kurd/ISIS units of currency.
etc

money use is to replace barter, it should be widely available, scarce and exchangeable.

 

[TaoJones]

Hopefully a wee bit higher, for ah iz an unabashedly greedy ho.

 

[Az_Rael]

Does anyone have an idea of what is going to happen when you can buy futures contracts starting this Sunday? I get the feeling everyone thinks will be positive, but I think it could have a very negative impact on current prices. At least in the short term.

It will be interesting for sure. I think at least one of the futures markets will have the (apparently) standard 20% circuit breakers built in, which is way less volatility than the crypto markets have been seeing. So that might help stabilize it somewhat. I have never traded futures, so I really don't know how it's going to play with the actual crypto market.

There are rumors that folks are running up the price in preparation for shorting it on the futures market as soon as that goes live, so who knows.

Either way the current price is completely crazy IMHO. This reminds me a bit of when I was saying the same thing in early 2014 when BTC was near $1000. It seemed absolutely crazy at the time, and was in the news, lots of folks jumping in. There was a pretty nasty correction shortly afterwards (Mt Gox), and I think we are due for something similar (be it the futures markets, one of the major exchanges crashing entirely under the load or getting their hot wallet hacked ala nicehash, etc)

 

[dhanson865]

I have been watching this closely for a couple of months now. There are days where it goes up 40% and down 20%, but last night into today was absolutely bonkers. Basically 50% increase in 30 hours and a pull back of 30% in like an hour and recovered about half of that so far. I have a somewhat small chunk of money and im planning to exit in the next few weeks. The issue is that you can only sell about $15k a week worth on Coindesk without giving them a ton of personal information. At that point, its just a request for an increase which has to be approved. If I wasnt in a couple of months ago I wouldnt be in it today and I hope to be out in less then a month. Dont put anymore in that you would want to light a cigar with. Anyway, not an advice.

Best place to track the prices that I have found:

BitMEX | Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange

I would not trade on that site because its is even more bonkers, you can leverage up to 100x.

Does anyone have an idea of what is going to happen when you can buy futures contracts starting this Sunday? I get the feeling everyone thinks will be positive, but I think it could have a very negative impact on current prices. At least in the short term.

Edit: Oh, and good luck trying to sell when the price starts dropping like a stone. Sites like coindesk are just inaccessible. Its actually saves you money because it can have such big moves in just a few hours.

Consider a Bitpay Visa. You can put up to $10,000 on it at a time and they don't bog down when the exchanges do.

It has it's drawbacks but if you need an alternate place to transfer funds to in those situations it may be better than nothing.

I'm using mine to pay for my cell bill, lunch at fast food, stuff off amazon, etc. Basically replaces my day to day CC that I was using. I still have my Discover card for any site or service that is hard to change the automatic payment to a new card and can use it if I don't have enough USD on the Bitpay Visa.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

Bitcoin seemed it was on nearly every news show today. At work, the television in the lunchroom was tuned to CNBC and the topic was bitcoin. The TV in the main lobby was tuned to a channel where people were talking about bitcoin. My local news channel was talking about bitcoin.

All my favorite tech websites published bitcoin articles. The big topics were the breaching of 15k and 19k levels. And Valve Studios now refusing to allow video game purchases with bitcoin on the Steam platform because of volatility and transactional headaches.

This is a frenzy. Not even TSLA from 2013-14 was like this. Or NVDA and SHOP more recently. My take is that a lot of people are going to be buying Tesla cars and even pricy Yachts from this, BUT a lot more people will be left holding an empty bag.

 

[dhanson865]

Over $18,000 now at (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin)

Bitpay is still behind at ~$16,500 I find it takes closer to midnight eastern for Bitpay to catch up to the numbers I'm seeing elsewhere on a busy day. They'll never give you the best price but often it's only a few dollars off and on the scale of 5 digit dollar figures I don't car about the minor variance.

I'll check back in a few hours to see if bitpay catches up, if not I'll wait for a day/time when they are closer to parity before sending more over.

 

[neroden]

Same here. The hype around the opening of futures only seems to have pushed BTC higher. Regardless of whether or not BTC has a future, I believe it's going to come crashing down within weeks or months, simply because it's gone up too quickly.

Bitcoin has now got people who know *nothing* moving into it.

There is an apocryphal story about Joe Kennedy: supposedly when his shoeshine boy started buying stocks and giving him stock tips, he knew there was a bubble and the stock market was going to crash, and proceeded to sell everything; and was correct. (There is no proof that this ever happened. But the story had become common currency among investors long before I was born and my grandmother told it.)

The logic here is: if each speculator tries to sell to the "greater fool", and we've gotten down to the shoeshine boys buying, there is no greater fool left...

Bitcoin has now reached this stage. I'm reading lots of credible reports of people who know nothing about money, investments, mathematics, computing, security, or *anything* related to Bitcoin rushing in because "it's going up". Your basic momentum trade, but extending to the completely ignorant. More accounts on one bitcoin exchange than at some of the largest stockbrokers! When they've purchased Bitcoin purely on speculation, and they decide to sell and take their profits, *who are they going to sell it to*?

Nobody, that's the answer. With no underlying value and no guaranteed redemption for anything, it's a lot like the tulip bubble (though at least the tulips could be planted in your garden; and will flower perennially if you have the right climate).

If all the people were moving into Bitcoin specifically to make payments, to buy illegal drugs or something where Bitcoin was the only way to pay for it, then it would be a sustainable rally. When they're moving into it for speculation, and documentation shows that they are... bubble.

 

[woof]

Anyone consider donating bitcoin to charitable organizations? Skip the cap gains tax and the BTC->$ transaction fees, yet deduct the whole $ value. At least that's how I think it'll work.

 

[kenliles]

money use is to replace barter, it should be widely available, scarce and exchangeable.

Agree. An intermediary for exchange (spanning the time of that exchange, short or long)

 

[Crowded Mind]

Bitcoin seemed it was on nearly every news show today. At work, the television in the lunchroom was tuned to CNBC and the topic was bitcoin. The TV in the main lobby was tuned to a channel where people were talking about bitcoin. My local news channel was talking about bitcoin.

All my favorite tech websites published bitcoin articles. The big topics were the breaching of 15k and 19k levels. And Valve Studios now refusing to allow video game purchases with bitcoin on the Steam platform because of volatility and transactional headaches.

This is a frenzy. Not even TSLA from 2013-14 was like this. Or NVDA and SHOP more recently. My take is that a lot of people are going to be buying Tesla cars and even pricy Yachts from this, BUT a lot more people will be left holding an empty bag.

Similar experience for me today, even the hosts of a classic rock radio station I happened across were talking about it. They were hypothesizing that bitcoin wasn’t really a coin, but that maybe it started as a real coin some time ago. So, yeah. Feels bubbly. I think cryptocurrencies create real value though, so I’m conflicted. I will probably just hold the small amount of BTC and ETH I have.

 

[Unpilot]

But there is little exchange with BC...just speculation.
Sure the pump and dump crowd exchanges BK but that is about it.
Every one else is holding on to see how high it goes.

 

[renim]

whether is true or not, I don't know, but bitcoin is famous for serving to very different communities. Criminals and nerds.

either group has plenty of motivation for financial shenanigans and manipulation. and plenty of competence to do so.

very long term i could see cryptocurrency displace gold. seriously
but short term, yikes, tulip mania ain't nuttin compared to whats coming.

 

[Az_Rael]

Bitcoin has now got people who know *nothing* moving into it.

I saw posts on Reddit that CoinBase is now the #1 downloaded app in the Apple App Store. That is definitely everyone and their dog trying to get in on this.

When it crashes, it will most likely take the Alt coins down with it too, but that is OK. A nice sale price for me!

 

[GoTslaGo]

Anyone consider donating bitcoin to charitable organizations? Skip the cap gains tax and the BTC->$ transaction fees, yet deduct the whole $ value. At least that's how I think it'll work.

I'd make sure your charitable organization knows what to do with it.

Or else the donation could be worth a lot less to the organization after the donating person had claimed the deduction--if the organization is still holding it when/if the bubble pops.

 

[ValueAnalyst]

I think it depends on your perspective. I


I don't think the CBOE futures will have much impact. The CME futures the following week are more likely to have an impact in my opinion.

As far as what's going to happen, your guess is as good as mine. I've seen theories both positive and negative for the price that seem plausible. I've also seen speculation that the futures will help stabilize the price. So really, no one knows.

I would argue that liquidity will rationalize price. I'll let you decide whether that means further increases, or not.

 

[Hogfighter]

I have a question that perhaps someone here can answer.

Suppose in the near future we in the US experience an inflationary environment. Naturally vast numbers of individuals would flock to Bitcoin in order to protect their wealth, putting further pressure on the US dollar.

Now, the Feds aren't going to be too happy about that. So naturally they would use the Interstate Commerce Clause to effectively ban the use of Bitcoin in all US transactions. That, of course, would be done in the EU and China if similar situations arose. That would essentially kill Bitcoin for all but clandestine transactions, rendering the cryptocurrency useless, no?

 

[bkp_duke]

Yes and no.

The beauty of bitcoin is that NO ONE knows who the coins belong to in a particular address until you send that BTC to an exchange to convert it to fiat. Because of that level of anonymity, there isn't jack squat US Gov can do until something happens that makes it traceable back to an individual. This is the reason no one has been able to squash Bitcoin in the past 8 years. Also makes it one hell of an anonymous asset store.

 

[Manton]

Bitcoin has been growing at astronomical rates and some are speculating the bubble will burst as early as this summer. If this happens, how might it affect TSLA?

 

[LCR1]

How do you think that will affect the price of tea in China?

 

[Missile Toad]

I'm pretty sure its correlated with alpaca mittens price. Buy low, sell high.