Bitcoin

They are inherently limited by design.

They are created when a computer on the bitcoin network solves a complex problem. When a computer has solved the problem it alerts the network and when verified the computer is awarded 50 bitcoins.

The complexity of the problem is then increased. This means bitcoins become progressively harder to mine.

Only 21 million can ever be mined, which is predicted to happen 20-30 years from now.

The above is simplified but gives a general idea.

If the bitcoin evangelists are right and it replaces fiat currency the 250k per coin is a low estimate.

But is anyone actually spending bitcoin? Seems like relative to bitcoin the world is in severe negative inflation and people are buying them as a get rich punt.
 
It's a new version of a pyramid selling scheme crossed with Lehman Brothers, built on credit and when it goes tits up you get nowt back and loose any cash invested in the system.

But the bubble hasn't burst yet and it's still sucking people in.

bubb.jpg

So as Deborah Meaden says, good luck, but I'm afraid I won't be investing :grin::grin::grin:
 
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A mate of mine has invested a few yrs ago and is earning some good returns the now especially with the spike. Wont ever loose on it now. £900 a month isnt bad plus heats the house :)
 
Been doing quite a bit of reading on it recently alot of people alot more informed than myself can see it rising up alot as there is the cap of there only being 21mill available and its not centralised etc...alot of people saying its a bubble etc but id say its worth the risk over a small period of time.. i gamble quite a bit so instead of sports betting and loosing quite a bit ive figured i may invest regular for a while instead not just in bitcoin but other crypto currencys... about 3 days ago invested £50 in bitcoin and £50 in ethereum using coinbase (had already done this before reading the negative reviews).. tried to buy £50 litecoin also but it knocked me back saying it was my bank... my bank days they didnt block it....will sort itself out i guess

Litecoin is still quite low in value around £230 per coin...it rose near 8000% in a year.. could be a punt
 
in my meagre opinion
bitcoin [ and other crypto money ] is a speculators investment
it rising like crazy just now as people holding big wads are pushing it into the public domain,
when it hits the level they want, they will drop it like a stone, cash in their wallets, and the rest of the currency will be worthless
apart from the dark web, what other mainstream use has it,?
its money laundering by the baddies,
and as soon as they see the peak point they will offload it onto all the greedy pyramid buyers in the public domain,
remember, the people at the bottom of the pyramid never get anything back
 
it has no real mainstream use atm, especially as it is too volatile to be used for currency.

a lot of online poker players will be quids in as the low transaction fees were an attraction and there were a few popular bitcoin poker sites.

when the bubble bursts is where it stands its biggest chance to gain a real foothold. the price wasnt built up entirely by speculators, there's a whole ethos behind crypto.

do you really need to ask what mainstream use a fee-free secure digital currency free from the machinations of government monetary policy has or will have?

one plausible step into the mainstream is in the aftermath of hyper inflation. there's an interesting article here : https://www.perrymarshall.com/48074/bitcoin-nuclear-winter/

excerpt:

Some country like Zambia or Argentina or Bhutan will hit 1000% per week inflation and currency meltdown.

Shopkeepers, in order to buy and sell bread and pay their employees, will have to switch to Bitcoins with QR codes on their smartphones. Because Zambia dollars will be worthless.

And in the space of 3 weeks, an entire nation will switch over to Bitcoin.

And it will never go back.

Bye-bye, Zambia dollar.

This will transform the very definition of a Nation-State, because up until now, all countries control their own currency. They must, in order to be sovereign.

Post-Bitcoin, governments will no longer be able to print money at will.

All they’ll be able to do is police the Internet.

(Maybe that means all the Police Departments will report to Google. Maybe it means they’ll arrest everybody who uses wrong transgender pronouns in their emails and Facebook posts.)

And once Zambia is on Bitcoin… Zimbabwe is next. And Malawi is next. Mozambique is next.

And just like the dominoes of Internet and smart phones fell, so will the dominoes of cryptocurrencies.

And Bitcoin will go from being the most volatile currency to the most stable currency. Because no country or company will have the ability to manipulate it at will.

It will become the new “Golden Straitjacket” (Tom Friedman’s term) of 21st Century economics.

Let me tell you a story, which was told to me by the late Tom Hoobyar. Tom was a Silicon Valley CEO of a biotech firm. I forget whether Tom was actually at this meeting, or if one of his friends told him this story.

But in the early 1990s the Joint Chiefs of Staff invited a bunch of Silicon Valley Nerds to Washington DC to give them a briefing on the Internet.

“Please explain to us what this technology is and what it means,” they said.

The first meeting was dinner. The nerds and geeks were intimidated. They straightened their ties and ate their potatoes and steaks and had polite conversation, but the next morning the geeks were still very nervous.

“Are we going to tell them?” was the question.

“Are we really going to tell them the implications of this?”

Finally they decided they had no choice. They appointed the boldest member of the group to drop the bomb.

After breakfast, a guy stood up in front of all the 5-Star Generals and said, “OK, I’m just going to say it:

“If you can’t control guns, drugs and illegal aliens, there’s no f***ing way you’re going to control ones and zeroes.”
The head of the Joint Chefs of Staff said:

“Yeah, that’s kinda what we thought.”

So… how do you transition from government-controlled money to de-centralized virtual money?

I have no idea. Sounds like a rough voyage to me. But the transition is inevitable.

Bitcoin is to money what the internet was to media. As John Paul Mendocha says, the Internet is a serial killer. And you never know who it’s going to take out next.

And know this: What we’re experiencing NOW is a bubble. The true revolution will happen after the devastation.

In the long run – after this season of extreme volatility – Bitcoin will be vastly more valuable than it is now.
this isnt without precedent. in the 50s brazil suffered hyper inflation and they issued a completely virtual currency called the URV - unit of real value. it brought stability and confidence back to people's relationship with money -

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazilr

one thing that may hold bitcoin back is the time it takes for transactions to be verified. there are much faster coins available. but i'd guess even after the bubble bursts crypto is here to stay.
 
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it has no real mainstream use atm, especially as it is too volatile to be used for currency.

a lot of online poker players will be quids in as the low transaction fees were an attraction and there were a few popular bitcoin poker sites.

when the bubble bursts is where it stands its biggest chance to gain a real foothold. the price wasnt built up entirely by speculators, there's a whole ethos behind crypto.

do you really need to ask what mainstream use a fee-free secure digital currency free from the machinations of government monetary policy has or will have?

one plausible step into the mainstream is in the aftermath of hyper inflation. there's an interesting article here : https://www.perrymarshall.com/48074/bitcoin-nuclear-winter/

excerpt:


one thing that may hold bitcoin back is the time it takes for transactions to be verified. there are much faster coins available. but i'd guess even after the bubble bursts crypto is here to stay.

if you believe that,
I think you may be deluded, or simply, as easily led as the rest of the sheep,
have you looked at what the Euro done to countries,?
a centralised monetary source, yes, it was controlled by someone, as is bitcoin,
anyone that thinks that bitcoin is not going to take a massive nosedive at some point misunderstands the fundamentals of supply and demand and how it effects worth
its only worth something while someone wants it,
atm the masses want it, so its value is increasing, more people want it than there is available,
as soon as the price is right, people holding lots of it will unload, suddenly the market will be flooded, and there will be more available than people want to buy,
ergo, the price will drop,
perhaps once the limit of 21m coins is reached it will become more stable,
then what,?
some other form of crypto currency becomes the next pyramid scheme,.?
why wouldnt it.?
 
yeah i agree its going to crash. but thats not a bad thing for it as a means of exchange. the price was quietly increasing for years when people wanted to use it as means of exchange. it had great utility as it was so deregulated, near anonymous and also secure due to the blockchain - there are no counterfeit bitcoins. so yah when the masses get their tootsies burned then begins the real test.

most of the shrewdies and people who buy into the ethos of bitcoin arent just expecting a crash, they are planning on holding on right through it. 20k per coin is a low target to hit if bitcoin does come into use as a significant % of the world's monetary exchanges.

i don't believe this is a passing phase at all. i think crypto currencies are going to be with us for the long haul. the idea of the verified blockchain is for sure going to take off as it has so many other uses.

btw:

have you looked at what the Euro done to countries,?
a centralised monetary source, yes, it was controlled by someone, as is bitcoin,

a centralised currency controlled by governments is the exact antithisis to bitcoin. which is completely decentralised.
 
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a centralised currency controlled by governments is the exact antithisis to bitcoin. which is completely decentralised.

it may be decentralised, [ although I dont think it really is ]
but its still controlled,

how does anyone know there arent any fake bitcoins out there.?
are you claiming that even though someone was smart enough to set up an alogaritm to mine them, there isnt someone smarter that can fake them.?

I dont see how any internet currency can be secure, its too vunerable to attacks from too many sources, never mind behind the scenes government organisations,

if you really wanted to have a good conspiracy theory you could do worse than the,,,,,,,,,,,,
Bitcoin is how the North Korean government fund themselves,
its easy, sell someone the Kings New Clothes
nobody can see them, so how does anyone know they even exist, but its trendy to have some, so no-one will deny them.
 
are you claiming that even though someone was smart enough to set up an alogaritm to mine them, there isnt someone smarter that can fake them.?
the nature of the blockchain makes that vanishingly unlikely.

conspiracy theories really dont interest me, squire

i have no dog in the fight as i own no crypto currency but the subject has fascinated me for a few years now. the technology and will is there for a huge shift to crypto currency.

certainly the idea of the decntralised blockchain has really exciting uses outside of crypto currency - bitcoin may or may not be the digital currency of the future, but the idea of the blockchain and the idea that there will be digital currencies in common use i would wager will come to fruition and both are things that will be widely used in the near future
 
the internet is nowhere near secure enough to be trusted
the blockchain could probably be corrupted at some stage, anyone that has ever downloaded a file knows that even with something that simple, corruption can occur,
one wrong digit in a blockchain could cost millions, bring down a whole countries economy if they are relying on cryptocurrency,
jeez, if a spotty teenager can access NASA, what hope is there for a secure network.?

I still say its simply pyramid selling,
you are handing over cold hard cash for absolutely NOTHING
good on ya if you can cash in and get out at the right time,
serves you right if you are greedy and end up with nowt.
 
any currency is only worth what someone tells you it's worth, the only difference between a twenty pound note and a scrap of newspaper is that folk believe the twenty has value.
If you could take a sack of salt back in time 2500 years you'd be loaded as it had value, take a sack of £20 notes back instead and you've got something on which to wipe your arse.
 
Yah i think we can agree to disagree there, steptoe
,
Neither of us knows where it's going, really. Either way it's exciting times. Good luck to all planning on holding on through the turbulence and crashes
 
long before bitcoin, money, salt, gold and everything else, people exchanged like for like, bartering basically, you've got 2 butchered cows to get rid of (no freezers back then) and I've got loads of veg, someone else has tonnes of firewood, someone else has six live chickens, so you swapped your beef for what you required. Those who didn't have anything to barter offered services, a week's labour or something along those lines.
If you had gold, you didn't need anything else because you could use this to buy stuff, so currency was invented but there obviously wasn't enough gold to go around so coins were then made from cheaper metals, silver, then bronze, copper and now steel but as things started spiralling out of control, paper was brought in - totally worthless but people were told it was valuable and you could buy gold with it, it caught on.

Gold and bitcoin are very similar in that there is only a finite amount of both - paper can be printed millions of times every day and around the clock so it will never survive in the long (long!) run, because as it's inexhaustable in a way, it will eventually become useless because if you print enough of it, it must devalue.

Gold had a similar run that BC is having a few years ago when everyone on TV were begging for scrap gold as the price of it rocketed
 
if you are interested in cryptos have a look at some of the smaller value coins like IOTA and ripple.

both are intrinsically quicker to process and are being picked up by the large corporations and banks.

rumours are that the japanese banks wil shortly be trialling the ripple blockchain to process payments.

each is less than a dollar for a coin :grin:
 
Have a watch of Banking on Bitcoin, it shows you what a sham it is.

Also Deep Web explains all about the silk road scandal.

They are not the most exciting watch but they do explain a lot.

Both are on Netflix
 
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