Cryptocurrencies

J

jc100

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Help me understand this topic. I have absolutely no clue why these things are currently worth this much. To me this seems like an elaborate scam attractive to the “money for nothing” crowd.
 
I don't understand it either, but I do understand what a speculative bubble is.

I understand the motivation for setting the "value" of things independently of the US dollar, which became magnified after the 2008 recession/depression, but a necessary trait of a viable currency is that the "value" of something has to be relatively stable, and it has become apparent that the way Bitcoin functions makes this impossible.

Rampant speculation has only one eventual outcome. Pain for everyone who doesn't get out soon enough.
 
I don’t understand the “worth” though. Computers solve problems and you are paid for this in cryptocurrency? I can’t seem to find out if these problems are actually assisting anything or whether it’s just a make-work issue. The more I read about it it the more it seems that the actual value is based upon whatever hype can be generated about the limited number of “coins” in circulation and therefore what the herd is prepared to pay. There’s no tangible value though, even gold has intrinsic properties that make it valuable for various uses such as materials, electronics etc. Things like bitcoin are virtual and have none of this utility.

To be totally cynical I can see how this is popular for a certain segment of the population that thinks being paid for having a computer solve worthless equations is a totally viable way to earn a living.
 
^^^

yes, did dome reading on mining
still sounds like a pile of crap to me

everything needs to have some connection to actual value
although paper currency has no mineral reserve connected to it any longer
it still is based on the economic strength of the bank issuing it

so the bitcoins have some cost to mine, infrastructure, energy
but it's all self-fulfilling BS I think ?
 
i can understand the need for getting away from the US dollar. That system is like a gaming table where the house gets a cut of every hand. Plus the USD is no longer backed by silver. The US motto is "In God We Trust" not In politicians we trust.

Gold is sketchy and hard to spend for little stuff and there are a lot of gold plated counterfeit bars being sold. Buying an ounce of gold costs a lot more than the listed value. Fees and account charges are ridiculous.

Where is a cryptocurrency any different than Monopoly money?

Then again what is the intrinsic value of anything?

Why were people paying $200 for a Kanye West white tee shirt?

Potash tanked when the cartel collapsed and diamonds could theoretically go the same way.

Explain this:

GBL, a Chinese bitcoin trading platform, suddenly shut down on October 26, 2013. Subscribers, unable to log in, lost up to $5 million worth of bitcoin.


"In February 2014, cryptocurrency made national headlines due to the world's largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, declaring bankruptcy. The company stated that it had lost nearly $473 million of their customer's bitcoins likely due to theft. This was equivalent to approximately 750,000 bitcoins, or about 7% of all the bitcoins in existence. Due to this crisis, among other news, the price of a bitcoin fell from a high of about $1,160 in December to under $400 in February."
 
My expectation, is that you're looking into it three years too late, but I could be wrong.

I would expect that it might be viable for money laundering, or tax evasion, if it's hard for the government to track.
 
Baggsy said:
My expectation, is that you're looking into it three years too late, but I could be wrong.

I would expect that it might be viable for money laundering, or tax evasion, if it's hard for the government to track.
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That's another thing. It's all trackable and not as anonymous as folks think.
 
been reading a few different threads and columns recently and seems a LOT of people are having trouble getting out of the crypto and cashing out. The exchanges are taking days (if not weeks) to respond, and are not accepting verifications of identification....some get completely shut out and their 'money' is gone. Also purchases of $20 have 10-20% transaction fees so and a long delay before payment and some stores have cancelled being paid in crypto.

A few guys posted on how they made an f-ton of money and now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon...won't be pretty for those that recently got in.
 
No matter how much I read about it, I just can't wrap my head around this cryptocurrency nonsense.

Can just anyone buy a blockchain mining machine, learn code and make millions? Where's all the cash go when you buy Bitcoin? Even people who are into it can't really explain it.

I've multiplied my money 10 times investing in marijuana stocks in what I think will be a stable emerging industry. That makes sense to me!
 
As far as I can tell, the only money that comes out is from money coming in from the next round of speculators. That's also called a Ponzi scheme. This may be the most elaborate one yet.
 
Brian P said:
As far as I can tell, the only money that comes out is from money coming in from the next round of speculators. That's also called a Ponzi scheme. This may be the most elaborate one yet.
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You said it Brian. The values are driven by FOMO (fear of missing out). People are only buying hoping that future suckers come in and boost the value with their demand. It's a bubble just waiting to burst - problem is no one knows when.
 
I’m not looking to get into this at all. I’m not touching it with a barge pole. Just trying to understand it.
 
jc100 said:
I’m not looking to get into this at all. I’m not touching it with a barge pole. Just trying to understand it.
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The fundamental concept seems interesting (tied to to the effort of a task that increases in difficulty over time as the currency valuation increases). It seems to be yet another shining example of what happens when gambling on the value of something vastly exceeds the supported value. It would be nice if we could separate gambling and the underlying commodities, but I don't know how to do that in reality.
 
GreyGhost said:
The fundamental concept seems interesting (tied to to the effort of a task that increases in difficulty over time as the currency valuation increases). It seems to be yet another shining example of what happens when gambling on the value of something vastly exceeds the supported value. It would be nice if we could separate gambling and the underlying commodities, but I don't know how to do that in reality.
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A totally meaningless task though as far as I can see. If the calculations were predicting new treatments for cancer based on the genome or something I could see a definite value in that but from what I see this looks like the ultimate millennial dream....make money from the pc you play your games on by essentially doing diddly squat yourself.
 
jc100 said:
A totally meaningless task though as far as I can see. If the calculations were predicting new treatments for cancer based on the genome or something I could see a definite value in that but from what I see this looks like the ultimate millennial dream....make money from the pc you play your games on by essentially doing diddly squat yourself.
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I think it was a meaningless task (although I haven't looked into the code, hopefully it wasn't a massive botnet trying to crack an encryption scheme). The outcome of the task wasn't important, it was that the task took a known (and ever increasing) amount of time to complete to provide a stable base. This slowly increases supply without meddling (eg. no single entity decides to issue extra currency while devaluing all existing currency).

The problem with many of these schemes is if someone finds a way to make a huge leap in computing speed, all existing miners become worthless and the "stable" base becomes unstable (eg. maybe a quantum computer can do the calculations 1000x faster).

It is an interesting social experiment, it's too bad that so many people are going to take a beating.
 
GreyGhost said:
I think it was a meaningless task (although I haven't looked into the code, hopefully it wasn't a massive botnet trying to crack an encryption scheme). The outcome of the task wasn't important, it was that the task took a known (and ever increasing) amount of time to complete to provide a stable base. This slowly increases supply without meddling (eg. no single entity decides to issue extra currency while devaluing all existing currency).

The problem with many of these schemes is if someone finds a way to make a huge leap in computing speed, all existing miners become worthless and the "stable" base becomes unstable (eg. maybe a quantum computer can do the calculations 1000x faster).

It is an interesting social experiment, it's too bad that so many people are going to take a beating.
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Theres a finite number of coins too though. Once all “mined” the miners have to move on to the next cryptocurrency. I’ve been reading a few threads where people have been spending tens of thousands of dollars on mining rigs. This “get rich quick” scheme is pulling in a bunch of suckers all the time and turning them into evangelical “coin salesmen”.
 
Iceman said:
Saw this on Kijiji today. Know very little about bitcoin etc, wouldn't touch it myself.


Please view this ad:

BitCoin Traders Required,
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-other-jobs/...aign=socialbuttonsVIP&utm_content=app_android



Download the application from the Google Play Store.
http://goo.gl/Hs9Yg

Sent from my SM-A500W using Tapatalk
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Hahaha. I like their quote marks. Probably because in a best case scenario you will have millions of "dollars" worth of something with no way to spend it or convert it to something you can spend.

Quote below:
Just one tiny investment – even one under $100 – could soon put you in a new class of “cryptocurrency millionaires.”
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