Crypto-Currency

[ChristopherP]

Has anyone gotten involved in any crypto-currency lately? Found long lost Bitcoins on old hard drives? Mined any?

These virtual currencies seem to be the latest 'thing' since the Bitcoin bubble has grown beyond anyones expectations!

 

[nivrip]

The bubble will burst eventually.

 

[Ian]

I've not done any mining or own any - but quite a few of my friends have, and they seem to have done pretty well out of it (at least, if they cashed in).

I'm also of the opinion that this is a huuuuuuuuge bubble ("greater fool theory" and all that). Great for anyone that got in at the right time and cashes out, particularly the way things are at the moment. However, there are going to be a lot of burnt fingers.

I was at the pub on Weds night and everyone at our table had recently invested in crypto-currencies (most within the last week). All of them had made substantial profit gains (on a modest sum though). I think they all expected the bubble to burst, but found it a bit of fun.

Bitcoin has some great technology for currency of the future, but there are some huge problems with using it as an actual currency. The fact that people are investing in a currency that has no backing, just perceived value, rings alarm bells for me . I can't imagine it not crashing.

I'd be cashing out immediately if I owned any (but I said the same thing a year ago when it was worth much less, as I'm frequently reminded by my friends!).

 

[ChristopherP]

I've not done any mining or own any - but quite a few of my friends have, and they seem to have done pretty well out of it (at least, if they cashed in).

I'm also of the opinion that this is a huuuuuuuuge bubble ("greater fool theory" and all that). Great for anyone that got in at the right time and cashes out, particularly the way things are at the moment. However, there are going to be a lot of burnt fingers.

I was at the pub on Weds night and everyone at our table had recently invested in crypto-currencies (most within the last week). All of them had made substantial profit gains (on a modest sum though). I think they all expected the bubble to burst, but found it a bit of fun.

Bitcoin has some great technology for currency of the future, but there are some huge problems with using it as an actual currency. The fact that people are investing in a currency that has no backing, just perceived value, rings alarm bells for me . I can't imagine it not crashing.

I'd be cashing out immediately if I owned any (but I said the same thing a year ago when it was worth much less, as I'm frequently reminded by my friends!).

I can't get my head round Bit Coin. I think it's a bubble as it doesn't have any use other than people think it can replace cash. I (like your friends) invested a small amount for fun last week but not Bitcoin. I bought some XRP Ripple which has a use (and is being used) in the banking industry to facilitate international transfers, and IOTA which is a machine currency for the Internet of Things. Both, in my mind, have much more purpose.

I know a couple of people that found some Bitcoin on their old computers, they paid pence for them years ago and have cashed some in for very handsome sums of money. Very lucky - I don't think anyone would have foreseen what would happen with it.

My view is that Bitcoin will crash, but Crypto currency as a 'thing' is here to stay and will be used widely - even if not as a replacement for traditional currency.

I did look at mining Litecoin and Ethereum the other day, but I've read that it ramps up your energy usage by a huge degree as your PC works flat out all of the time and it's less lucrative now as it gets harder to mine coins.

 

[Ian]

I'm going to be fascinated to look back at all of this in 5 years (a relatively short period of time!), as who knows what cryptocurrency will look like then. It feels like the bitcoin bubble is about to burst at any moment, but I also thought it was impossible that Trump would ever be president - so maybe I should go all in and invest .

 

[nivrip]

I know the exact date when Bitcoin will collapse.

It will be the day after I buy into it.

 

[V_R]

I'm another one that can't get my head around Bitcoin. Its going to crash hard soon surely? In hindsight I' wish I'd have got in on it a few years ago, I'd be laughing now. But I think its a bit late to start investing now.

There are a few on Overclockers who have made a proper profit out of it, but they've been at it for years.

 

[nivrip]

Been trying to get my head around Bitcoin as it’s big news at the moment. Just read a piece in the paper where one “expert” says that we should all be buying into it and another “expert” says not to touch it with an extremely long bargepole.

Another article refers to the amount of energy used to “mine” bitcoins....................

“The energy-consumption is insane. If we start using this on a global scale, it will kill the planet,” says Alex de Vries, a PwC analyst and founder of the Digiconomist blog.
These miners are already thought to be consuming energy each day equal to the entire power use of Denmark. Much of this 'mining' takes place in China where electricity is effectively subsidized and relies heavily on coal - to the point where it is distorting the data used by economists to track underlying shifts in Chinese industrial output.


This is particularly hard to comprehend in that all this power is required to produce a virtual currency. Here’s a bit about Mining.....................

Mining

Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing power. Miners keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly verifying and collecting newly broadcast transactions into a new group of transactions called a block. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, using the SHA-256 hashing algorithm,:ch. 7 which links it to the previous block, thus giving the blockchain its name.
To be accepted by the rest of the network, a new block must contain a so-called proof-of-work. The proof-of-work requires miners to find a number called a nonce, such that when the block content is hashed along with the nonce, the result is numerically smaller than the network's difficulty target :ch. 8 This proof is easy for any node in the network to verify, but extremely time-consuming to generate, as for a secure cryptographic hash, miners must try many different nonce values (usually the sequence of tested values is 0, 1, 2, 3, ...:ch. 8) before meeting the difficulty target.
Every 2,016 blocks (approximately 14 days at roughly 10 min per block), the difficulty target is adjusted based on the network's recent performance, with the aim of keeping the average time between new blocks at ten minutes. In this way the system automatically adapts to the total amount of mining power on the network.:ch. 8
Between 1 March 2014 and 1 March 2015, the average number of nonces miners had to try before creating a new block increased from 16.4 quintillion to 200.5 quintillion.
The proof-of-work system, alongside the chaining of blocks, makes modifications of the blockchain extremely hard, as an attacker must modify all subsequent blocks in order for the modifications of one block to be accepted.[54] As new blocks are mined all the time, the difficulty of modifying a block increases as time passes and the number of subsequent blocks (also called confirmations of the given block) increases.


This is not easy to follow but will have your brain cells working overtime. The only "nonce" that I can recognise is me. It seems to be the admin side of it and an extremely expensive way of controlling things. It appears that there is a limit to the number of Bitcoins that can be produced, 21 million, and this number will be reached about the year 2140. Then, of course, there’s all this guff about having “wallets”, which seem to be physical entities, into which you put your virtual currency.

So, do we buy in or avoid? After all my, somewhat limited, research into the matter I have to say that I’ve no idea.

But it does look like a very poppable bubble developing.

Hope you understand it better than I do.

 

[V_R]

 

[Ian]

Fascinating video - thanks @V_R!

Amazing to think that they're churning out 25 Bitcoins per site (I think that was what he said it was now) - that would have been nothing just a few years ago. You'd have thought they could have bought a clean mattress for the "rest room" with that money .

It always amuses me how communist China can be such good capitalists .

 

[nivrip]

Is this the beginning?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42457983

 

[Ian]

Is this the beginning?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42457983

Ouch... I wonder what the next week will hold
Today's High
$15,830.36

Today's Low
$10,834.94

 

[nivrip]

Came across this whilst reading today.................................

A lot of monkeys lived near a village.

One day a merchant came to the village to buy these monkeys!

He announced that he will buy the monkeys @ $100 each.

The villagers thought that this man is mad.

They thought how can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?

Still, some people caught some monkeys and gave them to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey.

This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.

After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ 200 each.

The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!

They sold the remaining monkeys @ 200 each.

Then the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ 500 each!

The villagers start to lose sleep! ... They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left and got 500 each.

The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.

Then the merchant announced that he is going home for a week. And when he returns, he will buy monkeys @ 1000 each!

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he bought. He was alone taking care of all the monkeys in a cage.

The merchant went home.

The villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each.

Then the employee told them that he will sell some monkeys @ 700 each, but secretly.

This news spread like fire. Since the merchant buys monkeys @ 1000 each, there is a 300 profit for each monkey.

The next day, villagers made a queue near the monkey cage.

The employee sold all the monkeys at 700 each. The rich bought monkeys in big lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and also bought monkeys!


The villagers took care of their monkeys & waited for the merchant to return.

But nobody came! ... Then they ran to the employee...

But he had already left too !

The villagers then realised that they have bought the useless stray monkeys @ 700 each and unable to sell them!

The Bitcoin will be the next monkey business
It will make a lot of people bankrupt and a few people filthy rich in this monkey business.

That's how it will work.



Seemed very relevant to this thread and maybe that's how it will really work out.

Who knows?

 

[nivrip]

And this today too....................................

Very good.

 

[historian]

I thought a "nonce" was something or someone,rather nasty.Or am I wrong?

 

[nivrip]

I thought a "nonce" was something or someone,rather nasty.Or am I wrong?

Just looked it up in the dictionary and, yes, you're quite right.

I had mistakenly thought that it simply meant someone who was a bit dim. I really ought to rephrase that.

 

[ChristopherP]

I'm another one that can't get my head around Bitcoin. Its going to crash hard soon surely? In hindsight I' wish I'd have got in on it a few years ago, I'd be laughing now. But I think its a bit late to start investing now.

There are a few on Overclockers who have made a proper profit out of it, but they've been at it for years.

I can't get my head round it either. I bought some Ripple (it's purpose is to replace the SWIFT banking system) because it has a job, whereas Bitcoin seems to exist solely as a decentralised unregulated global currency

 

[TriplexDread]

I bought some about 8 years ago on a website. Only about £5 worth to enable me to purchase something else (they only accepted BC) I cannot for the sake of me remember which site I purchased it from now. It could be worth thousands at today's rates. #completely gutted :'(

 

[ChristopherP]

I bought some about 8 years ago on a website. Only about £5 worth to enable me to purchase something else (they only accepted BC) I cannot for the sake of me remember which site I purchased it from now. It could be worth thousands at today's rates. #completely gutted :'(

Yikes. CoinCorner? Binance? Do you have any emails floating around from back then, or your bank statement from the time that might show which exchange you used?

 

[Abarbarian]

I bought some about 8 years ago on a website. Only about £5 worth to enable me to purchase something else (they only accepted BC) I cannot for the sake of me remember which site I purchased it from now. It could be worth thousands at today's rates. #completely gutted :'(

If you bought £5's worth eight years ago you could be a multi millionaire. if only you could remember where they are