OT: Ray, how's your Bitcoin investment going?

[jlwdm]

Originally Posted by 54ny77

anything that goes from zero to an incredibly insane # over a pretty short timeframe, with nothing really to show for it other than people wanting to buy it, just smells of a giant game of musical chairs.

i read something the other day that if you invested $100 in bitcoin 5-6 years ago, it'd be worth $3 million today.

mind boggling.

governments could stop it in a stroke of a pen. that's a pretty big risk.

A real world example is the Winklevoss twins. They invested $11m in 2013 and have held it all. Now worth about $1.5b.

Jeff

[thegunner]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Agreed. I was just trying to expand on 54ny77's point about what governments could do with the stroke of a pen.

ah i wish i had enough coin to make future regulation a legitimate concern, i think for those folks, they're already cashing out just fine.

[efuentes]

Hopefully people will realize that ecoins are not an investment device but a value transfer scheme, that´s when will ecoins will start to become usefull.

[unterhausen]

I bet the guy that recycled the laptop with $7 million worth of BTC on it when it was $300 per is really kicking himself now. Threw away $50 million.

Actually, I'm thinking a lot of people mined a BTC or two and have never done anything with them are trying to figure out what hard drive they are on and what the password is.

[rallizes]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...hash-passwords

not a bad haul

$64 million stolen

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by unterhausen

I bet the guy that recycled the laptop with $7 million worth of BTC on it when it was $300 per is really kicking himself now. Threw away $50 million.

Actually, I'm thinking a lot of people mined a BTC or two and have never done anything with them are trying to figure out what hard drive they are on and what the password is.

You are a million on paper, but you still need to find a way to convert and withdraw into a fiat currency, or find someone who will swap a real world object for your bitcoin.

I think the cash is gone. Consumed by the electricity spent to generate the hash.

[MattTuck]

No idea if this is real, saw it on reddit a day or so ago. makes me chuckle.

[cinema]

Originally Posted by 54ny77

governments could stop it in a stroke of a pen. that's a pretty big risk.

that's when you buy more.

[cloudguy]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

I think the cash is gone. Consumed by the electricity spent to generate the hash.

So mining for Bitcoins is now effectively the same as mining for coal:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envir...gy-electricity

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by cloudguy

So mining for Bitcoins is now effectively the same as mining for coal:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envir...gy-electricity

If the costs become too high, hashers will stop hashing. If you are using a renewable source, or if co2 cost is internalized, it shouldn't matter anyway. There is plenty of electricity that could be going to better uses. Wonder how much is used to power video games and tv watching.

[martl]

Originally Posted by 54ny77

governments could stop it in a stroke of a pen. that's a pretty big risk.

I understand they tried very hard for a couple of years now.

There is much to be said for a non-government controlled alternative currency. Possibly a lot against it, as well.
As Mr. Karpeles of MtGox cheated me out of the 25 BC i once mined and which now easily would pay for the appartment i'm living in, i'm out of the game.

Bitcoin currently is and never was a real currency - its course was much too volatile. Care paying for a pizza the same amount of BC that could be worth a car (or F*all) a week from now? i don't.
It's a gamblers toy, and if you arrive to the game *now*, you gotte be really smart and fast to make any profit.

[54ny77]

i'm not referring to the concept of blockchain itself. i'm referring to the intermediary, the companies who are domiciled and reside here like coinbase, etc., and are the "banks" of the bitcoin.

with a stroke of a pen, they could be regulated into oblivion. or they say f.u. and are de facto forced offshore, and then what?

totally agree with what your'e saying. the idea of it as a currency has gone by way of the dodo bird and is now pure speculation. as if the local pizza joint on the corner will have real-time bitcoin pricing for a large with mushroom, artichoke hearts and olives...

nope!

Originally Posted by martl

I understand they tried very hard for a couple of years now.

There is much to be said for a non-government controlled alternative currency. Possibly a lot against it, as well.
As Mr. Karpeles of MtGox cheated me out of the 25 BC i once mined and which now easily would pay for the appartment i'm living in, i'm out of the game.

Bitcoin currently is and never was a real currency - its course was much too volatile. Care paying for a pizza the same amount of BC that could be worth a car (or F*all) a week from now? i don't.
It's a gamblers toy, and if you arrive to the game *now*, you gotte be really smart and fast to make any profit.

[Tony T]

Bitcoin Futures now trading.
Bitcoin now at $16,700

[coffeecake]

I sold what fraction of bitcoin I had this weekend. I did not have much skin in the game and the fact that the exchange I used, Coinbase, crashed every time traffic escalated spurred this decision.

All in all, my BTC increased in value by 30 times since I acquired it in 2013. But as martl put it so nicely, how can bitcoin be a viable currency when it fluctuates in value so much. (p.s. I have no idea what I'm talking about)

[MattTuck]

30 times isn't too shabby

I would not be surprised if we head down to $100 again in the near future.

I just heard from a guy who has made $1 million this year day trading these digital coins.... definitely reminiscent of the dotcom bubble.

I did some back of the envelope calculations just to sanity check what some people are saying. Some people are saying bitcoin could be like digital gold. Others are saying it could be a currency. Ok, there is about 1.89 trillion dollars of gold that has been mined to date. And about 69 trillion dollars worth of currency around the globe.

If you believe bitcoin will reach the levels of gold, you arrive at a price around 136,000 per btc, about 8x current price. If you believe it will disrupt and replace all currencies in the world, it could be 3.3 million per btc.

I think both of those are incredibly optimistic, but let's say you buy the gold argument. That means if you put $1,000 into bitcoin now, your best case upside is making 8 times your money... or $8,000. The days of people getting in with $1,000 and becoming millionaires are almost definitely over unless you believe the extreme story around global disruption and replacement of existing currencies.

You can only double something so many times before it can't grow anymore.

PS. that is great episode. In unrelated Seinfeld trivia, did you see the interview with Brian Cranston about playing Dr. Whatley, and making Jerry laugh?