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

[Burning Pines]

Originally Posted by yinzerniner

Went to a party at his 4 floor rooftop penthouse a few years ago, where the average height and age of the female guests was 5'-10" and 24, respectively

Wow sounds like a great guy

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by Burning Pines

Wow sounds like a great guy

Dr. Doom is a pretty funny guy, but I do feel like he has milked the 2008 Dr. Doom claim to fame for too long. It reminds me of Elaine Gazarelli and claiming to call the crash in 1987.

However, that does not mean he is wrong on crypto.

I can see the value of a central blockchain for your digital life where if anyone wanted to access your data, you'd have to grant them permission. . . But that doesn't need to be privately controlled with the ponzi of mining. Estonia has already implemented some of this in e-Estonia. They have experimented with blockchain, but found it cheaper and easier to just use standard databases.

[cash05458]

Hey Admins...seriously? a 28 page ongoing thread thing going on forever about how folks have some problem with a member and then mention a few things about currency? Having fun? Just fantastic....let it go already! The things that get shut down jack fast and this? Come on...

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by cash05458

Hey Admins...seriously? a 28 page ongoing thread thing going on forever about how folks have some problem with a member and then mention a few things about currency? Having fun? Just fantastic....let it go already! The things that get shut down jack fast and this? Come on...

Actually, its a humorous thread on the insanity of markets. Remember the context, when this thread was started, bitcoin was $90. Today, it is at $6220. So yeah, that investment is working out pretty well. . .

Now for the poor buggers who paid $19,511 on 12/18/17, yeah it's not so great.

Who knows in 2023, maybe it is at zero, maybe it is at $429,000.

and I still think tulips smell nice.

[cash05458]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

Actually, its a humorous thread on the insanity of markets. Remember the context, when this thread was started, bitcoin was $90. Today, it is at $6220. So yeah, that investment is working out pretty well. . .

Now for the poor buggers who paid $19,511 on 12/18/17, yeah it's not so great.

Who knows in 2023, maybe it is at zero, maybe it is at $429,000.

and I still think tulips smell nice.

ok and I do get you...also tho if you go thru the thread there are lots of folks talking about Ray and giving quotes, giving old links from him and implying he is some sorta nut that have nothing to do with finances...my point is this: threads are shut down fast if it looks at all dangerous and this one just seems to go on and on...I know Ray and he is a good guy...maybe folks here decided they didnt like him...I have no idea...but it surprises me via the usual standard of being kind to one another...do yourself a favor and try to post something about politics and folks start arguing...it will be shut down faster than anything...so this one seems particularly mean to me. But what do I know as I am not really one of the guys.

[verticaldoug]

Cash I hear what you are saying and don't disagree. This thread is quite old and somehow survives. I think it is a good thread. After Sandy Hook which was close to home to a lot of people on this thread, Guns became taboo. 2016, when you know who must not be named was elected, politics became too heated. If you need a fix of crazy like I do from time to time, just go to REDDIT.
I hope we can keep old threads like this going, it's humbling to see how hard it is to forecast the future.

D

[Scuzzer]

How about a practical use for this thread. A few years ago I cashed out a position in bodog/bovada that resulted in me having around bitcoin or so.
It used to be worth around $20,000 but now it's worth about 7 grand. I always set my limit at buying a new bike if I got under 200 lbs, I'm a huge guy, offensive lineman type guy that currently sits at arounds 230 lbs.

I'm getting old, not sure if I'll ever hit below 200 lbs until they incinerate my body after death. As a 53 year old man can I expect, or hope, my current bitcoin position will improve or should I just take the profits as a stupidly light bike?

One extra piece of info: I've got non excercise related atrial fib. Waiting for it to get bad enough to do an ablation.

Last thought, how can NJ get 180 million dollars of sports gambling last month but somehow I can't play poker at home. Discuss.

[Tony T]

One week and one year charts:

[unterhausen]

I feel like the problems plaguing bitcoin are structural. As time goes on, you are going to see more and more people being wiped out due to theft. And the energy use is ridiculous. The time it takes to actually conduct a transaction is getting longer and longer. I can't see any reason to hold onto it at this point.

[Tony T]

.

[Tony T]

NYT: Remember Bitcoin? Some Investors Might Want to Forget
Dec. 27, 2018

For a few sweet months of 2018, all of Silicon Valley was wrapped up in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and a related technology called the blockchain. Not anymore.Ints Kalnins/Reuters


For a few sweet months of 2018, all of Silicon Valley was wrapped up in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and a related technology called the blockchain. Not anymore.Ints Kalnins/Reuters
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Last year around this time, a toy called a cryptokitty sold for $170,000. A real estate agent remade himself as CoinDaddy, producing cryptocurrency-themed music videos. The man behind a company called Ripple became for a moment richer than Mark Zuckerberg. Kids barely out of high school were buying Lamborghinis because of a crypto meme. Experts went on CNBC to say Bitcoin was going to reach $100,000 per coin.

For a few sweet months of 2018, all of Silicon Valley was wrapped up in frenzied easy money and a fantasy of remaking the world order with cryptocurrencies and a related technology called the blockchain. A flood of joy hit the Bay Area. The New York Times ran with the trend in an article with the headline “Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not.” It was temporarily true.

And just as the American public had been given every possible blockchain explainer that could be written, the whole thing collapsed. The bubble popped.

Today the price of Bitcoin — $19,783 last December — is $3,810. Litecoin was $366 a coin; it’s now $30. Ethereum was $1,400 in January; today it’s $130.

One recent crypto holiday party offered “broken Lambo dreams and an open bar to drown your sorrows in.”

This December closes out cryptocurrency’s most exciting year, ending in a terrible, sober headache of a winter.

At the meetups and the work spaces that remain, those who have stayed are calling this “the winter of crypto.” Believers say this is only “the trough of disillusionment,” pointing to a chart that posits all new technology goes through a similar trough before exploding into inevitable glory.

Those still chipping away at crypto dreams insist that this is all a good thing because only the serious ones, the true crypto believers, remain.

“It’s painful to lose money, but it’s a necessary step,” said Robert Neivert, an investor with the venture capital firm 500 Startups. “2018 was about moving from hype to product.”

The computing power needed to “mine” a Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency is now sometimes costing more than that coin is worth. This container at the Coin Mint facility holds 672 miners.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times


The computing power needed to “mine” a Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency is now sometimes costing more than that coin is worth. This container at the Coin Mint facility holds 672 miners.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
This year, the blockchain industry — a subset of the cryptocurrency industry that would very much like to live on its own — went through a Cambrian explosion. But first, an explanation of the blockchain: A blockchain is a relatively new kind of database that was initially introduced with Bitcoin. It is not the digital currency. It is the underlying technology that helps manage the currency. Most important, it is decentralized so no one person, government or business controls it.

Blockchain became a solution for everything — blockchain for journalism, for pot, for dentists. At the kernel of it all was real technological progress and a growing understanding that this decentralized technology could transform financial systems. But the excitement spun out of control.

Even adding the word “blockchain” made stock soar. When Long Island Iced Tea Company changed its name to Long Blockchain Company, its stock went up 500 percent in a day. Scammers flooded the space, launching dubious new investment schemes called “initial coin offerings.”

The computing power needed to “mine” a Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency is now sometimes costing more than that coin is worth. Mines — actually, they are electricity-needy data centers — are shutting down. Images of electronics piled up on street corners are going viral. As demand for Bitcoin has dwindled, Bitcoin’s algorithm has adjusted and the coin has become easier to mine.

But this is actually good, crypto experts argue.

“The fact that miners are shutting down and difficulty is decreasing is a feature, not a bug, of bitcoin’s design,” the venture capitalist Arianna Simpson wrote on Twitter.

Some in the cryptocurrency business would just like the world to know that there are still people working on it. Julian Spediacci, a cryptocurrency investor in San Francisco with his twin brother, James, said he would like people to know that he is still alive and identifies as a HODLer, or someone who is not selling despite market fluctuations.

“A lot of people are reaching out, and they want to find out what happened to us, and if we’re still alive, so it’d be great to clarify that there are a lot of OG HODLers,” Mr. Spediacci said, using language common in the crypto industry to indicate he would remain an investor.

“I think we’re nearing a bottom,” his brother said.

Some of the friends they made have left town. The meetups are quieter. The most recent video from the community’s primary musical voice, CoinDaddy, né Arya Bahmanyar, is set to the tune of Beatles hit “Yesterday.”

But the Spediacci brothers continue. They say they are starting a new hedge fund. And that weekend there would be a holiday party at a new blockchain incubator, Starfish, run by Alicia Ferratusco. An incubator is a space where a group of start-ups work together, in this case working on blockchain technology.

“It’s called Starfish because when you cut off the leg of the starfish, it can grow back,” Julian Spediacci said.

Not everyone is struggling in the downturn. For lawyers, it is a new gold rush.

“Now that the market dropped, everyone is getting sued,” said Chante Eliaszadeh, a law student and the president of a blockchain law club called Blockchain at Berkeley Law.

In headier times, a Bitcoin sign was seen in a window in Toronto.Mark Blinch/Reuters

In headier times, a Bitcoin sign was seen in a window in Toronto.Mark Blinch/Reuters
She said the legal scene is pretty exciting right now. As the Securities and Exchange Commission cracks down, some scammers are trying to escape to Bali or Malta, where regulations are more lax.

At one holiday party in Palo Alto this year, the theme was “real.”

Organizers had pasted the motto — “Real People, Real Money, Real Deals” — on the walls, on boards, on slide shows and handouts.

Moderating a panel was Radhika Iyengar-Emens, a founding partner at a venture firm that specializes in cryptocurrency and blockchain start-ups called StarChain Ventures.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of real use cases,” Ms. Iyengar-Emens said. “And these guys will be here for those very real use cases.”

A use case would be a regular consumer’s being able to use a cryptocurrency to do something other than make a speculative investment.

The audience sat in folding white chairs. The snacks were Ritz Bits.

“What is QuarkChain?” QuarkChain’s founder and chief executive, Qi Zhou, asked the audience. “Next generation blockchain.”

Kerry Washington, a member of the Litecoin Foundation, which promotes Litecoins, gave a presentation about the year, in which the coin lost more than 90 percent of its value.

He talked about a big Litecoin summit this year, which on one slide he specified cost a quarter-million dollars. There, guests could buy candy with Litecoins. This showed everyone how useful Litecoin could be, he said.

The trouble was always that we already have something that lets us buy candy.

An ad played for something called Bitrue, a wallet. It was just a half-dozen people looking straight at the camera saying: “I trust Bitrue.”

And then Curtis Wang, the chief executive of Bitrue, stood up to announce a very special offer. He could promise investors a 10 percent annual percentage yield. There was scattered applause in the crowd.

Someone in the audience raised a hand and asked whether that was even legal to offer.

[rallizes]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-gerald-cotten


interesting

About $190m in cryptocurrency has been locked away in a online black hole after the founder of a currency exchange died, apparently taking his encrypted access to their money with him.

[likebikes]

does anyone here actually own any crypto?

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by likebikes

does anyone here actually own any crypto?

Yes, I bought 0.12 bitcoin in August of 2017 for $341. It was worth more than 2K at one point. Alas, I flew to close to the sun and was blinded... it is worth $410 now, so I am still above water, I guess.

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by rallizes

About $190m in cryptocurrency has been locked away in a online black hole after the founder of a currency exchange died, apparently taking his encrypted access to their money with him.

I saw that and this sort of thing has always been my problem with crypto. It's not safe if you can recover the key, and it's not safe if you can't recover the key. I wouldn't mind if my liquid assets were better protected, but it doesn't seem like this is the way to do it without a lot more thought than has been given so far. There have been big robberies of BtC too. Not to mention the guy that threw away his laptop that had $7 million on the hard drive. Probably worth $70million now, and forget about what it was worth at the peak. Wonder how many times that has been repeated over the years.

I keep forgetting to ask my son how his brightcoin investment is going. He bought when it was still going up, and pulled out his initial investment after it had gone up some, so I'm sure he's above water.