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

[54ny77]

that is bonkers. from under 100 bucks to 50+ grand?

Originally Posted by redir

That's just incredible... Oh and... Damn it!

[BobbyJones]

Originally Posted by 54ny77

that is bonkers. from under 100 bucks to 50+ grand?

Go all the way back to 2011 then see how bonkers it is.

Not to distract from the original conversation, but there are alot of crypto and related blockchain technology platforms that currently trade for pennies that may / maynot survive and prosper in the long haul... like 10-20 years.

Something I became interested a couple of years ago that has nothing to do with bitcoin was trading at .05 - .14 when it caught my eye.... recently popped at $4 but has since settled a little bit. Those are astronomical percentages.

This isn't investment advice, but if you've got a few hundred bucks to spend, do some poking around. These types of things may be worth the gamble instead of going to the casino (or buying that new set of wheels!)

[C40_guy]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

55,450

How long before it hits 100,000? It was at 29,761 on Jan. 27.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/19/bitc...continues.html

Sometimes its better to bet on the arms suppliers s than on the combatants. Why buy AAPL when you can buy into AAPL suppliers?

I put some money into BLOK recently, along with a handful of SPACs (over the past 6 months). But that's a different thread.

[Tony T]

I would have liked to have tried “mining” when Bitcoin first started.
(...but then I probably would have used the coins to buy pizza )

[ceya]

Originally Posted by redir

Coins. I don't have much interest in bars.

It drop twice for gold to mid 1750s , last week ended around 1780s .

Buy for fractions also . This is the last year of the old eagle reverse. They have a new one .

Silver also is going well.

[Tony T]

58,000
.
57,000
.
56,000
.
55,000
.
54,000
.
53,000
.
52,000
...
47,000
.
46,000
.
45,000
...
50,000
...
46,000
...
44,000
.
43,000
...
52,000
.

[fiamme red]

So it's not going to be a straightforward march to 100,000.

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by Tony T

I would have liked to have tried “mining” when Bitcoin first started.
(...but then I probably would have used the coins to buy pizza )

Tony, I can't remember if I told this story already in this thread. About 10 years ago, I was turned on to bitcoin by a libertarian friend of mine. He had been a Ron Paul disciple and really thought the federal reserve was an existential threat. Anyway, the libertarians were some of the first to see the value of bitcoin in that it wasn't controlled by a government and had supply constraint built in from the start -- unlike fiat money.

Anyway, he was mining it as part of a mining pool and was getting a decent return vs. the electricity he was paying for. For those not aware, a mining pool is a group of people doing the hashing on their computers for the next block. If one of them solves the next block, the pool is awarded the bitcoins for their work, and they are distributed amongst the pool based on the hashing power each member supplied. This diversifies the risk of trying to mine a block yourself, which would be extremely unlikely. Anyway, he told me about it and I thought it was interesting but still considered it a little too experimental to throw real money at.

I figured I'd try to mine some on my laptop, just to learn more about it. Well, I downloaded the bitcoin program and tried to install it, and had some issues doing it on Windows. At the time, 1 bitcoin was a little less than a dollar, if I remember correctly (maybe even less when he first told me about it), and the chance of me actually solving a block was very very low, and so I didn't have a lot of motivation to solve the technical challenge of getting it up and running on a consumer grade HP Laptop running Windows. Even then, people were using powerful GPUs to do the mining. Got distracted by other real world stuff, and never really pursued it.

There were a few places you could buy bitcoin at the time (like Mt. Gox), but they were.... pretty shady, atleast compared to etrade or another stock broker. I am sure I could have asked my friend and he would have sold me some, but I didn't, because I still thought it was a little too experimental. I could have put $1,000 into it and had $50M today.

It is pretty easy to look back and second guess yourself on what you should have done, once you know the outcome. So, I'd suggest to everyone reading this thread ask themselves this question. "In 10 years, will I be telling a story about how a guy on a bike forum was telling me about bitcoin when it was only $50,000 and I considered it to be too experimental?"

[Ozz]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

T....
It is pretty easy to look back and second guess yourself on what you should have done, once you know the outcome. So, I'd suggest to everyone reading this thread ask themselves this question. "In 10 years, will I be telling a story about how a guy on a bike forum was telling me about bitcoin when it was only $50,000 and I considered it to be too experimental?"

Or, it could be worth $1 and you can be comforted that you made the right choice to stay out....

For me, the nefarious nature of the use of Bitcoin is what keeps me away. Until the anonymity is removed, it will be used by drug dealers, human trafficking, arms dealers, etc.....IMHO, investing in Bitcoin condones those activities.

I am not that good at compartmentalizing.

That said, the block-chain technology is cool and has applications beyond cryptocurrency...

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by Ozz

Or, it could be worth $1 and you can be comforted that you made the right choice to stay out....

For me, the nefarious nature of the use of Bitcoin is what keeps me away. Until the anonymity is removed, it will be used by drug dealers, human trafficking, arms dealers, etc.....IMHO, investing in Bitcoin condones those activities.

I am not that good at compartmentalizing.

That said, the block-chain technology is cool and has applications beyond cryptocurrency...

If illicit activities on the platform bother you (I think it is still estimated to be very small, but is a common bogeyman that fiat proponents throw at bitcoin), I buy that as your own tastes/preferences for risk. To say that using a system condones illicit activities that also take place on that system is a logical leap too far for me. Credit cards and cash and traditional banks are still used for the bulk of illicit activities. Unless you're arguing that using cash or using a credit card is also condoning illicit activity?

[Ozz]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

If illicit activities on the platform bother you (I think it is still estimated to be very small, but is a common bogeyman that fiat proponents throw at bitcoin), I buy that as your own tastes/preferences for risk. To say that using a system condones illicit activities that also take place on that system is a logical leap too far for me. Credit cards and cash and traditional banks are still used for the bulk of illicit activities. Unless you're arguing that using cash or using a credit card is also condoning illicit activity?

Other than cash (which is heavy, dirty, and can be destroyed) all other payment forms are not anonymous, unless you are bribing bankers and lawyers to setup phony/deceptive accounts. Which does happen.

U.S. Treasury has a whole department devoted to this stuff: FINCEN

Crypto just makes their job harder.....

[jkbrwn]

Originally Posted by Ozz

For me, the nefarious nature of the use of Bitcoin is what keeps me away. Until the anonymity is removed, it will be used by drug dealers, human trafficking, arms dealers, etc.....IMHO, investing in Bitcoin condones those activities.

That said, the block-chain technology is cool and has applications beyond cryptocurrency...

It also condones destroying the planet.

However, I agree that block-chain is cool. I once answered a survey for a university student at London's College of Fashion on how block-chain could be used as a means to avoid imitation garment production. It was interesting stuff.

[Ozz]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

It also condones destroying the planet....

Well, there is that too.

[BobbyJones]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

It is pretty easy to look back and second guess yourself on what you should have done, once you know the outcome. So, I'd suggest to everyone reading this thread ask themselves this question. "In 10 years, will I be telling a story about how a guy on a bike forum was telling me about bitcoin when it was only $50,000 and I considered it to be too experimental?"

Because 50k is a big gamble for a lot of people.... 1k, not so much.

See my post #557 above....

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by BobbyJones

Because 50k is a big gamble for a lot of people.... 1k, not so much.

See my post #557 above....

Oh, this is a good point that should be clear to people, but may not be obvious if you're just casually following things. When they say that 1 bitcoin is $50,000, that is a bit arbitrary. There are a certain amount of bitcoins out there, the maximum ever created will be 21,000,000.

To put that in perspective, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet's company) has about 1.5 million class A shares outstanding, each worth approximately $385,000. Apple has 16.9 Billion shares outstanding. So, the value of a share (likewise the value of a bitcoin) is just a function of how many there are. so, the price of a share is a bit arbitrary.

Now, bitcoins are divisible to 8 decimal points. So, even though a "bitcoin" is worth $50,000, you don't need to have $50,000 cash to invest in bitcoin. You could invest $50 and get 1/1000th of a bitcoin. That is still $50 allocated to this asset class. Likewise, instead of buying one of Berkshire Hathaway's class shares, you could buy one of their class B shares, which have many more shares outstanding (2.23 billion shares outstanding) to own a piece of Berkshire Hathaway.

So, let's say you had a portfolio of $60K, and wanted to allocate 1% of it to cryptocurrencies. You could easily go on CoinBase and buy $600 worth of bitcoin.

Hope that is helpful.