What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Birdjaguar]

I sold most of my remaining bitcoin to a friend who's using it for online poker.

And how would you rate your bitcoin experience? Enriching? Worth the effort? Emotionally satisfying? Do you recommend it to others? What did you learn? If you had $2000 would you go back to crypto currencies, buy a fancy appliance/durable good or take a trip?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Dutch tulips were prettier.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I have some money on this. Experience changes depending on your attitude. If you pretend to make money in the short term trading and such your experience very probably will be very frustrating and you will lose money sooner or later. If you look at the long term and have some spare money which you can afford to lose, buy some coins hold them and forget about it. Nobody knows what will happen in a year or two, and who says so, is a fool or a liar.

 

[Narz]

And how would you rate your bitcoin experience? Enriching? Worth the effort? Emotionally satisfying? Do you recommend it to others? What did you learn? If you had $2000 would you go back to crypto currencies, buy a fancy appliance/durable good or take a trip?

I don't recommend it to others because I don't want to be responsible for something I can't predict.

If I hadn't have let myself scare so easily I would've made alot more money.

IME productive work is more satisfying than investing/speculating. Of course money for nothing also feels good.

 

[Narz]

All the coins are way down. I'm curious whether theyll ever recover. I'm not holding very many big coins anymore but still have alt coins, mostly ripple, which I lost a hefty chunk on but still holding.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Blockchain is probably here to stay, but the crypto coins as speculative investments are on the wain. Bitcoin may linger because one can actually buy stuff with it. I would suggest that you move all your coins to Bitcoin and than spend it on real things.

 

[innonimatu]

"Blockchain" is an old idea. It is actually how a whole class of ciphers has worked for decades. And the idea of "blockchain" had been used in software before that word was coined.

It is of limited use, because it incurs a cost. More than one actually: increased processing power and decreased flexibility. For those use cases where it was useful, it was already in use before bitcoin was a thing. The other use cases have been made up in an attempt to sell useless software. It went nowhere.

 

[Birdjaguar]

IPO vs ICO since Jan 2017
Initial Public versus Initial coin offerings

Initial here means the increase in price from the opening price to the close that day.

ICO: up 179%; but of the 4,003 ICO examined, over 50% had failed within 4 months. somebody took the the money and ran, I guess.
IPO: up 21%, but there return through the rest of the year was -7.4%. If you want to get rich by buying IPOs, choose carefully.

A better choice? Broad based indexes over time.

 

[Narz]

Everything spiking today

 

[odpadnik]

Everything spiking today

I know right Added another 200 EUR in BTC to my Kriptomat account today.

Woop woop

 

[Kaitzilla]

Do you guys feel stupid?

If one would've bought $1,000 in bitcoin when this thread was created they'd have over $20,000 now.

Yup!
I was making fun of it when it was $500 back in 2014.

This year it was $3500 in February, $12000 in July, and $8000 currently.
Saw a Bitcoin ATM yesterday at the gas station.
Shows what I know.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

3 years ago I had problems with registring to coinbase (they wouldn't accept my EU ID for some reason, I tried for days) which led to me not investing all of my savings (not a lot, like 3k or something) into bitcoin. **** you, coinbase. literally cost me tens of thousands of dollars in opportunity cost.

 

[Ferocitus]

Pffft, Bit Coin. Yawn-inspiring rubbish.

If you want an interesting detective doco about how fools are parted from their money, there's a series of BBC podcasts about One Coin.
People claiming to have PhDs from Oxford, Bulgarians everywhere, con-people spanning the globe - Scotland to Dubai and sadly, even as far as Australia!
After a few years touting the currency, the main character disappeared and hasn't been seen for 2 years. Or has she?

The Missing Cryptoqueen
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07nkd84/episodes/downloads

 

[MaryKB]

I'd never invest in any kind of cryptocurrency, it's all basically a ponzi scheme. There's nothing backing it up, its value is entirely artificial, and eventually when no one wants it anymore then whoever's holding some loses everything. Your only value is whatever the next person will pay you for what you have.

When you purchase stocks, you're buying ownership in a company.
When you purchase futures, you're buying ownership in a product.
When you trade foreign currencies, you're investing in a country that guarantees value for your money.
When you buy cryptocurrency, you get absolutely nothing: it's entirely virtual and speculative.

Yes, some people will get rich, but that's how ponzi schemes and pyramid plans work: you're only making money by convincing someone else to give you more money for nothing. Sure maybe you want to try gaming it, but you're taking a huge risk, and while maybe you'll get a short term profit that's something I'd never recommend.

 

[Farm Boy]

Ah, futures speculators. Fine individuals, those.

 

[rah]

I'd treat them like I do the crap table.
Only bring money to the table that you can afford to lose.
Realize that the longer you play, the more likely you'll bust.
Get out while you're up.
Enjoy the ride. If you don't, why are you doing it.

 

[Modder_Mode]

I'd never invest in any kind of cryptocurrency, it's all basically a ponzi scheme. There's nothing backing it up, its value is entirely artificial, and eventually when no one wants it anymore then whoever's holding some loses everything. Your only value is whatever the next person will pay you for what you have.

When you purchase stocks, you're buying ownership in a company.
When you purchase futures, you're buying ownership in a product.
When you trade foreign currencies, you're investing in a country that guarantees value for your money.
When you buy cryptocurrency, you get absolutely nothing: it's entirely virtual and speculative.

Yes, some people will get rich, but that's how ponzi schemes and pyramid plans work: you're only making money by convincing someone else to give you more money for nothing. Sure maybe you want to try gaming it, but you're taking a huge risk, and while maybe you'll get a short term profit that's something I'd never recommend.

Most of what you say is true, but cryptocurrency isn't a ponzi or pyramid scheme because it doesn't promise you anything in return which is the fundamental principle with ponzi and pyramid schemes.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Cryptos are for risk takers or those with money to burn. If you are lucky and smart, you can make money. Or lose it.

 

[Modder_Mode]

Cryptos are for risk takers or those with money to burn. If you are lucky and smart, you can make money. Or lose it.

Very true, the early adopters were the real winners and they were not necessarily acquiring Bitcoin for investment purposes, you hear of stories of people years ago having Bitcoin and buying a coffee or two with the Bitcoin as a bit of gimmick only for it to rise in price a couple years later to the point they could have bought a house with it.

It's wild swings in price can be predicted to some degree, to give you some idea, the Chinese president yesterday praised blockchain technology, he didn't even mention Bitcoin or cryptos but merely the technology behind it and the subsequent Bitcoin price rose some $3000 in a day, it's price fluctuations are insane.

 

[Zardnaar]

The problem is anyone can do it.

The entire concept is easily watered down.
At one point there were more virtual currencies than real currencies.

I wouldn't buy in now, the time for that was 5 years ago.