Bitcoin stock going crazy!

sickmint79

I Drink Your Milkshake
Mar 2, 2008
26,884
16,592
grayslake
the libertarian and computer nerd in me both find bitcoin a fascinating experiment, although it frustrates me that i have no real way of participating in it.

1. i don't want to buy drugs
2. i don't want to sell drugs, or anything else i could sell, it would be easier and i'd make more money selling anything in $
3. i don't want to mine, which seems too difficult to be profitable
4. buying and holding isn't an investment, it's speculation and treating this as a share in a ponzi scheme

#4 is, of course, working great for a ton of people right now.

but realistically i just can't see anything i can do right now, except joining #4.

the blockchain technology is actually really cool and there will be some interesting applications of it i think. btc itself, what is it going to do? is it going to stand up as some real alternate form of currency? is it going to be a black market drug one primarily? is it going to be the greatest bubble in something ever?
 

01GTvert

TCG Elite Member
Jan 30, 2006
1,755
2
do you mean the crypto currency? 1 BTC has been above $4,000 since early august, and speculated to go higher.

It broke $4800 before pulling back to 4788 as of 3:45am CT.

Lite coin is up 50% in 5 days and is a lot cheaper to buy than BTC....

do you mean the crypto currency? 1 BTC has been above $4,000 since early august, and speculated to go higher.


nah...he means the ETF the Winklevoss twins opened earlier in the year.
 

Mr_Roboto

Doing the jobs nobody wants to
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Feb 4, 2012
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Nashotah, Wisconsin (AKA not Illinois)
Accepting BTC was the hip thing to do for a period, a guy bought a Porsche a few years ago from a dealer that accepted it.

That said, it seems a lot like speculation to me at the moment. I wish I would have bought a few when Gox imploded at $250ish.

That said, I have also read that it's popular in some third world countries where getting credit cards are virtually impossible. It would make sense to bypass the banks if you can't get them to work with you.
 

sickmint79

I Drink Your Milkshake
Mar 2, 2008
26,884
16,592
grayslake
Accepting BTC was the hip thing to do for a period, a guy bought a Porsche a few years ago from a dealer that accepted it.

That said, it seems a lot like speculation to me at the moment. I wish I would have bought a few when Gox imploded at $250ish.

That said, I have also read that it's popular in some third world countries where getting credit cards are virtually impossible. It would make sense to bypass the banks if you can't get them to work with you.

https://coinjournal.net/alphabay-admin-8-million-bitcoin-altcoins-bragged-porsche-purchase/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjqzyqRz_Mc

this is a bit annoying to watch in that peter not only criticizes bitcoin but also stumps for a gold backed alternate currency (which is actual gold implemented with modern technology) - i think the latter clouds some of the valid critique he is making against bitcoin.

of course many people buying btc are not buying into it because they want an alternate currency but because they see it as an "investment" and are really just playing speculator. btc does have real appeal and use as an alternate currency though, and i think better adoption in part because it's easier to participate in. ie. if you are in venezuela, your currency is fucked, bitcoin is a decent alternative even for a poorer person than the goldmoney card peter notes, as you have to buy some gold and get that card from some US company etc etc - whereas btc you can just sign up for s crypto wallet. since energy is price controlled/subsidized you can even profitably mine there moreso than perhaps anywhere else. in the world.

i think peter's point is also good that maybe bitcoin is myspace, and the coin that will win is another one. although if you know some crypto/alt currency history, bitcoin is not the first in this space either.
 

sickmint79

I Drink Your Milkshake
Mar 2, 2008
26,884
16,592
grayslake
you could online but there are trust issues (i have been the victim of gold embezzlement, by the way) and currency control issues as well. bitcoin is great for that. it's great for black markets and circumventing governments.

although i have no need to do either myself. people in other countries certainly do. participation here is in black markets and irrational bubble exuberance. who knows what bitcoin's real value is, $10 or $10,000? i won't shed a tear for anyone who loses fake (bubble value high) or real (what they bought in) money if a massive speculative bubble collapses, i would feel bad for someone in say venezuela who tried to use it as a safe store of value and suffered from it not being the case. although it should be seen clearly as a risky place to try and use it for that.
 

sickmint79

I Drink Your Milkshake
Mar 2, 2008
26,884
16,592
grayslake
It's being manipulated by the mass buying/selling of shares.... Basically, corruption.

The people who are getting filthy rich off this should be under investigation. Unfortunately, nothing will happen.

volatility doesn't mean corruption. neither does it indicate any manipulation.

$795 now
wow
what makes a stock jump that much every few hours?

note bitcoin is not a stock at all, and GBTC is a "Bitcoin Investment Trust". if you invest in say, a gold trust, they may actually have x% physical gold, y% gold futures, z% other options, etc. and they will say how much of what they buy more of as well. GBTC has a huge premium vs. bitcoin now so it's possible bitcoin could even go up and GBTC could go down.

the plus of GBTC is my mom can go buy 50k of it in her trading account right now, but she couldn't figure out how to buy 50 cents of it and put it into her own bitcoin wallet by the end of the weekend.

GBTC Craters During The Bitcoin Price Spike
 

Kaeghl

TCG Elite Member
Nov 18, 2008
1,868
1,022
Aurora, IL
So do you mine then use coin base to sell?

coinbase makes it much easier to buy and sell 3 approved cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin.
Coinbase is your entry level exchange,
its sister site (same team owns both) GDAX is more for the professional trader.

I don't mine. When bitcoin went nuts in price I jumped onto the ethereum and litecoin wagons since their price for entry are so much lower. Ethereum also has a lot of backing companies, and actually is useful for something.
since June to this morning I am up 42.7426% on initial investment.
So, not a bad return.
 

sickmint79

I Drink Your Milkshake
Mar 2, 2008
26,884
16,592
grayslake
If the pc was small enough I would bring it to work haha

I want to try it out and see what all the hype is about. Just not sure where to start

because of the mining difficulty you probably need a decent rig. or i suppose you could get away with something like an fpga or asic miner, not sure of the cost. if you can get not you to pay for the electricity, then it can work out.

the hype is mostly about people in a bubble who don't understand what they are buying but think it is magic internet money that can only go up. however there is also a reality of the currency having real use and real value. is the value today 10% real and 90% speculative? will the real value in 5 years be 110% of the current real value today? who knows.

the real value is in
1. commerce, today mostly on black markets
2. circumventing government price controls
3. circumventing mismanaged government currency

there there is speculative value in
4. additional real value of the currency in the future
5. irrational exuberance and bubble thinking

your average person in the US blabbing about it appears to be #5, a pure and simple currency speculator, and one participating in it essentially as a ponzi scheme.

you can see other new alternative currencies being made, which have
a.) have some improvement or benefit vs. bitcoin,
b.) are just seen/used as a new ponzi pyramid, or
c.) both

some of the alternate coins you may or may not be able to mine more profitably. your ideal mining scenario is that it doesn't take you too much time or gear, and someone else pays for the electricity.

if you want some, you can participate in commerce and buy/sell things in bitcoin, in which case you are contributing to real organic value and currency use and adoption. or you can just buy and hold some, hoping it goes up, at which point you are just a currency speculator. if the value is set mostly by speculators, that means you are hoping the next speculator pays even more than you, which is why it behaves and is referred to at times as less of a currency and more of a ponzi scheme.

thus far speculators, particularly early ones (just as in a ponzi) have been overall rewarded pretty well. bitcoin could go to $10,000 or $10 tomorrow, or in 10 years. it could be adopted in real use as an alternate parallel currency, or it could just be used and abused to the point of being a ponzi lottery. who knows?
 

Outlaw

TCG Elite Member
TCG Premium
Jul 24, 2009
19,609
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Johnsburg
Unless it was posted elsewhere, I'm surprised this wasn't bumped...

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-c...-trading-sparking-further-slide-idUKKCN1BP1J8

BEIJING/SHANGHAI/LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese bitcoin exchange BTCChina said on Thursday that it would stop all trading from Sept. 30, setting off a further slide in the value of the cryptocurrency that left it over 30 percent away from the record highs it hit earlier in the month.

China has boomed as a cryptocurrency trading location in recent years, as investors and speculators flocked to domestic exchanges that formerly allowed users to conduct trades for free, boosting demand.

But that has prompted regulators in the country to crack down on the cryptocurrency sector, in a bid to stamp out potential financial risks as consumers pile into a highly risky and speculative market that has seen unprecedented growth this year.

Just hours after BTCChina announced its closure, Chinese news outlet Yicai reported that the country plans to shut down all bitcoin exchanges by the end of September, citing financial sources in Shanghai.

BTCChina said its decision was based on a Sept. 4 directive from Chinese authorities that expressed concern over investment risks involved in cryptocurrencies and ordered a ban on so-called initial coin offerings, or ICOs - the practice of creating and selling digital currencies or tokens to investors to finance start-up projects.

That ban, as well as warnings by regulators in other countries, has driven fears of a wider crackdown and prompted a sell-off that has helped wipe almost $60 billion off the total value of cryptocurrencies since they hit record highs at the start of the month, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.
Related Coverage

China to close all bitcoin exchanges by end-September: Yicai

“The Chinese ban is causing a panic in the market as mixed messages and lack of clarity has turned sentiment negative,” said Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis site Cryptocompare.

BTCChina, one of China’s largest bitcoin trading platforms, which also runs an international exchange out of Hong Kong, will stop registration of new users from Thursday, it said on its official microblog.

“We will stop all trades on the digital trading platform starting Sept. 30,” it said. Its co-founder, Bobby Lee, told Reuters the move would not affect trading on the BTCC international exchange, however.

The price of bitcoin tumbled particularly sharply on BTCChina after the news. By 1233 GMT, it was down 18 percent on the exchange, at 20,510 yuan.

On U.S. exchange Bitstamp, it slid as much as 10 percent to a five-week low of $3,426.92, having hit a record high of nearly $5,000 on Sept. 2.
PANIC SPREADS

Panic also spread to other cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin’s main rival ether - sometimes called ethereum - also down around 10 percent, according to Coinmarketcap.

Reuters and other media had reported this week, citing sources, that China planned to further ban exchanges that allowed virtual currency trading but the regulator has yet to make an announcement.

Spokeswomen for OkCoin and Huobi, BTCChina’s main rivals in China, declined to say whether they would announce similar moves. Huobi said it had not received any clear directives from regulators to do so.
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Investors in China contributed up to 2.6 billion yuan, or $397 million, worth of cryptocurrencies through initial coin offerings in January-June, state-run media have said, citing data from the National Committee of Experts on Internet Financial Security Technology.

Adding to bitcoin’s woes this week was a warning by Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, that the cryptocurrency was a “fraud” and was set to “blow up” - comments that helped fuel a slide of as much as 11 percent in bitcoin on Wednesday.

Bitcoin is on track for its worst month since January 2015.

Reporting by Brenda Goh, Beijing Monitoring Desk and Jemima Kelly; Editing byLarry King
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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#Technology News
September 14, 2017 / 10:20 AM / Updated 3 hours ago
China to close all bitcoin exchanges by end-September: Yicai

Reuters Staff

1 Min Read

LONDON (Reuters) - China plans to shut the country’s bitcoin exchanges by the end of September, Chinese financial news outlet Yicai said on Thursday, citing sources.

“It has been set for the end of September, the order has come from above,” Yicai said, citing Shanghai financial sources, adding that the exchanges will be ordered to leave the market.

Earlier, BTCChina, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said it would stop all trading from Sept. 30. It said its decision was based on a Sept. 4 directive from Chinese authorities that expressed concern over investment risks involved in cryptocurrencies.
 
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