Is anyone else starting to become a bit worried? mod note in first post

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

I'll gladly share my prediction for a 50% stake in the profits. There's no way I'm parting with my TA data and equation though. It's a complex mixture of game theory, bayesian analysis, sentiment analysis, machine learning, and a good old-fashioned nose for making money. It's too valuable just to share with some random punter on the internet. I've proven its effectiveness two months in a row.

@LoLth Apologies for the advertising, I may contact boards HQ about becoming a verified rep. I've already had a number of queries from people wanting to purchase the next PPL forecast. May need my own Talk To forum at this rate.

Is it just Bitcoin you’re studying, Paddy, or are you looking at other coins? Any dark horse there that you think might moon?

ZeroThreat wrote: »

I asked earlier did he manage to predict the bullrun in Dec/Jan, didn't get a response yet though.

I can't speak for the man himself, but it's as obvious as the nose on your face that much of the bull market in the 2nd half of 2017 was as a result of Tether. Jesus, you could buy bitcoins using fake money and up the price, while others were getting out their credit card and lumping real money into Coinbase. That's not cool at all.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/tether-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-cryptocurrency-worrying-markets.html

Look at this graph.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1250/1*KuVnYeCueMSw7vJRboYAog.png

The name of Philip G. Potter will become utterly infamous in crypto circles. And I'd also suggest looking at how Binance uses Tether. I might be proven wrong, but I'll eat a fedora if Binance starts accepting FIAT currency. This is fraud on a pretty epic scale.

I've no skin in the game. I won't ever be buying crypto. I've nothing against people who have money out there in the ecosystem, but I'm allowed say why I think this is a bad idea. If ye all end up millionaires as a result then more power to you. If you've already cashed out and taken profits, then bless your brass balls. If you're hodling in the expectation that we are only getting started in this space (or chasing investments during December's ATH), then I fear for you. Here's some of my reasons for being pessimistic:

1) Energy usage. Extraordinary amount of power being used to validate transactions. Bitcoin alone uses more power than the entire energy consumption of Ireland and Denmark put together. Both countries with enormous cloud computing data centers. Really, for what? Speculation, store of value, as a currency? None of them make sense.

2) Tether. I keep going on about this, but it simply cannot be ignored. There's 2.2 billion fake dollars floating around between Bitfinex, Binance, and a few others. This is being used daily to keep the price of Bitcoin at a certain price. Even today the daily trading volume of it is 3.9 billion. Every tether has been traded almost two times. TLDR: that's fake money being used to buy bitcoins, so they can be sold off on FIAT exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken. There's absolutely no new real money entering the space at all. I'd really recommend DYOR on this.

Here is the graph showing tether being printed:



Here is the corresponding price of Bitcoin:



3) Regulation. There's going to be a crackdown on the entire space by US Government. Most of these ICO's are securities. Which means they will be subject to the same scrutiny as any other financial instrument.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/ethereum-falls-on-report-second-biggest-cryptocurrency-is-under-regulatory-scrutiny.html

4) Scams. The entire space is becoming overwhelmed with exit scams. Litecoin is still the most glaring for me. Tron is a massive shítcoin, but mooning on the idea of them launching their mainnet. Look at DAO, Verge, Walton etc. There's nothing there only marketing, badly written whitepapers, spurious linkedin profiles, and the idea that someone will buy those coins for more than you paid (real money) for.

5) Technology. Blockchain just isn't a very good idea. This article sums it up far better than I ever could: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

1) Energy usage.

2) Tether.

3) Regulation.

4) Scams.

5) Technology.

1. Agreed! Some will counter that the banking industry as it stands uses more but I don't think two wrongs make a right and that crypto devs should hold themselves to a higher standard than banks.
This is, unfortunately, one of those cases where security trumps speedy progress. You seem to think it's as easy as a flick of a switch, just change the consensus algo and see what happens?
Anyway, you know who else agrees with you that PoW is terrible for the environment and must be replaced? Vitalik!
Note the date. 2.5 years and PoS still not implemented. That's not due to laziness, it's due to the difficulty of the task and the myriad possibilities which have to be kept in mind before prematurely ejaculating bad code into the protocol.

2. Agreed! Hopefully DAI kills this.

3. Agreed? This isn't a problem for users really, more of a slight barrier to entry for ICO devs. Still much cheaper than an IPO by orders of magnitude so this isn't really a problem in my eyes. If it cuts down on scams then all the better!

4. Agreed on most points - shítcoins be shítcoining. Not sure why the DAO is on your list as a scam? It was a poorly tested contract, not a scam.

5. Vehemently disagree! Finally, something we can truly disagree upon.
So many terribly made points in this that it's hard to concentrate, but he clearly falls into the "It hasn't changed my life yet so it never will" category.
His idea that any transfer of value on blockchain is invalid because the DAO had a bug in it is boggling. So... A slice of code failed, therefore every instance of code is worthless? I hope he felt truly smug about that as he uploaded his text to Medium and his words were transferred electronically around the world. Are his words worthless because they're presented to us via code? I wouldn't think so. Or at least that's not the reason they're worthless.
He doesn't seem to be be aware that smart contracts can (and would, in his example) act as an escrow. He thinks a user's main account can be drained by the contract? Funny stuff.
He's also presuming the novelist is selling directly via their own shoddily-built contract rather than via a service like Publica which has had bounties to find bugs in the relevant contracts? He hasn't done even the slightest amount of research here.
Even if this book-selling crypto-company-contract decided to act maliciously it will take all of an hour or two before their business has no more customers. No worse than buying off a scammer on adverts tbh.

A lot of risk will be moved off the table if Vyper replaces Solidity as the de facto contract language, but that's likely still years away.

His section where he balks at the notion of voting via blockchain I really don't understand - he tries to paint the software writers as "hey guyz, just another third party, same but different!" but there's an astonishing gulf between trusting an open source contract with thousands of devs having the ability to confirm validity vs trusting the Afghan government. Possibly the stupidest point he made in that piece. Nightmare governments DO exist right now, they do skew and cheat votes - what frame of mind is he in where he thinks having every element of data verifiable is just as bad as having a closed off system where - as in the case of an election in the Niger Delta - there's a voter turnout of 120%?
Is he genuinely braindead? "Merp, derpherp phleeble phleeble, verifiable data is just as corrupt!"
What a mong.

"Blockchain systems are supposed to be more trustworthy, but in fact they are the least trustworthy systems in the world."

...continues to list things which aren't blockchains, rather elements of humanity. Not to go all Dan let Sac and Scroobius Pip on him, but...
Centralised exchanges? Not a blockchain.
Insider trading? Not caused by blockchain.
Smart contract hack? Not caused by blockchain.
Price swings? Not caused by blockchain.

Do any of those things devalue what blockchain is? Nope. They place a mirror in front of us and show why we should trust morally-pliable humans less.
He seems a little untethered to reality or at the very least lacks the ability to grasp the human touch required to make an act malicious.

His point about trusting mining pools and how they're not controlled by smart contracts? BTC is not the only coin. PoS is arriving! Yay! He can cross that point off his list. The only people who'll have to trust PoW in future are the people who value it for whatever reason. None of his concern and none of mine.

Product delivery? Mmmm. For the dark web you'll always have to have some element of non-traceability required which necessitates trusting the criminal. It's not ideal but we can hardly incorporate their products into the IoT and have their packages tagged and blockchain-enabled/verified - if you want to do something a specific government deems "wrong" you'll have to take the risks on either side, even if it's not ideal.

His last paragraphs are all over the place and ignorant of the real world in action.
"Want a deflationary currency? Just elect some other lobbyist-plant who promises not to screw you ove... Oh wait, he did it too."

Most of his points make little sense, the ones that are almost there are due to humanity being corrupt whether we interface with fiat or blockchain. Hardly blockchain's fault.
"But it's been here ten years!"

Let me get my passage-of-time-calculator out... Huh... That's approximately fúck all time. In the grand scheme of things it's a rounding error-worth of time. Yet detractors are annoyed it hasn't already usurped the world? But that's also what ye don't want to happen... Just trying to get this straight because it's the way every detractor speaks, so...
If it's innately valuable then it would already be the most valuable thing ever, no ifs, ands or buts? That's the benchmark?
Does that seem reasonable to you? Because you've spouted it before. Does that seem sane or reasonable to you?

This one's for you Johnny. Bitfenix and Tether.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Or we're in the golden age

We'd just prefer to tell ourselves we're in early days yet because - conflict of interest, we all want to get rich

Refreshing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a boatload of cash. Fair fücks. I’m a relative auld lad now, but I’d just suggest ye exercise caution when it comes to some of these investments. It’s the Wild West out there lads. If it looks too good to be true then it is.

Wouldn't be hugely worried about this dip below 9k. CME futures were up today, so there was money to be made by shorting the market. What is really worrying for Bitcoin is the lack of trading leading up to that. There's been no new money flowing into crypto since January. It's a race to infinity on producing ICO's based on Ethereum, and this bizarre 'arms race' between Binance, Bitfinex, and Okex on how they deal with Tether. Cause everyone wants Tether when things are going badly. But Tether is worth less than nothing.

Augur seems to be on the same run that ETC was on a couple of days ago (before it fell back to original levels).
There seems to be a fairly organised PnD going on across some coins over the last couple of weeks.
ETC, BNC, BCash and REP stand out over the last couple of weeks in particular.

mik_da_man wrote: »

Things seem to be taking a bit of a tumble at the moment...

Time of the month (futures expiring in a few days).

mik_da_man wrote: »

Cheers - Hadn't seen that news

Something like 10k (2 batches of 5k) moved from the Mt Gox address in the last few days. A pullback of this nature is to be expected with such a sale, looks like we will bounce back off support.
Consensus forum next week too.

kstand wrote: »

Something like 10k (2 batches of 5k) moved from the Mt Gox address in the last few days. A pullback of this nature is to be expected with such a sale, looks like we will bounce back off support.
Consensus forum next week too.

Does anyone have any idea how many coins this lunatic has left?