Is anyone else starting to become a bit excited?

Lex Luthor wrote: »

ding ding, another chance to accumulate coming up

Coming up? Or buy now?

OneMoreBabadee wrote: »

Is the sole reason people are buying bitcoins in order to sell them to someone else at a later date, for a higher price? Be honest. You know what they say, if it looks like a duck and quacks..

Why is gold bought and sold? Just to preempt a response along the lines of it being a useful metal for jewelry/industrial use, etc - it's price doesn't in any way reflect that. It's price goes well beyond that limited use. It's main functionality is as a store of value and a hedge against the equities markets.

Is the FX market not speculative in nature?

The thread you've commented in falls under a sub-section of 'Investments & Markets'. Therefore, of course people here expect to realise a profit. However, implicit in your claim is the notion that bitcoin doesn't add value in any way when it does. It has all the prerequisites of a store of value like gold - such as scarcity and durability - and fungability to a lesser extent. However, it's much better than gold in terms of portability, divisibility and verifiability.

It can be used as a means of exchange (albeit, perhaps not a good one until volatility settles - and tech improvements allow for low transaction costs/time). It's digital gold - but its use case as digital gold is in a developmental stage.

Therefore, this is what people are speculating on. It is a speculation - but it's not one without some substance behind it.

cnocbui wrote: »

Property, gold, silver, art, shares, bitcoin, classic cars.

You were saying?

Property is a strange one to include on that list, it's a basic and essential human need. Shares are linked to companies who are creating a tangible product (Apple) or service (Microsoft) and generating profit based on selling it. Even expensive paintings can be displayed in a gallery and draw international tourists, etc in. Gold, silver, precious metals, diamonds, etc all have some utility also (jewellery, industrial, mechanical components).

Apologies if my post came across as facetious, what I'm trying to say is people buy all the above for reasons other than selling the asset at a higher price in the future.

I just can't see the utility value of bitcoins compared to other investments. Nobody can do anything with the bitcoins they are buying now, except sit on them and hope the price goes up in the future, and someone else will buy them. The last people in will get burned.

OneMoreBabadee wrote: »

I just can't see the utility value of bitcoins compared to other investments. Nobody can do anything with the bitcoins they are buying now, except sit on them and hope the price goes up in the future, and someone else will buy them. The last people in will get burned.

You're one of many - yet many others can see the utility and potential. As regards what you can do with it, you can protect your wealth in many parts of the world - and cross borders with it - simply by remembering a 12 word mneumonic passphrase. Try doing that with gold or cash. You should take into account the utility of bitcoins non-confiscatable characteristic.

It's being used as a conduit to bring about more sanely priced world remittances in asia, south & central america. The average remittance cost worldwide is something like 9%. It's complete theft. Bitcoin isn't being used so much as a direct remittance transfer (as its a long way off utility as a means of exchange itself). However, there are a number of commercial services that use bitcoin in between the sender on one end and the receiver on the other - as a means of transfer.
Looking at the polar opposite end of the scale, $1.1 billion worth of bitcoin was recently transferred at a cost of 68 cents.

If you have an investment portfolio, you can hedge against the risk of your other holdings with a holding of bitcoin. For the most part, bitcoin is generally an uncorrelated asset.

I don't buy this notion of gold having other uses relative to what purpose it actually serves today. Those utilities account for small proportion of its use case. Even as jewelry, the World Gold Council produced a report that clarified that physical gold has traditionally been most popular in India/China/Middle East. Families own gold jewelry but its viewed as an investment.

If what you say is true, then gold would trade for far less than it does today.

Bitcoin can be transacted digitally in a peer to peer manner - without anyones interference - between two strangers on opposite ends of the planet.

If you have a bitcoin futures contract as opposed to oil or gold - there is no issue with having to take delivery of bitcoin. There are significant costs associated with oil or gold by comparison - they don't store themselves. We saw a recent example of that with oil trading at minus $37/barrel as there was no means to store it.

Show me the item that has all of these characteristics and only then is there any merit to your claim.

OneMoreBabadee wrote: »

The last people in will get burned

Lets say you're right. How long do you think that process would take? We're 11 years in right now. There have been multi million dollar investments in bitcoin mining facilities in North America in recent months. These are highly sophisticated ventures - with a 5 year time horizon on getting a return on investment. If this was just a flash in the pan, those guys wouldn't be getting involved.

Lex Luthor wrote: »

I'm currently averaging this dip until it bottoms out

I don't know what this means.

OneMoreBabadee wrote: »

Property is a strange one to include on that list, it's a basic and essential human need. Shares are linked to companies who are creating a tangible product (Apple) or service (Microsoft) and generating profit based on selling it. Even expensive paintings can be displayed in a gallery and draw international tourists, etc in. Gold, silver, precious metals, diamonds, etc all have some utility also (jewellery, industrial, mechanical components).

Apologies if my post came across as facetious, what I'm trying to say is people buy all the above for reasons other than selling the asset at a higher price in the future.

I just can't see the utility value of bitcoins compared to other investments. Nobody can do anything with the bitcoins they are buying now, except sit on them and hope the price goes up in the future, and someone else will buy them. The last people in will get burned.

Food is a need, which makes it quite attractive for people to invest in it's production for sale at a profit. Have you not heard about property investment, flipping? The use of gold and silver as industrial materials does not remotely explain their relatively high price. The vast majority of gold is stored in vaults as ingots and not because of it's industrial or decorative uses.

Many shares don't pay a dividend, or if they do, the return is paltry in comparison with the cost of the share, therefore there is little no practical coupling between the activity of the company and the value of its shares. Apple paid no dividends while Steve Jobs ran it and it made no difference whether Apple were making billions in profit or were making losses, as far as a shareholder was concerned as there is no coupling between the share and the companies economic activity. There is only a coupling when the company pays a dividend. The only way non dividend paying shares are an investment is the part they play in the share market ponzi scheme, which is based on people buying shares in the hope it's perceived value will rise in the mind of other investors so they will at a latter point pay more for the share than the original purchaser did.

Most share market activity is a ponzi scheme or just gambling. Only when there is a real financial coupling between a share and the economic performance of the issuing company through dividends, is this not the case.

It never ceases to amaze me how so many people fundamentally do not understand the nature of stock markets.

Most art bought as investments is never displayed to the public, and I think you know that. It's bought as a speculative investment.

My original interest in bitcoin was to pay for stuff online and I was very interested in using it for getting around currency conversion fees. That didn't work out due to the exchange fees being too high. I see it as a very portable store of value like gold and that such utility gives it value. Given it's very finite quantity, I think it reasonable it's value should rise with increasing demand for the features it offers.

If you do not realise that most 'investment' is speculative (ponzi scheme) with a hope of making a profit, then I'd say naive is a more appropriate word than facetious; no ofense intended.

rapul wrote: »

Anyone been mining electroneum on there phone? I have been for a long time as it eats up no battery, but I recently sent over 3k to Kucoin and wow is it flying, considering I got it all for free happy days!

Isn't that about €20-30?

Arrival wrote: »

Cannot seem to get setup on CoinBase Pro at all, any time I try to Log in or Sign up it just goes through the verifying ID process and then sends me on a loop where I just end up back on CoinBase. Anyone else had this issue? Just can't get past the verification process even though it says I'm verified, it's so frustrating

Is Kraken as cheap as it? Might just be the easier option, just not as fond of their layout as CoinBase's. Just want to average some money in

I use kraken lower fees. Coinbase pro maker taker fees are 0.50%. Kraken taker is 0.26% and maker is 0.16 %

Arrival wrote: »

I noticed the buying price is more expensive than the listing price on CoinBase as well, by a nice chunk too, and they still charge the €3 fee on top of that

Binance have maker/taker @ 0.1%.

For someone who doesn't trade large amounts, perhaps Aximetria's app based offering could be useful. They claim 0% commission for trades below $500/month. They also claim ease of movement from and to the app - via the bank card you associate with the account/app.
Disclaimer - I've only just heard of them - so I don't know to what extent their offering is good.

Thargor wrote: »

Whats regular Coinbase do you know?

Can be found https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/pricing-and-fees/fees.html

I have noticed when you try and buy crypto on Coinbase they have a few sneaky tricks. Say bitcoin was €8000. when you go to buy using debit card they jump The price to like €8050 and when you sell it geos down to €7950.

Just buy some ethereum and sit on it for a few years, it should work out nicely. Ethereum basically IS crypto at this time!

Anybody interested in DeFi, LEND aave is a project I've followed since the start, those guys are legit and have innovated and developed their platform very well. Price appreciation has been excellent and it's STILL a small market cap. I've used LEND dapp to make a loan to myself and it's very straightforward

Kyber network is a good one too.
Wait till theSe guys figure out how to get your average app user using their credit networks worldwide.


Stuck a little in IOTA as a long shot, come from behind leftand David solestun seems focused on turning it into a practical and decentralised network asap.