Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[markb]

Yeah I've purchased a couple of hundred off eBay last week, going to give cryptomate one last go later.

I ended up buying some, I bought it through gatehub.net .. Had to register and provide photocopies of ID, and then transferred money from my bank to gatehub. It took a while to register, get approved and wait for funds to be transferred though.

 

[Edwin]

I ended up buying some, I bought it through gatehub.net .. Had to register and provide photocopies of ID, and then transferred money from my bank to gatehub. It took a while to register, get approved and wait for funds to be transferred though.

Interesting. I wonder how long it will be before hackers set up some kind of fake exchange to scam people out of important documents they can then use for ID theft etc.? (Not suggesting the site you mentioned is fake, of course!)

 

[ausername]

I'm going to buy £200 worth of Ripple and that will be my one and only crypto gamble. I'll check the price now and again.

I'm not really into gambling, and that's what it feels like to me.... rather invest the time that people spend checking their crypto value multiple times a day into creating evergreen content for adsense clicks to be honest.

I'm sure a few of these cryptos will survive long term but there are a ridiculous number of them at the moment, is obvious that when 90% of them collapse it will go down in history as something equal to the dot com bubble

 

[mat]

Funny how people are saying that one of the things that sets it apart is that it is a store of value. I can appreciate that in certain circumstances. But from what I can see at the moment peoples idea of store of value seems to be chucking in £20 and hoping they can make a tenner and get it out again.

Surely if people see it as such a valuable asset to hold, they would not be getting in to try and make money, they would get in to be in and stay in?

Just looks like it is turning into a bookies/casino now, the sort of thing that is now making its way around the Uni dorms, with people putting in their pocket money to try and make a few quid or even just to say they have done it to their mates.

 

[ausername]

Agreed RE: bookies/casino.

I'm buying Ripple today or tomorrow (waiting for verification to process). Really doesn't feel any different to betting on a horse.

I've watched a lot of documentaries about the dot com bubble and a lot of parallels to be drawn.

Although of course to be noted that the tech bust did have survivors, like Amazon and eBay and there were savvy investors who came out of it in good shape.

I'm actually wondering whether I should be stalking namepros every day looking for generic gems whilst everybody goes stupid over third rate brandable crypto domains. Perhaps that is where domainers should be focusing their attentions, on what they know.

 

[dee]

I'm buying Ripple today or tomorrow (waiting for verification to process). Really doesn't feel any different to betting on a horse.

Ripple actually has seems to have a good use though in making cross border financial transactions work quickly and much cheaper than present systems. They are already actually being used by some major banks.

Allegedly their head cryptographer also mention on twitter that he wished he could say which two MAJOR online retailers were about to come onboard

 

[ausername]

Founder of Litecoin has sold all of his Litecoins

Because it was a "conflict of interest" apparently. Funny how he waited for the price to hit $300 before deciding it was a conflict of interest, he didn't seem too worried about that when the price was $4 a year ago.

Things like this seem to go under the radar though.... bet there are more people talking about two major online retailers accepting Ripple than there are about the creator of the 5th most valuable cryptocoin deciding it is time to cash in.

Nobody has any idea whether the Winklevoss twins have been liquidating some bitcoin into cash or not.... they aren't going to announce that because they don't want the price to crash, obviously, nobodies is going to know about that until they are out of bitcoin altogether. They don't have one large wallet address like some bagholders, they've been clever and split it over many that nobody knows about.

 

[Edwin]

Ripple actually has seems to have a good use though in making cross border financial transactions work quickly and much cheaper than present systems. They are already actually being used by some major banks.

Allegedly their head cryptographer also mention on twitter that he wished he could say which two MAJOR online retailers were about to come onboard

Do you need a blockchain solution to be an actual currency? Or can one be concocted that uses tokens that have no meaningful value (e.g. because all possible tokens are issued at launch) but retains the benefits of blockchain technology through some other means?

No idea, just speculating idly...

 

[dee]

Do you need a blockchain solution to be an actual currency? Or can one be concocted that uses tokens that have no meaningful value (e.g. because all possible tokens are issued at launch) but retains the benefits of blockchain technology through some other means?

No idea, just speculating idly...

I dont think it has to be a currency.Its the distributed ledger and accountability is the attraction. You cant spoof the ledger without everyone agreeing (simplistically i think) In fact there's all kinds of stuff in the pipeline with smart contracts etc that are exactly that. I think there's a huge potential in terms of copyright issues aswell. For instance... a song/movie gets played.... artist instantly gets royalty . Blockchain in itself has huge potential I think.

 

[Edwin]

So if that’s the case then that eliminates one supposed merit of many of the most widely hyped cryptocurrencies.

 

[dee]

So if that’s the case then that eliminates one supposed merit of many of the most widely hyped cryptocurrencies.

Yep. I think theres just too many at the moment aswell. It will thin out drastically in a couple generations of coin I reckon. I have some XRP as I think it will last longer. Banks are using it. They have invested a lot of money and systems to use it. Usage seems to snowballing as other companies see it working. I doubt it will go away in a hurry.

 

[ian]

Things like this seem to go under the radar though.

Hardly, it is one of the biggest talking points of the day, but nothing Charlie Lee says is a surprise to anyone, he is an outspoken character widely regarded as one of the key players in this industry. Where as for any other company where the creator/owner takes such a step would cause chaos, it doesn't with CL or Litecoin, because investors understand his approach, and position.

 

[ausername]

So if that’s the case then that eliminates one supposed merit of many of the most widely hyped cryptocurrencies.

Jeff Bezos asked all of his friends and contacts to invest $50,000 in his startup selling books online. The vast majority couldn't see the merits, why wouldn't you just visit a bookshop like people have for hundreds of years?

Five of them stumped up $50,000. Who knows how many of those 5 actually believed in his project, and how many just felt sorry for a friend.

Of the many who refused to invest $50,000.... some of them are still unable to talk to him about that decision today. I wonder how long they are in denial for?

The biggest mistake I've made in my life is selling bitcoin at $450, and then deciding not to buy back in at $1000....... I still have no idea whether I should buy back in now or not.

Who knows whether bitcoin goes to $1 million or to $100.

But I do think that those who are constantly critical of bitcoin are secretly just a bit bitter that they didn't invest.

 

[ausername]

Hardly, it is one of the biggest talking points of the day, but nothing Charlie Lee says is a surprise to anyone, he is an outspoken character widely regarded as one of the key players in this industry. Where as for any other company where the creator/owner takes such a step would cause chaos, it doesn't with CL or Litecoin, because investors understand his approach, and position.

Funny how he decides that he has a conflict of interest after a 7500% rally, instead of at any other point in the past 6 years. Looks quite transparent to me.... he doesn't expect anything like this to happen again, he's predicting that we are at peak crypto and therefore that this is the best time to make himself cash rich.... not sure how else it can be interpreted.

 

[ian]

Funny how he decides that he has a conflict of interest after a 7500% rally, instead of at any other point in the past 6 years. Looks quite transparent to me.... he doesn't expect anything like this to happen again, he's predicting that we are at peak crypto and therefore that this is the best time to make himself cash rich.... not sure how else it can be interpreted.

The timing is irrelevant, how can he, or anyone else predict at what level of the rise of crypto we are at? Perhaps we are at the top, or perhaps close to the bottom. His decision is in part a reaction a certain Bitcoin Cash promoter and their own questionable tactics surrounding its current position in the market and recent entry to the largest consumer crypto exchange. It is also pointed at the founder of Bitcoin itself, and other coins, to demonstrate that his tech/code will stand above them and isn't based solely upon self-promotion and profit. Having said all that, Charlie Lee is a dubious character for those that don't understand his personality or his past, and the entire Crypto market is one big ponzi scheme making everyone rich...up until the point it isn't (this statement doesn't apply to the principles of blockchain, for that I feel it is a given, and a bigger movement in communication than the Internet).

 

[ausername]

I had a cheeky little look for .uk domains which were available (where the .co.uk owner didn't hold the rights to registration).

Came out of that exercise with spendbitcoin.uk on a 2 year reg for a tenner.

That's me putting faith in both an unproven currency which nobody currently wants to spend, and an unproven domain extension which nobody currently wants to build on

Not sure whether I'll ever build a directory on it or not... probably one of fhose things I'll never get around to.

I once owned sellbitcoins.co.uk which sold on domainlore yesterday for £70..... I handregged that, sold it on Sedo for £140 in 2015, later saw it sold on Acorn for £35 earlier this year (probably went back to the deleted domain lists before that). Makes you realise how much of domaining is just a small bunch of enthusiasts passing domains between each other

 

[Edwin]

If you want to dream really big re Bitcoin mining...
https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...ing-could-be-a-very-profitable-business-model

I imagine this could be optimised still further by developing mining rigs in containers (like they have server farms in containers) and then doing deals with solar farm owners to plonk the containers down and buy the electricity cheaply.

Or even offering “negative power on demand” as a service to generators that have overcapacity problems (the output of some types of power plant can’t be varied enough to cope with demand troughs). You mine just some of the time, but the electricity is free or even negative cost. You spin up and shut down miners to balance the need for electricity to be used up.

Complex setups, not remotely of the garden shed variety, but someone somewhere may end up making a killing by thinking very far outside the box like that.

 

[Edwin]

Added: somebody else clearly thinks it’s an idea with legs (though they reference cheap solar not negative cost electricity from overcapacity) - found this after posting the above...
https://www.envion.org/en/

It would be interesting as a thought experiment to try and determine what would be cheaper: an environment where power is cheap but cooling is hard (desert solar) vs one where power is more expensive but cooling easier (arctic location).

Another way to go might be to find a solar farm spot beside a big river, waterproof the entire mining rig, and cool it for free by immersing it.

 

[websaway]

Added: somebody else clearly thinks it’s an idea with legs (though they reference cheap solar not negative cost electricity from overcapacity) - found this after posting the above...
https://www.envion.org/en/

It would be interesting as a thought experiment to try and determine what would be cheaper: an environment where power is cheap but cooling is hard (desert solar) vs one where power is more expensive but cooling easier (arctic location).

Another way to go might be to find a solar farm spot beside a big river, waterproof the entire mining rig, and cool it for free by immersing it.

You seem to have a great capacity for thought. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

 

[Edwin]

And here is the other part of the puzzle. Microsoft did testing of sea-immersed server containers.
https://arstechnica.com/information...ooling-its-datacenters-throw-them-in-the-sea/

Could be a cheap way for countries to get large scale solar installations cheap: lease them for a while to roving bands of crypto miners, who share the spoils (just like physical gold miners do with the land owners) to dramatically shorten the capital investment repayment period.