Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[ausername]

I saw somebody recently post that they sold some Doge coin they mined when it was joke and thenforgot about for $30,000 and he paid his sons college fees for the year and booked a 'vacation', pretty cool. Especially as those involved in the joke originally were presumably crypto skeptics, and that's why they were mocking it (they would pump and dump for a laugh).

 

[ausername]

Very smart move. Wish I'd thought to do the same. At 18, 28, or even 38...

One problem is, compound interest is the diametric opposite of instant gratification. As a culture, we're more and more used to getting what we want "immediately" (even if it's paid for on the never-never) and yet the one thing that can make the average person financially secure is about as counter to that trend as it's possible to be.

Well actually this is what annoys me when I see millenials moaning about how lucky baby boomers were.... whilst they replace their iTwat 700 with the iTwat 750 Zoom after a year. I wear my jeans until they have a hole in them and I've had the same phone for 3.5 years.

Plus ask any of them to swap the internet (which they have) for good fortune with investments (which they haven't bothered to make) and how many of them would do it? Its not all 'luck'.

I know that property has become more expensive as a proportion of income, but another thing which annoys me is my facebook followers who choose to live in London but moan incessantly about not being able to afford to buy a house. If you were born and raised in London and all your family live there then I understand.... if you moved there out of choice and do a job that can be done anywhere, then its a problem of your own making and you are actually part of the problem for real Londoners.

I'm not a huge fan of my own generation.

 

[Systreg]

Can someone explain market caps in a simple way, I don't understand what they are or how they work.

I've been reading about ripple, and there were numerous sites with topics asking if it can reach $5, $100, or $1,000 etc, and a lot of people were saying because of the market cap, no way can it reach $1,000, as that would be many multiples of all the money that exists in the world.

So, in simple terms, what is market cap and why can't a certain coin reach $1,000 when numerous others can?

Another question regarding some of the newer low priced coins, I'll use Golem (GNT) as an example, this coin has been around since Nov 2016 when it started out at $0.01, it's currently at $1.01.

Say you bought 100,000K of those coins at $0.01, and if they go up to $1.01 you might want to sell, how easy would it be to sell all 100,000K for that price? I think if you wanted to sell a few thousand you might be ok, but to sell them all, would that be possible, would there be enough of a market to sell them?

 

[Coolbreeze]

Hi Systreg, my understanding is the Market Cap means current Value of Coin multiply that by current Supply. I stick to the HODL plan but I should think selling huge quantities of coins depends on the demand of the particular currency might be quicker to convert into LTC BTC or any of the more popular coins and Cash out.

 

[Admin]

@Systreg - market cap is easy, its the same for stocks. Its simply the amount of shares times the price or in crypto world the amount of coins x price. The 'problem' with ripple is the humogumbus number of coins in circulation (over 3 billion). Bitcoin is limited to 21m with nearly 17m in circulation. This is why you cannot just look at the 'price' of crypto you want to buy. I laugh when people say i cant buy bitcoin now its too expensive. I like ripple because its cheap (3 dollars). Its not sound logic. Its always about percentage increases and you can buy any number or fraction of bitcoins.

 

[Admin]

You can use things like 'shapeshift' to convert one crypto currency into another more liquid currency if you want to unwind a position.

 

[Murray]

Its always about percentage increases and you can buy any number or fraction of bitcoins.

Why was it such a struggle to do anything with my 0.0056?

The best advice I could get with what to do with it was "hold on to it"

Couldn't spend it anywhere or sell it on an exchange

If you can't do anything with £60 then..

 

[Admin]

Why was it such a struggle to do anything with my 0.0056?

The best advice I could get with what to do with it was "hold on to it"

Couldn't spend it anywhere or sell it

If you can't do anything with £60 then..

Bitcoin is in its infancy and you bought it as a punt not because you knew what to do with it. With upcoming improvements to the network, utility will arrive. If Amazon accept it as payment then....you can imagine.

 

[martin-s]

humogumbus.

That's a word we should all start using!

 

[Admin]

Bitcoin is in its infancy and you bought it as a punt not because you knew what to do with it. With upcoming improvements to the network, utility will arrive. If Amazon accept it as payment then....you can imagine.

To clarify, it wasnt a liquidity issue like which is being asked about above. It was an issue of transaction cost. There is no problem selling significant numbers of whole bitcoins nevermind 0.0056 of one

 

[Murray]

Bitcoin is in its infancy and you bought it as a punt not because you knew what to do with it. With upcoming improvements to the network utility will arrive. If Amazon accept it as payment then....you can imagine.

I like ripple because its cheap (3 dollars). Its not sound logic. Its always about percentage increases and you can buy any number or fraction of bitcoins.

You can't buy any fraction of bitcoin atm , I imagine it's easier to buy £100 worth of ripple than £100 of bitcoin

Can you even buy £100 of bitcoin atm?

 

[dee]

The 'problem' with ripple is the humogumbus number of coins in circulation (over 3 billion).

Think there are currently 40 odd billion xrp in circulation, with an additional 60 billion still with creators ( they were planning to put them in escrow and release at 5 billion a year so as not to flood market) All the tokens are pre mined and there will never be more created. CEO Chris Larson became the 5th richest person alongside Zuckerberg this week it seems. On paper anyway, as he co founded and owns largest amount of ripple.

Of course it's not really a coin anyway, its a token used as transaction intermediary protocol for banks. I'm not sure most people jumping on the train understand and are just seeing the rise. I'm hoping it will certainly get well into double figures at least over next couple years, and its more than possible given the take up rate of banks and institutions.

 

[Edwin]

Market cap = total value of all coins.

If there are 10 of CoinA in circulation and each one costs £10, that’s a market cap of £100.

If there are 1,000,000,000 of CoinB in circulation and each one costs £1, that’s a market cap of £1,000,000,000.

So even though 1 CoinA is worth 10 times as much as CoinB (£10 vs £1), ALL the CoinB together are worth 10,000,000 times more than all the CoinA (£1,000,000,000 vs £100).

So if you only have 1 coin you’re much richer if you have CoinA than CoinB, but from the point of view of the wider economy CoinB is much much more significant than CoinA.

 

[dee]

Can you even buy £100 of bitcoin atm?

Yes. Although transaction cost is high at mo.

The problem at mo is transaction time and cost due to backup from the latest craze of interest. I personally think thats what will eventually cause the demise of bitcoin. Transactions per second are pretty limited really for a global currency and transaction confirmation times are ridonkulous at the moment.

 

[Admin]

You can't buy any fraction of bitcoin atm , I imagine it's easier to buy £100 worth of ripple than £100 of bitcoin

Can you even buy £100 of bitcoin atm?

Of course you can, you can buy any fraction. A bitcoin contains 100,000,000 satoshi

 

[dee]

On a side note. If anyone is seriously thinking of getting in on ripple. I'd do it now. I mean like this weekend. It's just retraced to under 3 after coinbase announcement run proved to be slightly premature, and not sure it will ever be this low again.

Obviously just my opinion .

 

[Systreg]

@Coolbreeze @Edwin and @Admin, thanks, that clarifies things

market cap is easy, its the same for stocks.

That wouldn't have helped without the rest that was written, I don't do stocks.

The 'problem' with ripple is the humogumbus number of coins in circulation (over 3 billion).

Ah right, that would explain why people are saying it can never reach $1K with the market cap stuff, it's all falling in to place now.

Unsurprisingly, there isn't a single entry for Humogumbus in Google, you've invented a new word, tempted the reg the .com to make a site about big things that are bigger than humongous haha

Thanks for the heads up on shapeshift, hadn't seen that before, looks like a handy site.

I find this site useful as it lists all the current prices on one page:

https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

Golem (GNT) has gone up another 0.03 since my previous post above.

 

[Systreg]

This can't be good for Bitcoin can it, Visa shut down several Bitcoin payment cards:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...-bitcoin-payment-cards-crackdown-card-issuer/

 

[Edwin]

I find this site useful as it lists all the current prices on one page:

https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

Golem (GNT) has gone up another 0.03 since my previous post above.

From that site, it should be possible to very very very roughly eyeball what the currency movement might be for a given buy transaction, at least for the small-cap and/or lightly traded currencies.

For instance, some coins have a total daily transaction volume under $1,000,000 so it's obvious that any purchase of significant size (e.g. $10,000+) will dramatically affect the value of the currency (that won't help you get rich, because it will plunge equally fast if not faster if you attempt to sell a large position).

On the other hand, something like Bitcoin with $21 billion a day in transaction volume won't dramatically shift if you buy or sell a few $tens of thousands worth.

 

[Edwin]

This can't be good for Bitcoin can it, Visa shut down several Bitcoin payment cards:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...-bitcoin-payment-cards-crackdown-card-issuer/

Don't worry, it takes a lot to stamp out "irrational exuberance" (the clue being the first word in the expression)