Bitcoin phenomenon

[smd]

No one has come out to explain what the fuck is going on with Bitcoin.  Just a few months ago, it was $5,000.  Back in April, it was under a $1000, then it spiked up after that.  Fuckin' CEO of JP Morgan Jamie Dimon has been criticizing it heavily for a very long time, but now JP Morgan and the other financial institutions are getting behind it.  Why?   It's reported that the 17-23% of total number of Bitcoins were lost on various hard drives, so there's nobody to collect that money, now said to be worth about $30 billion.

What is with the fever pitch of get rich quick schemes?   Why is there not a govt crackdown?   Why would the banks who hate Ponzi schemes turn to embrace it?   And why are there always new ways to put a fever in you to get you separated from your cash?

It also sounds like many experts are remaining silent because they don't want to appear wrong, or they've become a turncoat like JP Morgan & dropped their words, taking action in the opposite direction of all the bullshit they just said in public.

Is there a possible video here?

[smd]

@Source_Mystic It looks like a First-Guy Bank/Ponzi Scheme to me.  They say it's new tech but it's just a scam.  So why do people dump so many tens of thousands into this crap to practice the Greater Fool Theory?   Someone has to be a greater fool than me to pay such high prices for this crap.  It doesn't have any value & block chain tech stocks are worthless.  People want to gamble & watch their cash go up in smoke for an endorphin rush.

[smd]

On 11/29/2017 at 8:16 PM, Source_Mystic said:

Bitcoin and virtual currency are encrypted and untraceable and that is great for if you are buying something off the black market or the dark net. 

Personally  have no experience using them or with the dark net.  Untraceable transactions interest a lot of people. Just go watch banking on bitcoin seriously that will give you a understanding of the subject other wise you are just making a opinion based on bias instead of facts.

 

I'm sure it's all kinds of interesting for Law Enforcement.

You know what's really funny is that I'm seeing a bandwagon effect with Bitcoin in just the past week.  Have you seen that Tai Lopez is putting together large YouTube videos to study Bitcoin & even charging people for a course to speak to these Bitcoin experts, who have been giving away their knowledge for free up to this point.  I guess now that they're speaking to Tai, they'll put an end to that...hahah.

I've even found one guy who does nothing but talk about Magic the Gathering bought 3 video cards to mine some type of cryptocurrency & using that energy to heat his home (because the power consumed by the encryption really jacks up that electric bill).

Overall, I'm losing interest in it since Tai Lopez is getting into it.  We need a rant against it...hahah.

[smd]

I'm baa-ck!!  The Bitcoin Fever has taken over.  We really need a video on this.  Have you guys seen the current bitcoin price?  Over $18,000 per coin now.  This whole thing is mad & ridiculous.   I went to a bitcoin forum to look at mining, they must have had hundreds, if not thousands of same-day posts of people asking a shit-ton of questions about mining.

Also, I've found that Tai Lopez is doing his usual idiot thing of offering a bitcoin training program, at the same time he's learning about it, it would seem. For $500 smackers.   Another guy at Project Life Mastery on YouTube had a video about it in September, so I guess he was watching this for a bit.

And you know what the concept is being called for this gold-rush to bitcoin by the masses?  FOMO!  The Fear Of Missing Out!!!   Everyone that has looked at bitcoin & saw someone like the Vinklevoss Twins buying 100k bitcoins for 11 million & now worth a billion dollars, or even less, say 10,000 bitcoins worth $103 million, are in hysteria over this thing.  And yet, only 3% of the entire bitcoin account population owns a full bitcoin...So it sounds like all of that bitcoin is going to be diluted, eventually to the point nobody really owns much of it.

What's more, the futures trading is going to open up on Sunday with investors that will be trying to short bitcoin to drive the price back down.  The wealthiest players in bitcoin are the likeliest candidates to short it, since they can manipulate the price by selling their chunk, causing it to fall & turning profit even though they had gained profit from selling it in the first place.

It would be nice to have a video on what to do abut FOMO.  If my bastard friend that didn't like to brag & rub my face in his successes didn't tell me about bitcoin, I wouldn't have noticed the phenomenon.   I've told my smartest friends at work about bitcoin from a couple months ago & even now they're feeling it...that "left behind" feeling of the piles upon piles of cash driving up like a massive erection.

Edited December 8, 2017 by smd
typos

[smd]

I'm beginning to think that this subject is too big to be ignored. :-)  I've been a huge skeptic & resisted it heavily.  However, I always go back to look at what Leo's concept of counter-intuitive moves.  Is my resistance to Bitcoin, this massive disruptive technology, just some mental block on my part?  Should I really be investing heavily instead?   I was afraid of Google & Facebook when they IPO'ed, not understanding them, but now we have another one staring us in the face.

Since my last post, I watched the Netflix documentary, watched a few other YouTube videos, read a ton of articles, & even checked videos from Richard Quest and Jim Kramer.  What has really piqued my interest is what the Winkelvoss(?) Twins has said & done on this entire adventure.  They put in $11-12 million to get that initial 100,000 bitcoins in 2011, now a billion dollars later, in yesterday's article talking to them, they said they believe Bitcoin can be used instead of gold & still, they believe that this is a multi-trillion dollar industry, which means that cryptocurrencies are still in the initial stages of reaching multiple trillions.  They don't appear to care to sell it at all, but just sit on it like gold.   If they're right, the current price of a single bitcoin is still very low, even at $15,000.  I mean, if they're technically worth a million each (or more) in a multi-trillion dollar industry, the difference of buying a bitcoin at $5,000 or $15,000 is very little!

I've also found from an Indian buddy of mine, currently visiting family in India, is telling me that Indians are still buying bitcoin on the black market.  They're buying it, getting the gain, then cashing out the initial investment so that whatever is being earned is just funny money.  But maybe the joke will be on those that didn't jump in?

My counter-intuitive intuition is telling me to buy into this stuff, at least for what I can afford to lose.  I'm even wiping the dust off of my Nassim Taleb books on The Black Swan & Anti-fragile as they might seem to have a fit towards what we're seeing with a disruptive revolution to our general processes.  The Internet has destroyed so many things & now it might be blasting the banks.  What's more, our fucking US Govt & Banking system has not said one damn thing against it.  So as far as I can tell, they're interested in getting into it as well, so I don't think they're going to shut it down at all.

I also explored the question: Can Wall Street screw it up with shorting it?   I don't think it's possible to mess with it all that much.  Is it a Ponzi Scheme?  Is Gold a Ponzi Scheme?  If Gold isn't then maybe Cryptocurrencies aren't either, at least some of them are not.  They're saying when regulation gets into it, many of the thousand cryptocurrencies out there will be shutdown.

What about hacking?   Well if you make a copy of your bitcoins to an external device offline, nobody can rip you off online if it's hacked.  So that can also be prevented from happening.

[ZenBlue]

Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme. It's the beginning of the evolution of money.

I have been using Bitcoin since 2013. I haven't held onto any long term, but I do have a small amount now.

The real disruptor is the Blockchain technology. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency that started the entire movement. It is the first application that used Blockchain. Cryptocurrencies is what money is evolving into. Money has always evolved throughout history. I think Bitcoin will be more of a store of value like digital gold. There will be some other cryptocurrencies that will be used as everyday currency in the future. It could take over 20 years for that to happen or maybe not even in our lifetime.

But at this moment there is a massive opportunity for people to become wealthy from cryptocurrencies. It's about doing your research to invest in the right ones. Like any space, there are a lot of scam altcoins. Most of the altcoins are scams so stay away from them. Do your research and stick with the main ones to start with.

This is a complicated topic and there is way too much information to cover in one post.

Check out theses articles to learn more:

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin/

I recommend looking into: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin to start. Take the time to actually do research and learn about it. Don't just listen to what other people say about it or what the media says about it. Honestly the media dishes out crap information. You can dismiss what's happening as a "bubble/scam" if you want. You will probably regret it 10 to 20 years from now.

[smd]

@ZenBlue
To add to your list, I've been following Cryptography Master Bruce Schneier on his thoughts on cryptocurrency.  You can find it here:

https://www.schneier.com

He pointed out the best explanation for the bitcoin protocol from this link:

http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/

I didn't buy Google or Facebook on their IPO day.  I actually took the day off from work & had a $100k ready to dump into FB, but I didn't when it started dropping on day one due to glitches that day in the software they were using in the stock exchange that day.  Strangely enough, I don't regret it or think about it very often.  There are always missed opportunities in the markets, but it's not very long before something else comes along that I can invest in that everyone says "Is the next greatest thing. Be sure not to miss out!"

But what do people really regret more than missing out?  How about losing a shit-ton of money in one of these markets?   You can't just replenish your money stores easily if you don't have a great incoming supply of it.  I still think a shit-ton of people are going to find themselves losing their asshats of cash.

Consider this, a Flavored Tea Manufacturer on the stock market, announces they're going to invest in building Blockchain Tech.  The stock immediately in turn spikes upwards of 200%.  How the fuck is that not a bubble???  Someone just announces a new business direction, they don't have dick, so the stock goes up 200%.  It's asinine.   

To give some background, I've gone through the Dot Bomb of 1995 - 2000 & like Bitcoin it was always rising & falling.  But then one day, it fell & never came back.   At the time, the investors "HODLing" stock noticed their money was never coming back!  If the company didn't go to zero, it fell to such a degree that the loss could be in the thousands (or more) & you would never see that money again.  Maybe in 20-30 years by HODLing it...lol.  The news reports after the crash basically attributed the crash to Tech stocks as not having any value.  This INCLUDED the companies that did have value!  It wiped the whole fucking slate clean.

I've already read comments from people on YouTube saying how they bought high in the $17k-19k range & already feel cheated as fuck.  They could be sitting on it forever as it quietly tanks back to some extremely low level.

What's more, I keep hearing about The Greater Fool theory.  And for the moment, it appears that perhaps many people are feeling foolish about investing in coins.  And people are putting in more cash than they can "afford to lose".  I was thinking I could afford to lose $15k-20k in bitcoin investment, but then I re-evaluated my stance on money & realized what an asinine statement it is to think that I can piss away $15-20k!!!   If Bitcoin is at $20,000/coin for example, if I spend $20,000 to buy 1 bitcoin, it will have to advance to $40,000 _just_ to get a 100% return!!  Whereas all of the people that bought in before me (The First Guy Bank, remember?)  will be getting returns into the sheer  1000s%!!!   I would get a lousy $20,000 whereas the First Guy Bank members would be getting a billion dollars.   The math doesn't add up to the risk involved.

Anyhow, what people regret more than missing out is losing their ass in the markets.  When the pain of losing becomes greater than greed of buying, the news reports will speak about how everyone was wondeirng why Bitcoin had any value at all, just like they did with Tech Stocks in the Dot Bomb.  This is assuming of course that the Bitcoins aren't entirely ripped off by dastardly miners & hackers.

I've created a draft Mind Map of a Bitcoin Bubble that I'll go ahead & share here for all of the possible ways the Bubble might pop or just the negative things that might happen.   If I get more details as they occur, I'll add to it.

[Source_Mystic]

Virtual Crypto currency  is very interesting but personalty I have no use for such things at the moment. In new York  all the bitcoin brokers left because the federal government tried to regulate it thus tax it and make it part of legal tender currency. Personally as advanced as bitcoin is it is still virtual currency 1.0  even now it is still in the prototype phase. It has not reached the level of sophistication yet to be the one virtual currency of the future. It is merely a complex research  and development phase. I have no interest in investing it as a system or a currency.

[Soulbass]

https://www.actualized.org/insights/deep-life-lessons-from-bitcoin

[petragr]

All I know is that my son is into it watching the Bitcoin gurus for hours on end , he is learning to predict the market pretty well , however he now does not want to continue his education and earn a BA , much to my detriment.

I looked this deal up on the internet and it stated that it is a big scam but the people who know it is and play the market can make money of it , so I asked my son if this business is honorable and he did not really answer but most likely it is not a very honorable business, so therefore I bet the government is going to meddle with it somehow ,

If something is too good to be true , it most likely is not true,

sorry I meant penny stocks!

Edited December 31, 2017 by petragr

[Ayilton]

Leo has posted two video's on his blog about this... I loved them  ,  they can open your mind  ! 

the idea behind it... It's genius  ! Pure gold 

[ZenBlue]

@smd I don't deny that at one point the market will crash and that Bitcoin will be overvalued at some point. I think we are still far from that point. There will be trillions of dollars in the market cap of all cryptocurrencies before we reach what people refer to as a bubble. The real danger is the way that people are investing in altcoins which do not provide any real utility or value.

That's why there was a dot com boom in the first place. It comes back down to human psychology and people becoming greedy. People not doing any research and just throwing money into anything. Just like there are valuable tech companies today, there will be valuable cryptocurrencies even after a huge market crash.

There was a dot com crash, but there are still internet companies today that are worth billions. So yea of course I know there will be a point where the crypto market will crash, but that's where the opportunity lies. Savvy investors will seize the opportunities of the crash and reap a lot of rewards from it. There will be a recovery after the crash. Cryptocurrencies in general are not going away is what I'm trying to say. It would be unwise to completely dismiss it all together. 

[Greys0n]

Bitcoin is very popular nowadays

[smd]

On 2/28/2018 at 3:44 AM, Greys0n said:

Ultimately, the value of a bitcoin is determined by what people will pay for it. In this way, there's a similarity to how stocks are priced. I am really glad that I started mining 4 years ago. Now I am rich. I can spend BTC on whatever I want. In free time I play poker in online casinos. I found out from https://youtu.be/_xM740Wz1ow that some of them started accepting it. Bitcoin is everywhere . 

 

 

 

 

When you say you are rich, are you saying you sold your Bitcoin?  They're just hash codes.  Nobody can explain what it is & I have no idea why anyone still bothers with it.  When it dipped to 7k, I thought that it was finally bursting, but as it fell so did the stock market.  This made me wonder if the same algorithms that sold on the market were also being applied to someone's bitcoin stack (otherwise why did it simulate the stock market in lock step?).

At any rate, I still expect the entire thing to come to a crashing halt one day.  I knew the Subprime loans was bad. The online newspapers were constantly talking about how bad it was.  However, no one could explain how it would crash or why.  I think the term I'm looking for is Singularity.  There's a point on the horizon that you just can't see past & that's where we are with bitcoin.  Like a solution that someone came up with, that doesn't have a problem defined for it...almost as if it was developed backwards & what it solves hasn't been defined yet.  Or it solves nothing & something catastrophic would have to happen:  Perhaps someone cracks the encryption & breaks it somehow.  Or govt does a crackdown & fills it up with regulation & tracking to the point where it's not interesting.

I'd have thought it was gone for good, but right now it's at 11.2 & seems to be holding in that area.  It's practically a flatline at this point & maybe people are just sitting around buying it at 10 & selling it at 11, all the time.

On 12/30/2017 at 7:49 PM, petragr said:

All I know is that my son is into it watching the Bitcoin gurus for hours on end , he is learning to predict the market pretty well , however he now does not want to continue his education and earn a BA , much to my detriment.

I looked this deal up on the internet and it stated that it is a big scam but the people who know it is and play the market can make money of it , so I asked my son if this business is honorable and he did not really answer but most likely it is not a very honorable business, so therefore I bet the government is going to meddle with it somehow ,

If something is too good to be true , it most likely is not true,

sorry I meant penny stocks!

 

 

 

It sounds boring to trade bitcoin.  Penny stocks are proven dangerous already.  Except for the scams like BitConnect (wassa wassa wassa...) it doesn't look like you can lose much money in bitcoin itself, except by leaving it online.  It sounds like a major hassle to me to download hash codes & store them offline.  We have an entirely automated financial system that is easy & effortless to use.  Having to store your cash on a piece of hardware is pretty ridiculous.  I think it'll get as tiresome as recording movies off the TV with DVDs became or ripping Netflix DVDs to have your own 'free' copy...that repetition of putting the stick into your computer to buy/sell bitcoin funds, then taking it back out.  Do that a few hundred or thousand times & let's see how exciting that bitcoin is...financial freedom just inching forward.

I think bitcoin might make people sick of money perhaps.

Edited March 3, 2018 by smd
typos