bitcoin trading.

ivormonee

If the "IT guy" has 4,000 bitcoin then, at today's price of (let me just check, BRB...) $8,063.75 his holding is valued at (hang on, I need a spreadsheet, BRB...) $32,255,000.

He must really love his job in IT.

hildosaver

fwor wrote: »

Let me just check - are you speaking from direct experience of trying to sell £20million+ worth of Bitcoin?

I should add that I've no personal experience of the financial liquidity of any crypto currency, so I genuinely don't know if turning that much into some other currency is easy or not.

I have personal experience of buying and selling bitcoin - anybody can register with an exchange and quickly sell off a number relatively easily. Would he be able to sell all 4000 in one go? Yes but he would likely crash the price for a while which would not be a smart move but it's perfectly possible to do and in fact if you follow GDAX you can see people selling hundreds of bitcoin every single day in a matter of minutes.

hildosaver

ivormonee wrote: »

If the "IT guy" has 4,000 bitcoin then, at today's price of (let me just check, BRB...) $8,063.75 his holding is valued at (hang on, I need a spreadsheet, BRB...) $32,255,000.

He must really love his job in IT.

Yeah it's utter nonsense. I suspect our IT guy may be telling porkies.

bowlhead99

ivormonee wrote: »

If the "IT guy" has 4,000 bitcoin then, at today's price of (let me just check, BRB...) $8,063.75 his holding is valued at (hang on, I need a spreadsheet, BRB...) $32,255,000.

He must really love his job in IT.

Oh he "has" 4000 bitcoins but is having a tough time trying to sell them as he can't remember which hard drive he saved them on, so he's keeping hold of his IT job to ensure he can influence the department not to send all the old computers to landfill until he finds them.

Malthusian

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Oh he "has" 4000 bitcoins but is having a tough time trying to sell them as he can't remember which hard drive he saved them on, so he's keeping hold of his IT job to ensure he can influence the department not to send all the old computers to landfill until he finds them.

The funny thing about Bitcoin is that would actually be quite a plausible explanation.

No less plausible than people losing millions and billions because their wallet was on an old hard drive they threw away.

gash

hildosaver wrote: »

I have put a little bit of cash into it yeah - only enough that if i lost it all tomorrow it wouldn't bother me.

I have done the same with the Grand National tomorrow............because I'm not really confident at all.

hildosaver

gash wrote: »

I have done the same with the Grand National tomorrow............because I'm not really confident at all.

Yeah well apparently if I didn't stake my mortgage on it I'm not a real believer.

sabretoothtigger

Malthusian wrote: »

The funny thing about Bitcoin is that would actually be quite a plausible explanation.

No less plausible than people losing millions and billions because their wallet was on an old hard drive they threw away.

Yep its actually quite common. I have read more then a few times people find some BTC. Last one I read it was a few bitcoin, he had used it to pay some server bills a few years ago and then forgot all about it when no longer requiring that server be online.

There is exponential potential in crypto but I dont think it occurs in one direction, lateral expansion of the economic prospects would be a positive more then just 1 price rising.
I think BTC is still awkward but over the last year the basic protcol has advanced forward some, its progress is a little slow so maybe it will be leapfrogged by something. They still seem open to all avenues though
So also people are far too negative on a price drop when no real economy operates purely on speculative gains. Its the market cap, population and interaction that matters way more. Also inversely dollar prospects

Malthusian

hildosaver wrote: »

Yeah well apparently if I didn't stake my mortgage on it I'm not a real believer.

Pretty much. The idea that people will start buying and selling Bitcoin en masse, thus driving up its value, relies entirely on the idea that at some point people will wake up and believe in the value of Bitcoin in the same way they believe in pounds sterling and dollars.

I am only willing to borrow money via a mortgage priced in pounds sterling because I believe that the value of pounds sterling will remain stable over the long term. This means I won't wake up tomorrow to find that pounds sterling have doubled in value compared to the value of the goods and services I produce, and therefore I will have to work twice as hard to pay it off.

For Bitcoin to become usable as a currency, people need to be able to believe the same about Bitcoin: that they can hold money needed for future mortgage repayment in Bitcoin secure in the knowledge that it won't significantly fluctuate in value.

If even the rampers aren't willing to do this then nobody else is going to.

(Some of you may have spotted the obvious contradiction here: Bitcoin is supposed to rocket in value due to future mass adoption and yet future mass adoption requires it to stop rocketing in value. The explanation for this contradiction is look over there! a cute doge!)

hildosaver

I'm not convinced that Bitcoin will be a proper currency in the future (although there is every chance it will) however I am convinced that it will be seen as an alternative to the likes of gold.


There is huge potential for the value of Bitcoin to grow much higher imo however it will eventually likely level out and become much more stable - this is the lower levels of an S curve imo and we are still probably 5 - 10 years away from it fulfilling it's potential in the way I believe it will.


I take your point that at present it is purely a speculative investment and I'd agree with that.


What I don't get - particularly on a 'money saving' forum - is that a few people appear to suggest that in order for me to truely believe in an investment I should sell everything I own to buy it and put my entire families wellbeing at risk as a result. Utter lunacy to suggest that and it is laughable that some doubt my stance on Bitcoin because I choose not to risk everything on it.


I have invested what I can afford to and am comfortable trading to increase my position rather than putting more money into it. I think that is a sensible approach - even if I think it will be the chance of a lifetime to make serious cash my family comes first and I'm not going to put them at risk even if I'm convinced something is a great investment.