Bitcoin

[Deleted User]

[quote]So, at today's price of about $13150,  some unfortunate investors buying at the all-time high will have lost around a third of their value over the last 34 months and will know it; they won't be looking at your flattering table and thinking, "oh, that guy's table says it's gone up 128% in three years so I've probably made nice profits from those coins I bought in the last quarter of 2017". [/quote]

That's why I would never advise anyone to invest in Bitcoin in "one off". Statistics have shown, that people who bought at the top but continued to buy in regular intervals would be in massive profit already, despite starting at nearly $20k. Up 50%, to be more precise. Last 3 years of regular buying, $50 each month:

https://dcabtc.com?sd=2017-10-26&sda=3_years&f=monthly&d=3_years&ac=5000&c=false

Dollar Cost Averaging is much better strategy when it comes to volatile asset like Bitcoin.

nick1234

Bitcoin is cementing itself as the leading crypto currency and will only continue to increase in the future as more online places accept btc, PayPal for example last week announced it was accepting bitcoin which had a huge increase in price
Plus bitcoin is the only digital currency which can't be manipulated by governments, I am far more scared at holding GBP or USD which is being devalued daily.   

Having said that, I would not put more than 5% of my assets in BTC, as it is volatile. 

Eco_Miser

Plus bitcoin is the only digital currency which can't be manipulated by governments,

That's an interesting claim. Why can governments manipulate other digital currencies, but not Bitcoin?

EdGasketTheSecond

Eco_Miser said:

Plus bitcoin is the only digital currency which can't be manipulated by governments,

That's an interesting claim. Why can governments manipulate other digital currencies, but not Bitcoin?

Governments can manipulate their own digital currencies but not any in the public domain unless they go on a buying spree. What the poster means is that the governments can't just create extra Bitcoin out of nothing like they can USD or GBP.

'Paypal accepting bitcoin' is not quite correct; you can use Paypal to buy Bitcoin on 'LocalBitcoins', the same way that you can pay for many things with Paypal; nothing to see here.

Eco_Miser

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Eco_Miser said:

Plus bitcoin is the only digital currency which can't be manipulated by governments,

That's an interesting claim. Why can governments manipulate other digital currencies, but not Bitcoin?

Governments can manipulate their own digital currencies but not any in the public domain unless they go on a buying spree. What the poster means is that the governments can't just create extra Bitcoin out of nothing like they can USD or GBP.

'Paypal accepting bitcoin' is not quite correct; you can use Paypal to buy Bitcoin on 'LocalBitcoins', the same way that you can pay for many things with Paypal; nothing to see here.

Yes, but Bitcoin is not the only digital currency that is not government controlled, and I wouldn't really call USD or GBP 'digital', I've got physical tokens for GBP.

Preacher64

Deru said:

Another person I spoke said Tether is doing well so I'm going stick some money in that.

Tether doesn’t do well. It’s a stablecoin tied to the Dollar and fluctuates around a cent over time. It’s normally just used to facilitate trades on exchanges as I understand it.

hugglerbaby

Thank you every one for taking the time to respond to my query. Needless to say I won't be putting into bitcoin. 😂😂Once again many thanks. 

onthebench

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Bitcoin is highly speculative and much more volatile than gold. What happens once the last coin is mined and the servers are switched off? What happens if governments ban it? It could go back to 20K or down to nothing like tulip bulbs and other fads.

That's really not how it works. The last coin won't be mined for another 120 years, and assuming it is still going that wouldn't mean the servers would be "switched off", as it would still be profitable running them to benefit from the transaction fees.
Bitcoin could well be the next tulip bubble, but equally it is being taken rather more seriously by a lot of large investors than it was even a few months ago.
Given how governments have fallen in love with printing money as the way out of every crisis, there is something rather appealing to me in the idea of owning one (or even a half or less) of something that there can only be 21 million of, and which can't be inflated away to nothing.
I certainly wouldn't encourage people to put a significant proportion of their wealth into bitcoin, for obvious reasons, as it is a totally speculative gamble. But I can certainly see the appeal in drip-feeding a bit of money in on a cost-averaging basis.

As for all the talk about scams, of course there are scams if you answer an email offering to sell you bitcoin, just as there are scams offering penny stocks or helping Nigerian princes get their funds out of the country. But the whole point of bitcoin is that you can be your own bank and therefore be immune to scams and financial institutions going bust. If you have a hardware wallet and keep your own coins then you are pretty secure. Leaving them on an exchange is of course more risky.

For the OP, is it worth putting £250 into bitcoin? Well, if that is a trivial amount of money for you then why not? It might double, it might go up 10x, or it might crash and burn. Either way it's a lot more interesting than scrabbling around trying to earn 1% a year.

hugglerbaby

Thankyou so much for all your comment. Take care. And my zzz

Another_Saver

The longer a thread like this lives, the more posts you get about how bitcoin "may go up 10x" as if there's a magical supply of money out there that hasn't been used to buy bitcoins yet.

Another fundamental problem bitcoin cultists utterly fail to understand is if you believe in bitcoin's potential as a currency - its sole utility - then swapping your fiat government currencies for bitcoin is not an investment in bitcoin, it's equivalent to holding cash.
I look forward to reading books about the Bitcoin bubble when I retire in 2051 - and I'll be buying those books in £.