BITCOIN

DannyCarey

Santander and coinbase or Swan bitcoin still work for me

FrankRizzo

Thanks Danny! Do you do bank transfer or do you use your card?

When was the last time you managed to buy?

Malthusian

uk1 said:

To therefore state that the sole increases in BC has all been caused simply by people talking it up is both wrong and patronising  to others many seem to think of as being dim and bought in.

It's not patronising, just mathematics. People talking it up creates the impression of the "next big thing" and "time to get on the rocket". That creates more demand. That causes number go up. That continues until the pool of people willing to believe in the "next big thing" and with funds available is exhausted, at which point people start trying to cash out at the current price, when there is no-one willing to buy in, and the inevitable happens as we've just seen. 
Where this comes unstuck is when people accuse others directly of only posting on forums to pump the price. It's an ad hominem attack and all it achieves is to get people's backs up. Nobody is the villain of their own story and even the richest televangelists genuinely think they are trying to open people's eyes to the power of Christ rather than make money. (And why wouldn't they genuinely believe in the power of Christ when it's made them so rich.)
If someone is outnumbered 100 to 1 (it's not even 10 to 1 on this thread but same difference) over a difference of opinion it doesn't mean they're being bullied or being ganged up on. If I went onto a Manchester United forum as a City fan I'd expect to be outnumbered. If I tried to talk about death metal on an Ed Sheeran forum I would expect to be arguing with a large number of people who think that death metal is cacophonous noise. If I jumped on r/Bitcoin to tell everyone that they should invest in Vanguard I would expect a very uphill struggle. If a Bitcoin hodler comes to a forum called MoneySavingExpert Savings and Investment they should expect to be outnumbered. C'est la vie.
When you have chosen to post on a forum where your viewpoint is inherently outnumbered 10 to 1, the responses are going to inevitably span a range of etiquette points from calm and purely factual to snarky and ironic. Especially when the debate tends to be circular and there's an inherent temptation to play to the gallery for upvotes as opposed to drily responding to factual points that have already been addressed 20 times. Nonetheless the debate on this thread has very rarely crossed the line into rudeness. To the best of my knowledge more people got banned for overstepping the mark over London Capital & Finance than over Bitcoin.
I agree that the Bitcoin thread du jour (this isn't the first) serves a valuable purpose and have never argued that they should be deleted or shunted off to one side. 
One of the oddities of the Bitcoin thread(s) is that the no-coiners usually participate widely in other threads across these forums, while the pro-coiners only participate in Bitcoin threads. It's not hard to see why. If a new account asked the MSE forum about what they should do with their pension or savings, and Bitcoiners start telling them to put it in Bitcoin because it'll go to the moon, then notwithstanding the importance of tolerating contrary, novel and downright interesting points of view, MSE's banhammer is going to descend pretty quickly.
On the Bitcoin thread, by contrast, "Bitcoin is going to $400,000" is just good clean harmless fun.

SonOfPearl

Pearce7630 said:

Is investing in Bitcoin really worth it or is it all just a scam ? 

That was the question in the OP on this thread. Nearly two years and lots of heated discussion later and Bitcoin is now worth roughly the same as it was then. There's probably a moral in there somewhere. 

london21

Saw this and felt led to share 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llrs7herILg 

Exodi

I expect we're about to see a string of collapses in the fallout of FTX. E.g. Genesis (though it is continually being propped up by its parent DCG).

One thing I think Danny and I agree on, is the importance of holding your own keys if you are intent on holding bitcoin.

Shady practices seem to be a common theme amongst crypto-firms.

Frequentlyhere

Exodi said:

I expect we're about to see a string of collapses in the fallout of FTX. E.g. Genesis (though it is continually being propped up by its parent DCG).

One thing I think Danny and I agree on, is the importance of holding your own keys if you are intent on holding bitcoin.

Shady practices seem to be a common theme amongst crypto-firms.

It certainly looks incredibly unwise to hold anything on a CEx now.

But just such a waste of life to be your own bank instead. Time and research to learn what to do, cost of whatever storage you need, and then you're still left with some fairly chunky residual risks of things like the device breaking, you forgetting your password, theft, someone hacking you via using a keylogger and on and on.

And for what?  To hold some digital magic beans mostly bought previously only because of positive speculation, a wave of cheap money, and the ease of buying through centralised exchanges. Now all of that does not apply.

I just don't see why any new person would bother. And new people bothering is the only thing that will keep the price up. And be no under illusion, the price of BTC relative to what is happening around it, is up!

DannyCarey

Frequentlyhere said:

Exodi said:

I expect we're about to see a string of collapses in the fallout of FTX. E.g. Genesis (though it is continually being propped up by its parent DCG).

One thing I think Danny and I agree on, is the importance of holding your own keys if you are intent on holding bitcoin.

Shady practices seem to be a common theme amongst crypto-firms.

It certainly looks incredibly unwise to hold anything on a CEx now.

But just such a waste of life to be your own bank instead. Time and research to learn what to do, cost of whatever storage you need, and then you're still left with some fairly chunky residual risks of things like the device breaking, you forgetting your password, theft, someone hacking you via using a keylogger and on and on.

And for what?  To hold some digital magic beans mostly bought previously only because of positive speculation, a wave of cheap money, and the ease of buying through centralised exchanges. Now all of that does not apply.

I just don't see why any new person would bother. And new people bothering is the only thing that will keep the price up. And be no under illusion, the price of BTC relative to what is happening around it, is up!

I wonder what the people of Lebanon would think of that statement?

I do agree though that it's certainly not as easy as it could be, but it really is not very difficult. It is also relatvely early days and there are other services being built to tackle this problem, such as Fedimint. Whilst exchanges are allowed to get away with shady behaviour then it's even more necessary to take self custody, its always been the point of Bitcoin anyway. 

DannyCarey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKURxpFnwwE

Topical.

Frequentlyhere

I wonder what the people of Lebanon would think of that statement?

I do agree though that it's certainly not as easy as it could be, but it really is not very difficult. It is also relatvely early days and there are other services being built to tackle this problem, such as Fedimint. Whilst exchanges are allowed to get away with shady behaviour then it's even more necessary to take self custody, its always been the point of Bitcoin anyway. 

We're not in Lebanon or the Democractic Republic of the Congo are we though, Danny? 

Though for most people, buying bitcoin in the last couple of years has been a great way to make you feel like it. You can either store it with a exchange and see it get stolen by a white collar mafia, or keep it under your mattress and watch it melt in value from there.