BITCOIN

deejaybee

Coinbase what a palaver..... so far i have uploaded driving license and passport, plus done the webcam thing more than once, and still they are saying they cant verify my account !!!

Scott has kindly provided me info about Swissport, so i may have to go that way.

Notepad_Phil

darren232002 said:

Notepad_Phil said:

In the post I was replying to you said that banning bitcoin was impossible due to technical considerations. All I can see in your post are observations that you believe make it difficult to do but nothing which would make it definitively impossible. So are there technical considerations that would make it impossible or is it just a case of it being difficult to do?

Oh, did you miss you bit where I pointed out that you couldn't stop BTC trading unless you shut off the internet? I should probably add to that that I can store my entire wealth in my head with 24 words too. How are you going to ban an asset that can be traded over an all-pervasive network and effectively stored in my mind?

Except that if a government like the US (or maybe China in the future or even US+China in unison) ever did want to do this then they don't need to turn off the entire internet, they just need to turn off peoples access to get into or out of bitcoin. Yes you could still trade your 24 words amongst other similar minded people, but I suspect that BTC trading would soon die away in reality.

I had thought that there was some aspect of BTC that you were aware of that made it truly impossible, but if that's all you've got then I'd say that impossible is much too strong a word.

Anyway I doubt that any government would ever try to ban bitcoin or any of the legitimate cryptos, so I hope your dealings with crypto continue with success .

User232002

BearWhite said:

I have about 5% of my wealth in it and am interested in what people think are good long terms investments in the space. I have BTC (55%)  and ETH (35%) plus some others platform tokens. Any views here on BTC v ETH as a long term investment? The rest of my money is in global trackers and a rental property so I'm well diversified.

Past BTC and ETH, focus on good projects with working products (revenue streams or clear paths to generating such), a solid team of developers (security audited), with good marketing (network effects) and a non-scammy allocation of tokens (read the whitepaper).

Some avoids imo;
ADA (Cardano) is currently valued at $55B as an 'Ethereum killer,' but has no working smart contract functionality yet, has been in development for years and has limited developers working on it. It fails the first test above of being a 'working product.'

XRP has a current marketcap of $71B but the company that made XRP, Ripple Labs, hold nearly 50% of the supply. Even if you genuinely thought XRP was worth this, Ripple Labs has a much lower marketcap so it would be a far better investment given their holdings (not that I advise either btw, as I think XRP has a 'scammy allocation of tokens').

Ethereum Classic (ETC) has had numerous 51% attacks (essentially allowing someone to double spend tokens, or print free money) and has had no meaningful development on it since ETH abandoned it years ago. I shorted it at $7 earlier in the year for a brief period (I made money on that trade) because I thought even $7 was overpriced. Its currently trading for $120+ with a market capitalisation of $15B. Unfortunately the market is not very efficient yet and retail are buying this believing it has something to do with Ethereum, which it doesn't. It fails the 'solid team of developers' test.

underground99

wilding45 said:

I wanted to try Bitcoin trading and deposited 350 euro with a broker. I could not even access the site to give instructions and noticed that the firm was not fsa regulated for UK trading. I requested a refund , to no effect. I was not worried as I had paid by credit card and asked for a chargeback.....their response was no chargeback and no section 75 because a cryptocurrency is involved. I will let you know how I get on at the ombudsman.

To have a section 75 claim you would need the supplier to have broken their contract to supply you with the goods or services. It's not clear exactly what contracted 'transaction' for goods or services has been financed by your credit card company as you say your money disappeared and you couldn't access the site to give instructions. 

A number of major credit card issuers in the UK say that they are not to be used for cryptocurrency transactions (presumably because they don't want people putting in speculative claims when the currency falls in value) and so if that's part of their terms and conditions of use and you have tried to use them to buy crypto anyway, I guess they are probably not very interested in the supplier breaking their contract.  Sometimes you can can use the 'cash advance' feature of a credit card to do a cash transaction if it's for an activity (such as gambling or buying shares) that the card provider doesn't approve of. But in those cases you wouldn't get any S75 protection because you're not buying goods or services on credit, you're buying them with the cash advanced.   

These days, banks and some payment networks are also quite wary of gamblers and speculators doing 'chargebacks' when they are doing something speculative or risky such as buying crypto or placing bets that might not pay off. So they prefer to say their cards shouldn't be used for those types of transaction at all, and then if you try to give money to a crypto exchange or a betting group using your credit card they are not going to help you get it back because you only lost the money by breaking your terms. If you think you have some sort of a leg to stand on but the bank doesn't uphold your complaint and gives you a final written decision on your complaint that you don't like. tell the financial ombudsman about your complaint with the bank.  No point telling the financial ombudsman about your complaint with the crypto broker - as the crypto broker wasn't regulated for UK financial services, the ombudsman won't get directly involved with any disputes there.   

As an aside, the 'FSA' don't regulate financial services and investment business, it's the FCA (which stopped being called the FSA, 8 years ago); and the FCA don't regulate services provided by UK cryptoasset businesses, they only supervise money laundering compliance activities of such businesses. If it was a proper UK stockbroker, they would be regulated for buying and selling stocks. But it wasn't, so dead end.

User232002

Notepad_Phil said:

Except that if a government like the US (or maybe China in the future or even US+China in unison) ever did want to do this then they don't need to turn off the entire internet, they just need to turn off peoples access to get into or out of bitcoin. Yes you could still trade your 24 words amongst other similar minded people, but I suspect that BTC trading would soon die away in reality.

I had thought that there was some aspect of BTC that you were aware of that made it truly impossible, but if that's all you've got then I'd say that impossible is much too strong a word.

Anyway I doubt that any government would ever try to ban bitcoin or any of the legitimate cryptos, so I hope your dealings with crypto continue with success .

I've shown you that its impossible; Bitcoin trading can not be stopped as a technicality. Your argument is that BTC trading would die because there would be no value in it due to not being able to convert back to fiat. That doesn't mean its possible to ban it; it would still be tradable even if it went to zero. 

Beyond that, you're then arguing that governments increasing hurdles would make people want to give it up or destroy its value, but as I've already elaborated (i) history shows us this is incorrect (Bitcoin bans in other countries and the war on drugs), (ii) its against a governments own interests, and (iii) its unlikely the people with Bitcoin just write off that level of wealth.

underground99

Notepad_Phil said:

darren232002 said:

Notepad_Phil said:

In the post I was replying to you said that banning bitcoin was impossible due to technical considerations. All I can see in your post are observations that you believe make it difficult to do but nothing which would make it definitively impossible. So are there technical considerations that would make it impossible or is it just a case of it being difficult to do?

Oh, did you miss you bit where I pointed out that you couldn't stop BTC trading unless you shut off the internet? I should probably add to that that I can store my entire wealth in my head with 24 words too. How are you going to ban an asset that can be traded over an all-pervasive network and effectively stored in my mind?

I had thought that there was some aspect of BTC that you were aware of that made it truly impossible, but if that's all you've got then I'd say that impossible is much too strong a word.

Anyway I doubt that any government would ever try to ban bitcoin or any of the legitimate cryptos, so I hope your dealings with crypto continue with success .

Perhaps not 'impossible' so much as 'impractical'.

If you banned all the legitimate banks from sending money to and from BTC exchanges you would make it very difficult for lay people to move money from cash to BTC without some effort, and it would become more niche. But without cash you could still freely exchange other things for BTC (such as other crypto, or gold, or black market goods, or favours on some sort of  barter system, or perhaps units of an ETF that holds a known basket of public shares, etc etc). Driving the system underground would make the coins less valuable due to reduced demand from retail investors if that downtick wasn't replaced with some other source of demand, but it is perhaps something that a government would prefer to regulate (e.g. regulating the cash-to-crypto exchanges for anti-money laundering rules etc) rather than just have the system end up as something entirely unregulated that's great for trading favours between organised crime gangs.

So you could try to ban it, just like you can try to ban people greeting each other with 'hello' in the street and tell them they must say 'good morning' instead, but it is hard to enforce such a ban because people will do what they want, just a bit more quietly or in a different way to subvert the rules.  Once the genie is out of the bottle it is hard to make him go back in if he doesn't want to.

Scottex99

deejaybee said:

Coinbase what a palaver..... so far i have uploaded driving license and passport, plus done the webcam thing more than once, and still they are saying they cant verify my account !!!

Scott has kindly provided me info about Swissport, so i may have to go that way.

Swissborg 
Very good app, I sat with someone the other day and they created an account, topped up £ and bought a few different cryptos in the time it took to neck a pint. You can stake for Yield too

prowla

Scottex99 said:

Thrugelmir said:

patient_investor said:

IanManc said:

patient_investor said:

HansOndabush said:

Bitcoin could go to any price $100K, $1m, anything which still would not prove it isn't just a bubble and might go to $0

Have fun staying poor then, while we enjoy our millions. There’s a sucker born every minute. 😄

That comment might just come back to bite you.  🤨

 Cashed out profits thousand times over already and I still have active position in Bitcoin.

How do you cash out Bitcoin other than to sell it to another dumb speculator. When there's no one to sell it to what happens then? Takes two to trade. 

Why does this get raised again and again like it's relevant? It's not some illiquid fantasy asset with 3 orders in each order book. $65bn of BTC traded in the last 24 hours according to Gecko. My team put 2 x $1m BTC limit sell orders through an exchange fairly recently and they filled in about 4 mins.

Maybe the whole world's dumb?

deejaybee

So no ID checks with Swissport Scott ?

P1

wilding45 said:

I wanted to try Bitcoin trading and deposited 350 euro with a broker. I could not even access the site to give instructions and noticed that the firm was not fsa regulated for UK trading. I requested a refund , to no effect. I was not worried as I had paid by credit card and asked for a chargeback.....their response was no chargeback and no section 75 because a cryptocurrency is involved. I will let you know how I get on at the ombudsman.

Which "broker" was it.  Sounds odd.  Most buy from exchanges