Bitcoins/Cryptocurrency

bowlhead99 · 1 December 2017 at 11:24AM

markj113 wrote: »

I also had a similar problem buying my last car that was being delivered. Notified the bank around a week in advance I wanted to withdraw £9k cash. Turned up on the notified day with all my I.D and they still refused to give me MY money. All very embarrassing when the garage involved were traveling around 3 hours to deliver it and they were on their way.

The company selling the car was willing to travel three hours to sell it to you but weren't willing to accept a same day bank transfer that would give you an electronic trail of where your money had gone via a regulated financial institution? And wanted cash in hand that you had to go and physically get from a bank vault? Sounds dodgy as hell.

Had to get them to bank transfer instead.

Oh, they did accept a bank transfer, which for only £9k you could have arranged from the comfort of your own home...

Why would it have been better to pay them with a bitcoin wallet where the £9k they received may be worth £8k or £10k by the time they had got back to their car ringing workshop?

Bitcoin - I can send as little or as much as I like to whoever I want anywhere in the world from my secure hardware wallet with no hassle or fuss instantly.

It just depends on the person receiving it being happy to bear the risk of holding a volatile and speculative asset rather than instead receiving from you something with mainstream value.

Aegis · 1 December 2017 at 11:36AM

BananaRepublic wrote: »

I guess you didn't live through the tech boom then? Everyone was saying buy tech stocks, and explaining how they could not fall as it was the future. Valuations were often stratospheric. Your statement is exactly the same. The truth is that most bitcoin purchases are for investment. In other words, it is not users that are driving up the price. That means that when the investors lose confidence, the price WILL plummet. That is fact rather than opinion. When it plummets is anyone's guess. It may be that the big institutional buyers will take profits at some predefined level. Of course after the drop, it may rise again, but slowly over a decade or more, as the currency becomes more widely adopted.

I take a slightly different view on the long-term prospects, in that I don't think there are any. Bitcoin was the first big cryptocurrency, but as a result it is experimental technology that will be surpassed by better options in the future. If a new cryptocurrency has better utility as an actual means of temporarily storing value and spending anywhere in the world (i.e. acts like a real currency) and is adopted by a few major payment players, the likes of bitcoin will then be obsolete. At that point, I expect that it will go the way of all obsolete technology.

The single biggest problem with bitcoin is that, without an underpin from a government, asset, conglomerate or real currency, cryptocurrencies exactly like bitcoin can be replicated and released almost instantly by almost anyone with a bit of coding expertise, and there's no reason why bitcoin should have any more value than Aegiscoin (as far as I'm aware, fictional) except for the fact that people are currently used to speculating on bitcoin and would need some persuasion to move to my alternative.

As I keep saying offline, I think the technology is interesting and might well represent a future paradigm shift in how currency works, but people buying Bitcoin aren't buying the technology, but rather the product of that technology. If someone invented a great new process for making spoons (let's call them bit-spoons), Bitcoin investors who act the way they do at present would be out mass-buying bit-spoons rather than investing in the company holding the patents on the design process. It's irrational.

fun4everyone · 1 December 2017 at 11:48AM

Martin Lewis blog on bitcoin

https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2017/11/30/invest-bitcoin-four-things-need-know/

BananaRepublic · 1 December 2017 at 2:26PM

Aegis wrote: »

I take a slightly different view on the long-term prospects, in that I don't think there are any. Bitcoin was the first big cryptocurrency, but as a result it is experimental technology that will be surpassed by better options in the future. If a new cryptocurrency has better utility as an actual means of temporarily storing value and spending anywhere in the world (i.e. acts like a real currency) and is adopted by a few major payment players, the likes of bitcoin will then be obsolete. At that point, I expect that it will go the way of all obsolete technology.

The single biggest problem with bitcoin is that, without an underpin from a government, asset, conglomerate or real currency, cryptocurrencies exactly like bitcoin can be replicated and released almost instantly by almost anyone with a bit of coding expertise, and there's no reason why bitcoin should have any more value than Aegiscoin (as far as I'm aware, fictional) except for the fact that people are currently used to speculating on bitcoin and would need some persuasion to move to my alternative.

As I keep saying offline, I think the technology is interesting and might well represent a future paradigm shift in how currency works, but people buying Bitcoin aren't buying the technology, but rather the product of that technology. If someone invented a great new process for making spoons (let's call them bit-spoons), Bitcoin investors who act the way they do at present would be out mass-buying bit-spoons rather than investing in the company holding the patents on the design process. It's irrational.

I made no comment on its future worth although I cannot see any reason to use it other than anonymity, which I do not need. But it sounds like you think drug dealers, terrorists, arms dealers and pornographers will cease to exist? I suspect they will place a substantial demand on such currencies, be that Bitcoin, or an alternative.

However, when you say "cryptocurrencies exactly like bitcoin can be replicated and released almost instantly by almost anyone with a bit of coding expertise, " that is not true, it's not easy to mine Bitcoin, as it requires substantial investment in hardware, although the higher its value, the more lucrative it becomes.

Aegis · 1 December 2017 at 2:42PM

BananaRepublic wrote: »

I made no comment on its future worth although I cannot see any reason to use it other than anonymity, which I do not need. But it sounds like you think drug dealers, terrorists, arms dealers and pornographers will cease to exist? I suspect they will place a substantial demand on such currencies, be that Bitcoin, or an alternative.

It's the last bit that I believe. Ultimately such people will only continue to use a cryptocurrency that they can readily convert into normal currency. Whilst speculation on Bitcoin is running wild, they're undoubtedly delighted to use it, as they can get paid, wait a bit and sell for even greater profits than they were expecting. If the mainstream stop using Bitcoin, though, so will the criminals, as they need to be able to reintegrate their funds with normal currency.

However, when you say "cryptocurrencies exactly like bitcoin can be replicated and released almost instantly by almost anyone with a bit of coding expertise, " that is not true, it's not easy to mine Bitcoin, as it requires substantial investment in hardware, although the higher its value, the more lucrative it becomes.

What I mean by that is that it is now possible to launch a new cryptocurrency with minimal effort, not to release more actual Bitcoin. Apologies if that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

JohnRo · 1 December 2017 at 3:13PM

You're in the dragged kicking and screaming camp then, congratulations.

Crypto is here to stay, much better to start getting used to the fact and learning a little about it rather than falling for and regurgitating ignorant tabloid vitriol.

frenchplonka · 1 December 2017 at 7:26PM

Personally I think its going to be crash rise crash bigger rise crash rise pretty much how its been since its inception I'm late to the party and its purely a punt on my part the question is are u silly enough to come for a ride up the wrong side of the dual carriage way!

I'm in the car and steadily moving forward will I lose I don't know am I putting in a lot of money no around 50 a week gamble what you can afford to lose any profits a bonus

dividendhero · 2 December 2017 at 10:11AM

Let's say you decide to pay for legitimate goods using Bitcoins, a car at 2 bitcoins for example. Clearly vendor will want to see money first, you transfer him the 2 bitcoins. He claims he never got them - AFAIK you've no comeback (not unless you hire a hitman, using real cash so you don't get scammed twice)

fun4everyone · 2 December 2017 at 10:40AM

It's staggering the level of ignorance displayed. I would suggest reading and learning but haters gonna hate. Of course anyone not part of a massive bull market just wants to see it burst. People do not want to be made a fool out of, and bitcoin has made a fool out of many.

Consider this, bitcoin has been a staggeringly good investment. It doesn't matter what anyone says now - it absolutely has been. You could have made 500% even after it hit mainstream news and haters started screaming bubble. So anyone that claimed it was going to fail/spouted a load of scaremongering about it has been completely wrong.

Going forward who knows what is going to happen. Bitcoin might indeed crash and not recover previous highs, but not because its in a bubble. Crypto's are here to stay.

Aegis · 2 December 2017 at 11:01AM

It's done well for people who bought in relatively early (and it may still be relatively early, who knows) but that doesn't make it a good investment any more than when early adopters of Ponzi schemes make good money or lucky people won the lottery. A good investment is one where an expected increase in value comes from a fundamental reason. There's no such thing in bitcoin; it is irrational exuberance driving the price, exacerbated by existing holders doing everything they can to ramp up the price.

As a corollary I bought an AIM share earlier this year at an average of about 16p, and it's now worth 60p a share. The reason for this is that they have some solid intellectual property for manufacturing processes for materials which they are now building up to sell to some major international players. The price increase has been amazing, and may be somewhat driven by exuberance in the short term, but there's still a solid fundamental reason to expect the price of the company as a whole to go up even further if their proposed deals come to fruition. That's investing. Bitcoin is speculation at best.

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