Guys Let's All Get Rich - Are You Ready?

[Afro_Vacancy]

Call your bank obviously.

OK it's been fixed. I bought some us$ value of bitcoin, and half that much in ethereum.

Purchase price:
$16,774.07 / BTC
$430.26 / ETH

 

[IdealForehead]

OK it's been fixed. I bought some us$ value of bitcoin, and half that much in ethereum.

Purchase price:
$16,774.07 / BTC
$430.26 / ETH

Probably seems like those are the two best bets. Perhaps I will do the same. Would like a third coin to balance things further. Maybe litecoin?

How was coinbase to set up with? Take a lot of work or time?

God I feel like such a cuck coming to the party this late. It's that cucked feeling that's still kept me away for the past years. How do you cope? I guess better late than never, huh?

You going long term or short term?

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Probably seems like those are the two best bets. Perhaps I will do the same. Would like a third coin to balance things further. Maybe litecoin?

How was coinbase to set up with? Take a lot of work or time?

God I feel like such a cuck coming to the party this late. It's that cucked feeling that's still kept me away for the past years. How do you cope? I guess better late than never, huh?

You going long term or short term?

Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin are the three options on coinbase. Perhaps I could buy litecoin too, I don't know, it might be better. I have no idea lol.

Coinbase setup takes about ten minutes. I picked a password that I don't use for anything else and I didn't save it. Verification involved email and text messages. Then, they charged a tiny amount on my credit card a few times and asked me to confirm how much it was. I hope I get those ~3 bucks back lol.

I'm as big (as small?) a cuck as you are. I could and should have bought some earlier. I did not do so partly because I think it's a bubble. I called bitcoin the next tulip when it was worth roughly 5K. However, does it not make sense to invest in it if it's the next tulip? It does, so I did so. The economic fundamentals of the US economy are very much oriented toward bubbles, and this appears to be the next bubble. The most rational thing for me to do is to ignore it, and sell it at a fixed time, but it remains to be seen if I have the strength of will to do so. If I ended up clicking refresh on coinbase every thirty minutes, it will mean that I have a problem.

I'm an extremely risk averse person. I have kept all of my savings in liquid cash in a checking account -- that's absurd. I'm doing this in part as some sort of therapy, perhaps by taking on a risky investment and then being relaxed about it I can grow as a human being. However, that said, for every dollar that I've invested in bitcoin I'm thinking of investing $10 into index funds. More risky than cash, but less risky than bitcoin.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Did you use credit card or bank transfer? Credit card is instant and rarely kicks back, unless you are buying huge sums it is probably best but it does carry higher fees (Coinbase always screws you on fees).

That was a dumb post on my part lol.

I did use a credit card, but my bank sent me a text asking me to confirm if these are legit transactions. I guess that's fair. I responded to the text and then bought some coins. Hopefully I didn't lose 25% in those 10 minutes lol.

 

[IdealForehead]

Well there's a million ways to answer this question and since you are talking long term i think @JeanLucBB is more qualified to answer but here's what i would do:
BTC - 30%
ETH - 20%
NEO - 15%
BCH - 15%
KMD - 5%
XLM - 5%
ADA - 5%
XRP - 3%
XVG - 2%

Thanks. Why no litecoin?

Also, in a more short term, I finally got over my aversion and joined coinbase. Felt like sh*t every second of it. Incredible how easy it's become. Years ago it was f*****g hard to invest - that's partly why I never did it. The verification was a pain in the *** and the sites were sketchy. I just said I couldn't be bothered. Now I'm waiting for ID identification so I can buy a reasonable quantity.

So I'm feeling super impulsive and I want to buy some as soon as I am verified. With the way things have been the past few days obviously it's volatile. And if I'm looking long term, it's probably less critical, but do you think I should put $5K in BTC now or wait a few days/weeks to see if it comes down?

What's your sense of the action short term?

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Thanks. Why no litecoin?

Also, in a more short term, I finally got over my aversion and joined coinbase. Felt like sh*t every second of it. Incredible how easy it's become. Years ago it was f*****g hard to invest - that's partly why I never did it. The verification was a pain in the *** and the sites were sketchy. I just said I couldn't be bothered. Now I'm waiting for ID identification so I can buy a reasonable quantity.

So I'm feeling super impulsive and I want to buy some as soon as I am verified. With the way things have been the past few days obviously it's volatile. And if I'm looking long term, it's probably less critical, but do you think I should put $5K in BTC now or wait a few days/weeks to see if it comes down?

What's your sense of the action short term?

Given that you wrote that you have access to $10,000/month for investments, why not just put $10,000 into BTC? Give it one month's worth of investment income.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Spent all my money stupidly last month on taxes as if that matters (it doesn't, the interest is low enough I should have put it in BTC and realized that 10 minutes after paying).

So I can only do $5k now once I get verified until a few weeks, but I think I will just dump it into BTC upon verification. The question is whether we are on an immediate bust or not with the increased hype. I have thought we were going to see a bust a million times in BTC over the past few years though and it's never happened. Maybe it never will happen. Maybe it will just continue exponentially up.

Who the f*** knows? Not me. Thoughts?

I don't care if it corrects. I don't have the Chad-generating balls of @macaroni, I can't possibly hope to day trade crypto without going insane and it taking over my life. I will thus have to leave the money there and ride out short-term fluctuations.

 

[IdealForehead]

Litecoin is a cheaper version of ETH but offers little to no functional advantage/utility so it just becomes a lower entry price point and historically it has been slower moving than ETH or BTC. It has potential but i have a suspicion that for long term it will wash out because it is always considered a third rate coin; it is the bronze to the gold (BTC) and silver (ETH) and I think it will remain that way. It's not a bad buy, in fact i recommended friends buy it when it was $30 because i knew it would go to $100 like it is now, but i don't see it rising unless it becomes the target of huge speculation from newcomers to the market (which is a possibility i suppose).

As for BTC, i'm afraid to answer. On sunday CBOE will start the first ever BTC futures trading and i honestly don't know if that will cause BTC to spike to $50k or if it will cause people to bet against it and stunt the growth. It's unchartered territory for me and I am very cautious with BTC and quickly shift out of it to lock in value with other coins. I'll restate that i personally just have some uneasiness about BTC because of how fast its grown and it just doesn't feel right but my uneasiness could just be a personal bias. I do believe in BTC long term and I think it is a great buy, but a big part of me is waiting for the correction short term, i just don't know if the correction will come courtesy of this new futures trading, BCH attack, difficulty adjustment, newcomer panic, counter-media/press spreading FUD (which already you see lots of) or something else. The big boys are watching BTC now and they will either jump onboard and break it or milk it for all its worth.

Yeah I think this is going to be a weird mess. Wish I was verified now so I could buy more than $100 which is useless. Although you said there is a 3 day lag from purchase to actually getting the coins? So I'm gonna be behind the Sunday news regardless.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Yeah I feel like I'm taking it in the *** from CryptoChad but whatever, gotta do what you gotta do. We're not getting any benefit by lamenting the past.

I've been wasting money putting it into mortgage and other dumb things that don't even matter really in the scheme of things. I've gotten to the point where I need to put a sizable chunk down on this stuff regardless of the outcome or it's going to frustrate me forever.

The reason Bitcoin will never truly be a bust (and I knew this years ago but didn't follow through) is that it is so f*****g fantastic for money laundering and criminal purchases. Anything this good for criminal activity will always be popular. It's just been so hard to fully regulate and monitor. It's not that it can't be done, it's just not worth law enforcement's time.

So I expect cryptocurrencies to continue to rise. Overall I do realistically believe they are our generation's best investment. Like the Dot Com boom before. If you're looking at 10-20 years as a retirement plan, these coins will probably become legit mainstream ways of making purchases by then, at which even "late" investments now will pay off big so long as the tech holds.

Even if it has a use, it can still be a bubble. There was a dot com bubble in the 1990s but many of the companies are still there and stronger than ever. There was a real estate bubble that crashed in 2007, but homes are still there, and many homes are now worth a lot more. Of course, part of the reason for the latter is that the government made saving the housing market one of its top priorities.

The US economy is vulnerable to bubble economics, which may mean an excess of money going into an otherwise worthwhile investment, running up its value beyond utility. It happens that the investment may be bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, then so be it. I'll have 0.0000001% of the fun for myself, thank you.

**********

The vulnerability to bubbles is due to, in my opinion, the fact that they never solved the underlying problems of the 2008 financial crisis. They just rode it out by creating inflation by printing money. I saw estimates of something like 30 trillion being given to the banks, which are contrary to the suspect claims that the federal government "made money" from the bailouts (lol). There are actually pretty sound economic arguments that printing money leads to inflation, however it doesn't necessarily happen immediately. Further, inflation can also mean asset inflation, such as bubbles.

Since then they have not reformed any of the fundamental inefficiencies in the US economy: health care, the military, post-secondary education, pharmaceuticals, housing, etc etc etc. They're passing another tax cut in a few months to give rich people more money ... but the underlying economy has been hollowed out. There are few legit investment opportunities, and hence cash will look for bubble.

Whether that bubble is bitcoin, toilet paper, tulip bulbs, or beef comes down to culture and chance. And it appears that culture and chance are selecting bitcoin.

 

[IdealForehead]

Litecoin is a cheaper version of ETH but offers little to no functional advantage/utility so it just becomes a lower entry price point and historically it has been slower moving than ETH or BTC. It has potential but i have a suspicion that for long term it will wash out because it is always considered a third rate coin; it is the bronze to the gold (BTC) and silver (ETH) and I think it will remain that way. It's not a bad buy, in fact i recommended friends buy it when it was $30 because i knew it would go to $100 like it is now, but i don't see it rising unless it becomes the target of huge speculation from newcomers to the market (which is a possibility i suppose).

As for BTC, i'm afraid to answer. On sunday CBOE will start the first ever BTC futures trading and i honestly don't know if that will cause BTC to spike to $50k or if it will cause people to bet against it and stunt the growth. It's unchartered territory for me and I am very cautious with BTC and quickly shift out of it to lock in value with other coins. I'll restate that i personally just have some uneasiness about BTC because of how fast its grown and it just doesn't feel right but my uneasiness could just be a personal bias. I do believe in BTC long term and I think it is a great buy, but a big part of me is waiting for the correction short term, i just don't know if the correction will come courtesy of this new futures trading, BCH attack, difficulty adjustment, newcomer panic, counter-media/press spreading FUD (which already you see lots of) or something else. The big boys are watching BTC now and they will either jump onboard and break it or milk it for all its worth.

There was a time I told myself not to buy BTC because it went from $80 to $120 and I thought it had gone up too much already. f*****g shoot me.

One day people will buy things for real in real life with crypto the same way people buy drugs and steroids and RU online with crypto now. At that point, I'm sure they'll be looking back on these currencies the same way we're already starting to look back on BTC.

There is still a MASSIVE amount of growth that can happen in these markets, because these coins have only just barely begun to even enter the real world marketplace. They're not even useful for purchases yet to 99.9% of the population. What happens once people actually start using them FOR REAL, and not just for drugs/laundering/speculation?

The world may change in a real way.

 

[Exodus2011]

when weed becomes legal which is fairly likely i wonder how bitcoin will change lol. i've bought many ounces off dark web. thats why i was into bitcoin years ago lmao

all us degenerates and basement dwellers were into it first haha

 

[IdealForehead]

I forget the exact limitation but i think if you use credit card it is instant, the 3 day wait is only if you use bank transfer.

Well let's hope those assholes verify my driver's license then. I'm gonna call them tomorrow and yell at them. I'm sure they won't even pick up the phone because they're swamped right now.

 

[IdealForehead]

Goddamn it. They're cucking me right up the ***. Got verified (that was quick) then they tell me I have a $200 weekly limit, and I need to buy $200 to increase my limit. Bought $200, and I'm guessing now I have to wait until next week to buy a higher quantity.

What a f*****g assrape. I'm calling them tomorrow to yell.

BUY BUY BUY

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

If I had to speculate, I have a raw feeling that there are a lot of cynical people in the financial industry who just like me and Afro are bitter about having "missed out" and they want to see BTC fail. I think there will be a fair amount of shorting on Sunday which may drive prices down.

But I'm not talking about investing a lot of money right now (don't even have it liquid accessible that fast), so I think it won't really matter in the end. Even if they drive it down 30-40% it will come back anyway. It's inevitable.

And if they are more optimistic, they might drive it up. So I can't see a big difference either way. The more I think about it the more the only rational approach to crypto is to just keep pumping as much money as you can into for as long as you can and hold it as long as you can.

The final goal should be not based on an arbitary number ("I will sell when it gets to ___") but rather to hold at least until these currencies actually enter the real world in 5-10 years or so. I think once they do, the growth will be astounding for all these currencies even from where we are now. eg. When people can buy their groceries with LTC, imagine where the value will be compared to now, where no one is really using it for anything yet.

Problems will be if there is technological failure, but BTC has been resilient over more than a decade of attacks and hacks and it's still holding strong. So I think catastrophic failure is less likely.

Am I wrong?

First, it's true that I'm very bitter that I missed out on some great investments in Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. f*** my life. As for wanting bitcoin to fail, I don't think I do. What I want is for the US economy to reform itself and then to prosper, and I will not get to see what I want.

There's a belief that bitcoin is a great store of value in part because it can't be printed arbitrarily the way standard currencies can. However, it's also the case that anybody can create new coins, and in fact tons of new coins are being made. How many cryptocurrencies are there? There's a lot of printing of coins happening and thus there is the potential for money in cryptocurrencies to evaporate even if they eventually reach safe status and legal tender status.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Goddamn it. They're cucking me right up the ***. Got verified (that was quick) then they tell me I have a $200 weekly limit, and I need to buy $200 to increase my limit. Bought $200, and I'm guessing now I have to wait until next week to buy a higher quantity.

What a f*****g assrape. I'm calling them tomorrow to yell.

BUY BUY BUY
View attachment 72446

what country are you in?

 

[IdealForehead]

The final goal should be not based on an arbitary number ("I will sell when it gets to ___") but rather to hold at least until these currencies actually enter the real world in 5-10 years or so. I think once they do, the growth will be astounding for all these currencies even from where we are now. eg. When people can buy their groceries with LTC, imagine where the value will be compared to now, where no one is really using it for anything yet.

The other point of consideration to follow up on this thought is that it could be argued that since cryptocurrencies are completely arbitrary, it would be easy for one currency to supplant another, and thus all these may have "life cycles" where they are eventually replaced.

But this is not actually likely to be accurate. That would only apply if these currencies remained solely useful for laundering and speculation.

If it can be agreed they will enter the real world eventually (already there are bitcoin exchanges and kiosks in many countries), it will take some degree of technological convergence and agreement among banks and major retailers in which cryptocurrencies they will "adopt". Thus there will likely only be 3-5 big players standing in the end, just like we have VISA, MasterCard, Discover, etc. as our "plastic" payment now, solely as a matter of convenience and practicality.

For example, could Walmart realistically allow a dozen cryptocurrencies? Almost certainly not. It would be too confusing and create too much anarchy in their finances. But could they accept BTC, LTC, and ETH? Possible one or two at least.

So the currencies that become the most predominant in actual purchases day to day may be the ones that are:

- best established
- most scaleable

We know which are the most established now. That's easy. My knowledge of scaleabilty is less.

From what I understand, Bitcoins were very easy to "mine" initially, but there was a built in ceiling to how many could be mined over time, and that is why we have had exponential price increases. This makes Bitcoin good as a "standard", just as @macaroni has said, as like diamonds or gold, there is a finite amount that can exist. But it's probably not going to be as practical for day to day currency, although I do believe it will be an available option.

For standard currency, you can't have such a hard ceiling on the amount that exists. At least I don't believe you can. Is there a difference in Etherium or Litecoin in terms of how much can be created over time? If they have less of a ceiling, they will be more useful in the long run but perhaps show less aggressive growth (though still 1000s of percent increase could be expected if they truly make it to real life).

Am I mistaken? Thoughts? I should know more about this already but I've been sticking my head in the sand over bitterness. Time to stop doing that. It's not helping.

 

[IdealForehead]

I think the blockchain technology is here to stay and by design it is built to withstand attacks even by advanced computers (such as quantum computers, which don't yet exist). BTC is based on sound mathematical principles that allow it to be truly scarce while providing some utility, but realistically other newer coins do the same with more utility. Problem with BTC is in its current state it cannot process transactions very fast; you take a coin like xrp and you can literally send it in a millisecond whereas BTC can take hours sometimes to process transaction. Of course XRP is centralized which helps immensely for speed but know that certain scalability problems are coming to light with BTC as the userbase grows and pushes the network like never before.

As far as adoptability and everyday use as normal currency, it is very likely that if that were the case that governments would make their own cryptos; they wouldn't allow this to happen without jumping in to it. Also, there are plenty of countries with currencies that are basically worthless; good example is Zimbabwe with their old trillion dollar bill and you couldn't even pay for bus fair with 100 trillion dollar notes. The same can happen with crypto and alt coins, they are not immune to this.

That's a really interesting concept - that government would get into crypto. The primary flaw with this concept is that government is incredibly slow and never technologically savvy. It would take the US government for example years of deliberation, task forces, and committees, plus complaints that the NSA/CIA is going to be watching everything that's done with the currency, etc. before they could even come close to agreeing on the idea of creating a cryptocurrency. Let alone the work that it would take to actually create that currency technologically and ensure it is immune to attack.

I think it's possible but improbable.

Absolutely based on my prior post I agree that some of these currencies will fail and become worthless. But the ones that make it into the real world should explode. Probably the "biggest names" now have the highest likelihood of that just based on the fact that they got here first and are already getting a foothold.

I don't know enough about processing speed limitations to comment on which would be most practical for real world use. How useful would etherium or litecoin potentially be in the real world?

I think for a cryptocurrency to retain its appeal to the criminal world it must be decentralized. Any cryptocurrency which is centralized criminals will want nothing to do with. And criminals are the backbone of cryptocurrency at this stage. We must go where they are. But hopefully with a technology that also has the capacity to be fast and useful for normal people too.

Which would you speculate might be the best candidates to fulfill those criteria?

 

[JeanLucBB]

Wow actually sick of this sh*t I need to chill. All my dipshit friends are messaging me about it on facebook that I recommended it to as well now. I want some consolidation and relaxation here.

 

[IdealForehead]

First, it's true that I'm very bitter that I missed out on some great investments in Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. f*** my life. As for wanting bitcoin to fail, I don't think I do. What I want is for the US economy to reform itself and then to prosper, and I will not get to see what I want.

There's a belief that bitcoin is a great store of value in part because it can't be printed arbitrarily the way standard currencies can. However, it's also the case that anybody can create new coins, and in fact tons of new coins are being made. How many cryptocurrencies are there? There's a lot of printing of coins happening and thus there is the potential for money in cryptocurrencies to evaporate even if they eventually reach safe status and legal tender status.

Yeah sorry, I combined those two things.

We are both bitter about missing out to date. But unlike the traditional financial industry, neither of us wants to see crypto fail. We both want to get it and ride it up.

My impression at least of bitcoin has always been there is a limitation to how many can be made.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-happens-bitcoin-after-all-21-million-are-mined/

I am less certain of the limitations on the other crypto currencies, and I will have to learn more about this I suppose.

Just looking now: Litecoin looks actually similar but 4x more coins:

"Limited release (geometric series, rate halves every 4 years reaching a final total of 84 million LTC)".

According to this there will be 100 million ETH, so about 5x more coins.

This would suggest based on basic numbers, LTC and ETH will not reach their maximum exponential growth curves until there are at least 4-5 times as many people buying them as there are people buying BTC now.

I'm guessing that will be in around ~5 years.

 

[IdealForehead]

BTC is truly scarce, even gold and especially diamonds are not scarce. Diamonds are just run by a cartel that limits supply to guarantee high prices, diamonds are actually incredibly commonplace. Gold is the best anology, but BTC is even better than gold because the price of gold will drive people to go out and dig more gold up, which causes price to go down, so the higher the price goes the more downward pressure it faces, whereas BTC is truly and mathematically limited and scarce - only 21M coins will ever exist, that's it. Mining is a means of rewarding the network and ensuring decentralization of record keeping (blockchain technology) which is what powers BTC and every other alt coin (except XRP which is centralized); the complexity of the mining increases with each block that is closed; this is again part of the formula and is meant to reduce the risk of attacks on the network and fraud as well as keep up with appreciation in value of BTC.

Then what is your rationale for playing short term instead of just maximizing your total stash and trying to hold it long term? Are you skeptical these currencies can enter the real world? You have already said you think technological failure is unlikely.

Also as I said above it seems LTC is 4x the coin count, and ETH is 5x the coin count. Are these faster currencies for practical use? ie. More likely to become useful IRL?

I'm guessing based on limited information they will both ramp up to massive levels in 5-7 years as BTC has over the past 5-7 years. Wondering which may be most useful though in the long run to guide my split.