I think it’s time to move into crypto

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I Shrugged
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by I Shrugged » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:51 pm

vincent_c wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 12:33 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:28 am
Kbg wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 9:18 am
I Shrugged wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:47 am
A couple of newbie crypto people in my life tell me that in the US, everything is being reported. They mean by the exchanges and brokers and businesses. I tried the what about? questions but their reply was that if you want to do anything useful with it, it is reported.

My specific question to the forum is, please give me the rundown on this. How can US persons own and use crypto without reporting? I’m not looking to do so. Rather, it will affect my thinking that the gov doesn’t like it, wants to see it gone, etc.
Short answer: Legally, you can't starting last year.
Understood. But how can they if they want to?
Coin management, tumbling, etc.

You could buy your bitcoin in cash from a stranger or from a bitcoin ATM using cash and never convert it back into fiat, spend it where it is legal tender, etc.
So apparently it’s harder to accumulate and store privately than I thought.
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Kriegsspiel
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:41 pm

Cullen talks about crypto article with some PP undertones.
As you enter or near retirement most people will need this portfolio to provide a certain level of stability to offset the unpredictability that comes with reduced income streams from working. This account is compromised of your literal savings and should be allocated in a prudent manner that optimizes the likelihood of meeting your future financial goals. Importantly, as I often note, what we typically call an “investment” portfolio is really our savings portfolio. It is literally the money you save and you need it to be prudently allocated so that it creates a certain degree of predictability as you navigate the uncertainty of future liability needs.¹ If you were to think of all of your assets within a “Total Portfolio” you could divide this portfolio as follows:
  • Savings Portfolio – the financial assets that finance specific future liability needs such as retirement spending (liquid cash flow generating financial assets with a high probability of future returns and principal reliability).
  • Investment Portfolio – the financial assets that you can afford to lose, but might provide some asymmetric upside to your Savings Portfolio (illiquid financial assets with the potential for asymmetric future returns).
  • Real Portfolio – the non-financial assets that you own for various reasons aside from savings and investment (real estate, gold, etc).
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Jack Jones » Thu Jul 01, 2021 5:46 am

vincent_c wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:20 pm
Please correct me if I’m wrong. My understanding is that if the price goes up then there will be more miners, then hash rate and mining difficulty goes up, the network can process more transactions so it reduces congestion so for the same number of transactions and fees will then go down, no?
The network cannot process more transactions by more miners coming online. The network processes about 2MB of transactions every 10 minutes or so. This is independent of hash rate. This is what the Bitcoin Cash fork was about. I used to think this was a big deal, but I've come around and am no longer interested in Bitcoin Cash.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by dualstow » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:53 pm

SEC and Crypto
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... -on-crypto
- Matt Levine / Money Stuff/ Bloomberg
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Smith1776 » Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:08 pm

dualstow wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:53 pm
SEC and Crypto
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... -on-crypto
- Matt Levine / Money Stuff/ Bloomberg
I misssssseddd yoooooouuuuuuuu. O0 O0 O0
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:35 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:22 pm
Cost to produce does not confer value, intrinsic or otherwise.
Agreed. Individuals assign value based on their preferences.
SomeDude wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:22 pm
Value is either intrinsic or extrinsic.

Obviously bitcoin has no extrinsic value. A bitcoin cannot be used to do anything. Unless someone else is willing to trade you something that has value there is nothing you can do with your bitcoin. It can be argued that even in the process of being transferred around the bitcoin is still doing nothing.

Intrinsic value is harder to comprehend. It is the desire for something for that thing's own sake, and not for it's useful properties.

Gold is the easiest example. Gold has tons of uses, it's a very useful metal. There are people who hold it though who will never put it to use, whether in electrical components, dental work, jewelry, or anything. Some are holding it as a store of value and a speculation on future price, but some will never part with it, no matter what the price ever does. They want gold for its own sake. It has intrinsic value.
To be honest, non-monetary uses of gold make gold a WORSE money. You want your money to have as few non-monetary uses as possible.
SomeDude wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:22 pm
Bitcoin and crypto are neither. They have no properties that make them useful and no one wants them just to have them. It's 100% speculation that the future price will be higher. When no one believes that will happen the illusion will pop and i think the price will move quickly to match the intrinsic value.
How can you say Bitcoin has no properties that people value? Lets break that down one level deeper to see that the claim is false.

#1 You must agree that Bitcoin has some properties. For example it is digital. Software runs it. There is (currently) a supply cap of 21 million. You can send these coins to someone else, etc.

#2 Given all value is subjective and given #1, there is the potential for people to assign value to Bitcoins properties.

Now, what sort of uses might someone see in Bitcoin? See here for some:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9673&p=173490&hilit ... ce#p173490
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:39 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:16 pm
Is there even one person on earth that could use 300,000 satoshis? This does not sound like something that is scare to me so i must be missing something.
Replace satoshis with pennies/dollars/etc and you can see how strange this argument is.

"Is there even one person on earth that could use 300,000 dollars?"
SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:16 pm
Can satoshis do something different when you have more of them?
Similarly, ask the same of dollars.
SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:16 pm
Forget about the market price and selling your satoshis to someone else for a second. What can i do with 100 satoshi that i can't do with 1? It's obvious if you have more Gold you can do twice as much with it if you wanted to use it, twice as many fillings, pieces of jewelry, electronic parts etc.

What can a person like you or me for example use a satoshi for and why would you want 100 million of them (a bitcoin), if not to just hope someone else will pay more for them than you paid?
If I have twice as much of a monetary-like asset, then I have twice as much purchasing power. Im not sure why this is hard.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:44 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:23 pm
The main difference between gold and bitcoin is a bitcoin has no practical use.
What is a "use" compared to a "practical use"? Sending a bearer asset over the Internet seems like both a use and a practical use?
SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:23 pm
It doesn't have physical properties and it doesn't "do" anything. All you can do with a bitcoin to my knowledge is pass it back and forth.
You actually just articulated 2 of Bitcoins valuable properties here. Bitcoin's non-physical (digital) nature IS valuable. Especially in an age of increasing connectivity, digitization, etc. Also, ability to transaction with such a digital bearer asset is valuable.
SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:23 pm
It absolutely has a price right now and people will trade for it, but ONLY because they think they will eventually trade it to someone else for more than they gave up.
Bitcoin is basically ~100% monetary value (not really many other values). Gold is ~99% monetary value. It would seem they both are in the same "greater fool" boat here?
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:53 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 11:54 am
What i meat by "use" I shrugged was....if i want to buy or sell something using bitcoin instead of dollars or Euros for some reason, can't i just buy and sell the bitcoin practically at the same time? If the only use for bitcoins or satoshis is transferring ownership of them, what is the point of ever buying and holding them, other than as a bet that someone else will give me more dollars for them in the future. But why would someone do that unless they have am actual use?
Ive shared a list of some use cases for Bitcoin in a previous reply, please review.

Ill add a bit of nuance to the "why buy them now" vs "why buy them in the future".

Bitcoin is in the process of monetizing. One current use of bitcoin is to speculate on bitcoin continuing to monetize. This is a bet on bitcoin continuing to become money. Because if it continues to become money the exchange rate will have to go up to accommodate more of the worlds resources (due to bitcoins fixed supply). So yes there is a speculation component during this monetization phase.

In a world where bitcoin is done monetizing it will have some large value per coin say $1m USD. At that point it will be the worlds money and the speculation of it becoming money (and going up in value) will be done. At this point in bitcoins life, you will "buy"/hold bitcoin in order to save. You will save your wealth and purchasing power in money. Which is what gold was for so long.

Reference this monetization chart idea:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11918&start=25#p223442
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:29 am

Other than quibbling about the definition of money, do you have a disagreement with the fact that bitcoin is taking up an ever increasing amount of the worlds wealth (store of value)?

And do you think Bitcoin has followed the trajectory outlined in this chart so far?

Image
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:16 am

vincent_c wrote:
Sat Aug 21, 2021 1:39 pm
But how much wealth it stores has nothing to do with market cap but based on the depth of liquidity.
Of course it does. How can Bitcoin, with a 21 million supply cap, store $1,000,000,000 of wealth if the exchange rate is $1, for example? So the amount of wealth it stores exactly has to do with the exchange rate (and thus market cap).

Liquidity is also very important, Id agree. As you don't want your sale of 1 BTC to drop the BTC price $10,000.

So youd ideally want to see BTC price (market cap) AND liquidity increasing over time. Which largely, both have.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:41 am

Opinions on the best company to use to get into buy-and-hold bitcoin?
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:54 am

I mean to hold bitcoins, not to own companies involved in crypto.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:36 am

If that's a good bitcoin broker, then yes ;)
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Thu Aug 26, 2021 1:46 pm

Coinbase is fine IMHO. Stay with BTC IMHO.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Aug 26, 2021 2:34 pm

BlockFI was another one, and there were probably more I can't remember. I'm going to look over them all this weekend.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by escafandro » Thu Aug 26, 2021 6:18 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:41 am
Opinions on the best company to use to get into buy-and-hold bitcoin?
Why not hold in a wallet?
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by bitcoininthevp » Fri Aug 27, 2021 9:41 am

One cool option here is Unchained Capital. https://unchained-capital.com/

They allow you to purchase bitcoin right into a multisignature wallet, eliminating single points of failure. They have software and support people that will help set it up for you.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by dualstow » Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:48 am

Why did LITECOIN surge so much yesterday?
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Vil » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:26 am

dualstow wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:48 am
Why did LITECOIN surge so much yesterday?
Not only Litecoin, but couple of others too, read it somewhere. What I got in essence is that the price urge is due to AMC Corp claiming they're looking forward to accept some of that crap before the end of the year as payment... (a sort of).
IMHO that crypto hype is getting ridiculous size, recent days I have received couple questions (one from a guy that bought from Bitcomat (dunno how you call it in US)) from people I know, wanting to get rid of their Bitcoins... and even though none of them is what you can consider as investor, even speculator, they somehow started to feel its time to 'offload'.. But guess that can happen anytime, just was weird the timing of those calls..
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by vnatale » Wed Nov 10, 2021 10:49 am

Did anyone else hear that the new mayor of New York is going to take his first few paychecks in the form of bitcoin?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/new-yor ... tcoin.html
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by dualstow » Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:46 pm

Thank you Vil. It looks like some of these news reports are false, like the one relating to Walmart and crypto. Not sure about the AMC one.
Vinny: yes.
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by Cortopassi » Thu Nov 11, 2021 11:51 am

I don't know if this is ticking the top of a market like for dotcom, but passing through Aldi yesterday I heard one worker talking to another about his investment in bitcoin and NFTs.....
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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by seajay » Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:05 pm

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Re: I think it’s time to move into crypto

Post by dualstow » Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:51 am

Taproot, a bitcoin upgrade
This is bitcoin’s first major upgrade since 2017, and it will impact the blockchain in a number of ways.
Taproot will introduce what’s called Schnorr signatures, which will help bitcoin transactions become more private, efficient and less expensive. Most importantly, the upgrade will better enable bitcoin to execute smart contracts on the blockchain.

… while bitcoin likely won’t ever be as flexible as Ethereum from a smart contract standpoint, with Taproot that gap will now narrow.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/what-in ... grade.html
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years
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