Page 3 of 12

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 5:25 am
by Nonc Hilaire
Agreed medium and long term. This will end ugly, but some variation of blockchain will be with us for good.

Short-term you can still get a position for $100 or equivalent. It's like racing. You have much more fun when you make a small wager and it gives you something to talk about at parties. The ponzi is still young, and you will probably have a modest win.

But get at least a toe in the game.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 4:31 pm
by Simple Minded
noddy wrote:
in this case not so much :P


i dont actually trust bitcoin in the medium/longer term because without government enforcement its likely to become viewed as a black market - so im actually on the opposite side of the fence to his rant.

... and i dont have enough money to waste a decent amount on get rich quick schemes of dubious stability.

the price is volatile because the lack of regulation lets the bigger players manipulate the market with the kind of tricks that have long been illegal elsewhere.
Agreed. It's just that when people use the word trigger or any of it's variations..... a switch inside of me flips. ;)

Right now bitcoin is pure imagination, no associated physical, tangible quantity (like a diamond or a beenie-baby) , it could go to zero or a million $..... all determined by the buyer, not the owner. Just like the value of everything else. Control provides some semblance of stability, which gives more potential buyers a sense of confidence which promotes trust.

What is your house worth? To you as occupant or to the potential buyer? Look to history for guidelines. Without history, what determines perceived value? The never-ending dilemma, buyer determines value, caveat emptor.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 6:13 pm
by Nonc Hilaire
hwel3L6IZnc

Good channel. The guy is not a crypto tout.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 10:34 pm
by Zack Morris
Simple Minded wrote: Right now bitcoin is pure imagination, no associated physical, tangible quantity (like a diamond or a beenie-baby) , it could go to zero or a million $..... all determined by the buyer, not the owner. Just like the value of everything else. Control provides some semblance of stability, which gives more potential buyers a sense of confidence which promotes trust.
I don't understand the distinction of "owner" here. I own the Bitcoin that I purchased and everyone in the world agrees on that due to the way in which Bitcoin is created and accounted for. It's not tangible but that doesn't mean it is imaginary, either, or that it can be duplicated or counterfeited. Buyers and sellers determine the price. It just so happens that the 40% of Bitcoins are owned by only 1,000 people, and this year, there have been far more buyers than sellers for irrational reasons.
What is your house worth? To you as occupant or to the potential buyer? Look to history for guidelines. Without history, what determines perceived value? The never-ending dilemma, buyer determines value, caveat emptor.
You're basically describing valuation by comparables. It's true that comparables do not exist for cryptocurrencies. But there are other ways to value things. Ultimately, cryptocurrencies will be valued based on the fundamentals. Market participants will collectively be asking themselves 'how much value to me does Bitcoin generate if I own it'? Bitcoin (or any other crypto) can provide a valuable service: purchasing goods and services, moving money across borders, storing value beyond the control of governments and traditional financial institutions. It just so happens that right now, nearly no one is using it for these purposes, so the valuation is totally out of whack.

But the point is that there is nothing fundamentally silly about the idea of a cryptocurrency being comparable to physical precious metals.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 12:10 am
by Typhoon
Coinbase blog | Please invest responsibly
Despite the sizable and ongoing increases in our technical infrastructure and engineering staff, we wanted to remind customers that access to Coinbase services may become degraded or unavailable during times of significant volatility or volume. This could result in the inability to buy or sell for periods of time. Despite ongoing increases in our support capacity, our customer support response times may be delayed, especially for requests that do not involve immediate risks to customer account security.
I remember colleagues trying to sell on Black Monday back in 1987 who could not get through to their brokers.

Later read stories about how some brokers took their phones off the hook and stuffed them in their desk drawers.

UoUnvVRYzzA

Liquidity matters in all amounts.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:18 am
by Simple Minded
Zack Morris wrote:
Simple Minded wrote: Right now bitcoin is pure imagination, no associated physical, tangible quantity (like a diamond or a beenie-baby) , it could go to zero or a million $..... all determined by the buyer, not the owner. Just like the value of everything else. Control provides some semblance of stability, which gives more potential buyers a sense of confidence which promotes trust.
I don't understand the distinction of "owner" here. I own the Bitcoin that I purchased and everyone in the world agrees on that due to the way in which Bitcoin is created and accounted for. It's not tangible but that doesn't mean it is imaginary, either, or that it can be duplicated or counterfeited. Buyers and sellers determine the price. It just so happens that the 40% of Bitcoins are owned by only 1,000 people, and this year, there have been far more buyers than sellers for irrational reasons.
What is your house worth? To you as occupant or to the potential buyer? Look to history for guidelines. Without history, what determines perceived value? The never-ending dilemma, buyer determines value, caveat emptor.
You're basically describing valuation by comparables. It's true that comparables do not exist for cryptocurrencies. But there are other ways to value things. Ultimately, cryptocurrencies will be valued based on the fundamentals. Market participants will collectively be asking themselves 'how much value to me does Bitcoin generate if I own it'? Bitcoin (or any other crypto) can provide a valuable service: purchasing goods and services, moving money across borders, storing value beyond the control of governments and traditional financial institutions. It just so happens that right now, nearly no one is using it for these purposes, so the valuation is totally out of whack.

But the point is that there is nothing fundamentally silly about the idea of a cryptocurrency being comparable to physical precious metals.
Zack, Your mind is a thing of beauty. Bingo! You got it. Value is not associated with tangibility. It is a matter of utility for somethings and pure imagination for others.

value of 20 lbs of gold vs 20 lbs of water? in downtown NYC or in the desert?
value of popsicles vs hot chocolate? do you fear global warming more than coming ice age?

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:57 am
by Nonc Hilaire
Zug, Switzerland. Financal center for cryptocurrencies, the Rothschilds and Marc Rich.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/low-tax- ... 03712.html

Evidence that cryptos are evolutionary and not revolutionary. A necessary step towards the cashless society.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:13 am
by Typhoon
Nonc Hilaire wrote:Zug, Switzerland. Financal center for cryptocurrencies, the Rothschilds and Marc Rich.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/low-tax- ... 03712.html

Evidence that cryptos are evolutionary and not revolutionary. A necessary step towards the cashless society.
I would argue that the blockchain algorithms will be widely adopted, along similar lines that ZM has argued,
and that some widely used form of cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies will eventually emerge as an accepted store of value and medium of transaction.

However, current bitcoin mining strikes me as the pioneer days, the wild, wild East.

IEEE | The heart of Bitcoin is now in Inner Mongolia, where dirty coal fuels sophisticated semiconductor engineering

Would be interested in reading an argument how this is a productive, value adding, use of resources.

Those who bought bitcoin early due to some combination of foresight, a sense of adventure, and/or dumb luck and sell high before a possible bust will do well.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:30 pm
by Nonc Hilaire
Typhoon wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:Zug, Switzerland. Financal center for cryptocurrencies, the Rothschilds and Marc Rich.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/low-tax- ... 03712.html

Evidence that cryptos are evolutionary and not revolutionary. A necessary step towards the cashless society.
I would argue that the blockchain algorithms will be widely adopted, along similar lines that ZM has argued,
and that some widely used form of cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies will eventually emerge as an accepted store of value and medium of transaction.

However, current bitcoin mining strikes me as the pioneer days, the wild, wild East.

IEEE | The heart of Bitcoin is now in Inner Mongolia, where dirty coal fuels sophisticated semiconductor engineering

Would be interested in reading an argument how this is a productive, value adding, use of resources.

Those who bought bitcoin early due to some combination of foresight, a sense of adventure, and/or dumb luck and sell high before a possible bust will do well.
Agreed. The status quo is using entrepeneurs to do their crypto development, knowing it is all based on fiat and easily controlled or dismantled. The new futures offerings simply enables fiat price manipulation like we see in the metals.

I think we will see new government controlled cryptocoins established as legal tender, but some software rental tokens like Etherium and Veritaseum may make the migration to official coinage when established.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 4:13 am
by Nonc Hilaire
LTC is up 320% over last month. This is a mood altering experience. :lol:

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 4:24 am
by Typhoon
Nonc Hilaire wrote:LTC is up 320% over last month. This is a mood altering experience. :lol:
;)

AMS | The Blockchain Party

For the curious, one of the links in the article above goes into the details of the mathematics behind blockchain.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 2:51 pm
by Nonc Hilaire
Typhoon wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:LTC is up 320% over last month. This is a mood altering experience. :lol:
;)

AMS | The Blockchain Party

For the curious, one of the links in the article above goes into the details of the mathematics behind blockchain.
The techies are into the details but they don't like to discuss how simple fraud and theft can be. It's like they are arguing the facts about why a person cannot be sawn in half and deliberately ignore the magician on stage because he does not understand the details of biology make him logically irrelevant.

My guess is this run-up will finally be revealed as part Ponzi and part fiat money laundering. How else could there be so much fiat value? Normal market behavior stopped during the spring, and blow-off tops do not last this long. Add in that it also appears to be a Rothschild beta test for the cashless society I think the run-up will continue for months with a pullback when the futures experiment fails.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:54 am
by Typhoon
MIT Tech Review | A Cryptocurrency Without a Blockchain Has Been Built to Outperform Bitcoin
Instead of a blockchain, IOTA uses a “tangle,” which is based on a mathematical concept called a directed acyclic graph. Sønstebø says his team pursued an alternative approach after deciding that blockchains are too costly—it has recently cost as much as $20 per Bitcoin transaction because of high demand—and inefficient to operate at the scale required for the Internet of things.
Clever.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:13 am
by Mr. Perfect
Typhoon wrote: Liquidity matters in all amounts.
HFT has mitigated those concerns.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:41 am
by Typhoon
Mr. Perfect wrote:
Typhoon wrote: Liquidity matters in all amounts.
HFT has mitigated those concerns.
I'm not aware of HFT trading in crytocurrencies. Do you have a link?

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:44 am
by Typhoon
FT | Chinese regulators move to shutter bitcoin mines
. . . But the crackdown on bitcoin miners reflects a judgment that cryptocurrencies do not merit state support.

Bitcoin mining “consumes a large amount of electricity and also encourages a spirit of speculation in ‘virtual currencies’”, according to the document. Mining operations contradict efforts to prevent financial risk and to discourage activities that “deviate from the needs of the real economy”, it added.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 9:38 pm
by Typhoon
Reuters | South Korea plans to ban cryptocurrency trading, rattles market
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s government said on Thursday it plans to ban cryptocurrency trading, sending bitcoin prices plummeting and throwing the virtual coin market into turmoil as the nation’s police and tax authorities raided local exchanges on alleged tax evasion.

The clampdown in South Korea, a crucial source of global demand for cryptocurrency, came as policymakers around the world struggled to regulate an asset whose value has skyrocketed over the last year.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:04 am
by Enki
Is anyone here paying attention to the underlying tech? I see some talk about the Blockchain, but is anyone evaluating the different coins on their merits as a tech startup?

My take on this is that absent government intervention, and thus far, and foreseably through the Trump era, the SEC is pretty friendly to this stuff. Eventually there will be some egregious insider trading that will make some durian gambler on Main Street poor and they will have to crack down for the children. Problem is the regulators aren't moving that quickly and it is like a parasite on the economy, it will be inextricable from the economy by the time this happens. No doubt the party will end and there will be a hangover.

But in terms of timelines, I think it's instrumental to look at them as startups. Here are a few thoughts I have regarding the startup life cycle as the life cycle of a coin.

Ok, so let's start with the premise that a coin is issued by a tech startup in order to create liquidity within a closed market. I.E. people in the system are trading within the system. Freelancers hiring each other with an LATX on Latium's Taskrabbit killer can trade their services within a closed network. Those who bought in the ICO will be paying a worker pennies on the dollar, but the worker will be earning higher wages. Like if I bought the coin at $ .12 in the ICO, and in the speculation over the next couple of years, the value goes up over a dollar, and I pay someone $ 15/hour but pay them in the LATX I bought a couple of years ago for 1/8th of that value, it only matters if they want to exit the network, and if they can exit into USD or BTC or ETH or LTC or whatever, then I'm not ripping them off. So Latium organized their ICO to raise $ 15,000,000 to develop their app to help people sell services without fear that they won't get paid by the counterparty if they complete the assignment. Even if they go crazy spending that money, they probably have a burn rate of about $ 5m a year. Meaning that the network will continue to exist for 3 years, and for at least 2 of those, we won't know for sure if the team is a bunch of imbeciles that can't build a product. During this time period that money will be traded on an exchange and the trading volume on a coin that sold out a month and a half prior to the end of its ICO period that already had an MVP before the ICO. So during that time, it is almost certain that the value of the traded currency will increase beyond the price during the presale. So even if it is a Ponzi scheme and the app never actually does what it's supposed to do and they cannot build the network to accomplish the task they set out to accomplish, the period of the ponzi can be predicted with some level of confidence because we're not looking at when the market will stop wanting the LATX, we are looking at when the company runs out of its initial capital raise of USD.

Now, Bitcoin and Ethereum, these are the Gold and Silver of the crypto market respectively. Because of this ecosystem of product companies that are issuing tokens in lieu of securities, there needs to be a medium of exchange. Only a handful of currencies are widely traded on all exchanges, and thus provide liquidity in the market. These market making virtual commodities as such provide a necessary function in the whole ecosystem. So as long as the ponzi continues with product companies jumping in, they are necessary. Ethereum more than anything because Ethereum is becoming like the HTML of the crypto world. The logistics plays in this space such as ShipChain and CargoX serve various purposes and provide much needed features that currently do not exist in an industry corrupted by rampant fraud. The precision of a blockchain ledger adds a layer of security to both counterparties in a logistics transaction.

Then you have companies like Ripple, that see an old and teetering global bank messaging system dominated by an obsolete company called Swift that has to send transactions in bulk and as such major transactions are quite slow when banks talk to each other internationally and across the network. Ripple is focusing on the remittance system, and looking to be a medium of exchange for people sending money overseas. They just penned a deal with Moneygram for a pilot project and already have partnerships with banks across Asia, the CEO within the last two months became wealthier than Mark Zuckerberg.

Lack of liquidity is a HUUUUGE problem in the economy, and cryptocurrency helps solve that problem by creating networks that have their own liquidity and only rely on USD when exiting the crypto world. Already there are trusted mediums of exchange holding the center that are not USD. I know a number of Spengler Expats who are invested in the space and doing well. One who made a history Podcast and got a donation of Bitcoins, which are now worth tens of thousands. Another is a co-founder of the first crypto mutual fund.

So, for now, the SEC is friendly to the crypto market, and I don't see that changing until something egregious happens. The most recent statement from the SEC is actually pretty warm and friendly and talks about how they are watching and seeking to protect investors, but that they want these opportunities to be open to Main Street investors.

Another interesting aspect is the tense equilibrium between crypto and fiat. If people want to flee crypto, where do they go? They go to fiat. If the price drops significantly, then the institutional money wants to buy up the excess crypto and then demand rises again.

The institutional banks are wanting in. Fidelity might start listing Bitcoin, and Jamie Dimon reversed his position on cryptocurrency. Goldman Sachs is starting to invest as I understand it. After the correction of the last month, Bitcoin is starting to rise in price relative to the USD again today.

So there is huge investment in this market already, institutional money is coming in, it's becoming more accessible, and there is an increase in supply. So it doesn't look like the bubble is going to burst imminently.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:28 pm
by Typhoon
Enki wrote:Is anyone here paying attention to the underlying tech? I see some talk about the Blockchain, but is anyone evaluating the different coins on their merits as a tech startup?
Passing interest in the companies using DAGs instead of Blockchain.
Bloomberg wrote:

The global power needed to create cryptocurrencies this year could rival the entire electricity consumption of Argentina [and be a growth driver for renewable energy producers from the U.S. to China]*.

Miners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could require up to 140 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2018, about 0.6 percent of the global total, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Nicholas Ashworth wrote in a note Wednesday. That’s more than expected power demand from electric vehicles in 2025.

*Wishful thinking by Bloomberg
This strikes me as incredibly inefficient way to create an electronic medium of exchange.
Printing paper money or standard electronic transactions are far more energy and cost efficient.
Enki wrote: My take on this is that absent government intervention, and thus far, and foreseably through the Trump era, the SEC is pretty friendly to this stuff. Eventually there will be some egregious insider trading that will make some durian gambler on Main Street poor and they will have to crack down for the children. Problem is the regulators aren't moving that quickly and it is like a parasite on the economy, it will be inextricable from the economy by the time this happens. No doubt the party will end and there will be a hangover.
So far the penetration of blockchain into the economy has been as a purely speculative instrument. Tulips and beanie babies with higher transaction costs.
Enki wrote: But in terms of timelines, I think it's instrumental to look at them as startups. Here are a few thoughts I have regarding the startup life cycle as the life cycle of a coin.

Ok, so let's start with the premise that a coin is issued by a tech startup in order to create liquidity within a closed market. I.E. people in the system are trading within the system. Freelancers hiring each other with an LATX on Latium's Taskrabbit killer can trade their services within a closed network. Those who bought in the ICO will be paying a worker pennies on the dollar, but the worker will be earning higher wages. Like if I bought the coin at $ .12 in the ICO, and in the speculation over the next couple of years, the value goes up over a dollar, and I pay someone $ 15/hour but pay them in the LATX I bought a couple of years ago for 1/8th of that value, it only matters if they want to exit the network, and if they can exit into USD or BTC or ETH or LTC or whatever, then I'm not ripping them off. So Latium organized their ICO to raise $ 15,000,000 to develop their app to help people sell services without fear that they won't get paid by the counterparty if they complete the assignment. Even if they go crazy spending that money, they probably have a burn rate of about $ 5m a year. Meaning that the network will continue to exist for 3 years, and for at least 2 of those, we won't know for sure if the team is a bunch of imbeciles that can't build a product. During this time period that money will be traded on an exchange and the trading volume on a coin that sold out a month and a half prior to the end of its ICO period that already had an MVP before the ICO. So during that time, it is almost certain that the value of the traded currency will increase beyond the price during the presale. So even if it is a Ponzi scheme and the app never actually does what it's supposed to do and they cannot build the network to accomplish the task they set out to accomplish, the period of the ponzi can be predicted with some level of confidence because we're not looking at when the market will stop wanting the LATX, we are looking at when the company runs out of its initial capital raise of USD.
Does appear to have all the signs of a Ponzi scheme.
Enki wrote:Now, Bitcoin and Ethereum, these are the Gold and Silver of the crypto market respectively. Because of this ecosystem of product companies that are issuing tokens in lieu of securities, there needs to be a medium of exchange. Only a handful of currencies are widely traded on all exchanges, and thus provide liquidity in the market. These market making virtual commodities as such provide a necessary function in the whole ecosystem. So as long as the ponzi continues with product companies jumping in, they are necessary. Ethereum more than anything because Ethereum is becoming like the HTML of the crypto world. The logistics plays in this space such as ShipChain and CargoX serve various purposes and provide much needed features that currently do not exist in an industry corrupted by rampant fraud. The precision of a blockchain ledger adds a layer of security to both counterparties in a logistics transaction.
These blockchain ledgers also require "mining" do they not? If the volume of transactions become large, then someone is going to have to pay the electricity bill.
Enki wrote: Then you have companies like Ripple, that see an old and teetering global bank messaging system dominated by an obsolete company called Swift that has to send transactions in bulk and as such major transactions are quite slow when banks talk to each other internationally and across the network. Ripple is focusing on the remittance system, and looking to be a medium of exchange for people sending money overseas. They just penned a deal with Moneygram for a pilot project and already have partnerships with banks across Asia, the CEO within the last two months became wealthier than Mark Zuckerberg.
Companies such as Tencent and Alibaba in PR China are the leaders in this area at the consumer level with WeChat and Alipay, respectively.

FT | China is shaping the future of global tech
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week there were so many exhibitors from China — a third of the 4,500 total — some delegates joked that CES now stands for “China Electronics Show”.

...

Not that China itself is short of growth. Massive investments in mobile broadband and a highly competitive handset market means that nearly all of China’s approximately 750m internet users use smartphones. Payments via QR codes, led by Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay, are making cash obsolete. Dockless bikes line the streets of Chinese cities. . . .

I have lived in Beijing for more than 20 years, yet only in the past year have I felt on returning to London or Silicon Valley that I’m going backwards in time. For urban residents, China is increasingly a study in frictionless living. Hopping on a bike, ordering a meal from a huge range of restaurants, paying for utilities, transferring money to friends — all can be done at the touch of a button. Internet services in the west offer increasing convenience no doubt — but nothing beats the experience in China.
Enki wrote: Lack of liquidity is a HUUUUGE problem in the economy, and cryptocurrency helps solve that problem by creating networks that have their own liquidity and only rely on USD when exiting the crypto world. Already there are trusted mediums of exchange holding the center that are not USD. I know a number of Spengler Expats who are invested in the space and doing well. One who made a history Podcast and got a donation of Bitcoins, which are now worth tens of thousands. Another is a co-founder of the first crypto mutual fund.
My bet is that the lack of liquidity will prove to be a huge problem for Bitcoin.
If a significant number of holders want out at the same time, the exchanges won't be able to handle the volume.
Also recall reading that the crytocurrency exchanges are tacking on large transaction fees especially during times of stress.
Enki wrote:The institutional banks are wanting in. Fidelity might start listing Bitcoin, and Jamie Dimon reversed his position on cryptocurrency. Goldman Sachs is starting to invest as I understand it. After the correction of the last month, Bitcoin is starting to rise in price relative to the USD again today.

So there is huge investment in this market already, institutional money is coming in, it's becoming more accessible, and there is an increase in supply. So it doesn't look like the bubble is going to burst imminently.
Most bitcoin mining is done in PR China, in places such as Inner Mongolia, using cheap power from coal plants. Interesting that they are being shut down by a government that is pouring billions into R&D into such fields as machine learning as having no value to the economy.

Some form of crytocurrency with a secure traceable electronic ledger eventually evolve to dominate, doubt that Bitcoin will be it.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:56 am
by Enki
Typhoon wrote:Passing interest in the companies using DAGs instead of Blockchain.
What companies are doing this?
This strikes me as incredibly inefficient way to create an electronic medium of exchange.
Printing paper money or standard electronic transactions are far more energy and cost efficient.
Indeed, but the reality is that we have a liquidity trap where the dollar is being captured by rent seekers and not flowing to lower levels because those lower levels are losing the value of their labor due to increases in the efficiency of automation.
Enki wrote: So far the penetration of blockchain into the economy has been as a purely speculative instrument. Tulips and beanie babies with higher transaction costs.
I have given examples of use cases that people are penning deals with institutions in logistics and banking to change that. And the transaction cost of a bitcoin will never be higher than that of a tulip because I don't have to deliver the blockchain by horse and buggy. The electric usage is less than the caloric output of the horses.
Does appear to have all the signs of a Ponzi scheme.
It IS a ponzi scheme.
These blockchain ledgers also require "mining" do they not? If the volume of transactions become large, then someone is going to have to pay the electricity bill.
That's why most of the innovations in the space have been around reducing the energy consumption of the system. Moving from proof of stake to proof of work to other methods.
Companies such as Tencent and Alibaba in PR China are the leaders in this area at the consumer level with WeChat and Alipay, respectively.
Right, so corporations issuing currency is pretty much here to stay. Amazon is likely to begin issuing their own currency soon.
Not that China itself is short of growth. Massive investments in mobile broadband and a highly competitive handset market means that nearly all of
China’s approximately 750m internet users use smartphones. Payments via QR codes, led by Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay, are making cash obsolete. Dockless bikes line the streets of Chinese cities. . . .

I have lived in Beijing for more than 20 years, yet only in the past year have I felt on returning to London or Silicon Valley that I’m going backwards in time. For urban residents, China is increasingly a study in frictionless living. Hopping on a bike, ordering a meal from a huge range of restaurants, paying for utilities, transferring money to friends — all can be done at the touch of a button. Internet services in the west offer increasing convenience no doubt — but nothing beats the experience in China.
That's interesting. I am seeing a lot of that in New York. I don't need to leave my house much if I don't want to.

My bet is that the lack of liquidity will prove to be a huge problem for Bitcoin.
If a significant number of holders want out at the same time, the exchanges won't be able to handle the volume.
Also recall reading that the crytocurrency exchanges are tacking on large transaction fees especially during times of stress.
The other coins create liquidity in tandem with Bitcoin. It is merely the stabilizer in the center that everyone trusts as as medium of exchange. Basically anything that Coinbase/GDAX accepts is accepted on all exchanges.
Most bitcoin mining is done in PR China, in places such as Inner Mongolia, using cheap power from coal plants. Interesting that they are being shut down by a government that is pouring billions into R&D into such fields as machine learning as having no value to the economy.
I thought that as well, but then I saw data that only about 7% is mined in China. I'll see if i can find the data on where it's being mined.
Some form of crytocurrency with a secure traceable electronic ledger eventually evolve to dominate, doubt that Bitcoin will be it.
No, it won't be Bitcoin, it will likely based on what's happening now, be Ethereum and products derived from Ethereum. I am not even sure that there will be one coin to rule them all ultimately. I think the volatility of the market will be a pretty standard feature with various networks participating via the coins that they accept. Bitcoin is terrible as a currency, but as virtual gold, it works pretty well. If Ripple takes over the bank messaging market, that's a pretty big coup. They just signed a deal with Moneygram as they are focusing first on the remittance market. Check out their products xCurrent and xRapid.

Right now the name of the game is:

1) Useability
2) Extensibility
3) Low electric usage(Transaction and maintenance costs)
4) Distribution/Robustness (lack of gatekeeping)
5) Transaction Speeds
6) Anonymity

In terms of transaction speeds, some are already rivaling Visa. And some have beaten the current needs of Amazon. Bitcoin doesn't even rate in terms of transaction speed as compared to what Amazon needs.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:27 am
by Typhoon
Enki wrote:
Typhoon wrote:Passing interest in the companies using DAGs instead of Blockchain.
What companies are doing this?
The first one I learned of that uses a DAG [Directed Acyclic Graph] instead of a blockchain was IOTA.

Here is someone's comparison table:

Byteball, IOTA, RaiBlocks comparison table

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:38 pm
by Enki
IOTA is one of the most interesting ones to me. I really like the idea of the Tangle. I also like the idea of shared IOT assets.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:58 pm
by Nonc Hilaire
Acchain is the most interesting cryptocurrency imo. Basel III demands asset backed currencies and acchain wants to be the new asset backed SDR.

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:02 am
by Typhoon

Re: Bitcoin

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:53 am
by noddy
Enki wrote: Indeed, but the reality is that we have a liquidity trap where the dollar is being captured by rent seekers and not flowing to lower levels because those lower levels are losing the value of their labor due to increases in the efficiency of automation.
well the problem is that everyone is a rent seeker, left wingers, right wingers and centrists alike, we all love garunteed money for low stress reasons.

between the government, the working families who still have jobs and the corporations i think you will find these liquidity trapped unemployed have exactly the amount of resource that their "betters" think they should have - to the cent.

bitcoin or variations upon it, will not change this one iota - all that will happen is that the crypto currency becomes part of the standard basket and the rest adjusts to suit, or it becomes the backbone of the blackmarket.

no other outcome is possible.