Bitcoins

I still refuse to believe that there's that much *actual* money in this. Some people are getting rich no doubt but that money isn't just being created out of thin air, as much as it seems like it is at this point

W

What

i don't really know anything about cryptocurrency, but am i correct in thinking that 1) if it became more commonly used, it would essentially represent a merging of the use of money for investing and the use of money for day-to-day transactions, and 2) this merging would lead to even worse income inequality, assuming anything resembling the recent price volatility continues to play out?

Lol @ setting up as a mom n pop bitcoin miner this deep in the game tbh. Wherever the blockchain/cryptocurrency train is headed, pretty sure that's not a good use of your time + effort

This idea, this idea with math and computers to print money, is definitely worth something - it has the backing of narcotics smugglers, neo-nazis and collapsing caliphates, so it’s as good as bonds, except you can also get rich quick. BUY NOW AND SAVE.

represent a merging of the use of money for investing and the use of money for day-to-day transactions

You can speculate in currency markets already. It's just that the dollar, yen or euro do not have anywhere near the volatility of bitcoins, and the regular currency markets are so large and directly tied to the real economy that they are difficult to manipulate.

Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies have no known relationship to the real economy aside from their use by underground or black market economies, due to their difficulty for governments to trace or block. They also have lured in a lot of amateur speculators looking for a big, quick killing, who will easily be fleeced by the big players in the market.

from what I understand you need a massive amount of capital to profit off of regular currency exchanges because the changes are pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things

the other problem with that hypothetical is that Bitcoin fundamentally does not scale. if people started actually using it like Paypal the network would slow to a crawl. it's accepted in far less places now than it was during the first "boom". I have no clue what's causing the price to spike so dramatically right now.

who will trade me an amount of bit coins for my 1991 FLEER brand darryl strawberry baseball-style card

the top of daryl's bat has those atomic energy ring things on it, like it's drawn onto the bat, look's real cool

yesterday afternoon i got the Windows 10 Bitcoin Miner app from the Microsoft store and left it running overnight. now the proud owner of $.07 worth of digital currency!

Is ironic bitcoin mining a thing now

If they made a candy crush like game that mined bitcoins...

I thought there were a few. In order to capture the true BTC experience they actually wound up mining into someone else's wallet.

http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/

Is ironic bitcoin mining a thing now

I think some people mine other crypto-coins of more recent vintage, where the system requirements to be competitive are not so stringent, and then exchange them for Bitcoin.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502303450256-GCOINCOMPARE.jpeg

Wait'll you see the wallets...

I won't stand for this

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/kodak-joins-cryptocraze-with-digital-photo-licensing-site.html

well well well

https://www.wsj.com/articles/moneygram-signs-deal-to-work-with-currency-startup-ripple-1515679285

if FB releases a cryptocoin it would KILL YOUR MONEY

http://www.bluefat.com/1108/hm1.jpg

The group’s name is Kasotsuka Shojo, which translates as Virtual Currency Girls. Each one of the eight members represents a different cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Cardano. The women are outfitted in maid dresses and lucha libre-style masks that denote the currency they represent.

Kasotsuka Shojo’s debut single is called “The Moon and Virtual Currencies and Me” and is a blistering electro-pop song that warns listeners to be aware of fraud and to maintain their security online.

The group takes payment for concert tickets, merchandise, and other products through — what else? — cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ethereum.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882378/japan-jpop-band-virtual-currency-girls-kasotsuka-shojo-cryptocurrency

which poor lady has to be Dogecoin

doggycoin

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kng57/dogecoin-my-joke-cryptocurrency-hit-2-billion-jackson-palmer-opinion

in other news papas makin ripples kids

🌊😍

also it has to be said the amount of leniency california residents get when entering into this entire ecosystem is so crazy it's laughable

I have to assume that a huge part of what's "not right here" is that a lot of that "market cap" is a mirage, i.e. there are not actually $700B in assets tied up in cryptocurrency. In the case of Bitcoin and probably other cryptos too, huge amounts are locked away in the hands of a few people or outright lost, and more is being "hedl" by true believers. When trading volume of any asset is low enough, the price can be easily inflated. That's how the stock CRCW reached a multi-billion-dollar market cap with revenue in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and a massive net operating loss -- only like 1000 shares a day were trading. Very easy to manipulate the price at that kind of volume.

There's probably no way to calculate such a thing, but it would be fascinating to know how much money was actually *spent* acquiring the total amount of crypto in existence today, like not the total $ amount of all crypto transactions ever, but the total of all of the dollars spent by current crypto holders on crypto they currently hold. I have to imagine a lot of these crypto startups just give their management/founders huge percentages of their total coin, so that maybe you have a "market cap" of say $100 million with only $5 million in actual money having been spent by public buyers of the currency.

That’s sort of the case with Ripple IIRC - they premined the whole lot and still hold like 60% of them to parcel out with growth.

yeah, and that's just the company -- I'll bet management, employees and VC investors were given some too.

What exactly is a ripple token anyway ?
A form of stock?
From what I’ve heard the tokens are ancillary to the blockchain functionality.

all I have heard for the past week is 'buy ripple' but it's apparently a fucking pain in the ass to buy

I barely understand any of this crap and I'm in software. I did finally open a coinbase account and start buying ethereum though (in small amounts on a weekly basis).

Why not buy stocks?Possibly similarly overvalued and bubbly right now but actually buying a slice of something real.

Or ammo, for our post-apocalyptic barter economy. Five rounds of 9mm will get you one of those cockroach bars from Snowpiercer.

simplify your investment life by saddling yourself with a horrible mortgage. that way it will always be wisest to pay down the terrible yoke of your high rate mortgage.

What does there have to be all these different bitcoins? Like, what’s the difference between Litecoin and Ethereum?

Noobs

ethereum is more programmable / flexible than Bitcoin. it was intended more as an extensible platform than a payment syatem

all I have heard for the past week is 'buy ripple' but it's apparently a fucking pain in the ass to buy

Back in my day, ripple was just an extremely cheap sweet wine, mostly purchased by young adults who were within two years of the legal drinking age, plus or minus. It was only a pain in the ass to buy if you were on the minus side of that equation.

For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciR7Fq2tqJ0

Haha
The Grateful Dead even wrote a song about it

Just like guns and roses did later for nighttrain, another cheap wine
anyone ever write one for mad dog 20/20?

shocked youngsters here don't know from the ripple tipple

https://youtu.be/G1ndS-KotLo

https://68.media.tumblr.com/23120c035fb3bb482863e1edd3e369cb/tumblr_p2gpk8IYrU1vlks32o1_1280.jpg

xp to images of 2018 thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/style/bitcoin-millionaires.html

these guys..

capitalism is the real tale told by an idiot

btwn this, the "water grid" article and the Silicon Valley retreat, Nellie Bowles is the NYT MVP rn

I hope she turns this stuff into a book