Bitcoin - cryptocurrency?

   #41  

NZDubNurd

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My father-in-law bought bitcoin when they were NZ$400 each.

He sold one a while ago, because he thought NZ$11000 was a pretty good return.

Now they're NZ$24000 he's even happier he's still got more, but I think maybe he should dump them... since he's pushing 80 :-)

My brother-in-law will have shitloads of them, he got in very early and traded like crazy, and spent thousands on mining them, and even spent about NZ$30K on solar panels to help power the mining machines.
 
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DV52

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My father-in-law bought bitcoin when they were NZ$400 each.

He sold one a while ago, because he thought NZ$11000 was a pretty good return.

Now they're NZ$24000 he's even happier he's still got more, but I think maybe he should dump them... since he's pushing 80 :-)

My brother-in-law will have shitloads of them, he got in very early and traded like crazy, and spent thousands on mining them, and even spent about NZ$30K on solar panels to help power the mining machines.

You have some very canny investors in your family!!

I wish both of your relations a long longevity, but please make sure that both your father and brother-in-law read post #35 of this thread.


Don
 
   #43  

dingle

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We bought five of these when they were 50USD in 2013. Still holding them but the feeling is it's going to burst soon.
 
   #44  

Uwe

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I have a theory: If you've "invested" in a commodity and the price doubles, sell half. Now the other half is free, and you can't possibly lose anything. If it doubles again, sell half again. Now you've locked in a profit...
 
   #45  

dingle

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Yeah I've been talking to the wife about it the last few weeks, it's time to sell one and continue the gamble.
 
   #46  

Jack@European_Parts

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Always protect investment and profit and don't treat profit as a let it ride as if you lost nothing or this I covered my investment rational .....decide at this point is this an investment, what are the risks and is it feasible versus just a bet!

Trading is about calculated risk/reward and most of all "controlled emotion"........... :thumbs:

Don't get caught in the hype, as this state alters proper choices to be made.
 
   #47  

Jack@European_Parts

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Yeah I'm with Jamie on this, it's FRAUD........me personally I would take all the profit on this at 1600% & not adhere to a sell half rule.


What happens if the bitcoin bubble pops?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...-bubble-pops/ar-BBGDw6T?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=ientp

The enormous run-up in bitcoin's price this year has spurred talk that it's a bubble bound to burst. That sounds ominous. But take heart: If bitcoin's bubble pops, the pain likely will be restricted to those who bet on the cryptocurrency -- and not harm the wider market and economy very much.

Compared to past investment manias that came to grief, such as the 1990s dot-com craze and the housing boom of the past decade, a bitcoin rout likely would be of small magnitude.
Certainly, bitcoin's gains have been breathtaking enough to invite worry. Bitcoin, created as a faster and government-free means of exchange, has had such a sudden ascent that it's scary to many on Wall Street. Jamie Dimon, chairman of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), has labeled it a "fraud," and Bespoke Investment Group warned that the "herd mentality" that has pushed its price precipitously skyward would end in tears.
This year, bitcoin's price has enjoyed a 1,600 percent increase, shooting past $17,000 on Monday. It far eclipses the Nasdaq Composite's 26 percent advance. The cyber-currency "is now officially an investor mania," wrote Joshua Brown, an adviser with Ritholtz Wealth Management in a blog post. "Like all manias, when it turns, people are going to be wiped out."
BBGCAUc.img
© Provided by CBS Interactive Inc.Bitcoin is notoriously volatile, with double-digit drops common. In June, for instance, it fell 19 percent in one day. And many of the people piling into bitcoin appear to be speculators, not long-term investors who believe in its future. While the digital dough has found increasing acceptance among some retailers, with the likes of travel service Expedia accepting it, bitcoin and its smaller rivals like Ethereum have a long way to go.
That's because a taint lingers about the stuff. Bitcoin, because of its anonymity, rivaling cash, is a favorite among drug dealers and other criminals. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton cautioned on Monday that investors must be wary of cryptocurrency and especially of a spate of new "coin based offerings," where digital money firms raise money by distributing their internet-based coins.
Adding fuel to the worries is the launch of bitcoin futures contracts. Cboe Global Markets debuted its product on Sunday, which allows established Wall Street players, leery about the digital currency up to now, to get involved with it. CME Group, the biggest derivatives trading platform, will unveil its own bitcoin futures on Dec. 18. High-end investment firm Goldman Sachs (GS) has indicated it will clear bitcoin futures trades, where it acts as an intermediary between buyer and seller.
In raw dollar terms, bitcoin's presence seems to be formidable, with a market capitalization of $292 billion. That puts it ahead of all but 10 of the Standard & Poor's 500 members, just behind Bank of America (BAC) at $301 billion (No. 10 on the list) and Apple (AAPL) at $885 billion, the nation's most valuable company.


Still, amid all the jeremiads about the dangers of bitcoin, a sense of proportion is lacking. A bitcoin collapse probably wouldn't have much affect on other parts of the capital markets or the economy because, despite the impressive numbers of its bull run, its reach is meager.
If bitcoin's price dropped to zero, the loss would equal a fall of just 0.6 percent in U.S. equity prices, according to Capital Economics. Plus, "there is no correlation" between bitcoin prices and other assets, so it "should not affect wider financial conditions," according a recent report by the research firm.
In other words, such a swan dive could rival the damage of the sports card mania of the 1980s and 1990s -- a blow to some when it fell apart, but not to the general public.
And unlike other bubbles, as Gavekal Research has noted, the bitcoin rally is not largely powered by leverage. Borrowed money magnifies the scope of financial damage. The housing bust showed just that when a wave of defaulted mortgages swamped the debt-laden securities that Wall Street had packaged them into and battered the banks that held them.
Certainly, the impact of previous bursting bubbles has been far more widespread than the end of the bitcoin enthusiasm could produce.
BBGDlSe.img
© Provided by CBS Interactive Inc.In the Dutch tulip fad of the early 1600s, people pledged their houses and other valuables to buy the bulbs, which flower lovers craved. When the overvalued market imploded, Holland plunged into a recession. A similar frenzy enveloped Britain in the 1700s, as investors bid up shares of trading companies doing business in the Americas and the Pacific. When these companies didn't deliver the promised bounty and the so-called South Sea Bubble burst, the British government had to bail out the banks threatened by the collapse.
In the 1920s, a similar investing passion raged as everyone from the well-heeled to shoeshine boys borrowed money to buy stocks in a roaring market, where some of the offerings were not quite legitimate. When manufacturing and farm overproduction sent companies' prices and profits plunging, the stock market crashed, impoverishing millions of people, and ushering in the Great Depression.
The dot-com vogue of the 1990s saw the creation of myriad firms promising riches, even though many had no hope of turning a profit. Fed by passionate stock investors, these ambitious internet outfits pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite to new highs. But finally, too much red ink tried investors' patience. The Nasdaq tumbled three-quarters from its high point, in a market retreat that lasted from March 2000 to October 2002.The debacle touched off a recession, although the downturn was brief and mild because the tech tyros had used little leverage.
Borrowed money was at the heart of the housing disaster, however: Thanks to low interest rates and loosened lending standards, many people who never could qualify for a mortgage before suddenly borrowed large sums to buy houses. When they couldn't make their payments, the effect almost destroyed the international banking system and created the Great Recession.
 
   #48  

DV52

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I have a theory: If you've "invested" in a commodity and the price doubles, sell half. Now the other half is free, and you can't possibly lose anything. If it doubles again, sell half again. Now you've locked in a profit...

Uwe: I like your "theory", but I reckon that it needs a small embellishment: The "Ross-Imperative" for stack market trading needs to have an investment time component to truly reflect the notion of "profit". In deciding what proportion of stock to sell for break-even, the threshold price of the commodity should also be informed by the opportunity value of the money had the trader placed the funds in an "average" investment. Now, it doesn't really matter how the standard rate-of-return for an "average" investment is defined. It could be Consumer Price Index, the cash rate, the traded index for the stock exchange (NASDAQ for you guys), but there needs to be some accommodation for the time value of money in your theory (IMO) - especially if the stock is held for a period of time

Of course for the special case of Bitcoins, my embellishment is academic because the slope of the price curve is so steep that it totally swamps any consideration of the normal opportunity cost on funds invested


Don
 
   #49  

DV52

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Trading is about calculated risk/reward and most of all "controlled emotion"........... :thumbs:

Neh............ trading is about the most visceral of basic human emotions - markets (and price bubbles in particular) are run by fear and greed (nothing else)!!! :thanks:
 
   #50  

Jack@European_Parts

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Neh............ trading is about the most visceral of basic human emotions - markets (and price bubbles in particular) are run by fear and greed (nothing else)!!! :thanks:


That is the point of controlling ones emotions is can you stomach whether it be greed or fear............ :D

One might be scared and run from a person in panic losing ones life & net a bullet in the back and the one who controls fear can possibly see how to disarm and use it on his attacker to possibly overcome.

Fear is a much more powerful force than greed...........
 
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   #51  

Jack@European_Parts

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...at-i-learned/ar-BBGEBWT?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=ientp

I owned bitcoin for a weekend, and here's what I learned

I held on for my stash for a weekend to see what owning bitcoin was like. Here's what I learned.
It's crazy volatile
You should probably know this if you're buying bitcoin, but if you don't: the value of your bitcoin is apt to skyrocket and then tank at any moment. Minutes after buying $200 worth, my bitcoin value was down to $191. It continued to fall over the weekend before spiking on Monday back to its original value.
My bank thought it was fraud

When I first purchased bitcoin through the app Coinbase, my bank thought it was fraud and froze my account. I had to call my bank and confirm the purchases before trying to buy it again. Also, I've heard reports from friends in the newsroom that there are times when the Coinbase systems are overloaded, which might prevent folks from buying at a lower price. Coinbase addressed this potential issue in a message to its users.



It feels more like a roulette table than a regular investment

If you pick up a newspaper or watch CNBC, you can often figure out why a company's stock or a global currency is up or down. Maybe there's a new CEO, war, government problems, a scandal, a positive or negative earnings report or a new competitor. You can start to figure out why a stock might react the way it does.
Bitcoin isn't like that. It's kind of like standing at a roulette table, and seems to spike or sink purely based on the momentum of other people buying and selling. I'm sure other people understand it better than me, but I have a feeling a lot of folks are just as clueless and are simply buying it to "get rich quick." And why wouldn't you? Someone who purchased bitcoin when it crossed $3,000 back in June has already increased their investment more than five times at today's price.
I am also suspicious that some people are talking up bitcoin because they own a lot -- probably purchased when it was cheaper -- and they want it to continue skyrocket.

It's easy to buy and sell

It's really easy to buy and sell bitcoin, as I showed you in an earlier story, and fees through apps like Coinbase are low. That's probably another reason it's so attractive. It takes just a few seconds to enter in how much you'd like to purchase, for example, and you can sell it at am moment's notice. I sold mine on Monday morning after my investment hit a weekend low of $166 and returned back to $200 as bitcoin's value increased on news of bitcoin futures trading.
I won't buy it again

I'm not planning to buy bitcoin again, for several reasons. One, I write about bitcoin so outside of writing an article about how to buy it yourself, it's not appropriate for me to own a significant share. Also, I don't like that one moment the value of a bitcoin is down $2,000 and another it's up $5,000. It probably provides the same rush of adrenaline that a craps table in Vegas might provide, but it's too risky for me.

 
   #53  

DV52

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Go long..... :D

vreihen: Go long?

I think that we have found a counter party to Uwe's position below. Just don't forget that as the market-maker, I'm entitled to a % (higher than zero) of funds invested. Given the Pacific Peso that laughingly passes as $AUD, any commission amount in $USD is considered a fortune down here!

Don

I would happily buy some long-dated puts. :)
 
   #54  

dingle

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This is gambling, plain and simple.
 
   #55  

myounus

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It's a computer program at the end of the day with no intrinsic value.

Investors better hope the electricity don't run out.
 
   #56  

NZDubNurd

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It's a computer program at the end of the day with no intrinsic value.

But that's what money IS.

The only value it has, is what REAL stuff people think they can swap it for. This includes the US dollar, for which you either have a computer saying you have a certain count, or you have notes/coins which say they have a certain count value. The value of each of them changes every day, based on what the computers work out other people will pay for them at any given time.

It's ALL the same, but more people "trust" certain types. None of them are real.

Where has the Gold gone?
 
   #57  

DV52

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But that's what money IS.

The only value it has, is what REAL stuff people think they can swap it for. This includes the US dollar, for which you either have a computer saying you have a certain count, or you have notes/coins which say they have a certain count value. The value of each of them changes every day, based on what the computers work out other people will pay for them at any given time.

It's ALL the same, but more people "trust" certain types. None of them are real.

Where has the Gold gone?

NZDubNurd: That's what I like about Uwe's Bar - it's where the BIG questions are asked (and often answered)!!! Your question fits exactly into this category - what is money? I don't know the answer to this simple question, but I don't think that Gold is the same as money.

I used to think that money was a measure of the value of work and in days of yore, it probably was a good surrogate for a laborer's efforts. But that was long ago and in today's world such archaic notions are irrelevant. In modern economies, linking money to work-effort is too simplistic an answer and it's clearly an incorrect definition for the application of money on a traded exchange where little actual human effort is involved. Which brings me to the issue of Gold - which IMO is not money, but rather a thing that simply exists in relatively small quantities. Regardless of whether money is defined as a crytpo-currency, or the folding paper type, it is a thing that is invented by humans. Gold cannot be similarly defined because it is not made by humans: it was made in the big-bang and no one is making it anymore!!

So- what is money?

Don
 
   #58  

Uwe

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Money is a "claim ticket" for actual, physical wealth.

I heard an interesting test for whether something is or isn't money. Take a decent amount of it to a random red-light district and see if it's accepted in exchange for "services" there. If it is, what you have is money. I haven't personally tried it, but I imagine 1-oz gold coins, especially the more recognizable ones, would pass this test. ;)
 
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   #59  

DV52

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I heard an interesting test for whether something is or isn't money. Take a decent amount of it to a random red-light district and see if it's accepted in exchange for "services" there. If it is, what you have is money. I haven't personally tried it, but I imagine 1-oz gold coins, especially the more recognizable ones, would pass this test. ;)

Uwe: I must approach my comment regarding your red-light definition of money with the same caveat as you have used - "I haven't personally tried it" too!! ;) But if we accept your explanation, then the entire realm of narcotic drugs would also be classed as money too!! I'm not entirely certain that we should leave the answer to the pivotal question of what is money to the oldest profession in the world (notwithstanding the important of the industry's service to the stability of world economies)!!

Don
 
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Ciamardo

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interested discussion.... and Today(17december2017) it takes only 0,03068 BTC to buy a HEX-NET version PRO :p

lgQmgtp.png
 
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