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Thread: Crypto Currency

  1. #196
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    Quote Originally Posted by chuckcouples View Post
    Has this been rebalanced or are you saying that 80+% of your investments were in Bitcoin a few months ago?
    No, I’ve been buying the dip for a while. 40% is the highest percent BTC has reached in my portfolio. I didn’t start buying until October 2020. It reached like 90% TSLA at one point before I rebalanced and started buying BTC.

  2. #197
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    I own 0 BTC at this point. Nearly all ETH in terms of what I am holding long term. Most of it staked. EIP-1559 + the merge is coming and it's going to get really interesting.

    I have been learning how to interact with Defi protocols and it's pretty amazing.

    Flipped a bunch of NFTs as well because it's crazy frothy right now.

    I only see more and more of my portfolio nd time going into crypto as time goes on, not less.

  3. #198
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    The thing that confuses me most about the appeal of cryptocurrencies (and is probably a very common newbie question): Why would you want a currency with such a wildly fluctuating value? Who wants to use this as a currency??? Buy something for $100 today, and oops by next week you've essentially paid $150 for it. One of the best characteristics of a currency is stability and while I agree that blockchain has insane potential, the currency stuff is lost on me. Is the plan for the price to eventually stabilize so it's actually useful as a currency? Or is the thrill of that volatility part of the gambling aspect that people like about it?

  4. #199
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    Quote Originally Posted by forumname View Post
    The thing that confuses me most about the appeal of cryptocurrencies (and is probably a very common newbie question): Why would you want a currency with such a wildly fluctuating value? Who wants to use this as a currency??? Buy something for $100 today, and oops by next week you've essentially paid $150 for it. One of the best characteristics of a currency is stability, and while I agree that blockchain has insane potential, the currency stuff is lost on me. If the plan for the price to eventually stabilize so it's actually useful as a currency? Or is the thrill of that volatility part of the gambling aspect that people like about it?
    It's a bit unfortunate that they are called cryptocurrency at this point, because they are considered commodities by the CFTC. Bitcoin is headed down the 'store of value/digital gold' path at this point since it's never really lived up to it's ability to be a useful way to move money around at any kind of scale (despite what people want to tell you about Lightning network). Ether is a bit different since it acts as gas for all of the things that are actually happening on Ethereum (NFTs, Decentralized Finance etc), so it gets used and burned all of the time, but it also has speculative value in and of itself as a store of value, and it's also a capital asset in that it is going to give you the right to earn a share of the fees, particularly in a post EIP-1559 world. You're absolutely right that as a currency they are pretty poor due to their volatility, and the entire crypto space is still largely fueled by speculation. The challenge of how to make something that could massively increase in value in the future, also be something that people want to use to pay for things (even if those are just gas fees), is a big one, and still being worked on.

    There are stablecoins, which are pegged to USD, but they come with their own challenges (ie what are they actually backed by). The real holy grail is an algorithmic stablecoin that isn't collateralized, but holds it's peg by basically burning/minting tokens. They keep getting tried but none have really worked well at this point, though it's constantly being worked on.

    Clearly there are multiple reasons why people get into crypto, though I think it nearly always starts with speculation. It's also a black hole. It would be really interesting to know what percentage of people, once they get really involved in the space, really get back out long term. Then you have people who are really concerned about inflation and the devaluing of the US Dollar (I'm not as convinced it's as big of a deal as people think), and you have libertarian ideals (I share some of those, but some of them make me ill), and it's a real hodge podge of lots of different motivations.

  5. #200
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    Quote Originally Posted by doulos View Post
    Bitcoin is headed down the 'store of value/digital gold' path at this point since it's never really lived up to it's ability to be a useful way to move money around at any kind of scale (despite what people want to tell you about Lightning network).
    I'll push back on this point just a bit. It is important to distinguish between Bitcoin the network (capital B) and bitcoin the asset (lowercase b) I agree that bitcoin the asset is headed down a store of value/digital gold path at this point, but that is because highly volatile assets don't work great for mediums of exchange. A monetary asset, no matter how good its monetary properties, is guaranteed to have high volatility until it reaches a sufficiently high adoption rate. Bitcoin is basically where the internet was back in 1997, except that its network is growing at a faster rate in its first 12 years than the internet did. Still, we've got billions of users to go before reaching a high enough adoption rate for the volatility to go away.

    HOWEVER, Bitcoin the network and the Lightning Network are most definitely working very well for transactions. To say that Lightning has "never really lived up to it's ability to be a useful way to move money around at any kind of scale" is a bit odd because it is still so early, and the Lightning Network's growth in both number of nodes and total liquidity is basically parabolic at this point.



    There is a community in El Salvador (Bitcoin Beach) that transacts most of their commerce via the Lightning Network. Nearly every vendor there accepts Bitcoin via Lightning for all of the goods they sell every day. Also, remittances from USA to Nigeria, El Salvador, and other countries are increasingly being done via Strike / Lightning Network instead of by Western Union. A couple of good listens on this topic:

    https://open.spotify.com/episode/20UEnhqpg2fL433uTYjapn

    https://open.spotify.com/episode/4toV9eSa7ruJoB3rby9bjR
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    I am aware of what El Salvador has done and will just say I don't think it's going to end as well for Bitcoin as Bitcoin supporters think. Also, I'd have to go look, but last I had heard there were multiple times more WBTC on Ethereum as there was on the Lightning network. Not exactly huge volume. I get it, Bitcoin supporters believe in the Lightning Network. I do not, at least not in terms of it scaling to any significant size. If you do, and you're excited about where things are headed, then that's the beauty of this space - different strokes for different folks. Bitcoin got me into crypto years ago, but I've since sold it all and moved onto Ethereum.

    EDIT: Just doublechecked. 1500 BTC on Lightning and 196,000 WBTC on Ethereum.

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    I think its pretty clear that most people dont yet understand crypto. Currency as a use case isnt the draw card. In most cases its a misnomer. Ive heard the crypto space described as being four quadrants.
    1- Digital property, i.e. store of value (Bitcoin)
    2- Digital currency (stablecoins like USDT, DAI, USDC, CDBCs. Primarily used as a medium of exchange),
    3- Digital Platforms are what houses other businesses like DeFi, NFT, Gaming, Insurance (ETH, DOT),
    4- Decentralized Applications - (AXS, AAVE, LINK, GLM) DApps are used to provide services, exchanges, DEV tooling, etc.

    Personally, Some of my money is there for short term volitility (2-3 years) and the rest of my money will be long term holdings (retirement).

    If you dont know about it, I strongly suggest trying to learn a little bit about it. We are still in early adopter phase so there is still massive room to grow.

  8. #203
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    Quote Originally Posted by doulos View Post
    Just doublechecked. 1500 BTC on Lightning and 196,000 WBTC on Ethereum.
    I just downloaded Blue Wallet on the app store (1 minute, no KYC questions), created a Lightning wallet (10 seconds), generated an invoice for 10 sats, which is way less than a cent (10 seconds) and posted the QR code on Twitter with the word “test”. Within minutes a random dude in UK that I have never met sent me 10 sats from his “Bottle Wallet” (another of the hundreds of Lightning wallets). It arrived instantly. It cost both of us less than a cent to send less than a cent across the world instantly. If I had requested $1000 and he wanted to send me $1000, it would have come just as instantly and also cost us both practically nothing in fees. It would have worked just as well if he was in Venezuela, Russia, North Korea or China. And it would have worked just as well if we were in person and I was buying coffee from him. Instant settlement for a fee that is vastly smaller than a penny.

    Can you do this with Wrapped BTC on Ethereum? How much would it cost me to send 10 sats worth of wrapped BTC over Ethereum, and how long would it take for settlement?

    For that matter, can you do this with anything else besides BTC/Lightning? Paypal? Venmo? Zelle?

  9. #204
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    Quote Originally Posted by BreadManPanarin View Post
    I just downloaded Blue Wallet on the app store (1 minute, no KYC questions), created a Lightning wallet (10 seconds), generated an invoice for 10 sats, which is way less than a cent (10 seconds) and posted the QR code on Twitter with the word “test”. Within minutes a random dude in UK that I have never met sent me 10 sats from his “Bottle Wallet” (another of the hundreds of Lightning wallets). It arrived instantly. It cost both of us less than a cent to send less than a cent across the world instantly. If I had requested $1000 and he wanted to send me $1000, it would have come just as instantly and also cost us both practically nothing in fees. It would have worked just as well if he was in Venezuela, Russia, North Korea or China. And it would have worked just as well if we were in person and I was buying coffee from him. Instant settlement for a fee that is vastly smaller than a penny.

    Can you do this with Wrapped BTC on Ethereum? How much would it cost me to send 10 sats worth of wrapped BTC over Ethereum, and how long would it take for settlement?

    For that matter, can you do this with anything else besides BTC/Lightning? Paypal? Venmo? Zelle?
    No, you could not do that as cheaply on Ethereum directly. Do you know why? Because there is massive demand for Ethereum blockchain space because it actually gets used by people, thus the higher gas fees. This is the whole 'No one drives in New York because the traffic is so bad' argument.

    However, the future (in my opinion but time will tell) is not having your everyday individual interact directly with Etheruem, but by using things like Optimism (just released on Uniswap a couple days ago and runs with tiny fees and instantly), Arbitrum and the like, then having those rollups settled directly on Ethereum after the fact. This way you get low fees and the high speed on the layer 2 side, but the security of the Ethereum blockchain directly. There will still be some large organizations/whales perhaps who will be willing to pay the high gas fees to interact directly with Ethereum, but there won't be much of a need for people to do so (as we are already seeing).

    I'll finish again though by stating that if you're all on board the Bitcoin train still then all the power to you. I wish you well as I think there is lots of room in the space for Bitcoin to retain a spot as a store of value long term, and that alone is enough for it to be worth something. You're not alone. Jack Dorsey still thinks there is hope for actually using Bitcoin for things like Defi ( https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-...o-make-it-easy ). What's hilarious is that even Jack, who adores Bitcoin, minted his Twitter NFTs ... on Ethereum. Can't make this stuff up.

    Anyhow, I wish you well. It could be worse. You could be a Cardano supporter (I kid, I kid .... kind of).

  10. #205
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    Quote Originally Posted by doulos View Post
    No, you could not do that as cheaply on Ethereum directly. Do you know why? Because there is massive demand for Ethereum blockchain space because it actually gets used by people, thus the higher gas fees. This is the whole 'No one drives in New York because the traffic is so bad' argument.

    However, the future (in my opinion but time will tell) is not having your everyday individual interact directly with Etheruem, but by using things like Optimism (just released on Uniswap a couple days ago and runs with tiny fees and instantly), Arbitrum and the like, then having those rollups settled directly on Ethereum after the fact. This way you get low fees and the high speed on the layer 2 side, but the security of the Ethereum blockchain directly. There will still be some large organizations/whales perhaps who will be willing to pay the high gas fees to interact directly with Ethereum, but there won't be much of a need for people to do so (as we are already seeing).

    I'll finish again though by stating that if you're all on board the Bitcoin train still then all the power to you. I wish you well as I think there is lots of room in the space for Bitcoin to retain a spot as a store of value long term, and that alone is enough for it to be worth something. You're not alone. Jack Dorsey still thinks there is hope for actually using Bitcoin for things like Defi ( https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-...o-make-it-easy ). What's hilarious is that even Jack, who adores Bitcoin, minted his Twitter NFTs ... on Ethereum. Can't make this stuff up.

    Anyhow, I wish you well. It could be worse. You could be a Cardano supporter (I kid, I kid .... kind of).
    My point was simply that you pointed out that Bitcoin wasn't already working as a medium of exchange because Lightning doesn't work well, but in my experience it works just fine for transactions. Certainly better than doing base layer transactions on the Bitcoin or Ethereum networks. Will that change in the future if Ethereum succeeds in their very ambitious goals? Maybe. Will they succeed? Maybe. But the Lightning Network is working just fine for transactions right now, either for sending and receiving BTC or for sending USD through BTC rails and receiving USD on the other end to take advantage of the speed and permissionlessness of the network while avoiding the volatility. It has plenty of scaling yet to go, but that is to be expected for something still in its infancy. I own some Ethereum, so I'm not anti-Ethereum. I just prefer the scarce asset in Bitcoin that has a fixed monetary policy forever, and that intends to scale via additional layers like other moneys have done in the past instead of trying to do so on the base protocol. I prefer optimization of decentralization and security rather than optimization of efficiency on the base layer. This is just a matter of personal preference, and I can understand why you would prefer the "move fast and break things" tech mentality of Ethereum. There is a ton of upside IF they can manage to execute on their vision.

  11. #206
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    Quote Originally Posted by BreadManPanarin View Post
    My point was simply that you pointed out that Bitcoin wasn't already working as a medium of exchange because Lightning doesn't work well, but in my experience it works just fine for transactions. Certainly better than doing base layer transactions on the Bitcoin or Ethereum networks. Will that change in the future if Ethereum succeeds in their very ambitious goals? Maybe. Will they succeed? Maybe. But the Lightning Network is working just fine for transactions right now, either for sending and receiving BTC or for sending USD through BTC rails and receiving USD on the other end to take advantage of the speed and permissionlessness of the network while avoiding the volatility. It has plenty of scaling yet to go, but that is to be expected for something still in its infancy. I own some Ethereum, so I'm not anti-Ethereum. I just prefer the scarce asset in Bitcoin that has a fixed monetary policy forever, and that intends to scale via additional layers like other moneys have done in the past instead of trying to do so on the base protocol. I prefer optimization of decentralization and security rather than optimization of efficiency on the base layer. This is just a matter of personal preference, and I can understand why you would prefer the "move fast and break things" tech mentality of Ethereum. There is a ton of upside IF they can manage to execute on their vision.

    This has degraded into the typical bitcoin shtick. Been down this road too many times. If you're happy and I'm happy then that's all that matters.

  12. #207
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    Quote Originally Posted by BreadManPanarin View Post
    Something made me go back and dig this up and read it. What a fun ride...

    Anybody getting back in and hoping for another boom, or is it more likely to go further down than up?
    God I’m dumb. I didn’t even remember posting this in 2019. Should have been DCAing ever since then instead of waiting until oct 2020 to start buying. If I had done any research at all back then I’d be rich today. Sad face….

    Reading back through 2017-now on this thread is pretty crazy. Lol

  13. #208
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    What a difference a month makes eh lads? I am really glad that I was buying all the way down that dip. doulos, I have really been enjoying Ben Cowen's channel. He gives a good balanced view of the situation. Also been watching Elliotrades, but recently he has been selling a lot of hopium and Im liking him less and less.

  14. #209
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    Not sure if you've dipped your toes into the NFT craze at all, but oh boy...

  15. #210
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    NFT are going bananas, but I dont really have money to put into everything. Pretty happy with what I have.

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