The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I've been trading crypto since late last year, made some good money, lost it all but never under my capital.  Wondering if anyone else is involved.

It's a lot like gambling, and even if I lose everything it's been fun.  Think stock market only a million times more volatile lol.

I haven't gotten into it directly, but I think it's an interesting concept.  Several people in my family, mostly the younger ones, are involved.

Seems to have all the hallmarks of a Ponzi or pyramid scheme.  Or at the very least a bubble.   I would love to take a short position in it because it is destine to fail, only problem is it could go 10x its value before it crashes or it could crash tomorrow, I don't know how long it can keep attracting new speculators and don't want to bet against people being stupid.

No interest in it at all.

Smart money is always on stupid... ;)

Many people short and make a lot of money.  There is legitimate tech there that will revolutionize things, but it is being compared to the dot com bubble.  Bitcoin might be the Ask Jeeves of crypto, but something like litecoin that is trying to partner with Visa might come out of it like a Google.  Crypto=ponzi is a meme, and acknowledged. 

I have to ask, why do you think it's destine to fail?  I know it can fail, but I don't think it's destine to.

Over the last couple years I have been trying to figure out what exactly Bitcoins are, and have yet to really get an intelligent explanation.  Outside of "investing" in them, how do you get a bitcoin? Is there a place to exchange hard currency to buy a bitcoin, and more importantly how would one convert a bitcoin back into a hard currency?  From what information I have read it seems a bitcoin is just some sort of encrypted number saved on your hardrive or thumbdrive; it seems in this day and age someone could steal this information or create a bogus bitcoin.  Who is the bitcoin treasury that creates and identifies whether a bitcoin is real?  For all of these reasons I just can't bring myself to invest in them.

It's a lot faster and easier to just visit a casino.

Not really, I can do all this stuff from my phone.

A lot of this stuff you can just google yourself and find out.  Essentially, it's a world wide currency using an open source digital ledger that doesn't need a bank, so it's decentralized.  A bunch of high end computers push through transactions and get paid a small fee for it.  This is mining, which anyone can do with the proper computer, and how you get them if you don't invest.  There are places to exchange hard currency to buy bitcoin and other altcoins, Coinbase is the most common.  It was the number one app for apple in December.  This is also how you can convert back.  Bitcoin "treasury" is open source.  It's legitimacy is authorized by coders world wide.  There are risks, sure, exchanges have been hacked and currency stolen, but there is security around that if you take the time to implement it.

My main thing with bitcoin is whether or not we'll ever get to the point where the primary intention is to spend it, rather than simply to play it like a future with the intention of converting it to USD.

The single biggest help for its stability as a currency would be regular, encouraged acceptance at major online retailers.

Hell, it's to unstable to use as a currency. Could you imagine the price swings on merchandise. Too much market manipulation.

What make a currency a currency is it being the method of payment for taxes. Until the IRS accepts bitcoins and you fill out your 1040 in bitcoins it is not a currency.

I'm a a broke ass,that doesn't gamble,and not interested in it.I realize that some Crytocurrency could be doing good for the world (in their mining calculations),but I'm not comfortable with the idea in general.

It has absolutely zero of the defining characteristics of a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. I wouldn't be the least surprised if the bubble burst tomorrow, though. There's nothing rational about its current valuation.

the chineese place near me takes bitcoin as a form of payment for online orders

One of the companies doing cool things is Ripple.  They are actually implementing feeless, instant money transfers, and are working with MoneyGrahm and Western Union.  A lot of crypto people don't like them because they're a banker's company and bitcoin is all about getting away from banks, but it does have a realistic, actual world use.

John Oliver

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg

That was surprisingly cogent. I fully expected to come away disappointed and disgusted, but that was a pretty solid piece. Of course, it skirted a lot of the typical problems with bicoin and blockchain reporting by not actually trying to explain what they are or how they work, but in a way that was the strength of the piece. Most people don't need to know, just like most people don't need to know how an internal combustion engine works, or the inner working of the NYSE.

It is worth noting that scams can be made using just about anything and a little bit of critical thinking goes a long way. Some of the scams described in the segment were so outrageously obvious that it boggles the mind. One type of scam surprisingly not covered was the "exit scam". Those can be a whole lot harder to see through than crazy "we're changing the world, bro" schemes. Basically, know who you are giving your money to. An online presence, however slick, should never be sufficient.

As basically on big PSA, the piece could also have touched on one aspect of bitcoins that has burned a lot of people: If you hand over your bitcoins, you don't own any bitcoins. If you store "your" bitcoins in a "wallet" owned by some company, YOU don't own any bitcoins. You have an IOU from a company which may or may not be worth anything. As I said, though, the strength of the piece was at least partly its simplicity and going down that particular rabbit hole might have been too much.

Check out this story: Bitcoin Could Become Illegal Almost Everywhere, After Shocking Discovery in The Blockchain http://flip.it/BCO4nJ from Flipboard

Here is a pretty compelling reason to stay away. It seems the blockchain contains links to child porn. I am a novice to all this but thought I'd share

Wouldn't surprise me if at some point cyber currency becomes illegal, but not because of embedded links, but because its primary application is to aid illegal activities, black market, tax invasion etc.

Doubt it, as black market dealings have been addressed by numerous governments.  Crypto was discussed at G20 with positive results.  Even the U.S. has acknowledge that crypto does have a future and isn't going away.

Bitcoin was 9800 in the day of this thread being started.
Today, it's at 37,500.

It was relatively worth the same two years ago (Jan 2020), with a value of approximately $8500.00.  In the 4th quarter of 2020 it started taking off, along with a bunch of cryptos, reaching a high of about $67,000 just a little over two months ago.  Now with the big selloff last week who knows where this will go.  I do believe Bitcoin is the one crypto currency that will survive.

I have learned more about Bitcoin since this post of mine almost four years ago.  The first being when they talk about "mining", or effectively creating the value, it's done by owning large computer server farms which process data.  So if you own a large computer server farm and process transactions you are "paid" in Bitcoins that then have a value.  Two side notes, one I recently watched a news report were environmentalist were complaining about these server farms because they use a lot of electricity and some are run by coal plants that have started up again.  I don't really care about this, if you don't want energy live like the Amish, but I doubt any of these complainers would actually do that.  Then the second is that someone in my locality, that is extremely wealthy, announced plans recently that he was going to build a multi-million dollar server farm in order to mine Bitcoins.  Knowing of the environmentalist complaints he also plans to build a solar panel farm to power the computer farm.

The other thing I learned about Bitcoins since 2018, is that Bitcoin installed ATM machines all over the country, so that people with Bitcoins could convert it to US currency by making a withdrawal from one of these ATMs.  To me this makes it "real", and sustainable in my opinion.

The environmental concerns are totally valid.  It's not a "live like the Amish" thing.  It's that it uses a ton of energy to create bitcoin.  That is inherently bad for a lot of reasons.  There are other cryptos that don't require that, which could be better for their future.

Maybe I don't understand it, and please let me know, but aren't these computer servers running anyways to process internet flow of data anyways?  So are the owners of these servers generating income (in the form of Bitcoin) for handling these data transactions for us?  If these server farms went away wouldn't that slow the flow of data around the world, and perhaps create an expense to users in other ways?

How do other cryptos generate their initial currency if not from the way Bitcoin does?

I'm not an expert, but here's how I understand it.

Bitcoin is "harvested" by computers doing complex calculations and discovering or calculating the next coin....think of it like a computer finding out the next digit of pi....

Because bitcoin is so valuable, mining is valuable, so people (mostly in other countries) are buying up whatever computers they can and running them all day and night to try to mine for the next coin.  That's adding a ton of waste, not only in electricity, but also in parts -- as well as causing an issue with the supply chain, as there aren't enough microchips to go around.  These aren't computers being used for other things that just happen to be mining for bitcoin on the side -- these are big rooms, specifically filled with computers, just to mine for coins.

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/12/35/bc/1235bcaac3d3b99a6fbc8c0bd3c16a96.jpg)

The next part, I don't really understand, but some of these other, more environmental options, don't require actual mining....but something along the lines of you proving that you have the resources to mine for it, and then they award the next coin based on that....something to that effect.  There isn't actual computer mining.

And when bitcoin fails they'll be selling all those video cards for pennies on the dollar which is why I'm secretly hoping for failure. Sorry Dave. :)

it's the "i hope real estate crashes again so a regular person can afford to buy their 1st home" approach .. i get it

Thanks for the explanation Fau, it's not what I thought it was at all.  I thought these computers were actually providing a service to the population, but I guess not.

I know there is a limit to the number of Bitcoins, when researching this the other day I think I found that 90% of the maximum amount of Bitcoins are already in the market, so there are only another 10% available.  I'm sure someone will find another way to get around this, but interesting to see how this will affect the market in the future.