[Finance] The cryptocurrency (Bitcoin etc) thread

[Marshy]

When btc crashed 90% in 2018 it was likened to the dot com bubble burst.

When btc crashes from $100k back to $20/30k again later this year or in 2022 in will be likened to the dot com bubble burst.

When btc crashes from... in 2025 it will be compared.

You see the pattern?

yep its due another big crash. Primed for it. Thats the cycle.

Not convinced about 2025 though.... it has to be around then.... to crash ;-)

 

[martin tyler]

What platforms do people use to trade crypto on here? I’m fairly new in over past few months mainly reading more than anything but brought a few Etherum coins a couple months back via Coinbase on the exchange which I am still sitting on. Is there better platforms with your own personal wallet and lower transaction fees at all that anyone can recommend

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

When btc crashed 90% in 2018 it was likened to the dot com bubble burst.

When btc crashes from $100k back to $20/30k again later this year or in 2022 in will be likened to the dot com bubble burst.

When btc crashes from... in 2025 it will be compared.

You see the pattern?

The pattern is that there is no pattern. The dotcom crash had ebbs and flows in it's build up with lots of tech firms rising then falling just as different cryptos do at the moment. It is very much like the scenes in The Big Short when they do their research and start talking to estate agents, mortgage agents etc. that the penny drops. The parallels are that the language is very similar, from posts on these boards, to the wider media, there is that confidence in a system that won't fail / can't fail, you just need to ride out the troughs.

 

[Albion Dan]

The pattern is that there is no pattern. The dotcom crash had ebbs and flows in it's build up with lots of tech firms rising then falling just as different cryptos do at the moment. It is very much like the scenes in The Big Short when they do their research and start talking to estate agents, mortgage agents etc. that the penny drops. The parallels are that the language is very similar, from posts on these boards, to the wider media, there is that confidence in a system that won't fail / can't fail, you just need to ride out the troughs.

Did the system in the Big Short die? I still seem to see people taking out mortgages and house prices rising. They just timed the cycle top. There is a massive pattern. Did the internet die when the dot com bubble burst? Of course it didnt, it was just part of a cycle that saw many stocks rise exponentially from that point. There is ALWAYS a pattern.

The parallels are that the language is very similar, from posts on these boards, to the wider media, there is that confidence in a system that won't fail / can't fail, you just need to ride out the troughs.

The system wont fail, but the price will crash with 100% certainty and alot of alt start ups will die. Some however will go on to be the new Googles, Amazons, big banks etc.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

Did the system in the Big Short die? I still seem to see people taking out mortgages and house prices rising. They just timed the cycle top. There is a massive pattern. Did the internet die when the dot com bubble burst? Of course it didnt, it was just part of a cycle that saw many stocks rise exponentially from that point. There is ALWAYS a pattern.

Life will always go on, it's what gets taken down along the way. The internet did die in a way, some of the free spirit ingenuity all gobbled up by a few remaining players. The internet almost certainly took a different direction post dot com. And if you think the housing and mortgage markets are healthy places, still 12 years or so after the financial crash, austerity impacting countries around the globe, the wealth gap widening - then perhaps you are in your own bubble?

I thought crypto was supposed to be different, a break from the old financial state led centralised systems? You're just painting it as more of the same. It's either going to be revolutionary and different, or it isn't. If it is, then they old patterns and cycles don't apply do they.

 

[Albion Dan]

L
I thought crypto was supposed to be different, a break from the old financial state led centralised systems? You're just painting it as more of the same. It's either going to be revolutionary and different, or it isn't. If it is, then they old patterns and cycles don't apply do they.

Cycles and the mathematical code of the universe have applied to almost all financial systems (and many other things) for all measurable time. When something revolutionary replaces something old its the end of one cylce and the start of another.

As for blockchain being a break from centralised systems it is a new technology that enables the way that humans interact to fundamentally change. It will be replace how the internet, financial, and data systems work. Like the dot com bubble there will be winners and losers.

As for bitcoin this is an interesting article about where we are now.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoi...am-or-cycle-the-4th-wave-is-here-82f79595e951

 

[beorhthelm]

What platforms do people use to trade crypto on here? I’m fairly new in over past few months mainly reading more than anything but brought a few Etherum coins a couple months back via Coinbase on the exchange which I am still sitting on. Is there better platforms with your own personal wallet and lower transaction fees at all that anyone can recommend

better is subjective and variable quality (what does one want from the platform?). for fees best thing is to go Coinbase Pro, keeps your details and migrate tokens across without cost, fees a fraction.
if you want widest range of tokens look at Binance and Kucoin. if you want to hold your keys/wallet and trade look at Metamask wallet with Uniswap/1inch trading (and currently horrendous fees for small trades).

 

[beorhthelm]

Life will always go on, it's what gets taken down along the way. The internet did die in a way, some of the free spirit ingenuity all gobbled up by a few remaining players. The internet almost certainly took a different direction post dot com. And if you think the housing and mortgage markets are healthy places, still 12 years or so after the financial crash, austerity impacting countries around the globe, the wealth gap widening - then perhaps you are in your own bubble?

I thought crypto was supposed to be different, a break from the old financial state led centralised systems? You're just painting it as more of the same. It's either going to be revolutionary and different, or it isn't. If it is, then they old patterns and cycles don't apply do they.

maybe its just human nature to centralise, maybe its human nature for cycles to emerge in economies? the free spirit of internet is still there, you just have to be part of it.

for its faults, one of the joys of crypto is some finance or comp sci bods will come up with an idea, develop and deploy and have $10m invested in a week. its likely nonsense but sometimes an innovation comes forth. in the old system those ideas just stay on white papers and uni servers.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

maybe its just human nature to centralise, maybe its human nature for cycles to emerge in economies? the free spirit of internet is still there, you just have to be part of it.

Don't get me wrong, I've got some crypto. There are clearly various ways of looking at and considering what it is though I guess.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

Cycles and the mathematical code of the universe have applied to almost all financial systems (and many other things) for all measurable time. When something revolutionary replaces something old its the end of one cylce and the start of another.

As for blockchain being a break from centralised systems it is a new technology that enables the way that humans interact to fundamentally change. It will be replace how the internet, financial, and data systems work. Like the dot com bubble there will be winners and losers.

As for bitcoin this is an interesting article about where we are now.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoi...am-or-cycle-the-4th-wave-is-here-82f79595e951

Very interesting. I've never read a better setting our of financial systems than Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of novels. In the 3rd, set post Glorious Revolution, Stephenson sets out how rather than old ideas of finance and 'systems of the world' being replaced, they were consumed, the old becoming part of the new. I may well have to pick them up again and see how well they stack up against what is happening now.

 

[CheeseRolls]

Sounds a lot like the early days of personal computers when every man and his dog was making them in his garage but after a few years there were only a few big players.

I think there is a lot more room in the market than this.

1 The entry barriers remain very low.
2 The use cases are very broad.
3 There is no perfect knowledge, some of the stuff thriving right now is pretty much worthless, some very valuable stuff is largely neglected. Personally I am avoiding all NFD stuff around collectibles and gaming, I just don't understand enough about it or care enough to get involved, which is not to say it is rubbish, just that I don't feel well enough informed to get involved.
4 Some big players will not want the risk of changng their adopted position, even if something better comes along, hence interoperability will remain a big play.
5 The Internet of Things is going to be massive. This I do get and do want to get involved with and the long term fundamentals of collecting a tiny payment against billions of transactions a year is a good long term play, if you can pick the winners out.

 

[giveusfalmerplease]

I think there is a lot more room in the market than this.
.... Personally I am avoiding all NFD stuff around collectibles and gaming, I just don't understand enough about it or care enough to get involved, which is not to say it is rubbish, just that I don't feel well enough informed to get involved...

Yeah this is WEIRD..There are people spending thousands buying and selling digital "boosters", unlimited lives etc in digital games. They carry value now but will be worthless when the number of players drops low enough to the point nobody is playing any more except the idiots with unlimited lives and infinite bullets. I watched a youtube video where a guy loaded $10,000 of REAL money to buy some digital "lucky dip boxes" costing the equivelent of $5000 each !! Astoundingly he was overjoyed to get some trinket which he reckoned he could sell to some other idiot for $15000 I presume therefore he must be able to "cash out" making this some form of underhand illegal (?) gambling hidden in the form of a computer game.

 

[Marshy]

I think there is a lot more room in the market than this.

1 The entry barriers remain very low.
2 The use cases are very broad.
3 There is no perfect knowledge, some of the stuff thriving right now is pretty much worthless, some very valuable stuff is largely neglected. Personally I am avoiding all NFD stuff around collectibles and gaming, I just don't understand enough about it or care enough to get involved, which is not to say it is rubbish, just that I don't feel well enough informed to get involved.
4 Some big players will not want the risk of changng their adopted position, even if something better comes along, hence interoperability will remain a big play.
5 The Internet of Things is going to be massive. This I do get and do want to get involved with and the long term fundamentals of collecting a tiny payment against billions of transactions a year is a good long term play, if you can pick the winners out.

And by a lot more room you mean Trillions and Trillions, the stock market will eventually be tokanised.

This is just the beginning.

 

[beorhthelm]

3 There is no perfect knowledge, some of the stuff thriving right now is pretty much worthless, some very valuable stuff is largely neglected. Personally I am avoiding all NFD stuff around collectibles and gaming, I just don't understand enough about it or care enough to get involved, which is not to say it is rubbish, just that I don't feel well enough informed to get involved.
...
5 The Internet of Things is going to be massive. This I do get and do want to get involved with and the long term fundamentals of collecting a tiny payment against billions of transactions a year is a good long term play, if you can pick the winners out.

funny im the opposite. i completely get the NFT market, in understanding its a thing, not why people spend so much on tradeing cards (look up Magic the Gathering Black Lotus). the real use long term is not in those cards or art but in assets being represented and traded. on other hand i fail to see any serious use for crypto in IoT, why those things need to transact.

 

[CheeseRolls]

funny im the opposite. i completely get the NFT market, in understanding its a thing, not why people spend so much on tradeing cards (look up Magic the Gathering Black Lotus). the real use long term is not in those cards or art but in assets being represented and traded. on other hand i fail to see any serious use for crypto in IoT, why those things need to transact.

So there is clearly a cross over in assurance against counterfeiting, not a particularly interesting use case, but huge. The whole tracing a piece of beef back to an animal on the farm is also treated like some middle class foodie wet dream. In reality the opposite is the case. There are plenty of public health issues, which would benefit from quickly establishing who has eaten what and where did it come from.

Hypothetically a vaccine producer, makes a vaccine, which needs to be stored at -70C. A problem with a bad batch, may take years to manifest, or could happen quite quickly. One results in expensive legal cases and the other could stop production. They do everything in there control to ensure that quality is maintained in the factory and that the product is transported and stored well within the safety tolerance. Getting the temperature seals and location from the storage unit to write to a public immutable ledger proves that the vaccine was delivered in optimal condition. This means the batch can be discarded and or any issues with governments withholding payments due to faulty product can be contained and managed.

If you own one or two cars and could save £100 a year per car, by adjusting the air con in such a way that you wouldn't even notice, you probably may still not be bothered with the hassle. If you owned 10,000 vehicles you might be very interested. If there is a marketing tick on a brochure to tell you your car does it (the manufacturer had to do it to win the fleet order anyway), you can go away with a nice green glow and never have to think about it again. There are other ways to achieve this, but a low cost, secure publicly auditable legder with a smart contract woudl demonstrate that car manufacturers have moved on from gaming diesel emissions and should be recognised again as trusted corporate citizens.

 

[Albion Dan]

Very interesting. I've never read a better setting our of financial systems than Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of novels. In the 3rd, set post Glorious Revolution, Stephenson sets out how rather than old ideas of finance and 'systems of the world' being replaced, they were consumed, the old becoming part of the new. I may well have to pick them up again and see how well they stack up against what is happening now.

I’d be interested to read those, will look them up.

 

[Albion Dan]

Yeah this is WEIRD..There are people spending thousands buying and selling digital "boosters", unlimited lives etc in digital games. They carry value now but will be worthless when the number of players drops low enough to the point nobody is playing any more except the idiots with unlimited lives and infinite bullets. I watched a youtube video where a guy loaded $10,000 of REAL money to buy some digital "lucky dip boxes" costing the equivelent of $5000 each !! Astoundingly he was overjoyed to get some trinket which he reckoned he could sell to some other idiot for $15000 I presume therefore he must be able to "cash out" making this some form of underhand illegal (?) gambling hidden in the form of a computer game.

I have to say the whole NFT thing blows my mind but just seeing my kids play PS5 and the value they place on worthless shit in a game is a real insight on where that world is heading.

 

[Albion Dan]

Now available to all US PayPal users. How long till it’s available here? The one flaw for me is that you incur capital gains tax on BTC purchases if you are in good profit on your position.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

I’d be interested to read those, will look them up.

He also wrote Cryptonomicon in 1999, that covered 2 eras, WWII and Bletchley Park, and what was a group loosely related to those in the first era in present day late 90s where they have set up a data haven and [get this...] 'Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency'...

Allegedly this was required reading in the early days of Paypal.

I've loved all his books, but these, while long and detailed were also rip-roaring good plots, characters and narratives. Cryptonomicon isn't directly linked to The Baroque Cycle, but some of the characters in the cycle are ancestors of those in it.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/sci-fi-books-that-had-told-us-about-crypto-before-satoshi-did

 

[beorhthelm]

...

interesting techie things, can be done without a blockchain. maybe for the supply chain but thats a seperate use case to IoT. i ask if the thing can be done without a trustless blockchain and usually the answer is yes, and crypto has been shoehorned in. even low transactions are an additional cost. quite amusing reading whitepapers explain how great it would be to re-do this thing on the blockchain with only a small cost added, then structure token distribution for appreciation in value.

i still "invest" in them if there's enough hype and buzz about the project