patrick.net

This is a picture of just one of the bit mining "farms" that are used to create and update the bitcoin ledger. Out of a total of 21M coins 18.5M have already been "mined". As you can imagine this vast array of computers uses incredible amounts of power. As the bitcoin program plays out the miners get paid less coins per win. The computational power needed to solve the problems needed to win increases as well.

Not only does bitcoin require "the greater fool" to buy into the game, it also consumes the capital as it goes. Kind of like when the scam artist running a traditional Ponzi scheme pays the old rubes with the new rubes' money while buying a bunch of blow and escorts. The old rubes tell the new rubes, "It is an excellent investment as it always goes up and the people who run it throw one hell of a party".

Somebody has to pay for all of these computers and the power to run them. When it is no longer profitable the miners will quit and sell their custom hardware to some company using blockchain for some better purpose than a Ponzi scheme.

G36 says

Conveniently, you left the year 2140 out of your copy/paste effort. Which you claimed to be at 2040 in previous posts. Just a 100 years off.

Ya know, I think I am going to go back to my original estimate of 2040, actually I don't think it will last that long.

Onvacation says

As the bitcoin program plays out the miners get paid less coins per win. The computational power needed to solve the problems needed to win increases as well.

Several years ago there was a company in NL selling a space heater with a bitcoin mining machine inside it. The idea was to offset the cost of electricity with the bitcoins being mined and essentially get "free heat" out of it. =))

It could work some time ago but it probably wouldn't now.

More than half of the bitcoin mining operations are in China.

WookieMan says

You guys had an active thread going and then create a brand new one on the exact same topic. Stay in your lane. We don't need 10 different crypto threads.

I beg your pardon. I don't have ten different threads on crypto.

I did post
https://patrick.net/post/1334086/2020-07-26-bitcoin-meets-banking-as-u-s-bank-regulator-permits

and if you want to get on the ground floor of an exciting new currency of the future.
https://patrick.net/post/1314087/2018-02-28-getrichquickcoins

And maybe a couple of others but I promise to keep news of the crypto currency scam to this thread.

Sorry.

At least I'm not arguing about climate change and World Trade Center 7.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lin-a2lTelg

Onvacation says

I beg your pardon. I don't have ten different threads on crypto.

Sarcasm I assume? Either way a new thread was started in the last 10 days or less and now there's a new one pumping crypto or BTC.

"sarcasm is not a teaching method"
old saying

The more I look into bitcoin the more it looks like a Ponzi scheme.

It currently costs the miners a couple thousand to "mine" a coin. The miners profits go into player dividends and upgrades to keep up with the ever increasing complexity of the calculations involved in keeping the ledger up to date. It's going to cost more and more to "mine" the bitcoin and all of the "investments" in bitcoin are going into electricity, upgrades, and dividends to the people that fund these "mines". You used to be able to "mine" on your PC but now the miners are using as much power as the country of Israel.

In normal investments someone has a great idea for a product or a service and borrows money. The money funds the product or service and profits or losses are made. The stock market makes this easy. With crypto your kind of investing in a network of "miners" who depend on people to buy the coins at an ever increasing price to justify their ever increasing costs to "mine".

Bitcoin is unsustainable. If you want to be like Jamie and speculate in the crypto don't be the last one in, or out..

And there is no there there.

Bitcoin is a gamble and nothing more unless you are a criminal transfering money.

Bitcoin has no product, no needed service, and no assets.

Bitcoin requires huge amounts of electricity.

If you don't realize bitcoin relies on the next biggest fool, that fool may be you.

Bitcoin is programmable.

It was originally programmed with artificial scarcity and longevity.

Bitcoin can also change the rules of the currency as they go if a consensus of the miners agree. For instance, if their were only 100 miners in the world and 51 of them decided that the payoff was not high enough after one of the halving events and they decided to change the rules so they would make more there is nothing to stop them.

From a bitcoin fanboi site:

"Bitcoin is a unique digital asset for an increasingly digital world that requires digging deeper than the surface level to understand its core properties and trade-offs. It pushes onlookers to question pre-conceived notions of what is right and widely accepted to begin to understand its full value proposition."

Uh huh.

Buying Cryptocurrencies Scam: How It Works
Source: TNW (The Next Web) – Dan Pepijin

According to TNW, “at least 39 Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were launched in September. In addition, at least another 33 crypto startups are set to launch their ICOs in October. CO is an event in which a cryptocurrency, blockchain firm or a startup sells tokens that represent ownership of its core blockchain, in an effort to raise money to develop the product or scale an existing product.

Unfortunately, many scam artists have jumped on the cryptocurrency train to unleash all kinds of scam cryptocurrencies on unsuspecting investors who think they are buying the next Bitcoin at a discount.

In brief:
Average Bitcoin transaction fees increased 2,213% since January 1.
Since the date of Bitcoin's block reward halving, fees continued to increase by 144%.
Over 94MB Pending transactions in the Bitcoin mempool means the network is now as clogged as it was in January 2018.
The average cost of sending transactions on the Bitcoin network has increased by 2,213% since the turn of the year.

That’s according to data from Bitinfocharts, which shows that average Bitcoin transaction fees climbed as high as $6.64 on May 20. That’s the highest average cost of a Bitoin transaction since July 2018—almost two years ago.

At the turn of the year, average fees were as low as $0.28—marking a 2,213% spike since January 1.

https://decrypt.co/29949/crypto-blockchain-bitcoin-transaction-fees

HODL- Hold On for Dear Life!

"Crypto naysays who think Bitcoin is “the ultimate bubble” love to point at so-called HODLers and laugh.

HODLers are crypto investors who buy and hold their positions regardless of price. Whether the market is up, down or sideways, these folks stay invested, confident in the long-term value of crypto. The term was created in 2013 in a Bitcoin chat forum by an investor who was watching Bitcoin’s price fall sharply but decided not to sell. He wrote a post titled, “I am HODLing,” meaning to write “HOLDing.”

The misspelling caught on with the Bitcoin community. Eventually, working backward, they turned it into an evocative acronym: Hold On for Dear Life. Anyone who has watched Bitcoin’s recent volatility knows that the acronym can sometimes feel spot-on.

To the mainstream investment community, however, it’s the epitome of crypto insanity. You can almost hear them tut-tutting from behind their mahoganied desks:

Look at these fools, holding their imaginary money with no regard to price. They just sit there and watch while their portfolios fall by 50% or more. Insanity!

But HODLing is actually the only valid strategy for most crypto investors. After all, it’s just “buy and hold” in an updated wrapper."

"HODLers incur profits/losses based on when they entered the market cycle, however, the ones who entered the market less than a year ago having unrealized losses are piling up. The percentage of HODLers with unrealized positive gains has dropped and a higher percentage of them are currently running losses."

It's like real gold only better.

Onvacation says

It's like real gold only better.

Cant argue with that.

I don't know about fungible. I was in a Barcelona coin shop trying to buy some old 100 peseta token with Franco's image on it. I offered the proprietor US dollars but he would only take Euros. The coin would be worthless but it was made of silver.

Try giving him bitcoin.

I think "100 peseta token" are the last thing I would want to buy. Why would I?

So you collect silver/gold coins?

Onvacation says

I was in a Barcelona coin shop trying to buy some old 100 peseta token with Franco's image on it. The coin would be worthless but it was made of silver.

So you collect silver coins?

Onvacation, is that a hard question to answer? ;)

G36 says

So you collect silver coins?

and copper, nickel, zinc, at one point I had the goal of collecting every US coin made in the 20th century, but some of those Barber coins are way too expensive.

Yes I collect coins. But I don't invest in them.

Onvacation says

G36 says

So you collect silver coins?

and copper, nickel, zinc, at one opoint I had the goal of collecting every US coin made in the 20th century, but some of those Barber coins are way too expensive.

Yes I collect coins. But I don't invest in them.

Nice! What about gold coins? I imagine you also collect some gold coins?

Hi OV, no gold coins in your portfolio?

No gold in my portfolio. I don't consider my coin collection an investment, though it has appreciated over the years. It's just a hobby.

Onvacation says

No gold in my portfolio. I don't consider my coin collection an investment, though it has appreciated over the years. It's just a hobby.

Nice, yeah, understand. What's the age on your oldest coins?

Care to share how much is in the collection as a percentage of your net worth?
For instance, roughly 5% of my net worth is in crypto, the rest is stocks and RE.

G36 says

Care to share how much is in the collection as a percentage of your net worth?

No.

I'm a saver and dollar cost average kind of guy.

I do occasionally gamble. I won a silver token (1 oz of 99.9) at the Vegas airport during a stopover.

If you had invested $20,000 in bitcoin 3 years ago you would only be down $2,000.

I meant gambled. If you had speculated $20,000 in bitcoin 3 years ago you would only be down $2,000.

Onvacation says

I meant gambled. If you had speculated $20,000 in bitcoin 3 years ago you would only be down $2,000.

Which is the situation most of the current enthusiastic pumpers are in.

Onvacation says

I'm a saver and dollar cost average kind of guy.

.

Nice! How do you save? Do you keep cash in the savings account? And what do you dollar cast avg into? You said you invest in food/entertainment and mutual funds. Is that what you dollar cost avg into or do you invest in anything else?

I usually buy when things are on sale. Often I just go to Costco and buy in bulk.

I've always got a three month supply of toilet paper.

I spend very little time investing. I just accumulate stuff and experiences. I automatically dollar cost average into funds. It's amazing how paper wealth accumulates but that is a small part of your actual wealth. What good is it that you gain the world if you lose your soul?

I do invest quite a bit of time into exercise. I also believe in preventative maintenance and oral hygiene.

And bitcoin is a scam.

great. And when you say funds, you mean 401k or mutual funds besides your 401k?

Eric Holder says

Onvacation says

I meant gambled. If you had speculated $20,000 in bitcoin 3 years ago you would only be down $2,000.

Which is the situation most of the current enthusiastic pumpers are in.

people wish they would have bought at 20k soon. It will just be a blip on the log scale...
The next bull cycle has started.

G36 says

It will just be a blip on the log scale...
The next bull cycle has started.

Moonshot?

Onvacation says

G36 says

It will just be a blip on the log scale...
The next bull cycle has started.

Moonshot?

The next months/year should be a fun, profitable, enjoyable ride

BREAKING NEWS!

Bankers are pouring huge amounts of cash into bitcoin in an attempt to get it out of the country before the Kraken is released!

Onvacation says

BREAKING NEWS!

Bankers are pouring huge amounts of cash into bitcoin in an attempt to get it out of the country before the Kraken is released!

close!

Bankers {+ hedge funds and Nasdaq listed companies} are pouring huge amounts of cash into bitcoin since its the best performing asset available due to its traits (scarcity, decentralization and security). Retail will follow later.

Exciting times!!

G36 says

Retail will follow later.

"Here's your latte, that will be 12 satoshis plus a 10 satoshi transaction fee, 20 if you want it on the next block 10 minutes from now otherwise you will have to wait a couple of hours for a miner to accept your lower fee and verify your transaction. "