rkbabang

Isn't GBTC selling way above NAV (net asset value)? Any investment you buy should be something you understand and are comfortable with. Not because someone on some forum told you to. You don't know us, some of us might sound convincing, but maybe we have no idea what we're talking about. But your money is real and I'm sure you worked hard for it. Don't fall for FOMO (fear of missing out), it usually ends badly. +1. That is why I pointed out that 1 share of GBTC = 0.00100721 BTC. If you do buy this take that into account. Investing in BTC is risky enough without paying a large premium above market prices for it.

Unless Grayscale Investments and/or Xapo, Inc are a total frauds, my largest concern would be the safety of their holdings. This page (https://grayscale.co/bitcoin-investment-trust/) says: "Robust security and storage The Bitcoin Investment Trust’s assets are stored with Xapo, Inc., as Custodian, in deep cold storage vaults. Bitcoin stored in the Xapo Vaults reside on multisignature addresses, the private keys for which are protected by intense cryptographic, physical and process security." I don't know. As I've said a bunch of times already, I like to control my own keys. But if you do trust Grayscale and Xapo to both not be frauds and to be secure from hacking and theft then 1 share of GBTC = 0.00100721 BTC.

You need to be very clear on WHY you're investing in this. In the long-term - a holding of Bitcoin is probably a worthwhile thing. You will have some wealth that is always portable, no matter what happens to you. You will also have experience in what will probably become a 'core' crypto coin (complete with futures & options markets). It does not mean buy it today. In the nearer term, Etherium will make you familiar with how blockchain smart contract solutions can be applied across many different applications - but Ether token is not a substitute for Etherium stock (it's private). The solutions are where the money is, and the beneficiaries are the companies applying them (some of which are public). The downside is that distributed ledger applications have scaling limitations. To 'make' wealth one concentrates - to 'preserve' wealth one diversifies. To 'make' wealth in this game, you need to be a partner in a JV building a blockchain smart contract solution. If that's part of the plan - Etherium is probably the better choice. Notable is that it cannot be decided by conventional investment 'metrics' They don't exist yet. SD There is no doubt that Etherium is excellent technology, but will it be a good investment buying at today's prices? I don't know.

Humans are social animals. Those lower in the hierarchy always have to try to take pot shots at the top dog to try to raise themselves up. It's pretty stupid, and makes them look weak and insecure, IMO. +1. I've been an IC design engineer for over 20 years. I'm sure Musk couldn't just show up here tomorrow and do my job for me. But why on Earth would he want to? While I do okay, I'll never be a billionaire. His skill set is quite a bit more lucrative than mine... by a large margin. It's like criticizing an olympic gymnast for not being a great football player.

That makes sense for some crypto's but for bitcoin it is mostly ASIC. Haven't ever actually mined but that is what they say. I don't think you can do ether with ASIC so your thesis might hold up if ether takes over. Correct. If I were to invest in NVDA or AMD it would be because of AI/Deep learning not because of mining. There are ASICs for other algorithms now too, not just Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm. Here's an example of an ASIC based system to mine Scrypt coins such as Litecoin: https://shop.bitmain.com/antminer_l3_litecoin_asic_scrypt_miner.htm?flag=overview It's only a matter of time before other algorithms have custom chips available as well.

This is how me (I'm a computer engineer with some mechanical experience) and my engineering friends view him as well. I haven't actually seen much engineering done by him, but going off the hyperloop whitepaper he's either not an engineer or a terrible one. There's little to no mention of thermal expansion coefficients, mass of the capsules, seals, most failure modes, acceleration loading, recharging times, etc. All done for less cost per mile than a roller-coaster! Yes it's a neat idea, but not original besides the use of air bearings instead of magnets. That anyone would fund a hyperloop company based on the whitepaper is completely insane, and a testament to the ridiculous fervor surrounding Musk. He says he was fired from PayPal because he wanted them to switch from Unix to Windows. In 2000 this was nuts - Windows was not nearly as mature as a server platform as Unix or Linux. Moving to it would have been a bad decision. Then there are all his self-driving promises, with only a forward-facing radar and cameras... He seems to be backing off these claims now, which is good. I'd actually love to know what the dynamic range is on the AP2 cameras; anyone know where to get junkyard Tesla parts? From the available evidence it looks to me like Musk is good at motivating engineers to take bold risks and work on exciting projects. Sometimes he hits home runs (SpaceX), but his lack of in-depth, applied technical knowledge means he often mistakes what is possible for what is not. He may be a genius and fully capable of great feats of engineering, but if so he does not seem to focus his talents long enough to really analyze the viability of his goals. Disclosure: I'm probably going to short Tesla if it hits $400. In a related topic, Jeff Bezos isn't the best computer programmer in the world. His only talent seems to be hiring a lot of smart people and motivating them to create a website to sell a bunch of stuff. I've done some programming and I've got a circle of friends who agree with me. Sorry but what is your point exactly? And who really cares if you and your friends are better engineers than Elon Musk who's only talent is bringing smart people together to do astounding things.

What happens if one HQ decides one thing, and the other decides something else? Will the AMZN empire split in two? Will there be an Eastern AMZN and a Western AMZN? What happens if one of them is overrun? The First Drone War - The Story of The East Amazon Revolt Kindle: $11.99

And the most common hacking method is phishing attacks. i.e. a fake message which looks like it from an institution you do business with asking you to click a link and log in to your account. Do not click on links from emails. If Coinbase sends you an email to log into your account it probably isn't really from them. Always type the address into your browser and bookmark it or use the mobile app. This all goes for your brokerage and bank accounts as well. If you have a policy of never clicking on a link from an email you will be safe from these types of attacks.

No. You have to decide if you need the 'super security' of Bitcoin. If you do need it, pay up for the product offered - 'super security'. If you don't need it - why are you in Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is a 'investment', this is just the transaction fee. No different to the realtors commission when buying a house. SD Couldn't Xi Jingping destroy bitcoin's security by nationalizing all Chinese mining power? Nation states have huge piles of money and weapons and often do crazy destructive things. So while the answer to that is yes. I think that would only serve to destroy bitcoin rather than control it. People would move on to another cryptocurrency if they did that as no one wants a cryptocurrency controlled by any nation state not just China. So instead of being a trustless protocol, bitcoin's existence relies on placing your complete trust that an authoritarian dictator doesn't won't ever decide to destroy it. I thought the key selling point of this was that crypto holders don't trust government? So we sacrifice speed or cost of transactions in order to gain security, but it's not that secure for the average man on the street who doesn't understand all the steps to ensure their private key isn't hacked and on a protocol basis it's not secure because it could be destroyed by a single memo from the Chinese politburo. I'll readily admit I'm not an expert but the cost/benefit of that asset over gold, TIPS, T-bills, etc seems pretty shoddy. I'm long and I've realized solid gains because most of the zealots seem to have a religious devotion to it therefore the flow of funds should be bullish, but it's hard for me to really understand the appeal. It would cost a fortune (even for a nation state) to do this and because the target would be destroyed in the process, nothing would be accomplished. Of course those exact words could describe the US foreign policy so who knows? I expect to see central banks eventually adding BTC to their reserves along side gold, not trying to destroy it.

No. You have to decide if you need the 'super security' of Bitcoin. If you do need it, pay up for the product offered - 'super security'. If you don't need it - why are you in Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is a 'investment', this is just the transaction fee. No different to the realtors commission when buying a house. SD Couldn't Xi Jingping destroy bitcoin's security by nationalizing all Chinese mining power? Nation states have huge piles of money and weapons and often do crazy destructive things. So while the answer to that is yes. I think that would only serve to destroy bitcoin rather than control it. People would move on to another cryptocurrency if they did that as no one wants a cryptocurrency controlled by any nation state not just China.

I won't be writing any puts. If I could at a reasonable cost I'd buy 5yr $20K calls and 5yr $5K puts. I'm almost positive that in 5 years BTC will either be way above $20k (like $100k+) or way less than $5k (like close to or equal to $0).

Would you be willing to write a 5 year $15k call?

Yes, that is why I was struggling to make a comparison. The product itself as far as the regulations are probably going to be closer to tobacco or alcohol, but the ease of producing it yourself is much closer to backyard tomatoes.

The whole basis of this thread is flawed. You are supposing that there will be long term winners in this space to brag about. I disagree. Pot is an agricultural product that is easily grown by anyone (even by yourself in your own garden). That is like saying you are going to get rich investing in tomatoes. Unless the government steps in and creates an artificial monopoly (i.e. licensing only certain companies to grow and/or sell it), then I don't see what competitive advantage any one grower or seller has over any other. I'm sure there will be name brands with proprietary strains and pretty packaging, but that is a long way off and impossible to predict. I think the safest long term bet to profit from pot would be Altria, probably not a bad idea actually. I don't think that's what he's saying at all. Crypto was the #1 performing asset class of 2017, but Canadian marijuana stocks were probably number 2, with many/most up hundreds of percent. As just one example, TSX:WEED is a 10 bagger in the last 18 months or so. Of course, its market cap was unreasonably large before that 10X, and at $7 billion is absurd, its clearly a bubble. But there are people who are absolutely convinced that everyone is going to start using marijuana recreationally, and that these companies are the next MO because of it. Maybe there will be a couple of winners out of this (probably) but I don't see a way to find them in advance, and the valuations assume that all the companies will be big winners, but that's absurd. Very much like crypto, actually. Maybe one or two coins will work out as long term stores of value, but the world doesn't need hundreds of crypto-currencies, so most will flame out. Plus, the companies changing from ice-tea (for example) to crypto probably don't have a durable competitive advantage in crypto currency, so the fact their stocks are going up on a name change is absurd. Basically, there are two big bubbles right now, and we have a thread with people discussing their big gains in one. Surprising that no one has big gains on the other to brag about. I was the only one who admitted owning any of them, and I only had it as a merger arb position. The two segments don't seem that different to me in bubblyness, so I'd be surprised if we had buyers of one but not the other on the forum. Fair enough I guess. I've been out of the loop on this and not following it. I do think long term there is something there with crypto, something completely new on a par with the internet and weed is an agricultural product on a par with avocados or tomatoes. Thinking out loud, maybe coffee is a better analogy since there are many different strains yet they are all similar (unlike beer which varies greatly as many different ingredients and processes are used to make it). So maybe there will be a Starbucks of weed someday. I don't know. But to try to equate pot to crypto is like trying to equate coffee to the internet. One is plant product that you either enjoy or not and the other is a fundamental technology which will change the lives of every human on Earth.

The whole basis of this thread is flawed. You are supposing that there will be long term winners in this space to brag about. I disagree. Pot is an agricultural product that is easily grown by anyone (even by yourself in your own garden). That is like saying you are going to get rich investing in tomatoes. Unless the government steps in and creates an artificial monopoly (i.e. licensing only certain companies to grow and/or sell it), then I don't see what competitive advantage any one grower or seller has over any other. I'm sure there will be name brands with proprietary strains and pretty packaging, but that is a long way off and impossible to predict. I think the safest long term bet to profit from pot would be Altria, probably not a bad idea actually.

One word: PotCoin :)

Yeah, this is a good warning, SD. In my case, I bought a PC in September because my old one was 7 years old, slow, and getting BSOD every few days. I got a better graphics card than I would have otherwise--maybe an incremental cost of $300--so I could mine effectively. Normally my computer is on whenever I'm awake, so the incremental cost of electricity is low. I don't know if it was a good decision, but seemed like a reasonable gamble in that $300 isn't that much money to me and I've enjoyed doing it. Economically, it has paid off, returning about $600 so far. Of course, that's just an outcome that says little about whether the decision to buy the better card had a positive expected return. Even if one happens to win at roulette, it doesn't imply it was a smart decision to play. Another way to look at it is that if you would have bought $300 worth of Bitcoin in September at $3800 (it traded as low as $3500 in september) your bitcoin would be worth around $850 right now at bitcoin $10,630.00. You actually lost $250. This is why I have never bought hardware to mine. With the rising prices and rising difficulty it doesn't usually make sense to mine rather than purchase the coins outright unless you already own the hardware for other reasons.

Though frankly you could also describe Berkshire that way. Hence the fallacy of dismissing the value of any entity based on it's physical make-up. All fermions matter!

Why would I be concerned? Don't touch Tether with a 5-foot pole and you'll be fine (it's 100% a scam). The theory is that they are “printing” thether out of nothing and using it to buy bitcoin, thus inflating the price of bitcoin far above its actual demand. I’m not sure how much of the bitcoin demand is tether related, but long term it means nothing either way.

Interesting. Based on your thoughts, I may give it a shot too. Just be mindful that today - much of the reason for selling you a rig; is because the seller expects to make MORE from you - than he would had he simply kept the rig, & mined for himself. It's OK for a hobby and experimentation, but it's not what it seems. Obviously, not a popular view among many! At the aggregate: 1) Only the fastest miner gets paid. New rigs are always faster than yours; meaning that over time you progressively earn less, and more & more of it is in less desirable token. Rigs have a short economic life. 2) Appearance of distributed security. The more rigs sold outside of the 'tech' community, the more diverse the aggregate mining network 'appears' to be, and the more real distributed security 'seems' to be. Problem is that its a 70% layer of very fast computers in mining consortia, and a 30% layer of much slower computers spread throughout the world, with hash rate controlled by degree of hash complexity. A small drop in complexity, and the faster computers win - erasing distributed security. 3) Capital cost downloading. Every utility downloads the capital cost of producing its product onto its customers, most often by the customer paying a 'debt service' charge on their bill every month. An alternative is to simply have the customer build their own generation facility (take on the capital cost) and buy their net output. See any difference between this and a mining rig? SD I agree. I think it would be better to just buy $500 worth of bitcoin rather than go out and buy a $500 video card to start mining. But if you already have the video card like my son does, why not mine whenever it is otherwise idle.

It concerns me. But I put it in the same category as MtGox. A short term problem that won’t matter in 10 years. I’m in for the long haul I’m not all that worried about the little problems inbetween. If it all blows up the panic will create a nice buying opportunity.

Thanks wachtwoord for saving me the trouble. Maybe I should have said ”coin-out”.

FWIW, I am mining zcash with a 1070, and recently I've been making in the region of $3-5 per day. At this instant, it's $3.54 per day. Your son's 1070 TI should be slightly better than that. It's not going to make anyone wealthy, but it's pretty fun. We were looking into Zcash, Monero, Ether, etc but he decided to try this https://www.nicehash.com/cpu-gpu-mining They use both your GPU and CPU and have you mine whatever is most profitable at the moment with each of them. They are about 1% more expensive than most pools, but you should make up the difference in higher earnings. It says that he is earning between $5.50 and $6.00 per day right now (it changes from second to second). Yes I know they were hacked a month ago, but I figure if you cash out once in a while there will never be much in there to loose. And they changed their setup so that every transfer out of their system is human approved so that should mitigate someone hacking in and wiping out all the accounts again.

To crypto bulls, you probably look like this: (i'm joking here; take it lightly) I would think that is more a representation of people who still don’t get it. Funny story. My son just build his own gaming computer (an i7 7700k with a 1070 ti video card) and I was telling him last night that he should try to mine some altcoins and earn some of his money back. My wife said, “so if he starts mining, how does he get his check?”.

This is really the bull case. If the economy for criminals, terrorists, tax evaders, and money launderers is large enough (and it is), some of these tokens might actually have value as currencies. But which token will become the fiat currency of the underworld? There is a pretty good chance it hasn't even been invented yet. Are we still at the Napster stage of digital currencies? Yes, way back before that damn Satoshi published his paper criminals, terrorist, tax evaders, and money launderers didn't exist. There was just no way for them to apply their craft and trade. Obviously I'm joking, so don't worry, I'm sure the majority of criminals, terrorists, tax evaders, and money launderers will continue using the USD just as they always have for a long time to come.