rkbabang

Buying from an ATM is easier and much quicker (if you have one nearby that is). You can download your wallet, put money in to the machine, and you have bitcoin. You can still keep track of your cost basis and pay your taxes after you sell. You can still open up a Coinbase account later and transfer your bitcoins in to convert back to $USD. If you go through a company such as Coinbase you will need to setup an account (like you have already discovered) verify your ID, SSN, email address, etc. Then you will need to link your bank account which will take a few days. Then when you buy bitcoin from Coinbase it takes something like a week to show up in your account. They also have limits to the amount you can buy/sell in a day/week/month. So with an ATM you have bitcoin in minutes(even if it takes an hour to be fully confirmed at peak times, it is usually less), with Coinbase it will take you over a week from the time you first setup your account until you have bitcoin in your account. The downside of the ATM is that the fees are usually much higher. So you will save money in the end if you go the Coinbase route (if bitcoin doesn't shoot up in price by the time you get your account setup and your bank account linked and the money transferred in). Another way to buy bitcoin is to find someone who is willing to sell you some. This can be as quick and easy as the ATM and potentially cost you less (depending on the deal you make), but it can be dangerous meeting a stranger with cash in hand. If you go this route try craigslist or http://localbitcoins.com/ for people in your area selling bitcoins. I have never done this, but I know people who have. If you do use Coinbase and are worried about them being hacked, after you have your bitcoin in your coinbase account transfer it out to your own private wallet. This is what I do. I use coinbase to buy, but I don't store it there. Coinbase has never been hacked, but it is always a possibility.

Change is always chaotic. Do you think the nation state is going down without a fight? These are monsters with armies and $trillions worth of weaponry. The death throes of these beasts will be messy. We may be about to live in interesting times I fear.

So you are saying that no store of value has ever been perfect? Yeah no kidding, you are correct, but that doesn't mean we should all go back to using sea shells as money. Gold wasn't perfect, it was just better than sea shells or pretty rocks. Bitcoin isn't perfect, just better.

I think you are correct. 500 years from now when historians look back at this era the event that will be considered most significant will be Satashi's publication of his white paper on Bitcoin. It is the the shot heard 'round the world, it is Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the church door, it is one of those rare moments when the giant ship of history begins to change course, even if most of the people alive in the world at the time don't see it right away.

I’m down 12% on POEFF and I’m down 75% (total not just 2017) on PDH. And MIDD was just about flat (up about 3%) for the year which isn’t good in a year where the S&P500 is up over 20%.

+1. I think of all of them the root of the problem is #7. The way society views drugs in general. Anything proscribed by a doctor must not be harmful, while anything you do for personal reasons must be the work of the devil. All of the government laws/regulations and doctors/drug company actions are simply reflections of our warped puritan culture.

If you want to use Coinbase or a similar company than you will need to give all the same info as opening a bank or brokerage account. If you want to do it without that download a bitcoin wallet to your phone (Bread or Jaxx are good), then find a bitcoin ATM (https://coinatmradar.com/), you simply put cash in the machine and scan your QR receive code from your phone and no one knows you own that bitcoin but you.

How much has your life changed after a 12000% year? Congrats, that’s awesome. +1 on congrats. How did you convince yourself to continue to hold when it started reaching significant amounts? And how did you convince yourself to go all in on crypto to begin with? I've been convinced that crypto was going to be huge and life changing since 2014 yet I never put in significant amounts do to the risk and due to the fact that I didn't think it was going to go exponential until sometime in the 2020s. I thought I had time and I didn't want it sitting as dead money until then. I'm not complaining my crypto gains have been incredible, but they could have been massive because I invested far too little even when I knew better. One thing that is good though is that I invested so little that I'm still holding and am not under pressure to sell. Congratulations for not only having the insight, but for having to courage to put your money where your thinking was.

That's what I thought about 2017... Eventually you will be correct. I'm not sure it will be 2018 though.

That has more to do with it being illegal than it does the heroin itself. I think the fact that they are illegal kills far more people than these drugs would if they were simply sold like Tylenol over the counter. A huge reason people OD is that they don't really know what they are taking or the proper dose for the purity/mixture they have just purchased. Is it cut with elephant tranquilizers, rat poison? Does it have fentanyl in it? Is it more pure than the stuff you bought yesterday or less? How would you know? It isn't like you can sue the manufacturer if it isn't what you expected. I know that the Advil I buy at CVS isn't cut with elephant tranquilizers just like I know the vodka I buy at the liquor store isn't going to make me blind or kill me. you are correct in that if it is cut and what it is cut with causes many issues and if it was sold via a prescription it would be safer. I'm pretty liberal with regards to much of our drug laws/customs but I cannot support and think its incredibly naive to think that if Opiods were legal we'd be better off. Your last comment in that you cannot sue the manufacterer is somewhat incorrect. In the case of a HS classmate of mine who lost her brother to a heroin overdose the police found the dealer and he was charged with manslaughter as he was selling heroin that was pure and not cut which is not the standard. They made the argument that he knowingly put peoples lives at risk by selling a more pure substance. The police happened to catch that one. There are many the police didn't catch. When I go to the liquor store the bottles are labeled with the exact percentage of alcohol they contain and I know exactly who manufactured it. I know that I can't drink as much of a 100 proof spirit as I can a 60 proof. There is no guesswork involved. That wasn't the case in the 1920s.

+1, That's my prediction for the new year. That 2018 will be crazier than 2017 which is saying something.

For 2018 stocks I like are: BAM & PVF, BACWSA, POEFF, UBNT I'm also holding: AAPL, AMZN, MIDD, OSTK, BRKB, SYTE, PRDGF, WFCF, MKL, TSLA For crypto I think ETH, XMR,and Tezos will outperform BTC, LTC, & XRP. I'm holding (in order of $ worth) ETH (40%), BTC (23%), XMR (22%), DASH (7.5%), BCH (3.8%), NEO (3.5%), PLBT (0.14%), OMG (0.06%), GAS (0.06%), Tezos (not trading yet). Need to do more research on ADA, IOT, XLM and others.

That has more to do with it being illegal than it does the heroin itself. I think the fact that they are illegal kills far more people than these drugs would if they were simply sold like Tylenol over the counter. A huge reason people OD is that they don't really know what they are taking or the proper dose for the purity/mixture they have just purchased. Is it cut with elephant tranquilizers, rat poison? Does it have fentanyl in it? Is it more pure than the stuff you bought yesterday or less? How would you know? It isn't like you can sue the manufacturer if it isn't what you expected. I know that the Advil I buy at CVS isn't cut with elephant tranquilizers just like I know the vodka I buy at the liquor store isn't going to make me blind or kill me.

More evidence that the “then they fight you” phase is beginning.

I don’t know exactly where the anger is coming from, but if you are reading the same discussion I am, you will see the rudeness, name calling, personal attacks, and other school yard immaturity are not coming from the bitcoin bulls here. Also I am starting to see the same thing else where as well. Just a pattern I’ve been noticing and I’m pointing it out. Then they fight you? Or are we still at the mocking stage? ;) I think what I’ve been noticing is the beginnings of the move from mocking to fighting. On the bright side, I was at a Bitcoin ATM with my son last night, it is in the entry of a restaurant, this family walks by us and the little girl of maybe 7 says “hey Dad their buying Bitcoin too”.

I’ll separate stocks from crypto currencies. Stocks 27% Driven by Overstock, MKL, BACWSA, Amazon, Apple I had a really good year all around, but the S&P was not far behind, so I didn’t beat the market by much. Crypto portfolio 3900%, has been as high as 5000% in early December. Crypto went from being less than 1% of my total portfolio to around 65% now.

Can you imagine having debilitating chronic pain and not being able to find a doctor willing to help you? Because that is the other end of the spectrum. I say that it isn’t right to put the responsibility of reading minds on doctors with possible loss of license or even jail if they get it wrong. Remove the laws, sell this stuff over the counter and put the responsibility where it belongs... on the people who decide to take them.

Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin whatever etc.... I can create an auction site and call it zbay, does that mean Ebay is worthless? As an experiment go create a clone of bitcoin yourself, start mining blocks, and see if anyone else uses it. While your doing that I’m going to start producing a cola and making Coke worthless, because anyone can make brown sugar water.

What kind of investor are you? Obviously, sell them to the highest bidder on a shady corner (or Craiglist). You should have asked your doc for another prescription or two, you could have funded your BRK purchasing habit from the proceeds. 8) Craigslist? This is what bitcoin and the dark net was made for. Download TOR and get started.

I don’t know exactly where the anger is coming from, but if you are reading the same discussion I am, you will see the rudeness, name calling, personal attacks, and other school yard immaturity are not coming from the bitcoin bulls here. Also I am starting to see the same thing else where as well. Just a pattern I’ve been noticing and I’m pointing it out.

What has given me a good belly laugh reading the latest so many posts in this topic is that we are the ones living in a fantasy world and it is we that are going to lose our shirts because these are so obviously nothing but tulips, yet it is they who are so damn out of their minds angry. It’s “Blockchain Derangement Syndrome” I think.

That would be ridiculous. It’s the blockchain iced tea company.

Ha, Krugman gets something right for once. "BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions.” But of course Bitcoin isn’t evil, Krugman is. Bitcoin Is Evil

I know right- it almost reminds me of those who look at the recent price moves and immediately conclude bubble. Everyone knows it’s a bubble, so it must be one. Right?

2014-2016 is when I formed all of my opinions on crypto and also when I bought the vast majority of my holdings. I purchased very little in 2017 as I kept waiting for it to come back down.