rkbabang

Other people can only explain to you how it works. As for why it is valuable? It is valuable for the same reason gold, or diamonds, or baseball cards, or stock in companies, or old coins, or stamps, or antique cars, or rectangular pieces of green paper, or anything else might be valuable...because people are willing to trade other things for it. Whether or not you want to trade other things for it is a decision only you can make.

Imagine if the federal reserve said that they would create 10 new dollars per year (no more no less) every year from now on. That would make the supply of USD technically unlimited, but the inflation rate would be almost zero. There is a fixed amount of ETH created every year so the inflation rate will be smaller and smaller as time goes on and will approach zero over time. Like the $10 new dollars example the new Ether will be so tiny as to not matter. It is even expected by many to be deflationary eventually as the amount of new coins created may be less than the number of coins lost. I don't like the fact that it isn't bounded, but it isn't quite as bad as its detractors make it sound.

Exactly. The point is that a house isn't an investment. If you are extremely fortunate you will break even or not lose too much. A house is where you live. You do what you (or more likely your wife) wants to do to make it the place you want to live in. If you are ever trying to calculate ROI on your home then you are missing the point entirely. You don't live in investment property.

The only books I've read are "Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies" by Andreas M. Antonopoulos and "The Internet of Money" also by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Both are excellent. Mastering Bitcoin is more about how bitcoin works and how to use it, where The Internet of Money is a book about the effects the technology will have on the future. You can pretty much get everything in The Internet of Money by searching for Andreas Anonopoulos on youtube and watching all of his videos.

This reads really concerning, Cardboard. Is it more or less the same situation in the different provinces of Canada, or are there differences among provinces? Back when I lived in MA the state decided to do an experiment by making a section of an interstate highway concrete rather than asphalt. With the freezing and warming that happens in New England you can imagine what happened next. A lot of cars where damaged, a few people were injured and one person eventually died when trucks started kicking up chunks of concrete and sending it flying through car windshields of drivers unlucky enough to be driving behind them. They had to tear up the whole section and repave it with asphalt the way it should have been done to begin with. Because it is government no one is ever personally sued/punished for this type of negligence. This was right near where I lived at the time which is why I remember it. Here's a story I found about it: http://www.thesunchronicle.com/state-to-repave-i--where-motorists-cars-hit-by/article_1341d126-d761-55b4-89cb-ec5827b1df42.html

http://digg.com/video/simultaneous-landing-spacex-sonic-boom

LOL what about the guy in the pilot's seat on the rocket module trying to land it.

Another good video

It’s like watching a sci-fi movie watching those boosters land.

Yes, humans often act like humans. Which can sometimes be very good and other times very bad.

Why would anyone ever look at it from another point than "what it has grown to"? You still risk the same amount, regardless of where the wealth initially came from or what amount you invested versus your total wealth. Depending on where money comes from (income, inheritance, investment returns, bonus, windfalls, etc.) people tend to invest differently. This is completely irrational behavior. I do it too of course but try to be at least aware of it. And if you decide to hold your current positions, you are effectively making the decision to buy them now at current prices. Ask yourself if you would hold the same positions if you were to start over with a new portfolio. Specifically ask yourself this: If I were to restart with 100% in cash and the same knowledge, would I invest 40-45% in crypto's today? More power to you if you would. Just make sure that it is a conscious decision. Of course I understand that, but it is easier said than done. I do this all the time even with stocks. For instance I recently sold half of my long time Overstock.com position in the high $40s. Of course it is now trading at $63, which I consider highly overvalued into the speculative range. I would not buy Overstock at these prices, but I am not selling, because I think of those shares as "free" since I made multiples of my original investment when I sold the other half. It isn't rational, I know, but it is a very difficult way of thinking to overcome.

Yes, and I meant it half jokingly. I was imagining WEB & JB sitting down in Gorat's, with Bezos pitching him the healthcare idea, and Buffett saying "you know what, you'd have a lot more time to crush this idea, if you didn't have to do SEC filings & analyst calls." The joking half was, of course, due to the the seemingly crazy valuation, and the huge leverage they'd probably have to take on to swallow Amazon. Everyone here knows that I'm not a balance sheet ninja, and instead, am a story guy (this will undoubtedly bite me some day.) I just love the concept of how BRK has freed up so many execs to run their businesses & re-allocate divs to capex (I know, no divs to re-allocate at Amazon, just having fun riffing on an idea here.) --- I don't know much about Kroc, other than what was included in the movie "the Founder." I'd guess that innovative processes and a relentless drive would be the main things the two men share in common. Invert. With Amazon growing so fast it will soon be able to swallow BRK. WEB can retire and with Bezos at the helm all of Berkshire's cash can be used to grow Amazon instead of being allocated to buying companies.

I have a hobby selling physical gold & silver. I will sell bars & coins and stuff like that. I have established clients and am always getting new ones. I can tell you WITHOUT A DOUBT that more people are interested in precious metals when the price is going up and the price is HIGH. Most people WILL NOT buy when the price is low...they are too scared it is going lower. They want to buy when it is high & going higher. I also suspect that this is the same in most markets. Perhaps it is because Jane Blow heard about Joe Blow making a killing in XYZ market. That peaks her interest and she wants to be like "Joe Blow". At the bottom of markets, you aren't hearing about how people made a killing...you are hearing about how they LOST MONEY. Nobody wants to lose, so nobody is interested. At market tops (or near) you hear plenty of stories about people getting rich, paying off houses, how "it is different this time" and so on. Thus, more people get interested, get involved and the market(s) go higher. A self reinforcing loop? I'm buying more. I bought very little in 2017, most of my buying was in 2015-16. I started buying again when it first went bellow $12K this month and I am buying more today. If it drops from here I'll be buying more still. What % of your portfolio are you allocating to this? It depends on how you look at it. What I have invested or what it has grown to. Lets look at what I have invested. The amount I invested before 2018 is around 1% of my portfolio. The amount I added in my two buys in 2018 is about 0.5% of my portfolio. So my total cost basis is about 1.5% of my portfolio. Looking at it this way I have increased my investment by almost 50% in 2018. So I haven't put all that much in, but if you look at what it has grown to. Off the top of my head, it was as high as 65-70% of my portfolio at one point in December and is now somewhere around 40-45% of my portfolio. So you can see that the new money I have allocated in 2018 barely moved the needle.

I have a hobby selling physical gold & silver. I will sell bars & coins and stuff like that. I have established clients and am always getting new ones. I can tell you WITHOUT A DOUBT that more people are interested in precious metals when the price is going up and the price is HIGH. Most people WILL NOT buy when the price is low...they are too scared it is going lower. They want to buy when it is high & going higher. I also suspect that this is the same in most markets. Perhaps it is because Jane Blow heard about Joe Blow making a killing in XYZ market. That peaks her interest and she wants to be like "Joe Blow". At the bottom of markets, you aren't hearing about how people made a killing...you are hearing about how they LOST MONEY. Nobody wants to lose, so nobody is interested. At market tops (or near) you hear plenty of stories about people getting rich, paying off houses, how "it is different this time" and so on. Thus, more people get interested, get involved and the market(s) go higher. A self reinforcing loop? I'm buying more. I bought very little in 2017, most of my buying was in 2015-16. I started buying again when it first went bellow $12K this month and I am buying more today. If it drops from here I'll be buying more still.

I tried to read Collapse but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Tons of details in The World Until Yesterday, but I sort of like that, makes me feel it's more empirical and I can sort of draw my own conclusions The Easter Island case study was the most fascinating one for me as an example of societal collapse due to ecological damage. It's actually the only one that I can remember off the top of my head after more than a decade since I read Collapse last. Was it because they converted all of their resources into giant heads? It was digging those enormous holes required to bury stone giants up to their necks.

Even though I own shares, as I said before, it is more to support him than anything else, I wouldn’t be unhappy at that outcome. Of course I’d rather the shareholders make money along the way too.

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.