rkbabang

++ simple fix! How about to grab this JPEG file named "cropped-cropped-Handover-Corner-Of-Berkshire-Fairfax-JPG-e1516151433460" from the site, fix it and send it to Sanjeev for a reinstall on the CoBF webserver installation? [ ; - ) ] -I have forgotten how to do [read: manipulate] this in i.e. Photoshop, and nobody has asked me to document my investment returns here on CoBF so far, so I've had no need to refresh my memory! Thanks everyone! I figured the site isn't going anywhere, and it was time to make it a bit more permanent and recognizable. John, I can send you the different JPEGS if you know what to do...I'm not particularly tech savvie. I believe doing a clear version wouldn't be that difficult if you know what you are doing. Cheers! Since I suggested it I'd be willing to do it. I don't have photoshop on the computer I'm on right now so I did this with GIMP (which I'm not all that familiar with). If you want to email me the files, I'll do it tonight when I get home. I'll send you an email in case you no longer have my address. EDIT: deleted file, transparency didn't work. Like I said I'm not too familiar with GIMP.

I like it as well, although I think it would look better if the background were transparent rather than white so that the light blue background would show through. Just a suggestion.

Is this correct ??? https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days The big ones are mining pools, some have tens of thousands of members each of whom can switch pools or start mining on their own with a couple of keystrokes.

Considering they went down for scheduled maintenance and haven't come back up, I'm assuming that they haven't been hacked (you don't usually schedule being hacked) and are just having unexpected technical difficulties with their upgrades. But as I've said a bunch of times by now: Don't leave any balance in an exchange. If you must use an exchange, make a deposit, make a trade, make a withdrawal. The whole process should take about 10-30min depending on the coins involved. Get in then get back out as quickly as you can.

Also from the King. "“I was too dumb to realize [the opportunity with Amazon],” Buffett said on CNBC. Amazon shares have quintupled since 2011. “I did not think [bezos] could succeed on the scale he has.” https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/05/08/warren-buffett-google-amazon-ibm-tech-stocks.html Kings are not infallible.

MoviePass owner hints at ICO https://seekingalpha.com/news/3322080-blockchain-watch-moviepass-owner-hints-ico

Only time will tell if I can do that for 20 years though. I'm half way there.

Well, that didn’t take long. Jamie Dimon says he regrets calling bitcoin a fraud and believes in the technology behind it https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/jamie-dimon-says-he-regrets-calling-bitcoin-a-fraud.html

I'd like to thank Elon Musk for looking out for us all. "Sorry NSA, I don't know what happened to your secret spy satellite" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/highly-classified-us-spy-satellite-appears-to-be-a-total-loss-after-spacex-launch.html

This is how I answered this last time it was asked: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/what-books-do-you-periodically-re-read/msg63492/#msg63492 "How to Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values", by Robert M. Pirsig "Civil Disobedience", "Life Without Principle", and "Waldon", all by Henry David Thoreau "Atlas Shrugged" and "Anthem", by Ayn Rand "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto", by Murray N. Rothbard "The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism", by David Friedman "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" and "Stranger in a Strange Land", both by Robert A. Heinlein "The Illuminatus! Trilogy", by Robert Anton Wilson "Pallas", "Tom Paine Maru", and "The Probability Broach", all by L. Neil Smith "Cryptonomicon", "The Diamond Age", and "Anathem", all by Neal Stephenson "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat "No Treason, by Lysander Spooner

For example gold and human beings coexisted on this planet a long time before gold was used as money. What happened? Gold didn't change, but all of the sudden it had value where it previously did not.

Similar to your thinking, one would assume that if people were looking for store of value one would assume that gain in cryto would translate into an equivalent drop in gold. When I look at charts of golds it seems quite flat, suggesting one is speculation while the other is business as usual. BeerBaron Anyone who doesn't think Bitcoin is pure speculation right now is insane. I just think it is a good bet, just don't bet the farm.

Yes gold isn't going anywhere, but if the US government gets tyrannical to the point where it shuts down the internet I suspect I'll have larger problems than my Bitcoin holdings.

The value of the US dollar also changed during that period. Pretty big difference between changing that much over 40-50 year and that much in a year. No disputing that. I'm just saying nothing is completely stable and bitcoin is so new and so few people use it (and even fewer understand it) that I wouldn't be surprised if we have a few more up or down 30X years coming. On the bear side: there is a lot of Bitcoin in a small number of hands, when those whales start selling things are going to get bumpy and panic will ensue. And on the bullish side: With so few people currently invested and it being so hard for people to invest in (see my above posts that you mentioned), I don't think we've even even come close to seeing how insane Bitcoin mania can get. Bitcoin will be as easy to use as normal banking is now and every joe sixpack will be buying, so the real mania is still to come (Bitcoin with a $30T market cap maybe). But 20 years from now all that will have shaken out and it will be close to as stable as gold has been (up or down 3-5X in a decade).

How do you value gold? Should it be valued at $7T right now or is it over or under valued? I've read many times that Bitcoin is too volatile to be a good store of value. While that is true currently, the volatility will need to be less than it is, even gold isn't completely stable. Gold went from $35/oz in 1970 to $850/oz in 1980. It fell to as low as $250 in 1999 and was trading over $1000 in 2008. Just in my lifetime gold has ranged from $38 to $1800. That is a 47X difference on a store of value that has been in common use for thousands of years (you aren't going to get more stable than that). And it wasn't a smooth increase from $38 to $1800, but up and down massively. I don't know how to exactly value Bitcoin, but there are some things I'm sure of. It will be used as a store of value that will be more commonly utilized than gold. Therefor it will be valued at some portion of what gold is valued at today. It won't be 100%, people will still hold gold and there will still be a market for it. So will Bitcoin be valued at half of what gold is today? 85%? Maybe I'm wrong and it will only be 25%. I don't know. But at 25%-85% of $7T the market cap will be in the trillions eventually. I don't know how long this will take (5-15 years maybe), but I am counting on being approximately correct rather than precisely wrong.

I agree that meeting the goals is important, but measuring whether in the long run you can outperform a strategy of putting 100% of new cash added immediately into cheap passive indexing, either in absolute returns or in some long term risk adjusted measure (over a whole economic cycle), is a helpful sanity check for whether or not you're right to be an active investor. You can feel great about your investment returns like me in the last couple of years thinking you're way ahead then find that after accounting for new cash added and currency windfalls you only beat the S&P500 Total Return Index by a few percent each year, far less outperformance then you'd have guessed from how well each decision turned out. I suspect it has a lot to do with riding BRK down to $124 in my case before going in even heavier at the market low, and seeing the whole market rise alongside it. So I made some great decisions but only affecting 15-25% of my portfolio and each only being a modest amount better than a decision to buy the index would have been. +1. This is exactly why I track it. If I can't beat an index fund then what am I even doing? According to Fidelity where all of my actively managed assets are (I have my 401K for work somewhere else, but those are in index funds so I don't track those when calculating my returns) I have an annualized return of a little over 12% over the last 10 years and according to Fidelity the S&P500 has done 8.5% annualized over the same period. I wonder how good a return that is considering my time spent. On the other hand I enjoy it, so I guess my hobby pays me a little bit. Beats golf.

I may just do that in the near future. I suspect it will show me that Bitcoin is easier to acquire and store. It couldn't hurt to own a small amount of gold though.

I don't know what is wrong with coindesk.com, I've never been to that website before, but it does appear broken. There are a million other places you can get a quote though. I usually use http://coincap.io/ If yahoo finance goes down and you can't get a stock quote from there, would you come to the conclusion that stocks are broken? Also you misunderstand my posts there is no relying on third parties. You can acquire Bitcoin outside of a company like Coinbase. You could mine it yourself, you could go to an atm, you could find someone to sell you some, etc. Just like gold, you can try prospecting yourself or you can find a private party to sell you some, or you can buy it from a dealer. You can also purchase a gold ETF which is something you will one day be able to easily do with Bitcoin as well. I've never physically owned gold as an investment, but I have in the past owned SGOL. With Bitcoin you can absolutely do everything yourself. You could write software to generate your own private keys and to interact with the blockchain or you could use opensource software that does this for you. You can run this software on an air-gapped computer, generate your keys, and completely control your private keys without relying on any 3rd party. EDIT: Also when it goes up 20X in a year it does give pause to rational players, but that also says nothing at all about what will happen long term with this. It hit around $1100 in 2013 then went back down to around $100. I am not saying similar crashes (or worse) will not happen along the way.

Yes you could use a computer that is never connected to the internet to create your wallet or install your wallet on a usb stick and only access it from non-connected computers. Then send your coins from coinbase to the address generated by the offline computer. You could also use a hardware wallet like Trezor this is pocket sized and not much bigger than a usb stick. I've never used one, because I just prefer to keep paper wallets, but some people claim these are a highly secure way to hold your Bitcoins. There is also the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet but those appear to be backordered until March.

Both. Your private key is made up of numbers and letters and your public address is also made up of different numbers and letters. But they can both be made into a QR code which can be scanned by a smartphone camera. Any string of numbers and letters can be made into a QR code, that includes website addresses, bitcoin addresses, or anything else. After buying on Coinbase go to your account and select "send", you will fill out a form which needs the amount to send and the address to send to. Fill in the amount to send, then go to jaxx and find your receive address, copy it, then paste it into the form on coinbase. Then hit the send button. It is pretty easy. Jaxx is an application that runs on your computer or phone, but it doesn't send any info off of your device. But yes if someone got control of your device they could steal your bitcoin from you. This is the same if you kept your private key on your hard drive, if someone hacked your computer they could steal your bitcoin. If you have a substantial amount and you are afraid of someone hacking your device you don't have to keep the Jaxx software on your device. The best way to learn this I think is to actually do it. My recommendation would be to take $100 to experiment with for educational purposes. 1) Set up a Coinbase account and buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. 2) Download the Jaxx app to your phone. 3) Run the Jaxx app and set up a new wallet. IMPORTANT: Write down the 12 word backup phrase that you are given and save it somewhere secure. 4) Once you have your Bitcoin available in Coinbase send it to your Jaxx wallet. a) In Coinbase select "Send". b) Put in the amount to send (the max amount). c) In Jaxx copy the receive address. d) in Coinbase paste your jaxx receive address in the address to send to. And hit the send button. e) Wait until your Bitcoin shows up in Jaxx. This could be as quick as 2 min or as long as an hour. But will probably be within 10 min. 5) Now that you have Bitcoin in your private Jaxx wallet. You can remove the Jaxx app from your phone. Just uninstall the app completely. It is now gone and no one can get your Bitcoin by hacking into your phone. The only way anyone could steal your Bitcoin from you now would be to somehow get a hold of your 12 word backup phrase which you wrote down when setting up Jaxx. 6) Now to restore your wallet you simply re-install Jaxx and instead of creating a new wallet select restore wallet the first time you run it. It will ask you for your backup phrase. Type it in and your wallet containing your Bitcoins will be available for you to use. You can do this to check the balance or to make a transaction. Then you can uninstall Jaxx again to have your wallet exist nowhere but on paper again. rkbabang, are you just simplifying your explanation here about what is bitcoin and how its transactions work? My understanding is that you never download a bitcoin. Bitcoins (more precisely, their values) are not stored on any specific device, but they "inhere" on transaction records on the blockchain network. By creating your own wallet and "sending bitcoins" to there, you are recording an additional transaction to your own address (this address is still part of the network). To make further transactions, you would need to know and use the private key that is generated by the wallet. And this private key is what gets stored in your wallet. And to answer emily's question of why you cannot simply download "bitcoins" - Because it is simply not a download of an information artifact, but software like jaxx interacts with the blockchain to participate in the transaction recording (ledger) and manages the key generation / storage. You could write software yourself that does this, but obviously not straightforward like storing a file. Yes I was trying to simplify it. More of a how to do it than a how it works explanation. You are correct there is more to it. Jaxx interacts with the block chain and doesn't really store anything. It is even more complicated than that though, as Jaxx is an HD wallet which uses a hash of your 12 word backup phrase to generate a new private-key/public-address pair for every single transaction you make with it. You can view all of your private key/public address pairs in the settings if you want to and use a block explorer to examine each one, but the software handles all of that under the hood for you. When you restore it on a new Jaxx installation using your 12 word phrase it regenerates the hashes and searches the blockchain to re-compute your history and ballance. The thing is that you don't have to understand how email works to send emails and you don't have to understand how bitcoin works to use bitcoin. If you want a deep understanding of the underlying technology you could start with Satashi's white paper, there are also good books and articles which you could read, but if you just want to start using Bitcoin to get a feel for how it works there is no substitute for hands on experience.

Both. Your private key is made up of numbers and letters and your public address is also made up of different numbers and letters. But they can both be made into a QR code which can be scanned by a smartphone camera. Any string of numbers and letters can be made into a QR code, that includes website addresses, bitcoin addresses, or anything else. After buying on Coinbase go to your account and select "send", you will fill out a form which needs the amount to send and the address to send to. Fill in the amount to send, then go to jaxx and find your receive address, copy it, then paste it into the form on coinbase. Then hit the send button. It is pretty easy. Jaxx is an application that runs on your computer or phone, but it doesn't send any info off of your device. But yes if someone got control of your device they could steal your bitcoin from you. This is the same if you kept your private key on your hard drive, if someone hacked your computer they could steal your bitcoin. If you have a substantial amount and you are afraid of someone hacking your device you don't have to keep the Jaxx software on your device. The best way to learn this I think is to actually do it. My recommendation would be to take $100 to experiment with for educational purposes. 1) Set up a Coinbase account and buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. 2) Download the Jaxx app to your phone. 3) Run the Jaxx app and set up a new wallet. IMPORTANT: Write down the 12 word backup phrase that you are given and save it somewhere secure. 4) Once you have your Bitcoin available in Coinbase send it to your Jaxx wallet. a) In Coinbase select "Send". b) Put in the amount to send (the max amount). c) In Jaxx copy the receive address. d) in Coinbase paste your jaxx receive address in the address to send to. And hit the send button. e) Wait until your Bitcoin shows up in Jaxx. This could be as quick as 2 min or as long as an hour. But will probably be within 10 min. 5) Now that you have Bitcoin in your private Jaxx wallet. You can remove the Jaxx app from your phone. Just uninstall the app completely. It is now gone and no one can get your Bitcoin by hacking into your phone. The only way anyone could steal your Bitcoin from you now would be to somehow get a hold of your 12 word backup phrase which you wrote down when setting up Jaxx. 6) Now to restore your wallet you simply re-install Jaxx and instead of creating a new wallet select restore wallet the first time you run it. It will ask you for your backup phrase. Type it in and your wallet containing your Bitcoins will be available for you to use. You can do this to check the balance or to make a transaction. Then you can uninstall Jaxx again to have your wallet exist nowhere but on paper again.

+1 Would like to enjoy the "slow death" with those willing to discuss and not insult. The other option is that we move the discussions to the investment idea board with separate topics such as “BTC - Bitcoin”, “ETC - Ethereum”, XMR - Monero”, etc That way we can keep the topic confined more narrowly to just one coin. I think everyone gets the general idea by now and has formed there own opinions.

The ultimate supply of BTC is fixed. Assuming BTC becomes a store of value and the human population continues to grow, then won't the value of BTC continue to increase in nominal terms? For example, would you expect a gallon of milk to cost less BTC in year 20 relative to year 1, because of the deflationary effect of a fixed supply of BTC versus a growing population of humans? If that is so, why would you ever spend BTC rather than your local fiat currency that has no fixed supply? The fixed supply of BTC (a feature, not a bug to many) is one of the reasons it's hard to see its use as a dominate currency, because I don't think people would accept the consequences of such "hard" money. The "it will be worth so much that no one will use it and that makes it worthless" argument again. Where did I say it would be "worthless"? What I said is that it won't be used as a currency in the sense that it will not be the medium of exchange for small day-to-day transactions. Just like gold today is not a day-to-day currency, but that doesn't make it worthless as a result. Also, I'm raising the point to suggest that people who are focusing on the ability to use BTC as an everyday currency may be focused on the wrong things. Oh, I agree with you then. I don't see many people who still believe that other than those who don't understand bitcoin at all. A lot of those who still want to focus on replacing cash in everyday transactions have moved onto to BCH (or LTC, DASH, XRP, etc) and have abandoned BTC.

The ultimate supply of BTC is fixed. Assuming BTC becomes a store of value and the human population continues to grow, then won't the value of BTC continue to increase in nominal terms? For example, would you expect a gallon of milk to cost less BTC in year 20 relative to year 1, because of the deflationary effect of a fixed supply of BTC versus a growing population of humans? If that is so, why would you ever spend BTC rather than your local fiat currency that has no fixed supply? The fixed supply of BTC (a feature, not a bug to many) is one of the reasons it's hard to see its use as a dominate currency, because I don't think people would accept the consequences of such "hard" money. The "it will be worth so much that no one will use it and that makes it worthless" argument again. Yes, it will not circulate as much as the dollar, nor does gold, because it is not a payment rail it is a store of value. It makes sense only to use it for long term storage or to move very large amounts. I don't foresee anyone ever buying milk or coffee with Bitcoin. EDIT: Unless you are talking about a tractor trailer tanker full of milk or a shipping container full of bulk unroasted coffee beans. Those transactions might be done in bitcoin.

I've heard this stated before, but have you really spent time trying to think how you would ban cryptocurrencies? It would require no changes to the internet. How about a law that says transacting in bitcoin is illegal and any merchant caught accepting, or attempting to accept (i.e. a pay with bitcoin option), bitcoin as compensation will be subject to imprisonment for up to 50 years? And any corporate merchant caught accepting, or attempting to accept (i.e. a pay with bitcoin option), bitcoin as compensation will be subject to penalties equal to the last five years GAAP net income? How easy would it be to enforce this law? There are something like 50 retailers that account for 95% of US retail. You just task one guy with going on their websites every day and trying to pay with bitcoin, if he can, they broke the law. You would just police the merchant, not the customer. You could also make it illegal to provide an exchange of bitcoin for USD. Isn't that an activity that can be easily tracked? Those are extremes, but it wouldn't be difficult to create incentives to avoid the use of bitcoin. Governments can put people in prison, and people generally don't like prison... Yes, governments are the enemies of mankind and often do nasty things. The US government once banned gold. It won't stop Bitcoin, just like the US government's gold ban didn't make gold worthless, but it will certainly slow down its growth and adoption in the US. Not every government is going to ban bitcoin.