Cryptocurrencies

[Aberhound]

Congrats.  I read the paper on this forum late 2011 and the high conviction posters were framing this as digital gold. I loved the philosophy of the paper.  The math i didnt understand so i stayed away.  For others to learn( myself):

 

1.) What was thesis when invested?

2.) What is current thesis?

3.) When is this vehicle a sell? Or riding it out using power law?

 

Thanks

 

-premfan

 

1. My thesis last august was that BTC would increase exponentially at greater than 100% per annum for at least 5 years, probably to 2032. Further the blockchain was a third revolution in accounting similar in impact to dual entry accounting except with trust as Trace Meyer argues. I charted it and decided that what I was seeing was the S-curve of technological adoption similar to Apple when the Iphone 3 came out. Do you know anyone who had the Iphone 1 or 2? I know one. Finally I theorized that it was created by the Anglo alliance (along with almost all other long term agendas), for the purpose of destroying the nation state final leg of power, namely the ability to issue cheap bonds because your central bank can create currency. This is part of the agenda for the next phase of a world of ten super states. Crypto makes this inevitable. i no longer bother with stocks and save much time thereby.

 

2. Same. Now the thesis is expanded because I am starting to understand the vast potential of the blockchain so that I now estimate it will be 20 times bigger than the internet as one blog predicted. I also predict Bitcoin will prevail because the silk road alliance will be 60% of the world GDP so China can take over from US as the world's policeman which is one of the Anglo empire long term agendas. Asians will favour Bitcoin over Ethereum or any JP Morgan/banker crypto where they are not trusted for good reason. They will do so because they wrongly perceive Bitcoin as decentralized. I now believe that the reason for the press attacks against Bitcoin is so they can accumulate 50% and then control it. When I say Anglo empire I do not think in term of countries anymore. These people have no loyalty to any country or to the people of UK, US etc. and do everything with similar methods in long term agendas. The most common method is deception. Another method is control by duality. It is easier to maintain control when you control both sides like Democrat/Republican. Accordingly invest in both Bitcoin and Ethereum as they form a duality and favour will be moved back and forth. RSK which allows the creation of smart contracts like Ethereum with the same programming but which works with Bitcoin for greater security and is claimed to be 6x faster is much better than Ethereum from a lawyer's standpoint so currently Bitcoin will likely enjoy favour. I currently favour Bitcoin.

 

3. Sell before 2032 and diversify into the boom so it does not matter which coin prevails. Get into crypto like Dustin Hoffman was told to get into plastic. (I think plastic really meant visa/mastercard!).

 

There are lots of people that have made millions that I run into ready to invest in crypto with tons of followers who have made fortunes because of their advice. It is amazing what new business models are made possible because cryptos can eliminate "friction" for many businesses. It reminds me of 1996 when the internet started to gain traction leading up to the 2001 dot com bubble. I 1998 participated in a internet video start-up, an amazing experience. This is much bigger and faster. Don't believe what you read and change the way you think about cryptos so that they are your own thoughts, not thoughts fed by the Anglo empire media who always seek to deceive. It is still possible to prevent or delay their 50% control and bitcoin will be the hardest one for them to achieve. Ripple and Ethereum are theirs and Ripple is obviously one of many crypto pump and dumps considering the billions of coins. They will support Ethereum to maintain the duality so it likely will be well managed. 

[rkbabang]

Two interesting stories about Ethereum.

 

Singapore will be issuing its currency as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. 

http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/06/07/singaporean-dollar-tokenized-ethereums-blockchain-monetary-authority-singapore

 

And Putin had a meeting with Vilalik Buterin

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/putin-eyes-bitcoin-rival-to-spur-economic-growth-beyond-oil-gas

 

[Fly]

This might be something to watch as well:

 

http://www.coindesk.com/us-congressional-group-calls-on-irs-to-clarify-bitcoin-tax-guidance/

[Liberty]

The Tim Ferriss Show: #244: The Quiet Master of Cryptocurrency — Nick Szabo

https://overcast.fm/+BmGV410hM

[LC]

I bought a tiny bit of etherium today

[rkbabang]

I bought a tiny bit of etherium today

 

Good choice, ETH is my largest crypto holding by far, not because it is the one I bought the most of, that would be Bitcoin,  but because I bought ETH at around $8 where my BTC was acquired between $200-$800. I purchased some ZEC a few days ago to further diversify. 

[clutch]

Good choice, ETH is my largest crypto holding by far, not because it is the one I bought the most of, that would be Bitcoin,  but because I bought ETH at around $8 where my BTC was acquired between $200-$800. I purchased some ZEC a few days ago to further diversify.

 

What are your thoughts on Ripple and XRP?

[wachtwoord]

At the current valuation I would own most scamcoins over ETH, it's fully centralized, has an infinite supply and trades at half the valuation of Bitcoin?

 

On top of that it's Turing complete so it will be exploited until it dies. I would be really surprised if Ethereum exists in 10 years, while I would be equally surprised if Bitcoin did not.

 

Edit:

 

Why would you buy ZEC? Did you read what it is? They can't prove they didnt keep the initialization seed and if the did can create an infinite supply without it being visible. On top of this they assign themselves 20% (iirc) from the block reward of every mined block.

[wachtwoord]

Good choice, ETH is my largest crypto holding by far, not because it is the one I bought the most of, that would be Bitcoin,  but because I bought ETH at around $8 where my BTC was acquired between $200-$800. I purchased some ZEC a few days ago to further diversify.

 

What are your thoughts on Ripple and XRP?

 

Ripple truly is the largest scam around. It's a company releasing a currency which the can inflate infinitely and assign to themselves. On top of that it's not even a cryptocurrency, there is no mining either through POW or POS.

[anony208]

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has nothing to do with the currency aspect. Big names in that alliance have no impact to the speculative aspect of ETH. The alliance is interested in the enterprise aspect of the technology -- permissioned networks, secure data sharing, smart contracts, etc.

[rkbabang]

Good choice, ETH is my largest crypto holding by far, not because it is the one I bought the most of, that would be Bitcoin,  but because I bought ETH at around $8 where my BTC was acquired between $200-$800. I purchased some ZEC a few days ago to further diversify.

 

What are your thoughts on Ripple and XRP?

 

 

Ripple truly is the largest scam around. It's a company releasing a currency which the can inflate infinitely and assign to themselves. On top of that it's not even a cryptocurrency, there is no mining either through POW or POS.

 

I agree with wachtwoord on ripple.  You have to trust the corporation, it isn't a cryptocurrency at all. I don't think that going from trusting governments and central banks to trusting corporations to control money is much of an improvement.

[rukawa]

Good choice, ETH is my largest crypto holding by far, not because it is the one I bought the most of, that would be Bitcoin,  but because I bought ETH at around $8 where my BTC was acquired between $200-$800. I purchased some ZEC a few days ago to further diversify.

 

What are your thoughts on Ripple and XRP?

 

Ripple truly is the largest scam around. It's a company releasing a currency which the can inflate infinitely and assign to themselves. On top of that it's not even a cryptocurrency, there is no mining either through POW or POS.

 

Reminds me of this

[jb85]

At the current valuation I would own most scamcoins over ETH, it's fully centralized, has an infinite supply and trades at half the valuation of Bitcoin?

 

On top of that it's Turing complete so it will be exploited until it dies. I would be really surprised if Ethereum exists in 10 years, while I would be equally surprised if Bitcoin did not.

 

 

*Supply is not infinite in any reasonable sense (technically it is, but a .000001% annaul inflation rate is basically 0%) -->

 

 

*ETH is far from fully centralized imo.  Just because a community makes a decision that folks don't agree with doesn't mean its centralized.  (I assume your referrring to DAO hard fork).  At the very least, the existance of ETC shows its not centralized and anyone is free to make bets on whether they agreed with DAO fork (ETH) or didn't agree with DAO fork (ETC).  If vitalik goes nuclear tomorrow and adds code that says he gets 90% of ETH, i'm pretty sure no one is gonna run that code, hence not fully centralized.  Its certainly a spectrum, and ETH may be more centralized than BTC (i dont think it is, but i can see the argument), but logic goes out the window when we start talking in certainties.

 

*Theres a segment of crypto land that wants to say POS, sharding, etc are guaranteed to fail.  I'm not sure what the odds are but imo crypto land is getting very tribal (im guilty at times) and any sort of rationale discussion is going out the window (ie bitcoin maximilaists, eth maximalists, etc).  in reality, theres a non 0%, non 100% chance eth takes over as a better over all currency even if turing completeness never serves any practical use.  Theres a nontrivial chance that POS and sharding turn out to be order of magnitude more secure than BTC as well as being able to handle orders of magnitudes more transactions and that eth market cap is worth much more than btc

 

*would agree turing completeness has many things to overcome but again odds of doing so are not 0% nor are they 100%.

 

*Def don't want to debate POS, Sharding etc here (other are more qualified to do so), but instead will just post some links i found helpful so others reading this thread can learn more.  They explain it much better than i could.  i don't agree with everything vitalik says and i'm far from 100% sure POS succeeds, but imo its at least worth considering his roadmap, thoughts, etc.

 

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/

 

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ

 

https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51

[rkbabang]

At the current valuation I would own most scamcoins over ETH, it's fully centralized, has an infinite supply and trades at half the valuation of Bitcoin?

 

On top of that it's Turing complete so it will be exploited until it dies. I would be really surprised if Ethereum exists in 10 years, while I would be equally surprised if Bitcoin did not.

 

Edit:

 

Why would you buy ZEC? Did you read what it is? They can't prove they didnt keep the initialization seed and if the did can create an infinite supply without it being visible. On top of this they assign themselves 20% (iirc) from the block reward of every mined block.

 

I disagree with you on ETH.  It is technically infinite, but it increases by a small fixed amount of ETH every year, so the inflation starts out tiny and approaches (but never quite reaches 0%).  In fact it may even be deflationary in some years due to coin losses, which nobody disputes is a thing.  I've heard some estimates that as much as 15% of bitcoin may be irretrievably lost already.    People are not always smart about backing up things, thumb drives are lost, hard drives crash, hardware wallets are lost/damaged, paper wallets are lost/damaged, people die without leaving instructions to their heirs on how to retrieve their cryptocurrencies maybe the heirs don't even know it exists at all.  Back in the first few years when bitcoin was almost worthless many people lost a lot of coins and didn't worry too much about it, etc, etc.  There will always be some loss, so the tiny, almost zero inflation rate doesn't worry me.  These new coins will be used to pay miners every year which is something I see as a problem with bitcoin.  Once mining isn't very profitable because of coin creation I think fees are going to rise dramatically.  The bitcoin fees are already too high.

 

I did some reading on ZCash and I now think you are correct.  I was reading too much of the ZCash official line on how the trusted setup went and cheerleading by supporters on how secure the encryption is.  I only had a tiny amount, but I just shapeshifted it back into BTC as I am no longer comfortable with it.  Thank You for bringing this to my attention.  There is a lot of back and forth and lies, and tribalism, on the message boards about this, and it is hard to know what to believe, but this piece written by one of the 6 people involved in the trusted setup is what really changed my mind. I just don't see ZCash as one of the eventual winners.

 

My Role In The 2016 Zcash Trusted Setup Ceremony

 

[wachtwoord]

At the current valuation I would own most scamcoins over ETH, it's fully centralized, has an infinite supply and trades at half the valuation of Bitcoin?

 

On top of that it's Turing complete so it will be exploited until it dies. I would be really surprised if Ethereum exists in 10 years, while I would be equally surprised if Bitcoin did not.

 

Edit:

 

Why would you buy ZEC? Did you read what it is? They can't prove they didnt keep the initialization seed and if the did can create an infinite supply without it being visible. On top of this they assign themselves 20% (iirc) from the block reward of every mined block.

 

I disagree with you on ETH.  It is technically infinite, but it increases by a small fixed amount of ETH every year, so the inflation starts out tiny and approaches (but never quite reaches 0%).  In fact it may even be deflationary in some years due to coin losses, which nobody disputes is a thing.  I've heard some estimates that as much as 15% of bitcoin may be irretrievably lost already.    People are not always smart about backing up things, thumb drives are lost, hard drives crash, hardware wallets are lost/damaged, paper wallets are lost/damaged, people die without leaving instructions to their heirs on how to retrieve their cryptocurrencies maybe the heirs don't even know it exists at all.  Back in the first few years when bitcoin was almost worthless many people lost a lot of coins and didn't worry too much about it, etc, etc.  There will always be some loss, so the tiny, almost zero inflation rate doesn't worry me.  These new coins will be used to pay miners every year which is something I see as a problem with bitcoin.  Once mining isn't very profitable because of coin creation I think fees are going to rise dramatically.  The bitcoin fees are already too high.

 

I did some reading on ZCash and I now think you are correct.  I was reading too much of the ZCash official line on how the trusted setup went and cheerleading by supporters on how secure the encryption is.  I only had a tiny amount, but I just shapeshifted it back into BTC as I am no longer comfortable with it.  Thank You for bringing this to my attention.  There is a lot of back and forth and lies, and tribalism, on the message boards about this, and it is hard to know what to believe, but this piece written by one of the 6 people involved in the trusted setup is what really changed my mind. I just don't see ZCash as one of the eventual winners.

 

My Role In The 2016 Zcash Trusted Setup Ceremony

 

No worries, it's hard to follow. When I first read about zero-knowledge proof in the context of Bitcoin I was really enthusiastic but the way they implemented it is just terrible. Even implemented well I think Monero is preferable cause ring-signatures are proven technology while zero-knwoledge proofs are cutting (bleeding?) edge. I was even (mildly) enthusiastic about the original idea behind Ripple (a trust network where actors provided lines of credit to each other, which would allow people to provide p2p loans to each other without moving funds and without strong required direct trust  between loaner and debtor) but it was completely corrupted.

 

Ethereum: Are you talking Ethereum or Bitcoin regarding inflation? Bitcoin follows a completely defined structure for releasing its coins that has never been deviated from. Ethereum says something along the lines of: Vitalek will decide in the future. Vitalek is also the biggest liability of Ethereum as he is a single point of failure. That's why it's so important that Satoshi Nakamoto is anonymous in Bitcoin: there is no-one to corrupt and there is no (less) "follow the Messiah" mentality. Why was ETH forked and did ETH win instead of ETC? Because Vitalek said so. He will be subverted by powerful groups (and held responsible if illegal activities are supported by Ethereum).

 

All of this comes on top of the fact that Ethereum was pre-mined and will not be workable long term due to the Truing completeness.

 

BTW: Fees in Bitcoin are not too high but a few orders of magnitude too low. Bitcoin is the most secure payment network on the planet and because of its distribution resistant to censorship and other limitations. I expect fees in the future to rise top an equivalent of $100-$1000 at least and it will be worth that. Those fees is what will pay for the security offered by the most secure transaction network the world has ever seen. The only one that (without strong social engineering that is being attempted right now) cannot be defeated by any state, party or nation.

[premfan]

For the cypto guys i noticed dennis rodman on his trip to north korea was wearing a potcoin.com shirt.

 

 

Thanks for all the inputs.  Truly a great study in what extreme scarcity and insatiable demand could create.  I expect the winklevoss twins to grace the forbes list next year.

[rkbabang]

I don't know about potcoin, but

Bitcoin Is Helping the Pot Business Get Over Its Banking Problem

[wachtwoord]

To those invested in Ethereum: What do you think of RSK (http://www.rsk.co/)? With RSK, why would you need Ethereum?

[LC]

I wouldn't say I invested in Ethereum, so I am not the person to answer that question. But my reason for throwing money at it are as follows:

 

My buddy turned 10K into 300K with bitcoin over the last 4 years or so.

 

I have no clue about the technology, the winners/losers, the this, the that...this is purely speculative and either I'll lose it all or it will balloon to something.

 

Tiny % of my portfolio, it's like gambling to me: figure out how much money I am OK with setting on fire, and go from there.

[wachtwoord]

I wouldn't say I invested in Ethereum, so I am not the person to answer that question. But my reason for throwing money at it are as follows:

 

My buddy turned 10K into 300K with bitcoin over the last 4 years or so.

 

I have no clue about the technology, the winners/losers, the this, the that...this is purely speculative and either I'll lose it all or it will balloon to something.

 

Tiny % of my portfolio, it's like gambling to me: figure out how much money I am OK with setting on fire, and go from there.

 

This is the exact reason why the Ethereum bubble is so big. Make your own decision but Bitcoin is the vastly superior investment (still) if you ask me.

[LC]

That's fair...I presume you say that because bitcoin is a better technology overall.

 

I still don't quite get what real world applications these things have. All I see are digital currency (is it that hard to send money via Venmo?) and "smart-contracts". Not sure how much $ there is in smart contracts. Or what a smart contract even is.

 

I'm getting old I guess.

[wachtwoord]

Primarily for Bitcoin it's the most secure immutable transaction ledger ever created which is distributed and therefore extremely strong against attack and censorship. It doesn't scale though without sacrificing security and distribution (but lower security solutions will be build on top of it).

 

A primary application of such a ledger is for storing and transfering wealth (and this application was needed to make the network as strong as it is to incentive people) but its useful for anything which requires an extremely strong notion of truth (contracts, unchangable record keeping, trades etc) and is willing to pay for it.

[LC]

So (correct me if am wrong) the technology is a distributed ledger? To simplify, it's pretty much bittorrent for transactions (or even more generally, any records in general)?

 

The value is that, if party A makes a transaction with party B, and then both party A and B sends a signed receipt to everyone else in the world...well nobody can come by later and say "well no, party A still has not transacted with party B".

 

I can see how this adds another level of security, for sure.

 

So my thoughts are, the technology and the coin aspect are two distinct things.

 

The technology is just a record keeping platform, which is stronger the more people use it. You can't generate profit from it, correct?

 

The coin aspect is only as valuable as people make it. So, the more people who transfer their wealth into bitcoins, the more valuable bitcoins are. Until of course, the last marginal person converts their dollars into bitcoin.

 

So to value the coin aspect, you have to have an understanding on how and why people will move their wealth into bitcoins. What drives this behavior? Is it security (i.e. people fearing the bank holding their money)? Is it ease-of-use (i.e. a completely digital society where everything is bought/paid for digitally?). Some other reason?

 

Curious to your two cents on these thoughts, particularly the last one...

[wachtwoord]

Well the very characteristics of Bitcoin make it particularly suitable for storing wealth. Erik Voorhees wrote about it in 2012 http://moneyandstate.com/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction-used-care/ (it shares many of gold's characteristics but is doesn't cost money or time to store or transfer)

 

So if we accept that Bitcoin is good money Gresham's law applies: "bad money drives out good. For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will disappear from circulation." (Wikipedia). Which will lead to people storing wealth in Bitcoin (removing them from circulation).

 

It's true that Bitcoin and bitcoin (the token and the network) are two different things, but it's important to note one doesn't work without the other. The bitcoin network is only secure because people are willing to put resources at work to secure it. That's something they would never have done at this scale without monetary compensation. The "currency" aspect bootstrapped the whole network into place. This is why banks and financial institutions that want blockchain but not Bitcoin don't understand anything about this. They often even don't want the mining to be distributed and in effect end up making the world least efficient database with nothing going for it but the blockchain buss word.

[LC]

Ok thanks - just read thru this thread....very interesting stuff....more for me to read... :D