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Post by Roger on Apr 30, 2021 19:26:53 GMT
If I have £1 or 1$ and do nothing I will always have it, in 10 years or 100 years. Can the same be said about a crypto coin? You may always have it, but it's value is forever shrinking due to inflation. Money kept under the bed is ultimately lost. Crypto is a punt, so your £1 might be worth £100 in 10 years or nothing. It's all about risk and reward. No risk, no reward.
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2021 18:25:37 GMT
Just to bring things up to date...Chia is now live, earlier when at $1200 per coin that would give my son $300k if he sold at that point. It's currently at $1600 having a peak so far of over $1900. IIRC my son said he may trade 20 coins, 10 each for him and his wife to keep under capital gains. Anyway, he's happy, made a small fortune for little investment. If he sold everything today he would certainly be in the money, he's too switched on to make that mistake. He expects the price to drop a lot over the next few days but also expects to to grow massively over the coming years. Good for him I say, meanwhile my one little farm has an estimated time to produce 1 coin of 11 years... I think my son's impressive rig is now rated to produce 1 coin every 2 months under the now harsh farming settings. He did very well knowing what to do and when to do it at the begining. Pete
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Post by David on May 3, 2021 21:26:34 GMT
He did do well! I was listening to a podcast the other day where they spoke about dogecoin - literally a joke - and how it's gone up in "value" so much recently.
I still can't take these things seriously, but don't dispute there is money to be made if you know what you're doing.
Holding them is probably a good idea. The booms and busts of these 'coins' are spectacular and seem to be largely driven by whim but the well known ones do seem to hit absurd highs occasionally.
The whole thing is madness but most things in the tech world are these days.
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Post by silverfox on May 4, 2021 9:38:12 GMT
Pete
That is good. Where does he go to sell them?
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2021 9:59:18 GMT
Pete That is good. Where does he go to sell them? It's all done online, you create a wallet connected to your own bank account, I think?....he was going to sell some just for some petty cash and cover his investment. Think he's now going to wait for a few years, he may even buy some if they drop low enough. The initial value was far higher than he expected at over $1500 per coin, peaking at $1934. If it drops low enough it would be worth buying more, he did consider selling what he has and then doubling his coin by buying back at the expected lower value but decided against this. Currently the value is at $700, he expects it to drop a fair bit more before climbing again. In the meantime his farm is adding coin, up to 210 coins now. Pete
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Post by runner42 on May 5, 2021 0:01:57 GMT
I am struggling to understand the concept being discussed here, but it's not surprising since I initially had difficulty in understanding stocks and shares. When Telecom was floated the government encouraged the mums and dads to take their first steps to owning shares, so I bought some. Money was transferred from my bank account and paid to Telecom, although it was a digital transfer, I did have a perception that actual dollars were moved from my bank account to Telecom. This of course was a fact. When the share value dropped I lost money and naively thought my loss was somebody's gain, after all if I didn't have the dollars somebody else must have. Cash don't just disappear. I still don't know. I am still of a mindset that there are as many banknotes in circulation to cover the stated wealth of the country.
Brian
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Gary L
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,208
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Post by Gary L on May 5, 2021 17:22:36 GMT
I am struggling to understand the concept being discussed here, but it's not surprising since I initially had difficulty in understanding stocks and shares. When Telecom was floated the government encouraged the mums and dads to take their first steps to owning shares, so I bought some. Money was transferred from my bank account and paid to Telecom, although it was a digital transfer, I did have a perception that actual dollars were moved from my bank account to Telecom. This of course was a fact. When the share value dropped I lost money and naively thought my loss was somebody's gain, after all if I didn't have the dollars somebody else must have. Cash don't just disappear. I still don't know. I am still of a mindset that there are as many banknotes in circulation to cover the stated wealth of the country. Brian IIRC we were taught in 1st yr that anything could be termed a “currency” if it fulfilled two functions: [1] as a store of wealth and [2] as a means of exchange. Thus in post-war Germany, with a collapsed Reichsmark, cigarettes were used as money and they met both requirements. Your Telecom shares didn’t, because nobody bought anything with them, and they (evidently) didn’t store your wealth very well either. So your shares were a commodity which could be bought and sold, but not a currency.Bitcoinage in general seems to fulfil the second part of the definition, but not the first. Cigarettes, gold, diamonds, all have intrinsic value so can be used as a store of wealth as well as a means of exchange. Dollars and pounds are just bits of paper with no intrinsic value, but they store wealth because their supply is carefully regulated by powerful backers who are trusted to do so by the market. By contrast, bitcoinage is not a store of wealth because it lacks intrinsic value (you can’t do anything useful with it) and there is no regulation and no trust. Maybe this will change; certainly the Central Banks are investigating, probably to look trendy, so don’t hold your breath. Once they become regulated, the possibility of huge bitcoinage gains will disappear, along with the prospect of huge losses. Meanwhile, it is right to treat them like your Telecom shares; a commodity whose value can fluctuate up and down. But as currency, no thanks; they don’t qualify. Caveat Emptor! Gary
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stevep
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,070
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Post by stevep on May 5, 2021 18:10:32 GMT
Great explanation Gary.
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Post by silverfox on May 5, 2021 22:39:22 GMT
Gary
That is how i view them. To me it is the same with shares when the experts say that ABC ltd company is worth y pounds on the stock market But when ABC ltd floated it sold 1000 shares at 1 pound each. Therefore it was worth and got 1000 pounds in its bank. Now surely any future buying and selling of shares does not affect the intial worth physically of ABC ltd If the shares go up to 10.00 then that 1000 pound does not go up as well it is only the traders who are making money not ABC ltd. Unless they print more shares to sell at the new price. And shares are completely worthless until you sell them. Only Coin of the realm has value ( ok it may be worth less by inflation or as they like to say 'In real terms' A painting by Van Gogh isworthless as are loco nameplates They may have a value but you cant by a burger with it. Someone who bought a GWR plate 15 years ago at the boom for 25k would now get about 8k for it.I don't think my 25k sitting in a sock under my bed would have shrunk that much in the same time I still cannot figure out who will but these coins if and when they aresold, they appear to be made out of thin air run a computer for 11years as Peter is doing and poof there is a coin. no physical form wgatsoever just a machine code on a hard drive
Perhaps i may have it sall wrong and would willing listen to someone who can answer all my questions as they do Like i said the modern version of The Kings new clothes. Good luck to Peter and his lad, but count me out.
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Gary L
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,208
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Post by Gary L on May 6, 2021 0:30:00 GMT
Thanks Steve And to Silverfox, yup, that's how it is, precisely. A commodity (shares, gold, a nameplate) is worth whatever someone else will pay for it. A currency can be a commodity too; it is what makes exchange rates go up and down. But that is separate from its function as a store of wealth and a means of exchange. When you use a shedload of pounds to buy a house or a car you don't think about what 'commodity pounds' are worth on the international exchanges, you think about what that 'currency pound' was worth in terms of the labour you used to earn it. The trouble with "cryptocurrency" (note the name) is the inventors have deliberately set out to obscure this vital fact. They have dressed up a (fundamentally valueless) commodity to try and make it sound and seem like a currency, which is deceiving lots of people who ought to know better. It is a falsehood, and some people (the inventors, natch) have already made fortunes, but it is a Bubble. Like all Bubbles, it will burst when some big owner somewhere realises they are worthless and begins to dump his stocks, and starts a selling panic. But being a con isn't the main reason I am against it. I am against it because generating this mythical commodity is using up colossal amounts of energy worldwide and pumping megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere when the sane part of the world is trying to cut back on both. Bitcoin alone (there are others) uses the same amount of energy as Austria, and it is growing at a rate of 20% per month it says here or it has the Carbon footprint of Sweden it says here. Even allowing for exaggeration to make a point, this is an environmental catastrophe unfolding in front of our eyes. And a completely unnecessary and greed-driven one. I'm wearing out my soapbox. Let's get back to model engineering! Gary
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Post by silverfox on May 6, 2021 7:49:36 GMT
Thanks Gary I do fear a lot of people will be weeping buckets in the future, it is those i feel sorry for. Yes back to the fun things
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2021 13:50:59 GMT
Some interesting views on shares and crypto coins? Meanwhile in the real world, my son decided to only sell 1.5 coins, yes that's 1 1/2 coins. Most crypto coin can be broken down into many decimal points. For this new coin it's almost infinite, a guide to how far the creators belive it will reach in value. Anyway, with the cash that was deposited into my son's bank account from the sell he bought two more top of the range servers and a host of hardrives. IIRC, this with his other assets will give him a regular coinage return even with the harshish settings today. Current value of a coin now is approx $600, my son expects it to drop further before begining its climb to who knows where? As for governments across the world views on this, what can they not like? Here in the UK a high tax bracket seller will have to pay 20% capital gains tax on each sell above their tax allowance if more than one sell per financial year. Governments are making a hell of a lot of money on cryptocurrency trades, in fact, I believe the UK government was the first to cash in on this. Anyway, even at today's value my son has a fair chunk of money sitting in crypto currency which he could sell today, he won't, he's in it for the long haul. He has little to lose if anything, only in time will we see how much wealth he can accumulate with his knowledge on these things. For me this is all way above my head.. Pete
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Post by silverfox on May 6, 2021 21:47:33 GMT
Peter
Who did he sell them to?
That is the bit i do not understand
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2021 22:11:49 GMT
Peter Who did he sell them to? That is the bit i do not understand To whoever is buying, that's how the stockexchange works...there is buying/selling happening all through the trading day. Whatever the stated value is at the time is what you get or pay plus any commission if going through a broker. It's a little more complicated with this new coin, currently to get cash my son first exchanged his coin with another type that is currently trading for cash. The new coin will take a short time before showing on the official stock exchange. As I said my son knows his stuff and thus traded IIRC with an exchange in Korea which does recognise the coin. BTW, he has sold some more coins sonce, he is keeping 200 to one side as a nest egg. Coins he farms he sells, he is currently farming 2 coins per day, that adds up to a lot of extra money over 1 month, even at todays value of only $600 each. Pete
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Post by runner42 on May 6, 2021 23:57:12 GMT
As I said previously, I don't understand the concept of digital currency but no matter I am content to be forever in the dark. But what intrigues me is that to be successful you require some top of the range hardware, servers and hard drives which are operating at high duty cycles and require a great amount of electricity. This caused by the software the servers are running which appear to be number crunching at a phenomenal rate. The end result is a lot of 1s and 0s stored on a hard drive that represents something of value that can be traded, ie sold to another wishing to buy. So this assumes that the servers have connectivity with others through the internet and these 1s and 0s are transferred from the seller to the buyer. But with digital data you can replicate it an unlimited amount of times the only need is more storage space, so what prevents the seller keeping a copy that is provided to the buyer. Is there also an issue of security and these servers can be hacked and data stolen? I am obviously out of my depth even trying to visualise the tangible aspects of hardware requirements and usage, but I am hoping that someone will enlighten me.
Brian
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Gary L
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,208
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Post by Gary L on May 7, 2021 1:01:20 GMT
As I said previously, I don't understand the concept of digital currency but no matter I am content to be forever in the dark. But what intrigues me is that to be successful you require some top of the range hardware, servers and hard drives which are operating at high duty cycles and require a great amount of electricity. This caused by the software the servers are running which appear to be number crunching at a phenomenal rate. The end result is a lot of 1s and 0s stored on a hard drive that represents something of value that can be traded, ie sold to another wishing to buy. So this assumes that the servers have connectivity with others through the internet and these 1s and 0s are transferred from the seller to the buyer. But with digital data you can replicate it an unlimited amount of times the only need is more storage space, so what prevents the seller keeping a copy that is provided to the buyer. Is there also an issue of security and these servers can be hacked and data stolen? I am obviously out of my depth even trying to visualise the tangible aspects of hardware requirements and usage, but I am hoping that someone will enlighten me. Brian It's done using blockchains which are an ingenious cryptographic concept that keeps an integral record of the transaction every bitcoin is involved with, which is freely accessible and publicly readable. This also means that every bitcoin is unique and uncopiable; it is very clever. There was a case reported just this week, of a bitcoin owner who was scammed out of a small fortune by a simple phishing attack (leaving him feeling very stupid, as they do). He is still able to see exactly where 'his' bitcoins are currently located, who 'owns' them and exactly what transactions they were involved in at every stage. But unfortunately it is still impossible for him to recover them, because the system only guarantees ownership, it has no interest in the method by which they were acquired. It was also reported in this week's Economist just yesterday, that the world's Central Banks are indeed set to launch various denominations of GovCoin that the public will be able to purchase direct (e-dollars from the Fed, e-pounds from the Bank of England e-yuan from China and so on). This will kill the market for Bitcoins stone dead (with any luck) because these will be usable as currency, and backed by state actors, so even more secure than ordinary Commercial Banks and a direct (and cheaper) alternative to Visa and similar payment systems. They will have the same blockchain protection as Bitcoin but they will be vastly more stable, reliable and tradeable. "Unsupervised networks" (i.e.Bitcoin) "would become a Wild West of fraud and privacy abuses" (if they are not already). -Gary
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2021 1:02:30 GMT
It doesn't work like that Brian..yes there is the storage of data which is how this particular cryptocurrency works, it works this way as it uses far less power than other cryptocurrencies and thus has been labeled the green cryptocurrency. other cryptocurrencies work on processing power which does use vast amounts of power, ie there are large warehouses across the world running processors just for Bitcoin which currently is worth over $50k per coin, a value that chia hopes to beat. The data stored is worth nothing to others, you can't copy it and use it to trade. Depending on how much data you have stored will dictate how many coins you get awarded. It's the coins that hold a value, not the data itself and the coin info is held securely on the main servers which is the only contact that individual farmers have, they all talk to the main server only, not each other. As for security, this is solid, as the creators say, it's safer than holding cash in your hand, considering who the creator is I would believe that claim. There are lots of extra security protocols in this coin which has been well thought out by Cohen. Lessons from the past have been learned and enacted in this new coin. This is just what I have learned in recent weeks since my son started this enterprise, I know little about it myself, just what I have read from the company and what the economic experts and press are saying out there.
Pete
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Post by steamer5 on May 14, 2021 8:37:52 GMT
Hi Guys, Interesting article on the news tonight about Bitcoin & how it dropped 17% on the back of Elon Musks comment they they will no longer accept them for the purchase of cars due to the energy consumption for mining them.
Now the REALLY interesting stuff.....
New Zealand’s TOTAL electricity consumption is 39 TWh. Mining Bitcoins consumes 150 TWh world wide!!
Cheers Kerrin
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2021 10:19:32 GMT
Hi Guys, Interesting article on the news tonight about Bitcoin & how it dropped 17% on the back of Elon Musks comment they they will no longer accept them for the purchase of cars due to the energy consumption for mining them. Now the REALLY interesting stuff..... New Zealand’s TOTAL electricity consumption is 39 TWh. Mining Bitcoins consumes 150 TWh world wide!! Cheers Kerrin Yes, Meanwhile, after Elon's announcement, the coin my boys are dealing in shot up about 70%, down a little now at over 30%. My two sons with the most coins have been making money since my last post, they've been doing a little trading, buy low, sell high, making a couple of £k per day...Not sure how much number 2 son made last night, he fell asleep when it hit its peak at over $1,700, but he did sell some shortly before at $1500, these were bought at $900 so a good jump. The coin has now been listed on its second exchange, the big jump is expected once it's listed on the big crypto exchanges, I think it's 'Coinbase' but could be wrong. At the current value, my IT son is sitting on £300k which he would get today if he sold, no question...minus tax. This is after already selling a number of coins to cover his initial investment and other things to improve life. Once it goes onto one of the big exchanges, the sky's the limit. Chat out there is predicting a jump to $10k, that would make my son a millionaire 3 times over... I read a story last week of a young guy in the US, who made over a million after his 'dogecoin suddenly jumped by 8000%, IIRC it was only worth 47 cents before the jump? I bet there were a lot of big money winners that day, thing is this coin is seen by those in the know as a very short-term risky currency, it will plummet to nothing, hence why my boys aren't getting involved. It will be interesting to watch what Musk does next, he said he suspended bitcoin due to emissions, will he now buy into those coins seen as greener. exciting times ahead....maybe?? When someone like Musk trades, it has a massive impact on value as he trades in billions. He hasn't sold his bitcoin, only stashed away it for another day, if he had sold in large numbers the price would have plummeted. Pete
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Post by houstonceng on May 14, 2021 10:29:53 GMT
What I cannot understand is this mining system. You run a supercomputer or a large number of PC Servers that do very complex calculations that, when solved, create part of a bitcoin. If you are creating bitcoins out of thin air, surely that leads to inflation in the same way that printing more paper money, or selling more shares, can do if the economy of the country, or value of the company, cannot back them up.
I understand about shares and the likelihood that, for example the death of the CEO of a company can wipe off share value, even though the company is still there and nothing has happened to its assets, just because of “the market” reaction to the death (it happened to a company in which I worked). But bitcoin creation just doesn’t seem to jive up.
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