Crash the dollar and boost Crypto.

I've yet to see a logical explanation of why this bullshit scam has any real value in the real world. Lets see if I've got this right.

We buy a bunch of expensive computers.
They consume vast amounts of power while "mining" Bitcoin.
We use those bitcoins to buy stuff.

"That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free"

And of course Trump, being the scumbag con artist he is, thinks its a great idea.

Herd Insanity.

I look forward to the day when this crap blows up in its believers faces. 99.999% of them will lose their shorts. .001% of them will walk away with the other 99.999 percent's money.

I’m an educated man with 30 years of experience teaching at a community college, and I have to admit that I just can’t wrap my head around bitcoin. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why it has any value.

And no one that I’ve ever asked can really explain it, either!

I knew some gullibles who thought they were going to become millionaires with that scheme. It didn't take long for it to die out.

My Dump-voting husband transferred $10,000 from our savings to the 'penny stocks' site without saying a word to me about it. The only reason I found out was by checking our bank statement - I nearly hit the ceiling and my blood pressure was elevated for a few weeks.

When confronted about it, naturally he lied. He told me he transferred the money because the online site's interest rate was higher than our local Financial's was.

I eventually found out that a fellow Dumper suggested the site to him. Being a mindless fool, he went right along wth it. God only knows how much of our money he lost. His mantra is "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."

I hope I didn't offend you with my comment (or maybe you're not married to him any longer after that?)

My late brother tried to convince me to invest and I flat out told him no way. He always had one or more get-rich-quick schemes he fell for. He died penniless and left his wife with nothing but debt.

Bitcoin was created in the shadows and by being the first and its being reasonably secure in design has caught the eye of the fiancial system. It was inspired by John Nash who was featured in the film A Beautiful mind. Dr Nash was autistic and a genious who developed skitzophrenia, but during his career in Economics at Princeton he conceived of many of the underpinnings of the derivatives market. Devitives are financial products based or derived from other economic products. Futures for physical goods like oil, foodstuffs and now surrogates for the financial markets themselves. Famous derivatives include stock indexes and benchmarks like regional oil prices. He figured out how to optimally price options on stocks and these futures. He also conceived of the the Nash Equilibrium about how markets come to set a price. Later in life he started to theorize the concept of Ideal Money and did some other work with cryptographay. Bitcoin rather than simply carry some other stuff like our internet traffic or data itself, is setup to be like money while also selfcontaining a ledger of all transactions. This for bitcoin is called the blockchain where everything is listed. It is only pseudo-anonymous not truely private, and this has led to bad outcome for some of the lucky early adoptors, who nievely bragged about their source of "wealth". People have been kidnapped and forced to give up control of their loot. So as usual the ones with sufficient resources to hold these modern chests of gold to have armed security often corporations are becoming dominant or intermediatories sort of like brokerage houses, which have much less consumer protections.

So it is a glorified ponzi scheme wrapped inside of some neat novel ideas. A point of failure is that any cartel who's total holdings break over 50% can wreck the system. Bitcoin is basically montizing energy usage, along capital invested in computational capacity, so it is a drag on our environment, as long as we mostly make energy using fossil fuels.

that was worth $35,000 would you take the payment in that phony shit or would you demand a certified check from a bank before handing over the title?

Just sayin'

As of right now, there willl ALWAYS be a loser on one side of any transaction. The dollar loses value, but it changes very very slowly
Imagine buying anything for one BTC just 10 days ago.
YOU'D be the loser.
No one in their right mind would spend BTC to buy anything right now
I say this as a hold of BTC and a few other cryptos but I see them as trading items, not currency.

Oh, and I was told by a friend to "just put $1000 in it & see where it goes. You can afford that". Back when the price was around 40.00. But I couldn't grasp WTF a "crypto wallet" was so I passed.

lucky enough to get their em..."digital wallet" back where it was. Instead they'll lose all.

Doubtful.......

Basically it means your bitcoins can’t be forged by someone else. The expensive math leads to only your coin being legit.

As a currency, bitcoin is a joke — it's just an online gambling game played by speculators. If your shells might lose 10% of their value overnight because of a tweet, you'd probably rather not to take shells in trade. There is one, and only one, reason to buy bitcoins: the belief that a "greater fool" will pay more for them than you did, using the same reasoning.

People are using it as a currency right now. It’s being adopted. It happens to be based on math which is a new one for most people to wrap their heads around.

Bitcoin will never have wide acceptance as a viable currency BECAUSE it will never be stable — it's just a speculation game for people hoping to get rich the easy way. When anyone takes dollars in trade, they can be confident that the value won't change before they can trade them for something else. That will NEVER be the case with bitcoin.

Over the very short-term, it appears less stable than the dollar, for example. But over the longer term, it not only has similar stability, but it retains its value, unlike the dollar, which is in a constant state of devaluation. And the rate of devaluation is very unstable, from 1 to 12% per year annualized. It only appears stable because of using a short time frame and because that is the denomination in which you are used to valuing everything.

Gold remains gold, if anything it's use in electronics has increased it's worth. There is nothing that says this trust cannot evaporate, especially as it is just math. Beanie Babies, Tui[p and other things at least had a physical existence that said that the item in question was that actual item.

The intrinsic value of gold is maybe 10% of its market value because it is used as a store of wealth. But gold is very hard to use in trade because it is heavy and often heavily regulated. 90% of its value is just because people trust someone eventually will want to buy it.

BTC's advantage is it has no third party you must rely upon or get permission from to own or trade. With gold, I have to meet you in person or use a trusted intermediary. BTC does away with that. I can trade it with anyone in the world without anyone's permission or assistance to do so.

But we are still a long way from that. And we already have quantum resistant cryptography developed to update cryptocurrencies.

someone no one can even prove existed, someone no one an find NOW, someone who is also the largest holder of the asset, who hasnt accessed the asset.
You dont find that odd at all?
Why would we need to wait on quantum computing? Anything man invented man can crack. And if it IS cracked, all of our BTC assets are at risk of either being stolen or devalued by adding more to the system. 21 million now, 21 billion tomorrow!

WHY does it have any value? It’s not a physical object you can hold in your hand, like gold or diamonds. It’s not backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. It seems like a game to me.

I wish more DU members would come around. When you are ruled by tyrants, BTC provides freedom. In this day and age, Democrats should be embracing bitcoin!

That's how you'll get rich, right?

I hold a very modest amount of BTC relative to other investments. It could triple in value and it would not have a material impact on me personally.

The real value of BTC is it protects you from inflation and from bad actors in government playing games with the dollar (like is happening right now). It is not governed by any government, which has value in itself, especially if you find yourself living under a fascist regime.

And it would likely destroy the world banking system
The US wouldnt have sanctions as a tool to reign in illegal activities by foreigners.
You'd never be able to catch or punish companies doing illegal business
Etc Etc

They are incorporating crypto into their normal processes. Even SWIFT is talking about replacing its antiquted system with a blockchain based tool.

Russia and China don't need crypto. They have a vast financial network available to them that is not controlled by the west. And our recent attempts to isolate Russia has incentivized them to bulk up those networks.

Each bitcoin is worth NOTHING until hard working Americans are convinced that they need to trade their dollars to buy it.
If nobody buys the bitcoins, they continue to be worth NOTHING.

Weirdly, now we can add math problems to this list. Even gold is useless- by itself it’s just a piece of metal, albeit a sweet soft yellow colored one with excellent conductivity and corrosion resistance.

I mean, come on.

Hint, never.

It makes for a long lasting coin though. You might make a 10,000 dollar coin out of a bit of gold, just to make it look good and last. The value of a token is pretty much independent from its material value.

It's a scam. Always has been

Now we're overrun with made up millionaire bros with made up "coins" who want to live in their own made up world's from our very real resources.

time, and eventually the amount of money that speculators have available to be spread over the ever-expanding universe of cryptocurrencies will reach a point where their prices can no longer be supported.

This is also not Important News as required by LBN. Assets of all kinds frequently hit new all time highs (2 or 3 of the 3 major stock market indexes, for example, have been hitting all time highs once or twice a week lately. Gold's last ATH was Oct 1, median existing home prices in June). That's what happens when there is inflation. This is humdrum. LBN is not the place to tick tock increasing asset prices.

"Rare doesn't automatically mean valuable."

LOSE everything, and it will NOT be a billionaire!!

As assets go up, the US Dollar is losing value (purchasing power). Stock can be carried upward by these trends in a kind of reflation of assets on the books and operations too.

We are so screwed.

can pay taxes with bitcoin, it's a scam.

Colorado and Utah already allow it. It is converted immediately upon payment, but they allow it and make it pretty easy.

It is sold at market to a willing buyer, like all other tradeable financial instruments.

Bond market holding fairly steady at the same time. Prices of consumer goods are still outrageous. I think they've now got enough of the little guys money in their hands that they're just playing games with each other. A 2-3% move in any of these markets can make someone with deep pockets millions or even billions in a day where as, IMO, long haulers like most were taught are in a bubble that could break them. A lot of people forget the tech bubble breaking in the late 90's. That was one of the first investment disasters that happened with peoples 401k money tied up. I know friend's parents who went broke overnight. Lost so much in their employer 401k's they lost them. I think we're in a similar situation. The company's that survived that bubble are now over extending markets. The whole economy seems weighted on too few cooperation's IMO. It's a teeter totter that is artificially defying gravity and all your pocket change is flowing up to a kid with a chest that weighs a ton, up in the air on the other end. Its going to break at some point. It's not going to take much to wipe the average Joe off the map financially and eventually turn all workers into glorified indentured servants where they own nothing and rent everything from the few Where not far away from that now..
Just MHO

Printed out of existence. Because of that interest rates are up, asset prices are up and stocks are up as everyone chases yield.

The only reason the bond market has stayed relatively stable is because of a two part combo - compared to the rest of the world, we are a safe haven. And we are starting to purchase our own bonds.

You are absolutely right though, this can't keep up forever. Something is going to break, and break big.

And if you were working you'd have no ability to TELL your brokerage to sell unless you wanted to create a taxable event. Everything was /12 price for months. All you had to do was wait it out
And if you were near retirement age, you shouldn't have been 100% in the market anyway.
And how could you go broke overnight? The crash wasnt overnight; it was months long before reversing.

Back then peoples pensions were increasingly being run by private investment firms. When that bubble burst many people who may have had normal pensions say through unions had been moved into the IRA/401k world, or should I say forced to. Yes many peoples "pensions" were so heavily weighted in sketchy tech stocks they got wiped out. You assume that every one has complete control over their retirement IRA's/401k's. Most people who are lucky enough to have a job that provides them with one must "conform" to the managing companies investment practices in order to get the matching investment their company may offer. If one chooses not to tow the line or live in one of the boxes the management company offers they loose the matching funds, which is a big deal in most cases. I went through that several times. In the late 90's people were not really educated (the number of IRA/401k seminars in the 90's was insane) and the laws were extremely loose on how these new "pension" systems operated and very little was regulated on how they invested that money. If you were 45 or 50 years old when the tech bubble burst and the company managing your pension was weighted heavy into the tech sector, yeah, you could lose your entire retirement. That wasn't even close to being able to retire back then. I know people who worked for a large unionized company whose pensions were moved into 401ks in such a situation and yes, they lost everything to the point their accounts were closed or hammered hard enough it took 10 or 15 years to scrape what they had worked so for back. Many lost over 100k dollars and never got it back, 25 years worth of retirement savings. It did happen. '07/08 was different.
Just my opinion but I still say this economy isnt right, at least in the economic basics I was taught in school. I'm no economist, respectfully

or a money laundering tool.

trump is about to make these boys rich when the treasury buys these hot potatoes from them.

as soon as the taxpayers own these things we will find out their real value.

i look at it the same way i look at gold. a just in case investment.
will it implode and be worthless? I dont discount the possibility. but better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it.

(it is less than 1% of my entire portfolio while i also have 5% in gold)

It's a classic "pump and dump" scheme.