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Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

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Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#181

Post by nazgulnarsil »

hnsmurf wrote: post #125
stevenj wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: 1 Perhaps. But if you know what you're doing, wide diversification may not be wise. "How many insights do you need? Well, I'd argue: that you don't need many in a lifetime. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway and all of its accumulated billions, the top ten insights account for most of it. And that's with a very brilliant man—Warren's a lot more able than I am and very disciplined—devoting his lifetime to it. I don…

The Berkshire Hathaway quote illustrates the diversity point here. Berkshire made a lot more than 10 investments, just those 10 returned most of the money. If they knew in advance what those 10 would be they would have only made those 10 investments, but they didn't so they diversified.

this. hindsight bias and the need to create a narrative about chaotic outcomes drives much economic discussion.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#182

Post by nazgulnarsil »

safeaim wrote: post #144
Duff wrote: post #49

"They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the h…

Where's that quote from?

what else? The Road Warrior.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#183

Post by Tichy »

hugh3 wrote: post #167
Tichy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is just a tool, and BitCoin is a particular variant of that tool. It has unique properties that can be used for lots of things. Therefore I wouldn't say that they are worthless.

It has unique properties that can be used for lots of things Well, no, it doesn't have any unique properties. For instance, as I've said before, I'm running an alternative currency called "bitcoin prime" which has these two properties: 1. Every string of bits that is a bitcoin is also a bitcoin prime, and 2. Every bitcoin prime extant as of April 1, 2011 belongs to me (all subsequently mined bitcoins prime belong to…

You can also arbitrarily launch a new search engine at any time, but that doesn't mean that you will become the next Google. Likewise launching a new social network won't automatically make you the next Facebook. BitCoin already has a strong network of nodes securing the transactions behind it.

Your algorithm only piggybacks on BitCoin, you wouldn't be able to run your scheme without the existing BitCoin infrastructure. Also, the existance of bitcoin prime wouldn't enable you to send bitcoins, so bitcoins would still be unique.

In fact I would like to see you run your scheme. How would you transfer 1000 bitcoin prime to somebody else? Since you don't have the private keys of the real owners of the bitcoins, I don't think you could do it.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#184

Post by Duff »

safeaim wrote: post #144
Duff wrote: post #49

"They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the h…

Where's that quote from?

Its a Mad Max quote adopted by the Fuckedcompany.com BBS.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#186

Post by netcan »

maxwell wrote: post #112
netcan wrote: post #100

Interesting side effect of these bitcoin discussions is the back & forward of "this is a scam" --> "This is insane social engineering hack" --> "This is no different from any other money" : Makes you think about what money is. We're so used to it that it seems trivial but if someone explained to you about their idea for this new thing called money you would probably think it was stupid, pointless and a way of scammin…

MyBitcoin and Mt. Gox are OK, but are only for exchange. As far as I know, there isn't a web app for trading and mining yet. With browsers moving toward supporting hardware acceleration, it won't be long. The desktop client is pretty unfriendly to normal people; the whole scene reminds me of BitTorrent a few years back.

I don't want to mine. I want to buy $100 of bitcoin, without having to do much more than put $100 in paypal and forget about it.

Just an incentive to learn a bit more about it.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#187

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #10
luigi wrote: post #3

This violates two simple, and obvious, tenets of investing: 1. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. 2. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

They are only heuristics, not iron law of investment. Even so, don't put all your eggs in one basket pretty much apply to all situations.

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#188

Post by [deleted] »

hugh3 wrote: post #111
knowtheory wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pets.com stock doesn't count? ;)

I know you're being facetious, but just to clarify it for everybody: no, stock in a company never counts, because pets.com was an actual company with actual assets. For instance, they owned that sock puppet. Bitcoins have literally zero value.

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#189

Post by scotty79 »

eropple wrote: post #61
scotty79 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take away the interesting technical aspects BitCoin consists only of technical aspects. The rest is just noise that people do around them.

All human-created phenomena are social phenomena. "It's just tech" is said only by those who fundamentally don't understand this or want you to ignore those social aspects for their own gains. Contrary to what lots of the Bitcoin aficionados might like people to think, the social aspects of it are the only part that really matters outside of a crypto mailing list. And they're also the reasons it's insane to expect pe…

Bitcoin is as much social phenomena as neodymium magnets.

Lots of people buy bitcoins but thats just consequence of the fact that bitcoins are excelent at being scarce and seem to be excelent at staying scarce and at some other things.

Re: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin

#190

Post by gulbrandr »

_cbsz wrote: post #137
dspeyer wrote: post #135

He seems very impressed with the privacy: "In fact, nobody knows that he got it except me and him", "nobody can ... look at your account balance". But every transaction is public. Is there anything stopping the NSA (or Amazon, or me) from subscribing and adding up his current balance? Sure, it'll be linked to his bitcoin address, not his name, but that can't be all that hard to map, can it?

You create a new bitcoin address for every transaction. Some money goes to the actual recipient, and the "change" goes back to your new address. In addition, you can attempt to "launder" bitcoins by executing bogus transactions from yourself to yourself. Posting a static bitcoin address on your website and saying "send money here" is not considered best practice.

> "Posting a static bitcoin address on your website and saying "send money here" is not considered best practice."

Can you explain why?

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