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Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

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Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who call Bitcoin a 'Ponzi scheme' , type of plant or apply whatever reduction on a very complex and innovative product are just mind boggling to me. You are mind-boggled because you have created a strawman; a caricature of what the "bitcoin non-believer" looks like. Your mind would be less boggled if you accepted that there are valid points on both sides in this case. People who question bitcoin's current va…

You are absolutely right. Again my comment was directed at : > People who call Bitcoin a 'Ponzi scheme' , type of plant or apply whatever reduction on a very complex and innovative product. Not at the one's who are raising very valid red flags on valuation and how hot the market is becoming. In my personal opinion it is absolutely 'bubble' like behavior right now. And i believe we both echo the same sentiment.

> a very complex and innovative product.

The main point here is that there's absolutely nothing innovative about BTC anymore, if anything it's way behind. Which is why the valuation is so suspect; it's totally disconnected from the utility BTC provides compared to alts. Anything BTC does, alts do better, except for marketing.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#312

I've made about $110k profit this year in crypto on a $21k investment earlier this year, and I think this is all a giant bubble. I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving and a commercial with Ron Paul talking about Bitcoin came on, which coincided with around the time it went to $10k, and it hit me really hard that this isn't going to last forever (and probably will hurt sooner rather than later). I liquidated eve…

I guess this applies to non-crypto trading as well, but, how do you manage taxes on these transactions?

I know what I put in, and I know what my profit is, so I am going to report the net gain and pay the tax on that (ugh)

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#313

This thread's audience is obviously a 'developed nations' one. From our perspective yes, Crytpo's use case as currency make absolutely no sense (yet), we tap our Visa card to pay instantly with no fees and no fraud liability, hard to beat. As a store of value however there is a very strong use case in the western world. Of the top my head, it is estimated that 10% of our GDP is in off shore havens, think about that i…

The average "unbanked" person in a third world nation couldn't afford a $20 transaction fee for their ordinary transactions. But bitcoin certainly looks like a way for some portion of this group to protect their capital since it's not controlled by states want capital controls. Of course, there's a reason third world countries want capital controls - a lot of the people seeking to export capital are corrupt non-ownin…

Spot on.

Use as currency for Bitcoin (and other coin networks) is still in it's infancy and cannot scale the way it needs to should it want to replace fiat.

The important distinction I would draw though that stores of value have historically been cumbersome to transport and liquidate, Bitcoin solves that problem in a very good way.

I feel it's important to also address this 20$ bitcoin fee meme that seems to be going around. While based in truth it is not 100% accurate.

You have the capacity to set your own txn fee on the Bitcoin network. If you don't mind waiting a couple of blocks (1-3 hours) to get your transaction confirmed , then the fees fall down to single dollars and even lower. If you're selling a bulk commodity to a distributor in another market , you don't need ecommerce style confirmation times. Same goes for transferring large sums of wealth.

With that said, things like the lightning network will resolve alot of issues with Bitcoin scaling and in my (humble) opinion this is why LTC is pumping. (Atomic swap + Transfer over LTC )

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#314
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes obviously. But you earlier stated that "Already happened basically!" in reference to a crypto bailout. So again, how is "seek" equivalent to "ask" here?

Parent comment i replied to - "... hope cryto speculators won’t ask to be bailed out... " To which I replied that someone has in fact already asked for a bail-out. Title of Article - "Record ICO Tezos Founders Seek Bail-Out From Foundation" It's only a matter of time before someone in the cryprocurrency sphere asks for a bail-out for reason or another.

Gotcha, I thought you were saying that a bailout already happened. It's obvious to me now that you were saying someone has already asked for a bailout.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#315

I've made about $110k profit this year in crypto on a $21k investment earlier this year, and I think this is all a giant bubble. I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving and a commercial with Ron Paul talking about Bitcoin came on, which coincided with around the time it went to $10k, and it hit me really hard that this isn't going to last forever (and probably will hurt sooner rather than later). I liquidated eve…

Hey, good on you: always be happy about selling early and not sad over selling late.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My .02 BTC (now worth $351.44) is that cryptocurrency is here to stay. The runup might be a bubble, might not, doesn't really interest me that much. The long run for this technology feels very strong to me so I'm buying to hold. I think BTC and ETH are the lowest-risk coins right now. 99% of the coins are going to fade away, so that's where the real bubble is. Some random ICO pops up and within months their token mar…

While I agree that BTC and ETH are likely lowest risk long term, I'm not exactly throwing money at crypto for the low risk portion of my portfolio and don't mind doubling down on a more dangerous gamble since I've researched my holds pretty well, imo. Further, I'd argue that BTC and ETH are both extremely overbought at the moment, and reflect more of what a bubble is than many of the lowly alt coins that have real us…

"some of these smaller projects"

Which ones? There are hundreds of these things, and my personal view is that they're mostly worthless. I really don't think the hard part at this point is coming up with a cool use case for cryptocurrency, or even building the technology that works (though many of these alts have yet to even do that). The hard part is adoption, and my estimation is that almost all of them will fail at adoption. Time will tell, I guess.

I'd argue that BTC and ETH are both extremely overbought at the moment

You might be right, you might be wrong. It'll only be clear in hindsight. Which is why I don't time the market or trade. I just buy and hold for the long run. It's a small portion of my networth, weighted towards BTC and ETH, but I'm buying some other alts with 1-2% of my net worth (total).

In the long run, the cryptocurrency market will be worth $0 or trillions, so I'm not particularly worried about whether I got in when it was $10 billion or $500 billion or how it goes up and down in the meantime.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#317
post #268
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M-Pesa is a centralized service run by Vodafone, quite the opposite of blockchain. It only resembles blockchain in that it involves electronics and it's recent, but by that standard, we'd call credit cards or PayPal "the original Blockchain". And as far as I know, it's denominated in Kenyan shillings, not in its own currency (i.e., hype about M-Pesa does not result in something with Bitcoin's to-the-moon valuation re…

I think you misunderstood him. What he said is that others countries that doesn't have a solid electronic transaction system are actively trying new stuff. In that case, M-Pesa won that race but the fact that it was centralized isn't why it won, it won because it was needed. Now does Bitcoin is needed for another country? No idea, but I would have said the same for M-Pesa.

But he specifically used the word "blockchain." I'm making two claims: first, that blockchain-based systems (for most people's definitions of "blockchain" other than a meaningless buzzword) are worse for people in situations like that of the "African farmer" than centralized systems, and second, that the vast majority of Bitcoin detractors dislike it specifically because of things related (directly or indirectly) to it being a blockchain-based system.

For instance, "Bitcoin is a bubble" only makes sense if it's its own unit of currency. "M-Pesa is a bubble," "Square Cash is a bubble," etc. aren't meaningful statements to make; they just support transmission of the underlying currency. ("Kenyan shillings are a bubble" is a meaningful statement, but I've never heard anyone claim that you should use cryptocurrencies to insulate yourself from hyperdeflation of a fiat currency.)

"Bitcoin is environmentally dangerous" only matters if proof-of-work is relevant; in a centralized system, you don't have the problems that lead to you wanting to even consider proof-of-work.

"ICOs are a scam" doesn't make sense in a centralized system. "The transaction rate is too low" isn't a complaint anyone has about a centralized system (the usual complaint about the US markets is that the transaction rate is too high, and HFT should be throttled). And so on and so forth.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#318
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ridiculous in the sense that the whole phenomenon is absurd or relatively to what some people earn in a year, sure. But I only made about 2.5x my wager, which wasn't much (less than $10000, more than $1000). Also, as noted, much of a LTC gains could easily be eaten up by ETH losses. BTC is too expensive for my gambling taste.

To me, this kind of comment drives home the insanity of the crypto craze right now. Complaints of "only" making a 2.5x return. Or proposed strategies elsewhere in this thread of buying a coin, selling half "when" it doubles, not "if".

I wasn't complaining. The "only" was in response to suggesting I made "huge" amounts of profit. I didn't gamble that much, and so I didn't make that much even with the return. My profit was less than my paycheck. 2.5x is better than anything I've ever made in equities (in fairness 90% of my strategy there is selling covered calls on dividend paying stocks) and far and away my best gamble on a percentage return basis. I doubt I'll ever be as lucky as that again.

But I agree it does highlight how insane the crypto craze is.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average "unbanked" person in a third world nation couldn't afford a $20 transaction fee for their ordinary transactions. But bitcoin certainly looks like a way for some portion of this group to protect their capital since it's not controlled by states want capital controls. Of course, there's a reason third world countries want capital controls - a lot of the people seeking to export capital are corrupt non-ownin…

Spot on. Use as currency for Bitcoin (and other coin networks) is still in it's infancy and cannot scale the way it needs to should it want to replace fiat. The important distinction I would draw though that stores of value have historically been cumbersome to transport and liquidate, Bitcoin solves that problem in a very good way. I feel it's important to also address this 20$ bitcoin fee meme that seems to be going…

> You have the capacity to set your own txn fee on the Bitcoin network. If you don't mind waiting a couple of blocks (1-3 hours) to get your transaction confirmed , then the fees fall down to single dollars and even lower.

This is infeasible because of insane volatility that BTC is experiencing. You either pay through the nose for a fast confirmation, or you are overpaying, or underpaying your counterparty.

Not to mention that VISA tends to be able to handle a bit more then 3 transactions a second. For some reason, BCH's market cap has not surpassed BTC's crippled protocol... Perhaps it's because nobody is using Bitcoin to transact.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#320

I've made about $110k profit this year in crypto on a $21k investment earlier this year, and I think this is all a giant bubble. I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving and a commercial with Ron Paul talking about Bitcoin came on, which coincided with around the time it went to $10k, and it hit me really hard that this isn't going to last forever (and probably will hurt sooner rather than later). I liquidated eve…

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