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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

#361

Post by amscanne »

charlesdm wrote: post #347
frakr wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide proof of one pension fund that has bought in to crypto?

Maybe not yet as of today, but they're coming. I have a friend (wealthy family with a substantial family office) who bought into crypto at the beginning of last year. His dad runs quite a large traditional investment fund and knows of people in his network working at pension funds that are looking at putting money into Bitcoin / Ethereum and others. The family has done private equity deals together with some of these…

Wow, pension funds should not be doing currency speculation. That's bad.

The problem with crypto-_currency_ is that it's not a productive asset. A share of a business pays dividends over time and thus has intrinsic value (and _some_ speculative value), while a currency does not. A currency transaction is a zero-sum game, which is good because it minimizes friction.

Buying cryptocurrency with the expectation of increases isn't investment, it's _speculation_.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#362

Post by davidgh »

Watching this whole thing really has me scratching my head. Honestly - the value of BTC in a decade is anyone’s guess.

For me, I have a modest holding (in terms of its USD value today as compared to my other investments). After much wrestling, I’ve decided to just let it sit and be done with it. If it crashes back to pennies, oh well. If it goes to the moon, I’m glad I had a piece of the action.

As much fun as it seems, I’ve made the deliberate decision to not try to game / day trade it. It’s been possible to try to make money like that in Vegas for many years and that’s never been that interesting to me, either.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#363

Post by slyfocks »

starlust2 wrote: post #266
benmorris wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. I'm confident a crypto coin crash is coming to eclipse any we've had before. The combination of volume, transactions/second limits, and weak exchange infrastructure; when people want to get out things are going to get ugly.

Also agree. It seems many people are convinced that others will just keep holding forever. Eventually there's less money flowing in and people will realize they aren't getting rich. When people aren't making more money they will start selling. Worse, the people buying in now aren't true believers. They are "investing" because they think it is easy money. These folks represent a larger percentage of the market cap and…

The cult-like “hodl” culture in the Bitcoin community exacerbating the already limited supply of Bitcoins (if it were a stock, it would be a “low-float” stock, which results in increased vol) has served as the perfect breeding ground for a bubble.

As Bitcoin becomes extremely mainstream, those who hodl Bitcoin with religious fervor are increasingly becoming a smaller minority. Eventually it’ll reach critical mass and there will be enough disloyal Bitcoin ownership to cause a panic at the first significant sign of selling.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#364

Post by tomkarlo »

nicky0 wrote: post #325
joe_the_user wrote: post #285

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. Plenty of things that were eventually successful products went into extreme bubble and correct mode before they were successful. Blockchains may or may not be part of the finance of the future. But that doesn't mean that 99% of the price of a given blockchain prod…

There is no evidence that bitcoin is or isn't in a bubble. It is a conjecture either way.

There's lots of evidence it's overvalued (e.g. price vs. utility), and some evidence as well that it's undervalued (most the argument for future value as more people use it). It's not a matter of lack of evidence, it's an issue of which evidence you choose to give more credence.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#365

Post by andr3w321 »

jordanpg wrote: post #359
exelius wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strayed so far from fundamentals that it's bound to crash. I really hope it's not that big when it does...

It's not obvious to me that "fundamentals" apply here. This is literally unprecedented and cryptocurrency economies are uncharted territory.

The fundamentals are at the current price of $17,000/btc bitcoin mining costs are about $14.5B annually(144 blocks of 12.5 btc/block plus ~3.8 btc/block in fees) in electricity expenses due to paying off miners which is about on par with the 8th largest company in the world Facebook. Bitcoin's revenue/year is however much money people feel like FOMOing in + however much tether money bitfinex feels like printing which right now is more than the mining costs. Once this figure changes, the price will decline. For reference, Facebook has ~$24B in revenue/year.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#366

Post by seibelj »

frakr wrote: post #343
charlesdm wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is a bubble, that doesn't mean it can't go another 20x from here, depending which crypto you put your money in. There's cheap liquidity (ho ho ho said the FED and the ECB), there are institutions (pension funds) that are starting to buy in, and in comparison, the dot-com bubble (which was mainly a US led bubble, not global) went to $5.7tn to $1.7tn. Gold is worth $8tn globally. Why couldn't Bitcoin get to…

Can you provide proof of one pension fund that has bought in to crypto?

I have heard many anecdotes about finance money coming in. We are witnessing it.

Also, rich Saudis are scared shitless about losing their wealth when political winds change. They put their money into crypto and it's much, much harder to take it from them, provided they own the private key. This is the best mechanism of wealth storage yet created, provided the value holds, which as more around the globe believe in, it becomes more likely. Bitcoin could be digital gold, but we shall see.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#367

Post by DINKDINK »

joe_the_user wrote: post #270
zMiller wrote: post #150

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…

>The average "unbanked" person in a third world nation couldn't afford a $20 transaction fee for their ordinary transactions.

Someone in a country, who has the equivalent of $800 is life savings, is experiencing hyperinflation (Venezuela let's say). Are you telling me that they're not willing to pay 2.5% (20/800) of their savings to save 97.5% of it? Why do you think someone would be willing to let hyperinflation destroy 100% of their life savings when there's an alternative?

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#368

Post by stordoff »

zMiller wrote: post #150

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…

> 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.

Fees that are absorbed by the merchant, so not an entirely fair comparison. Still, I agree that the fees make the use cases for cryptocurrenies very limited personally. Right now, I can pay a fee to a third-party (CC fees in the form of slightly higher priced goods) BUT that third-party takes on a significant part of the liability (e.g. for goods not provided), and I can transfer money to a trusted (or untrusted providing I am OK with the risk) party in the same country for ZERO fees via my bank. For those use cases, using most cryptocurrenies would be strictly worse (I either give up the fraud protection or I am paying an unnecessary fee).

The only case where it makes sense is for international transfers, which typically do have higher bank fees, but personally they are so rare (I've used it once in the past decade) that they are barely worth considering for my personal use cases.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#370

Post by passwordreset »

geofft wrote: post #317
dwild wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"bubble": stocks have been said to be in "bubbles". If a person claims "M-Pesa is [in] a bubble" he would be talking about the market cap of the company, in the same way that "Bitcoin is [in] a bubble" speaks to the market cap of Bitcoin on some exchanges. Quite meaningful, actually.

"environment": Proof of work systems ensure that the ledger is secure and worthy of trust. Proof of Authority systems require trust, where the ledger is secure "because we say so." Isn't this the major reason why people are fleeing from legal tender? People can't trust the issuers, the processors, or the banks because they're colluding with politicians who provide bailouts using taxpayer dollars?

"ICO scam": absolutely makes sense in a centralized system. Are you actually claiming that people don't create scam companies with centralized currencies? Because why? Even legitimate companies can be slandered for the same reasons that people call ICOs "scams". The Franklin Mint, for example, produces coins which are sold on late-night infomercials that have little-to-no intrinsic value, but people buy for speculative reasons. Are they a scam? The reasoning is identical.

"slow/expensive transactions": One of Bitcoins main value propositions is aiding in international transfers. The centralized systems were too slow and expensive, so a better alternative was developed. Saying that speed and expense aren't complaints that people have made about existing centralized systems is simply wrong.

And so on and so forth.

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