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Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

forbes.com

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Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#41

Post by Jabanga »

nosuchthing wrote: post #32
jcslzr wrote: post #6

Math guy explains bitcoin: https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4

Math guy neglected to mention the ponzi scheme aspect of these cryptocoins, where the early adopters amass large quantities of coins for no reason other then running the software for a short duration and significantly lower cost of processing cycles, all by design. Rubes trading excessive amounts of fiat cash for digital tokens are baffling, and a testament to how deranged economics can get simply by assuming an asse…

There's nothing ponzi schemish about that. The cost of mining is proportional to competition for new coins. Not much different than any other resource extraction.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#42

Post by puranjay »

chrissnell wrote: post #23
puranjay wrote: post #10

I sold a domain back in 2011 where the buyer offered to pay via Bitcoin. It was a decent sized transaction. I don't remember the exact exchange rate but it would have likely been upwards of 1,000 BTC. I took cash instead. I still look back on that and think "what if?"

At least you sold it. I registered a bunch of great domains when I was a college freshman in 1993. They were free to register, you only had to submit a form via email. I had, amongst others: grateful.com eleet.com cjs.com snell.com When Network Solutions won the contract to administer them, they started charging $70/year/domain and I was a poor student and let almost all of them lapse. I lost all of those ones. The o…

I used to trade domains back when I was in college in 2007 (before the market crashed in 2008). It was still wildly lucrative. You could buy a domain for $10k one day and sell it for $30k two days later.

A lot of people had similar stories: they registered Cars.com or some other major domain back in the 90s, sold it for peanuts, and watched with dismay as it was eventually flipped for 7 figures 10 years later.

I know a guy who, on a whim, registered about 100 double-letter domains (AB.com, AC.com, etc.), then let them expire.

Each of those would be worth a minimum of $250k today

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#43

Post by vertex-four »

danmaz74 wrote: post #34
pmorici wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think you understand the scale we are talking about here if this becomes a world wide common digital currency. Your political dogma is getting in the way of you understanding what Bitcoin's real potential is.

Bitcoin will never become the "world wide common digital currency": it's deflationary in the long term, very volatile int he short term, and transactions are expensive and slow. Maybe some other cryptocurrency could, but not bitcoin. It could stay as a store of value though, like gold.

Lightning Network and thus cheap off-chain (but provably secure) transactions are probably "only" a couple of years away at this point.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#44

Post by owebmaster »

vertex-four wrote: post #43
danmaz74 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin will never become the "world wide common digital currency": it's deflationary in the long term, very volatile int he short term, and transactions are expensive and slow. Maybe some other cryptocurrency could, but not bitcoin. It could stay as a store of value though, like gold.

Lightning Network and thus cheap off-chain (but provably secure) transactions are probably "only" a couple of years away at this point.

But it may probably not be a solution or take a couple of decades, like the scalability of Elon Musk's projects.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#45

Post by aml183 »

nosuchthing wrote: post #32
jcslzr wrote: post #6

Math guy explains bitcoin: https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4

Math guy neglected to mention the ponzi scheme aspect of these cryptocoins, where the early adopters amass large quantities of coins for no reason other then running the software for a short duration and significantly lower cost of processing cycles, all by design. Rubes trading excessive amounts of fiat cash for digital tokens are baffling, and a testament to how deranged economics can get simply by assuming an asse…

Cryptocurrency is not a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme has an expectation that you'll be paid dividends or returns by the company you are investing in. Essentially, old investors are being paid by new investors. There is only one investment period for these tokens (eg. ICO).

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#46

Post by vertex-four »

owebmaster wrote: post #44
vertex-four wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning Network and thus cheap off-chain (but provably secure) transactions are probably "only" a couple of years away at this point.

But it may probably not be a solution or take a couple of decades, like the scalability of Elon Musk's projects.

I don't understand why you think Lightning Network wouldn't be a solution - the crypto side of it is very well-specced and works, and there's plenty of research papers describing various methods of finding a reasonably short path across routes between nodes. It solves specific problems Bitcoin users have today (it provides fast, cheap transactions, which Bitcoin currently doesn't), so it will gain quick adoption.

It's primarily held up on Bitcoin's variant on party politics, more than anything else - there's functional payment channel code working on Litecoin's main network and Bitcoin's testnet.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#47

Post by Grustaf »

rbudenebd wrote: post #30
Grustaf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that people who got rich through business are already well known, so it’s too late for them. This guy has the option to stay hidden, so he takes it.

People who make $25b are well known. People who make $25m in business are not.

Not as well known as Elon Musk obviously but with 25 m in the bank you're unlikely to be completely invisible like this guy. Someone is bound to know you exist.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#48

Post by pmorici »

fapjacks wrote: post #36
9to5isdead wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to get ready to buy when it does. :)

Yes, this reflects my position: I'm out of all cryptocurrencies except for a small bit to fuel a couple side projects. I'm waiting for the coming crash so I can buy.

Everyone says that but when the crash actually happens they always get cold feet because the prevailing view is that Bitcoin is dead and done and never going to recover so they lose their nerve and don't follow through. But best of luck.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#49

Post by pmorici »

vertex-four wrote: post #46
owebmaster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it may probably not be a solution or take a couple of decades, like the scalability of Elon Musk's projects.

I don't understand why you think Lightning Network wouldn't be a solution - the crypto side of it is very well-specced and works, and there's plenty of research papers describing various methods of finding a reasonably short path across routes between nodes. It solves specific problems Bitcoin users have today (it provides fast, cheap transactions, which Bitcoin currently doesn't), so it will gain quick adoption. It'…

For starters the people pushing lightning are religiously opposing any increase in the block size. For lightening to even be viable on a world wide scale the block size will need to be increased.

Re: Meet the Man Traveling the World on $25M of Bitcoin Profits

#50

Post by pmorici »

danmaz74 wrote: post #34
pmorici wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think you understand the scale we are talking about here if this becomes a world wide common digital currency. Your political dogma is getting in the way of you understanding what Bitcoin's real potential is.

Bitcoin will never become the "world wide common digital currency": it's deflationary in the long term, very volatile int he short term, and transactions are expensive and slow. Maybe some other cryptocurrency could, but not bitcoin. It could stay as a store of value though, like gold.

"it's deflationary in the long term"

Whether or not you think that matters is political dogma.

"very volatile int he short term"

Looking at the one year time scale BTC/USD is only about 2-3x as volatile as USD/EUR. Bitcoin volatility in general has been trending DOWN since it's inception as you would expect something to become more stable as the market matures and more people adopt it.

https://www.investing.com/tools/forex-volatility-calculator https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/volatility-index/

"transactions are expensive and slow"

By what standard? A typical transaction costs less than a dollar and takes about 10 minutes. Once the people holding the block size hostage are out of the way you can expect the cost to return to cents and the speed to be more reliable at 10 minutes or less.

Anyone who thinks Bitcoin can be a store of value like Gold w/o having utility as money is fooling themselves. You need to both.

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