Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled • Hacker News Board

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#481

Post by vkou » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:23 AM UTC

DINKDINK wrote: post #367

joe_the_user wrote: post #270

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…

>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 des…

If it were that simple to deal with hyperinflation, why won't they just buy USD?

Because the government will forbid it? They can forbid the purchase of BTC, or the exchange of it for goods, too.

Oh, in-person off-the-books transactions will solve the problem? Well, you don't need BTC for that, you can do in-person transactions of bolivars for USD, too.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#482

Post by beebmam » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:36 AM UTC

jrm2k6 wrote: post #201

beebmam wrote: post #183

Coinbase is a joke of a service. They're telling me it will take 8 days to buy a Litecoin. Is this for real?

Use your credit card. Transferring funds between your bank account and Coinbase takes forever.

I just used my credit card about 9 hours ago. I've had the money taken out of my credit card, but I've yet to see the coins appear in my wallet for sending or selling. It shows in coinbase that the transaction was "Completed", but I have nothing so far.

How long does the credit card process take?

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#483

Post by geofft » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

diab0lic wrote: post #440

geofft wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but merchants can generally get fees that are only slightly higher than what you get in cash back. Square charges a 2.75% fee (and some of that goes to Square, presumably), and there are 2% cash back cards with no annual fee easily available (I use the Citi Double Cash one). So even if your store is raising prices by 2.75%, you're effective price only goes up by about .7%. If you want to get upset, get upset at…

So what you're saying is I'm getting 0% cash back and paying .7% more for everything. Still doesn't sound like a win to me, and it still doesn't matter what card you get because no card is giving you more back than they're making off your use of it. That's not how money works.

You're paying 0.7% primarily for the ability to pay, and also for the ability to pay on credit, to get a chargeback if needed, to cover fraudulent use of your physical payment device including loss, etc.

This is a) a good deal on its own and b) a much better deal than Bitcoin, which provides only the first of those things, and only reaches 0.7% if your transaction is over about 3000 USD.

If you think this is a bad deal, I'm curious what you think is a better deal and who's offering it.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#484

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #461

exelius wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy enough to rob someone for this amount of money too. As Eric Schmidt said (in the context of a hostile government, but it works here too): no passcode in the world is going to protect you from a man holding a gun to your head and demanding said passcode.

Split your loot into 100 pieces and convert to BC one by one. So you get robbed five time out of a hundred, no big deal. Eventually find a reliable trader and take your business to him. You don’t have to make it totally safe, just safer compared to other methods of evading control.

Can you lie convincingly enough to someone with a gun to your head (or the head of someone you care about) who demands the other 99 pieces as well?

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#485

Post by mortehu » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:54 AM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #466

exelius wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of novice speculators are using Coinbase. They at least attempt to maintain the appearance of compliance; but I suspect a large market run would wipe them out of USD fairly quickly. The fact that “experienced” Bitcoin speculators are getting nervous is a sign the bubble is about to pop. Tether volumes are hockey-sticking up as a result. There has been enough technical analysis to show that USDT volu…

I’d be interested in seeing evidence that USDT “drives” the USD-BTC exchange rate. I do think it’s a good indicator of sentiment about the exchange rate. Typically it’s within $0.02 of its supposed $1.00 value, but today it reached at least $1.08 and is still at $1.06. That means people are willing to pay a 6% premium just to be able to cash out of BTC today.

Maybe USDT is used in cross exchange arbitrage, where USD would be a lot slower and thus not worth as much.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#486

Post by petre » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 5:58 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #375

patmcc wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>They put their money into crypto and it's much, much harder to take it from them, provided they own the private key. That's not exactly trivial - how do you store a private key in such a way that it's safe, accessible to you and only you, cannot be destroyed by your enemies, and can be passed on to your heirs upon your death?

It's comparatively safer than holding millions in government-controlled banks, property which can be seized with the stroke of a pen, physical wealth like gold which is tough to store and move, and has value anywhere in the world (not many people in Europe care about your franchise holdings in Riyadh). In contrast, if you buy bitcoins, when you flee the country you can bring your wealth with a memorized 24-word code…

They will accept it now. Not when everyone wants to sell. But yes, instead of having the state take it away, it's better to store some value in BTC.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#487

Post by freeloop3 » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 6:03 AM UTC

swyx wrote: post #477

freeloop3 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made $3 million :)

holy shit. just on litecoin?

No, I bought in 2013 for $10k at about $7 per BTC. I had about a $300k net worth at the time, so it seemed like a good play. Periodically sold and distributed into several alt coins over the years (eth, dash, monero, bitshares, etc.).

I could have made a lot more if I didn't sell so much, but at the time a 10x increase seemed like a one in a lifetime event. When it increased to $80 per btc, I sold 80% of my investment.

When it hit $1000, I felt bad about selling so much during the last run up, that I didn't sell at all. I took the crash back to $200 in stride. I was convinced that crypto was following a pattern of boom and crash, and then boom again and that in the coming years there would a final "big wave" as the last market (finance and retail) opened up to it. It appears that that is what happened. I've already sold a lot, avoided taxes by making a CRUT (a tax shelter) but still have about 50%. I plan to sell some more in January, because I think this wave is going to peak rather slowly (because, let's face it, finance and retail are dumb. It will take finance a long time to shift direction, and public perception is going to change slowly, IMO. For example, the housing bubble went on for a year after it seemed obviously to have reached its peak.). Also it works to my advantage considering taxes to wait.

My general advice now is if you see an investment you are unsure of but could pay off big time, you should invest a little at least. A basket of risky investments can be a huge windfall even if not all pay out.

Also, when you think a risky investment has run its course and is going to crash, it's usually a good idea to not sell all of it and leave maybe 10% just in case.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#488

Post by ericsoderstrom » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 6:07 AM UTC

Mtinie wrote: post #469

ericsoderstrom wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people who bought pets.com or webvan stock, or any number of countless stocks which soon became worthless?

That’s a risk on any day of any calendar year. We can find points and counterpoints to prove any scenario.

That was my point... OP had cherry picked the examples of microsoft and amazon to support the claim that buying and holding cryptocurrency through a bubble is a smart investment, which is of course absurd.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#489

Post by graedus » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 6:08 AM UTC

JonnyNova wrote: post #451

panarky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...A bubble, Galbraith observed ... Counterpoint: Galbraith confidently called the US stock market a "classic bubble" in April, 1999. At that time, the Dow Jones was at 10,494. Today it's at 24,504. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, it now looks like Galbraith was wrong. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/apr/18/observerbus... > Assets need to be productive in order to be true investments Counterpoi…

> > ...A bubble, Galbraith observed ... > Counterpoint: Galbraith confidently called the US stock market a "classic bubble" in April, 1999. At that time, the Dow Jones was at 10,494. Today it's at 24,504. No! Current day valuation versus 1999 valuation has nothing to do with each other. In 1999 the market was over valued and the bubble soon popped. > > Assets need to be productive in order to be true investments > Co…

> The key difference between an asset and investment is that investments produce returns.

Right, but an asset can go up in price and stay there if demand increases and/or the currency the price is denominated in is losing value over time. Especially true if supply is limited.

I don't expect BTC to stay at $17000 - it could go down or up, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it's currently in a bubble that pops. It might then go to near-$0, or it might proceed to regain those levels and continue even higher over time, depending on how demand evolves against the ultimately fixed supply. I remember $500 for 1 BTC seemed insanely high at the time. $675 must have seemed crazy for gold in 2006, but I don't expect it to return there again despite the intervening ups and downs.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#490

Post by petre » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 6:11 AM UTC

elif wrote: post #353

garybro wrote: post #303

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 woke up this morning and was astonished to see that LTC was about $380. This was in the course of about 5 hours. Had I not sold it last night, I would have made almost $40k. I can relate. If I'd done the exact paired trades i did this month (only between btc, bch, eth, and usd), only at different times than i did, i would have doubled my money yet another time, for a life-changing sum. Instead I've been sleeping w…

Astonished, why? Capital is fleeing BTC to LTC probably because of BTC holders getting nervous about high volatility and exchanges going down or temporarily suspending transactions. Which in turn will also screw LTC. This article is a clear indicator about this.