I saw where the Winklevoss twins who were involved with Zuckerberg at Harvard bought $11 million worth a while back and are now billionaires. On paper.

What about Litecoin and Ethereum? How are those different and why aren’t they blowing up like Bitcoin?

 

Those are both solid crypto's as well, I really feel like Litecoin has a lot of potential and expect it to break out in 2018. At the moment both are struggling a bit because everyone is putting money into BTC. Even people that also invest in Ether and LTC are dumping money into BTC rather than those two. If you look at this year's history, both LTC and Ether have actually blown up with Ether gaining 5,000% and LTC gaining 2,500% on the year so they're really not that much different than BTC in terms of growth percentages.

So, if one would exchange their Bitcoins for USD, would you have to pay taxes on that money? Id assume so. Is anyone afraid of the bottom falling out and losing everything, or do you believe it'll be a a gradual decline (if there would be) to give you enough of a warning? What if enough people try to sell off their Bitcoins at the same time? Does that have any effect on the worth? This whole thing is very intriguing.

 

It isn't taxed when converted to USD, but it would be in your best interest to report it on your tax return. The bottom falling out is always a possibility, but it would still be hard to not come out ahead as long as you keep adjusting your stop/losses as the market grows. I pulled my initial investment out a while back so theoretically I can't lose any money, however I could lose a lot of profits. Yes, anytime there are a lot of people selling off all at once it's going to drop the overall value, which is how any market works.

Reminds me of the scene in Blow where the guy is testing the coke's burning temp.

 

It appears that today the burning point was $19.5k as there was a major correction as BTC approached 20k. It's starting to stabilize around 16k though which is still a 23% gain over this time yesterday.

I understand the financial aspect of Bitcoin. I am clueless on the mining aspect of it. Can anyone elaborate on that process?

I understand the financial aspect of Bitcoin. I am clueless on the mining aspect of it. Can anyone elaborate on that process?

 

Mining is simply completing/documenting transactions on the blockchain via a computer and a mining app or pool. Each transaction has a fee associated with it, which eventually results in a payout in whatever cryptocurrency you are mining. The only way to really make any money at it though it to buy a dedicated rig that is set up to mine coins only. The other issue with it is the amount of electricity you're going to consume with running said machine at max power 24/7.

Those two pizza's bought back in 2010 for 10k in bitcoin are now worth nearly 200 million dollars, hence the reason it won't become a currency anytime soon. Insane, it was domino's pizza at that.

Your explanation of mining made me even more confused. It’s mined digitally? What’s the story behind the pizza?

Your explanation of mining made me even more confused. It’s mined digitally? What’s the story behind the pizza?

 

Yes it's mined digitally. BTC as well as other crypto's are all digital forms of currency, something has to give them their worth which is the blockchain. Mine the blockchain and you earn digital currency, or you can just convert USD to it and buy it that way.

 

The pizza was actually two pizza's that were bought in 2010 for 10k in bitcoing. Totday, those two pizza's would be worth nearly 200 million dollars in relevance with the amount of bitcoing used to buy them. That goes back to why people at the moment are not using BTC to purchase things. It needs to settle in before it's realistic to actually purchase stuff with it.

This is from a awhile ago when it was only around $600-700 but I thought it did a good job of explaining how to get bitcoin (but I would use coinbase now), what it is, what mining is and how it works

 

 

I held off buying anything until it was around 10,000. Kicking myself for not getting into it when I first started learning about it. I have also got into Ethereum and Litecoin through the coinbase app.

Mining is simply completing/documenting transactions on the blockchain via a computer and a mining app or pool. Each transaction has a fee associated with it, which eventually results in a payout in whatever cryptocurrency you are mining. The only way to really make any money at it though it to buy a dedicated rig that is set up to mine coins only. The other issue with it is the amount of electricity you're going to consume with running said machine at max power 24/7.

 

Do you just buy a machine and hit the ‘go’ button or does someone have to work the machine 24/7?

Bitcoin futures trading is going to come online this weekend. Is that something to be concerned about?

I saw where the Winklevoss twins who were involved with Zuckerberg at Harvard bought $11 million worth a while back and are now billionaires. On paper.

 

They are exactly like Josh Pastner.

This is an interesting read:

 

Bitcoin is ruining the planet - Business Insider

 

If you're like me, you've probably been ignoring the bitcoin phenomenon for years — because it seemed too complex, far-fetched, or maybe even too libertarian. But if you have any interest in a future where the world moves beyond fossil fuels, you and I should both start paying attention now.

 

Last week, the value of a single bitcoin broke the $10,000 barrier for the first time. Over the weekend, the price nearly hit $12,000. At the beginning of this year, it was less than $1,000.

 

If you had bought $100 in bitcoin back in 2011, your investment would be worth nearly $4 million today. All over the internet there are stories of people who treated their friends to lunch a few years ago and, as a novelty, paid with bitcoin. Those same people are now realizing that if they'd just paid in cash and held onto their digital currency, they'd now have enough money to buy a house.

 

That sort of precipitous rise is stunning, of course, but bitcoin wasn't intended to be an investment instrument. Its creators envisioned it as a replacement for money itself — a decentralized, secure, anonymous method for transferring value between people.

 

But what they might not have accounted for is how much of an energy suck the computer network behind bitcoin could one day become.

Bitcoin futures trading is going to come online this weekend. Is that something to be concerned about?

 

Only for those trading them.