Bitcoin - do you understand it

My biggest problem with bitcoin is that it's following the same path as the sub-prime mortgage investments. While it was just a few people playing with an interesting idea in private, there was no problem. Now we have banks and other major investors getting involved. That's a very bad problem just waiting to happen.

Who will get hurt? That would be the poor. just as with the financial disaster that was 2007. Why? Because the whole financial system will get whacked and when that happens, it's the people on the financial edge that lack the resources to go on.

The idea that it's been going OK for several years so it'll go on OK is given the lie by the sad history of Tulip Mania. That went OK from 1593 all the way to 1637, when the whole house of cards collapsed, taking the Dutch economy (then the equivalent to modern day Wall Street) with it. There are now plenty of apologists for the Tulip fiasco, most of whom (or so it seems) denied the dangers of the subprime mortgage speculation at the time.
 
Do you want to be a space farmer? (Anyone Chia (XCH) farming? )

I've installed the farmer on my downloader Pi that's not doing much. I created 8 plots (4 in parallel, twice) using my main machine. Saved the plots into my NAS spare space. Everything was just sat there unused and powered anyway, so pretty much zero investment. The only wear is on the drive used to generate the plots, looks like around 10TB writes per 4 plots. I used a spare 1TB SSD I got from work.

Probability to win was every 1 yr 10 mo with 8 plots (~820GB of storage), start of weekend. Now it's gone up to 2 yr 3 mo. Ah well, as long as I don't need the NAS space, I'll just let it sit there.

I read pools will become available in a few months time, but to join a pool, you have to re-do the plots. So I'm not in a hurry to fill every storage device. But looks a fun way to utilise all the spare capacities that's already powered to play this lottery.
 
My biggest problem with bitcoin is that it's following the same path as the sub-prime mortgage investments. While it was just a few people playing with an interesting idea in private, there was no problem. Now we have banks and other major investors getting involved. That's a very bad problem just waiting to happen.

Who will get hurt? That would be the poor. just as with the financial disaster that was 2007. Why? Because the whole financial system will get whacked and when that happens, it's the people on the financial edge that lack the resources to go on.
"major investors are getting involved" - how does that mean people will get hurt? Can you detail exactly how that will happen as a consequence of major investor involvement? The sub-prime mortgage crash was as a result of a number of things including property speculation and then a price crash which meant people / investors in the US couldn't refinance their properties when their discounted rates ended. Anyone holding crypto when the price goes down doesn't need to do any refinancing, they can just sit on it until the price goes back up. Everyone said "TULIPS!!! OMG!!!!" (or South sea bonds) when it went down at the start of 2018, and look at the price today.

If the man on the Clapham omnibus spends £100 on crypto and it goes to £10, he's down £90. If he can't afford to lose that £90, he should have put the money in the bank at 0.1% interest and shouldn't be speculating on a new investment class. But the general advice would be the same if invested in a more traditional FTSE100 share or a global tracker fund. Treat anything other than a FSCS protected account as gambling and don't gamble what you can't afford to lose.
 
Treat anything other than a FSCS protected account as gambling and don't gamble what you can't afford to lose.
There's nothing wrong with gambling your own money, provided you don't make your family destitute.

Gambling other people's money is quite a different matter. Gambling with very large sums can effect the wider economy, harming people who have not chosen to be part of the bet.
 
How will someone else gamble with my money, exactly?
That would be between you and "someone else". The problem comes when bankers, investment companies and other custodians of other people's money or jobs "invest" in the South Sea Bubble...
 
Oh dear........ :(
 
Depressing at the moment :(

HODL :)
 
I'm invested in Jasmy, Planetwatch and hopefully soon Helium if the miner ever gets delivered.

All utility tokens.
 
I'm invested in Jasmy, Planetwatch and hopefully soon Helium if the miner ever gets delivered.

All utility tokens.

After dabbling wiht other coins I have been with ethurium for a while now.....
 
My 15 year old nephew has made approx 15k from the new NYC coin. He got involved in the Miami coin when it first started and is now working on something to do with New York coin. I think he's writing the Blockchain and gets a percentage of each transaction.

Not bad considering he's spent nothing.
 
No, never done Bitcoin, never will, the ONLY online gambling I ever do's the National Lottery, and I'm slowly going off that because I only ever win anything every few months despite spending about £9 a week on online tickets, more when it's multi millions on the Euro one.
 
No, never done Bitcoin, never will, the ONLY online gambling I ever do's the National Lottery, and I'm slowly going off that because I only ever win anything every few months despite spending about £9 a week on online tickets, more when it's multi millions on the Euro one.
Honestly that £9 would be better invested in Bitcoin :p
 
No chance.

I'd lose more than I could ever make.

But its very hard to lose money on bitcoin... You buy what you can afford.... and dont sell until its higher.. when the price goes down you just hold on until it goes up :)
 
Honestly that £9 would be better invested in Bitcoin :p
A useful tip my accountancy instructor once shared with us: "an investment provides an expected return at a specified date - anything else is just gambling".

In the four and a half decades since then, I've seen his assertion proven regularly.
 
I noticed PayPal now has Crypto functions and I had £ 20 spare, so put £ 5 in each of the 4 cyber currencies. Each ‘investment’ has halved in value in the past month. Will just leave it there and come back to it in 6 months or so.
 
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