I’m not sure about bitcoin as basis for a significant transactional currency. It seems inefficient and if done in the purist way seems too place too much demand on users to secure their own assets.
I like the concept of Blockchain for more general applications though, e.g. contracts and other documents where authenticity is important.
Having said that I do hold cryptocurrency with no intention of selling in the near future. To answer one of the questions in your earlier post, what it has going for it at the moment is significant institutional interest. This is the first time in its history this has happened.
It’s ironic that Bitcoin is sold by some as a way to decouple from central government control, QE etc, yet more there’s so much cash sloshing around from stimulus packages now that institutions are suddenly willing to have a punt on it.
what I’ve never understood is why on earth would you want your main currency decoupled from central government control. seems like a terrible idea, the currency will be extremely unstable, unprotected from bad actors, and a nightmare for law enforcement.
I can’t answer that for you. If you don’t want to get involved, there’s nothing stopping you from that.
Bitcoin is perfectly capable of being safely stored offline. Yes, you may need to go online, to spend/send BTC over great distances, but I can print out some of my BTC and hand it to another person, who can scan/input into their wallet - yes, they will need to be online, for the transaction to be added to their wallet & registered onto the blockchain. There’s likely no huge bandwidth & computational effort for the wallet to push the transaction onto the blockchain & once it’s in play, the wallet doesn’t need to be online or play any part, in the transaction ratification.
I use Jaxx Liberty on my phone, some paper wallets in my safe, and some very small amunts in the exchanges, binance, coinbase, cex.io & localbitcoins. Definitely not all in the same basket.
Have you met the government(s)? They ARE the bad actors!
I’ll just leave these links from an excellent interview between Dave Lee (a Bitcoin skeptic) & Yassine Elmandjra (an analyst with ARK Invest covering Bitcoin, Crypto and Blockchain technologies).
foolhardy… unless I am indeed not investing money I can’t afford to lose - I’ve just borrowed it & am paying it off, just like I did when I bought my car. In fact, I just replaced my car finance payments with cryptoinvestment loan payments, when my car finance ended.
Why not just buy crypto on a recurring purchase instead, that way you’re not being charged interest and you get to benefit from a dollar cost average style effect
I’m actually quite comfortable with the debt, which will be paid off in a set timescale. The reality is that I am not rich & don’t have access to family money or financial support, so I can only be crafty with OPM, with the goal of accruing wealth for myself & paying back the loan early, isn’t part of my plan.
It’s much easier to invest in the companies that develop the tech for crypto instead, like Riot Blockchain and Canaan Creative (both available on Freetrade). Secondary exposure, but they’ve done very well with the growth of mining.
Pretty much, also the massive volatility and having to convert each £1 to 0.000025 (at the time of writing) for any given transaction.
Also that it only seems to be computer component sellers (that sell mining hardware) and ahem…skin sites that currently accept it. At least, without using a TOR browser.
Oh, and the lack of any intrinsic value. At least with gold or silver it can still be used in manufacturing. With bitcoin a bunch of nerds decided it was worth “this much”, but it isn’t, is it. It isn’t really worth anything.
Shares in Nvidia and/or AMD? Probably better to buy the means of production than the end result. Nvidia and AMD are useful for other things beyond crypto as well too. You’ll get exposure to both in a good index fund, mind.
I expect this to be an unpopular opinion, but whether I (or you) use Bitcoin or not, it is still going to be mined. There is a finite number of Bitcoin. It is not a reason for an individual to stop trading/buying/using it. It will still be mined and still be bad for the environment. Regarding that Tweet, it doesn’t matter how much attention is put on it, the end result will still be the same surely as it is decentralised?