Geniuses of Veeky Forums, what are your thoughts on crypto currency?

The fact that its value is so volatile renders it unusable as a serious currency. Without a central bank to stabilize it, I don't see how that will be fixed. Further, the fact that many people have just flat out lost their money in Mt. Gox and stuff makes me unwilling to put much trust in the whole system.

As it is, I have no idea what its value is based on. Seemingly just on the fact that people are buying and selling it a lot. Tulip mania or whatever.

Maybe you can make a quick buck if you guess right, but I don't see it working as an actual currency.

I am eternally butthurt for WATCHING bitcoin through infancy to LAMBO purchase. I was on /g/ 24/7 then, it's probably the largest indicator of brainletism in my genes.

your post sounds like 3-5 years ago

if you're not the owner of the address, you're not owner of the coins. Its that simple

Things like food and raw goods have a stable price not because a government is there behind its back and regulating its price (although it does that sometimes but it always has catastrophic effects, see the soviet union and american corn industry), with enough time and scale the distribution chart should even out, im not sure what the GINI index of bitcoin right now is, but im sure it was worse than somalia in some ways
what year? mine was early 2011 when GPU mining wasn't even a thing and i had like ~110

The more people use Bitcoin, the more that flattens and evens out. The volatility nowadays is based on huge ammounts of bitcoins sold by some few owners at the same time, paired with hearsaying about how it may be in the future.
The more users with smaller and active wallets, the more stable it will be and the volatility dissapears or flattens out.

MT GOX was a site hack not hacking the blockchain mechanism itself.

I am myself one of these very static and inactive holders of a huge ammount of Bitcoins. If i would decide selling my roundabout 250000 Bitcoins, the value would most likely deplete into bottomless levels. that's why i parted them up into many many small wallets with just a several Bitcoins each.
I started mining bitcoins with my laptop from the very beginning and simply forgot about them when i "pensioned" my laptop and put that thing on the attic. During that time i was mining, i additionally bought more Bitcoins for a relatively small ammount of money.
It wasn't until last year, when i wanted to give away my laptop to my niece and decided to erase and reformat the HDD to make a clear install on it, that i realized i still have the program and all these wallets on my Laptop.
All these walltets would have been lost for good if i hadn't looked up what's on the partition.

user, if you are being true, a single fraction of a single bitcoin could literally change my entire life: 1P4Jrwt5qu8miwUcytLJds8BYG3jRW8Egv

The future we were promised.
One world currency.

can you sign a few wallets? if the story is true, its FUCKING amazing

I won't give away a single satoshi.

I will wait until the last Bitcoin has been mined and the userbase extended to be at least half of the worlds population.
That's the point the Bitcoin will really launch into new levels of value.
There are 21 million Bitcoins possible to mine (if i recall this correctly). Divide that with only 3 Billion people in use of the system and realize what value they may have then.
Everyone selling or even giving away his Bitcoins at this time now is an idiot and should be punished by law.

My prediction is that not first world idiots like me and other Bitcoin holders will be the majority of Bitcoin users in the nearer future, but it will be the majority of 3rd world counties people that will take use of it.
It's a fact, that these countries and people are held down by the western zionist banking system. The Bitcoin could be THE tool/currency to free themselfes from that opression and make trade possible without feeding the greedy wallstreet banksters.
This fact alone will most likely make the Bitcoin popular in these regions. The western countries will jump on and join the train later.
Mark my words.

I predict that if you manage to buy just a half of a Bitcoin, you will later be a multi millionaire when the rocket launches.
This is not unaffordable for someone who spends 20 bucks each month on his internet connection and orders a pizza once a week.

Stop smoking and buy bitcoins instead.
Mark my words!!!

I won't make myself a target.

A one world currency is not of value for the Elite íf they don't control it.
Bitcoin is a swarm not a monolithic currency controlled and centralized by a few.

I don't believe your claim of owning that many buttcoins. Got anything to validate it?

I don't really see the advantage of BTC for anyone that isn't buying drugs / guns or is just speculating. It just doesn't seem convenient for everyday use.
Not to mention the volatility, but maybe that'll change.

>If i would decide selling my roundabout 250000 Bitcoins
sup Veeky Forums, bought your lambos yet?

>if the story is true, its FUCKING amazing
its not. your new is showing

fuck off shill
>250000 bitcoins
yeah fuck off kid you might fool some retards here and that's all you're gonna get

>tech nerd runs a program that crunches weird numbers using his dell laptop
>pshh this crap sucks, im going to leave it in my parents attic
>a few years go buy
>better give my laptop to a close lesser enabled one that i know
>formating.exe
>oh shit whats this? BITCOIN? isnt that like 4k or more by now?
>OH SHIT 250k of them on my wallet

i know he isn't the only rando that was in the game during those primortial stages but still a dozen of stories like these are fucking awesome, mining bitcoin in 2009 and 2010 is worth building a time traveling machine

>dont want to compromise my self
you can anonimize transactions with lightning network now, its dirt cheap, you're at no risk senpai
sigh at least a few wallets or i call it bullshit
>inb4 i store them at an exchange
roger ver pls

As i said, i won't make myself a target.

Lemme explain:
Bitcoin is a blockchain depending currency. You don't need rocket sience to reverse engineer the history of every Bitcoin ever mined/transfered.
Basically ALL my Bitcoins are created by mining (Except the ones i bought) with one single wallet.dat.
If i give you one wallets adress, you can simply follow back the individual history of that Bitoins wallet to it's creating point. From there you can find the other wallets.
If you are in possession of that many Bitcoins as i am, you wont give people the possibility to chase you and your assets.
A nobrainer i guess.

If it makes you feel any better, there's a 99% chance you would have dumped all your coins when it hit $1.00 or something like that.

Except from paying in restaurants, i never purchased anything of value for them.
I have only one "active" wallet on my smartphone. With a value of about 200 USD maybe.

I own a well going business. I have neither time, nor motivation to buy/use a lambo (allthough i love these cars).
I will later in future (if Bitcoin establishes) use it for political purposes not to buy toys.

It will not work in its current form and the value in it right now are people trying to reserve their room on the possible "smart money" boat. Any company that wants to take advantage of it will simply create their own and thanks to the many projects, the cryptocurrency "community" itself it trying to make that future as easy as possible. They're self-sabotaging is going to kill them, and it's probably already too late. If they broke off into their own thing instead of becoming some media spectacle, it would have become something really great, but it's too late now. Anyone can make their own stupid coin and nobody will ever agree on a single one.

Exactly, when i mined them, it was still in its very first steps in 2009 and you could mine a couple hundred Bitcoins per day with a simple Laptop. Wich i did.
They had no value at this stage and you could basically not buy anything for them because no one accepted them as a currency. For me it was a fun project and i never took it too serious. I additionally bought a "couple thousand" Bitcoins just to support the idea, the concept behind it. Wich i found and still find great.

It was like with some people rocking the "Folding @ Home" project 24/7. They spend huge ammounts of money on special equipment to bring themselfes and their team on the top ten list of folders totally aware on that they will never get a single "dime" back in reward. they do it for a better future, a cure on cancer or other diseases.

I've heard about blockchain a few years ago when my network tech interest friend got into Dogecoin and then again when Veeky Forums was created here. The hurdle to make an account on an exchange turned me off and the idea that it's too late was also lingering in my mind. Now after coming back to a normal routine after finishing my PhD in May I couldn't miss the news about Ethereum blowing up.

So I eventually signed up and quickly made tens of k gains, which drew me more in, obviously.

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I'm currently toying around with a bot who makes some money on Bittrex and I've also downloaded the NEO testnet block headers and will support the guy who writes the Python software developement kit on git. If you're interested in either of those two, I'm happy for collaborators. I have a friend who studies math and stats and I'm currently evaluating the ticker data, running moving avarage algorithms on it and so on. The buy and sell conditions are tricky to improve, but it's real math, which is nice.

Here the API which I too use in my routine
github.com/ericsomdahl/python-bittrex
Here the western NEO dev community, which are pretty cool folks
github.com/CityOfZion
You find the Slack chat at the bottom of this page
cityofzion.io/

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Regarding opinions, I have a lot, and I surely a better technical few on things than Veeky Forums

First off, it must be noted that it's all currently unregulated (taxes and IPC (aka ICO) regulations suck balls in the US, though, which is thankfully not where I live) and low market cap (money involved), which is both good. I think even moreso than in the dot-com area, it's an unprecedented situation in that every 14 year old can make an account and start trading stocks, essentially. Both play into it being extremely volatile, and this is also the reason I can make money with a bot I only scripted 2 weeks ago. It will not stay like this forever.
The global situation is interesting.

cont.

Wasn't the whole point of using these things for illegal trade through TOR that they couldn't be traced?

In any case, I'm not going to just take it on good faith that some dude on an imageboard is half a billionaire. The reason I ask is because I've seen threads promoting Bitcoin before, and there are invariably people who claim to have made a lot of money. However, I am yet to see a single person give anything that would make me believe them.

>although it does that sometimes but it always has catastrophic effects, see the soviet union and american corn industry

How is this supposed to be an argument for bitcoin? A large part of the appeal in keeping your assets in currency is that you can expect it to remain relatively stable because it's in the interests of governments to make sure it is stable. If a single investor, or group of investors, can just topple the value of your money it's not very good. Further, you're basically saying Bitcoin _should_ be useful for what it was intended for when it's used on a massive scale. But surely getting to that scale is not at all certain when, until a much bigger group of people use it, it's a rather poor choice for currency.

cont. 2

Asia is adopting it quickly, Chinese people generally being ahead of the curve in terms of tech adoption compared to old people in the US. Japan has made it essentially a legal currency, Korea is following.

Well okay, I have three ineresting points of opinion to offer that I don't hear people express too often.
Firstly, people are fuzzy about the value and use structure of the tech, and I think it will become clear in the future and it goes like this: Crypto is not about transfers from people to people but from people to institution and companies. If you read this and don't know Smart Contracts, this might make no sense but essentially in the last two years a crowdfunding system has established itself and this is not a bug but I'd say the main feature. This goes back to anyone being able to buy stocks. This will stick around.
Something that people, even those invest, don't quite see is that a blockchain is more like "http" (hypertext transfer protocol) than anything else. The money aspect is a side effect of the immutable aspect of a blockchain. In general, folks only use a browser as a magic window for hypertext and websites, but the thing that's being developed is simply a way to use the existing internet. And it works and will not go away.
So apart from single currency chains (Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, litecoin, zcash, dash, monero, etc.) you got many ideas for the tech, from banks (Ripple) to distributed file sharing (Filecoin) and use and abuse for social networks (Steen). The big players, however, will be the chains on which you can issue other token (Ethereum, NEO, NEM, Lisk, Stratis, EOS). Ethereum made the start, but for some fucking reason they wanted to have their own gimmicky C++/Javascript looking hybrid (among others) be converted to the virtual machine and as a result it's fairly hard to to get into it. Lisk uses Javascript, and I can't judge it, and several teams are now trying to do it with .Net/C#, which is the best route. NEO, Stratis, EOS.

Your bitcoin wallet is only "semi-anonymous" let me describe the level of anonymity:
You can create a wallet which is essentially just a string of random characters. The wallet has no apparent personal ties to your identity. However, your ISP knows that during a time that you were the receiver of their service, the wallet was made on your connection (and of course give the info to the gov when they ask for it).
Every single transaction made between Bitcoin wallets is publicly known on the ledger. It doesn't give any personal info, but it will permanently record
>On this date/time wallet #6565132132 gave 5BTC to wallet #596518165
Through this, every Bitcoin ever made is traceable to a wallet by backtracking on all the transactions.

Now there are some coins which are trying to make this process more private. Monero, for example functions pretty much the same as Bitcoin but its ledger isn't public. So what you can do is take the BTC you own and trade it for Monero. Then you sell that Monero back for BTC and immediately transfer that BTC from the exchange to a secure wallet.
Essentially it's like if a helicopter was chasing a car and then the car drives into a tunnel. When the car comes back out the other side they can track it again but they don't know for sure who's inside the vehicle anymore.

I've been screwing around with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since late 2012/early 2013.

There is absolutely no good reason to buy Bitcoin, especially not at the current price point. Bitcoin is essentially just a shittier version of a debit card, the only benefit being that you can use it to buy drugs online (which it doesn't even do all that well)

Bitcoin is neither fast, nor is it a cheap way of transferring money. It's not decentralized, and it isn't untraceable. It's a retard's first attempt at a currency and it's ultimately worthless.

Yeah bitcoin has a number of flaws which are going to prevent it from going truly mainstream. People talk about the near future where literally everyone is using bitcoin to buy whatever, and while I don't doubt that cryptocurrency is going to become an everyday tool in the future, the crypto that makes it isn't going to be Bitcoin.
Chances are the coin that will really make it big hasn't been created yet. Also good chance it's going to be "GoogleCoin" or "MicrosoftCoin" or something like that.

cont. 3

For people going into it, it's valuable to understand that there are currencies, assets/tokens and shares being traded at the same time now. It's not all the same, but they are interchangable on the exchangers.

Going on, despite blockchain protocols and smart contracts having a clear usecase, the whole scene is completely overvalued. Essentially, you could take all coins' and tokens values and divide it by 20 or some factor, and you'd still get a sensible valuation.

You see it with actual products like Steem or Status Network Token. I think the former (it's somewhat like reddit, but with bandwidth limitation for their users and no ads, and decentralized of course) has about 100.000 users now, and as such it's in the sense the most successful blockchain application. Compare this with any of the currencies (Bitcoin, Dash, etc.). Those are traded far more than anything else. Hardly anyone exchanges money person to person (I talked about this above). But the value of the steem currency is comparatively low! Same with Status Network, which is a chat client with an alpha version out, where you can trade stuff and use a token for ads.
The things that are more or less completed have a reasonably low evaluation, and I think that's a reflection of the true value, and the vast overvaluedness of the other coins. That's my theory at least.

Nonetheless, unless there are regulations of the govs in the West, in the next 2 years more people will get into it, pour money in, and it's trivial to make money off of it.

So again, if you're interested in writing math for the bot, of if you're interested in C# or Python developement with the blockchain, give me a headsup. The latter is just a datastream of hashes now, but soon we'll be able to port Smart Contracts on the nextwork (issue token, make banking apps, automated transfers, think business employer situations or pokemoney distribution).

cont 4

Yes, Bitcoin is slow and expensive. It has been improved upon and from a technical standpoint made obsolete already 4 year after the release.
You still make money if you buy now, though, because the market capitalization is growing. The current price of 4000$ is somewhat absurd and there is surely a bubble to be popped, but all the top 10 coins in market cap are held and traded so much that it can't quite fall too deep - at least without external regulations. Here's the market cap
coinmarketcap.com/

50% right.
I always use TOR with Bitcoins. But that doesn't make the transactions not tracable.
Using TOR means the Owner of the Bitcoin remains user, but you can backtrace the Bitcoins history through the Blockchain anyways.
I know there are tumblers, but i won't use them under any circumstance.

I am not promoting anything here. In fact what i heard, are other Cryptocurrencies more promotable at this time than Bitcoin is. Due to the rocket like value increase, i would prefer other Cryptocurrencies nowadays.

Bitcoin in difference doesn't have a chance in regard of making fast and easy money in short time. Bitcoin is still pretty volatile but not very predictable.

I know that and others too. So what do i have to promote here?
I'm convinced that Bitcoin (the biggest and most popular/established Cryptocurrency of all) is here to stay, but for making fast money, others are to prefer. However other Cryptocurrencies will survive their hype is unknown to us all.

At a certain point of spread in users, they can't dissapear and will always be in comparesent to Bitcoin.
None of the users sides will give up on their currency and change to the other one because it's grown bigger. The massive sellout would automatically imply a total loss of value in just a few minutes if not even seconds.
Just to collectively step into another Cryptocurrency at a high price and ending up as a poor fucker in that new/other currency?
I highly doubt that.

Most of us will buy/mine other Cryptocurrencies as well to spread the assets. Wich is always a good idea (haven't done that yet). In my case, too late maybe for even it out equally? I guess so.
But people doing so will bring stability to these Currencies.

Also...
I...you guys are going to flip when you realise who has the most bitcoin...
And it's as fucking hilarious as it is depressing...
All that money...
All that power.
Guess who bought the most bits as a whole subculture?

Yes.
Bits.
FUCKING
BRONIES.

I don't see the correlation?

That's right.
Because of a fictional currency and it's popular show literal horse fuckers now have more cash in total than several small nations.

JUST.

They bought bitcoin because they liked the name.

And accidently made a buck ton of money.

>Buck ton
>A shit ton of the worlds most powerful crypto currency is currently in possession of a bunch of /mlp/'ers

Is this the real life?

Imagine how much of a brainlet someone has to be if they think of /sci7 as "geniuses"

>Yeah bitcoin has a number of flaws which are going to prevent it from going truly mainstream.
I wouldn't bet on that. Sure it's slower and has some flaws (backtracing the blockchain). But it's rocksolid in itself.
Also: "We the people" are not the only ones decinding hwta to come next. The elites wich are in control may accept their banking system to be obsolete because of Cryptocurrencies, but they will under ALL Circumstances prevent a non tracable Cryptocurrency to merge as the dominator on the market of Cryptocurrencies. That would pretty much crush their power/influence forever (no matter how much they earn of that currency).
So a somewhat tracable blockchain would be a good compromise between us "we the people" and them greedy fuckers.
Keep in mind that at a certain point many people will have their financial assets all based on a cryptocurrency wich means you can't just let that crash by blocking it from the internet and by that producing poverty en masse. This would cause a worldwide unpredictable chain of reactions.
Not to talk about the technical impossibility to make a decentralized swarming system stop working. sure, this counts for all or most Cryptocurrencies but the bigger they are, the more redundant they will be. Bitcoin already reached that point of no return. Others may follow.

lolno. The person/group with the most BTC is Satoshi himself, along with a few other startup developers. This shit was premined on day 0.

that'a pretty much besides the point

yes, he didn't mean Bronies are the people who have literally the most Bitcoin of all

he said it's funny a ridiculous fringe group had an incentive to buy an item that took off

Blookchanz teknology iz ork wizardry
and I fear that it can be defeated by further math wizardry.

However cryptocurrency isn't just about crypto. It's also currency, and with all the appeals of a currency that it has it has a fatal flaw- its acceptance as legal tender for good and services is not backed by force unlike other currencies. All bets on crypto currency right now is really suspect.

As it is, it's a fucking bubble since normies are buying it in hopes that the price will keep rising, one day it'll crash and settle down to a fairly stable price

>normies are buying it
But they aren't

Just a question, if there's a limit of bitcoins possible to mine. Isn't the whole process of accessing to this limit a problem? Since, if I remember correctly, when you validate a blockchain you get like 5 bc, can't remember exactly. When it 's going to have no bc left, what would be the reward?

Pretty sure the transaction fees become the incentive for miners.

It has scaling issues and because of this can never see widespread adoption. Complexity of the bitcoin network is [math]O(n^2)[/math]

Samuel Hyde posted a good instagram video where he explained why he sold all his etherum. Its gone now but i agreed wholeheartedly. Basically "I don't think corporate enterprise is going to let someone who looks like this [image of skinny ass vitalik] design the future economic framework"

Expect more and more regulation on crypto. I hear they already tax it in some way in the US now which is for me a magnificently huge red flag

The us govt isnt spending millions on developing quantum computing for nothing

buy high sell low

I hope you realize that economy is not exactly the scope of this board, even if there are autists that will argue that its a science

They piss me off because people are using computing resources for bullshit instead of scientific computing.

It's not for buying groceries. It was developed by the US government to be the foundation of their currency. When one bitcoin is worth 1 million dollars, it will be used to back the US dollar. This is why each bitcoin is divisible into 100 million pieces, and it's also why Satoshi Nakamoto's 1 million bitcoin stash has never been touched. That is to be the foundation of the US government's strategic bitcoin reserve.