Just a heads up / thread for anybody tracking Bitcoin, today and tomorrow is when something called "segwit" is supposed to be activated, which enables a technology known as "lightning network" to run on the Bitcoin network. This will allow Bitcoin network to be used as a payment system, rather than ONLY as a store of value, due to greater rate of transactions. Many people expect that this could raise the price of Bitcoin to ~$5000. We are already almost back to the all time highs from about a month ago, before it took a short-lived nose dive.
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last commentI wonder how much of a factor the chaos coming out of the Trump administration is in fueling the alternative currencies.
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To the moon!
Oh, baby!
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@Che I agree with your thinking a few months ago I bought a few bitcoins because I wanted to learn more about crypto, the volatility was more than I liked so I promptly sold out at a profit, probably beginners luck, but with all of the mess going on I feel it is better for me to be invested in things I understand maybe if the politics swirling around stop roiling so violently I might take another plunge but in the current climate I am most comfortable with what I know so I'm standing pat for now.
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@ che " way too vulnerable existing only in cyberspace. Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and dare I say the US all have priors for fucking around there and I just don’t see what would stop a state or non-state actor from causing chaos."
Perhaps you don't fully understand the blockchain technology, or perhaps you do and I am simply misunderstanding you statement. The technology behind Bitcoin (called blockchain) is precisely what makes it so stable and valuable. I can think of only one surefire event that would cause the Bitcoin blockchain to break: An apocalyptic solar flair that scrambles the entire planet's digital storage devices. Anything short of that: your Bitcoins are pretty damn safe. (unless you lose your password, tee hee).
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^^^ Or maybe one of these state actors hack into the blockchain and steal everything who is going to do anything about it none of the state actor are going to have a dog in the brawl that ensues, so your gonna get your money back from tha Russians, the Iranians, or the N. Koreans good luck.
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They'd have to break ECDSA or SHA256.
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I read crypto currencies were a bigger bubble than tulip mania ever was. In the case of the tulip mania, I read some people were taking out loans borrowing money against their house to buy more tulips. Maybe the author of the article was short bitcoin. I don't know.
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@Che
" It’s actually a lot harder (to do it right) than accumulating it in the first place. First world problems. :)"
Ain't that the fucking truth.
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@Che
The news you heard was probably correct, but the exchanges are separate from the blockchain. This is why those who responsibly educate the public about Bitcoin (e.g. andreas antonopoulos, see his YouTube channel) will advise people to never store the majority of their funds on a Bitcoin exchange. The exchanges are vulnerable. Bitcoin is not. It is a very young technology, so you really have to understand it in order to use it properly. But it is growing, and becoming more sophisticated.
You can think of Bitcoin kinda like this. Imagine a computer file that contained a secret message (e.g. your balance), and then that message was cryptographically scrambled by your personal, offline computer, so that only one person (you) had the password. And then imagine that this cryptographic scrambling (called SHA256) would take the computing power equivalent of 100 Alphabets (by Alphabet I mean GOOG, the public company) about a 10^100 years, on average, to guess the password (so, literally impossible to guess). Then, pretend that that computer file with the secret message is shared with hundreds of millions of people across the world, on their computers, so there are copies of this message all over the world (but 'cept you can read it). Then, imagine that hundreds of supercomputers are constantly, 24/7, performing computations to continually verify the integrity of that message, so it never changes. And if the file ever does change on one person's computer (maybe because an atom decayed in somebody's hard drive and the radiated neutron flipped a 0 to a 1) then it is immediately detected that the file has changed, that it is incorrect, and is therefore immediately updated. So, the entire world's computers are constantly working to verify and maintain the integrity of that computer file, the one with the secret message (your balance).
And you are the only person with the password.
That's about how secure Bitcoin is. That's why it would literally take an apocalyptic solar flair to break it.
Except, in the real Bitcoin, every single user has that amount of security; not only you.
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Best advice I've seen is to store portions of your crypto-currency portfolio in different wallets. Some on exchanges, some on different electronic wallets, some in cold storage (on your Trezor say), and I guess some in paper wallets.
That being said, I have everything on an exchange right now, because I'm expecting tomorrow to be volatile to put it mildly. (And that's where we are talking about crypto-currencies where a 10-20% move in a day is nothing anyone would rate as volatile. :-) )
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... I know of a very well established Russian escort agency in the US that accepts Bitcoin as well...
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Price swings are not too bad so far, but looks like there is some pretty decent volume. Normally bittrex can handle whatever the market throws at it in terms of volume, but this morning is the first time I've seen it slow.
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I'm way too chickenshit to have anything to do with Bitcoins. I trimmed my stock exposure today. Hope I made the right choice.
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I believe that the encryption is very strong as @FutureTrackStar says but don't underestimate the ability of the state. here's a new article about the wannacry virus as it relates to the ransom being paid in bitcoin.
money.cnn.com
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Boom. Bitcoin ~ $3,200 about an hour ago. How high is this thing gonna go?
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TrackStar: "How high is this thing gonna go?"
To the moon!
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LMAO.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com
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Moon. ($3400)
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$3400 already.
Seems when the consensus view on TUSCL is that something is a bubble you should just go ahead and buy it. We've seen that with the stock market and now Bitcoin.
Lol!
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