Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

vGrade

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Next BTC futures expires Friday the 26th. It will most likely drop again. Just watch for it.
 

vGrade

Potato del Grande
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I can't help but feel that these are all just a high tech Ponzi scheme that are perpetuated more by people who are buying in to get rich rather than being used as actual legal tender.

Yeah you have some coffee shops that accept block chain whatever plus the misc doodads, but it still feels fundamentally wrong, especially with the meteoric rise in 'value'.

Have people done proper numerical modelling to assess the effect that having a steady, albeit decaying, influx of 'mined' currency injected to the system is having on overall currency stability? Normally if you have a commodity that fluctuates up and down it relies on the fact that for everyone who buys low and sells high there is some poor sap that buys high and sells low. Can the value of the freshly minted coins short circuit that and allow far more gains than losses?
Here is a list of crypto ponzi schemes and people who are/were promoting them on YouTube • r/CryptoCurrency
 

Ravishing

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Educate me on Futures.

I went to the CME site and see where you get the 26th, why is there another January expiration? Seems like it's once a month afterwards and nothing in May..

This was a win for the bears, but it could go toward the bulls, right? So doesn't necessarily mean a drop prior to expiration. Or is it historically accurate to expect drops?
 

Scoresby

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I can't help but feel that these are all just a high tech Ponzi scheme that are perpetuated more by people who are buying in to get rich rather than being used as actual legal tender.

Yeah you have some coffee shops that accept block chain whatever plus the misc doodads, but it still feels fundamentally wrong, especially with the meteoric rise in 'value'.

Have people done proper numerical modelling to assess the effect that having a steady, albeit decaying, influx of 'mined' currency injected to the system is having on overall currency stability? Normally if you have a commodity that fluctuates up and down it relies on the fact that for everyone who buys low and sells high there is some poor sap that buys high and sells low. Can the value of the freshly minted coins short circuit that and allow far more gains than losses?

The supply doesn't change so much year-to-year from here out. Because of the nature of the reward halving every 210,000 blocks almost 80% of the coins are already in existence, with the remainder distributed over the next 20 years or so (in a decaying supply). The concern you have might have been real the first few years when the block reward was high, but (at least mathematically) we are past that point. The price is volatile because people are speculating like crazy and treating it as an investment and it is increasing because boatloads of fiat are being poured into the system.
 

R3N

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Are People here interested in Initial Coin Offering (ICO) ? There are plenty of opportunities with them.
 

James

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3hvnmdq0x1b01.png


Strong sign that Ethereum is going to be a much more stable investment, imo.
 

Torrid

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Number of transactions indicates use/adoption, so that's not stupid, but it's one indicator among many and you have to understand that not all transactions are equal.

With lightning networks, it's much harder to gauge TX rate since it's so private (I assume). People just started to buy stuff via lightning on bitcoin mainnet. Could be an even more exciting year than last. Several other TX rate increasing protocol upgrades are coming down the pike for BTC as well, and Coinbase will get their shit together sooner or later.

ETH is highly experimental; I wouldn't consider it a safe asset for that reason alone. Switching to PoS could cause any number of serious problems even if you accept the premise that PoS is workable. (which many do not) Again, I highly recommend diversifying if you're 100% in ETH. (granted I would say the same for any coin) Don't however buy shitcoins just for the sake of diversifying.
 

Ravishing

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Number of transactions indicates use/adoption, so that's not stupid, but it's one indicator among many and you have to understand that not all transactions are equal.
I'm just saying that transactions and price of a coin aren't really comparable at all. So many variables that factor into coin price... and transactions for that matter, and one doesn't really affect the other imo.

If you take away transactions you'll notice price of ETH and BTC follow each other, which seems much more relevant than slapping on the transaction data.

Just means you have big players that are playing both crypto markets about equally
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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not all transactions are equal
This is very important to understand especially when you understand how exchanges work where they sit on your money and then buy lump amounts of BTC.

You are going to obviously have a lot less transactions but they are still going to be there and they are going to be large.
 

Scoresby

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I see the bitcoin transaction graph as it being pretty pegged on block size (it can only support ~2500ish tx per block IIRC). This is due to its popularity and a necessary hurdle for it to get past in its evolution.
 

Arative

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I see the bitcoin transaction graph as it being pretty pegged on block size (it can only support ~2500ish tx per block IIRC). This is due to its popularity and a necessary hurdle for it to get past in its evolution.

Block size is an issue that needs to be addressed. I just had two transactions go through yesterday that I created on the 3rd. Granted they were low fee but 16 days is a long time to go through.
 

Fulorian

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If you take away transactions you'll notice price of ETH and BTC follow each other, which seems much more relevant than slapping on the transaction data.

That isn't even remotely true. Eth went from $10 to $300 from Jan through July 2017, while BTC went from $1k to $4k in that time. Then, from July through December, BTC went from $4k to $20k, while Eth held constant oscillating right around $300 that whole time - it didn't start breaking out until Christmas/New Years.

Ethereum and Bitcoin are probably the two least correlated cryptos in the whole market, at least amongst the majors.

Also - how is it not relevant that Bitcoin has completely saturated its transaction network and isn't able to scale, while Ethereum has linearly followed its price increases and transaction volumes with the capability to fill all those volumes? That's only irrelevant if you don't see a need for a medium of exchange - the store of value function is all BTC has left, and it's getting pretty thin.
 

Torrid

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Looks like somebody didn't read more than a page back.

ETH is great if you don't mind transactions failing, less privacy, higher fees than Litecoin, more centralized control, a presaled coin, a network about to upend its entire security model to a highly experimental one, and nodes failing because they can't catch up with the blockchain.

Again, ETH scaled because they increased the block size, nothing more; and it caused them a lot of problems. Bitcoin chose to go another route (although SegWit DID also increase block size) and instead decreased transaction sizes + is developing second layer protocols. SegWit alone will increase base layer TX rate by roughly 3x current rate when fully adopted, and Schnorr signatures + MAST will decrease transaction sizes further when implemented. Lightning will multiply base layer TX rate by orders of magnitude. (ETH will probably get lightning, but not before bitcoin)
 
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Ravishing

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That isn't even remotely true. Eth went from $10 to $300 from Jan through July 2017, while BTC went from $1k to $4k in that time. Then, from July through December, BTC went from $4k to $20k, while Eth held constant oscillating right around $300 that whole time - it didn't start breaking out until Christmas/New Years.

Ethereum and Bitcoin are probably the two least correlated cryptos in the whole market, at least amongst the majors.

Also - how is it not relevant that Bitcoin has completely saturated its transaction network and isn't able to scale, while Ethereum has linearly followed its price increases and transaction volumes with the capability to fill all those volumes? That's only irrelevant if you don't see a need for a medium of exchange - the store of value function is all BTC has left, and it's getting pretty thin.

I'm talking about the chart that is posted, not the entire history of ETH & BTC. In the short term their prices mimic each other. And watching both everyday, I see them change roughly same % every day. The only time they deviate is when there is a new tech implemented or split, etc.

The # of transactions is not affecting price of the coin. Why should it?

The coin prices are being driven by speculators more than anything.

And as mentioned above, seems like BTC's transaction limit is intentional and limited by block size. I'd actually be scared about ETH growing too unwieldy and facing many more challenges than BTC, which has chosen a more measured approach.

BTC has it's problems for sure, but at this point in the game, I think taking a slow & measured approach is the correct way and most of these challenges will be solved eventually.

Security and Reliability will always be the #1 & #2 factors when talking about currency. And I believe BTC is rated highest in both of these categories, correct me if I'm wrong.

Once those are good, then you work on scaleability.
 

James

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(ETH will probably get lightning, but not before bitcoin)

Lightning is vaporware tho, it's either not going to be developed, or will be entirely different than what they're promising it can do now.

seems like BTC's transaction limit is intentional

Which is precisely the problem, they've intentionally kept transaction fees high because it's what the miners want, not what's best for the coin.

Once those are good, then you work on scaleability.

Nah, you have to work on all three at once, and I really don't see how you can have sufficient security with SegWit, shit is a disaster imo.
 

The_Black_Log Foler

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This whole crypto thing has been hilarious. I can't tell you how many friends have jumped on the crypto train and have 0 idea how blockchain tech works or why there would be any underlying value in the coins they invest in. Needless to say most of them are crying and moaning over losses now. Blockchain tech is super interested and has a lot of potential. Bitcoin will be bogged down by regulation once enough people get fucked over by altcoins like Ripple and any joe that wants to do an ICO for a faux "revolutoinary" bizniz idea that's a front of scamming pleebs. GL bros
 
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fris

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unless you bought solely into something like bitconnect or lost on every day-trader-ish trade, you can't be down that much. if someone went 100% into something like Ripple at it's peek, then maybe you've lost 75%? pretty much anything is still up from 1 month ago.