Sanrith Descartes
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Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies
- Thread starter Tripamang
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Burren
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Do you mind elaborating on that a bit for those of us that are new to Crypto? In my monkey brain, I buy it like a stock and then sell it just the same. Money then gets wired to my bank account in USD. How would I "store" BC or another cypto? That sort of makes it sound like I can insulate myself from the market, but that also seems counter-intuitive based on what I know and do elsewhere.
tugofpeace
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I'm new to it, but to put it simply, it's like buying an external harddrive for crypto only. There is some kind of security phrase that only you know of which points to this harddrive, and you send cryptocurrency from your brokerage (like Coinbase, Strike, etc) to your harddrive. The harddrive is otherwise offline so if someone hacks your brokerage, your crypto is in your offline harddrive, so nothing can happen to it. Truly safe.
Now if you happen to lose that harddrive, as long as you still have your security phrase you still have your currency. How that works, I'm still trying to understand.
Flobee
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The short version is that Bitcoin the network is simply a ledger that tracks how much Bitcoin, the currency, exists on any given wallet. When you buy BTC on an exchange they are holding your coin in their wallet, essentially an IOU for delivery of your Bitcoin to an address you own upon request.
A Bitcoin "wallet" be it software hardware is essentially just a private key that is required to move Bitcoin that exists on an address you own to another address.
When you take self custody you're going to use a wallet of your choice to generate an address then give that address to your exchange requesting they send your coin to it. At this point, once that transaction is finalized, your wallets private key is required to spend that Bitcoin, so you have control over it.
I don't have a ton of time right now to go deeper but let me know if that doesn't make sense and I'll try to help more when I have a bit more time. Also check the video below for a newbie friendly tutorial to first time self custody. Dude looks goofy but his tutorials are legit. Also if search is working now I've gone over this a number of times in the past here.
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Burren
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Kithani
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OU Ariakas
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OK, hear me out.
GameStop realizes that the value of their company is derived from internet meme culture and so they realize that the best way to take advantage is to leverage that fleeting value into a possibly parabolic asset on the books. If they can buy enough and it keeps hitting new highs then maybe the stock price continues to increase due to the support of that meme-y and diamond hands community.
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Flobee
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Haus
I am Big Balls!
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Yeah, Coinbase is shamelessly try to squeeze their users for profits at this point.
There are other "crypto cards" but most all of them are at the very best break even when you look at fees and whatnot.
If you want to slowly accumulate crypto over time just set up a scheduled buy once a month.
Flobee
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I've used Gemini card for a few years. I don't love the company and the cash back is almost always just 1% but there are no additional fees, membership requirements, or asset requirements. That being said my Bitcoin back has like 3-4x'd since I got the card so I'm overall happy with it, airline miles don't do that.
If I were to get a new one I would 100% go with Fold, Bitcoin only and overall just a better company. Only reason I haven'tyet is the switching effort hasn't been worth it to me.
If I were to get a new one I would 100% go with Fold, Bitcoin only and overall just a better company. Only reason I haven'tyet is the switching effort hasn't been worth it to me.
I just use the fidelity card and buy the bitcoin etf with the 2% cash back that gets deposited into my stock account.
Flobee
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Lol
www.forbes.com
Real Estate No Longer Makes Up A Majority Of Donald Trump's Fortune
Over nearly 50 years, the president built a $2.5 billion real-estate empire. Then, in less than five years, he created a crypto kingdom worth even more.
www.forbes.com
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Flobee
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Yea, but that's not Bitcoin, it's a Bitcoin IOU. I can withdrawal mine. You do you but these two approaches are not the same
Understand, but if Fidelity and IBIT fail and lose your bitcoin - bitcoin will be next to worthless anyways. No one will trust it anymore and it will probably lose institutional backing. It's a risk I'm fine with. Not like they can't have an in-kind 1 to 1 etf in the future you can withdraw as bitcoin. It's low on my risk meter, i don't have to self-custody and run the risk of losing keys and i don't have to use the public version of coinbase. I'm ok with it as bitcoin is a savings account for me and not something i plan on using anytime soon.
Flobee
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For sure it's a fine vehicle if you understand the trade offs. I would quibble on the comment about Bitcoin failing if Fidelity or IBIT fail, Bitcoin is far bigger than both which I believe will become quite evident over the next couple years.
It's rather short sighted to only see Bitcoin as a saving vehicle, as it is quite a bit more than that, but it is the prevailing narrative right now so you're in good company. A borderless, permissionless, uncensorable monetary network with instant* settlement where no one is it control is a very fine reserve asset, but it's not just a piggy bank.
If you don't have self custody then you aren't actually capable of using Bitcoin, you have USD exposure to it. For what it's worth I do think that in-kind withdrawals/deposits will happen but that's going to be a play to capture more rather than allow capital to flee. Like I said your viewpoint is the current consensus. Bitcoins swimming with the big sharks now and they play the long game. Not telling you or anyone what to do with your money, but don't be fooled into thinking IBIT is equivalent to BTC in self custody, it's not.
I actually self custodied on and off for years - i moved it to to the ETF purposefully. I understand all of what your saying and am all for people pushing to use bitcoin any way they can. I will just be using it as a savings/investment for now and will dump it if the bear pokes it's head out of the cave. Will keep some always, but will certainly take profits.
As for using Bitcoin - I'm more in the camp it's not that useful as a currency type replacement or using it as standard payment functionality. Plenty of other cryptos are far better suited for that. Store of Value is where I see it, Collateral for loans is the long game, and incredibly large payment vehicle as well. It's just too slow for most use cases.
Rangoth
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i have a genuine question about this piece And I’m not trying to start a BTC purist war. But on the uncensorable/anonymous thing.….i know there is no way to prevent wallet A from interacting on the chain but wouldn’t it actually HURT people over cash because the way governments would do it is by saying “anyone accepting an incoming transaction from wallet A faces x/y/z charges and fines”?
unlike cash which is a fungible asset, even if they don’t know who owns wallet A, all they need to do is flag it as a ”non allowed transaction wallet” and any legit business that doesn’t want to get in trouble would stop accepting funds from there? And it’s not like the owner of wallet A can just move their bitcoin to wallet B because now that wallet gets flagged.
the only cash equivalent I can think of is flagging certain serial numbers, but the average store doesn’t check that so only banks would and they would have to pass a law stating all stores must now check serial numbers?