TOPIC: Who Buys/Sells/Pays/Holds in Bitcoin ?

Back in the day (2007-2009) Scotty and I used to Bitcoin to buy "stuff". Lots of stuff actually.

Haven't messed with it in years... Recently saw that the price went from $3-6 (what I remember it as) to $700+.
Wow.

So I setup Bitcoin (+20% Discount) on Happy Hippo and I got a lot of Bitcoin today.
(I haven't announced this yet, so you can use Bitcoin on Hippo, as we used to do on Dwolla with the 20% off)

Who else uses Bitcoin?
Especially -- who holds Bitcoin, as a short/medium term investment?

I was actually going to make a new thread but saw this and even though it's an old thread I think It's still relevant.

I've recently bought bitcoin because I think it could be a great way for me to invest money in the medium-long term. I don't have money to go crazy with it and do day trading but there's a lot of backing behind the technology and I believe it like many others this could be as big as the credit card was and the internet.

Something very helpful and interesting with cryptocurrencies is that it's different than the stock market and anything can affect it like the Chinese Government banning ICOs. There was a massive plummet in the price and that's exactly when I bought. Low and behold it went right back up despite people thinking it was "the end".

Many people claim it's in a bubble but it has real valuable applications that could be pivotal in the future. It's still used for certain purchases and the ability to use it in everyday life will just continue to increase and thus increasing its value over time.

Thoughts on this? Looking to restart the conversation a little bit if people are interested.

I used to buy an sell in bitcoins online for the past 2 years.

After seeing last summer their increase in value from the previous one (2 years), I decided that I could as well invest into them.

I took a 3k loan in the winter, and pushed it all into BTC, which was at $700/BTC back then. And then well, the rest is history .

For me, Bitcoins are not a bubble. Before I even thought about investing into them, I was using them for functional reasons, every day.

As a payment system, for the merchants they are amazing. Anyone can accept payments, no verification, NO CHARGEBACKS, and no disputes to deal with. In high-risk fields, such as virtual sales, this is gold.

The alternatives are either payment systems like PayPal or Skrill which micromanage you and screw you over at the tiniest detail. Of course, accepting credit cards directly is not an option if you are not registered as a company, and a chargeback rate of as low as 2% can get your account closed.

Now, that being said, most sales in bitcoin are done in the dark net. Yes, drugs, money laundering, and such. As long as darknet keeps existing, they will hold value. Now, whether $4k/BTC is their real value, I doubt it. I think this is caused largely by bitcoins entering into mainstream, and thus investors and investor wannabe's jumping on the bandwagoon.

But that bitcoins will stay with us for a couple of years more at least, there is no doubt.

Now, the only problem I see is the LE institution crash on gray area services. BTC-e was closed for money laundering, two largest darknet marketplaces went down, Bitmixer shut down informing that "despite tumbling bitcoins, they can still be tracked", and the development of tools to de-anonymize bitcoins.

If bitcoins lose the anonimity, the whole purpose of using them for darknet will be lost. This will encourage dealers to switch to more anonymous coins, such as Monero.

Ethereum on the other hand, is/was a bubble, I believe. As you could see, after the ~$400-> ~$200, it could never properly recover, and most likely the value will further plummet, unless a very practical use is found. However, on practice I never saw anyone using ethereum for anything else than trading.

Cheers

I buy all my happy hippo shit with bitcoin because of the 25% discount, but then I bought some more as a speculative investment. No regrets. The current dip doesn't phase me at all, I think it'll go back up and then I'll sell.

I don't hold bitcoin per se, but I do hold a significant amount of my savings in crypto currency. I think it's a sound investment and tbh I encourage everyone here to do some research on the crypto market. There's alot of room for profit as the markets are still in relative infancy (even bitcoin). If you can afford it give cloud mining a look it's a solid way to put away alot of crypto while mot having to even think about it.

I had a lot of them many years ago, but sold - put into projects, living free without cares and it got me years of freedom where I could chase tail or do what I wanted 24/7 so I don't necessarily have any regrets... except now they are worth 10x what I sold for.

I now day trade as a hobby and for fun, and have considered to write about it. Although it's fairly tough to write a guide there is a certain baseline.

It's NOT good for anyone trying to start out and make a couple bucks with a couple bucks though. You could turn $100 into a $1000 with time and solid success - but it's much much much better if you have $10,000 that isn't going to make or break you to play with.That way it's not going to sting much in trial and error until you get results.

It requires a lot of time and attention, stress, study... it's also a completely social-less environment. Much like trading stocks - you pick your "work" times, and then you have your play times. You don't mix the two - open trading while being out trying to have fun can be catastrophic. I did this the other weekend and I will regret it for the next year whenever I think about it.

I am for the most part knowledgeable about bitcoin and a lot of the altcoin currencies, so if anyone is interested they can ask away and I will see what I can do to assist/advice.

You need to be ready to lose everything you put into bitcoin

That is, any money you put into bitcoin should be "play money" not "life savings", "college fund", whatever

The only news about bitcoin that you see in mainstream media like WSJ, Bloomberg, etc is price going up. The truth is, bitcoin has a lot of problems and is highly political. Nothing gets done to improve the bitcoin network because everyone has an agenda and it's been going on like that for years... I highly doubt that (if cryptocurrency succeeds) bitcoin will be the last man standing or whatever. At least as it pertains to a digital form of cash (transaction fees and times are terrible)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem

It could be that bitcoin ends up being like "digital gold" and people just buy and hold forever as a secure way of storing value

Either way, IMO, any "investing" is more or less a 50/50 coin flip that you have no control over.

Government decides to ban all cryptocurrency exchanges? Price drops (you can't do anything about it)
Creator of bitcoin decides to dump all his bitcoin? Price drops (you can't do anything about it)
Etc.

Don't even get into altcoins unless you're going to become an active trader

If you really want to get a sense of the kind of "bubble" that bitcoin is in (at least in terms of the short-term) just go to any bitcoin or crypto subreddit. All it is is people jacking off over all-time price highs / young, hopeless, broke 20 somethings hoping that bitcoin et al will be their ticket out of mediocrity.

Sorry, but if bitcoin hits $1 million per bitcoin, that means the world will have already ended (collapse of major financial systems and governments)

This is all my amateur opinion and not financial advice

All cryptos are just speculative at this point. They can be worth nothing tomorrow. So yes, don't put any money into them that you aren't prepared to lose. However, there is the potential that they will skyrocket (as they have recently done) and just keep going. Or, this could be the top of the bubble and you're in for a world of hurt.

From an investment standpoint. I'd suggest putting up to 10% of your investable money into crypto. Any more than that and I think you're insane, or you have so much money that it doesn't matter if you lost all your crypto. At the young ages around here, I'd put another 10% into US bonds, and the remaining 80% into 2-3 vanguard index funds. For the last 100 years the stock market has been reliable and given consistently good returns over the long run. It's the smartest place for the average investor.

***Now if you want to invest in crypto...there are new products just coming to market. Index funds of crypto currencies. I think there's a good chance that bitcoin will not stay the dominant currency because of technical limitations. I suggest you read into the transaction limitations it has, and problems with the governing structure of the Bitcoin. Chances are Bitcoin is the Netscape, Myspace, AOL of cryptos. Putting your money only into Bitcoin is asking for disaster. I think both Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash are better situated for the long run...but who knows?

Which is why I suggest you don't try to guess such a market, and take the same strategy as stock investing. By an index fund. ***Pro tip: check out the fund Crypto20. It should be available for trade just after New Years. Although, I think 20 cryptos is bit of an overkill because 20 will not rise to the top. Only a few. So you might check a more narrow fund like: Hold 10.

Then you have skin in the game, and if any one of them takes off you stand to benefit.

Do not buy coins anymore man. The transaction fees are way too high now, and the websites charge you like 10% just to buy them with your CC. Its not worth it.

The best way to do it is by buying Cloud Mining Contracts. Basically outsourcing the mining. They have no feeds and you can reinvest them and get compound interest. Check out this site I use, right now I have 2200 invested or 10 Th/s. That is my mining power. You can start with like 10 bucks and at least have something going.

hashflare.io/r/929136F2-btc

barbavssa wrote: Do not buy coins anymore man. The transaction fees are way too high now, and the websites charge you like 10% just to buy them with your CC. Its not worth it.

The best way to do it is by buying Cloud Mining Contracts. Basically outsourcing the mining. They have no feeds and you can reinvest them and get compound interest. Check out this site I use, right now I have 2200 invested or 10 Th/s. That is my mining power. You can start with like 10 bucks and at least have something going.

hashflare.io/r/929136F2-btc

Don't listen to this! Very few posts from that user, and bad advice at that.
1. CC fees for crypto are about 2.5%, which is standard for CC payments with any merchant.
2. Don't buy crypto with a CC in the first place! dum dum
3. You can purchase using ACH on coinbase for about 1.5% if I remember right. (Other exchanges can be less)
4. Cloud mining contracts are notorious for being complete scams!

Don't listen to this! Very few posts from that user, and bad advice at that.
1. CC fees for crypto are about 2.5%, which is standard for CC payments with any merchant.

There are places where the effective transaction cost is around 10%. This is either due to the combination of the country/provider/payment method you're using, and/or that provider not allowing you to alter the bitcoin transaction fee when you spend the coins out. So if you've got access to good provider & payment setup, good for you.

As for the original topic, how many guys do you know who actually use it to purchase non-dodgy stuff? Like food? How many talk about it purely as a speculative way to get rich? Doesn't bode well...

I don't care what the transaction fees are.. I made quadruple the money I did from what I put in.

If you look at the price/coin when I posted originally in this thread, you'll see the price was way lower and if you bought in at that time, you'd have at least double your money right now...

There are many affluent people on this forum including Chris who have bought a significant amount of cryptocurrencies lately. The only regret is I wish I used Kraken from the start.