Bitcoin....who's gotten into it?

[byates1]

No. Never mind. I don't get impressed by "I'm rich" statements. Who does? Be glad you are still banked.

Imagine if you had cashed out $3.6 Billion like the people that just unbanked a lot of banked in Africa. Bitcoin, "Unbanking the banked" in Africa.

https://www.engadget.com/africrypt-b...174636634.html

yeah that's obviously not fucking cool. were you the guy posting about the gondola cable? seems your user handle has changed. mine's byates1. on here since 06. no change.

[bennymac]

yeah that's obviously not fucking cool. were you the guy posting about the gondola cable? seems your user handle has changed. mine's byates1. on here since 06. no change.

There’s a long history of trolls changing their TGR names.

[byates1]

i'm not looking at you i'm looking through you.

[BobMc]

Dude, I barely managed to finish HS and I am embarrassed by my GPA.

I have had many professions over the years and none of them involved anything above simple mathematics. That said it doesn't take a genius level IQ to know bullshit when you smell it. I wish you all the luck in the world and will leave it at that.

Yeah, for someone that is “Only trying to help mags..” that was pretty fucking lame.

[byates1]

i got banned for a week. allocate 5/10 %

[pureantigravity]

There’s a long history of trolls changing their TGR names.

An even more apropos name for a skier would be pureantigravity.

I can change it back if it confuses people. I changed it yesterday or the day before. Someone in this thread suggested that 'pureantigravity' was better for a ski forum than 'puregravity'. I agree. I'm sure you will all adapt. I changed it yesterday and no one mentioned anything. Strange that no one noticed until now. I like it. I like it a lot

[garyfromterrace]

You think anyone who dares utter a criticism of BTC is an idiot/skeptic/luddite/boomer

I happen to be all of these things. And, I'm going to hell also.

[Bunion 2020]

Well at least ya got that goin for ya.

[MegaStoke]

just a simple guess, you did't turn 9k into 50k? i did.

Cool, let’s see you do it again.

[bennymac]

Take your favorite crypto project - it’s past performance is indicative of its future results.

At least that’s what I’ve learned in here.

[4matic]

plenty of you white fucks have 10/20 g laying around. btc is a 10x in 5yrs.

Could be. Could also be down another 70% before that happens. It’s following a well known playbook creating waves of optimism after each leg down.

This last bounce is pretty shallow. Look out below.

[CirqueScaler]

OK, so I saw the following answers about why the price of bitcoin could be lower in five years:

if institutional investors stop buying (and sell)
if Tether unravels
if it gets hacked (does this mean if a bug is found, shera?)
if things keep going and bitcoin stops existing

[pureantigravity]

+ these (could be organized into sub categories, how many in 5 years??)
- if general economic downturn (most pyramids and Ponzis fail because of withdrawals initiated by this)
- if interest rates go up and money becomes cheaper to borrow
- if education (people become more aware of new age Ponzis and HYIP schemes)
- if performance doesn't drastically improve past 7 tx/s with 10 minute to 30 minute confirmation times
- if government regulation (all sorts + even taking the domain names away)
-- if taxes (carbon tax?)
-- if war
- if quantum computing developments (sha256 is not quantum proof)
- if fiat banking won't play (on/off ramps)
- if whales sell (top 5% own huge portion)
- if network attack (partitioning, spam attacks, etc.)
- if software attack (code base/ wallets/ firmware hack)
--- such as Bait and switch, Fabricated transactions, Chain hijacking, Transaction withholding, Chain rewrites
- if crypto community turns against it
- if mining banned (by utility co.)
- if electricity price
- if availability of more profitable mining hardware (Bitmain supply etc.)
- if ransomware repelled / anti-virus developments (no buying by ransomed businesses, prevent ransomware)
- if becomes political (election promises etc.)
- if schism in Bitcoin devs community (more forks and/or abandonment of b)
- if better alternative (digital fiat and/or other cryptos supplant Bitcoin and/or a new better fork)
- if Satoshi is identified.
- if more exchange hacks and/or major exchanges shut down
- if ELON
- if fake news / fud
- if market exhaustion
- if hardware wallet firmware attack + SPV rogue wallet attack**
- if hardware wallet chip replacement attack (see kraken link.)

edit: + defi flash loan attack. Bitcoin has scripting and so this is even possible in the BTC ecosystem in some fashion.
https://www.coindesk.com/the-defi-fl...ged-everything


** I Invented this. Even though the key on a hardware wallet are stored in a secure chip, the firmware can be easily updated to a rogue firmware that changes the display SEND address. If the user is tricked into updating the wallet by a 3rd part software wallet (so many that use Ledger etc.) then the user will OK a transaction that is actually sent to another address. For this reason, the safest method to send BTC is to actually install bitcoin-core onto a computer that is not connected to the internet and has all communications turned off and sign OFFLINE transactions. A very complicated process indeed. See https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/...-your-bitcoins for reasons you should use Bitcoin-core. Use it on a dedicated offline computer. You will need the full 350GB blockchain download on a separate LIVE computer for read-only access to your wallets and to broadcast signed transactions.

[pureantigravity]

Bitcoin network update. There are currently 2.441 transactions being added to the Bitcoin mempool every second. The last time it was this low was August 31, 2018. The network is VERY quiet. The transaction rate has been dropping dramatically since Feb 25, 2021 (3.795 tx/s -> 2.537 tx/s, 30 day avg).

Also,the current value of all transaction outputs per day is 1.823M BTC. Output Value Per Day has been declining since the local peak on Sept 22, 2020. Bitcoin price was ~$10.7K when the outputs were highest. Who was moving? Who was buying and selling? What's happening? How is Output Per Day and Price and Hodling related (would require translating to dollars)?



https://www.blockchain.com/charts

[shera]

OK, so I saw the following answers about why the price of bitcoin could be lower in five years:

if institutional investors stop buying (and sell)
if Tether unravels
if it gets hacked (does this mean if a bug is found, shera?)
if things keep going and bitcoin stops existing

No I think the bitcoin codebase is stable. Ethereum/defi is not stable. Centralized exchanges adn crypto "banks" are not stable. I mitigate my risk on that by sticking to a couple of big US players, Coinbase and Celsius, splitting my assets between them. I'm considering adding a third and adding cold storage.

[pureantigravity]

No I think the bitcoin codebase is stable.

How about unknown zero-day exploits like this just revealed last year:

"A previously undisclosed vulnerability in the Bitcoin Core software could have allowed attackers to steal funds, delay settlements or split the largest blockchain network into conflicting versions had it not been quietly patched two years ago."

https://www.coindesk.com/high-severi...ears-after-fix

"This paper describes an easily exploitable uncontrolled memory resource consumption denial-of-service vulnerability that existed in the peer-to-peer network code of three implementations of Bitcoin and other blockchains including Litecoin, Namecoin and Decred"

https://invdos.net/paper/CVE-2018-17145.pdf

And it wasn't just Bitcoin-core that was affected.

[pureantigravity]

It is insane how many mining rigs have gone up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist the last 2 weeks. And not just 4 or 5 GPU rigs but people with multiple 12 card rigs, etc. "All rigs are fully assembled and have been mining for no longer than 3 months." Even people with lots of 40 or 50 units of much more expensive Bitmain style LTD/DOGE GPUs.

Just do a search. Crazy.

[cspringsposer]

Looking for some input from experienced bitcoin users. I have been thinking of adding some BTC to my portfolio but wanted to try to actually use it as currency before I put any investment money into it during this dip (or crash). My experience was not at all confidence inspiring so I wanted to know if my transaction was an anomaly or if it was a normal experience. For reference, I was using coinpayment as the exchange/facilitator of the transaction.

After creating an account and setting up my wallet, I purchased $125 worth of BTC. From the time I submitted the payment from my CC until the BTC was in my wallet was almost 3 hours (my status updates said the blockchain was congested and working slowly). I next sent the BTC payment to the retailer. (Overstock). This process took an additional hour+ to clear, and to my surprise, incurred a $13 transaction fee (i.e. more than 10% of the actual payment).

The payment was successful and my merchandise is on the way, but I have to believe this is not normal for a few reasons:

1. No legitimate currency that is going to be mainstream should incur a 10%+ fee simply to use it;
2. No legitimate online transaction should take hours to process and clear; and
3. From the time I bought the BTC to the time I submitted payment for the retail purchase (3 hours), the value of the BTC fluctuated against the USD (an increase). My USD cost of the purchase was almost $2 less than I initially was to pay based on the fluctuation

So what am I missing? Is this a normal experience? If not, please tell me why. If it is normal, I will probably avoid buying BTC as an investment due to the reasons listed above.

I seriously appreciate the insight from the BTC experts here.

[skaredshtles]

Bitcoin is not a functional currency.

[pureantigravity]

Looking for some input from experienced bitcoin users. I have been thinking of adding some BTC to my portfolio but wanted to try to actually use it as currency before I put any investment money into it during this dip (or crash). My experience was not at all confidence inspiring so I wanted to know if my transaction was an anomaly or if it was a normal experience. For reference, I was using coinpayment as the exchange/facilitator of the transaction.

After creating an account and setting up my wallet, I purchased $125 worth of BTC. From the time I submitted the payment from my CC until the BTC was in my wallet was almost 3 hours (my status updates said the blockchain was congested and working slowly). I next sent the BTC payment to the retailer. (Overstock). This process took an additional hour+ to clear, and to my surprise, incurred a $13 transaction fee (i.e. more than 10% of the actual payment).

The payment was successful and my merchandise is on the way, but I have to believe this is not normal for a few reasons:

1. No legitimate currency that is going to be mainstream should incur a 10%+ fee simply to use it;
2. No legitimate online transaction should take hours to process and clear; and
3. From the time I bought the BTC to the time I submitted payment for the retail purchase (3 hours), the value of the BTC fluctuated against the USD (an increase). My USD cost of the purchase was almost $2 less than I initially was to pay based on the fluctuation

So what am I missing? Is this a normal experience? If not, please tell me why. If it is normal, I will probably avoid buying BTC as an investment due to the reasons listed above.

I seriously appreciate the insight from the BTC experts here.

Not a BTC expert but here is what I think:

(1) The average BTC transaction fee RIGHT NOW is $7.18 for a 30 minute wait. This would only make sense for large value transactions. It would literally be impossible to send anything less than $7.18 in 30 minutes right now. See https://bitcoinfees.gitlab.io/

(2) Delays are normal. The block time with BTC is 10 minutes and a minimum of 2 confirmations is recommended for small transactions. That means a 20 minute wait. They might require 3 or 4 or even 5 confirmations. Add 10 minutes per.

(3) It is market priced (or manipulated LOL). You get what it is at any point in time. Be glad you didn't buy before a 30% crash.

Your experience is normal. The average BTC disciple will tell you to wait for "Lightning Network" that has unsolvable problems and introduces trusted 3rd parties (negating the decentralization narrative). Soon!

Obviously it has a long way to go before it is useful. Overstock also had big problems with it in the past and discontinued it after the last market crash in 2018. I'm surprised they are still trying to shoot customers in the foot like this again.

Try VISA or MASTERCARD. You get free money for 30 days and collect points! Much wow!

[MultiVerse]

Crypto is painful for everyday payments. Nobody uses it for that. Nobody wants to use it for that. This is well known. Companies still list crypto payment options because it generates free publicity.

Payments are not the right way to think about crypto. For now, crypto is a marker of cultural and social affiliation. For some it's speculative, for others memetic identity.

[cspringsposer]

Not a BTC expert but here is what I think:

(1) The average BTC transaction fee RIGHT NOW is $7.18 for a 30 minute wait. This would only make sense for large value transactions. It would literally be impossible to send anything less than $7.18 in 30 minutes right now. See https://bitcoinfees.gitlab.io/

(2) Delays are normal. The block time with BTC is 10 minutes and a minimum of 2 confirmations is recommended for small transactions. That means a 20 minute wait. They might require 3 or 4 or even 5 confirmations. Add 10 minutes per.

(3) It is market priced (or manipulated LOL). You get what it is at any point in time. Be glad you didn't buy before a 30% crash.

Your experience is normal. The average BTC disciple will tell you to wait for "Lightning Network" that has unsolvable problems and introduces trusted 3rd parties (negating the decentralization narrative). Soon!

Obviously it has a long way to go before it is useful. Overstock also had big problems with it in the past and discontinued it after the last market crash in 2018. I'm surprised they are still trying to shoot customers in the foot like this again.

Try VISA or MASTERCARD. You get free money for 30 days and collect points! Much wow!

I appreciate the thoughts on this. I do understand (somewhat) blockchain as a process, and see very real intrinsic value in it, but what I am trying to make an informed decision on is crypto currency - an actual currency based on/derived from blockchain. From my experience, it just isn't a viable currency and I have a hard time seeing the intrinsic value in it at this stage.

[MontuckyFried]

I appreciate the thoughts on this. I do understand (somewhat) blockchain as a process, and see very real intrinsic value in it, but what I am trying to make an informed decision on is crypto currency - an actual currency based on/derived from blockchain. From my experience, it just isn't a viable currency and I have a hard time seeing the intrinsic value in it at this stage.

Haha. I hear ya. I started dabbling in it back in February so I could learn more about the whole thing, and I STILL don't honestly get it. My only advice is to only "invest" enough money you won't cry about if it goes down hard. Just pretend it's like a night of $0.50 blackjack bets at a sleazy old casino in Vegas getting hammered with a bunch of elderly chain smoking Chinese ladies, where you get blacked out, wake up in an alley covered in your own puke and all but $1 is missing, but you go in for another bet, toss back a few more free drinks, wake up back in your hotel room with a beautiful woman by your side (who is not a call girl) and you're back to original stash of cash and then some. Back to the casino!!! Doh! Woke up in the alley again. SUNNUVA! That's been about as volatile as some of my stuff's been, but only when watching it closely. When I step back and take weeks in between checking my balances, they've not been so bad. I'm still up over all my initial purchases, but not my NEAR as much as it was at one point. But that's ok. I'm mostly in it just to learn anyway. And the memes. Definitely the memes.

[Skidog]

Bitcoin is not a functional currency.

Queue Stalefish and something about El Salvador...

[stalefish3169]

Queue Stalefish and something about El Salvador...

I concur that BTC is not a mechanism for everyday payments by North Americans who have bank accounts. However, that could change rapidly with the growth of the second layer lightning network and a change in tax policy to exempt small payments from capital gains taxes.

As far as El Salvador goes, El Zonte, aka Bitcoin Beach has been a great success by many metrics. It's proof that BTC can work for everyday payments for people without access to traditional banking.

Funny thing is we're in the second inning and most of you all seem to write off any impact network improvements will have. It's like you're being critical of the internet in 1994 because it can't stream HD video.

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