(12-19-2016 02:17 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(12-16-2016 06:31 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Sometimes we need a bit of a rebuttal piece (see below linked article), when we are looking at various bitcoin perspectives (especially when confronting some of the negative Nancies that are out there, including some of the butt hurt bigblockers that you find on bitcoin.com, rbtc, anti-segwiters, and some of the alt coin pumpers that continue to assert that bitcoin is dying and their coin is better, blah, blah blah...)

https://news.bitcoin.com/lets-make-2017-year-bitcoin/

I recently kind of changed my outlook on Bitcoin in the sense I don't think mass adoption matters which in hte past was something I wanted to see.

Even if my local starbucks accepted bitcoin I dont think I'd use it there's no reason not to use cash or card imho.

I see bitcoin as a storage of value and a means of making large transactions, especially in "high risk" categories and or internationally. Outside of that I dont think btc is really needed for day to day commerce but it doesn't matter b/c bitcoin has value for the other reasons.

With India playing games with banking Bitcoin is a safe storage of value. When the Russian Ruble or Chinese Yuan is losing value, safe storage of value.

I do business iwth people in Africa Western Union will no longer let me send payments which it was always expensive anyway. They can't get paypal and bank wires are complicated banks dont like large international wires, bitcoin would be perfect.

If I were selling vapes or a high risk or high chargeback item again bitcoin rocks for that.

I think bitcoin has a ton of value and practical use but buying cofee and mainstream adoption for those types of things is not necessary.

I'm sure this argument has been made by others before but its something that just clicked with me

Thanks for those overall points, Jamaicabound.

I agree with you, and I also believe that it is a bit interesting, even in a kind of strange way, that bitcoin is evolving for people and their perspectives with the passage of time in part, as you suggest, we are realizing and experiencing more and more use cases - and witnessing those use cases play out in the real world. Sure, wider and wider adoption and use cases can inspire more and more development and more and more making bitcoin user-friendly and thereby inspiring more folks to find uses for bitcoin in their lives.

Overall, as you mentioned, we do not have a lot of easy to use interfaces that inspire consumer use of bitcoin. Even though I would not rule out consumer use, for future bitcoin use, it is not the be all, end all essential that sometimes folks have made out for the value of bitcoin. I think that that those consumer-friendly aspects of bitcoin, as you suggested, are not really a material component in current times, and there may even exist a lot of disincentives to attempt to use bitcoin in that consumer spending day to day way, such as bitcoin's volatility and probable record keeping issues - to name a couple.

Sometimes, as you said, it also takes a bit of time for some of these value concept matters to sink in, and surely each of us will express them in differing ways. Sure there are some folks who have made similar points to you by asserting that they are not going to spend their bitcoins because they want to get rid of the lower value assets first (fiat, etc), but yeah, also there may be cost/benefit analysis that causes some folks to recognize that they may be able to spend from some of their first world credit cards, etc... even though some of those payment methods are not available to other folks in the world, so they may consider the matter differently while still spending their fiat first (or not really being sure about the long term storage value of bitcoin).

I do think that some of the consumer matters are going to be better developed in the future, likely with the activation of segwit and lightning network and some other systems that likely build on segwit - which will likely take several years for some of these infrastructure matters to develop.. even though there continue to be ongoing attempts at various developments and introductions... that may "take off" at some point.

I agree with you that there are so many other (non consumption /micro-transaction spending) great things about bitcoin, that it does not matter too much about whether one use-case aspect, such as microtransactions, is adequately developed or user-friendly, and maybe even sometimes, the various misinformation and misconceptions of people in regard to bitcoin's utility is going to continue to allow "earlier" adopters (like you and me and a few other folks) to continue to see the light and to accumulate more and more bitcoin into our holdings, because we do recognize bitcoin's utility as a kind of longer play... and we are not necessarily going to get distracted by some naysayers who attempt inept and simplified comparisons of bitcoin to things such as credit cards and/or other consumer payment/micro-payment mechanisms, which may come in the future but is not necessarily a present day reality for the majority of bitcoin's longer play values.

I found the below-linked article to be interesting for guys who may be contemplating the extent to which (or maybe how to calculate their 2016 USA tax obligations, if any).

https://news.bitcoin.com/irs-attack-dog-...itcoiners/

Even though the below linked blog post was written and published about 4 months ago, I think that it outlines an interesting perspective in a kind of attempt to understand where and how value is created in bitcoin in describing the dynamics of the protocol level and the application level....

Even though the blog entry still seems to recognize the greater value of bitcoin's protocol layer, as compared with Ethereum's protocol layer, it seems to me that the article is giving a bit too much benefit of the doubt to Ethereum (maybe partly due to the fact that the article was written and published before Ethereum's issues with the DAO and the multiple Ethereum forks, that tend to demonstrate several weaknesses in the manipulability of Ethereum's protocol level).


https://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols

(12-09-2016 04:58 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 01:51 PM)Lenny Marmor Wrote:  I am interested in getting a personal desktop wallet. Any recommendations on which one I should get?

You could know more about the advantages of some kind of storage device like that than me. I personally only use various cloud based forms of storage, and the one that I think is best for allowing me to keep control of the private keys is the blockchain.info wallet (at least that is what they say about the private keys).

When I trade bitcoin directly with folks, I use the blockchain.info wallet from my phone. I think that the majority of guys that I buy or sell from use the blockchain.info wallet. However, I have a couple of guys who frequently sell bitcoins to me, and they both use mycellium (on their phone).. I do not have enough information to recommend or not recommend mycellium.

I have thought about getting a hardware device such as ledger.. but so far, I have not moved further in that direction because I really have not considered such a move as necessary for my current personal purposes.

Maybe some other guys can chime in here regarding what they use and why?

Hey Lenny Marmor:

I thought about you when I saw the below-linked article which seems to be a decent supplement my earlier response to you regarding some wallet possibilities (and wallet considerations).

https://news.bitcoin.com/choose-right-bi...let-needs/

This article is very short and gives 5 summary reasons that a regular guy could want to be involved in bitcoin.

http://vastbitcoins.com/index.php/2016/1...-bitcoins/


And, by the way, i was going to attach another link here... but i got toooooooo citeeeeeeee!!!!!

because we currently have a decent attack on $800, and $800 is looking easily in the realm of surpassing since in the last 20 minutes more than 450 coins were purchased (on Stamp) between $796 and $799.99.


Edit: Now that some of the upwards price action has subsided (maybe going to have a correction now, or some flat action, here, but who knows?), I can post one more link in this post.


This below link gives a pretty decent overview of various aspects of theoretical uses of the lightning network to bitcoin transactions (sure some of this has been tested, too).

https:[email protected]_lightning/bitc....bgp2xmtbi

I think that these bitcoin descriptions in the below linked article for 2016 are insightful and the predictions are fairly conservative... decent insight from the perspectives of a spectrum of various financial players

http://moneymorning.com/2016/12/20/bitco...fluencers/


And, here's another lightning thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...tning_faq/

(12-20-2016 05:03 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 04:58 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-09-2016 01:51 PM)Lenny Marmor Wrote:  I am interested in getting a personal desktop wallet. Any recommendations on which one I should get?

You could know more about the advantages of some kind of storage device like that than me. I personally only use various cloud based forms of storage, and the one that I think is best for allowing me to keep control of the private keys is the blockchain.info wallet (at least that is what they say about the private keys).

When I trade bitcoin directly with folks, I use the blockchain.info wallet from my phone. I think that the majority of guys that I buy or sell from use the blockchain.info wallet. However, I have a couple of guys who frequently sell bitcoins to me, and they both use mycellium (on their phone).. I do not have enough information to recommend or not recommend mycellium.

I have thought about getting a hardware device such as ledger.. but so far, I have not moved further in that direction because I really have not considered such a move as necessary for my current personal purposes.

Maybe some other guys can chime in here regarding what they use and why?

Hey Lenny Marmor:

I thought about you when I saw the below-linked article which seems to be a decent supplement my earlier response to you regarding some wallet possibilities (and wallet considerations).

https://news.bitcoin.com/choose-right-bi...let-needs/

The below article is a decent supplement to wallet and cold storage concerns.


https://news.bitcoin.com/idiot-proof-vau...%20Channel

(12-21-2016 08:25 AM)SunW Wrote:  

OH my!!!! Oh my!!!!


My orders are filling left and right and currently difficulties to keep up.. too much cash coming in, and sometimes wondering if I should not be selling any of our lillie fiends, because folks seem to be running out of coins... which means, oh my, oh my, and up, up, up..

Hey lately I got people hitting me up online offering to buy Bitcoins for like 10% or 20% over spot. First reaction is a scam, I messaged a kid back just to see what his deal was, he claims to sell them to people overseas at a large markup. Says he has limits on his accounts and cant get tnough to keep up. Anyone actually have a hustle like this going? Why can't people just buy their own coins?

$29.000 incoming! trust me.

Trump Picks a Bitcoin Supporter for Cabinet as U.S. Budget Director

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/trump-pi...-director/

Quote:Mick Mulvaney, a conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina and a long-time bitcoin supporter has been picked to run the Office of Management and Budget.

President-elect Trump stated:

"With Mick at the head of OMB, my Administration is going to make smart choices about America’s budget, bring new accountability to our federal government, and renew the American taxpayer’s trust in how their money is spent!"

Mulvaney became interested in bitcoin around April 2014 when he publicly stated:

"Just wrapped up a Small Business Committee hearing on Bitcoin. I know it isn’t a mainstream issue yet — and may not become one — but it is extraordinarily interesting and something that could eventually influence the dollar and our monetary policy. In fact, one of the witnesses drew favorable comparisons between Bitcoin and Milton Friedman."

He is the first member of Congress to accept bitcoin donations and questioned Janet Yellen, Chair of the Federal Reserve, in October 2015: “what Bitcoin’s rising popularity says about public perception of the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy,” according to Coin Center, a non-profit bitcoin research and advocacy center.

(12-21-2016 12:53 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Hey lately I got people hitting me up online offering to buy Bitcoins for like 10% or 20% over spot. First reaction is a scam, I messaged a kid back just to see what his deal was, he claims to sell them to people overseas at a large markup. Says he has limits on his accounts and cant get tnough to keep up. Anyone actually have a hustle like this going? Why can't people just buy their own coins?

Most likely a scam. Where are these people getting your contact information? There are a large amount of people on localbitcoins.com selling bitcoins at much better rates than 10-20% over spot, if these people were legit they could purchase all the bitcoins they need there. What payment method are they suggesting that you use? It is probably people using stolen paypal or bank account details, where the payment will be reversed and you left out of pocket.

(12-21-2016 09:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 08:25 AM)SunW Wrote:  

OH my!!!! Oh my!!!!


My orders are filling left and right and currently difficulties to keep up.. too much cash coming in, and sometimes wondering if I should not be selling any of our lillie fiends, because folks seem to be running out of coins... which means, oh my, oh my, and up, up, up..

Can you explain this? Why are people running out of coins?

(12-21-2016 12:53 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Hey lately I got people hitting me up online offering to buy Bitcoins for like 10% or 20% over spot. First reaction is a scam, I messaged a kid back just to see what his deal was, he claims to sell them to people overseas at a large markup. Says he has limits on his accounts and cant get tnough to keep up. Anyone actually have a hustle like this going? Why can't people just buy their own coins?

The story is plausible, but it may be a scam.

I got scammed out of a few coins by engaging in an online transaction, when it appeared that the dollars went through, I sent the bitcoins, and then the dollars got reversed.

Thereafter, I only deal with cash transaction - or if you have some way to verify that the cash transaction is not reversible, which is difficult to do. The person may claim, several weeks later, that someone stole their account, etc. etc.. and then you are fucked out of your bitcoins.

I personally believe that it is not worth it - unless you have some protections.... and I am not even clear about how those guys on local bitcoins do not suffer a certain number of scams when they are accepting bank transfers, etc.. maybe they do not send the coins until after a certain clear and seemingly irreversible point or maybe they suffer a certain amount of losses to scams, and still are able to profit? I am not sure.

(12-21-2016 01:37 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  $29.000 incoming! trust me.

Why don't you just accept the fact that you: 1) misread the upside of this particular market, 2) bitcoin remains a very good investment, and 3) no one is asserting that $29,000 is in the near future - even though continued upwards price swings, like what we are experiencing shows the ongoing decent potential for such in the future - recall the stupid-ass exuberance that recently took place with Zcash - which seems to indicate that for short periods there can play out an enormous amount of irrational exuberance - once the trend starts to appear to be going up (and reality no longer matters when a sufficient amount of capital is willing to be placed to "buy" and there is not enough coins "for sale" at such time).

(12-21-2016 03:19 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  Can you explain this? Why are people running out of coins?

People are not literally running out of coins, I think a more accurate description of what he means would be sell orders on the exchange are running out.

Traders will usually have a certain amount of bitcoins they are willing to sell, say you have 10 BTC and you want to hold 50% no matter what so you have 5 BTC you will sell on the exchange for the right price. The current market price may be $750 so you place sell orders at $760, 770, 780, 790, 800 for 1BTC each. The price rises to $800 and now you have 'ran out' of bitcoins that you are willing to sell.

Sell orders will never really run out on the exchanges, with the price at the highest it has been in almost 3 years and rising people will continue to see it as a good deal to sell their coins, and if they don't the price will adjust until they do. The coins are always just sold to someone else so they don't actually go anywhere, that next person is always going to have a price where they are willing to sell them again.

(12-21-2016 03:19 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 09:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 08:25 AM)SunW Wrote:  

OH my!!!! Oh my!!!!


My orders are filling left and right and currently difficulties to keep up.. too much cash coming in, and sometimes wondering if I should not be selling any of our lillie fiends, because folks seem to be running out of coins... which means, oh my, oh my, and up, up, up..

Can you explain this? Why are people running out of coins?

I may have used some inartful phraseology here, but the essence of the matter is that as BTC prices go up, some folks will continue to believe that the price is going to continue to go up and they will hold their coins causing an insufficient number of coins for sale to meet the demand.

It is not as if the coins do not exist, but at some point, people may stop putting their coins on the exchanges to sell them.

For illustrative purposes, you can look at the bitstamp order book.

https://www.bitstamp.net/market/order_book/

If you look at the right side (those selling coins), currently (with prices around $823), there are about 1400 coins for sale, up to the price of $904.

A couple of days ago, when prices were at $780, there were about 2600 coins for sale up to $860.

Sometimes those coins will get purchased faster than people are willing, ready or able to place more coins up for sale, and the same thing happens on all of the exchanges when there is considerable buying pressure and ongoing action.. well the order books can become thin in both directions, and that causes additional volatility too... but the essence of the matter is that there are going to be times in which we run out of a sufficient number of folks who are willing, ready and able to sell their coins causing the price to go up to sometime unreasonable and irrational levels. I am not saying that for sure this is going to happen or is the best explanation for what is happening, but sometimes it can happen and does appear to be happening when the price is moving up quicker than the books are being replenished on the selling side.



(EDIT: I agree with Savage's above post, also, which I saw after I posted the above response).

(12-21-2016 04:17 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 03:19 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 09:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 08:25 AM)SunW Wrote:  

OH my!!!! Oh my!!!!


My orders are filling left and right and currently difficulties to keep up.. too much cash coming in, and sometimes wondering if I should not be selling any of our lillie fiends, because folks seem to be running out of coins... which means, oh my, oh my, and up, up, up..

Can you explain this? Why are people running out of coins?

I may have used some inartful phraseology here, but the essence of the matter is that as BTC prices go up, some folks will continue to believe that the price is going to continue to go up and they will hold their coins causing an insufficient number of coins for sale to meet the demand.

It is not as if the coins do not exist, but at some point, people may stop putting their coins on the exchanges to sell them.

For illustrative purposes, you can look at the bitstamp order book.

https://www.bitstamp.net/market/order_book/

If you look at the right side (those selling coins), currently (with prices around $823), there are about 1400 coins for sale, up to the price of $904.

A couple of days ago, when prices were at $780, there were about 2600 coins for sale up to $860.

Sometimes those coins will get purchased faster than people are willing, ready or able to place more coins up for sale, and the same thing happens on all of the exchanges when there is considerable buying pressure and ongoing action.. well the order books can become thin in both directions, and that causes additional volatility too... but the essence of the matter is that there are going to be times in which we run out of a sufficient number of folks who are willing, ready and able to sell their coins causing the price to go up to sometime unreasonable and irrational levels. I am not saying that for sure this is going to happen or is the best explanation for what is happening, but sometimes it can happen and does appear to be happening when the price is moving up quicker than the books are being replenished on the selling side.



(EDIT: I agree with Savage's above post, also, which I saw after I posted the above response).

I'm going to supplement this one more time with another example of something that just occurred on Bitstamp.

If you watch some of the various exchanges (and the fact that they are 24/7 makes this kind of difficult to schedule), you will likely recognize that situations can change very quickly in terms of how many folks are wanting to buy/sell at various price points on each of the exchanges.

So, now, as I type, the price on Stamp is $827.11, and there are about 1,028 coins up for sale to get the price to $910. That is about 450 fewer coins up for sale then there were one hour ago. Also, about 10 minutes ago, when the price was hovering in the $826 arena, I had seen that someone had placed 103 coins up for sale at $827, then I was ready to get the popcorn out to watch (what I had anticipated) the small wall of coins to be bought up quickly. The price reached $827, and I refreshed my screen to see that the 103 coins had disappeared. Who knows about the guy's subsequent plan, but whatever it was, it appears that he did feel in the mood to have all 103 of those coins to be bought at $827.

That's an example of an evolving situation in which some folks are going to decide to either not put additional coins up for sale, or possibly to remove coins from the "for sale" category.. and maybe revisit the situation regarding whether or not to sell those coins at a later time (which may or may not pay off as a good trading or selling strategy).

(12-21-2016 04:00 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Why don't you just accept the fact that you: 1) misread the upside of this particular market, 2) bitcoin remains a very good investment, and 3) no one is asserting that $29,000 is in the near future - even though continued upwards price swings, like what we are experiencing shows the ongoing decent potential for such in the future - recall the stupid-ass exuberance that recently took place with Zcash - which seems to indicate that for short periods there can play out an enormous amount of irrational exuberance - once the trend starts to appear to be going up (and reality no longer matters when a sufficient amount of capital is willing to be placed to "buy" and there is not enough coins "for sale" at such time).

Ignore SourPuss. He's trolling. SourPuss gonna sour puss.

Are you talking about me?

Here's the link to the image of an interesting article from Adamant Research (based on the discussion that bitcoin has broken $800, seems to have published either today or yesterday).


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=...sg17256685

Thanks for the responses on the last page guys. I'm still trying to learn more about it.

I invested a small amount back in June and have seen a great return so far. I'd like to do a dollar cost average of sorts. Curious if the spike today changed any of your guys' approach to buying Bitcoin?

(12-21-2016 11:32 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  Thanks for the responses on the last page guys. I'm still trying to learn more about it.

I invested a small amount back in June and have seen a great return so far. I'd like to do a dollar cost average of sorts. Curious if the spike today changed any of your guys' approach to buying Bitcoin?

Of course guys are going to choose differing levels of investment into BTC and also differing levels of whether they are actively managing their BTC investment or attempting to set up their BTC investment in a more passive manner.

I think that my initial intention was to merely dollar cost average and to learn about bitcoin as I was slowly dollar cost averaging into it but to also attempt to make the whole investment somewhat passive - something that I would check in on a few times a month.

My plan did not really work out as I had planned because I kind of got sucked into the rabbit hole of studying bitcoin in a more active way, and the structuring my trading of bitcoin in a more active way, in order to protect and to possibly profit from bitcoin's volatility.

On the other hand, let's consider the extent to which you may feel that you have a decent stake in bitcoin. For me, it took a bit more than a year, where I began to feel that I had taken an adequate stake in bitcoin through my dollar cost averaging investment methodology.

You seem to be in a position where you may be questioning your own level of the stake in bitcoin that you have taken in bitcoin.

Let's say, for example you have $100 of extra cash every two weeks that you are ready, willing and able to invest in bitcoin, but you are not sure about whether the price of bitcoin has inflated too much at this particular point, and there may be a dip in price. A pure dollar cost averaging approach would dictate that you continue to invest the same amount of dollars on a regular basis no matter what the price, but instead, you are considering to attempt to play with your methodology a little bit.

Therefore, you may just decide to continue with your dollar cost averaging in a proportioned kind of way, and only invest a portion of that $100 (maybe $30 or maybe $50 or maybe $80) in order to prepare for a potential dip (and to use the extra money in the event that there is another dip). Those are very personal choices that come from looking at your own situation, your risk tolerance and your views of bitcoin... Pure dollar cost averaging would suggest that you just continue to invest the same amount of dollars on a regular basis (and maybe just taking from some other funds if you want to invest more during dips - that is if we are going to have any meaningful dips in the near future).

I am continuously making little tweaks to my bitcoin investment portfolio in order to attempt to keep it in a proportion that I feel as tolerable to my own financial situation, my bitcoin views and what I believe to be more probable short term BTC price directions (while also attempting to prepare for BTC price movements in either direction).

My BTC to dollar ratio in my holdings is currently a little more than 92%, and I am also able to have that 8% cash for moving money around, engaging in direct trades (including local bitcoins), potential arbitrage opportunities and of course to buy more bitcoins if the price goes down... sure given the recent price upsurge, I may have a bit of a high percentage of my holding that remains in BTC, but each of us is likely going to allocate differently depending on our own situation and views.

See this one:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-...KKBN14B1HD


Yep.. Bitcoin's market cap floating around $14 billion, which is an all time high for bitcoins market cap. The last all time high for bitcoin's market cap was on December 4, 2013 at $13.86 billion.

In the past 8 hours, bitcoin prices went above $14 billion for a little while when price went to $875 on stamp.. then prices kind of hovered in the lower $870s range for a few hours.. before experiencing a 1,000 coin dump correction down to $837.. and then bounced back.. mostly..

Currently, as I type, we have BTC prices floating in the upper $850s to lower $860s - which puts the market cap slightly below $14 billion (kind of in the $13.8 billion arena - which is coincidentally its previous market cap ATH.

Currently, there continues to be decent upwards buying pressure and momentum.... .which makes it seem as if the odds are pretty decent that this rally is going to continue.. and maybe even make an attempt at $900 in the coming days.. Let's see?

On the other hand, we also recognize that the shot up from the $780s to $870s was over a period of less than 2 days.. so experiencing some consolidation or even profit taking at this point by some of the bigger players may not be unreasonable (in spite of what appears to be ongoing upwards price pressures)

Don't many of us wished we would have picked up more coins through most of 2015 in the $200s?