/biz/ - Business & Finance

>Is it a scam

Essentially. Cryptocurrencies are nothing more than people trying to create value from nothing and sell it to you. That's why there are a thousand different types of coin out there. People realized the real profit only goes to the people who own the coin.

>Is it worth investing in it?

If you hate money and want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, yes.

>Is it hard?

You sound like a NEET who thinks investing in something is going to get him easy money. If you want to invest, do a lot of research and make careful decisions on stable companies. Stay as far away from cryptocurrencies as you can.

>Why do people get to buy real shit with this?

They don't. I mean you can buy drugs with it. I think overstock.com accepts BTC or did for a short time but that's it. It's not an accepted currency and never will be due to its nature.

Buttcoins were created out of nothing by Emperor Karpeles and his developer Mr Nakamoto.

They hold no value and the price is constantly manipulated by trade bots that stir up speculation, tricking people into making poor financial decisions.

Emperor Karpeles is known to manipulate the network and has hacked over 200,000 buttcoins in the past year. I'm sure you heard something about the MtGox scandal.

It is actually really easy. All you have to do is pick a buttcoin exchange company and send them some of your real money. After that they put a higher number in your 'digital wallet'. When you try to withdraw your buttcoins, they put the transaction on hold and make you answer personal questions until you give up and get a second job to cover your loses.

The only companies that accept buttcoins are ones that either Karpeles or Mr. Nakamoto own through a shell corporation. They trade over priced crap goods for these valueless buttcoins then sell them back to the gambling addicts on the exchanges.
im a girl btw

>>373353
>im a girl btw

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain
It is a peer to peer network like torrents but instead of everyone having copies of music or files they share the entire ledger of transactions, the blockchain. The network is a decentralized consensus upon what addresses control how much bitcoin, and is impervious to hacking or control by a 3rd party. Politically however the idea is failing, because it is an anarchist infrastructure trying to operate within a libertarian trading environment. Some authority and leadership needs to exist, i.e. the Bitcoin Foundation, the issue of having it truly decentralized remains unsolved. The technology however is extremely powerful.

So it's best if I stay away from this correct? But how did some guy from /o/ buy a Lamborghini? Why doesn't the us say it's fake, it seems like the US favors bitcoin.

Just curious about this an I'm not good in money.

Also I'm not NEET

>>373340

>DISH now accepting Bitcoin
>Expedia now accepting Bitcoin

Stop getting buttmad and shitposting because you lose your last $300 applebee's paycheck trying to short PND.

>>373251
Bitcoin? It's the best game ever.

All the excitement of EVE, with none of the stupid spaceships.

At least Bitcoins are fairer than normal financial markets to the average joe.

Big financial institutions, hedge fonds etc. are not in the game (yet).

>>373378

No one accepts bitcoins. Everyone uses some service to convert the coins into dollars.

>>373404
It doesn't matter. Gold & Silver aren't much accepted either.

Bitcoins are a store of value and the easy of conversion is just a "nice to have" feature which increases the liquidity premium.

>>373408

No. Gold and silver are widely considered valuable, but aren't accepted because of storage reasons. Bitcoins cannot use this excuse. The reason why bitcoins are immediately converted is because no one wants to hold on to it.

>>373408
You know what converts good into USD? USD. Shits insane, bro.

>>373412
Not even my local precious metal dealer who has decent storage facilities wants to have gold & silver. He hedges his stock. (e.g. he holds 400kg Silver in stock and is short the same amount in Comex future contracts)

He does this because they does not wan't to hold the currency exchange rate risk.
The same is true for merchants who don't like the risk of Bitcoin prices changing.

However them accepting BTC as form of payment makes it very convenient for the people who actually prefer to have Bitcoin risk.

I'm not sure that there has been any investment that has performed better in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013.. Certainly holding for any two years of that period would have been an incredible return.

Bitcoin is revalued upwards on a logarithmic scale every few months now for 5 years. In between these 10x increases there are periods of volatility.

If you don't have the stomach for volatility then you should wait until Bitcoin settles down around $100,000/BTC. Personally, I have enjoyed the last few orders of magnitude shifts, and expect that the current market capitalization under $10B will work its way north of $100B probably by the end of the year.

There's nothing that even comes close to the historical performance and, to my mind, inevitable rise of bitcoin as it moves into a position to start destroying weaker central banks. You will regret not investing your life savings in Bitcoin, and might end your life over the issue. When you get tot that point I think it's important that you remember that someone literally warned you that you'd be committing suicide over this.. and that all it would have required for you to be financially independent for the rest of your life was to not listen to the 4chan trolls, and buy a few bitcoins. I think you probably should just kill yourself in the future, because you won't ever have that chance again in your lifetime. This was actually the whole point of your life and you fucked it up.

>>373447
>>Btc cultist really believes this.

>>373454
>not taking part in a religion based on math

Hypothetically, if every retailer took it..would it really matter? Sure prices would go up because of the mouthbreather-level investor demand. Still, no one uses it. They might hold on to it and wait for it to go up, but that's it. Its absolutely useless. You know what else people collected but never used? Pokemon cards. Nobody actually played that shit. You should sell your Charizard card while its still worth money.

>>373447

>10,000 USD to BTC

I think you mean 6,000,000 USD to BTC

>>373464
Listen to this person. He knows what he's talking about.

The silicon valley luminaries who are involved with creating TCP/IP, HTTP, the browser, etc -- don't listen to them. They're just fucking with you, trying to get you to to buy Pokemon cards.

Also pokemon cards were just as valuable as bitcoin. Yes, the bitcoin decentralized supercomputing network is the fastest and largest ever created in history, and yes Satoshi Nakamoto is widely understood to have made a major breakthrough in the history of mathematics and computer science worthy of several Nobel prizes in different categories, and yes bitcoin has a five year track record of exponential growth... but anon here says it's totally useless. He's obviously in a better position to make these judgements for you.

>>373467
>6,000,000

Oy vey!

>>>/pol/

>>373469

If its a currency then why don't people use it that way? Why aren't you converting your filthy USD paycheck into BTC?

Better yet, why would anyone with actual wealth want to convert to using BTC? They'd all inevitably lose a portion of all their wealth if they jumped ship. All while subsequently transferring their wealth into a the hands of a few neckbeards and Chinese nationals, who've been INVESTING and not actually USING the currency. This is why BTC is useless.

>>373481
Lot of misinfo on ygis thread.

Mtgox and the 1009 dollar cap was anninside job. Millions of dollars wasnt pumped into btc in a month to skyrocket the price. They had bots buying every 20 minutes.

It was an inside job with them pumping in fake money to buy coins to elevate the price. They knew they were just gonna abandon the site and walk away with the coins.

>>373481

Btcs is a way for neckbeards to live their neet life. It's their only hope, so they defend it every ounce of their manchild energy.

>>373469
My neighbor is a fellow Pokemon card collector and the other day he asked to borrow $5. I had this genius idea that makes Satoshi Nakamoto look like Slowtoshi Megamoron.

I grabbed a pikachu card from my collection and flung it out the window towards my neighbors backyard. It picked up the airstream coming off his pool and sliced pretty hard to the left where it landed on his window sill. My neighbor opened the window and there was his $5 card right there! Then he went on Ebay and sold it for fair value so he could then use the money to buy a dragon, um, uhhh, a dragon miniature statue on overstock.

Could you imagine how frustrating it would have been to open up a bitcoin wallet and send him $5 instantly, even if he wasn't home, and then have him go through hell copy/pasting his wallet address into overstock? Good thing he was home at the time so we could use my superior system instead of that bullshit buttcoin shit.

Buttcoins are for faggots only. BTC? More like LGBTC!!!

>>373469
>Satoshi Nakamoto is widely understood to have made a major breakthrough in the history of mathematics and computer science worthy of several Nobel prizes in different categories

10/10 trolling there.

>>bitcoin has a five year track record of exponential growth

Greater fool theory

>>373251
The problem with cryptocurrencies is that their value will not increase unless they're being used. The people mining them right now are not really willing to part with them. They're all waiting for them to increase in value like Bitcoin did so they can cash out for hundreds of thousands of dollars, like people did with bitcoin.

Investing time or money into cryptocurrencies now is pretty much pointless.

>>373454
>>373467
>>373481
>>373483
>>373485
>>373488
>>373499

Being right about bitcoin since 2011 has made these last three years the most enjoyable period of my life. I can not tell you how happy it makes me to watch socialists get poorer and poorer. I don't exactly hate you people, but goddamn if it isn't funny to watch you try and deny the irrefutable reality that you have been very wrong. I look forward to the next few orders of magnitude changes, and your continued denials.

I realize that this seems like a troll, but I couldn't possibly be more honest. This is literally my hobby now. Every single day I seek out buttcoin people, altcoin people or marxist/democrat/socialist types and try and read their denials. It is an unending source of amusement for me -- and more than that even.. it's heartwarming. It wouldn't be as fun to watch socialists grow poorer if they weren't aware of why they were so poor. This is why its not fun for me to rub it in the face of third world socialists -- because they're not smart enough to know why they're so bad at life. But if you can get on 4chan and find bitcoin threads, and have a few arguments lined up against bitcoin.. then you're it. You're what I feed on.

These little bits of effort on your part bring me immeasurable pleasure. I can't possibly thank you enough for posting here tonight. I'm not sure if any of you are the same people who were mocking bitcoin at $1 or $10, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you are duly punished for being a socialist, and that's what bitcoin is. It's punishment for being willfully retarded -- and for those of us who enjoy watching the suffering of socialists, it's grace.

>>373533
>i was lucky to buy before the bubble
Okay we get it, but now the hype it's over. This was these rare opportunities to get rich that only happen in a lifetime, congratulations for the lucky ones. Let's just let it to go now.

>>373458
>implying math always applies in real life
This is why nerds don't get laid.

>>373533
>These little bits of effort on your part bring me immeasurable pleasure.

I was being sarcastic about bitcoin. It really is one of the most amazing inventions in history, and the overwhelming amount of sarcasm in my post should have indicated that fact. Unfortunately, your head is so far up your ass that you couldn't see the side of a barn. Well, with such a sense of blind pride as you, I am sure a person could think we are headed to some far off fantasy that we are not, and then be fucked out of his fortune.

You have been blessed and you need to show that you have counted that so far. Right now you are high on a gravy train and headed to some place that you have no care of wondering about.

>>373573

So this is OP here and basically I shouldn't get into this right ?

>Is it a scam

Most cryptocurrencies are scams, notably Dogecoin. Bitcoin is not a scam, Litecoin may or may not be a scam. Namecoin is not a scam. Peercoin isn't a scam but *is* broken. Just about all of the rest *are* scams.

>Is it worth investing in it?

Probably not, you can make some money trading shitcoins (dogecoin, vertcoin, auroracoin, etc) but you can just as easily lose money.

If you're the gambling type, buy some bitcoin and hodl, in 6 months you may make have some gains, in the short term fuck if anybody knows.

>Is it hard?

No, doing it right is hard though (being secure). If you buy a large amount make sure you keep an offline wallet.

>Why do people get to buy real shit with this?

Why do people get to buy real shit with fake paper money that loses value by the day? (The answer is the people who have real shit are willing to trade their real shit for your paper money, or bitcoins, or whatever)

>>373533
>These little bits of effort on your part bring me immeasurable pleasure
You know what gives me immeasurable pleasure? The fact that Bitcoin is taking a huge dump today and doesn't show any sign of slowing. Every time it crashes I giggle in glee.

>>374175
the really huge dump isn't going to happen until the end of the month

http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2014/bitcoins/

>>374178
I saw this. You need 200k wire transfer and government I.D. just to get in on the action. Yes, it seems like Bitcoin really is for the common folk.

>>374178
This and the fact that there is no protection against 51% attack makes Bitcoin a pretty useless experimental currency. A passing fad, and nothing more. And that's coming from someone holding 35 bitcoins. I didn't even sell at 1200 because I thought it would go higher...just lol

>>373950
How is peercoin broken? Explain

-There are about 12,000,000 minted bitcoins.
The US is selling 30,000
thats 0.25% of the market

-MtGox, 180,000 bitcoins

Speculators please go away

>>374229
there's 140,000 more

>>373251

>is it a scam

It's a decentralized digital currency. It cannot inherently be a "scam", however the markets that bitcoin trades on are shady at best, prone to massive failures and breaches (MtGOX among many others in the past), and are thin and illiquid enough that those with moderate wealth and trading expertise can easily manipuate the market to their whims.

>is it worth investing in
Personally, I say yes, but I fully disclose that I am biased, having invested my $1800 tax return last may at an average price of about $125 and am sitting quite pretty regardless of where the price action goes.

Historically speaking, BTC has been a tremendous investment if you've been able to hold through the downturns or just sell out completely when you've reached a number you're happy with cashing out at.

I personally believe the potential upsides far exceed the potential downsides to investing, so long as you only put in money you are 1000000% willing to lose. Although thats the same spiel you hear regarding every investment, it holds especially true for BTC.

You also need to have the fortitude to hold through significant downturns, as they have happened in the past and will likely happen again. As of right now the price is 575 and no one knows where the fuck it's going in 2 months let alone a full year.

Best advice is just to dollar cost average in over whatever time frame you're comfortable with, and hold until you either lose all your money or hit your cash-out threshhold

>is it hard

Depends. You need to create an account on an exchange (Bitstamp is preferred), and send them some personal information to verify your account to allow for trading

You then need to wire money to the exchange to credit your account, which can incur fees and wait times.

You also should, prior to any of this, EDUCATE YOURSELF on BTC and how it all works, wallets, transfers, etc. You are in COMPLETE CONTROL of your coins (cont)

>>373251

(cont)

you are in COMPLETE CONTROL of your coins. There is no deposit insurance to protect you if the exchange you hold them on goes under (thanks Gox, you faggots). If you fuck up the sending/recieving address, you will send your coins to someone else or to no one at all, and lose that transaction amount for good. There are many ways to fuck up and no one is going to hold your hand through it

It is strongly advised to learn to how to create your own cold wallet/paper wallet, or at the very least create a wallet account on blockchain, but the more control you have over your OWN coins, the better. Leaving them sitting on your exchange account is NOT RECOMMENDED unless they're for short term trading purposes.

>Why do people get to buy real shit with this?

Because the market has decided BTC has value, and those willing to accept BTC as a form of payment are doing so. Things have value becuase people give them value, whether it be BTC or paper currency.

>>374229

If 30k BTC are dropped on the market, the price will fall like a stone.

There might be 12,000,000 minted coins, but only a fraction of those are being traded.
Most of them are in storage, owned by very few people.


The amount of people who actually own Bitcoins, is ridiculously small. 30k coins is going to make a fuckhuge impact.

http://bitscan.com/bitnews/item/how-many-people-really-own-bitcoins-and-why-does-it-matter

>Amount of people who own Bitcoins is 1.2 million maximum.
>and the vast majority of these, almost one million, hold less than a full bitcoin. The total of this million-or-so accounts is just 87,000 btc.

>>374285

do you really think whoever gets those coins would be stupid enough to just do a market sell for all of them?

the slippage would be fucking brutal

they'd be smarter to cash out in small increments to avoid fucking the market.

Also, anyone purchasing that many coins isn't likely looking for a quick flip and will want to hang onto them or even drive price upwards before beginning to unload

>>373464
I-I played the TCG...


I still do fuckers.

>>373251
I'm only gonna comment on
>Is it worth investing in it?
And the answer, at this point, is no. However, it might be worth investing in altcoins, on the hype, and then immediately flipping them for 20-30% more. So right now you're looking at things such as privacy enhancing coins - DarkCoin, Monero, Bloobery. Or sportcoins - GoalCoin. Or "investment" grade coins - ENRG, FUEL, etc...

It's cool that people make money trading cryptocurrencies, but honestly I really only use them to engage in "counter-economic activities" and I make far far more money than I would ordinarily make just trading them.

Bitcoin is not decentrilised. Still want to invest? Take a look here:
https://blockchain.info/pools

It's easy to buy drugs with

New guy herre
Are bittcoins and dogecoins different currencies? Are all those different names you hear, completely different currencies? Or are they all considered "bittcoin" or just cryptocurrency?

>>374688
Their cost is determined relatively to bitcoin, because it was the first one. They are completely different currencies.

ITT: Butmad people who missed the train and didn't get rich with BTC, and because of their pride they refuse to get in now (if they do they will still be able to make a nice profit) are now shilling to scare away people of the currency, because hurr It is not that I was so stupid to not invest in the technology that will be the digital currency of the future, it that it was, and still is a scam even if almost everyone that invested on it early is now fucking rich, the market cap and the price is orders of magnitude bigger that it was in the beginning and it is still growing, and more and more business are accepting it.

Meanwhile I bough a new car and paid half of my house price with the money I made with it. Stay mad Luddites.

>>374681
>https://blockchain.info/pools

looks like someone is spreading 51% attack FUD

>>373926

Also been doing this since 2011, here is the straightest answer you will get:

If you are not sure about this don't do it. There are LOTS of pitfalls, shit is pretty easily stolen.

If you think it's interesting enough, keep reading on the bitcoin.it wiki. Everything you need to know is there, including the known potential problems with bitcoin, how bad they are really, and what is just a bunch of fearmongering lies. It took me about 3 days of solid reading to fully wrap my head around what the fuck was going on, and when I was done, I bet my future on it.

BTW recent price drop is right on schedule & has nothing to do with the auction, that is just people searching for reasons

The real reason is: I don't fucking know but who cares it's a natural fucking market movement

>>373251
Also stay away from altcoins until you know wtf you are doing. Make sure you read up on PROPER cold storage before buying any BTC. GET PARANOID about security, personal responsibility means nobody can get your coins back for you, period

>>374752
Price is gonna fall ASAP after 51 is reached.

>>373251
Advice: Sell Bitcoins now, Buy after people realize Bitcoin is still going to work regardless, make a nice Profit

>>374763
just posted this in another thread since nobody who goes around saying GHASH.IO IS LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER has any idea what a 51% attack is

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power

plz note the category of severity as well as the things the attacker can and can't do thx

there will almost certainly be a price drop but it won't be worse than silkroad or gox, and both of those are just part of the chart wave now

>>374763
That won't be for several years though, right?

>>373408
>Bitcoins are a store of value
HAHAHAHAHA. Precious metal coins store value because it's not just some arbitrary number printed on the front. The value of the metal content determines the value of the coin.

Butcoins are just another fiat currency, just without government backing it.

>>374909
Can you eat gold?

>>374920
Can you eat your hard drive?

>>374909
Explain paper bills mate.
Because paper is definitely worth 100USD

If you are going to buy and sell it on the long term it's basically a bet against fiat currencies and against a positive outlook on the stability of the markets and our governments as a whole.

As long as people will use fiat, and there is no big downside to it (hyperinflation, mandatory taxation through no-cash laws and so on), there is no real huge upside to using crypto-currencies.

Now, if there was to come a market crash, with following hyperinflation and fiat money getting worthless, it might be hugely beneficial, giving people an easy way to jump the ship from a dying currency to a stable deflationary one, ie buying the fuck out of the most popular crypto with all their money. Of course this will lead to a value explosion and those who got in early will be the new rich fucks. Same logic as goldbugs have basically.

Now when this happens , you'll at some point won't be able to trade your buttcoins back into USD again, because USD will be dead. Until the government fully bans crypto and issues a new currency, maybe even with bitcoin-like qualities, though fully controlled by the feds. Even then cryptos will have their place in black makets (as they do now), and probably more so if governments turn more and more authoritarian.


Personally I am long bitcoin. But very long term, and part of me getting into it is ideological (Libertarian).
I'm not sure if bitcoin will win out in the end, maybe a better more feature rich currency will take over (NXT for example) in the end, but crypto is here to stay brother.

>>374285
Daily volume traded on exchanges is 2m+ per day. I don't think 30k will make that much of an impact.
And that is assuming someone would just dump everything at once. Sure price would maybe spike down, but quickly retrace back up. Selling 6k on bitstamp right now would drive the price to $515.

Then take into account that they won't get them at a super bargain, with a value of ~17m, I could imagine they maybe get it for 90 cents on the dollar, maybe a little more. Trading fees on the exchange are 0.5% or less, then also the buyer could hedge the transaction out instantly by selling short on bitfinex, allowing him to lock in his risk, another reason to believe that the coins won't be that much below market value.