Bitcoin Nears $6,000 For the First Time (bloomberg.com)

Bitcoin closed in on another milestone Friday, as the digital currency approached $6,000 for the first time to put its gain in 2017 to above 500 percent. From a report: The push higher comes just three days after bitcoin suffered its biggest one-day drop in a month on rising concern that regulators are increasingly targeting digital currencies. It's added almost $500 in value in the past two days alone.

Comments

In hindsight

[corychristison]

In hindsight, maybe I should have held on to those bitcoins from 2012...

Re:In hindsight

[Cytotoxic]

Yeah, I was too smart for all of this.

We downloaded it right after it first appeared on the net to play with it. Shared computing was just becoming a thing, with folding at home. So we installed in on a couple of machines to see what it was. After playing around with it for a couple of weeks, I had 1 bitcoin and my lead developer had three. I thought it was interesting, but essentially pointless and deleted it. My buddy kept playing around and eventually amassed 7 whole bitcoins.

They were valued at about 50 cents, theoretically, when we started. They spiked to $7 in a really short time, then back down to a buck. When they went back up over two bucks, my buddy sold out. He's no fool. We both knew a bubble scam when we saw it.

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Do you really want to be on an FBI or DHS watchlist as a potential criminal or terrorist?

Re:In hindsight

[Billly Gates]

Wait he sold his bitcoins for $14??

Those 7 would be worth $42,000! Who is the fool?

Re:In hindsight

[corychristison]

Well, I'm not American, so there's that.

Re:In hindsight

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ah yeah, that reminds me of when I got out of Magic: the Gathering. "Ten bucks? For a pack of Legends! You realize the retail price on that pack is $3.95? Count me out! Later, fools!"

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to thank Slashdot (again) for running their July 2010 article on bitcoin. I mined and didn't sell until I sold about 3% recently, so thank you. And for all the negative comments about it being a ponzi, tulips, you can "just duplicate your wallet and duplicate your coins" and all the other nonsense, glad I didn't listen.

Yet, more than 7 years later, I keep hearing the same thing. Many people are too clever by half. Or at least think they are smart.

Re:In hindsight

[hattable]

True. Adding you to the list twice really wouldn't do much.

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot railed against bitcoin since day one. Being interested in the technology, I followed it and accumulated bitcoin over time, stopping in 2011 when I considered that I had enough and the price had hit $10. Hodling ever since. Haters gonna hate. :)

Re:In hindsight

[zlives]

LOL.... sigh.... ahem.... happy friday

Re:In hindsight

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I'm kicking myself for not making bi-weekly buys of say $250 over the past few years. I got in when BTC was trading around $250, so even $750 seemed like a high valuation back then and I didn't put more money in.

That being said, I'm pretty happy with my return. My holdings are now valued at more than six figures and I invested less than $10,000 initially. It's kicked the crap out of my other retirement holdings.

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

What pool were you using maybe you still have a balance there?

Re: In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

My Enron shares are going to be worth something any day now. Also, my pets.com stock! C'mon leeman Bros! You can do it!

(Scams look great until they don't)

Re: In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you cash them out periodically "buy low/sell high" until your initial investment is covered (in cash) and from that point on profit with every move.

Made a killing in the market since 2010. So good that I foresee a very early retirement.

You're just butthurt you weren't smart enough to act. Cost you big time.

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, sarcasm...

Re:In hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

Folding@home is nearly a decade older than BitCoin though...

Re:In hindsight

[Gussington]

Wait he sold his bitcoins for $14??

Those 7 would be worth $42,000! Who is the fool?

Yeah, that's the joke. And you a good joke only gets funnier when you explain it...

Re:In hindsight

[ncc74656]

Could be worse. Early on, I had my VPS solo-mining when it was idle...and I managed to find a block, but didn't notice it until a couple years or so later. When I discovered I had 50 BTC on hand, the value had already gone up to $13 each. I spent most of it on a Radeon HD 7750 (to get into GPU mining) and a couple of Butterfly Labs ASIC miners (something like 5-7 GH/s each). If I had just held onto those 50 CPU-mined BTC, they'd be worth about $300k right now.

I now have a rig with four GeForce 1070s producing maybe $40-$50 per week, and I've been buying $100 or $200 worth here and there (kinda getting it onto a monthly basis lately). So far, money invested in Bitcoin is showing more growth than mining, but then I have a $100 purchase from last December (when Bitcoin was down to about $775) whose growth is throwing the totals through the roof, while I've only been back in mining since June. (Still have the mining gear from the first time around, but except for the aforementioned Radeon, they're only useful as space heaters now.)

Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

Normally I laugh at people foolish to buy at a high and sell low when it tanks, but I am thinking it will only go up for the following reasons:
1. We are at an economic height now and growth we have not seen since the mid to late 1990s.
2. Russia and other countries are launching their own bitcoins
3. Goldman Sachs and others like this because they can do business without being taxed or have the government snoop. You can easily do commerce in bitcoins and not pay taxes

So what makes 1 unique and retarded? Well, like gold bitcoin has an inverse relationship to the stock market. WIth over-inflated prices we know a crash is coming and recession will strike. That is the norm these days. When it does gold SPIKES. When Wall Street sees their stocks losing 1/2 it's value in just 3 months they need a safe haven to put their money. Gold and bitcoin are such.

Even better bitcoins may skyrocket in value in such an event in a stock market collapse making thsoe who didn't get in at $6,000 a coin sorry. I am going to save this comment so I can either laugh at myself for benig moronic if I am wrong later on or will do this as a HA told ya so!

I am seriously thinking of putting some money down but am nervous I am buying at a high.

What do you all think>?

Re:Time to buy??

[corychristison]

According to CNBC it's going to keep growing past $10,000 per BTC.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

When North Korea rains nuclear hellfire down on our west coast metropolises, Bitcoin will be about the only safe haven for your money. Real estate will tank after tens of thousands of square miles of prime property are forever off limits due to radiation contamination, and the economic hit to the US stock market will probably be upwards of 50% loss. It will aboslutely send the USA into a major recession, more likely depression, and it will take literally decades to rebuild the infrastructure decimated by the hydrogen bombs. Jobs will be exceptionally hard to obtian, and those who own Bitcoin or gold will be the only ones able to maintain a reasonable facsimile of their old lifestyles.

Re:Time to buy??

[Cytotoxic]

Well, I think the government is going to get their slice. That's how they roll. If they didn't already have the authority to tax transactions in bitcoin (they do), they would invent it quickly.

Plus, the bock chain makes bitcoin immensely traceable. Everyone knows every transaction that ever happens. So once you figure out who Goldman Sachs is in the bitcoin realm, you can tax all of it.

On the "other currencies" front.... this is where the $6,000 will be risky. Bitcoin is beginning to have real difficulties scaling, with transactions taking a very long time to complete. Other currencies address this issue. So a mass move could be in the offing.

That being said, there are probably fixes available for bitcoin that could save it. With so much money on the line, I guess it would be imprudent to bet against people fixing bitcoin.

Re:Time to buy??

[misexistentialist]

gold fell in 2008, I don't think Bitcoin would behave the same as gold, but losing money is always easy...

Re:Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

According to CNBC it's going to keep growing past $10,000 per BTC.

They lost all credibility with the .com rise and crash.

I am not following the experts. What I am following is lots of money is out there. People do not want it to loose value. When Stocks go down in value they put it in other places. Housing was the boom during the .com crash. Bitcoins are soooo easy to invest with less hassle during a crash. Gold too.

But overall bitcoin and gold are TERRIBLE investments as there is no ROI. But now my opinion is they are serving a purpose as the stock valuations are well out of place and nervous investors are buying bitcoin. THe bullish ones now will be buying them later on after their stocks start crashing and they need a safe haven. That in return raises the value.

So we will see. Right now I want to get money to pay off debt first over investing but I am considering a small tiny investment to see if it will grow. It is risky at 6,000 a coin for sure IN THE SHORT TERM.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't eat gold, but if necessary you can clobber somebody over the head with it and take their food. Bitcoins are backed by even less practical value.

They'll crash, and hard. With so many competing technologies being deployed, there will be other places to shop for non-fiat currency. And of course, at some point, somebody will find a flaw that allows wide-scale manipulation of the blockchain; that much is inevitable, as it has been with any kind of technology ever, ever. You won't be able to sell your shit fast enough when that day comes.

Re:Time to buy??

[GLMDesigns]

I own BTC. I mine BTC. I mine ETH. But in the event of "nuclear hellfire" BTC is worth 0. It will be worth less than paper money and certainly less than a pile of bricks.

Nuclear Hellfire == no electricity.
No electricity. No internet.
No internet. No BTC.

Re:Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

gold fell in 2008, I don't think Bitcoin would behave the same as gold, but losing money is always easy...

Gold will go back up after the stock market crashes. I agree gold is a terrible investment as it earns no income for 30 year returns. However, Gold sea saws and in 1980 it was worth alot too when interest rates were INSANE.

Money always moves so basically buying bitcoin for me at least is a bet that the market will have a correction. All those extra trillions of dollars will need to go where it is safe. That will now be gold and bitcoin. Then I sell and buy stocks :-D

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. At 50% unemployment you better have a stockpile of guns and the ability to fend people off. Your gold and USB stick aren't going to save you from being drug out into the street and shot.

Re:Time to buy??

[Tx]

There is no rational basis to predict the future behaviour of bitcoin, so if you treat it as an investment, i.e. buy in and hope/assume it will increase in value, understand that you are gambling, not investing. I say that as someone who is doing exactly that right now. I had been on a policy of ending each trading session with only cash in my trading account, expecting btc to potentially crash after events in recent weeks, and while I did make some money trading, I would have made five times as much if I had just held bitcoin until today. So I decided to become a gambler for a while and went all in on btc a few days ago. I have a fixed target to cash out at though, and as I'm only trading for fun with a few grand, I can afford to take the risk.

Re:Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

In Venezuela it's quite popular due to an unstable government and currency. If the US collapses (doubtful) you can always use bitcoin to trade and use any currency you like.

Re:Time to buy??

[Afty0r]

Goldman Sachs and others like this because they can do business without being taxed or have the government snoop.

Err.... lulwut? That's complete rubbish.

Re:Time to buy??

[John Napkintosh]

But overall bitcoin and gold are TERRIBLE investments as there is no ROI.

If I cash out now, I will realize a 300% ROI if I don't have to worry about any sort of taxes, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

Re:Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

But overall bitcoin and gold are TERRIBLE investments as there is no ROI.

If I cash out now, I will realize a 300% ROI if I don't have to worry about any sort of taxes, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

What I meant is it does now earn value. ROI was not the appropriate term. I think earnings would be better as when you buy a stock you get a share of the money earned. When you invest in a home you get rent, etc.

Gold well it doesn't do anything. It doesn't generate wealth. Basically you hope someone will pay more for yours what you bought it for. For 30 year investments it is a bad move as your money looses to inflation compared to a traditional investment instrument. But for a few years bitcoin can go up in value if you want to make a bet.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more worried about Yellowstone, personally. The timeframe for that disaster has been drastically reduced, there's practically no way to prevent it, and when it blows it will take out most of the continental US. If you manage to survive it, you'd better hope those bitcoins are fucking edible...

Re:Time to buy??

[GLMDesigns]

I 100% agree. I'm a big fan of BTC for multiple reason. However, in case of a zombie apocalypse, BTC is worthless. Literally worthless. Cash can be burnt. BTC doesn't exist without electricity.

Re: Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you gotta pay capital gains tax on that. Bitcoin is no different than any other investment.

Re:Time to buy??

[Khashishi]

Currency isn't supposed to generate wealth. It supposed to store wealth and make transactions easier. If it is generating wealth then it isn't a good currency. Of course, you are talking about investment, not a currency. But my point is that as long as people are treating Bitcoin as an investment, it really isn't much good as a currency. And if it isn't good as a currency, what good is it for? You are only investing in it because you hope someone else will buy it from you for more. It has no intrinsic value. It's no good for currency since transaction times are too long and transaction costs are too high. Eventually, people will figure out that Bitcoin is worthless. The only value it generates is taken from the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.

If you want to design a crypto-currency that actually functions as currency, you gotta design something that isn't used as an investment. Otherwise, speculators are going to ruin it.

Re:Time to buy??

[Cytotoxic]

Yeah, the "investment" aspect of bitcoin at this point is the part that is related to a ponzi scheme. Essentially, nobody is in the market. So as more people come to the market for a fixed amount of bitcoin, the price will continue to rise. Until no more people are coming to the market. Then it will stop rising. And then the "investor" class will leave. And the value of bitcoin will fall.

When these points will be reached is another question. One I'd love to know the answer to, because it would be really easy to get really rich knowing something like that.

Re:Time to buy??

[Billly Gates]

Yeah, the "investment" aspect of bitcoin at this point is the part that is related to a ponzi scheme. Essentially, nobody is in the market. So as more people come to the market for a fixed amount of bitcoin, the price will continue to rise. Until no more people are coming to the market. Then it will stop rising. And then the "investor" class will leave. And the value of bitcoin will fall.

When these points will be reached is another question. One I'd love to know the answer to, because it would be really easy to get really rich knowing something like that.

I think it will stay.

When Goldman Sachs realized in 2006 that ther real estate market was no good and wanted to leave while they still could they had a problem? It is not liquid or fast/easy to move. Buying real estate is not liquid or easy either. So let's say you're a banker who is loosing money FAST in a crashing stock market.

You could go through your lawyers, auditors, red tape paper pushers, other investors, their lawyers, then get a customer then have the money moved for each transaction. Or you could get your mouse and click buy and move your 10 million ASAP.

I think the later is the winner and normal Joes like how easy and simple it is to move money to and from bitcoin. It is even more liquid than the bank! At a bank any large sum of money takes processing time. With bitcoin BAM done! Goldman Sachs this time around will be buying bitcoin when the market crashes next instead of moving money to and from housing slowly over 1 year.

Re:Time to buy??

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

What do you all think>?

I don't believe the universe exists merely to screw me over personally, but based on what I've done with investments in the stock market, here's what I think. Bitcoin has long since passed being at the stage where I could gamble a little money on it and if it didn't go up, I could accept the loss. Now it involves a major financial commitment to me to get just one coin. If I made the kind of cash where I could just throw away $6000 and shrug it off if need be, I wouldn't be posting here. So I figure realistically 2 outcomes are possible.

1) If I get in, for sure it will tank and I'll lose thousands of dollars. I wouldn't be surprised if within 6 months its value has decreased by 50%.
2) If I don't get in, it will continue to defy logic and continue to increase in value.

I'll go for #1 which is the only logical course of action.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

have you even heard of a bitcoin tumbler?

or do you just repeat the "bitcoin is not anonymous" mantra you keep reading?

it's only traceable if you buy it at coinbase or kraken and spend it online without obfuscating your coins first. in other words, only if your'e a n00b soccer mom who thought bitcoin would let her buy percocet without a Rx.

Re:Time to buy??

[acvh]

sounds like my friends who always tell me stories about big wins playing blackjack at a casino. they seem to forget all the times they lost money at the same game.

for now bitcoin has made people some money, assuming that they have taken opportunities to turn it into cash. at some point a clever person or persons will find a way to hack the blockchain and all confidence in bitcoin will disappear. it will be good to sell before that happens.

Re:Time to buy??

[datavirtue]

As a currency its value compared to a dollar has to be MUCH higher than it is now.

Re:Time to buy??

[PingSpike]

Of, CNBC says so? Huh, maybe its time to sell.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

its like you're assuming the exchanges won't face regulation at some point.

Re:Time to buy??

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Currency isn't supposed to generate wealth.

Every currency on Earth generates wealth if it's deposited in a bank. Or if there's a deflation.

It supposed to store wealth and make transactions easier. And if it isn't good as a currency, what good is it for?

Bitcoin stores wealth just fine and transactions using bitcoin are a lot easier and faster than using the traditional banking system.

But my point is that as long as people are treating Bitcoin as an investment, it really isn't much good as a currency.

People are inclined to treat everything which is rare and perceived as valuable as an investment. Every limited crypto-currency will be treated the same way.

It has no intrinsic value.

Fiat money has zero intrinsic value. Different countries and governments regularly refuse to pay debts and default on bonds.

It's no good for currency since transaction times are too long and transaction costs are too high.

Transaction times are fine and costs are nowhere near what you pay for e.g. SWIFT or Western Union transfers.

Eventually, people will figure out that Bitcoin is worthless.

Gold and silver are in a similar position. Or shares. Or bonds. Or even currencies in certain countries of the world. Go by something using gold ... oh, wait, you cannot. All by themselves gold and silver are worthless.

The only value it generates is taken from the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.

The whole financial system of this world is basically a pyramid.

If you want to design a crypto-currency that actually functions as currency, you gotta design something that isn't used as an investment.

Good luck with that. You may as well rewrite people's DNA for that.

Otherwise, speculators are going to ruin it.

You mean human beings? And also tell me how Bitcoin is being ruined.

Re:Time to buy??

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

It has no intrinsic value

Neither do the paper bills you hold in your wallet. What makes Bitcoin really valuable is that you can transmit stored value outside of the traditional banking system.

You are also protected from having that value stolen by third parties. As an example, a court can pass a judgement and seize all of your bank accounts. Even with a valid judgement no one can take your Bitcoin without your private key.

Re: Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to pay capital gains. You're supposed to, but if you don't then it's up to the IRS to attempt to collect.

Re:Time to buy??

[Khashishi]

Transaction times are fine and costs [bitinfocharts.com] are nowhere near what you pay for e.g. SWIFT or Western Union transfers.

https://blockchain.info/charts...
So you think a 142 minute (Oct 20, 2017) confirmation time and $3 transaction fee (Oct 20, 2017) is fine? Maybe if you are buying a house or a pallet of drugs or something. And who uses Western Union other than Nigerian princes?

Re:Time to buy??

[Khashishi]

True, but you run the risk of losing your private key or having it stolen. I feel this is orders of magnitude more likely than a court seizing my accounts. But I can easily see how drug dealers could come to a different conclusion.

Re:Time to buy??

[twokay]

"When Goldman Sachs realized in 2006 that ther real estate market was no good and wanted to leave while they still could they had a problem? It is not liquid or fast/easy to move. Buying real estate is not liquid or easy either. So let's say you're a banker who is loosing money FAST in a crashing stock market."

Wasn't part of the problem they did get out fast? They just cooked up the financial instruments to do so and sold them to as many suckers as they could find (like Deutsche Bank at the time).

Personally I get the feeling we are close to the "shoe-shine boy giving stock tips in 1929" stage with Bitcoin. Half of my office are taking about "Crypto" trading, many are actively trading. I hear questionable advice thrown around daily. None use Bitcoin to buy anything, they want to get rich quick.

"Trade Crypto" adverts are popping up more frequently on public transport as well...

Re:Time to buy??

[DerekLyons]

3. Goldman Sachs and others like this because they can do business without being taxed

Nope. The IRS doesn't care what you buy and sell, but if you make a profit that profit is taxable.

Re:Time to buy??

[crtreece]

major financial commitment to me to get just one coin

A bitcoin is divisible up to 8 decimal places. You don't have to buy them whole. Spend $10 or $100 or whatever other increment you want.

Re:Time to buy??

[DontBeAMoran]

I'm taking a page from Star Trek and its gold pressed latinum. I'm having my Bitcoins converted to gold-wrapped chocolate. Still a Bitcoin in QR code form, gold value from the wrapper, food value from the chocolate.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

As the other AC said, tumblers are not that helpful against the FBI, NSA or CIA. Ross Ulbricht thought that bitcoin would protect his anonymity too....

Re:Time to buy??

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Bank transfers often take up to a week to be confirmed. 142 minutes are the average. If you're smart enough you'll choose a fee which will make your transaction be confirmed in under an hour.

Western Union is used by the people of the world. Tell me, how'd you send money (more or less instantly) from the US to a random person in some odd country or vice versa? Bitcoin makes it trivial. Bitcoin allows you to remain fully anonymous. Bitcoin won't make you fill in forms or show your ID. There will be no IRS involved.

Re:Time to buy??

[thegarbz]

If you want to design a crypto-currency that actually functions as currency, you gotta design something that isn't used as an investment. Otherwise, speculators are going to ruin it.

Every currency is used as investment, and every currency is speculated. The trick is not in the design but rather in creating a trading volume high enough that speculators can't affect the system simply by buying a small (relatively speaking to real currencies) amount of the currency.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Every currency on Earth generates wealth if it's deposited in a bank.

That's because the bank lends it to people for interest.
Money in the bank doesn't juts sit in the vault.

Deflation is unhealthy for an ecconamy specifically because it creates the illusion of value generation whin in reality the money is siting idle not generating real wealth.

Re:Time to buy??

[Lucky_Strikez]

No electricity or internet and your bank is going to be worthless too because guess what? It's all stored electronically.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

All the GP is saying is that Bitcoin is risky. Right now, people can use it to transfer money (or buy drugs) so there's demand, but demand isn't inexhaustible and it may change.

Regular currencies are valuable because you can pay your taxes in them and you have to do that. They don't have any sort of intrinsic worth, the worth comes from a social structure around them. If demand for them changes, it probably means a severe crisis for the underlying country, but yes, such things have happened. Look at Brazil or Zimbabwe for famous examples.

Re:Time to buy??

[BabyAndTheButterfly]

Are you american? You guys think west coast is the whole world? Bitcoin and internet is much bigger than any single country.

Re: Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Once bitcoin hits a plateau, speculators are incentivized to cash out and move onto greener pastures, in the endless pursuit of returns. There is a lot of money on the line, but perversely this could push people to abandon ship (chase higher return on investment elsewhere) over fixing things (stabilizing the value, not what a speculator wants). Depends on whether you see it as an investment, store of wealth, or currency. Nobody has the answer to that (though most agree it's not suitable as a currency just yet).

Re: Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you should do what I've done and switch to the split tally. I carry my tally stick and nothing else now.

Re:Time to buy??

[yoey]

If you can afford it, which means you're prepared to lose it, buy a few hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin and watch it over time. I did, and it's been fun to watch the values fluctuate like crazy.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash out while you have a chance. The problem with bitcoin is liquidity. You want to _cash_ out. Well, you need a secure way to accept payment for your bitcoin, and if the exchanges have a run, they won't have the cash to pay you. In may cases, they won't have any obligation to, either.

Re:Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

>like gold[,] bitcoin has an inverse relationship to the stock market.

So why are both high right now if there's an inverse relationship?

Re: Time to buy??

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

Banks do not loan out money in their vaults. The value of the loan is created by the Federal Reserve.

You need to learn about "fractional reserve banking.

Not your fault though, since none of this is taught in schools, which is the real crime IMO.

Re:Time to buy??

[Gussington]

What I meant is it does now earn value. ROI was not the appropriate term. I think earnings would be better as when you buy a stock you get a share of the money earned. When you invest in a home you get rent, etc.

There's two ways to earn money off any investment, earnings and capital gain. Currency trading is all the latter.

Re:Time to buy??

[ncc74656]

If you're smart enough you'll choose a fee which will make your transaction be confirmed in under an hour.

...unless you don't care how quickly the transfer goes through, in which case you set a low fee. When I got my Trezor a while back and moved funds onto it, I set fees around 50-250 satoshis/byte, which I think worked out at the time to something like 5-25 cents for the transaction. So what if it took 36 hours to go through? I wasn't going to spend my stash on anything anytime soon, so I wasn't in a hurry.

I suppose there are instances where you want transactions to confirm in a more timely manner, but if those circumstances don't apply to you, you can still get cheap transactions if you have some patience.

Re:Time to buy??

[GLMDesigns]

LOL.

Yes I realize that. I extrapolated to a SHTF (sh!t hits the fan) scenario; zombie apocalypse.

Still, if China and the US are knocked off the grid for a while (EMP) then finding a block will take a hell of lot longer than 10 minutes. Maybe 10 hours. Maybe longer.

this has been up for at least 8 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

and none of you fuckers have taken the fr1st p0ts?

I'm sure criminals are thrilled about this

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the majority who use so-called 'cryptocurrency' anyway.

As long as it ends central banking?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: IF this bitcoin lunacy can break the central banks & IMF minus havoc worldwide economically? I'm ALL for it. THEY are THE biggest single problem imo (& they always have been).

Jackson & Lincoln kicked them to the curb & economic woes righted themselves (as an example) - then that FOOL Wilson illegally signed them back in (minus a majority in congress, makes it illegal right there for the NOT "federal" reserve, who also STOLE THE GOLD FROM FT. KNOX TOO NO LESS (Ron Paul tried auditing it, they would not LET him, also illegal to do - then it turns out the 'treasury dept.' & NOT federal reserve claim to be holding onto it for 'safe keeping'? BS - they STOLE it (what's safer than FORT KNOX after all, for Pete's sake?)).

APK

P.S.=> Enlighten me - what creates VALUE in bitcoins? Is it backed by REAL things like Gold for example (vs. fiat currency bs that is backed by EASILY SWAYED "gross national product" (GNP) that the CENTRAL BANKS can sway easily by altering interest rates on money (that isn't worth shit)? Thanks... apk

Re:As long as it ends central banking?

[grnbrg]

> P.S.=> Enlighten me - what creates VALUE in bitcoins?

The value in Bitcoins is that they are predictable and virtually unchangeable, and governed by the mathematics in the protocol.

The only way to change the bitcoin protocol is to convince the majority of the market that such a change is necessary and beneficial. It is not possible to (for example) confiscate Bitcoin. It is not possible to change how many Bitcoin are created. Doing such things would require that at least most people involved in Bitcoin (both using it, and the miners creating it) agree to do so. It's not something that can be forced.

These rules and their immutability, combined with Bitcoin being the first to provide such a service has generated trust in those who know about Bitcoin, and that trust in a system of tokens for moving value from person to person has given those tokens value. If that trust by the market is damaged or destroyed, the value of Bitcoin will follow. However, if the market maintains that trust, and more people come to share that trust -- there are a limited number of tokens, so their scarcity drives the value up.

It's the same with dollars -- the small pieces of paper have virtually no intrinsic value. But the market trusts can be reliably exchanged for something else. If the market loses faith in the system of pieces of paper (See Zimbabwe or (more recently) Venezuela, for example.) then the value of those pieces of paper can become negligible.

That pattern seems classical

[hcs_$reboot]

This week +10%, next week +10%, ..... then, after a while, suddenly, -99% ... (whatever the reason might be, some laws ...)

Re:That pattern seems classical

[torkus]

It's easy to predict the past...

Anyone can look at the 6 month history of anything and point out 'yep, woulda bought there, sold there, bought again there, sold there...bought a TON there and sold it all....hmmm...there and there, and I'd be rich off a $10k investment...I woulda done it too if not for those meddling teenagers'

+1 for anyone who gets the reference

Re:That pattern seems classical

[Anonymous Coward]

They said that when bitcoin hit $1.
They said that when bitcoin hit $10.
They said that when bitcoin hit $100.
They said that when bitcoin hit $1,000.
I wonder what they'll say when bitcoin hits $10,000...

Re:That pattern seems classical

[hcs_$reboot]

+1 for anyone who gets the reference

+1 for Google, then!

Silver and Gold.

[Zorro]

Don't burn and don't disappear when the power goes out.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Billly Gates]

They also don't earn revenue like a traditional investment such as a Stock dividend or rent from a bought property.

They still are not a good investment for 30 years for this reason.

However, they are great gambling tool or safe haven in the event of a stock market crash temporarily just like bitcoin.

FYI if you had no power who are you going to buy and sell from?

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

When the power goes out the world as we know it will end. Bitcoin or not will mean zilch. The world will become total chaos and you can only pray that fiat money/gold/silver will still be worth anything at all.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Billly Gates]

When the power goes out the world as we know it will end. Bitcoin or not will mean zilch. The world will become total chaos and you can only pray that fiat money/gold/silver will still be worth anything at all.

Yeah with no power no one will be buying or selling. They probablyt will be trading and dollars still for awhile.

Having no power and a civilization collapse is very very improbable and unrealistic. I feel it is someone trying to justify why they lost so much money buying gold at a high because they hated Obama or something of that matter but I could be wrong.

With gold values no one will be trading in their wedding rings for a quart of milk. That is insanity so I say nay to this how argument.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you know the price of gold with no internet?

Re:Silver and Gold.

[grnbrg]

In a short term power or network outage, Bitcoin will be as available as current credit and debit cards. (Which is to say, not at all.) But gold or silver won't be useful for buying bread at the local supermarket, either -- they'll tell you to come back with dollars, or when the lights come back on.

In an actual, we're fucked global disaster like a Carrington event or a global war that permanently (or nearly so) knocks out major national infrastructure? Bitcoin and banks will definitely be gone. But people aren't going to be interested in pretty metals, either. Trade (such as it is) will be conducted with valuable commodities like ammunition, gasoline and non-perishable food items.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[sinij]

If you intend to do prepping, at least do it right. If the world ends, and somehow you end up surviving then tools of survival will become valuable commodities - fuel, medicine, ammo, tools, food.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[thegarbz]

Don't burn and don't disappear when the power goes out.

They are also completely worthless when the power doesn't come back on after a week. At that point you'll be wishing you invested in canned beans instead.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[zieroh]

I maintain that if you know how to make booze, you can get anything else you need.

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Gussington]

When the power goes out the world as we know it will end. Bitcoin or not will mean zilch.

We had a power outage the other week, no-one died, and BTC still went up. Or are you talking a global permanent world wide power outage? Like the kind that happens all the time???

The world will become total chaos and you can only pray that fiat money/gold/silver will still be worth anything at all.

So out of all the millions of possible scenarios, that's one and you're backing that one only? Talk about speculative investing strategies....

Re:Silver and Gold.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't burn and don't disappear when the power goes out.

Unless the reason the power went out was a huge fire at the location of the Silver and Gold.

Bitcoin's dominance

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I'm more curious as to why bitcoin's dominance has been steadily increasing since July. One possible explanation is that alternative currencies (mainly Ethereum) are no longer as profitable as they used to be due to an increase in difficulty. Or maybe Bitcoin receives a lot more attention. Or maybe it's just the sum of everything: a number of large exchanges, publicity, many vaporware ICOs, etc. etc. etc.

Re:Bitcoin's dominance

[hitchhacker]

Two words: Segregated Witness.

Re:Bitcoin's dominance

[Gussington]

I'm more curious as to why bitcoin's dominance has been steadily increasing since July.

My take is that up to now BTC was just a nerd thing. Now it is breaking mainstream it is about to go stupid. I heard a guy at work say he's shifted his retirement fund to BTC (already made 50% this year). The demand market is shifting from a few million nerds, to hundreds of millions of semi nerds, until it hits the billions of regular folks. BTC is the de facto crypto currency so will be a magnet for users new to crypto. The supply/demand potential could see this thing hitting $1mil/coin (sounds stupid I know, but why not?)

I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[IonOtter]

It's a bubble!
It's a scam!
It'll never take off!
It doesn't have a ROI!
It's blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blather-blother-bloviate...

When it first came out, it cost you fifty cents worth of electricity on your monthly bill. And even when you had to start buying massively powered mining rigs, you were *still* getting coins, even if the ROI wasn't there at the time.

So word to the wise?

The next time something new pops up, that doesn't cost more than fifty cents on your monthly electric bill, don't waste your breath bloviating on the Internet about how it'll never take off, and simply load it on an old machine you were going to scrap anyway, and let it rip.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a scam and bubble, what no one predicted was how large the bubble could get. Countries are really dragging their feet when it comes to shutting down Bitcoin...and they will, because country currency itself is a scam, and Bitcoin will ruin everything.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

Have to agree here. Slashdot covered it in July 2010, all you had to do was mine for a month or two (or even a year or 2), not panic sell, and you'd have a heft sum. (Buying might have been better of course, but there wasn't really a well-known place to do so then).

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

this.

thank you. so much agreed.

i can't get over how many supposedly young and open-minded tech-savvy geeks on this site continually poo-poo BTC. for christ's sake people, quit trying to apply old-world ideas to predict a new-world invention!

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can make money out of it now, no one should or would stop you. However, you should hope that you aren't the one who still holds on it when it suddenly becomes useless. Always remind yourself, anything goes up, must come down.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[torkus]

It can be a bubble and a scam.

If you flip flop and get out before it dies, there's no reason you can't make money off it.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[WrongMonkey]

Looking at the big picture, is taking your investment cues from slashdot really such a good idea?

Over the years, how many new technologies have been hyped on slashdot? How many of those have actually taken off?

How many technology companies have been bashed on slashdot (eg Apple, Microsoft)? How many of those have continued to grow beyond all expectation?

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

quit trying to apply old-world ideas to predict a new-world invention!

So you think that "new-world inventions" are impervious to the laws of economics? SMH

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

That's good advice for anything new. Diversify your investments and reap the rewards! Not every bet will pay off big, but if you make a thousand bets the odds that one of them will be a winner goes up.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Yunzil]

It's still a bubble and a scam. The fact that it's gone to $6k doesn't negate either of those.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[TeknoHog]

What, no tulips?

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[MrDozR]

quit trying to apply old-world ideas to predict a new-world invention!

So you think that "new-world inventions" are impervious to the laws of economics? SMH

You think the laws of economics apply to something that wasn't even conceived when said laws were dreamt up?

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[BabyAndTheButterfly]

lol,, if you make thousand bets you are a fool! you have to pick the winners carefully

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[DontBeAMoran]

thank you. so much agreed.

You seem like an ideal candidate to buy Dogecoins.

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

...a retard and his money are soon parted....

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Anonymous Coward]

lol is something only retards say seriously

Re:I've always adored the nay-sayers here

[Gussington]

It's still a bubble and a scam. The fact that it's gone to $6k doesn't negate either of those.

It might be a bubble, but bubbles still make lots of people rich. It's no effort to call a bubble, the art is predicting the pop and getting out immediately prior.

Reason I ask on bitcoin valuation?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: China no longer buys oil on the world-reserve currency/"petro-dollar" & trades shares back in GOLD!

* Get WHY I asked WHAT EXACTLY IS BEHIND BITCOIN to make it actually valuable?

APK

P.S.=> You break the 'petro-dollar', we go into Hyper-Inflation is why... apk

guns

[Anonymous Coward]

they're taking your guns away from you. quick! buy more! inflate the market! HURRY!

oops did I say guns? I meant those bitty coin thingies.

1849. Relive the nigh^H^H^H^Hmerkin dream. Again. And again. And again. And again.

Make greed great again.

MAGA

[agent]

Thank God for Donald J. Trump! This was only possible because he is president.

Re:MAGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Four-digit account that has been dormant for eight years suddenly comes back to life to troll for Trump? How's the weather in Moscow, comrade?

Re:MAGA

[zieroh]

Four-digit account that has been dormant for eight years suddenly comes back to life to troll for Trump? How's the weather in Moscow, comrade?

The email address tells the whole story.

Correct & understood beforehand (fiat)

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & my other post (on China trading for oil in Yuan, & offering GOLD in exchange - ultra dangerous to the dollar as reserve currency).

(Bitcoin's another no TRUE real hard asset backed 'currency' - we agree on this & THAT is what I needed reinforcement/backing on - so thanks).

APK

P.S.=> China's the danger now & so is the IMF/NOT "federal" @ all reserve central banks - especially w/ how they keep raising interest rates on money (the cost of it in other words for loan)... apk

Tumblers don't hide you

[Anonymous Coward]

Tumblers sound ingenius, but DHS/FBI have blockchain analysis software that sees right through the moved coin.

You can't hide BTC, no way around it. You can trade for other crypto coin, but then there are records of that.

Pre-fork Surge

[daten]

It rose earlier this year and then fell sharply due to increased currency trading and mining activity in China. When China started cracking down on exchanges and talking about regulation it fell. It then surged again in anticipation of upcoming changes to Bitcoin and related forks. Since anyone that holds Bitcoin when the fork occurs, essentially doubles their number of coins by now continuing to own Bitcoin and also owning the new cloned currency, in this case Bitcoin Gold, everyone is investing before the fork or consolidating their alt-coins (Litecoin, Etherium, Zcash, etc) to Bitcoin to get the free money. This happened earlier in the year with Bitcoin Cash as well. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar...

Re:Pre-fork Surge

[DontBeAMoran]

Make that pre-forks surges. There's Bitcoin gold and also SegWit2x.

Scam and Fraud Story

[Anonymous Coward]

How many editors own bitcoin and plan to short it?

It'll go up forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy now. I'll selling all my gold reserves and American dollars and putting them ALL into bitcoin and I advise you to do the same IMMEDIATELY. Only an idiot would not get in now. Guaranteed to go up forever!