Particracy Forum

I must say I still don't quite understand the mechanics of Bitcoin, though I'm reading up on it right now.

The moment states start worrying seriously about crypto currencies then I would start getting interested.

Hrafn wrote:I must say I still don't quite understand the mechanics of Bitcoin, though I'm reading up on it right now.

Whenever I try to get a gasp of them, I get the feeling my brain is way to 'normie' to understand this kind of stuff.

They're kinda cool in a sense, kinda scary in another (perfect for organized crime, as demonstrated by those Russian hackers who attacked our hospitals recently). But if I was looking to invest in something, I'd probably prefer to invest in gold. Or whiskey. Useful even if I would one day become a millionarie.

I'll go along with everyone here and admit that I too am struggling to fully get my head around them.

But like you have said, Governments don't seem to be overly bothered about them; it was in the paper yesterday actually that they were saying they were ultimately a waste of time because they're deeply unstable and liable to burst at any time.

Correct me if I'm wrong (which is extremely likely in this case (and indeed most cases )), but all they really seem to have done is make it much easier for cyber criminals to operate.

Yeah, essentially the only benefit is that you can hold and move money without going through the banking system, or fucking about with briefcases full of banknotes. Instead you get an incredibly complex online "coin" that takes up an awful lot of power but works remarkably well.

It's essentially a currency, but it lacks almost all the benefits that make investing in foreign currencies attractive. For one thing it's incredibly unstable, if you invest in Sterling or Dollars at least you know you're not going to lose everything in a couple of days, with Bitcoin they could be worthless by next friday. A lot of people ae sitting on a lot of bitcoins right now, a stupidly high percentage of them stil belong to whoever created the coin and his friends. Basically everyone who was even vaguely invovled in bitcoin pre 2011 is a potential millionare. At current values the creator of bitcoin is estimated to own $15 billion dollars worth of the things.

Assuming that they are still alive/still have access to their accounts they could just cash out en masse, make themselves stupidly wealthy in a couple of seconds. The value of Bitcoin would tank, every investor around would get scared and dump theirs too. In 5-10 minutes bitcoins are worthless, anyone who didn't cash out in time now looks pretty stupid, life goes on.

Also, Yes, I am bitter, When I first heard of these things they were worth £7 each and I nearly bought a few,

I bought Ripple and Tron for €500. Let's see if I'm a multi-millionaire in a few years.

Hrafn wrote:I bought Ripple and Tron for €500. Let's see if I'm a multi-millionaire in a few years.

That's rather brave,

An advantage of cryptocurrencies is that dissidents cannot easily be cut off. Recently in Sweden a bunch of right-wing think tanks and alt-media platforms have had their bank
accounts and paypal accounts closed. Many of them accepted donations in BTC even long before this happened, but now they are going all-in.
In other countries, they are actually upset now that crypto-investing has made "racists" rich.

I think that cryptocurrencies will eventually stabilize in value as more people start using them. I don't think that Bitcoin specifically will be widely used as a means to make everyday transactions though, it has become too slow and the fees too high. Litecoin along with a myriad of altcoins seem more promising in that regard. There are also new cryptocurrencies that give more privacy than Bitcoin does.
I've discussed this with an old friend of mine who has been very into crypto for the past few years.