Posted on 12/03/2020 11:13:01 AM PST by Red Badger
I bought 25 bitcoin in 2013 for about $86 apiece.
It might not be real money, but it bought a shit-ton of gold, and new truck. And I paid a ton of taxes on this non-existent thing...
Trust me, the IRS KNOWS its real.
Yeah. I bought 4 bitcoin when it was 250 dollars.
Sold one when it was over 5000 dollars to lock in some profit.
Still hanging on to 3 BTC, anything I make is gravy.
Sure as hell wish I had bought some more.
If you really want to know, I can explain it. If you are just “tossing off a comment” I won’t bother.
It is interesting. It is real. And if governments spent their money using bitcoin, you would be a lot happier with how your money is being spent.
Do you get a certificate or some paper saying you are the owner?..............
I have a college friend who manages very large family trusts. We meet a few times and year to have dinner.
He always asks me about the digital stuff. His firm was hiring some people to come in and explain it to them.
What he told me was that a few (out of a lot) have asked about this stuff. What the firm is thinking is that as their old stodgy family trusts are passed down from the boomers, they will be asked about including some of it in their portfolios.
There are now institutional buyers who are moving in some positions for their “high value” customers ($100MM plus). The fact that CME opened futures the day AFTER the last all time high is telling. The fact, that three years later the move to a new all time high has been more “stair step” and less parabolic speaks to this being taken much more seriously this time around.
I am not someone who is going to tell ANYONE to get into Bitcoin or any digital currency. But I would be the person to say, folks should be careful about “dismissing” it. (Not saying that is YOU).
The biggest concern is, as is with all things, China.
There is a lot more terrorist and drug money being laundered with $100 bills than bitcoin.
I bought stocks. I have seen them go up and up and know that I have cash. Bitcoin is vapor. Poof, all gone.
In 1923, when 23 billion German Reichsmark were worth one U.S. dollar and people were carrying their paper money to the bakery in wheelbarrows, the German government had not collapsed. There was turmoil, there were political assassinations, there was a little incident in a beer hall in Munich, but the Weimar Republic continued for another ten years.
Just sayin'.
Regards,
Bitcoin works as a peer-to-peer open ledger system where people can exchange value.
What that means is that it works somewhat like any other money transfer system. Except, it is not run by a bank or country. There are limited numbers of them. The network is supported buy itself.
The ledger part of it means that there are nodes all over the world constantly updating transactions. If I sent you .1 bitcoin (roughly $2) the transaction would be sent out on the network. The nodes compete to “confirm” the transaction on their ledgers. The when the transaction is confirmed, your “wallet” will be credited with .1 bitoin and mine will be debited.
If you were to look up my wallet address, you could see every transaction on the ledger. You have to know who is attached to what wallet “address” but it is transparent and the system will wait until several nodes have been confirmed before you can “spend” your .1 bitcoin.
The benefit is that the network—all of the users—agree on the value. There is no “money printing” and no inflation. It is “barter” at its most basic.
Of course, it is relatively easy to convert the bitcoin to whatever local currency there is.
If you have ever wired money and had to convert it to yuan, or yen, or euros, you know that the banks will each take a slice of the pie at every stop. And a wire might take a few days to arrive if you are sending it internationally.
The other day I moved about $300,000 worth of bitcoin. It took about ten minutes. And cost about $4 to “wire” it.
It is volatile, but not as much as it used to be.
Whenever anyone asks if they should “invest in it”, I tell them to go to the window, open it, and start throwing $20 bills out. When that starts to “hurt” then that is the amount to invest in Bitcoin.
There are many, many other crypto currencies out there. Most of them are referred to as shitcoins. They are pretty much worthless. But there are a top ten that have specific purposes and are going to revolutionize billing systems, medical care, and anything else that needs to be tracked and “recorded” in a manner that cannot be challenged.
House titles are being put on the blockchain. Anyone who has done a title search knows what a pain it is. Putting home titles on the blockchain means you get a certified, “true” documented title history in seconds.
Blockchain and bitcoin are the basis of those things. Hardly anyone is buying a full bitcoin—at $20k that is a little high—but they buy them in parts down to a millionth.
Bit is a significant change in the way people will think of money and what we do with it. It is NOT going to change how you buy groceries, or buy coffee.
It is an alternative to a store of value—whether that be gold, property, or whatever you store your purchasing power in.
I’ve had some long conversations with the IRS about that question. Fortunately, I am a holder (hodler) and not a trader. But, I have to remind myself that Uncle Sugar gets his piece first...every time I convert a part of one to dollars.
It has never hit 200K yet. Just shy of 20K (per bitcoin) has been its highest mark thus far.
Mt Gox was a mess. But it wasn’t “bitcoin.”
It was an exchange. And a sketchy one at that.
Just as it is with gold...buying bitcoin and not holding it in a personal wallet, not connected to the internet, is foolish. Leaving it on an exchange is just tempting someone to steal it from you.
You can buy paper gold—people do it every day with GLD. But when the shit hits the fan, your paper gold is useless.
Same concept.
Cash in one third, or cash all and run.
“It’s not even real money backed by anything.”
The US dollar is nothing more than a fiat currency that is backed by nothing but the collective belief that it has value.
If/when that changes then you won’t be able to buy a sheet of toilet paper with $100 trillion dollars.
My bad.
Still, if you bought it at 900, you should take a portion of those gains at 1800, and then some more perhaps at 18,000. If you liquidated your entire life to buy in, you can’t wait around and hope it makes 200k.
I won’t need to.
Hey, I had a thought.
If things go south that bad, I’ll use the toilet paper as currency.
Here is how it works:
Each bitcoin has an “address”. You buy the bitcoin from an exchange. I use Coinbase, a US company. Then I transfer the “address” to my wallet. My wallet is ONLY connected to the internet when I am sending or receiving.
The act of transferring the address is entered into the network and “everyone” confirms that Bitcoin now belongs to me.
The reverse is true if I want to sell it, or send it to someone in payment. They send me their address and I send them the bitcoin.
I have to confirm all transactions with a 2 stage authorizations system. That way there is even less chance of making a mistake or getting ripped off.
My wallet has settings on it that will force me to stop...and enter a pin before I move on with a transaction over X amount.
So, you are never going to use this to buy groceries. But you would never use gold to buy groceries either—you would convert it to dollars first.
“If things go south that bad, I’ll use the toilet paper as currency.”
A common happenstance in socialist countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe is when toilet paper is a more valuable form of currency than the national currency.
Thanks! I wondered...............
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