Posted on 02/01/2024 8:27:45 AM PST by Victor
Do any Freepers have experience with Crypto/Bitcoin? Anybody been scammed?
Do any Freepers have experience with it? Anybody been scammed?
Is investing in a currency that is NOT back by a government a good idea?
I have no experience with it and I have not been scammed.
I have two rules. First is I dont invest if I cant understand the fundamentals of how its supposed to make a profit. Second, I dont invest with anything where there is a question about the fiduciary accountability to the investor (me).
I have ten years experience with it.
I have not been scammed. I don’t do business with sketchy partners.
It is not an investment in the traditional sense. It meets almost none of the conditions to be called a traditional investment. If you are not sure what it is, or what it does…be very careful. Bitcoin (which is the only one I would come close to reccomend) is very volatile. Don’t put a penny into it that you don’t mind losing.
That said, my holdings have allowed me to pay off two vehicles, most of my mortgage, and retire early.
Prepare to hear about tulips, Ponzi schemes, EMP worries, and a bunch of other things. FR is not really the place where you are going to get objective, reasoned discussions about this.
If I don’t understand something...I do not invest in it. Period.
Oh…to your last point: The fact that it is not tied to government inflation is pretty much the key point to a peer to peer value transfer system. No government can just “print more”. That is why governments don’t like it.
I have some Doge coin via Robinhood. Not a scam in the traditional sense but haven’t made much with it.
I second this suggestion. It’s a good read and explains the basics well.
Good point.
How exactly are profits made when investing in Crypto...?
I suppose if you own it, you can trade it...but for what? More digital money?
The idea that a currency is nothing more than ones and zeroes is a little unsettling to me..
It is easy to invest in bitcoin or Ethereum. It gets risky when you speculate on alt coins or meme coins, like doge or shiba. Open an account with Coinbase. It’s easy. You don’t have to be a computer whiz to get started. I like the idea of a decentralized currency.
I’ve been buying it for since 2016. I don’t invest it per se: I put found money into Bitcoin and Etherium and then hodl (Hold On For Dear Life). I’ve never been scammed or ripped off and have used the gains here and there to pay for home and car repairs and the like.
Thanks
You paid off everything because you didn’t use it as a “store of value,” but as an “investment.”
I haven’t, but my sis knows a couple that invested thousands in a crypto (at least they thought they were investing), yet can’t get any of it back. (’Novatech’ I think)
It’s very ethereal
Thanks.
But how are the "gains" realized? How are they transferred into normal currency (dollars) that you can use to make home repairs?
How would anyone make “profits” on trading the dollar for yen?
Stop thinking in terms of traditional investments. There are no revenues, expenses, profits, or dividends. The value is based on what someone else is willing to exchange for it. It is more akin to a commodity than a security.
One of the reasons the “investment” community has eschewed it is that they cannot “pin down” how to come up with a value model that fits in with their models. That’s understandable.
But that doesn’t mean that the system doesn’t have value. The blockchain and distributed ledger are genius and will be used for a lot of things. The Etherium blockchain can be adopted to contracts and used for many specialized applications.
It gets pretty cloudy when you move into the “Alt coin” world. That is where you can lose your shirt in a minute. Those are akin to “penny stocks.” I played with those a long time ago and never saw much use for them.
There is no lack of cryptocurrency.
In fact, there is code that lets you start up your own cryptocurrency, in very short order.
I sold some to make sure my asset based did not get too out of balance.
I bought $2,500 worth in 2013. That grew to be too large a portion of my “savings”. So I converted it, paid the taxes, and used it to live my life.
That is being prudent.
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