Bitcoin Briefly Hits $99,047

CNBC (Business News) ^ | 21 November 2024

[zeestephen]

$98,530 at this writing.

[cuban leaf]

Talk about a house built on sand.

BTW, I just learned from my brother about a friend of his that was always a huge bitcoin fan. I said the price is popping and Joe (not his real name) was always a huge fan. I then found out that he paid $800 dollars for his bit coins and had bought a few tens of thousands of dollars worth Back in the day. Now, this friend was also always a little flakey so I asked my brother if he ever sold it. He said no.

However, when I said that he must be sitting pretty, my brother said he lost it all because he had moved it to FTX.

i.e. he lost it all.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

If YOU would like to be on a CRYPTO PING LIST, please pm me.

The Crypto Ping List covers the following:

Bitcoin
Ethereum
Other coins built on the Ethereum blockchain mining
etc.

Thanks! For it - or ag'in it, it'll be a wild ride.

[Drago]

That is yet another example of a reason for not leaving your BTC with other people (exchanges) unless you are some kind of day trader. Keep your BTC keys in your personal possession. (FTX & Mt. Gox are just 2 of many examples).

[P8riot]

It was $70K on election day. Been trending up ever since.

[Vermont Lt]

The FTX people were paid in cash for their bitcoin. They actually made money—but they did not get the Bitcoin itself. So, that sucked.

[Drago]

Yeah, I spent 0.32 BTC ($31K) on 6 ozs. of loose leaf tea back about 10 years ago...the tea shop was the 1st place to spend BTC in my area....I thought it was “cool” to buy some tea that way! ;-)

BTC can be essentially anonymous if you are careful/smart about it...fresh BTC wallet (BTC “Core” wallet) downloaded via TOR if super paranoid...fund the new wallet with BTC that has been “coin-joined”/”bit-mixed”/”whirlpooled” i.e. (the new “Ashigaru” project), then NEVER use a unique wallet address more than once. Also definitely no use of exchanges like “Coinbase” that require “KYC”. Not sure what you mean by “a wallet ID”, your private key is private by design...the only thing exposed to the blockchain are “UTXO’s”/public keys and if you haven’t associated those to any of your personal info. by the above “bad habits” then your “ID” is just a long string of random #’s not associated to any person or place. And if you only use a particular wallet address once (you can generate as many of those as you want from your BTC wallet)...Blockchain analysis will be stymied at the one transaction level.

[Vermont Lt]

By wallet ID, I meant your wallet address. Yes…that can change with every transaction. And I agree, your private keys are private.

I was trying to “dumb it down” a bit.

[zeestephen]

Re: "How many Bitcoins?"

A critical question.

Unless investors know how many Bitcoins are in circulation (aka - "the float"), it is impossible to calculate the value of one Bitcoin.

As of today, every Bitcoin sale, purchase, or transaction is purely speculative.

Second issue - in a strict legal sense, how do you prove ownership of any particular Bitcoin?

Since anonymity is a central feature of Bitcoins, you have no legal recourse if someone hacks into your account, and moves your Bitcoins to a new account.

Final issue - Block Chain.

I do not get it.

Anyone with basic computer skills could have created Block Chain 30 years ago.

Buy a public website.

Publish a "Write Once - Read Only" Excel Spread Sheet.

Conceal millions of Crypto Coins behind 64 random character passwords.

Presto - Block Chain!

In spite of my current doubts, I think digital currency will eventually dominate business transactions.

Until someone turns off the electricity, anyway!

[Vermont Lt]

Not sure of your point.

No one disputes any of that.

The number mined is a known number. I don’t know what they are exactly. You are using stock valuation terms applied to Bitcoin. That’s not going to work. The value is a peer to peer agreement, not based on float—you are not valuing assets across shares.

It’s a bit more complicated than a spreadsheet. LOL

One of the beauties of bitcoin is you cannot get charged back. It is meant for grownups who understand they are exchanging value. Legally, you possess the private keys that hold the bitcoin on the blockchain. If you don’t own the keys…you don’t own the bitcoin.

I hear the “EMP” thing a lot. If your power goes off for more than a day or so…your entire financial system will go away. Well over 90% of financial transactions are “digital” these days.

If the power really goes out, you better have cash, gold, food, and bullets.

[packrat35]

FTX is giving refunds now as they unwind it. He will probably get most of his money back.

[packrat35]

Coinbase sucks. Avoid them at your peril...

[Drago]

OK, practice “safe crypto”! ;-)

[Drago]

In related news “DOGE” is up 174% in a month!

(The “Dept. Of Government Efficiency” helped out just a bit). 😉

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogecoin

[Right_Wing_Madman]

Unless investors know how many Bitcoins are in circulation (aka - "the float"), it is impossible to calculate the value of one Bitcoin.

It is impossible too to calculate the tonnage of gold that's been mined and lost over the centuries. If someone dumps 10,000 bitcoin in the market, the price will go down. It's the same if a mining company discovers 1,000,000 ounces of gold in Nevada. It's not a big deal. The market price will simply reflect the increase in supply.

As of today, every Bitcoin sale, purchase, or transaction is purely speculative.

Commodities that fulfill the store of value function are mostly speculative: gold, baseball cards, rare coins, antique furniture, French impressionist paintings. You purchase the commodity with the hope that someone in the future pays more for it (store of value). Fiat cash is good for daily transactions, but it is considered to have poor store of value. It will most certainly be worth less 20 years later.

how do you prove ownership of any particular Bitcoin?

You're the only one who knows the passcode for an amount of Bitcoin at a particular address. You prove ownership by moving that bitcoin from one address to another.

you have no legal recourse if someone hacks into your account, and moves your Bitcoins to a new account.

That's correct. If someone else knows the passcode to your bitcoins, they are at risk of being stolen. This is what happened at the Mt. Gox exchange in 2012.

Anyone with basic computer skills could have created Block Chain 30 years ago.

The beauty of the blockchain is its mathematical encryption (it is impossible to decode backwards) and its simplicity. You're right, bitcoin should have been invented 20 years before it was created. But sometimes the simple ideas are hardest to realize.

[zeestephen]

Re: "Not sure of your point."

Simple - Valuation, ownership, and potentially infinite competitive Crypto.

If the supply of Crypto goes up, the value comes down.

Called inflation in my world.

Re: "It's a bit more complicated than a spreadsheet."

My understanding is that the Block Chain records an anonymous transaction between two anonymous persons or business entities.

How does that help you? I do not see it.

Re: "One of the beauties of bitcoin is you cannot get charged back."

I do not know what charged back means?

Re: "Electricity..."

My closing laugh line - which failed.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Pinging again with news.

Judge in Shanghai Court just ruled that Bitcoin is property and Chinese citizens can own it.

Seems significant.

https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/shanghai-court-confirms-legal-recognition-of-crypto-ownership-202411211417

[Vermont Lt]

Wow. They used to ban bitcoin every other day. This is wonderful news.

It’s good to hear China is a land of laws. LOL

[Vermont Lt]

The supply is capped. Once it gets to 21 MM, it’s done. Thus, no inflation of bitcoin.

The key to the blockchain is the confirmation process that records the “agreement” between the two peers. The process, which is based complicated algorithms, eliminates the need for a third party “processing” the transaction. The results are public and recorded so that anyone can see them.

This is th key to eliminating the banks and governments.

If you have ever dealt in bank transactions, you understand that what the bank grants, it can claw back. Once a transaction is done with the blockchain, it cannot be reversed.

There are many, much better explanations out there. It is worth taking an hour or so to understand what makes this different. A quick search will find them.

[Jumper]

I built mining rigs and mined Etherum from Dec 17 until Eth was done being available for mining. They bowed to the pressure of the Green Energy lobby. With that those who controlled Etherum no longer had sane restrictions on what they could release, or burn.

I am 83% BTC and 17% SOL. I wish I had kept the SOLona... but at least my holdings were enough that I gave a BTC to each of my boys. They are dumbfounded that they are sitting on nearly 99K today. Both have become investors in BTC.

All at once, for the first time in my life, I have more money than I can literally afford to spend. It is incredible that 7 years in Dec 2017 I started out buying computer equipment and self educating myself. The first 5 years were a tax nightmare because I owed taxes every year due to the deposits being income and then any trading.

Now I buy and hold so I do not have realized income. Trump jumped on the BTC bandwagon while the DNC was against it, yet during the election period you would hard pressed to figure out that the Democrats were against BTC/crypto if your went to Coinbase - they were basically running static not knowing the outcome of the election.

Trump has announced the US will hold BTC. Eighteen states are now going to purchase and hold BTC.

The race is on and it is a matter of how fast your state or country gets BTC holdings, but it is going to be the Gold Standard.

One-Tenth of one BTC which is 10K today will be enough for your family’s future to deposit and draw capital proceeds from the Fund/Financial House to live without working.

Self Custody is great. The trick at this point for me is that I will owe 60K on taxes for each one I pull out of coinbase. Maybe I can move them to MicroStrategy and put them on deposit since Michael Saylor’s an innovative guy;)

[zeestephen]

Re: "FTX (Sam Bankman-Fried) Collapse"

Incredibly, there is a good chance your brother's friend will get "all" of his 2022 FTX money back.

In May 2024, the now court supervised FTX company announced that most FTX customers will get "all" their money back, and the new FTX company will actually have a surplus of funds.

However, I think a legal word game is being played out here.

Probably - 100% of FTX Crypto was converted to cash at some point in time, so the FTX vendors could get paid.

So - your brother's friend will probably get back the cash value of his Crypto - on the day FTX collapsed.

Any increase in Crypto value since 2022 has permanently vanished.

In the final analysis, the bankruptcy of FTX was exactly like an old fashioned bank panic.

When all the depositors try to withdraw all their money on the same day, every bank in the world would collapse!