What are your thoughts on crypto?

BTC is like up 50% in the past month. But XRP is crashing?

And then there's all the other variations like litecoins, doge, etc

Cryptography is really cool

@alexbrooklyn I meant cryptocurrencies though?

They are worth investing in although it's not a trivial thing, especially given how high BTC jumped back from when it hit the £22k mark.

@Berkmann18 well I've only bought like $2,000 a month ago and it's already up 50% and people are saying it's going to hit 100k (from $20k).

But I'm wondering, where is this demand coming from. Why are people buying it? Is this just a bunch of people speculating on something that has no real value?

I actually didn't buy bitcoins itself so can't use it and I'm thinking most buyers are like me these days. Just trading rather than using it to buy stuff priced in BTC. And I think last time I looked, services with are BTC constantly change in pricing based on the current exchange rate.

@r20408e122449d We're still in Tier 3 but someone infected with the new strain got in so I wouldn't be surprised if we moved to Tier 4 instead of 2 in a month.

I had a few bitcoins and altcoins but I was advised to sell them before the expected crash after BTC exceeded £22k which I did, now it's picking up again.
I wonder when it would be worth buying again (and if I'll stick to having BTC, XRP, ETH and XMR) but at the same time I'll ignore Binance this time and only use Coinbase (for now).

@r20408e122449d @Berkmann18 Bloomberg: Bitcoin Faces Regulatory Scrutiny After Record-Breaking Rally.
https://bloomberg.com/news/...

Just got this as a Google News notif... Wondering if Google is starting to know too much or collecting data where it shouldn't...

@donuts I'm not an economist but in my understanding,
- the increased push to digital solutions (which lead to Zoom, Ocado & co stocks rising),
- the possible increase in the amount of people interested in cryptocurrencies,
- the pandemic, Brexit and all the other events that have been significantly influencing markets
All contributing (in some way) to the Bitcoin hike.

I could be off the mark tho.

@donuts This and the possibility that some banks/governments are trying to control those coins 🤔?

@Berkmann18 what's Tier 4, I think I read in the news some areas are already T4, full lockdown? No gathering at all or leaving house?

What about the vaccine, I thought UK was getting everyone vaccinated ASAP?

So u have ur own wallet, address? That needs a lot of space though?

@donuts It's a restriction level going from Tier 1 (moderate restriction, the closest to normal) to Tier 4 (full local lockdown which is the most restrictive where you're only allowed to leave the house for specific reasons and can't meet people who don't live with you).

As for the vaccine, only people high on the priority list can get it for now, and the supply isn't high so far.

I do have my wallets which aren't that space-hungry (possibly because I've got a lot of storage space to not worry about that).

@Berkmann18 the pandemic/brexit hasbt done much with golf/silver prices though which is sort of what I found strange. I bought about $5000 in those when COVID just started around January.

They're pretty much flat or even decreased in value.... Whereas BTC went up 50% just in November/December.

Cryptocurrency's biggest contribution is that it teaches us why we have all those rules about all the other financial markets....

I like cryptocurrencies but I don't think they are the future.

They offer a lot of interesting ways of holding and handling "money" but they lack something very important for them to work as real money and that is assurance.

What I mean by that is that the value is extremely volatile.

Additionally, because cryptocurrencies can't be rolled back (you can't undo a transaction once it's confirmed), it means that there is nobody really that will have your back if you were to be scammed (like PayPal and some banks do).

Cryptocurrencies are a double-edged sword...

Crypto is like gold but worse. It is pure speculation. It doesn’t inherently have value. It’ll very likely keep going up, but with huge swings.

Crypto doesn’t produce value. New currencies keep popping up, many are no different than ponzu schemes.

Like it or not crypto is here to stay.

@Haxk20 definitely! It’s an amazing concept. I’ve admittedly made my fair share from crypto 😊

@natescode New cryptos indeed will keep popping up, because it's just (ab)using the hype surrounding cryptos.

Most of em indeed are low-quality "scamcoins" that will try to get hype (while they are just a fork of a fork of a fork of a fork with no added benefit, just a different name) surrounding them, get exchanges to support them and then cash out.

It's why I personally stick to the big 2: Bitcoin (the "OG") and Ethereum (that actually has done something interesting: smart contracts).

All those other coins I just can't be arsed with personally.

@FinlayDaG33k agreed. Excited to see where crypto and blockchain goes next.

@Nanos Depends... while cash indeed gives you a tangible object , "real money" (a.k.a "fiat currency") doesn't always have this.

I live in The Netherlands where most payments are actually done digitally through a debit card.

The only "tangible" thing here is the piece of plastic that you can insert onto a device to transfer money, cryptocurrencies also have these things (hardware wallets like a Trezor and/or Ledger wallet for example).

and even that is slowly getting less common as a lot of people now also start using their smartphones and watches for this...

Some countries are leaning more towards cash (like Japan being a cash-based society) while others are leaning more towards digital payments (The Netherlands being one of them).

(also minor sidenote: melting down coins or burning cash is actually a crime in The Netherlands)

also, some coins exist that are purely based on "staking" and require little to no extra electricity.

@donuts True, it mostly affected fiat currencies and some industries like hospitality and travel.

Crypto? 👍🏻

I just want the shitcoin peddlers to get out of my inbox to be honest... And I used Ethereum for some payments where I didn't want the other party to know my bank details. That's pretty much all I can say about it. Fiat currencies aren't going to get replaced by these crypto coins anytime soon.

BitconneeeeeEEEEECT!!!!

When I want to gamble I just go to the casino. At least they're regulated.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi how about the stock market?

@donuts The stock market is "regulated" by people for whom insider trading laws do not apply.

If I were a congressperson I might play the stock market. Seems to me anybody else is just tossing money around and trusting somebody else not to fuck them.

@FinlayDaG33k yes honestly I wonder.. What if someday all the bank accounts get hacked and ur balances are set to 0...

What proof do we actually have to say that we had all that money in the first place...

And well what's to keep the gifts from secretly "printing" more money and giving it to people they like... I mean what exactly is keeping tabs on the much dollars, euros etc are actually available...

Reminds me of that guy in Soul, just watched this weekend, counter everyone that died on an abacus.... But in the end he gets distracted and the Counselor changes the count...

@Nanos Peercoin was among the first iirc.

Ethereum is also gonna move to it iirc after a long time of PoW.

@donuts well, actually I do have some proof.

I get a monthly piece of paper in my mail that shows me every transaction I made that month along with the balances, so I can proof what my account should have been.

So unless they also put their other stuff like the references in the same DB that gets hacked, I can still proof what I had.

Also, the govts can't really secretly print more money (in the form of cash) as they need to be serialized... and even after a small amount of time, it'd become quite noticable after a little while.

printing money "digitally" is already being done by creating "debts", basically banks telling the central banks: "we owe you N euro", but at some point, the debt will become too much and hyper inflation starts occurring, which is obviously a bad thing.

The entire economy is based on debts and it's a *very* complex economical topic that I can't really explain here...

@FinlayDaG33k hm.,. Maybe I should move back to paper statements...