Bitcoin?

[dennis thompson]

Anyone own bitcoin? Anyone understand what it is? I don't.

[Mel Fulks]

I don't have any. But I know people who do. Think the easiest way to start to get how it works is just compare a one dollar fed note to the old "silver certificate" dollars. Bit coin is like the Fed note .....without you having to accept it under penalty of law. Silver and gold have always been widely accepted ,paper money is easily faked since its all made of same stuff. The strength of bit coin is that those getting involved have a good understanding of why governments want to control money.

[Wade Lippman]

Remember tulipmania, when tulips were being bought and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars?
This is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of tulips, you have nothing. People buy them in expectation that other people will be willing to pay more for them in the future. So far it has worked great, as did tulips, until the day it didn't work. Then it will collapse and people will lose everything. Except of course the people who got out in time, and that is the key to the collapse. No one wants to get out late, so when it starts to go down everyone will want to get out. Collapse.

One big difference between bitcoins and tulips is that bitcoins are widely used to pay for illegal drugs and ransoms (ie. ransomware). It has no other use; at least tulips gave pretty flowers.

[Jim Becker]

There is great risk in Bitcoin and other "electronic currencies". They are purely market-based and speculative, IMHO. There was a lot of volatility this week alone.

Here's an interesting article that talks a little about potentially why Bitcoin is "hot" at the moment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/con...ottest-n827906

[Michael Weber]

Considered it about a year ago and in fact joined an exchange. Watched it for a few days and decided not to get any. Because of volitility and the fact it really represents nothing of any value except to drug dealers, gun dealers, kidnappers, slavers and other criminals to operate internationally totally transparent to any government knowledge or ability to track. I would have expected governments to shut down exchanges before now but I guess,ours at least, is too busy squabbling to attend to the interests of the people. That, or worse, have a vested interest in cyber currency surviving if you'll excuse my cynicism. Rant off

[John Terefenko]

sounds like a ponzi scheme to me

[Edwin Santos]

sounds like a ponzi scheme to me

Funny, a lot of cryptocurrency fans believe it is the cold hard cash in your wallet that is the ponzi scheme.
Gold bugs tend to be in the same camp.
I guess time will tell who's right.

One thing I'm quite sure about - the world your kids or grandkids will grow up in will look radically different than the one you grew up in.
Your world and the world of your parents will look quite similar to each other in comparison.

[Mel Fulks]

Fort Knox is full of gold....the Feds think it's valuble. Somebody asked them "why gold"? Turns out there just are not enough Honus Wagner baseball cards to fill the place up.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Fort Knox is full of gold....the Feds think it's valuble. Somebody asked them "why gold"? Turns out there just are not enough Honus Wagner baseball cards to fill the place up.

Fort Knox now only contains 23% of what it did in 1941. There are other Federals Reserves around the country.

[Michael Weber]

StarCraft Gaming tournament prize list from 2011. Supposedly.
377A6D5E-5C03-4243-BF80-E62D2D97FEC1.jpeg

[John Terefenko]

Funny, a lot of cryptocurrency fans believe it is the cold hard cash in your wallet that is the ponzi scheme.
Gold bugs tend to be in the same camp.
I guess time will tell who's right.

One thing I'm quite sure about - the world your kids or grandkids will grow up in will look radically different than the one you grew up in.
Your world and the world of your parents will look quite similar to each other in comparison.

Take long to think of this statement??? Of course the world will look different if there will be a world. North Korea may have a say in this along with other radicals. Modern man is expanding much faster because there are so many more as opposed to yesteryear. New technology leads to newer technology and so on.

I do not know anything about Bitcoin and nor do I want to. I hate using credit cards. Give me all your green cash and I will dispose of it for you.

[Edwin Santos]

Take long to think of this statement??? Of course the world will look different if there will be a world. North Korea may have a say in this along with other radicals. Modern man is expanding much faster because there are so many more as opposed to yesteryear. New technology leads to newer technology and so on.

I do not know anything about Bitcoin and nor do I want to. I hate using credit cards. Give me all your green cash and I will dispose of it for you.

John, It actually did take me quite a while thinking about things to arrive at that statement, but then again I won't deny being slower than some.

In case it wasn't well communicated the first time, basically what I was trying to say is that over a long period of time, change to me seemed to be somewhat constant. My observation over the past decade or so is that the curve of change has moved to a more exponential and less logarithmic rate than in the past. In other words, the speed of change is accelerating, and the extent of change is broadening in a non-linear fashion. It's like taking the principle of compounding returns and applying it to basically everything.

So while every generation will look different than the one preceding, I'm saying the degree of resemblance between two adjacent generations is diminishing.

If this is/was obvious to you and everyone else, then I am slow to the party indeed. And/or I wonder if others would agree on the observation at all.

I'm not endorsing nor trashing Bitcoin or any blockchain cryptocurrency, but I think it's an exciting time in general and I very much look forward to the future.

[Stan Calow]

Edwin your observation actually was the subject of a series of books back in the '70s - Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, which were widely popular bestsellers at the time. What I think causes the acceleration is demographics. The population of the US has more than doubled since I was born, and the world population has almost tripled. I've heard it said that half the people who have ever been alive on earth, are alive today. Don't know if thats true, but the sheer number of people drives things forward - whether better or worse, I dont know. I'm staying away from bitcoin.

[John Terefenko]

Edwin your observation actually was the subject of a series of books back in the '70s - Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, which were widely popular bestsellers at the time. What I think causes the acceleration is demographics. The population of the US has more than doubled since I was born, and the world population has almost tripled. I've heard it said that half the people who have ever been alive on earth, are alive today. Don't know if thats true, but the sheer number of people drives things forward - whether better or worse, I dont know. I'm staying away from bitcoin.

This was my point also. The amount of people contributing to change has increased over years and that is why it is accelerating so fast. You are also improving on things that were not available years ago. This is a natural progression. It is always fun to look back to what things use to be but live in the present and hope the future will hold good things.

[Wade Lippman]

Considered it about a year ago and in fact joined an exchange. Watched it for a few days and decided not to get any. Because of volitility and the fact it really represents nothing of any value except to drug dealers, gun dealers, kidnappers, slavers and other criminals to operate internationally totally transparent to any government knowledge or ability to track. I would have expected governments to shut down exchanges before now but I guess,ours at least, is too busy squabbling to attend to the interests of the people. That, or worse, have a vested interest in cyber currency surviving if you'll excuse my cynicism. Rant off

I agree it should be illegal. Serves no purpose except to facilitate crime. But maybe is the issue is whether making it illegal would help. Everything would go on as before, except it would be illegal. So what? It is not like being legal gets you anything; somebody just stole $85M worth of them and there is nothing to be done about it; you can't sue anyone because there is no one to sue, and you can't prove you owned them anyhow.

It will be something to see when they crash.