Cryptos

[UtwigMU]

Does anyone here know anything about cryptos?
Wallets, mining, transactions, exchanges?

I decided to read up and study cryptos, maybe do a test transaction with like 20 euros.

[Umfriend]

I did not and I won't. I refuse to deal/trade/transact with and support a phenomena that help drug dealers, arms dealers, money launderers etc.

[UtwigMU]

I did not and I won't. I refuse to deal/trade/transact with and support a phenomena that help drug dealers, arms dealers, money launderers etc.

So you don't use cash either?

[Umfriend]

I do use cash and I get your (funny, smart and good) point. However, cash, IMO, is less facilitating than cryptos.

[UtwigMU]

There are few options with cryptos. I see them as alternative to paypal and credit cards, they are starting to take this role. Until we went in EU around 2005 there were customs on all hardware from abroad and it was inconvenient. Since then with paypal and credit cards I have purchased many used and new things from abroad. Still I needed to figure out how to open up paypal, how to get money into paypal (in Slovenia it still doesn't work from all banks), how to obtain prepaid mastercard (good if you can't get one from bank or more secure if you can't use paypal). For example if you wanted to obtain anonymous VPS cryptos could be useful.

Another thing is that cash has been effectively banned. In Slovenia there is a limit of 420€ for B2B and 5000€ for B2C. Daily withdrawal limit without announcement is around 4000€ and anything north of 2000€ gets reported. 500€ bills are to be taken out, though they are still in circulation. My ATM limits are 300€ per account but I have personal and business account. Whatever is in the bank is not safe since state can decide to take your money. In my case our version of IRS took money from my bank account for taxes, for which I had written paper from them, I had already paid. They make a mistake, they take your money and then you can sod off basically. Once I was on beer with few business owners and some guy who used to run large investment fund and we had discussion about cash. Say you're a business owner and you want to stash away around 100k Euros of cash for rainy days, this does become a problem. You can't withdraw and go to Switerland, Austrian banks which used to be secret have been screwed over by EU. Your only option is Dubai but there you need to convert to their currency and if you die sheik inherits the money. Other options are small planes. After a recent crash of small plane with some foreign internet businessmen here there were rumors they were smuggling cash. So cryptos are the new cash in that they are for now unrestricted and anonymous. I don't yet have such use cases for now.

As far as "investing" goes I think cryptos are purely speculative. If you have a gambling budget (money that you don't care to loose) you can try cryptos. There are many layers to this and it seems bitcoin is acting as reserve currency for other alternative coins some of which serve a purpose and Ethereum seems to be OK but others seem like ponzi schemes.

[VJ]

I've read a bit on it because I find it fascinating... and scary... because to be honest, I still don't fully get where the value comes from.

It seems that the time to mine bitcoins at home has passed: only with a top of the range nVidia card you can still be profitable, but just barely (assuming non-free electricity, the margin is a bit bigger if you already have photo-voltaics). It is impossible to keep up with the professional bitcoin mining installation. A bitcoin mining manufacturing company went to the research center where my girlfriend works to look for cooperation, so she saw what they offer: shipping container sized units with the sole purpose of bitcoin mining.

I feel it is a bubble waiting to burst... But that does not mean there are no interesting aspects; the whole blockchain thing is fascinating.

Interesting read on the power required for Bitcoin:

https://newatlas.com/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-power-consumption/52556/

[UtwigMU]

It's now profitable to mine ether and other altcoins. Still, a decent miner with few GPUs is around 1500€, I don't think mining with subpar hardware would be proftiable as blockchain is growing. It's not that risky as if you don't turn a profit in worst case you can still sell hardware at a loss and be down on electricity bills.

[VJ]

True... but the question is: how long will your installation be profitable? Top model GPUs were very expensive, to the point that AMD (not sure about nVidia) launched GPU cards without video output solely for mining purposes. But as those are pointless once they are no longer profitable, they are not very popular. Also remember that if a card is not profitable, many miners will try to dump their non-profitable GPUs, which sinks their price on the second-hand market. In addition (read an article on Tweakers.net on this - but it is in Dutch), the second-hand market is lower as potential buyers are weary of getting a card that was used for mining.

While it may be profitable for longer to mine Ether or others, the question is whether the small amount of profit weighs up against the investment. If it is pure an investment, then why bother mining yourself?

be down on electricity bills

But you were up in the first place, so it just brings you back to your normal level.

[Umfriend]

I know next to nothing about cryptos.

It's now profitable to mine ether and other altcoins.

But for how long? I assume that there is a maximum number of each coin that can be mined (fixed "money" supply) so the marginal rate of return (cryptocoin/Kwh) will drop sharply. Will you mine fast enough? Also, as more and more coins come into play, it becomes harder to see how cryptocurrency has a fixed supply and that raises the question of potential inflation, no?

To me, it is still Tulip Mania.

[VJ]

It seems we scared of UtwigMU...

To me, it is just a shame that there is no link between distributed computing (boinc, etc.) and cryptos. That would be interesting as it would be a way to "sell" computing power.

[UtwigMU]

I've bought a Trezor (a hardware wallet). I'll set it up and test a transatction in and out through exchange on the order of 10-20€.

[UtwigMU]

Buying BTC is hard. 3h of research and still no bitcoins. You can only exchange quickly paypal for BTC at virwox at 10% loss by exchanging for tokens and then tokens for bitcoin. Limit is 90€. There are bitcoin ATMs around here but not accessible at night. Then there is localbitcoins where they offer cash, paypal or bank transfers. Sellers require ID. The exchanges such as coinbase also require ID.

So I was unsuccessful in registering at exchange (waiting for ID confirmation), need to wait 48h at virwox to receive my 0.00110000 BTC and one local seller who sells at 2000€ premium over spot of 12700 wants ID. Exchanges are not anonymous and I don't know how you would cash out your anonymously received bitcoins as all exchanges want ID and localbitcoins can be a sting.

I think purchasing bitcoins is in no way straightforward and it will not be available to the masses anytime soon. It's like the Internet of mid 1990s - only for geeks. The only drug dealer I know is way too dumb to use bitcoin and waiting couple of days to buy bitcoins kind-of kills the lets get high for the party scenario.

There is also eToro but you don't actually own bitcoins, can only trade. This to me is like those schemes where you purchase gold which is or isn't stored somewhere abroad and you get online account or piece of paper stating gold is yours. If they get hacked you're probably SOL.

Trezor is cool, go watch a video on it. I'm a fan of HW security devices, own three and use one for my online banking and state institutions certificate store.

[UtwigMU]

And today morning my 0.0006 BTC have arrived in my wallet. Took about 34h through virwox. Transaction cost 63% for paypal > virwox > BTC Wirvox was mentioned online as the "quickest" way for paypal to bitcoin but it's true they had 48h for manual confirmation for first time transaction.

Now I only need to wait for 1-2 years for bitcoin to double so I can get back what I lost on transaction.

[UtwigMU]

So it turns out in Slovenia you can purchase bitcoins simply for cash on gas stations. You go there, buy a coupon, go to website, give address and they send bitcoins to your address with 7% commission. The conversion is done when you enter your coupon, not when you purchase it. During Christmas and on 27th the website was closed but when it came up (few hours later than promised) I was able to enter the code and got my bitcoins within an hour. Since rate was good at times of transaction I lost only 2.3% for transaction fees. They seem to include multiple coupons in in single transaction to multiple addresses so it's workable for them with high BTC transaction fees.

Still this coin scene is very dangerous. For example popular altcoin exchange Bitrex is closed for new members, with Coinmama and Coinbase I'm waiting 2 days for ID aproval, the dude who is selling bitcoins locally in person for cash is on leave until mid January.

In case you hold a large number of coins and a flash crash happens expect half exchanges to be closed and a week to process your transactions. If rug were to be pulled from under the BTC market most "investors" would be fscked.

[UtwigMU]

https://steemit.com/

An interesting concept I've found: blogging platform that distributes blockchain coins based on views, that can then be traded or purchased.

I think we are at the place where current leaders google and facebook will get new and more competition from alt-tech. For example a lot of youtubers complain about google's demonetization and there is now also political censorship. So there is now bitchute (torrent based youtube alternative), gab (alternative to twitter that is more free speech oriented), minds (fb alternative), voat (alternative to reddit). FB in particular has become totally stale: there are too many adds, don't get posts from pages I like (for example one philosophy and literature quote page), most people don't really write anything meaningful or mischievous but instead just share memes that I have already seen. From advertiser's perspective we get maybe 0.1% of our followers to view our posts without paying.

Of course blockhain will now solve everything and company's stock goes to the moon just by including blockchain in the name. So there is a lot of hype but like with the NASDAQ of late 1990's some of these new trends will turn into real value and money generating businesses.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-24/riding-blockchain-train-these-companies-changed-their-name-and-their-stock-price-soa

In tiny 2M Slovenia we have two cryptos that I know off and probably some more that I don't.

On my quest for bitcoins: I have now trezor working with both my Windows and Linux PCs in online Chrome app and on Windows with software wallet that also supports other coins.

In BTC there is a money grab fork coming called Segwit2X where like with Bitcoin Cash all holders of Bitcoin will get B2X tomorrow 28th.