planetgeli
There's no future in England's dreaming
Crash and burn, crash and burn, crash and burn.
Whoops sorry. Just crash, crash, crash.
Whoops sorry. Just crash, crash, crash.
Bitcoin discussion and news
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binka
!!!!!!!!!
I don't really know much about cryptocurrencies but I am curious is anyone actually using BTC to buy stuff now? I see people on here talking about the BTC they spent previously now being worth shitloads. Who is going to spend £100 of BTC if the same BTC might be worth £200 next month? If so what's the point of it other than hoping to cash out at the top?
joustmaster
offcumdun
people use it all the time.
you buy some and spend it all in the same day. So the change in cost makes no real difference.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
you can use it to buy drugs online, which is almost certainly the vast majority of actual usage of BTC (as opposed to speculative purchases)
Other illegal things too, but mostly drugs I reckon.
I spend £100 of BTC now because I want £100 of drugs now, not maybe £200 next month. Also it might be worth £50 next month, who knows.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
at this point they are waiting till the vinegar strokes to cash in imo. Steam have stopped taking it as its too messy now. But you used to be able to buy games from them with bitcoin when things were relatively stable apparently. It was also previously used for drugs and other stuff where you'd rather not have go through more orthodox methods of exchange over distance. The FBI are cashing a wallet apparently, nicked from a drug dealer. Proceeds of crime and all that. I think thats just greed rather than prescience tho. Oh on googling its not even that new, they've been selling seized bitcoins to take as proceeds for ages. I hate the 21st century.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
I don't think anyone who plans to spend btc really holds it because it's too volatile, only speculators (and people who have lost their bitcoin wallets) hold onto btc. I have absolutely no idea how many people are buying btc or what proportion of those are buying it to spend it and what proportion are speculators.
oh actually there are organised criminal gangs and money launderers who use btc as well. I suppose they fall into the category of people buying it to spend it but kind of different to people buying drugs with it (though obv that's part of what organised criminal gangs use it for)
Bitcoin's another bubble, just like the dotcoms. It doesn’t matter a lick whether or not Bitcoin or the other cryptocurrencies are brilliant innovations with a long future ahead of them; plenty of the companies whose stocks went up like a rocket in the 1920s boom also had a long and prosperous future ahead of them, and the people who invested in them in 1928 and 1929 lost their shirts anyway. The price of Bitcoin isn’t soaring into low earth orbit because of its actual prospects. The price of Bitcoin is soaring into low earth orbit because a great many people who think they can get money for nothing are cashing in their other investments and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoins. Once the supply of suckers runs out, so will the bubble, and never—not one single time in the history of finance—has a bubble like this one ended without a messy crash.
We could get into a long discussion about the difference between money and wealth—they’re not at all the same thing, you know—and the way that people confuse an increase in the price of a speculative asset with the theoretical increase in wealth they could have if they could extract the value of that asset without crashing the price (which, of course, they can’t).
If you have any money you can’t afford to lose in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you need to cash out and walk away, right now.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that since you know it’s a bubble, you can time the market and cash in before the bottom drops out. Everyone thinks that. What will happen is that at some point in the weeks or months ahead—and it’s impossible to predict when—one of those sudden dips in price will keep on going down, and before you realize it’s not just another dip, you won’t be able to cash out without taking a serious loss. Then it’ll go up again, but it’ll never reach its previous high, and right around the time you’re starting to think that the trouble’s over and you can take your profits, it’ll lurch downward again, hard. Rinse and repeat; by the time it bottoms out a Bitcoin will be worth maybe thirty or forty dollars, if it’s worth anything at all, and you’ll be bankrupt. (Shares in General Motors, the Microsoft of its era, sold for nine dollars and change once the 1929 crash bottomed out; some of the other hot stocks of the period ended up worth precisely zero, because the issuing companies folded.)
People are taking out second mortgages on their homes to invest the proceeds in Bitcoins. In a sane market, that doesn’t happen—and that kind of idiocy is the only warning you’ll get.
Let’s make this even simpler.
If you have money in Bitcoin, get out.
NOW.
We could get into a long discussion about the difference between money and wealth—they’re not at all the same thing, you know—and the way that people confuse an increase in the price of a speculative asset with the theoretical increase in wealth they could have if they could extract the value of that asset without crashing the price (which, of course, they can’t).
If you have any money you can’t afford to lose in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you need to cash out and walk away, right now.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that since you know it’s a bubble, you can time the market and cash in before the bottom drops out. Everyone thinks that. What will happen is that at some point in the weeks or months ahead—and it’s impossible to predict when—one of those sudden dips in price will keep on going down, and before you realize it’s not just another dip, you won’t be able to cash out without taking a serious loss. Then it’ll go up again, but it’ll never reach its previous high, and right around the time you’re starting to think that the trouble’s over and you can take your profits, it’ll lurch downward again, hard. Rinse and repeat; by the time it bottoms out a Bitcoin will be worth maybe thirty or forty dollars, if it’s worth anything at all, and you’ll be bankrupt. (Shares in General Motors, the Microsoft of its era, sold for nine dollars and change once the 1929 crash bottomed out; some of the other hot stocks of the period ended up worth precisely zero, because the issuing companies folded.)
People are taking out second mortgages on their homes to invest the proceeds in Bitcoins. In a sane market, that doesn’t happen—and that kind of idiocy is the only warning you’ll get.
Let’s make this even simpler.
If you have money in Bitcoin, get out.
NOW.
doodlelogic
arbitrary message here
Like in Iceland, say.
But Iceland uses its plentiful geothermal to smelt aluminium from bauxite. That's an extremely energy heavy process and by doing it with geothermal they are directly competing against US and Chinese plants that use coal.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
bimble
floofy
Banned by whom ?
ffsear
Well-Known Member
Ranbay
The same rules apply
eh? what wallet you using? how the fuck is it that much!?!?!
sim667
All aboard the 303 bus.
blockchain.info
I know right, fucking pisstake. All I want to do is move it from one wallet which is imported, to the actual blockchain wallet so I can backup using the words
This is partly true, and I agree that the west has some responsibility for China's economic problems, because western companies have taken advantage of the cheap labour and absence of regulations in China to produce products for cheap.
BUT while western capitalism has taken advantage of them, a lot of the environmental problems in China are caused by its repressive political system. There is no accountability, and cronyism between officials and capitalists is rife. People who complain about environmental problems can find themselves being roughed up or imprisoned for "picking fights and spreading rumours". The law in China is mostly meaningless, which makes regulations impossible to realistically enforce, as there are no channels for workers or villagers to whistle blow. (partly because there is no legal awareness, and there is a tendency for lawyers to get arrested when going against local elites) Attempts to enforce environmental regulations are usually arbitrary and temporary and take the form of "campaigns" - officials come to the plant, and the owners stop polluting for a day or two and then continue after the officials are gone. I've seen enough of these campaigns in the past to know that they are utterly ineffectual, usually solved with bribery or abiding by the laws on a temporary basis, only for normal service to be resumed when the heat is off.
Tight control over the media also leads to absurd beliefs that the smog is actually fog and perfectly natural, people ask me if it reminds me of home because London is known as "fog city" in China for some reason. (apparently this is something to do with the Chinese translation of Oliver Twist.) It also leads to disastrous errors of policy that would have been called out in a country with a free press and a civil society - for example the government attempted to deal with the problem of rapidly expanding deserts by planting millions of trees, but they made the elementary mistake of monoculture tree planting, which led to all the trees to die of disease and actually accelerated the expansion of the deserts. This is a mistake that would have been called out with even the smallest amount of public scrutiny.
As for solar panels, they are produced en masse, cheaply, and with poor environmental regulations to meet government panels and try to improve China's environmental image. For the reasons I have mentioned above (lack of accountability, lack of enforceable laws, repression of whistle blowers by local elites) they are actually making the environmental crisis worse, not better. The Dirty Side of a “Green” Industry | Worldwatch Institute
Mark my words, the environmental crisis in China is unprecedented, and the country is facing severe water shortages and famine by 2030. 80% of the groundwater supplies are poisoned, it is already too late to avoid a crisis. The recent North Korea-isation of Xinjiang province (many of my friends have completely dropped off the radar and are impossible to reach by any means, amid stories of Muslims being sent to re-education camps en masse... actually at present, NW China may be a worse place than North Korea) is tightly related to the environmental crisis, as Han Chinese taking the increasingly scarce good land and leaving the Kazakhs and Uighurs to the growing desert is unsurprisingly fuelling ethnic discontent in the region, as well as in Inner Mongolia.
Source on the looming water crisis:
China’s Groundwater Crisis
Source on desertification:
https://globalriskinsights.com/2016/02/chinas-growing-deserts-a-major-political-risk/
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Idaho
blah blah blah
I thought this was an interesting perspective on blockchain and crypto from a professionally sceptical industry insider. Talks about why use cases that were so hyped in the early days haven't materialised, and why enterprise applications of blockchain haven't really got anywhere.
Probably only of interest to those with some understanding of the financial industry.
#213 Tim Swanson: Busting the Great Wall of Hype
Probably only of interest to those with some understanding of the financial industry.
#213 Tim Swanson: Busting the Great Wall of Hype
There aren’t many examples of bigger stock market crashes. I know — I had to look into that data last year.
bimble
floofy
Why does this say that $14,000 is "a psychologically key level"?
Bitcoin falls by more than $2,000, briefly dropping through $14,000 mark
Bitcoin falls by more than $2,000, briefly dropping through $14,000 mark
Yossarian
⏭️
Could be carnage after the Americans wake up and see what's happened to the price. Or they could say "Wow, cheap bitcoin" and it'll go up again, who the fuck knows. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only person I know who is into this used to have a massive problem with sports betting.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
No, its not true.
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