Has anyone got any knowledge/stories of purchasing/using/trading Cryptocurrencies? I've recently been testing the waters on Poloniex and doing a little bit of trading on their markets, made 50 quid off but a complete fluke so thought I'd get out while I was up. The markets are extremely volatile and have read some horror stories about Banks closing down accounts for those who have dealt/used Bitcoins, enough to put me off.
Currency of choice on the Dark Net. Though if you access the Dark Net, you'll probably have either the FBI or the agents of an artificial super-intelligence knocking at your door within about 20 minutes.
Posting here as it's most relevant. A few months ago I invested a significant amount of money (for me anyway!) in a cryptocurrency called Ethereum, i'm pretty well versed in tech (i'm an IT technician) and from a tech point of view, this looked the future, it's like Bitcoin (obvs, being a cryptocurrency) but has a LOT more real world uses (aka, other than buying drugs), and to me seemed the future of cryptocurrencies. I invested at £10 per "Ether". 2 weeks later they were at £14 per one as Microsoft invested significantly among a few other big companies. One week later and a huge security issue was flagged up (https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/06/17/critical-update-re-dao-vulnerability/ - you may need to look a few terms!) that saw the price drop to around £6 per Ether (that I used to buy a few more) and the other day did what's known as a "hard fork", which has never been done for a cryptocurrency that was the size of Ethereum before. It was a huge success and the price has gone up MASSIVELY within the last 24 hours (was £9.12 when I checked around 10AM this morning, at time of posting it's £12.14). Now all eyes are on Bitcoin (for all its success, it's still quite flawed) to try and implement the same. I know crypto-currencies aren't looked upon nicely here (based on the other posts in this thread), but after initially looking at bitcoin when they were £30 per bitcoin, and deciding it was too much effort to buy (then regretting my decision when they were £600 less than a year later), i've decided i'm not missing out again and am willing to take the educated gamble.
I'm in the Stevo camp here. One question - what is the benefit of these currencies as compared to the sterling?
Ethereum for instance funds a website called the DAO, which is essentially a huge organisation - but fuelled by the people: https://daohub.org/about.html - as I mentioned before there's not a whole lot of real-world uses for Bitcoin (although it negates the need for banks etc) other than nefarious uses, but there's plenty of interesting things happening with Ethereum, google smart contracts and ether apps for some light reading if you're bored!
It's like putting your savings into gold. Most people don't accept it so you have to covert back when you want to buy something. At least with gold you have a physical item. Yes it could be stolen but it's a darn site easier to protect than a few numbers on someon else's computer somewhere. Traditionally over time the price of gold has increased but there have been troughs where when you wanted to buy something, converting back to cash might lose you some money. It's a virtual commodity and you're gambling on it's worth. Some people will take it in direct exchange for goods and services but goods and services are priced according to real life currencies so it's still a gamble. Not for me, but if people want a punt, just do it with money you could stand to lose.
You can use this argument to claim that having a bank account is unsafe. In reality you can store your crypto-currency yourself using encryption.
It's not on someones computer unless you want it to be (I presume you're meaning on currency exchanges), it's on your own computer (and even then you can convert it to a "real" offline wallet.
Control of the financial system and its money supply, is one of the primary tools that has been used by ruling elites to control society and its citizens since the dawn of civilisation and increasingly so in the past 300 years. Any grass roots alternatives that spring up to shift this balance of power is an exciting development in my eyes.
Speaking as someone who is responsible for computers housing other people's data, that's simply not true. Physical objects are far easier to compromise.
Hi Reids, Do you think that is a peak or do you see that moving further? I wouldn't do more than some splash cash, as 1. I simply don't understand it 2. I don't see an underlying value, hence investment gains are purely based on group sentiment, which is volatile and risky 3. I am tying all my money in the growing tulip bulb market.
I honestly see it at £100 before the end of the year (I hope so anyway, i've got 38 of them that I've been buying since from when I originally posted about it!). There's signs that there's about to be a big breakout in price such as obvious market manipulation to keep the price down so bigger fish can buy them up before the price increase, combined with some expected announcements from some big players at some conferences about Ethereum over the next week and an announcement from the EEA (which is an alliance set up by names such as Microsoft, Intel, JP Morgan, BP, Santander to form technologies based on Ethereum). I have been wrong before though, I keep thinking Bitcoins hit it's peak and it carries on shooting upwards, but the value for Ethereum should only go up, whether that's short term or long term.
@reids which platform do you use? I'm trying to add a new card to coinbase because my old one expired, but it's bugged to hell and won't accept anything. I saw CB uses Poloniex, do you do too?
Yeah I sometimes use Poloniex, Kraken aren't bad either and probably the easiest way to buy other than coinbase!
At one point the poorer Chinese who couldn't buy foreign property used to use them as somewhere to hide away their money but then the Chinese government cracked down hard on it.
£183 now! But yeah, can cash out via coinbase at any time. Personally holding mine further. Not sure when I'll cash out but think they'll increase in value for a good while yet.
I think you'd be mad to cash out now, couple of years and we could be looking at bitcoin levels of valuation.
Yeah exactly, I'll probably cash out a couple when they hit £200 to cover my initial investment. I've invested some in some projects I like the look of as well, back in Feb I invested 9 eth (then about £100) in an online dice roll game (don't laugh, the BTC version makes an absolute mint) that pays out investors every 3 months based on the profit of the game. I did that as an investment upon an investment, figured that if it returned say even 2% ROI each year that (at the time) would be 0.18 eth which at £10 per eth isn't a lot. But if the price of eth went up as I thought it would, then that might be a nice payoff (and I can sell my stake in the casino at any time which is currently valued at £2k for my then £90 investment!). Want it to get to the stage where I'm earning a quarter of my wage from my actual job passively via cryptocurrency. Me and my friends have split the cost of a mining rig and have been mining for 3 weeks so far and made almost 0.9 eth which is pretty impressive. I've also bought a 3TB and been given 2 more 3TB HDDs to mine Burstcoin (think airbnb for hard drive space) which will apparently net me around £40-£50 a month which is pretty decent!
At this rate, ETH is going to clear my mortgage... I've been doing some CFD trading on it the past week or so too, making a nice bit of pocket money with no stress. Ride the coat tails! Did you see it was $412 at one point today? Was so tempting haha.
Yeah, I said I was gonna cash out a couple at £200, but seeing how fast it shot up I decided to hold off. Might now do it at £350..
I tried to flipping register with Coinbase, but can't deposit cash. Payment fails with unknown error every time. Contacted via their email but got a response saying they don't take enquiries via email anymore. Tried Kraken and now it says there is a 3-4 week wait for verifiication! Does anyone know a platform where you can buy and trade without a 4 week wait?
Yeah annoyingly Coinbases EU debit card payments have been down for almost a week (my friend tried to buy more at £200 but was declined, he's now furious!). One thing you could do is buy some bitcoins from somewhere (more places sell bitcoin than ethereum) then swap it into ethereum using a service like shapeshift.io