Bitcoin nears $10,000

If a Bitcoin is worth that, can you imagine what a Wholecoin is worth!

Goods allegedly exchanged for a single bulb of the Viceroy tulip
Two lasts of wheat    448ƒ
Four lasts of rye    558ƒ
Four fat oxen    480ƒ
Eight fat swine    240ƒ
Twelve fat sheep    120ƒ
Two hogsheads of wine    70ƒ
Four tuns of beer    32ƒ
Two tons of butter    192ƒ
1,000 lb. of cheese    120ƒ
A complete bed    100ƒ
A suit of clothes    80ƒ
A silver drinking cup    60ƒ
Total    2500ƒ

Where can I buy these tulips please?

A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops — and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil (XOM, -0.37%) will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.

^ Cubist ?

As Voltaire once stated; all paper currency returns to its intrinsic value....nothing.
So what do currencies that dont even exist return to?

I noticed recently how Goldman Sachs had joined in the craze by creating trading platforms for the public to indulge in the trading of these 'things'. Knowing what we do about both that company and the inherent nature of markets encouraging Jo public to speculate on stuff they cant possibly comperehend as to it's future, is it too much to assume its bubble like characteristics now to be purely coincidental?

For all gambling gains today have to be lost by somebody else in future, and encouraging all to dive in and reap reward is an often used tactic right before the proverbial fork is stuck into the market (at the point where the 'important ones' have got out)

Fondle.  What a great word and one that is sorely underused.

Mr Damo : (in comments)

People that dismiss Bitcoin as a fraud need to understand that the protocol was a breakthrough in computer science: it built on 40 years of research in cryptography by tens of thousands of researchers around the world. This is so much more than just some elaborate con.

Bitcoin combined the speed of the internet to enable global, fast, real-time transactions in a practical way by solving a computer science problem called the Byzantine Generals' Problem. This, in effect, allowed for trust between different parties over an untrusted network such as different banks or the internet. Critically, it removed any need for a trusted "middle man" such as a central bank, government, or clearing house. Instead, trust was created through what is called a Blockchain, the decentralised system that underpins the invention of Bitcoin.

The possibilities that this new technology has opened up are mind-bending. So when we hear uninformed people dismiss it as "tulips", you can understand why we get a bit defensive.

The bitcoin scalability problem is a consequence of the fact that blocks in the blockchain are limited to one megabyte in size.[1] Blocks larger than one megabyte are automatically rejected by the network as invalid.[2] Bitcoin blocks carry the transactions on the bitcoin network since the last block has been created.[3]:ch. 2 This allows for around three transactions per second maximum capacity rate.

The one-megabyte limit has created a bottleneck in bitcoin, resulting in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block.

This makes bitcoin unsuitable for almost all types of transactions we normally use money for. It's only real use is as a store of value - Like gold.

Irs very disperate by all accounts, all infrastructures unable to communicate with each other.
Apparently non trust the other and each transaction has to run the block chain from the beginning each time.
As soon as somebody creates the improved variant then the originator gets forgotten.

Also bitcoin has a reputation for unscrupulous transactions, what happens if states who want the price to drop bring in regulation as China did recently?

Finally the end of the year brings the ability to short the currency, it will be game on after that.

Bitcoin could be the greatest thing since sliced bread for all I know but when any idiot can make money from it just by buying it then I get a bit skeptical.  Also it doesn't do much for its credibility when I find my junk mail full of Bitcoin opportunities every day.

I told my cousin to invest in one coin whenit was at 250 pounds, he looked at me as if I was a  idiot. The keiser report guy o rt. News figures it mightreach 50 thôusand. I refuse to even entertain it, it has the moebius symbol, mark of the new covenant' ,  it's a criminal currency and. Might be shutdown at any time,  like the crypto currencya fewyrs ago.. mount gok??

At the beginning of 2014 I had a decent win on a football accumulator.  Took out some money and thought along with other things I might invest some in some cryptocurrency including bitcoins. Decided I should stick a nominal amount in at first then play about to get use to the exchanges and how to use the wallets.  Bought a tenth of a bitcoin (for about 40ish quid then) and some lite coins and traded for some other currencies like ripple.Total spent was only 100 quid to get the hang of things.  Played about for a week and read up on them a fair bit then lost interest for a bit due to being busy at work. Checked the prices 4-5 months later and bitcoin had dropped to below 300 pound and the other currencies were dow to so my 100 quid was now worth about 30 quid. Didn't renew my interest in it. Forgot about my wallets for 3 years until the summer there when checked them. All up. Out of the 4 currencies I bought one went bust but the other 3 are all up between 800%- 2000% so my my measly 100 quid is now a grand. Every time I read the name bitcoin I wince at not continuing my interest in them and investing in them at 300 quid.

The Emperor's new underpants x 10,000

Pretty lazy cliches. Bitcoin will crash eventually as it is clearly over valued but it and the efficient cryptocurrencies won't just be a flash in the pan and will find a stable market value at some point. No different than the dot com boom that saw crazy speculations and when the crash came those companies with no substance dissapeared but those like google, ebay and amazon etc. became massive companies eventually.

In the end when speculation dies down and they stabilise there is very little difference between cryptocurrencies and any fiat currency. Their only worth is what people think it's worth. Their are too many advantages of cryptocurrencies for them to be the emperors clothes.

Now $16,000 - up $6,000 in five days; $3,000 today.  There must be people who have made fortunes.

...undoubtedly at some stage, there will be fortunes lost too

I know very little about this subject but I've seen predictions by "experts" of the currency reaching $50k, $100k and even $200k

all above my head but someone loose,s has his stock stolen so price increases,so I,d imagine we can look forward to more thefts,loose.s  of stock in the future

I do not loose.

He looses.

You loose money everyday.

The nuts on your wheels are loose.

Your loses are unsustainable.


That'll be 20 Guineas, thank you !

Almost certain to go much higher. I don't  understand the security risks so I won't be buying but for anyone OK with that aspect there's a big upside for the next several months imo.

I invested £300 last thursday 30th nov.as of today it's worth £470.not too bothered if it goes tits up,just wish i had done it 3 years ago.

a few years ago i heard max keiser of RT say it will go to 50,000. this morning they say 200,000.

it's a collectible now... not a currency. no one is spending it.

it's a pokemon token.

21 million tokens.

you'd be better buying an old spiderman issue - only 200,000 of each issue published in 1970?

if the internet implodes with an emp - there is no bitcoin.

Zorro , it's how much you can make short term. And then in a few weeks/months convert to PM's.   You can't compare with old valuables that keep there value with a bit on top. Bitcoin may  double or more in a couple of weeks.

pass the parcel , good luck

may as well back england when they are batting and hope they dont lose a wicket

The smell of a pyramid scheme fills the air

when does the lemmings full sign go up

Good time to get into physical bullion, if you haven't already

£930's a decent price to pay, imo.

http://www.kitco.com/

i can't my head around how this works .   I think i must be a bit stupid .

I assume there a limit to bitcoin - how do you spend bitcoin  (does it come with a bitcoin card ?  )  is it accepted by stores ?

what is the difference between  investing in bitcoins and say very old currency   where the value becomes higher as time trundles on ?

i've only met one person who understands it  -and he confused me explaining it lol .

If not may folk understand it can it work as a currency ?

many*

arnt most of those joining now just investing in companies investing in bitcoin not the actual bitcoin itself, or you,d have to lay out 16 grand currently for one coin wouldn't you,

or like trading the pound just trading it to go up[ or down, still

tt

Cheers Leopard....

coach , the simple difference is that both bitcoin and fiat notes backed by governments/banks  can lose their value instantly. The difference at the moment is that people across the globe are getting sick of a third party controlling the system. Young people in particular are seeing the rise in bitcoin as wealth transfer so there's plenty of upside imo. When can we bet on bitcoin on here ?

i looked into mining it few years ago after the guy buried his hard drive in the local dump.
it was all over the news.  worth a fortune. that guy must be away to Borneo to get away from the updated price now? i was put off mining it after i noticed it had the mark of the beast on it. and that it took me hours to set up without a bleep?
you needed a graphics card and electricity bills would soar? so too many negatives.
spiritual and body -

applepay will be along soon.

"Tulip Mania"
End of!

Coachbuster 08 Dec 17 18:21 Joined: 08 Apr 06 | Topic/replies: 37,258 | Blogger: Coachbuster's blog
i can't my head around how this works .   I think i must be a bit stupid .




If you truly want to know how it all works, you could do a lot worse than listen to the three podcasts here:

http://investorfieldguide.com/hashpower/

Digital currencies now have more than $500 billion in market capitalization, making them bigger than the Berkshire Hathaway holding company of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Buffett’s company is worth $491 billion. The cryptocurrency market is also bigger than Facebook and ExxonMobil, which are each worth $411 billion, according to the PwC rating of the world’s top 100 companies.

Imagine an exchange using blockchain technology - three days to get each bet confirmed, and paying an unknown Chinese firm a £20 fee for the privilege.

the word is loads of americans remortgaging to buy bitcoin

what can go wrong

three days? The original version of blockchain technology can take 3 days i.e bitcoin. The technology has moved on in 10 years.

gets more and more coverage daily politica again today with same bitcoin expert and I,m still non the wiser obvious question if theres only 21 million available and half of that been sold,why havnt the usual suspects snapped the rest up,money trees like this arnt usually marketed intensely to the great unwashed, saw today on politics show theres atm,s where you can go buy them,parts of them,just checked the tulips are still in the greenhouse

you cant 'snap them up' you have to mine them and the energy ratio increases while the value pay off decreases.
21 million isnt a number like a finite sum, its the calculation of the point where its no longer worth your while mining them, thats how I understood it.
There are ways they can increase the number in existence however when that point comes, a bit like when companies make more shares available and the price drops

Im happy to sit the whole thing out, and if people make great gains then Im happy for them.
But they are only realised if they sell the things, if people dont and it does crash then you have made nothing and will have to live with the mental turmoil of having and lost it.

The part that makes me decidedly uneasy is that the general type of person who are getting hooked on this blanket exposure are the types of person who generally work for a living just about managing and have limited experience in the LSE etc and have become invested in the talk of liberation from the oppressors of old money establishment antics.

They see this vertical gains and expect them to continue (they may well) but equally it could just as easily be the new age con that talks up anything then gets its throat cut on purpose under the auspices of 'oh well, nothing is guaranteed, we did tell you'

You might be able to confirm a Bitcoin transaction in less than an hour, but you'd have to offer a ridiculously high transaction fee to do so.

Those Chinese Bitcoin miners paying for and burning through astronomical amounts of electricity day after day aren't doing so out of charity. They're doing it to take advantage of idiots handing over real money to them in exchange for ... well, what? 

Blockchain technology is the most unacceptable face of capitalism the world has ever seen. Never have more resources been destroyed for less end product.

The situation three days ago:

Miners on the Bitcoin network prioritize transactions by the fee that they receive for confirming them. Therefore, if you pay a higher fee, a miner is more likely to process your transfer, which decreases the transaction time.

As mentioned earlier, a Bitcoin transaction generally needs 6 confirmations from miners before it’s processed. The average time it takes to mine a block is 10 minutes, so you would expect a transaction to take around an hour on average.

However, the recent popularity boom of Bitcoin has caused congestion on the network.  The average time for one confirmation has recently ranged anywhere from 30 minutes to over 16 hours in extreme cases.

https://coincentral.com/how-long-do-bitcoin-transfers-take/

Good luck betting in-running with blockchain technology, everyone.

Screaming that is Bitcoin. The first use of blockchain technology.  That technology is 8 years old.  Posting about the time constraints of bitcoin to refute the idea that blockchain technology wouldn't work for an exchange is a bit like suggesting commercial air travel would never work because the Wright flyer didn't have any space for passengers.

But people arnt buying shares in the concept they are buying bitcoins

When another superior version comes out bitcoin plummets surely?

The analogy of flight being invested in rather than the old style planes would be the comparison, but how do you invest in the cryptographic concept alone?

So what? The point is screaming can't seem to fathom the difference between bitcoin which uses block chain technology that existed 8 years ago and the technology itself.

There are already numerous superior versions of bit coin e.g litecoin which has far quicker transaction speeds and far lower fees.

You can't invest in any concept alone.

Litecoin's not exactly new tech though - it's been around for 6 years. Yet one Litecoin is still only worth $300, even in the current mania. That suggests that the more complex algorithm it uses must be problematic, in the sense that it's even more energy-intensive and expensive to run than Bitcoin.

And technologies such as Tethers or the Lightning network seem to me to get around the length of time associated with blockchain transactions only by taking those transactions off the blockchain, which brings us all back to square one in terms of security and anonymity.

I don't see any wonder technology that miraculously makes computation faster for the same price while keeping to the idea of a blockchain. If there were, it would surely be in use.

Litecoin isn't new tech but it's a superior version that has been around for six years and hasn't caused bitcoins price to plummet  It's about 10x less energy intensive.

Your last sentence is just confused nonsense.  First you say block chain technology wouldn't work for a betting exchange because 8 year old blockchain technology wouldn't. Now you are saying there can't be any better technology because it would have been done already.

Don't the the point or love for this at all. Seems imho to often be the sort of thing conspiracy nuts love as they feel they are sticking it to the illumanti.

THere was some article I read the other day that the amount of electrical energy put into the relatively pointless idea of bitcoin mining is now mind boggling. More than ireland. In fact:
"The electricity used to mine bitcoin this year is bigger than the annual usage of 159 countries"
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-usage-2017-11

"PowerCompare.co.uk used stats from Bitcoin and cryptocurrency data provider Digiconomist, which estimates that 29.05 TWh of electricity was used to mine bitcoin, compared to an estimated 25 TWh of electricity per year used by Ireland."

Well how green is that. There were already currencies. What is the ****ing POINT?

Do you not see a point in that Just Checking?

It's bizarre to suggest currency based on effort or hardwork that anyone can create is pointless but  another currency that is created by the few by simply punching some digits in to a leger is not pointless.

If anything cryptocurrencies will hopefully educate a lot of people on how Fiat currencies are created.

A currency is really simply a medium that advanced the barter system to allow putting a unit on the value of the interchange of things that are worth > 0 pence.

A rarely used made up currency that costs more than the energy consumption of medium sized european country, by virtue of endless totally pointless CPU Maths, that if it was to actually be widely used would require the energy usage of the sun or whatever, just to exist is just stupid.

If I pay £1.16 today in tesco that's a trivial transaction, that costs about 0.0000000001w of energy. It's a few bytes down a wire.

What is the bitcoin energy coist of, in one day, 100 million people, a very small % of the planet, doing just one tiny transaction?

Yes it's hugely inflated now, as are most pyramid schemes. I certainly wouldn't buy into it.

A rarely used made up currency that costs more than the energy consumption of medium sized european country, by virtue of endless totally pointless CPU Maths, that if it was to actually be widely used would require the energy usage of the sun or whatever, just to exist is just stupid.

If I pay £1.16 today in tesco that's a trivial transaction, that costs about 0.0000000001w of energy. It's a few bytes down a wire.

Again you think something which requires some effort is pointless but something which doesn't isn't pointless?

If I paid 5 pound at Tesco's in bitcoin it would require some kind of effort/output. If I pay 5 pound on my credit card all it requires is a bank to create a currency because they have a licence to do so and I'm trusted to maybe pay it back.

Whether or not you see advantages in bitcoin to ask what the point in Crytpocurrency is when there are other currencies that exist is  a stupid point.

All I see its lots of people who like to give the impression that they know whats going on.  The reality is nobody really knows but Bitcoin etc  is being sold as a way that any idiot can make money and for me that's reason enough to avoid.

Exactly like Betfair then.

ive seen at least half a dozen experts on the subject ltely on the bbc,sky,itv etc and you get the feeling the presenters,pundits etc would love to plough money into it but like the majority of us,the more people who come on to explain it the less we understand it