I don't buy the analogy. When I play poker, I usually win, because I've spent years reading people and learning the game. When I play craps, it's more random and not a game of skill, but more luck. With stocks, I don't feel it's gambling at all, I invest in companies that make money or have potential for growth, if you invest in the stock market long term it's always profitable, very much unlike gambling. With crypto, it more like investing in start up companies, you are investing based on potential for growth, realizing some will fail, that still seems far more of a successful plan than a game of chance, especially if you do your homework and follow the trends.

Um, can you tell me where you got these numbers, because these aren't even close to what I've seen.

As of January, ~10% was held by miners, Exchanges held about 13%, Whales (includes humpbacks) accounted for ~33%. Whales could be anything from institutions, funds, custodians along with high net worth individuals.

Based on a very in depth study done by Glassnode, "We can derive that around 2% of network entities control 71.5% of all Bitcoin. Note that this figure is substantially different from the often propagated "2% control 95% of the supply"."

https://insights.glassnode.com/bitcoin-supply-distribution/

Unless you're an idiot like me!

Is this what coinbase means by "security key"? One more thing for me to lose, but I haven't lost my keys for awhile...

Trading and Investing are different things.

I have investments I'll never touch until I need them. I check their value maybe quarterly or less, mostly for peace of mind. It's rare I make any alterations to my strategy. I just continue to put money into it on a continual basis to dollar cost average into the market. If I notice a dip, I might throw more than normal to get a little more bang for the buck. Those assets are mostly spread across indexes or managed accounts. Recently I started throwing a little into crypto for much the same purpose. That's it.

Trading is what I do with my idle pinball money... I'm not likely to outearn my investment strategy, but my goals are different. One, I like following the markets, doing the tech analysis, trying to catch some runners, etc. It's another hobby I enjoy that at least has some potential to be profitable. Two, I want to pull some gains and throw it at a new machine or other toy as I please. This isn't retirement money, it's play money.

You've mentioned the plates a couple times before and it saddens me that this is just a consumer product. Guess I should've known, but previously I thought it was a fun story because in my head you were hanging out in a garage with a welding mask on burning your seed phrase into some steel.

Interesting to see that you only really need the first 4 letters of each word.

I didn't use or log into my Coinbase account for 3 or 4 years in which I switched laptops and phones and had no passwords saved. 6 months ago when I decided to access that account again, it was relatively easy to go through their security protocols, wait through the verification process, and have access to my bitcoin again. I appreciated both the security protocols and the ease of accessing my funds again. Waiting 72 hours probably seems a lot different to someone that's younger or newer to crypto, that seemed pretty normal to me.

"A Mysterious Bitcoin Whale who sold 3000 Bitcoins at 58K$, Bought back 3521 Bitcoins in the last three days"
https://itsblockchain.com/bitcoin-whale-bought-3521-bitcoins/

Is it Musk?

Nope, nothing so grandiose I'm afraid. I originally purchased a steel plate and some punches, but that got old really fast.

I'm not sure where you're seeing that, but it could be a few things. If it was referring to a hardware 2FA key, it would be under the section where you create your 2FA codes.

That would be true if people were buying into cryptos that seek to solve a problem in a fresh way, i.e. like a start-up company / Kickstarter might.

I think though in the main, with cryptos at least, there is a significant amount of money being put into “whatever combination of letters is showing the mad gains”, whether that be BTC, ADA, MATIC, WIBBLE, ZYZZY or whatever. If you asked those people what drew them to those coins (e.g. a reasonable question with stocks and shares, and startups), “why X over Y”, what the purpose of that coin is, they probably couldn’t tell you. It would be “omg got in at $1.11, up double digits pc today, WIBBLE to the moon boys! HODL rocket-ship.jpg”.

I mean, just doing it to make money isn’t “wrong”, persay, but it’s not investing either, it’s gambling. Unfortunately (?) buying and selling cryptos is so frictionless that it’s never been easier to lose money you can’t afford to lose, for a lot of people. It also tends to be more emotional too, because people don’t like to lose and in an almost entirely sentiment driven market that can happen quickly, without warning and without you having any control over it (e.g. Musk tweeting, China crackdown announcements, regulation threats, etc)

I’ve got the bulk of my money in regular investments that I don’t really have to think about. Like the poster remarked above I check them so often just to confirm they still exist and are on track. With cryptos I’m playing with money that I don’t mind losing. I am more interested in the underlying technology and the prospects for it than just straight up betting on it, as many people do.

I do think regulation is coming on this stuff, in some shape or form, simply because the more it captures retail “investor” money the more people are going to lose big to the random sentiment swings and whale manipulation. For every person buying the dip there must be however many people nursing considerable losses due to buying in at the wrong time on FOMO gold rushes and straight up pump and dump scams, etc.

.

This market is like a fucking yo-yo right now, and going nowhere. If you're an active trader you could buy and sell on the 15% swings every 12hrs.

I really appreciate everyone's input and opinions on this crazy stuff.

I was wondering what ya'll thought about the talk of "govcoins" - Fedcoin and e-euro - and what they will do to crypto?

Bought some more ETH at 2500, fingers crossed.

I transferred another $200 to the exchange today, and I'll watch things today and tomorrow. It's not much, but it scratches my itch to buy the dip, without overspending in case the dip continues to dip lol.

I think most of it is every 20 minutes there is discussion of a ban followed by all the new people running for the exits. This is starting to be too damn stressful.

I have a funny feeling it's going to go from bad to worse pretty quickly with the talk of a mining ban in China. Especially since it's coming from China's Vice Premier and not some I heard it from someone that heard it from someone.

That's why I could never try to swing/day trade crypto. There's just too many wild x factors that pop out of nowhere at random times. I find that buying in small amounts and holding is a lot easier for me to wrap my head around, and have faith in, long term.

Wouldn’t banning mining in China make the price go up?

No clue. But if you remember, when that coal electric plant in China went offline and the hash rate dropped by 25% the price crashed.

This doesn't like a dip any longer but rather the start of a bear market?

That's kind of what I was thinking. Most of the gains for the last few months have been wiped out, the news has completely soured and I'm having to zoom further and further out to see when thing were last profitable.

Put your fun money in and don't look at it. If it bothers you that much, cash out and don't jump back in for a while.

This is not for the faint of heart. I understand your stress as I have been dealing with it too. I bought in, and I try to look maybe 2 times a day or it will drive me crazy.

Agree - only have in crypto what I can afford to go to 0

I would tend to agree.

If you're daytrading, log in as often as you need to in order to play the dips.

If you consider it an investment, why are you logging in at all? You wouldn't check your stocks & shares every day.

It seems to me that checking the prices incessantly when you're either not in a liquidity position to take advantage of it, or are not confident in doing so anyway, is pointless and only likely to create stress - either because you are seeing opportunities pass you by, or because you're going to be upset at the % loss, or whatever.

As said above - don't bet more than you can afford to lose. A good maxim for any remotely risky investment really.

Well, I guess we know the answer to this now. I didn't think it would happen 3 months later. My response? I bought some more.

I still honestly think this will be at 100k by xMas with a few blips along the way. That 30k was bargain price if any one managed to buy a chunk.

If it did reach 100k I’d probably cash half out and enjoy life a little more

China is pushing for their own government controlled non-anonymous coin. Think about how the worlds largest population having it's own coin impacts the rest of the world trying to use BTC or anything else. As it is today the cyrpto coin market is way too fractured. Until only 1 maybe 2 coins are the go ahead, these are false markets of speculation and that is it and they are not going to be stable.

Sorry, I don't see it
When it gets back to 50-60 range there will be a lot of sellers wanting to get out

Thanks. I appreciate it but I've been around the block. I got involved with this stuff mid 2017 and have ridden the emotional roller coaster many times, both up and down. It's still no less stressful when your value drops by 50%. With that said, I have no plans on going anywhere.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that usually Fridays and Saturdays tend to see lower prices. I'm not sure if that is a carry over effect from the way people approach stocks (as trading is closed on weekends so sell on Friday), or what, but it's something I've noticed the last few months. Combine it being a Friday, after a decent crash, and sprinkle in some China fud for good measure, and I really feel this is more a combination of negative effects than the start of a bear market.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/china-bitcoin-mining-ethereum-illegal-trading-cryptocurrency-market-150459164.html

I’m guessing this is largely to blame for today’s depression in prices.

I have to say, if the US starts making similar comments, or worse - promise regulation - I think we’ll see a pretty big downturn. Will be interesting to see what survives.

I do find it strange that ETH, ADA, etc are badly affected by this news. You’d think that as they have applications (unlike BTC) that they would suffer less, but the opposite is the case, ETH down 16%, ADA 19% compared to BTC 10%. Maybe they were overvalued?

I don't see how anybody would be surprised that China doesn't like crypto. Communism is all based on centrallization. The whole decentralization thing is totally incompatible with it. (Of course, is it really decentralized, and so on and so forth, is a whole different discussion).
I think that's really where the "bitcoiners/maximalists" (can't say I'm one of them, but I think I understand the mindset) differ from the "investors". Investors want widespread acceptance, bitcoiners want to fight government control, as I understand it.

...and for that matter, I don't see how any government, even on the free market side, would be too fond of it either.

To be fair, the United States government doesn't like crypto either, it doesn't benefit our crony capitalism either.

It’s not so much that it’s a surprise, moreover that every time they say something things take a downturn. It as if this fact isn’t priced in.

The US hasn’t even made any substantial comments on it yet. If they start hinting at similar controls, things will get bad, I think. The worst part is that this can happen at any time with no warning.

Not trying to be a downer, just pragmatic.

I guess it's probably gotten as big as it can get (or close to it) - it's probably getting to that size where governments will want to snuff it before it gets out of hand and gains mainstream traction and I would think it's not a coincidence that they're kind of all coming out around the same time. The whole pollution thing is an excuse (not saying it's not true, just that it's convenient to hide behind that).
Regular people will not want to touch anything illegal, especially if it starts to come with some tax evasion-type penalties, so there goes the mainstream acceptance. People doing illegal things will still use it for currency as it's already out there and not traceable, so it's probably going to remain in existence for a long time.

The one I'm still confused about is Elon though. Again he didn't just realize last week the pollution part and he doesn't seem to be one to go hand in hand with government, but he is certainly unpredictable.

That's the only US Gov comment I've seen so far...

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Does anybody really "like" crypto?

I mean we are 12 years into it and nobody uses it.

It’s worth more than 99% of businesses.
Yes Levi no one uses it.

Walmart is 400B
Crypto is 1.5 T at this time.

Ok ok ok I don't use it.

When is the projected date when shlubs like me will be using it to buy stuff?

That’s up to you .

My great aunt has never been online.

Is it really a part of you daily life? Like, you use it to buy stuff?

And MY great aunt is certainly online! You should see her facebook profile!

don’t feed the bear , monkey

Ha it's not a troll...I drop by here every few weeks to see what you guys are up to. I know it's like a religion for you guys and religious debate here is a bannable offense so not interested in arguing about or asking you to salve my skepticism.

Just wondering if any of you guys are using this these days as actual currency. I had a friend who used to buy drugs with it but he lost a bunch of bitcoins when the big Dread Pirate Roberts bust went down. Fortunately he DID get a lot of drugs that way before that happened.

Of course if I'd bought some bitcoin from him INSTEAD of the drugs back then I'd be in much better shape right now!

I’ll go for it...
Unfortunately I’ve never had the opportunity to buy drugs with crypto. But my drug days are behind me now so slim chance but never say never. I wouldn’t anyway too easy to trace unless you use monero or lightning, but even then a bad idea just use cash.

I did a sale of RaM pinball in cardano. It was pretty cool, over seas sales and it cost less than $1 to process in fees. took about 2min for the funds to be fully transferred. Had we done a wire transfer with currency exchange the fees would have been a hundred dollars at least.

I’m not really looking to sell any btc atm but it’s not hard to do anywhere that takes visa. I do have a Visa card that gives me btc rewards but for the first month I’m not too impressed. My AMEX has better rewards.

It’s still early for crypto. Again I can spend btc but don’t want to. Think of the internet in late 90’s when people saying it’s a fad and you can’t do anything with it. In a world that’s going digital some crypto will win out, and different cryptos do different things. Blockchain is very powerful tool for what it offers to the world. Example if Chainlink can do what it promises it will revolutionize the medical patient information sharing. And of course some are scams too.

What's the big deal with Bitcoin? Not even one numismatist is at all interested in collecting it.

You can sell me a Mando LE for 1 MATIC?

It could be that numismatist are only interested in physical forms of currency?

Rather outdated notion...but I still wear mechanical watches, so to each their own.