Coinbase still owns the private key. That means if coinbase disappears tomorrow, so does access to your coin.

What’s the difference between this and just buying the stock?

Another to get indirect exposure to crypto is by buying stocks like PayPal, square, visa, MasterCard. Payment systems in general.

This is something I've been wondering about. It's supposed to be anonymous, untraceable blah blah, yet the exchanges have all that info and can be taxed when you convert. Are you saying there are other ways to acquire it without mining or being paid in it? Seems that regardless, if you try to cash out to normal currency you are tracked.

I will take the risk

To make sure it's clear (not sure from your wording), bitcoin isn't a stock, it's a currency. But your question is very relevant when compared to stocks.

If you bought stocks from E*Trade, and they go out of business tomorrow, how do you claim ownership of the stock if E*Trade is (was) the only one with record of it? The answer is two-fold... One is E*Trade is big, would probably be bailed out at least long enough so you can transfer your ownership out of it, and two, there are probably regulations around ensuring the ownership is properly registered in a timely manner with independent sources.

Since Crypto isn't regulated, you are relying on the exchange to stay in business to keep your registered ownership. If you look up mtGox and 40+ other crypto exchanges that went out of business you start to understand why others recommended you keep your registration in your own hands (the equivalent of having your stock broker send you certificates). However, day after day we see news releases of people who lost their crypto keys, and their millions of dollars, so relying on humans to track their own keys is also faulty.

IMO Coinbase feels pretty legit and mostly stable, is U.S. based, and is looking to IPO so the short term risk of leaving your crypto registration with Coinbase seems low. For longer term and if you have substantial value in crypto, the recommendation is to store your keys in your personal hardware wallet, because of the decentralized nature of crypto.

Sold 250 of GME at 51. This is just stupid but I am in. Lets see where this goes.

Also, just for Ice, I bought 4,000 SABR on a reopening play.

Looks like decent dividend.

Another 250 of GME just sold at 62. This is beyond stupid. Will figure out what to do with the last 500.

Thanks for the explanation as I’m sorts new to this. So about those “keys”....I trade on Robinhood and when I buy Bitcoin for example, I just buy the coins or stock and that’s it. I’ve never heard anything about owning keys? Apologies for my complete ignorance on the subject

If you are already at a huge profit, I'd be tempted to see how far the squeeze can go with some of it. FYI, I bought 10 shares at opening to do just that.

Yep, we are letting it run. Insane.

HALTED!

Crazy, how long does that halt last before trading resumes on it?
Edit: Nevermind, it was short, looks like it's moving again

PLTR is going off today as well.

I wouldn't even go so far to call it a currency - it is a speculative asset - only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. It has no intrinsic value whatsoever. The thing with bitcoin nobody talks about is that the BIG players own almost all of it, that is why the market is driving it to the current level. Supply is limited. If one or all the big boys decide to liquidate - the price will quickly dissapate.

Robinhood would hold your keys for you, so you're relying on Robinhood to stay in business, or at least give you your keys if they go out of business.

Can say the same same for the US dollar. People/governments/businesses sort of agree on its value, but there is no intrinsic value to the paper it's printed on, and considering most isn't even on paper, that intrinsic value is the same as crypto... all tracked via electronic ledgers at banks. The main difference is the US Government backs its currency with, essentially, it's word, but it can devalues it when it feels like it, which is what's been happening for years.

And back to topic, PLTR at all time highs today!

Funny you should bring that up. Sold all my GME for a 48% profit in a week. Rolled the earnings into AMC at $3.24. Currently at $3.44. Let's see what happens.

I’m considering buying some lottery tickets too, in the form of AMC options. A few months out, so if it doesn’t happen my fuse isn’t too short.

I decided to go with some recs I've seen on here and bought about $8k of each SABR, LTC, and GAIN just now. I am commenting mostly to say that I am happy I found this thread and hope that I can make some useful suggestions in the future.

Other than being cheap compared to last year, anything pointing to a resurgence? I know they just issued $100M in $15% interest bonds, which to me seems crazy, but I'll admit I know nothing about them beyond that.

No need to apologize. In a nutshell, when you buy Bitcoin an entry is made in the blockchain (think digital ledger) indicating that your wallet owns X amount of BTC. Associated with that wallet is a public / private key pair. You prove ownership of the wallet and associated BTC with the private key. That's what validates your ownership of the BTC you purchased.

When you keep it stored on an exchange, they have the private key which is linked to your account via your email address. If something happens to the exchange, your private key can be lost forever which in turn means your BTC is locked up forever.

Best practices is to purchase a hardware wallet, which is a device that holds your private keys. That way you control them and not someone else. However, there are reasons to keep crypto on an exchange. I have about 25-30% of mine on exchanges and the rest in a hardware wallet.

YES! And this is a stock market thread. Can we please take the discussion of pseudo-currency elsewhere? Thanks.

You can talk reopening plays and all of that, but this is what it comes down to: short interest squeeze play. People are following the GME example. That worked out pretty well for me. I do not recommend this for anybody. This is riding the lightning.

Perfectly explained. Thanks brother!

Where are you guys getting the info on the targets for a short squeeze?

You can argue the same thing about a lot of things we place value on

You put 18k into AMC?
BALLER ALERT! lol
Good luck!

It's a reddit group with 2 million people (it's almost doubled in size in the past month):
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets

GME has been the main target for months for a squeeze. A lot of hype for buying BB and PLTR for the past few weeks, building hype for AMC in the last 24 hours. Betting on meme stocks has lots of risk but also lots of reward. They are seriously driving the prices of a few stocks up.

Damn! I guess you can make quick money in the stock market.

Can one stock crash the market? What happens when they all panic cash out? Asking for a friend on reddit

PLTR!!!!

I am going to buy Ice a beer!

someone will always be left holding the bag - better to be happy with a decent gain than to watch it evaporate before your eyes.

.

DBLM too. I am still on the train. Been on PLTR since Nov and not getting off. Long term hold. JMIA also is having a day also. Another long term hold.

But wait, Ice didn’t you jump off the train??

I know I am late on this one to share IZEA. I honestly didn’t give it much thought when I bought it a couple of weeks ago. Online influencer advertising platform in a year when companies are expanding their advertisers budgets. Online advertising has been around but still early innings. A $200M company. Tiny! Sorry to be douchey and not sharing it earlier but may be worth a watch list add.

And that is why I took a 48% gain, smiled, and walked away. You get greedy, you get dead.

These are not quality investments. However, there are some fundamental issues going on that can be taken advantage of.

Once again, I do not advocate anybody following me on this.

Thank WSB! LMAO

Mining is anonymous and you can to direct exchanges and person-to-person sales. That’s the idea. If you use it as a currency. It’s often used for illicit things but it’s also used for people who realize the US dollar is dead and we dance on its corpse.

It’s very hard to use it outside the exchanges but effectively with the public and private keys you have everything you need. Post your public key and people can send coins to it or request money from you. Lots of possibilities! It sounds way more complicated than it really is.

And like people said in the thread “it’s worthless pseudo-currency” so if it’s not real then there’s nothing wrong with hiding your fortunes in bitcoin like all the billionaires are doing right now!

For the answer on where I get info on short interest, etc, the answer is more complex than WSB. A lot of those guys are posting memes and the like. The vast majority are getting lucky vs knowing what they are doing. I do get some ideas there and do my diligence. Then, I consult with my financial guy. We talked 6 times today as GME erupted. He convinced me to sell at 51 and 62, and I made the call to exit.

As for AMC in particular, here is the short interest vs the float. I think the combination of those factors and the mob at WSB seeing what happened with GME could make this interesting.

5F909979-86A7-4BE9-9BA6-2B7F873008D9 (resized).png

What is this translated to pinball speak?

There is no translation. You fundamentally have to understand this or you should not do this trade.

With that being said, there are 52M shares of AMC stock and people are short 38M. Any upward motion in price makes the short owners have to cover, which means buy the stock that they borrowed and sold. With this amount of shares short to outstanding shares, if enough momentum gets behind buying shares it could drive the cost up quickly.

Thanks Ice!! On the PLTR and JMIA train.

Ok, so I am not Iceman, but I did bring PLTR, RKT, C3.AI, Lancadia, and a few others to this party. My professional life revolves around selling very complex analytics and data fabric solutions to the largest entities in the US. This area is going to be huge under the Biden administration. You will have UIpath IPOing this first quarter and Databricks (alledgedly) IPOing this year. I would add those to your lists.

Happy hunting!

Give us a 1 week heads up of when you think they are IPOing please.

AMC- with 0% float shorted means all the shorts are retail investors?

Let's be honest here... what are stocks actually? They are "currency" in a given company. Just because a company issues stock doesn't mean it's safe, nor does it make it any more legitimate than a crypto currency designed to solve the massive inefficiencies with the current global currency exchange via banks. In fact Janet Yellen came out in support of crypto currency this week (while noting its illicit uses as well, which, if you want to be honest, happens with stocks all the time in many forms of white collar crime. I've seen plenty of this first hand, but those are stories for another day).

And when it comes down to it, all the technical indicators that apply to trading stocks apply the same to crypto. And let's not forget those people who make a living trading fiat currencies, or commodities, or bonds, or the fact that there are plenty of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks and funds that are directly related to crypto currency. So honestly while I support the desires of people in this thread to want crypto discussion elsewhere, I'll also argue trading crypto isn't different enough from stock trading to lay down a blanket ban from this thread... just a gentle nudge into the bitcoin/crypto thread should suffice.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/somebody-explain-bitcoin-to-me

Do you have to be a broker to have access to the short information?

I took a peek at that Reddit group. Maybe I’m not reading the correct stuff since I’ve never used Reddit but what I read was mostly a bunch of disorganized, foul mouthed garbage. No thanks. Doing fine without that.

That's exactly what it is, it's terrible. I'm using it only to see where 2 million people are all putting their money each week because currently they have enough of an investment army to push a stock's price up significantly.

Several Stocktwits channels are abuzz justifying they they could be the next target for the r/wsb YOLO charge. Nice to see some happy chatter, but only so many will be right.