How can you say that 'theres really none happening' in the face of the near constant decline since Black Sunday Dec. 17, 2017 when Bitcoin futures trading was started?  Soon after futures contract trading was called out as causing the decline, the decline slowed and as voices were raised the non-big-jumps, ordinary trading, has leveled out.

Along with the fairly steady decline of Bitcoin value since that Black Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017, when Bitcoin futures trading commenced, has been sharp large volume increases and decreases. Those jumps also have an effect of triggering wins and losses in futures. So, a large enough house with enough Bitcoin to make the large jumps can decide how much to buy or sell for a period in the then coming days to maximize profit on futures. It's pumping money out. And it can do this even without using bad press to change expectations.

I think without the margin payouts this would become unprofitable to the house.

So, with no real central authority to consult they just put futures trading in place.  Brings to mind a large corporation that would insure some of its workers with life insurance and the corporation as the beneficiary.  Say a worker would die at home, the corporation would collect the life insurance and the worker's family would get nothing from the life insurance policy.  The practice was ruled illegal.

So, I wonder how this state of affairs happened.  Like in this country, did the approving authority that gave the go ahead to trade bitcoin futures ask anyone if we the bitcoin users minded?  I understand bitcoin doesn't have a ruling authority but was the Bitcoin Foundation even consulted?

In 1972, when the IMM was created, was every country who's fiat currencies were then to become part of currency futures, consulted?

Futures trading is astoundingly tempting to manipulation of markets, currencies, equities.  

I mentioned a try at buying stocks.  Bitcoin is too egalitarian for the world financial industry.   If they can't make bitcoin lose money they lose money.

And while we're at it why not ban bitcoin lending.  Our economy went to serious inflation when fast cash became available from Ready Credit, to Diners Club cards, to credit cards generally.

And suppose a ban on bitcoin futures trading resulted in a long term positive recovery of bitcoin?  What would that say about futures trading of equities in general?

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Interesting.  Looking at the Futures Contract Wikipedia page, the Dutch pioneered and had formal futures markets in the 17th century.  I see references to the tulip bubble bust when shade is being cast at bitcoin.  The tulip bubble that burst.  What caught my eye in this wiki was that a tulip futures market appeared near the height of tulipmania in 1636.  February 1637 saw the crash of the tulip market.  Did speculators see an opportunity to make money bursting the tulip bubble?

Wall street and bankers are bitcoin's enemies.  

As a means of maintaining value, in the present bitcoin has been defeated.  On 12/17/17 btc=$19379 and today 7/11/18 btc=$6345.  A drop of $13034 or $501/week.  I bailed when I looked at the slope and the previous 2 weeks saw 5.05%/week drop.  Right now the the $501/week average amounts to 2.57%/week.  

One would be an idiot to leave money as bitcoin while it's losing value at 2.57%/week.

Bitcoin's enemies did this.  Wall street brokers and bankers used media to boost the value of bitcoin approaching 12/17/2017, when trading in bitcoin futures took effect, then casting shade driving bitcoin down, classic pump an dump.

I tried buying a few stocks years ago when my bank allowed trading.  I figured oh, no traders to deal with, I was wrong.  Buying a  few stock saw unexpected fees that made the whole exercise a bust.  This was years before bitcoin.  And moving money, the international fees were horrible.  That's why Wall Street brokers and bankers couldn't allow bitcoin to stabilize and rise in value.  They don't want our money in btc.  As fiat currencies increasingly continue to be watered down while money is pumped to the top 1%, the fixed quantity of bitcoin should only allow it to win.  At least that was the case until bitcoin futures trading took effect.

Will eliminating bitcoin futures trading fix it?  Big deposits and withdrawals will still work to pump money out even without bad press to drive value down.  Still, stopping futures trading will kill the incentive for some bad press.  

Early on bitcoin was the place to be when  there was trouble.  That sure changed.  Right now with trade wars a reality one would think money would be heading to bitcoin in a big way.  Why isn't it?  Who's ox was getting gored that that changed?

soy39

(the 39 unrelated to red lining implications - though that 17/17 does bring a pair of grim reapers to mind)

or Bitcoin as a means to store value defeated!

I've been a bitcoin owner for years.  I discovered a block pool mining with my then new Mercury.  As mining became less profitable I used my best Bitmain product to mine and reduce heating bills.  I was a hodl until this year.

Last year I was elated to see the rise up to December and had visions of buying a house for myself and one of my sons (the other doing very well).  Then that slide from 12/17/2017.  I held on through slides before, like when btc was down in the low hundreds but the steady drop at a rate of roughly 5%/week was just too much and I almost fully cashed out.  Of course the buildup and fall was due to futures trading.  Capitalism at its worst.  In economics we learned futures were started in the Chicago Mercantile, betting on acts of God, the weather.  But futures on other than crop yields is suspiciously like powerful forces in trading saw they had the power of gods to control future prices through media.  And they did and do.  Even Bill Gates said he could short Bitcoin and drive it down, but then his grandfather's family, Maxwell, owns one of the largest banks in the northwest.  I wonder if that bank is bitcoin friendly.

So, I'd been watching the drop.  It looked like someone was pumping value out of the ecosystem.  Was it Bitmain?  Not having confidence in the coins it mines?  Mining and cashing in?  But it wasn't just cashing in.  There would be a big drop in value, then sometimes a relatively stable period, then a big jump up.  Like catch me if you can, buy low and sell high.  But the trend was always down, that 5% per week.

Then recently, June 29, the big drops changed to big jumps.  Twice on June 29, once on July 2 and again on July 7.  I couldn't bring myself to trust the rise because it wasn't due to a confidence change but due to big money pumping it up.  Then yesterday a big drop.  Who the heck is going to put confidence in coin that visibly being bounced around by some manipulator?

My question was Who is it?  But maybe the subject should be Is it possible to ban bitcoin futures?  If futures trading is what's pumping money to the top 1% so steadily then bitcoin with futures trading is no better than fiat.

soy39

I filed a FBAR for MtGox in 2013.  I have not renewed the FBAR for MtGox since, given the bankruptcy.

I have opted to have my claim paid out to Kraken in the form of btc.  My claim has been approved years ago.

Should I re-register my MtGox account with FBAR every year?

I'll register my Kraken account with FBAR hoping to nail down loose ends.  Should this be done annually regardless if the claim has not been paid and the account value is $0.00?

I found the IRS basis accountability difficult.  I note they may assess a fine for documents that can't be scanned.  Instead of using the IRS form for basis accountability, I put it all down on paper, my yearly 12/31 basis recalculation, and sent it all in.  They approved and figured my tax refund a few bucks higher than I had submitted!

soy39

 

Yes, I see that now.  And old miners as heat won't work well for long.

But, I gotta say electric is a getting more expensive.  A few years ago the rates went up and caught me unawares while mining.  At the same time an increase of line charges of $5 was added.  This year another $5 increase in line charges.  On top of that, something called VOGTLE IDC, which is about financing the building of a nuclear reactor around Savannah, is $0.006/kWh.  South Carolina, which was having a similar cost overrun problem with the construction of a nuclear reactor killed the reactor construction.  They should kill it here too.  Anyway, those increased line charges aren't going to go away if one starts powering one's home part time with solar.  And that kind of thing is going to keep happening.

Looking at what that .6¢/kWh will add to my typical monthly driving if I were driving a Chevy Bolt getting 17.6 kWh/62.137 miles.  But after I put the chickens to bed...

Okay, so if I drive 500 mi/month (retired), at 17.6 kwh/100km, the .006 VOGTLE will only add 84¢/month and now that mileage might cost about $15 in electric otherwise.  That 500 miles is 1½ tanks of gas.  That $15.84 addition to my electric bill would be a lot better than what I pay for filling the tank 1½ times.  Doesn't help my mining costs any.

I see Tesla Powerwalls are to be sold in Home Depot and they start at $5,500 for 13.5kWh.  My S5 with non-standard switching supplies and therefore not super efficient, with an extra fan, ran at 624 watts at 337.5M and 645 watts at 350M.  So, figuring 624 watts, that's just under 15kWh/day.  I see it takes 6kWh to charge a Prius.  To power the S5 a rough calculation using 120 watt solar panels would take 16 panels.  And nexttag shows that a package of six 120 wall solar panels would cost $1545.  So, at a cost of $257.50/120watt panel, that's $4120.

Propane heating and cooking is very close to 100 gallons/year and was $1.25/gallon in 2016 (didn't run miners summer/winter of 16/17) and $2.10/gallon in 2017.  I'm a true believer in long underwear and live alone.  So, if I bought a Tesla battery wall it would take 30 years of heating with my miners to pay off the battery alone never mind the solar cells (if figuring heat because in very cold weather I needed to fire up a couple of C4's as well).  But that really isn't realistic as I could run the miner summer nights to mid-morning without exposure to excessive heat and the minimal bitcoin it earns over time, and with bitcoin value luck, would pay that down.  Still, a Powerwall, solar cells, a charging station and a Prius could kill my gasoline bill.  But, car insurance on an EV is higher.  And, we are going to run out of petroleum sooner or later.

So, not organized at all.  Still worth thinking about though.

I heated my mobile home with a few old Bitmain miners this last winter using very little propane on the coldest days.  My S5 seems to have a value comparable to a heat pump, not paying for itself but cheaper than heating with electric.  Electric isn't that cheap here in Georgia but I'm guessing half of what I'd be paying on Long Island.

I have property and the thought of solar is usually in the back of my mind.  I had asked my insurance agent about buying a used EV but he threw shade on the idea.  Used EVs and rural distances don't mix well.  But more interesting is that I don't think the grid is ready for many EVs charging every night when the boss gets home from his commute, neighborhood transformers catching fire and what not.  And although most of Georgia under Georgia Power has net metering for solar, private electric companies in some parts are unregulated in that regard and not bound by the Georgia Power.  So, I wondered about a solar wall and solar cells unconnected to the grid for 24/7 mining.

Has anyone used a solar wall and cells to off grid power a miner 24/7?  If so what miner(s), what battery wall, and how many solar cells at what wattage?  I could picture putting the cells all on an old, no longer road worthy, trailer to avoid a boost in property tax.  And, if I ever buy an EV I could expand. 

Thanks.

soy39

Looking at CDY now.  I see: In the case of CDY, holders of BCH will receive 1,000 CDY for every BCH they hold. WBTC, on the other hand, will airdrop 100 tokens for every BTC. It should also be noted, that Coinex is the only exchange currently trading CDY and thus if your tokens are not held in a BCH wallet, you may not be eligible to claim the hard fork. (from: https://cryptoticker.io/bitcoin-candy-world-bitcoin-mined/).  

So, kind of the reverse of the bch fork, easier, eventually, if one had one's btc on Coinbase rather than in a private wallet.  The CDY makes having the bch in a private wallet necessary to possibly 'be eligible to claim the hard fork'.

It would be nice to see CDY listed among CoinGecko's 1149 listed cryptocoins.

I understand that one did not need to have one's btc on an exchange in order to get the bch but it was easier.

How does one go about taking ownership of any of these other coins based on btc ownership at the time of that new coins creation and which are they?

I can foresee a problem with some forks saying 'Here, you have x of the new coin for having btc at present.'  If one wanted to cash those out, what exchanges will handle the transaction?  Coinbase for instance withheld the bch after the fork for some months before allowing trading but steadfastly won't trade most others.  There was a risk, and those of us who got burned badly by MtGox losing our coins, felt pressure to take out btc from exchanges and move the coins to a personal wallet.  I resisted, trusting that Coinbase would do the right thing, it being watched closely by the government and based in California.  The successful bch fork vindicated that trust.

I suppose the way to go would be if the new coins had an exchange that would allow cashing in for eth and sending those to a Coinbase address.

I was quite happy with the bch fork.  Are there other forks that give btc holders a share of the new offerings simply for owning btc? 

So is segwit2x being mined right now or only as a test?  I understand that pools which intend to mine segwit2x will start on Nov. 16 and that testing is being done now but not actual mining.

Besides the question if bitcoin ASIC mining devices will run on the segwit2x pools or become obsolete if they can't, and if 2x becomes the dominant cryptocoin, there's the question of relative value, bitcoin1x vs bitcoin2x.  If 2x becomes the dominant although we'll have equal numbers of both coins to start, I could see many selling their 2x and putting it into 1x then finding it was a mistake.

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But if the majority of bitcoin miners would fail to crunch segwit2x blocks then it would seem doomed - so perhaps we can assume they can.

Okay, so 'fork' implies that pools for both bitcoin1x and bitcoin2x will be mining the same chain pre-fork, then the designated block will be reached, then the fork, then the mining on the two pools will be different.  The bitcoin1x pool will have fewer miners solely due to the fork.  The bitcoin2x chain will now be mining larger blocks.  A question is: will the first block of the bitcoin2x be mined at the same difficulty as the corresponding block on bitcoin1x?  That bitcoin1x block will take longer due to fewer miners.  The first block on the bitcoin2x at that time will take longer due to its larger size, greater content.  I'm not sure the second is absolutely true as empty blocks had been found in the past.  If an empty block can be discovered they why would the bitcoin2x blocks need be "full"?  But then, that empty block situation was said to be due to an unfair vetting of what to put in the block, and that condition was said to be defeated with segwit last August.

Another question is, if both bitcoin1x and bitcoin2x take exceptionally long to discover the first block post fork, which difficulty will drop more and when?  I suspect bitcoin2x will drop more as it's new and untested therefore fewer miners than on the bitcoin1x branch of the fork.

Okay, I see an answer to a question about difficulty given by Andrew Chow on bitcoin.stackexchange.com back on Oct. 23rd.  "...The "difficulty" of mining is determined by the difficulty (the value). The difficulty only adjust itself every 2016 blocks, so when the Segwit2x fork happens, the difficulty will not adjust until 1152 after the fork happens. So the difficulty will not change at the time of the fork for either chain (barring any difficulty adjustment thing that segwit2x decides to implement in the future) so it will be equally difficult to mine on both chains and thus not easier at all.

When the difficulty adjusts, it can only adjust by a factor of 4 at most, so only down to a difficulty 1/4th that of the difficulty at the time of fork. This means that it won't be possible to CPU or GPU mine either chain for a while as the difficulty needs to adjust down a lot."

soy39