Haha I agree. Tbh we've broken the code of nature, we now reproduce like cockroaches because survival of the fittest now comes down to who has health insurance, a warm house, and a mcdonalds near by.

As Louis CK says: "Why don't you just eat the shit off the ground, I left stuff all over for you, corn, wheat".... "but I like when it's wrapped in bacon". haha

It's inevitable in my mind that we will eventually overgrow the space we've come to live in. On a high note though, more people = perpetually higher prices for bitcoin, gold, and other "rarish" things. There will always me more people looking to purchase than there is available.

Just wait until it's food we are after

That's the point.. we all think we are better but at the end of the day we are just monkeys trading rocks. I can definitely compare many peoples emotional trading to being no more sophisticated than what a monkey would do. Value is subjective, we can value one thing differently from day to day, meaning that it's all arbitrary, the flavor of the week. When it comes down to it, bitcoin is great, but it would work the EXACT same way @ $5 a piece. So to argue that bitcoins underlying technology is the reason its nearly 5k ea really isn't grounded in reality. Its because we are playing the bitrock-hoarding game...

The vast majority of users here make decisions based on nothing more than emotion.

Also, monkeys have definitely been known to use tools, even trading them with eachother... so I wouldn't be so quick to write them off as "dummies".

Half the people here on the forums remind me of monkeys talking about $50 ripple rocks lmao. Something about how it'd be cheaper for a bank to use the ripple network LOL, that's just delusional. A bank would never risk putting customer funds into a publicly-traded, unregulated, exchange system with a fluctuating price when they can just clone it and make it their own. Plus, what's cheaper than using the ripple network? Cloning it and making it your own so the fees go to the bank instead. It's much more likely for them to base the system off of fiat currency as well, simply because that works better with their business model.

To say we aren't monkeys is to deny our ancestry. Check out some of the studies on monkey versus human psychology. We really aren't all that different emotion wise lol. Human beings are intelligent, but that still doesn't mean we aren't stupid at the same time. I see plenty of assinine behavior from humans. If  humans didn't exist, pretty sure bonobos would be the most intelligent... do you consider a bonobo intelligent? no you consider yourself smarter, purely because humans are the smartest thing humans are aware of. I'd imagine that bonobo would feel pretty intelligent too if he sees nothing else smarter than him in the animal kingdom.


Also, a good example is Paypal... They have millions of users and currently hold around 13 billion in customer funds. Granted, Paypal only has to change numbers from one account to the next, where as bitcoin needs liquidity to buy and sell and have a semi-stable exchange rate... but at the end of the day the scale of Paypal is much bigger payment volume wise than bitcoin is... and they only hold 13b in customer funds.  

At least I can actually use Paypal to purchase things I need for my family... bitcoin I have to exchange to fiat (one way or the other). The fees are more with bitcoin when counting transaction fee + fiat conversion fee than with paypal lol.

There's no way in hell bitcoin deserves a 75b market cap, but I am happy it is because the profits have been amazing

Let the poop flinging commence.

Hell, it isn't my dog but I'd practically pay YOU to take him away LOL.

Why would a bank trust the ripple network when they can just create their own?

Sure using the ripple network would be cheaper for them, you know what would be EVEN cheaper? Cloning the ripple network and making "wells fargo coin" so all fees are paid to the bank instead.

I see zero reasons why any of the large banks in the world would chose to use the actual ripple network, nor do I see any reason for XRP to have that high of a market cap. The technology is good yes, but that doesn't make the coin behind the technology any more valuable.

Why should banks trust random people on the internet with something that has been entrusted with the banking industry for 100's of years?? That's just delusional. We're talking billions of dollars in corporate & customer funds, even if it's just for transfers, they can't & wouldn't take the exchange rate risk.
It makes 100% more sense to clone the technology and tailor it to your current needs, while keeping all the fees in the process.

I'd imagine if a bank ever creates a coin, it will be backed by good ole fiat currency simply because that will just work easier for their business model.

#1: all deposits/withdraws/transfers are currently made in regulated fiat currency, so why would you to mix in "took 1m regulated USD, transferred 1m worth of USD in unregulated XRP @ current exchange rate, lost 100k on XRP price movements", because at the end of the day both sides of the trade need to get the same amount of value.

Its much easier to just create your own coin and say for each coin I have I also have 1 USD to back it up.  If you send me 1 WFcoin to deposit, you get 1 USD in your account. It would simply be a "place holder" for 1 usd worth of value that is universally accepted among BANKS and no one else..., and any bank who received this coin would automatically know its a "IOU" for 1 usd and credit 1 usd to the customer account.

#2: If giant banks used a secondary currency that was freely traded on the market, that opens them up to manipulation by outside actors. This type of risk is something that banks WILL NOT stand for, I couldn't imagine depositing my funds and then hearing "sorry sir, after we transferred your xrp it went down 10%" rofl.

or "hey guys, I hear WF is transferring a large amount today, let's buy XRP up before the trade & make it higher than it should be so we can sell it @ a profit and then watch the market float back to normal valuation... who cares if we are taking value directly out of the bank itself and putting it into our pockets, that's what traders do!"

#3: The government would never give approval for the use of a publicly-controlled currency for non-crypto transactions dealing with the average joe. It's just simply more trouble than it is worth. I couldn't imagine trying to explain to my grandpa that you lost his "actual money" because of some weird internet money transfer system that fluctuates in price.

I swear people just don't think too deeply about stuff do they? We've used banks all ours lives, put yourself in their shoes and see how stupid all of this sounds haha.

Trade XRP to make profit... Don't drink Jeb Jone's Kool-aid though, or anyone elses for that matter... LOL

Why do a kickstarter and have people donate actual money when you can just create your own coin & create value out of thin air. -sarcasm-

I'd imagine the ICO startups have raised exponentially more "value" than they would've through kickstarter, with less of a chance of getting sued when they don't deliver. (AKA: scammers paradise)

We can argue later about if the value is real or not, out of sight out of mind I suppose??

Let me make it real easy for you guys.

Coin A & Coin B are both mined. Sometimes Coin A is more profitable, Sometimes Coin B is more profitable. At no point does Coin A become "better" than Coin B simply because it is suddenly more profitable to mine, or suddenly has more people mining it. OF COURSE you are going to switch to the most profitable chain, that's just simple economics.

RawDog & 25Hash, you are both bordering "extremist" with this shit lol, I see you all over this forum trying to push your narrative. At least make a point based in reality, so far all I've seen is a bunch of blatant shill posts. We've seen campaigns like this in the past, don't think you are fooling anyone.

BCC is up 100% in the last week, of course its more profitable to mine atm, lmao. -facepalm-

Be very careful dealing with someone in PM especially in regards to your private keys. Do not under any circumstances give those away. You probably already know this, but in the off chance you don't... You will lose everything if you give away your private keys. Imo, there's no reason why you can't solve this problem here in public.

I'm surprised no one has chimed in to help you, I did my split through Ledger, so I don't have the knowledge to give. I wish you the best of luck!

It comes down to personal risk tolerance and goals.

The counter argument to holding long term is how do you know that THIS rise isn't the last rise? It might seem all cherry now, but there's alot of things that could change from here into the future. Bitcoin could have government problems with US citizens in the future, a better competing coin could take over, we could have major heists, some sort of power coup or coding flaw, etc.

I sell at the peak and rebuy after it reforms a bottom, there's been 1 year each bubble where you have ample time to stock up on any coin of your choosing after the crash. There's no reason to have something rise 13x since you've purchased and then hold it until it loses 75% of that profit, just so you can make more profit down the road.

I'd rather protect my profits, buy back with a smaller portion later -if i get the chance- and turn profit into more profit while also protecting atleast 50% of my previous gains. I've made alot more than I would have just holding this whole time.

You can't get upset over lost profit, even if its a big lost profit... a realized loss is a hell of alot worse than a missed profit. There's been many opportunities to make money this year.

For instance, I'm up 75% on Alibaba so far for 2017, and that's just one of many lol. I've missed a few, but i'm still beating the US stock market by a fairly decent margin (and that's without including crypto). Tesla (i won't touch it, too risky) is another stock you could've made 70% on this year, though i consider it a bubble.

You could always sell 50%, keep the other 50% and try to rebuy later at a cheaper price, etc. Many different variances on what can be done to help mitigate risk & collect profit as it grows.

It's not done, but I'd definitely say the altcoin bubble is taking a breather. The vast majority of coins are going down at the moment, though that doesn't mean that they might not come back after this.

Bitcoin is going straight up at the moment, highly unsustainable. I'd imagine everyones ditching Alts for BTC because they don't want to miss out on the action.

Has alot to do with the market as a whole and not so much with each individual coin.

I've notice Altcoins & Bitcoin go through phases where they correlate & rise with eachother then switch to completely opposite correlation, with alts falling as bitcoin rises.

At the end of the day, both markets rise alot whether they are in lockstep or not. The question is: Is it over? Ik bitcoin has to be close to a proper correction. This is reminding me immensely of 2013, the jump from 600-900, small correction, then major jump from 900-1260... before moving downward. The difference is, this time everythings hunky-dory, no Mt Gox's & Chinese government bans lol.

I'm on the fence, basically.

quite frankly, if you need a "whale club" you are doing it wrong.

Quite interesting really, though I always figured this was happening, but never sure of the scale. It kind of like the "Selling Paypal @ 50% discount for btc" thing. I definitely think you are onto something, though I must ask: Are you from USA? if you are selling through LBC as an unliscensed money exchanger and asking for zero ID the gov here will shaft you. This also could be why you are attracting a certain type of clientele.

Even the traders on LBC that use proper liscenses & ask for ids and stuff... It's not like you can't fake an ID and show that instead, so I've oftened wondered how these procedures protect anyone from anything.

I always buy my LBC by cash deposit though, using proper id from an exchanger that has 1000s of good transactions with 99%+ good feedback. I've never had an issue. What would you like to know about my experiences with cash deposit on lbc?

I definitely agree, competition tends to be a good thing no matter whom it comes from.  Chinese miners have already shown us their ability & will to influence the future of bitcoin in their favor. It's not a good thing to have such a concentrated amount of mining power in a single area or with a single group, it makes collusion too easy.

I am still quite curious if anyone can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bitmain was actually using Asicboost?

imo, a more distributed network of miners is a good thing for bitcoin, regardless of whose doing the mining.

Lol definitely cool, or maybe we can take apart a few of the 6800 nuclear warheads that we will never use and use them to fuel nuclear-powered bitcoin miners (the planet would cease to exist before we got through 1/12th of them).

I could see it now: "Sweetie, don't stare directly at the bitcoin miner, it will make you go blind"...  

Russian state-sponsored mining sounds like a good reason for the US government to freak out.

Suddenly our secretive internet money becomes "secretive internet money... controlled by the Russians". LOL

Sure it doesn't matter if they actually control it, it just sounds good on paper.  

Never said it was flawed, said it was inevitable. I'm not trying to fix stupid, that's impossible, but I do try to use this to my advantage to make trading decisions. You keep implying I'm trying to fix things.

If we want to argue flaws, both sides are flawed, at the end of the day these problems exist for both systems. Arguing with a hardcore Capitalist is just as bad as arguing with a hardcore Socialist, neither will reason and meet in the middle. There's no reason to label eachother when labels are half the problem, everyone is free to their opinion right? It's not like I'm trying to force these changes on you... it's a friendly discussion.

"100% free unregulated markets", apparently Bitcoin has already failed that, guess we will add that to the list of things we "wanted" for bitcoin, but no longer can "acheive".

Is it socialist of me because I don't trust your currency will be worth something tomorrow because it's backed by nothing but pipe-dreams and hash rates? How much of the current bitcoin marketcap do you think is actually represented by fiat value? or to put it another way: If we all were to cash out right now, what percentage would we get of it's current worth in fiat value?

Yes value is subjective, we can get into the diamond/water paradox if you want, but at the end of the day, I simply chose to base my value around things I can actually use, which means *to me* Bitcoin isn't backed by anything. I'm very sorry my opinion differs from yours...

"It's decentralized, for the people by the people"... ya ya, but when can I use it to buy groceries for my family? put gas in my car? and I mean actually use it, not use a company that exchanges my Bitcoin to Fiat for a fee and then lets me pump gas with it... when is Bitcoin going to be more to me than a "investment vehicle" that I use to profit from?

And when are we going to stop pretending that the vast majority of users aren't here for fiat gains? It seems to me each time bitcoin rises, we get a fresh flood of hungry noobs that pile ontop of the already giant pile of people looking to profit. It's only the hardcore 20% that push the bitcoin narrative.

You act like Bitcoin is a free unregulated market, yet I see exchanges losing money to regulation left and right. I see exchanges excluding states & countries because of rules & sanctions. I see exchanges blacklisting coins from Money Laundering, Heists, & Gambling. Is that what you call a 100% free unregulated market? Lol.

I have to exchange to fiat to do much good with my bitcoin, so technically I'M STILL USING FIAT... "but you can buy a Tesla from Bitpremier, or some Alpaca socks on OpenBazaar"...   and let's not pretend like if we suddenly had a bitcoin-only economy there would be no regulation LOL. Let's not be delusional now...

So far, all I see is a bunch of monkeys, including myself, buying rocks and talking about how in the future these rocks will take over the world. It doesn't bother me to look at it and say "hey, this really isn't all that sane, there's alot of holes in this story"... I am an unbiased outsider looking in (for the last 6 years), it's what allows me to get out in time and not be clouded by grandiose dreams of private islands & million-dollar bitcoins.

All I am asking is why? I never said I wanted to fix it, I said it was something that is inevitable with all types of currency. Lol All I asked is how people can sit there and say "bitcoin is so much better" when it clearly has the same issues traditional fiat currencies have, such as being created out of thin air, regulated out the ass, useful only to a specific group of people, & being distributed to & controlled by the people highest up on the foodchain.

It won't ever get fixed, you can look at ANY economy using any type of currency (socialist or capitalist) and they have the same issues, because we are monkeys trading rocks and monkeys will always be greedy.

If it makes me a Socialist to point out the obvious holes in this story, than by all means, I am a Socialist haha.

At least Bitcoin is an improvement in the "controlled by people for the people" department. I like that I can send from my own living room directly to anyone in the world without a middleman (kind of) within 10 minutes for about $3 or less. It's a great system that is extremely innovative and deserves an applause, but I don't believe bitcoin should be worth as much as it is. If it needed to support billions of dollars in daily-life transactions, I can definitely see it being more expensive...

Right now though, we are just playing the "hoarding game". Who can collect the most bitrocks?

If I had to guess, maybe he's referring to the scam site "electrum-cash.org" which is NOT the original website. There was a person that lose 45 btc to this site, the only of which I've heard of so far involving electrum.

1 million btc stolen though is a stretch haha, they are lucky if they made 100 btc.

I don't support BCC, but I'm definitely not going to pretend some of the largest players in crypto are simply going to create all this drama and let it die. Maybe I am wrong there, but I think the point of this crash is so they can accumulate all your coins before they decide to pump.

Regardless, I think the people that sold above 0.35 btc / bcc sold at the all time high.

Then again look at ripple, that shit came back from the dead and became one of the "largest" by marketcap, so I suppose anything can happen eh.

Don't write it off yet, you might regret missing the profits later. Stay unbiased if you are here for trading profits.

That is pretty interesting, where is a good place to monitor BCH's current hashrate? Anyone know?

Does this correlation pop up anywhere else? I wonder if it used to when it just a few alts.

I'm not going to lie though, I think the plan with BCH is to let the hype die down, let everyone dump their coins, then pump the shit out of them after they accumulate a good amount of them. I wish I sold earlier but I was "playing it safe", I guess I can't complain, they didn't lie so far when they told us "free money" haha.

I'm pretty sure the people that sold at 0.35+ probably sold at the highest it will ever be though.

Haha, you have me laughing man don't worry, sometimes the truth hurts, you aren't being a dick.

From my understanding (correct me if i'm wrong) they can create their own diamonds for most industrial needs now, which are the diamonds used for sawing/polishing/etc correct? Are there any industrial uses for natural diamonds that artificial diamonds can't replace?

It's the diamonds found in nature that are cut to make look shiney and sold as jewelry, again from my understanding.

I was saying basically that the only reason nice looking natural diamonds are expensive is because we perceive them as pretty. For industrial needs, we can now create as many as we want within reason, correct? The reason natural diamonds are "rare" is because people hunt them out and now all of the low hanging fruit has been found & locked up in De Beur's vault whom only releases so many per year in order to keep the price high.

There's no reason to believe that tomorrow someone will find enough diamonds to crash the market, or that public perception of diamonds will change, but, again the value is inflated because we see it as "pretty". (and no i'm not saying it will change, I'm just asking what stops it from changing?)

I agree with you honestly, but I bet diamonds were fairly common until one of us monkeys picked one up and decided to show the world how pretty it is. Technically, we can make diamonds now for any sort of industrial need, yet De Beurs keeps the supply low and the demand high with their xmas "propose to her today" advertisements haha.

and I didn't realize gold had that many uses, it was probably a bad example but you get my point. I'll go look this up now because I'm curious.

Edit: definitely a few more uses than I led on to believe, I stand corrected. Electronics, space crafts, dentistry, medication, making stuff pretty, etc. I just don't like how some people treat the financial side of gold, I feel like that's played out, a 1000+ year old fallacy, yet something that will more than likely never end for as long as humans exist.

Diamonds are definitely the better example. Why are Diamonds the most pretty? I think Opal is fairly pretty, why not that? or something else? What's pretty one day might change tomorrow, why should I trust it's still relevant and pretty? haha