I'm pretty sure this coin has been abandoned, though I hope I'm wrong. Around the time NXT was a big thing I invested in two spinnoffs: FIMK and NEM. At least one of them was a winner, but it wasn't FIMK.

I got scammed out of a half a Bitcoin (around $50 worth at the time) by an outfit called Mining United. The idea was that you sent them your BTC for a few days and then they sent it back to you with a generous interest added. The returns were ridiculous for banking but not knowing any better I figured that was reasonable for mining. I got paid a few times and kept putting funds in, and then the site disappeared. I looked up the outfit and found my way to this forum because a forum thread on Mining United came up on my search query. I chose the handle "wiser" because after having been burned so early on I hoped that I was wiser and I was determined to learn as much as I could so I wouldn't get scammed again like that.

My advice: avoid any site that claims to double, triple, or quadruple your Bitcoin. Avoid any site that claims 100% profit in less than a year. You know the saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Avoid any site that does not thoroughly explain how those crazy profits are made. You know those sites that say you can get rich from selling a breakthrough product but they never actually tell you what the product is? Well, the Bitcoin version of those sites will tell you how they exploit some bug in mining, trading, or pick something that generates unheard of returns, but they don't give you specifics (because there aren't any).

With that said, you can make some crazy returns legitimately in cryptocurrencies, especially if you happen to have bought a new coin, held it, and then it went to the moon. So... too good to be true doesn't always cut it, and people do get lucky. But you should at least understand how the legitimate returns happened.

Another check that has served me well: if you find a site that looks interesting, wait a while. A legit site will still be there in a month or so. Many of the scam sites go away in less time than that. Bookmark it and come back to it. Odds are good it won't even be there. If it is, then apply above rules. You can always ask about it here (don't use affiliate links in this case, just use the straight site and ask if it's legit or seems scammy). Experienced people are usually more than happy to check it out and weigh in.

In general, you're not going to get rich by sticking your Bitcoin into any kind of black box and raking in a high return from it. It's not going to happen. You're going to have to put in some work for your profits. It may be less than working a minimum wage job to pay the bills, but there is no free ride, not even in cryptocurrencies.

And I learned that the hard way. If you have already been a victim, know you're not alone. Try to learn as much as you can from the experience and don't give up.

This excellent article does a great job of answering the original question posed on this thread. I learned a lot from reading it:

https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

I'm taking a little break from sharing tips because I had some things come up in my life this past week that required more intense attention. However, I'm hoping to keep going with it by the middle of the week.

In the mean time, I came across this very well written nontechnical piece explaining what cryptocurrencies actually are, why they are valuable, and why they might not be valuable down the road. It's a very balanced, realistic view. I learned a lot from reading it, and I'm not exactly a newbie. It's a great article, one everyone involved in this industry should keep in their virtual library.

https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

This is a great article explaining what Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are, and why they are valuable, why they might turn out to not be valuable. It's probably one of the best nontechnical explanations for the entire cryptocurrency phenomenon I've read in a long time. I learned a lot reading it.

https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

I could live with rewarding original stakeholders with a portion of this fund. Would original stakeholders have to do anything in particular to claim their portion or would it just show up automatically at the original address assigned in the genesis block?

This will only work when Bitcoin price is climbing. If you were to buy BTC on credit today and next week it were to drop down to around $8000, this strategy would not work so well.

Only invest what you can afford to lose. Probably best to use your own funds rather than the credit cards' funds.

Bitcoin. If you've ever tried to work with the actual Ethereum wallets you'll understand.

For the life of me I don't understand why people haven't figured that out already! Ethereum is the biggest pain to work with. Its wallets are wonky. Even the ones that work aren't arranged intuitively. NEM is much easier to use. Probably the coin I know with the best working wallet is DMD Diamond.

Very good points!

Coinbase is a US based company. In the US, there are rules that say you have to pay taxes on income and gains. There are also rules that forbid financial institutions from serving people with criminal intent. For financial institutions to comply with these rules, they have to know who you are if you want to use their services. If you live in the US, odds are high that you are in some way benefiting from taxation. Do you drive on roads? Do you visit national parks and monuments? Do you use the Postal Service? If you do any of these things and plenty of other things, then you are benefiting from taxes. The US Government asks that you pay your share so others can also benefit. If you refuse to do that, you are breaking the law.

I'm not particularly endorsing our tax system. In fact, there are aspects of it I truly do not like. There are also legal processes people here go through to change the laws they don't like. If you live in the US and don't like something, you have channels to go through. It's not a perfect or easy system. It is what it is.

No matter what the industry is, eventually governments are going to be interested in making laws about it. It's no different with cryptocurrency. If you don't like paying taxes, you're not going to be able to avoid that forever with Bitcoin or anything else. Of course it's your choice, but breaking the law is not something to be taken lightly.

That is an excellent question, and one I have been asked in real life by friends, and it's not easy to answer. The short simple answer is that it has value because there are people willing to pay for it. People are willing to pay for it because they think it will have more value in the future.

But what is actually backing Bitcoin up?

I believe it's mostly the technology and the fact that many people are involved in it. With that said, there are other coins which have taken the block chain concept one or more steps further, improved on the technology. Some of those coins will eventually replace Bitcoin in my opinion. But for the time being, and probably the next few years, Bitcoin has the first mover advantage, and it's the only cryptocoin most people know about at this point.

Another thing adding value to Bitcoin is the infrastructure that has developed around it. There are more and more services out there which take Bitcoin in payments or even exist because of Bitcoin, such as Coinbase, BitTrex, Poloniex and numerous other exchanges.

With all that said, there are still aspects of Bitcoin that are backed up by the current interest of more people and speculators. Right now they want in, so the price goes up. But if their interests go elsewhere, then the price goes down. So for that reason, Bitcoin could also be a bit of a bubble, so you need to invest with caution. I would also recommend getting educated on the other cryptocoins and diversifying into some of them as well.

Some us us Legendary Bitcoin Talk members are willing to help a newbie out for free.

To be fair, I wouldn't be able to take the time for phone consultations, but I have made and am making plenty of money that I am totally willing to share tips at no charge.

NEM is a great coin! It's been around for a while and finally this past year its price has started to climb. I think there is plenty of upward growth ahead, so now is still a good time to buy in. Disclosure: I hold NEM.

If you are in the US or Canada, you can also use Coinbase to make your trades from USD to BTC. Then you would send your BTC to the exchange of your choice, make your altcoin trade there, then send altcoin to your altcoin wallet.

I've started a thread here to help those new to the cryptocurrency industry navigate this world.

You have to be very patient, and willing to hold onto your coins when others are panic selling. In general, when you see the price shooting up really fast you can expect it to correct at some point. But you don't know when. So you sell when the run up seems to be slowing down. You most likely won't hit the top, but that's OK. Likewise, when it's falling, you try to buy when it's settled down a bit, and most likely the price will continue to fall some after you've bought in, so you have to let that go and hold on until you see the price rise again. Some people are cut out for that sort of thing and others are not. A lot of people are not cut out for that, which is why those who are get rich.

In my experience the faster the run up the steeper the correction. Unless there is something truly crazy going on Bitcoin will settle at a low somewhere in the 7 to 9k range, hang out there for a while, and then start climbing again.

Another thing to keep in mind: Bitcoin tends to drop in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I think a significant number of Bitcoin holders sell off a bunch to shower their loved ones with great gifts to celebrate.

So... if you have some extra money lying around as Christmas gets closer, you might get Bitcoin at a good price and see your holdings grow nicely over the few months after Christmas. It's happened before, but not guaranteed to happen again. Only put in what you can afford to lose.

Great to see NEM enjoying some positive price action today

Generally when the price of Bitcoin rises as fast as it has over the past few days, it does correct, and sometimes that correction can be in the form of a drop of several thousand Dollars. I wouldn't call it a crash, though. I think Bitcoin is likely to go up even higher, but it won't be a smooth rise, but with a lot of ups and downs generally trending upwards.

My initial impression is that it seems like a strange way to do it--splitting the tokens into two other tokens. It might be a creative way to attempt to satisfy regulations. I don't think compliance is as complicated as some people say. I think the "sniff" test the regulators use is going to be: "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck..." In other words, if it in any way functions as an investment product, it's going to be considered a security by the regulators unless there are specific rules allowing for your particular "exception."

That's actually a funny question, only because when NEM was coded from scratch there was only one Bitcoin, and I don't think anyone anticipated the multiple forks it's having now.

NEM was originally going to be a clone of NXT. NXT was the first of what was called the second generation of cryptocurrency back in the day. Rather than proof of work mining, it confirmed blocks through a process called forging. The entire coin was released at once in a genesis block so the forging address would get any coins that were transaction fees. NXT had some initial technical difficulties which NEM was going to address. And then the developers decided to just code the whole thing from scratch. NEM is a complete original.