When you consider the market cap of google alone is 700 billion, and that's just one company based in the US, and consider these cryptos are global and can be traded in many different countries, 30 billion is just a drop in the bucket. Still it amazes me how everything went dead in 2015 and the total market cap of all the cryptos was less than the market cap of ETH alone right now... will the bubble pop with another 3 years where we drift around and do nothing and base around 10 billion? Will interest in cryptos remain and investment increase?  We haven't even hit the mainstream news outlets yet so methinks we have more to run.  Still we don't just want another big bubble that bursts where everyone heads for the exits and cryptos are again forgotten for another 3 years. (like I kind of admittedly did aside from managing to stumble over here and claim my XEM stake which I did actually do)

The altcoins move with bitcoin... if there's a winter sleep, bitcoin will drift back down to $500-600 and drift around for years as well.. they move in tandem.  We are currently in a bubble.   As for marijuana, potheads have enough to deal with just getting it legal and the profits made from becoming a dealer in a legal state, they won't be worried about a crypto currency in my opinion... I'd invest in cryptos based on the technology... XEM and ETH are the two in the top 10 with the best tech. They are both somewhat rich in price, though XEM is far cheaper and has the potential to double, you're not going to retire from buying any of these now at these prices... maybe 6 months ago, or 18 months ago.

Which begs the question how much XEM is lost in oblivion.. we know at least 2,250,000 of it is.. one of my stakes. :p

I had 2 stakes through this forum but lost the private key for one of them.. I had the wallet password and have the address of the coins so I can look at my second stake,  but lost the wallet file in a computer format and didn't backup my private key.  If microsoft had not released windows 10 I'd have a second stake. I do still have my one stake and haven't sold any yet.. amazing yes it's worth $100K. If I didn't think the coin had as much or more potential than Ethereum I'd sell now.. I said I'd sell when it hit a nickel. Will probably regret not selling.. but as long as this crypto bubble continues NEM should hold up as well as any other top 10 coin.. I'm gambling it will hit number 4 market cap and be somewhere around 800 million to a billion market cap within a month or two.

Wait until kraken and other exchanges start to cover NEM and we'll see if we get more volume and interest.

I pretty much know the answer to this question unfortunately, but I have a NEM stake but don't have the private key, what I do have is the account address and the password I used to create it. Is there any way to use these two items to recreate the wallet without the wallet file?

I suppose lost NEM that will never be recovered could in theory be removed from the total amount in existance.

most americans are fairly airheaded but it can't be helped... that's the way they are taught to be by the culture... from what I've seen most americans care and talk about the following... their own drinking stories, sexual conquests, and personal lives, or the drinking stories, sexual conquests, or personal lives of those around them.

Try to bring up discussion about history, politics, science, or anything of substance, and their eyes gloss over.  I'm not very talkative because I'm around people and that's all they know how to talk about is their past bar stories which do not interest me. Same old, same old.

Don't get me wrong I find them to be well adjusted, nice enough people, just a bit on the shallow side.  I think this is more a human nature thing though.. humans are attracted to what makes them 'feel' and not necessarily what makes them 'think' ... people love to tell stories and gossip about one another.

wow that's 2000 rounds of brass .223 ... people spend way too much money on restaurants I find. I'll take the excess and blow it on something else like ammo or palladium and not have as much fun.

ruger 10/22 with loaded 25 and 50 round magazines and thousands of rounds of ammo (over 10,000)  is all any person needs for a weapon. In a SHTF situation the caliber is not going to matter that much. If you get shot, you are in deep trouble. It's not going to matter how fast the particular caliber kills... chances are you and your adversary will both shoot each other and both die anyways so the best thing is to avoid a confrontation and keep a low profile.  You can kill a deer and large game with a .22... scope and SHOT PLACEMENT and multiple successive rounds are key here. If you are going up against a bear you better be aiming for the head with a 50 round magazine or two though.  BY FAR the cheapest way to stockpile, as .22 LR can be had for 25 bucks for 550 rounds, far cheaper than any other round.. and Ruger 10/22s and their scopes and high capacity mags are cheap and plentiful items.

12 gauge shotgun is also cheap and plentiful ammo

Aside from that...

toilet paper

water filters

water

food

generators

solar ovens

solar battery chargers and batteries or hand crank models

short wave radio

assets in hard metals in a safe place



I'm not sure how I'd handle anarchy.. I would not loot and pillage and would work to protect the innocent though. I'd make a good leader I think... with swift justice against people who would loot, pillage, or harm innocents.

gold backed currency would not solve anything... most people who promote gold own gold, just like bitcoin, and they'd love to see a gold standard because they'd stand to 'gain' from it... they are profit mongers.

Gold would be fractional reserved like any other currency and would not meet the needs of 21st century commerce. Gold is a commodity.

It remains to be seen if credit based currency issued by the government treasury would really work that much better than debt based currency issued by a central bank.  The main problem we have to day are exchange rate differences and automation which has eliminated a lot of jobs and lowered their salaries. Just in the last 10 years where I work machines are able to pump out twice the product or more in just 10 years... what can't be made faster with automation is shipped to china to get done.

people skills and 'who you know' are more important than college. It might be unfortunate that this is the case (at least from my perspective) but it's human nature.

There are certain professions (degree majors) that are in demand, while others are a waste of time. Do your research.

I've reached the early 30's and although it's never too late to go to school, to me work is work... if I'm stuck 12 hours a day doing something I'd rather not be doing, that's called work... there are almost no professions I would enjoy so much as to not call it 'work' ...  so I might as well stick it out where I'm at making $20/hour rather than risk going to school, wasting lots of money, with no guarantees going forward... plus you lose so much of what you learned in high school by the time you hit 30....


Everyone on the internet makes $50 per hour and owns their own business so I know I'm poor.

good analogy and I agree.

Cryptos are a poor place to park cash because they are filled with seedy types who only desire profit rather than a stable currency. They'd rather it shoot up to $10k per coin, crash back down so they can trade it like a stock. It's a commodity, not a currency. Personal property is about right.

cryptos are dying, there's nothing inherently superior about using them for an american at least, maybe if you are doing something illegal or in a country that is oppressive, but the shitcoin explosion, constant volatility, and constant presence of scammers and profit mongers killed any crypto interest I might have.  Basically all shitcoins are worthless to me, and I'll only get into bitcoin if it gets back under 150 bucks each.

These coin makers can say anything they want, but the truth is they are just going to take the money and run.

I agree there's a lot of shitcoins out there, but using illegal tactics to get rid of them is not something I'll participate in. Someone else can do the dirty work if they want. It wouldn't surprise me though like others have said that this is all just a scam by a shitcoin creator themselves to eliminate the competition. People will say anything to make a buck which is why nobody should take anything at face value.

INTJs should know better than to gamble... being good with facts and logic, here are the facts:

The house always wins, the only real chance you have is if you play blackjack and count cards. Other then that, it's all up to chance.

This can be demonstrated without losing much at all.  There are a number of sites you can play with fake money for free that have the same payouts as a typical casino slot or keno machine... watch as you slowly lose all your money.

Go to a casino, play a keno machine, and bet only a nickel per hand... sit there for hours... play thousands of hands...  you'll probably end up down some money, and if you didn't, you just got lucky. The numbers generated are completely random.. the payout is designed so that the odds of winning are factored in and a certain 'percentage' comes back to the player.   I walked out with a free crab leg meal and 10 bucks today from my bi-weekly visit to the casino for some chow and thought I came out well. I  usually lose my 5 bucks and leave like clockwork.

For those who insist on gambling with machines, the best chance you have is to pick the highest progressive jackpots you can find and bet to try to win them... but don't forget about the taxes you'll have to pay for winning such large amounts.

Bottom line... don't gamble. Buy something that will retain or increase in value instead, like platinum, palladium, guns, land...

By the way... for those who like  poker, here's a little known game confined to around where I live called silverado stud for you to enjoy for free with fake money.  Every time I've played this unique and rather enjoyable poker game I've drained my fake money balance to zero.

http://www.silveradostud.com/HowtoPlay.htm

I have no stake in any altcoin but if I did I'd probably go with one of the top tier older altcoins like memorycoin or peercoin, perhaps NXT but I don't like the way the coins were distributed on that one.

Do NOT buy bitcoin script.. everyone here should be driving that piece of garbage into the ground by principle.

Also looking at the market cap is not enough.. you have to look at the number of total coins... for example not long ago dogecoin was at 48 billion coins... the increase to over 62 billion coins in just a month or two combined with a lower market cap means your value has eroded far more than the market cap alone would suggest.

Look for coins with stable or low inflation, or where most of the coins have already been mined. Honestly if I was going to buy some I might buy UNOBTANIUM just because the supply is low and more than half has been mined already. I'd focus on altcoins more than 6 months old that were more fairly distributed with little to no premine.

Personally I would not invest in any... I think bitcoin is headed lower and will drag all the alts with it.   If you want to preserve VALUE  you have to be very careful.. the number of altcoins continues to accelerate steadily, and existing altcoins continue to be mined, ever increasing the number of available coins and diluting the entire market.

Most people who invest in alts now are going to lose their ass unless they are daytraders or swing traders. You don't 'buy and hold' altcoins for the most part. Buy some palladium or platinum, or if you live in the US, Guns/AMMO instead.

There is always going to be people with powerful hardware that will mine a coin when the difficulty gets low enough, then they will pump it on the forums. I don't see a way out of this. I do believe scamcoins are destroying the altcoin market. Now I see there's a "bitcoin scrypt" coin... that's one that I would go and try to 'destroy' simply for taking the bitcoin name, but if there's profit to be made people don't care about ethics, they will mine and pump it.. but with so many altcoins I don't really give a crap personally... whereas I might have started trading them when there was 50, now that there's 200, no freakin way.


For what it's worth, this experiment in crypto currencies shows why governments and regulated banking exist, and why 'anarchists' or 'preppers' as we call them in the US are misguided... anybody who ever wants the rule of law to come from mobs of people with guns (and this is coming from a person who owns 7 guns) simply would probably not be the best person to be the one in charge. Human nature is such that governments such as what we have now are better than anarchy or chaos.... a system of checks and balances where laws are typically made by representatives who we elect that vote on our behalf.. the system works well though it's not without flaws and does have a reek of corruption in it, you can bet any sort of anarchistic system hardcore libertarians would come up with would have the same sorts of corruption.

good point, but of more important to me is that the site shows just how stupid an increase of alt coins there has been, which essentially makes them all worthless in my eyes, and makes me focus solely on bitcoin, which I think is also overvalued thus I'm not interested or investing in any crypto at this point.

Nearing 200 altcoins... I just don't care about any of them.

Too unstable... it needs to be more stable and not subject to pump and dumping... plus the now 200 altcoins don't help things. I've lost complete interest in trading altcoins or holding bitcoin because there are so many altcoins... they are ALL WORTHLESS.  The devs in most of them don't have any loyalty toward them.. they make one, pump it up, then start pumping another. Dogecoin was the same way... people pump up doge, then suddenly everyone was supposed to buy worldcoin after one big holder decides to buy a bunch and then pump it on the forums... cryptos are commodity vehicles no better than pink sheet penny stocks, with perhaps the exception of bitcoin, and even bitcoin, I won't invest in any until it's under 200 and the top holders distribute some of their coins out.. concentrated wealth makes it no different than fiat.

I'm patiently waiting for sub 200 per bitcoin.   At $600 I'd rather invest in something like a CZ 75B or a couple of Ruger LCPs, or a Winchester Defender, or some physical palladium... and actually, AMMO... which seems to hold it's value better than the firearms themselves and is easily tradable around here.

silly people personally attacking Buffet because he criticized bitcoin.. everyone is entitled to their opinion. Fact is, since there are now hundreds of altcoins I've pretty much stopped caring about cryptos. They are not scarce in the fact that anyone can create another one at any time and the only thing that makes one worth 'more' than another is people's willingness to give it value.

The price is not going to increase exponentially so you have nothing to worry about for quite awhile. I used to be interested in altcoins and crypto currencies when there was maybe 40-60 of them but now that there's 140 of them and climbing on coinmarketcap it makes them all seem worthless to me to be honest. Nothing 'really' makes one worth more than another except a person's perceptions and they are all getting pretty much mined and dumped making them a poor 'store of value' in the long run.

I'll wait until one is created that's backed completely by bullion by a major firm for now.. I don't trust any of them.. what gives them value seems to be a lot of hot air.  I honestly trust major banks, firms, and the government more to hold my wealth than cryptos. Blame the fact that anyone can create another altcoin at anytime.

I have a stake in NEM and am glad to have one but by the time the coin goes public there will be hundreds of alt coins and alt coins will be DEAD as a doornail. Only the few will survive. Of course speculating on which few could still make people lots of money.  Dogecoin has now had it's day and I believe that one will die like the rest... once all the profit has been milked from the cow the market cap will plummet as once former loyal investors pump their next coin.

Maybe bitcoin can survive all this, and I'd like to see it become useful in actually serving as a currency, but I don't really care what price it's trading at for that to occur.. I'll buy in if I can get bitcoins for under $200, no sooner... or when amazon.com starts taking it... if I had bitcoins and was a bitcoin millionaire boy would I be selling and converting to fiat.. you'd be dumb not too if you have 1,000 or more of them to not convert half.