They are much needed to buy and use btc however they are able to be regulated.  I thought about getting a couple and placing them in nyc - $5k each not a bad investment - but they are considering it a financial institution and it needs to be licensed and regulated etc etc.  It could take years before they roll them out ... or most likely until a big financial institution adapts them and simply places them in their existing branches

If bitcoin continues to go up or even stays the same this domain will be never go down to $100.  Someone will always be willing to spend $$ on it, even if only used as SEO.

Meridian is basically insuring the vaults inventory whatever that may be, i.e. bitcoins.  They will not specifically insure bitcoins as the price fluctuates so wildly.  Xapo most likely has a coverage limit of $1mm which includes the covered perils of theft.

The problem with this is if they have an average bitcoin vauled at $600 and the price doubles overnight and then their vault gets broken into their coverage limit might not cover all bitcoins at the new price of $1,200.  Everyone would have to take the $600 each and then file a lawsuit.

In order to cover this xapo would need to constantly be purchasing more insurance and passing the additional premiums on to the user, which they say is free.  Not possible unless they are losing money.

On the flip side insurance only covers market value so if you store at $600, the price drops to $30 and the vault gets robbed you only get $30.

Its clear that a legal team did not draft all of this so I am a little skeptical of their ability to pay out.

I've purchased hundreds of sites and sold 1 of them for good money. 

However looking at bitcoinwallet.com it has to be new money, not an investor.  First in their own news section they list the article stating that it sold for 250k.  I'm not sure I would do that.  Second the website is a disaster.  Unless an early whale, with no marketing, design or idea of what is going on luckily mined 100k btc's in 2011 is rolling in cash I don't see what they are doing.

But ... for those saying that these prices are ridiculous.  They are not.  Imagine buying bit in 2011 for .1 and someone asks price as .5 .. you would have said they were crazy asking that and now you would leverage your house, car, wife to buy as many as you could at that price.

This site, if btc goes mainstream in the next couple of years, could be work 1mm +.  If they put some coding behind hit and get some subscribers they could sell it for $4mm +

Or of course btc could die and it becomes worthless.

Over the last couple of months I've picked up a couple of .com's related to btc but they are few and far between.  I made up words and add bitcoin in it and they are taken.  The majority of them are owned by a couple of guys.  This isn't a bad thing it just forces new money to make up more clever names.

Great advice guys .. thanks.  I don't think I had a full grasp on storage at first but now I get it.

Thanks piper looks pretty cool .. will be getting one of those.

I guess third party cold storage isn't a great idea after all ... I think perhaps one day it will be.  People used to have problems with banks (more so than now) but eventually would deposit.  Back before debit cards money was essentially in cold storage unless you went to a branch and picked it up.

I guess I'll just back up copies.  I read that some people just throw back up on sites like dropbox ... is that secure enough?

I can see cyrpto is the future but I am very late to the game just trying to read 2 years worth of bitcointalk to figure it all out so sorry if this is all noob of me.

Hey looking for good cold storage sites.

Not sure what to look for when shopping around?  What kind of security do you like?, what are good rates? What kind of access do I have to my btc?

It would have to be paid by the users based on premiums paid and an initial bankroll of the company.

It would have to be a company like Allstate that has an escrow account for claims payable and paid directly to that. 

In the event that a third party is liable for the loss, i.e. gox then the company could subrogate against them for reimbursement

All fine in theory however as btc is an unregulated market its very difficult.

Also you would have to insure based on an agreed upon current market value.  If you insure at 500 but btc goes up to 1k and its stolen you would only get $500 worth of btc back.  On the flip if you insure at $500 and it goes down to $200 then you would only get $200.

Just to clarify.  This would be an insurance policy against the loss of bitcoins?

What would the covered perils entail?

i.e. If a tornado knocks your house down and your usb gets lost would that get covered?

If its theft how do you prove in order to get paid back.  In a normal insurance claim of theft a police report would have to be filed in order to substantiate a claim otherwise you could call your insurer and state that your television and jewelry was stolen and they would send you a check ... obviously not a good business model for a company paying out ... and yes you could simply file a false police report however that is a barrier that most people 9/10 won't cross.

What would the policy limits look like?

In a currency such as usd or based on qty of btc?

i.e. $5,000 usd or 10btc

How many btc's would you have on any given day to support claims?

In the event of another Gox would you have at least 7500 btc or would you go bankrupt?


Sorry I could go on forever.

... just interested as I hold multiple US/state insurance licenses and know that if done properly it can be profitable however there are a lot of obstacles for something like this and unless you have been in the field for as long as I have some might be overlooked.

How does one make money from the atms ... like standard ones where they pay a fee? 

If so what is the fee that you have seen?  .0001btc? (example only)

Buffet is famous for saying that he doesn't invest in what he doesn't understand.

He simply doesn't understand this therefore he wouldn't invest.  His comments were off the cuff.

He has been investing and making billions since many of us were in diapers.

If he wanted to invest in bitcoin he would.  He would not launch a smear campaign against it watch it fall a couple of dollars and swoop in.

When he invests, he does so in billions.  He could purchase a substantial amount of coin, he could create mining conglomerates in Antarctica ...he could pretty much do whatever he likes.

He loves money.  He is good at making it.  He is a capitalist.  He is smarter in that vein than 99.999 people on this planet.  I don't personally care much about his personal reputation as its none of my business but when people buy what he buys or sells what he sells they make money.

I think it was an actual show on cable.. not sure the network

Heard from a couple of people that they were starting preproduction on a bitcoin based reality show.. not sure what its about.

anyone on here a part of it?

 I think they were talking about people that made a small fortune using crypto and what they bought, how they live ..etc.

Not sure who would come out on national tv about it but I guess some people are.

Low of .00065 today ... not doing great.

I think someone posted a fairly comprehensive list of the places that accept bitcoin .. anyone have that bookmarked?

I can see one or more corps doing it but never a several acting in unison.  I also couldn't see the no premine.

They would have to do a 50% premine so they could put it in their vaults and set the rate for fullfillment for total coins produced at like 5 years. 

Even though it has been around for years Bitcoin and alt are still in early adopter phase.

Much like 32.1 yr old white males cornered the cell phone market in the 80's.  However unlike cell phones the prices of bitcoin will go up (ish) whereas cell phones went down.  The lower price is what spreads the idea or product to the masses.  The more prices of bit goes up the more alts will gain popularity(and hence value) because the barriers to entry are less.

This is why I think alt will the checking accounts and bit will be the savings.  (for a percentage because obviously if everyone put bit into storage then the demand/price would decrease )

Until a brick and mortar store like walmart offers preloaded debit cards of coins with instant verification it will be continue to be a niche market 1-2%...  anyone want to start that business with me let me know 


If I'm wrong blast away.  I'm still learning and I'll gladly alter my opinion based on contrary facts.

As many of you know back in the day different US towns, states, territories ..etc. had their own currency.  This created alot of confusion as to what was fake, a scam, counterfeit, its value and so on.

That is until the us govt stepped in and regulated and formed a uniform measure of currency.

Do you think the govt will regulate or will the alt market self regulate to get down to a select few.  I say a select few rather than the 1, like the us dollar because with thousands of alt coins being produced and no end in site I don't personally believe there will ever be 1 global crypto and I also don't believe there should be.

The overall goal is to get more people using fewer coins to stabilize the market/value.  More coins being produced and market confusion is the only actual barrier to entry for more investors/users

Thoughts

I was going through numbers for doge and their breakdown is pretty straightforward:

Block 1 -100k - 50B
Block 101k - 500k - 25B

Total circulation after block 2 is 75B

Obviously this isn't the case as there will be loss due to crashes, lost passphrases ..etc.  What percentage of 75B do you think will simply cease to exist?  I'm guesstimating 10%+ but maybe someone has already run the numbers on this.

I've seen on other posts that they believe 90% of all bitcoin is hoarded ... do you think that goes for alts as well?

If this is the case for doge and we subtract 7.5B from the top and then factor in a hoard rate of 90% that leaves us with about 7B actually being used. (assuming that hoard rates are comparable which they might not be)

I'm sure this number would then go down again for people who aren't hoarding but simply forget about it or leave it on an exchange to favor other currency...etc.

I'll take off another 1B for that leaving us with around 6B.  How many users then control the active 6B and is that enough to have it adopted by mainstream?

This actually posts a couple of questions and while I'm looking for a little incite I think I just started thinking and typing and went on a tangent 

I am completely new to all of this and am going to try my hand at building a new coin ... I know I know that there are thousands and they are mostly worthless ..etc. but as a side project its just fun to create something.  Even if it doesn't take off it just adds to the development of the idea as a whole or at the very least just gives me greater insight to how this all works on a micro level.

Obviously the coding isn't the hardest part its trying to get people to adopt it, trade it, tip it, accept it for goods ..etc.

What would cause you to use a new coin?

1. What kind of security
2. Size of expected coins produced
3. rewards - fixed or random
4. What do early adopters look for - in terms of marketing
5. meme or no meme (kidding)
6. code based on bitcoin or other?

What else am I am missing?

I don't expect it to go to the moon ... this isn't about becoming a billionaire of course it would be nice, again just looking to try my hand at creating something.