rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[gentlemand]

Rpietila, do you think it's possible for people getting in to Bitcoin now to make big profits in the future ... Or should I say have great purchasing power using btc in let's say 5-10 years time?

No one can answer this and you shouldn't be listening to a single person who claims that they can tell you how this is going to pan out.

I must also add that I am sure there is a number of btc most people don't want to hold over just yet. Let's say I have 5 btc, that's roughly $1200. I wouldn't be too bothered losing that as it wouldn't affect me too much.
If I had 100btc would I be brave enough to keep holding it? I mean that's about $24k and I'd be pretty upset if Bitcoin failed and I lost the lot!

It looks like you've answered your own question right there.

The only thing to do is put in an amount that you feel comfortable with right now if it was set on fire. It's an oldie but a goldie but it sure beats spending every second of the next few years willing something to go up so it can 'save' you.

Forces beyond the control of almost everyone here will decide where it ends up. Hitch a ride by all means but be sure you can leave it without being consumed with regret.

If it becomes a global fixture 30 BTC will be a ludicrous amount to own. If it goes flying down the toilet most people can recover that type of money within a few months.

It's always wonderful to have more. It's a warmer feeling to know life will go on regardless of what direction it goes in.

[rjclarke2000]

Thanks for that. I haven't only asked Mr Pietila. In the past I have listened to many opinions.

It's definitely a tricky one!

[gentlemand]

Thanks for that. I haven't only asked Mr Pietila. In the past I have listened to many opinions.

It's definitely a tricky one!

Yup. It's a beast of a decision but your present comfort zone is far more important than a theoretical future.

30 BTC puts you far ahead of most people posting here already. If it does seep across the world there'll likely never be more than 5-6 million people who can own more, probably considerably less when lost/Satoshi/whale coins are taken into account. That's a fine place to be.

I could get to 100 coins myself but I'm not doing it because that might compromise future possibilities if it does go totally wrong. I figured out what I was comfortable with and stuck to it even though the urge is strong to go deeper. You gotta resist it.

[rjclarke2000]

Thanks for that. I haven't only asked Mr Pietila. In the past I have listened to many opinions.

It's definitely a tricky one!

Yup. It's a beast of a decision but your present comfort zone is far more important than a theoretical future.

30 BTC puts you far ahead of most people posting here already. If it does seep across the world there'll likely never be more than 5-6 million people who can own more, probably considerably less when lost/Satoshi/whale coins are taken into account. That's a fine place to be.

I could get to 100 coins myself but I'm not doing it because that might compromise future possibilities if it does go totally wrong. I figured out what I was comfortable with and stuck to it even though the urge is strong to go deeper. You gotta resist it.

Good advice. I will stick to my original plan and keep doing what I am doing.

[rpietila]

I think I calculated that there will never be even 1 million people with 1 whole bitcoin (unless the bitcoins forcibly are collected and redistributed to achieve this exact distribution, which of course theoretically is possible).

So yeah, if you go for the long term, buying 30 bitcoins makes much sense, you can sell one here and there and still make sure that you own the precious one in the end, making you in the 1 million jetset.

[ParabellumLite]

Rpietila, this topic is being sold as the 'Quality TA Thread', yet for days on end I encountered almost no TA at all . Are you  guys planning to turn this into a Wall Observer V2, yet with some quasi-philosophical mumblings as a distinctive feature? This topic is one of the last strongworks of mostly reasonable people, which makes me rather sad to see so little TA.

[rpietila]

Rpietila, this topic is being sold as the 'Quality TA Thread', yet for days on end I encountered almost no TA at all . Are you  guys planning to turn this into a Wall Observer V2, yet with some quasi-philosophical mumblings as a distinctive feature? This topic is one of the last strongworks of mostly reasonable people, which makes me rather sad to see so little TA.

The name of the thread since inception has been rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread where the smiley in the end is very relevant. It was founded after the Adam's Wall Observer occasionally turned into pages after pages of hatespeech towards me. I also remember forecasting $400 when it was unthinkable in early 2014 and promised to only come back in the thread after the prediction materialized, and needed to have another thread to continue discussion meanwhile.

So yes, this one is a lounge where Bitcoin TA is allowed but at the same time it is both an imitation and a parody of the "original" thread.

[mladen00]

This is a best TA thread,
rpietila ty

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

They don't have to uncover the identity of all miners, merely a few of the biggest - and they can't hide.  It might be what breaks up the big mines/pools in future, who knows. Of course that opens the door to TPTB creating and controlling their own large farms to force their agenda.  Better to be private from the start.

It would be fruitless because Bitcoin could just fork off to evade. If Bitcoin ultimately needs to be private by default, it will become that way (and if it can't hard fork that in, it can spin off an anonycoin...but the market won't accept this prematurely).

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

read my post above, what if "many to many" transactions are banned by the miners because of "potential money laundering"

In a scenario where miners are banned from processing "many to many" transactions, what happens to anonycoin miners?

I'm not saying that Monero will be left unregulated when Bitcoin is being regulated with black- and or whitelisting. It's even possible that Monero will be illegal in some countries. Although, this would make it even more stealth (people would ony use it with I2P f.e.)

The public ledger makes it possible that miners comply with the rules. In Monero, you can't see what you are processing. At least you have "plausible deniability". Government would only have the choice between banning monero completely, or allowing it (with a possible requirement to share your viewkey if they ask; but there is still plausible deniability about how much monero accounts you own )

Are you saying there is something about Bitcoin miners that makes them unable to anonymize themselves? (If so, who is Satoshi? )

No, that is possible. But (some) pools will probably comply because a lot of miners will just want to mine at a pool that complies.
(these miners are not willing to take the risk of comitting a criminal offence while they are just in it for the mining profit, not caring about fungibility)

I think this boils down to the set of scenarios where the government quasi-embraces Bitcoin but tries to control it to various degrees, wherein depending on how much control they exert, there are various possible results ranging from a fork to a spin-off. When and if it becomes compelling enough to make Bitcoin as default-anonymous as Monero appears to be, that will happen. So far no real attacks have been lobbed from the state, so there is no need yet. The market punishes premature action.

[Erdogan]

read my post above, what if "many to many" transactions are banned by the miners because of "potential money laundering"

In a scenario where miners are banned from processing "many to many" transactions, what happens to anonycoin miners?

I'm not saying that Monero will be left unregulated when Bitcoin is being regulated with black- and or whitelisting. It's even possible that Monero will be illegal in some countries. Although, this would make it even more stealth (people would ony use it with I2P f.e.)

The public ledger makes it possible that miners comply with the rules. In Monero, you can't see what you are processing. At least you have "plausible deniability". Government would only have the choice between banning monero completely, or allowing it (with a possible requirement to share your viewkey if they ask; but there is still plausible deniability about how much monero accounts you own )

Are you saying there is something about Bitcoin miners that makes them unable to anonymize themselves? (If so, who is Satoshi? )

No, that is possible. But (some) pools will probably comply because a lot of miners will just want to mine at a pool that complies.
(these miners are not willing to take the risk of comitting a criminal offence while they are just in it for the mining profit, not caring about fungibility)

I think this boils down to the set of scenarios where the government quasi-embraces Bitcoin but tries to control it to various degrees, wherein depending on how much control they exert, there are various possible results ranging from a fork to a spin-off. When and if it becomes compelling enough to make Bitcoin as default-anonymous as Monero appears to be, that will happen. So far no real attacks have been lobbed from the state, so there is no need yet. The market punishes premature action.

A major impediment to government mining, is the fact that there is no seigniorage. Thy could try anyway out of stupidity, just like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who hoped to profit from reopening old gold mines. There is no extra profit, they can not monopolize it, so mining will be left alone.

[chessnut]

It's been said that bitcoin is "good enough".
Don't you think a significantly better coin is needed to overtake bitcoin, not a coin that only is a bit more reliable and anonymous?

I really don't see the hype around monero but I might get me some just in case

By whom?  When?

Bitcoin is not good enough.  That is the problem.  As a public ledger, it is good enough.  For cash or SOV purposes, it is falling shorter by the day.  Privacy is an essential requirement.

Bitcoin is plenty good enough. There are practical ways to achieve anonymity with bitcoin if you want to. Tumbling, mixing and swapping mechanisms can be made as secure, easy and decentralised as bitcoin its self. These methods are particularly easy and effective for moderately small sums of money like only a few thousand dollars. But transparency is the beauty of bitcoin in that it becomes harder to move very large sums of money on the blockchain anonymously. This is a good thing! you can watch HSBC laundering money on your own desktop. With bitcoin you can have a balance between anonymity and transparency that is ideal.

The problem with BTC transparency:
Basically it comes down to 2 possible scenario's: blacklisting and whitelisting

Government could on one hand through “whitelisting” obligate bitcoin users  to identify themselves when they purchase bitcoins (this is already happening) and ask them to whom they are transferring these bitcoins (the American website Coinbase is already asking this for some transactions). In the future this could lead to a situation in which only “identified” bitcoins would be spendable at regulated payment processors (bitpay?). As a result, your anonymous bitcoins would only be spendable if you match them to your identity through a regulated authority.

A more aggressive approach is “blacklisting”. This is a system whereby the government obligates the big mining pools (which are verifying and recording transactions in the blockchain) to not sustain certain transactions. As a result, coinjoin-transactions and transactions coming from mixers could be blacklisted whereby it would be very difficult to still perform these kind of transactions. If only a few miners process these kind of transactions, they would at least be very slow. But if the regulated pools decide to not accept blocks with mixed transactions in them, you can’t even use anonymized bitcoins! Also, other (private) miners could be incentivized to enforce the regulation, even if they are not known to the government:
if it is illigal to build on a block with a "blacklisted transaction" and if some big pools would comply, it doesn't really make sense to built on this illigal chain... If you don't comply, this big pool will not build on your chain and you will loose your reward!
edit: I expect a lot of pools to comply, because the individual miners in a pool which does not comply with blacklisting, could be considered doing "money laundering" because part of the reward they receive comes from the transaction fees!

In essence this could lead to three kinds of bitcoins:
-White bitcoins: bitcoins that satisfy the obligation of identification.
-Grey bitcoins: bitcoins that are not yet identified, but which are not actively anonymized.
-Black bitcoins: bitcoins that are banned by miners.

The consequence? Bitcoin will not be fungible anymore: you can’t just use a grey or black bitcoin to buy something from a webshop. If the government is able to discover that you possess black bitcoins or process blacklisted type transactions, you could even be seen as a someone committing a criminal offence.

Yeah so which government? all the governments? will they share personal data of their citizens? and how will these governments stop extreme deflation of clean coins.... the 'clean coin currency' will be even less stable than bitcoin as the clean coins will all get put through the same tumble machine. There will be incentive to take clean coins in exchange for 'dirty' coins as a service at a premium because to enforce such a regulation over the whole world would be impossible to do and dirty coins will continue to have value. One government will take advantage over the other to collect their cheap dirty coins and then magically clean them. The world is so much bigger than that.


just to add to that..... If you imagine the sheer amount of data there is to process if every transaction, every micro transaction, had to be officially tied to an identity and that information be validated and proof checked, it would quickly get out of hand. Bad transactions would make it through and deflate the clean coins. Its still vulnerable to false information.

Mining pools can be decentralised, its already being done. I cant imagine a situation where any single government or even many in unison can block all transactions.

[rpietila]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Whatever is not adequately explained by stupidity must be attributed to malice.

(And: Don't be stupid enough to place all your bets on the premise that your definition of "adequate" is universal.)

[aminorex]

A major impediment to government mining, is the fact that there is no seigniorage.

Once you are in the hash majority, seignorage is trivial to arrange.

[Erdogan]

A major impediment to government mining, is the fact that there is no seigniorage.

Once you are in the hash majority, seignorage is trivial to arrange.

The old 51 percent attack.

[chessnut]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Whatever is not adequately explained by stupidity must be attributed to malice.

(And: Don't be stupid enough to place all your bets on the premise that your definition of "adequate" is universal.)

entails but...the second bit.... not sure what you mean. I wouldn't bet on such a thing. Some people are sure to disagree with me. If you disagree with me that the vast majority of problems may be adequately attributed to stupidity and fallacy then its none of my business.

... or do you mean not to place my bets that my definition of 'adequate' is adequate?

[Erdogan]

Digging into the nature of the powers that shouldn't be: I think malice is the primary driver.

[rpietila]

... or do you mean not to place my bets that my definition of 'adequate' is adequate?

Do not invest in a way that assumes that your worldview is correct.

The more confident you are on that your worldview is correct, (statistically) the less likely you are indeed correct, and the more likely you are to invest disproportionately in assets whose performance depends on you being correct, and the less their performance turns out to be, if/when you are not actually correct, and the less the good performance in the other assets can help you as you did not buy them in the first place.

If your worldview is paranoid, including concerning your perception of yourself being correct, the more likely you actually are reasonably correct, and the conservative investment strategy also yields good results to you, as it has done to me.

[chessnut]

Digging into the nature of the powers that shouldn't be: I think malice is the primary driver.

The deceptive are far fewer than the easily deceived. Its no good blaming Hitler and his pals for WWII, you have to blame the human race. You have to blame the middle east not religion.

[chessnut]

... or do you mean not to place my bets that my definition of 'adequate' is adequate?

Do not invest in a way that assumes that your worldview is correct.

The more confident you are on that your worldview is correct, (statistically) the less likely you are indeed correct, and the more likely you are to invest disproportionately in assets whose performance depends on you being correct, and the less their performance turns out to be, if/when you are not actually correct, and the less the good performance in the other assets can help you as you did not buy them in the first place.

If your worldview is paranoid, including concerning your perception of yourself being correct, the more likely you actually are reasonably correct, and the conservative investment strategy also yields good results to you, as it has done to me.

The way I would put it is that confidence based on subjectivity and objectivity are two different matters, but ironically in investing it is statistically true for the herd objective or not. I would not draw confidence from a universal definition of adequate in principle.