Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

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Caliane

Caliane

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TJT said:
This would be a good use case to have a safety deposit box at the bank like our parents did. Or if you already have one.
Click to expand...
oh, thats a good idea. I was just going to put in the safe in the basement..

A reddit post also made a good point. Be sure to make easy to follow instructions you can give to a trusted relative. Should something happen to you. Ain't no one going to figure that shit out, unless you have clear instructions for them. Can't really do it in a will.
 
TJT

TJT

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Lol make your will be nothing but the multi-sequence passphrase of alphanumeric strings.

It'd be like the start of a John Grisham novel!
 
Caliane

Caliane

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Caliane

Caliane

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BTC is still up and down. mostly down, but they dont seem to want to let it drop below 30k.

ETH is rallying hard. +18% in 24 hours.
1477 new ATH.

People expected Eth to shoot up, after it hit 1440 the first time like a week ago. but that dip with BTC, possibly election related, or Yellen stuff or "doublespend", made Eth drop a bit as well.
So, seems to have recovered, and might continue greatly.

cointelegraph.com

Ethereum will become the main asset for investors in 2021

For those who want to embody the old dream of the cryptocurrency community, which is to allow the exchange of value in the format of cross-blockchain transactions, then it will be Ethereum that takes them the first step in this direction.
cointelegraph.com cointelegraph.com
also,
ccnews24.net

In 2020, investors earned more with ETH than with BTC

If you invested in Ethereum in 2020, you valued your deposit better than with Bitcoin. Ethereum Despite the global outbreak of COVID-19, which was behind the March slump in all financial markets, 2020 was the best year for cryptocurrencies to date. Even though only Bitcoin was mostly talked...
ccnews24.net ccnews24.net
 
Armadon

Armadon

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Man I don't know what the fuck crypto currency is but I'm making money. I feel like I'm just gambling and rolling the dice. I took 4k out of my bitcoin and moved it over to etherium last week and made a little more then 1k so far. I know it's not much compared to everyone else but it's just fun to me.
 
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Brad

Brad

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Armadon said:
Man I don't know what the fuck crypto currency is but I'm making money. I feel like I'm just gambling and rolling the dice. I took 4k out of my bitcoin and moved it over to etherium last week and made a little more then 1k so far. I know it's not much compared to everyone else but it's just fun to me.
Click to expand...

Just a little heads up in case you were not aware.

Each transfer from one crypto to another is supposed to be taxed if in profit, not just when crypto is liquidated into fiat currency.

I feel that $30,000 is the new base level now.
 
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Armadon

Armadon

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Brad said:
Just a little heads up in case you were not aware.

Each transfer from one crypto to another is supposed to be taxed if in profit, not just when crypto is liquidated into fiat currency.

I feel that $30,000 is the new base level now.
Click to expand...
ok had no idea, thanks for letting me know
 
Rangoth

Rangoth

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More questions as I learn more about this stuff....

When I transfer a coin from A-B there is a "fee"(or sometimes is?)

  1. Is there always a fee or is this just what services or hosted websites charge as a way of making money, like a bank fee?
  2. If someone is a "miner" are they only generating NEW coins or are they the ones doing the confirming of transactions and they are getting the fee(ignoring the details of distributed mining and pools/etc).
  3. I played around with one of those "lending" systems, as it seemed interesting to me. Making 3% on my ETH/BTC didnt seem like much, but considering that either of those coins also could go up in value that 3% could be much more! Obviously I am skeptical and didn't want to dump all I have, but wanted to check it out. So just making an account and even pretending to "deposit" coins for lending+interest, it said that my transaction fee to complete the process would be something crazy like .0XXX ETH, or what was about 120$ US

Needless to say I did not do it because I would have to essentially "waste" 120$ in ETH, hope that the entire thing is not a wretched scam, hope the interest rate stays high, leave it in there long enough to make money and then, I assume, pay the fee again to get the coins back in my wallet.

Anyway this brought me down the rabbit hole of trying to understand the fee system. I am basically someone that just had a few coins from very early in the game which I sat on, just recently opened a coinbase pro+coinbase(funny to learn those differences) and I was going to pick up some additional coins and maybe try one of the alt coins trading at like .50 with the hope that if it goes to 500$+ i make bank and if it doesn't i lost 250$, not big deal. But it seems like between the fees and high chance the altcoin just stays at the exact same value I gain almost nothing.


Short Version:

I am trying to understand the fee system and how it relates to coins/mining + a deeper/better understanding how all the different coins connect or relate to one another.
 
fris

fris

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I'll give you a dumb answer, others will probably correct or be more intelligent after

Any activity on the block chain has a cost, transaction fee, that is based on that coin. So moving it around each time eats away at the value. I dont know where that value goes.

There's "crypto banks " that will pay you an interest if you store your coins with them.

Then there's public exchanges, like binance, where you can exchange one currency for another. A few years ago, I bought BTC via coinbase, transferred it to binance, traded my BTC for Etherium and a few alt coins.

I have a few fractions of BTC on coinbase, a few fractions of Ether and such on Binance.

If I were to transfer my coins to a hardware wallet, the value of what I had would reduce by a small %
 
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Rangoth

Rangoth

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Thanks Fris. From my research, when I use the "crypto banks", I'm actually storing my coins somewhere under their control....IE it is not really my hard wallet. Now, this may or may not be bad, right? At least how I understand it.

I know it's kind of a lame comparison, but I compare it to a bank robbery, so let me know if I am off-base here. By storing my crypto with them, they can lend it(similar to those contract/lending sites), other people can borrow, when other people pay back the "bank" gets interest on that loan, they give some back to people and keep the rest, aka like a bank. Obviously this is a bit simplified, but I think that's the basic concept.

Now here is the part where crypto fails on this front to my understanding: It's such a "wild west" market that basically putting your crypto any place other than a secure/hard wallet is risky due to unknown in governments/laws changing, the owner of the site/bank just up and leaving with everyone's money, and other shit like that. Where as if the bank gets robbed it's government backed. Again ignoring the fact they would have to "print" money to cover their robbery should the currency not be recovered and all that.

At least that is my understanding. Because if I have 4ish bitcoins and these "lending/bank" sites were 100% trustworthy then I would basically be a fool not to go make even 1% "interest" on my bit coin, right? 1% + whatever the hell it will inflate in the next 2-3 years. But sadly once I move them from my wallet I inherit risk I do not in the non-crypto world. Someone please correct my above idiotic statements if I am wrong.

On the transaction fee thing, I am specifically trying to understand where it goes and I am having trouble finding a source for this. Coinbase directly states "XXX Coinbase fee", so it's clear they get it. But where does it go when I see "miner fee", language indicates it goes to the miners themselves which, again with my simplistic understanding, means that mining is not explicitly to generating new coins but to also doing the mundane work on the network and you get rewarded with those fees. Is that correct?
 
fris

fris

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Imo, the biggest risk to crypto value is tender getting outed. It's basically tied to the value of $1 USD. Every one they sell, they keep that much USD in a bank account, or equal something something. They've refused any audits. It's the main way new people buy ANY crypto, and most new value in crypto has come from that. If that crashes, crypto as something of value is over forever.

The 2 big exchanges I've used seem kinda secure. They've stopped tomfoolery , have smart people managing it. But when compared to a real bank, there's FDIC. Its all yolo.

This exchanges that pay interest, I don't know how they're using your crypto to make $$. Maybe using it in a Proof of Stake blockchain?

A YouTube channel that's mostly finance but also loves crypto is Andre Jikt (think I'm spelling right). He starts every video with a slight of hand magic trick. Check out his channel and a video reactiong to Stephen Grahams view on crypto,he does into earning interest in your crypto
 
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Break

Break

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Rangoth said:
Thanks Fris. From my research, when I use the "crypto banks", I'm actually storing my coins somewhere under their control....IE it is not really my hard wallet. Now, this may or may not be bad, right? At least how I understand it.

I know it's kind of a lame comparison, but I compare it to a bank robbery, so let me know if I am off-base here. By storing my crypto with them, they can lend it(similar to those contract/lending sites), other people can borrow, when other people pay back the "bank" gets interest on that loan, they give some back to people and keep the rest, aka like a bank. Obviously this is a bit simplified, but I think that's the basic concept.

Now here is the part where crypto fails on this front to my understanding: It's such a "wild west" market that basically putting your crypto any place other than a secure/hard wallet is risky due to unknown in governments/laws changing, the owner of the site/bank just up and leaving with everyone's money, and other shit like that. Where as if the bank gets robbed it's government backed. Again ignoring the fact they would have to "print" money to cover their robbery should the currency not be recovered and all that.

At least that is my understanding. Because if I have 4ish bitcoins and these "lending/bank" sites were 100% trustworthy then I would basically be a fool not to go make even 1% "interest" on my bit coin, right? 1% + whatever the hell it will inflate in the next 2-3 years. But sadly once I move them from my wallet I inherit risk I do not in the non-crypto world. Someone please correct my above idiotic statements if I am wrong.

On the transaction fee thing, I am specifically trying to understand where it goes and I am having trouble finding a source for this. Coinbase directly states "XXX Coinbase fee", so it's clear they get it. But where does it go when I see "miner fee", language indicates it goes to the miners themselves which, again with my simplistic understanding, means that mining is not explicitly to generating new coins but to also doing the mundane work on the network and you get rewarded with those fees. Is that correct?
Click to expand...

The miner fee is to ensure that your transaction gets committed into the next block. Miner's can pick and choose which transactions they include into their next block they're solving. The higher the fee, the more likely it will be to be accepted by a miner. If you have your own wallet app on your PC you can try to send BTC with a very tiny fee but it may never be sent if enough other transactions are available that pay miners higher fees. Currently BTC blocks are 1 megabyte, so that means every 10 minutes can only create 1 megabyte of transactions. A successful miner will get the 6.25BTC plus all the fees that are jammed into the 1MB of transactions they are crunching numbers on.

Edit: looks like the block size limit is no longer a strict 1MB but you get the idea.
 
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Rangoth

Rangoth

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Break said:
A successful miner will get the 6.25BTC plus all the fees that are jammed into the 1MB of transactions they are crunching numbers on.

Edit: looks like the block size limit is no longer a strict 1MB but you get the idea.
Click to expand...

Ahh, this is the part I was not sure on. So a miner can not only "mine" a new bitcoin block, but they are the ones which get the fees? So it does not go to a company persay, but rather the person(pool/group) which verified the block? Good to know.

So this brings my follow-up, and sorry to use this board as my "wiki", but these are some of the things I struggle to understand even after reading. Like for instance I read about getting my transaction in a block/verified and understood that, but nothing really told me where the fee went.

Anyway, last question for now, I keep hearing and reading that bitcoin makes transactions easier and anonymous, crypto is the future blah blah....I'm sure I am missing something *very* basic here, but if all transactions must be verified(and on the blockchain) does this make small BTC transactions basically too expensive to maintain. For example I want to paypal someone 25$ or I buy 12.50$ worth of crap at a local store across the street. The fees would potentially be higher than a credit card. What is the plan to operate this type of system at a micro(size of transaction) and global(amount of small transactions) scale?

I'm happy to educate myself you if you can recommend a good read or watch on the topic, but I am not finding anyway. The videos I see talk about "It's now easy to send coin X to your friend for cheaper than a typical remittance and faster than an old fashion wire transfer", but the block fees seem to contradict that.
 
Break

Break

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That's one of Bitcoin's main weaknesses, as it it exists today it cant possibly function as a replacement for credit cards or cash for every day transactions because of it's low speed and higher fees for low amount transactions. One option is simply larger block sizes which would allow for more transactions but by design there is a 10 minute wait between blocks on average. Look into Lightning Network, it's basically a proposed second layer on top of bitcoin designed to allow many more and private transactions but it's not ready for prime time yet.
 
Rangoth

Rangoth

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Is that also what is causing some of these little alt-coins to surge? Are any of them specifically designed for "micro" or daily style transactions?
 
Caliane

Caliane

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not really. thats more just people diversifying portfolio's etc. some coins are very literally tied to Btc or Eth.
this is fun:

Blockchain Transaction Visualizer - TxStreet.com

Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum etc) blockchain live transaction visualizer. Every tx is a person, and they fill up buses which represent blocks.
txstreet.com txstreet.com

BTC is "gold 2.o" no one is going to use it for day to day. Assuming it doesn't die out entirely. it might. but is clearly winning atm, seemingly on name recognition alone.
Eth is much faster... but "gas' fees, etc. even its a bit impractical. Theres also the carbon emissions thing we haven't talked about here. BTC is intentionally energy inefficient. It burns a shit ton of coal. Eth is better again here.. but it too is not great.

and yeah, the fees, etc, is why I think something like Nano will be a 3rd coin that succeeds. it itself has very little market cap, so may not be the one.. I'm not sure which is the best direct competitor.
nano.org

Nano | Eco-friendly & feeless digital currency

Learn all about the fast, feeless and eco-friendly digital currency called nano
nano.org nano.org
 
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LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Caliane said:
not really. thats more just people diversifying portfolio's etc. some coins are very literally tied to Btc or Eth.
this is fun:

Blockchain Transaction Visualizer - TxStreet.com

Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum etc) blockchain live transaction visualizer. Every tx is a person, and they fill up buses which represent blocks.
txstreet.com txstreet.com

BTC is "gold 2.o" no one is going to use it for day to day. Assuming it doesn't die out entirely. it might. but is clearly winning atm, seemingly on name recognition alone.
Eth is much faster... but "gas' fees, etc. even its a bit impractical. Theres also the carbon emissions thing we haven't talked about here. BTC is intentionally energy inefficient. It burns a shit ton of coal. Eth is better again here.. but it too is not great.

and yeah, the fees, etc, is why I think something like Nano will be a 3rd coin that succeeds. it itself has very little market cap, so may not be the one.. I'm not sure which is the best direct competitor.
nano.org

Nano | Eco-friendly & feeless digital currency

Learn all about the fast, feeless and eco-friendly digital currency called nano
nano.org nano.org
Click to expand...

Isn't proof of stake designed to correct that for ETH?
 
Lambourne

Lambourne

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After meme stocks they are now going for meme cryptos.

1611843347542.png
 
Flobee

Flobee

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Rangoth said:
Is that also what is causing some of these little alt-coins to surge? Are any of them specifically designed for "micro" or daily style transactions?
Click to expand...
This line of thought gets people in trouble. If you believe in Bitcoin's meme then own Bitcoin. Small transaction issues can be solved with layer 2 solutions. This could be BTC's own lightning network, Ethereum, or just a platform like Paypal. This is, IMO, a non-issue long term.

Altcoins do plenty of other cool (or useless) things, but they're not Bitcoin.
 
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