This thread is great. I would also love to keep up with the new MN coins.

I cannot believe how cheap some of the current MN coins used to be and how much they have pumped over the last few months.

No, I can't see it happening

You guys are all completely retarded.

Just buy and HODL, do not even think of trying to time the market. None of us have ANY IDEA what the price will do over the next few months, stop trying to predict it and profit from it, you will just end up getting burnt. HODLers are GUARANTEED profit if bitcoin goes up long term, traders are not.

This thread is great. I do own quite a bit of ethereum and think it's great- but I am trying super hard to approach everything with an open mind, and leave my convictions at home. So I enjoy reading and learning the various (potential!) problems with Eth.

I think I am lucky in that I own approximately the same amount of both bitcoin and ethereum (as a proportion of total supply) so I am indifferent as to which one is ultimately victorious, if indeed only one of them is. This allows me to approach this from a more neutral perspective without becoming emotionally involved.

I agree with you. Bitcoin is the safest way to increase your wealth at the moment. Especially now, since we are still pretty close to the bottom, and some way from each reaching 2013 highs let alone making new highs with all the user adoption that has happened since.

If you have absolute confidence then it's not a huge gamble

In my opinion you are right to have so much confidence. The future is very bright I feel.

I have a very aggressive strategy.

I have put my life savings into bitcoin. Whenever it goes up 10 times, I will sell 10%. My buy in was $270, so I will sell my first coins when it's at $2700.

When bitcoin is $27,000 I will sell another 10%. This will be the first time I will make a penny of profit.

I don't even feel this is risky. I have holdings in all the major altcoins as well and will follow the same strategy with them. If bitcoin goes kaboom, I am confident another coin will pick up the slack.

Trading and gambling are two different things. Trading comes with the expectation of making a profit, which is what most people here seem to be talking about.

Of course if OP is just doing it for fun then that is gambling and good luck to him.

You guys are all idiots.

Trading is a game of luck, unless you have insider information, which it doesn't sound like you do OP.

It'll absorb a huge amount of your time, and- after expenses and opportunity costs- you will probably lose money.

HODL and spend your time playing videogames instead. You will make more money for zero effort.

Of course the price will be higher as a result of the halving than if there never was going to be one. However it is impossible to know what the price would be right now if there was no halving planned.

Perhaps the price would have been $250 now. I.e.- the price rise has already happened.

Perhaps the price would have been $410 now - in which case the price rise has yet to come.

There is no way to know. Certainly, it is ridiculous to expect a price rise right around the halving. I would actually think a price drop is more likely, as people dump their coins when a hoped for rise doesn't materialise. I believe this happened to oil prices during the start of Gulf War2- everybody expected oil prices to go up, they didn't, people dumped their holdings as a result, then price went down.

Thanks for uplifting post OP.

Although you are right, I don't understand why it is so. 1 BTC is pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things...and the potential of bitcoin is so huge...I CANNOT wrap my head around why so few people seem to want to own one. It's not like it's some underground little secret anymore. It's been around seven years!!!

It seems to me to be the bargain of a lifetime. In fact, multiple lifetimes have to come along for there to be something like this. We are INCREDIBLY lucky to be alive during the dawn of cryptocurrencies.

Why doesn't every single member of this forum own at least 1, for example?

+1

Please please elaborate on this because it doesn't make any sense to me at all

Here's what I don't understand.

All new money = debt. All debt comes with interest. Therefore there is not enough money to pay back the debt.

Money supply must be constantly increased to pay back old debt. Money supply can only be increased by going further into debt.

Governments therefore MUST run deficits to keep the money supply expanding so there is enough money to pay back old debts.

So what we are seeing MUST have happened at some point- constant deficits are the only way to keep the system working.

I remember reading somewhere that during Bill Clinton's terms, while there was a government surplus, the Fed were concerned about the effect this was having on the money supply. Government deficits are REQUIRED.

This seems clear as day to me yet it is not widely acknowledged to be so. Am I wrong? Or is everyone else wrong?

OP you are an idiot.

This thread is ridiculous.

I have wondered this as well. According to

http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/AboveGround.png

Only 12% of gold is used in industry. Unless I am mistaken, I think this means that gold's price would be ~12% of its current price were it to be used only for industry (massively simplifying of course).

I'll tell you what will happen.

Currently bitcoin (in most places) is taxed like a commodity, you pay capital gains.

This form of tax is too administratively complicated for a currency- imagine having to make a record of every single purchase you made, and the FX rate at that time. Furthermore, the 'reference' currency (local fiat) won't be around for ever so you wouldn't even have anything to compare bitcoin's value to. How do you work out the capital gains of a bitcoin if there are no fiat currencies!?

So in the long term it won't be taxed directly (via capital gains) but of course there will always be sales tax, income tax, on bitcoins/paid received, just like there is now for fiat.

I posed this hypothetical to discuss exactly what you stated. Which is the belief that cryptocurrencies live and die with bitcoin.

Why exactly do you believe this?

Y'all are thinking too small.

We could have another 2013 and have a price increase of 50x, to 20k per coin.

It could go even higher. 2013 was not preceded by a two year bear market (the longer the bear market, the larger the bubble at the end), and the inflation rate is much lower now, and will soon half.

Of course we could end the year at $200.

No one knows. All I know is that I'm going to be increasing my holdings as much as possible at current prices.

Ok well how about if bitcoin fails and takes down most altcoins with it, what would happen to the remaining unaffected altcoins? Like Monero which I understand works in a completely different way?