Thetownend.com

Just wondering if any of you cadavers have dipped your toe into crypto.

Yeah I've got a couple of hundreds quids worth. It's confusing but fun.

How did you choose one or did you take pot luck?

I’ve got a grand to chuck at it so thinking to have a nibble at a few rather than just one.

Are you looking to trade it or as an investment over a period of years?

I have an intricate plan.

Double my money, take out my original stake then leave the ‘profit’ to ride.

What could go wrong!

Everything.

As I've posted about on here before, until everyone agrees that a particular cryptocurrency is a valid means of exchange of value, they are all nothing more than speculation.

With the exception of a few (Bitcoin, Ethereum and some others) most are just pump and dumb schemes designed to fleece people like you of their money.

If you don't understand it, don't put your money in it.

or, only put in what you expect to lose .

You might get lucky, you might lose it all.. is surely going to pop at some point.

My mate about 2 years ago made £120k in about 6 months, but he never cashed out when he had the chance and lost £60k of that almost overnight last November, hes still up but nowhere near as much.

I fear you could be a little late to the party but I understand you can still make some money from it.

Just like gambling, only put in what you can afford to lose and treat it like betting.

Probably a good life rule. With crypto in particular, even if you do happen to understand it, enough people who don't are now investing as to make it a very irrational market. You might make money, you might not, but it's essentially gambling at this point.

If you want to do it, stick with the bigger names. If you just want something that has the potential for better returns than a cash bank account, buy shares in something.

As others have said above, it’s incredibly risky and very volatile. I personally don’t touch it but would only ever consider the more established Bitcoin and Ethereum. You could get lucky, or you could lose the lot. Only ever put in what you can afford to lose.

Yep, got a good whack of my investment portfolio tied up in Crypto and got a few friends that are developers on crypto projects.

If you have a look at https://coinmarketcap.com/ (https://coinmarketcap.com/), the top 25 to 30 projects are the most established in the crypto space.

Bitcoin, obvious the most well known, is arguably equivalent to Gold. It's mental that countries like El Salvador and just yesterday, Central Africa Republic, have adopted it as a currency but demonstrates the future of crypto.
Ethereum has a lot more use cases as it's the most developed smart contract based crypto. Smart contracts absorb data from other blockchains that help it code an agreement into the crypto, so for example a very simple explanation is you put £20 on Swindon winning promotion this season, if we won promotion, the smart contract would activate and pay you your winnings
Tether - It's a stablecoin that is tethered to USD. So 1 tether token is worth $1 USD. But Tether is not very transparent just don't touch it...
BNB is a exchange crypto that is similar to Ethereum (ETH) and has a lott of projects built on top of it that is exclusive to the Binance exchange
USDC is the same purpose as Tether but a ton more legit. Use USDC if you want to use stablecoin. A lot of platforms will pay 12% daily compounding interest just for hedging fiat in stablecoins
Solana - becoming the bedrock of the NFT world. Really interesting project.
XRP - embroiled in a court case with the SEC which is due to be dismissed months ago.. When it does, it will go through the roof but until the court case is dismissed, many exchanges won't let you buy or trade it.
Terra - not all too familiar with this one TBH
Cardano - ETH competitor
TerraUSD - Tether and USDC competitor and linked heavily to Terra
Dogecoin - one of the biggest piss takes in Crypto legitimised by Elon Musk. Starting to have potential but Elon loves to pump and dump it so be careful.
etc...

Other notable mentions to have a look at, Chainlink and Uniswap. So many great projects doing some great stuff with tons of potential but it's so so early in there development still, even Bitcoin.

If you want some non financial advice, set think about much you want to invest overall. Split your cash proportionately across multiple assets and buy with 5% of your total cash at a time to 'dollar cost average' buy. Spreads your risk and then just leave it. Be prepared for the highs and the lows. It can be very volatile and turn on a pinhead. But lastly, do your research. You wouldn't buy a car without understanding it's features and statistics, crypto is no different!

Give me a shout if you want to chat more, happy to talk all day about it. I've help a lot of people get onboard and collectively invested more than £50k into various crypto assets.

Hahahahahaha. Utter bullshit.

I knew you'd be along to spout your fanboy ideologies.

pssst, want to buy don't6 NFTs? I'll swap it for that cow you are taking to market

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-plan-to-make-uk-a-global-cryptoasset-technology-hub (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-plan-to-make-uk-a-global-cryptoasset-technology-hub)

Fanboy ideologies or the future of finance whether you agree with it or not? It’s OK to agree to disagree but let’s keep this friendly and avoid lowering the tone of a good debate. Hang your head in shame and have some respect for others POV ;)

I am no Finance expert, but given Gold's safe haven status comes from being a thing of physical existence and rare, how is Bitcoin even close to being relatable?

generating a bitcoin Blockchain is not easy. So I guess it is rare in that sense.

you can't make a ring from it though :)

Bitcoin isn't real though, as in, I cannot hold one.

edit: and I know it's value is still perceived, but it's significance is due to it being an actual 3D thing.  Bitcoin is not, therefore they are very different, as is the $ for example.  All uniquely different, but a form of value to exchange.

that was my point about the ring.

Ah, right.  As I said, no expert!

my best friend of 40 years is hugely into the crypto and nft's....when he talks about I have no idea what the hell he is saying.
he was in with a group and invested about 150k it eventually was worth over 300k.  he was able to use some card to pay for stuff with it. BUT then the guy in charge of the group, took all the crypto so his 300k, his 150k was gone.
so as others have said, it is hugely risky.
I will say also, my buddy is so smart, he now still deals with crypto and is involved in some movie being made using nft's to pay for it or something....i still have no idea.  i just throw him $50 every now and then to buy me whatever just in case he gets lucky cuz i know he isnt smart  :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

I’ll treat it as a punt. Regular savings are so far behind inflation you’re losing money.

I’ve signed up to Kraken so I’ll just pick 2 or 3 at random and let it run.

Bitcoin on it's own is ranked 9th in all Asset Market Cap https://8marketcap.com/ (https://8marketcap.com/), so it's around 6% right now but has been as high as 10%+ within the last 12 months. https://8marketcap.com/compare/bitcoin/gold/ (https://8marketcap.com/compare/bitcoin/gold/). It's alot closer to topping out Silver https://8marketcap.com/compare/bitcoin/silver/ (https://8marketcap.com/compare/bitcoin/silver/) but then have a look at the performance of Gold vs Bitcoin too https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-vs-gold/ (https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-vs-gold/). Even if you chop the first 4 years of BTC off due to being new and alot of swings, BTC has still outperformed Gold considerably.

I mention BTC is arguably similar to Digital Gold and even the likes of Goldman Sachs, once massively bearish on crypto, now championing it's potential https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/goldman-sachs-says-bitcoin-will-compete-with-gold-store-value-2022-01-05/ (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/goldman-sachs-says-bitcoin-will-compete-with-gold-store-value-2022-01-05/)

You might not be able to hold or wear a physical Bitcoin as a ring, but you can't move Gold from one side of the planet to the other within minutes at a fraction of the cost either..

Best of luck. Would be interested to hear which assets you buy  :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

Which was the point, to explain why they are not the same.  I'm not saying one is good and one is bad, just that they are very different in nature.

I agree that blockchain technology is undoubtedly the future of currency and actually pretty much everything.

But cryptocurrency and blockchain, although intrinsically related, are very different things.

I laughed at your post because you're claiming that bitcoin should be comparable to safe haven physical assets like gold. Maybe in the future it will be, but as RobT has as said, today you really can't compare the two.

80 % Bitcoin/Ethereum and the rest is ALGO / CRONOS

https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

This vid crystallised the little I understood about crypto currency and confirmed my hunch to steer clear of it. (The vid is chiefly about NFTs but does a good round up of crypto at the start).

Ethically and environmentally it’s generally an absolute shitshow, but it’s the fact that anyone getting involved now are effectively just fluffers for earlier adopters and your existence in crypto is purely reliant on convincing others to come and fluff for you, that’s the real turn off. It’s a zero sum game.

I'd say the only similarity that BTC has to Gold is that it has somewhat become a Store of Value. It's traded of course, like many assets (physical and digital) but like XAU, many people who have it do just hold it.

There are no real useful use cases for BTC as it is still pretty expense and slow compared to many other crypto.

ETH is probably at the end of it's life cycle in terms of use cases. What has been done is great on Smart Contracts but the average joe will not be attracted to high gas fees when trading it (their are ways to do it cheaper but newbs will struggle at first and likely not have the patience). For example, even when it's cheap, and ETH to ETH transfer can cost you $6. When the gas is high, you might pay $40...not many will jump on board with that. If you compare assets like Dash, XRP, LTC and many more. They move any amount in seconds (XRP) and it's super cheap. $0.0000001. Better of waiting for ETH2.0...if we're alive to see it.

I'm not a huge fan of the Crypto Punk and Ape culture via NFTs - they've exposed a market but it's mostly celebs or influencers launching which makes much of those unobtainable for your average collector.

I've done "ok" off some crypto stuff but was "in" pretty early. But my motive back then wasn't to make money - I was motivated by blockchain and public ledgers. I love the triple accounting element that this brings. Just by making everything public. XRP is probably one of the most transparent for this. I also can't wait until the XRPL (the ledger) has their version of NFT's running because yet again, it will bring more accessibility because it's purely so cheap so everyone can get involved and build on it. With that also comes interoperability, so even other assets (any assets) will be usable on it. Much like multiple assets can already be traded on it at a very nominal fee.

Imagine for one minute trying to send a bunch of emergency funds to someone in NZ or India or Africa or East Asia. It could be family or friends, someone travelling and so on. Yes, we can do that today and it's quick ish (I think 2hrs but can take upto 48hrs maybe longer) but even then you have to pay the top end of a premium to send a cross border transfer. People in some of those places can probably ill afford to pay the fees so it becomes limiting as to who can. Little johnny on his parents funded 2yr gap year in Bali is ok as they probably couldn't give a fuck what it costs. With this premium added, say Western Union or MoneyGram (although MG are using XRP for some currency pairs), the person then needs to send more funds to make it worthwhile as a low amount of funds still incurs the same fee.

People say "but PayPal can do that". Well it can't. PayPal might be able to make quick payments but settlement is still an issue. Plus they do still take a cut/charge you. This again is poor for the wider world problem of X-TFR (cross transfer). XRP solves that problem, along with some other emerging digital assets too. You can send any amount, anywhere in the world, for near on free (again, it's $0.000001 ish). As well as paying it in seconds, it also settles in secs in real time too. Suck on that SWIFT and SEPA. I've done it, several times. Had a guy in Aussie send me 100 XRP in 2017 to test his project he was building on the XRPL. Within 5secs it was in my account. We did a few tests and then I sent him 50 back (he said to keep the other 50 for my time, we spent about 10mins max) and in 5secs he had 50XRP back in his account. The key thing here to remember is both the payment and settlement time. Never will you have this pending funds bollocks like you do in traditional banking. No bother on a Bank Holiday and you don't need to pay a premium to use the service.

If mainstream banking in the west, doesn't jump on board to use XRP or similar for cross border transfers then they're bloody stupid or too institutionalised to see the benefit. The rails are already laid for them to use it.

Oh and if you're wondering about off and on-ramping FIAT, if you need to get it "out", places like Uphold and Xumm Wallet (a personal fave and I know the creator) both offer facilities to turn your digital funds into physical reddies (if that's your devaluing bag).

So FDB is supposedly the BTC Fanboy. I guess this makes me an XRP Fanboy. Regardless, as they mentioned, we're all incredibly early on the curve even if you invest/gamble/punt/ whatever today. Yes it's volatile in some markets and yes you must use caution and as every single fucking person in crypto with a smidge of credibility repeatedly says "This is not financial advice". Please see Samdy for that  :)

Keep hearing this trope. Not true, even a 5 second google search can disprove it. Do you think the banks use zero energy in all their data centres, admin sites and branches?

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes-less-than-half-the-energy-of-the-banking-or-gold-industries
https://www.iyops.org/post/energy-consumption-cryptocurrency-vs-traditional-banks
https://medium.com/@zodhyatech/which-consumes-more-power-banks-or-bitcoins-8302750fe2bc
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bitcoin-mining-environment-climate-crypto-b1849211.html
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes-less-than-half-the-energy-of-the-banking-or-gold-industries

That's PoW covered, what about the coins that use PoS? Even less energy consumption there.

I have a lot invested in stocks & shares took a massive drop during early Covid, recovered well last summer then dropped off again early this year but you have to ride the storm until things pick up again.

Yes a 5 second search can pull up the same rehashed research article from multiple outlets - unsurprisingly research carried out by a company with what looks to be a vested interest in the success of crypto - “ We are the bridge between the crypto and the institutional worlds”.

What it won’t give you is analysis on the sense of scale. The folding ideas vid covers this at c.16 mins (with cited references) and examples.

I’ll paraphrase; people claim that the global banking industry uses far more energy than crypto. Technically this is true, however that’s the banking system for over 7 billion people, not a few hundred thousand crypto investors. Scaled per transaction, crypto uses vastly more energy than traditional banking systems.

If XRP were the utility asset for world banking and cross border transfers I can guarantee you it uses way less energy than traditional banking. They've done plenty of scalability testing too with some fairly large banks. MoneyGram have done testing with them. The SBI, Santander, Canadian BoC, Partnered with AWS, TransferGo...there's more but you can go and check for yourself :)

XRP for one doesn't using PoW anyway so involves no mining incentive. It's mostly done via Trusted Validator Nodes and based on consensus to approve transactions. It doesn't discriminate between other currencies (digital or FIAT). At present it can handle 1500tps at a fee of $0.00001. To put that in comparison to other crypto...ETH can currently do 10tps and BTC only 4-5tps.

But you know, don't get sucked into the mantra that BTC and ETH are the only crypto around by those who haven't checked out much else :)

You reds x