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'Was on a call with a service provider today – they’ve developed a cloud platform that can be used by any bank to perform their core banking activites – and lots of very big institutional players are moving onto it.
They’re using smart contracts as part of the ledger.
If you don’t know what that means, you’re not qualified to dismiss crypto.'
Doesn't change the statement that it's essentially gambling tho'. Very effective, automated gambling for the aforementioned big institutions, and not for your benefit
Unless you stick cash in a building society then it’s all gambling - those sharp suited city types don’t run Porches on 1.5% interest rates.
And I don’t think anyone in this thread has bought crypto without being aware of the risks.
If you don’t know what that means, you’re not qualified to dismiss crypto.
The things which spring to mind are "service provider". So this is a service they control? Doesnt seem an obvious fit for a decentralised technology aimed at avoiding that central control with all the associated overheads.
Also did you ask what happened when those smart contracts run into the inevitable bugs. Will those big banks suck it up or will it be time for the lawyers to get involved and decide what those smart contracts actually mean.
They’re using smart contracts as part of the ledger. If you don’t know what that means, you’re not qualified to dismiss crypto.
Automated boolean logic that operates in a legal framework in other words?, if conditions are met then execute……..
I follow a few informative folk on Twitter regarding valid possibilities of blockchain use, it’s so easy these days to find information that’s explained in a non patronising way.
Doesn’t change the statement that it’s essentially gambling tho’. Very effective, automated gambling for the aforementioned big institutions, and not for your benefit
Your (and @dissonance) reply shows your lack of understanding.
It's simply a robust technology platform. How is that, in any way, gambling?
Was on a call with a service provider today – they’ve developed a cloud platform that can be used by any bank to perform their core banking activites – and lots of very big institutional players are moving onto it.
no very big institutional players will have any interest in their platform. Source : I'm a fairly senior techy in a big institutional bank.
If you don’t know what that means, you’re not qualified to dismiss crypto.’
I'd rather judge by results than patronising comments.
, is anyone using Binance
I’ve got a Binance account, I keep my Helium tokens in it thinking they’ll make me rich!!! I haven’t got that many and I do wonder if I should convert them all to BTC - not sure it makes an awful lot of difference as they all seem to go up and down in sync…
Not earned enough to warrant making a withdrawal yet so can’t comment on that but my test transaction went through with no issues…
Not earned enough to warrant making a withdrawal yet so can’t comment o
You might want to google binance and sterling withdrawals for todays headlines.
Genuine question alert. Can anyone explain what the point of a Britcoin would be? The only thing I can gather from this is new ways to pay, but I can't see how they would be different from to other digital payments currently available via traditional banking. What would the appeal be for the user? They would still be facilitated by private institutions so presumably wouldn't make payments free for businesses etc.
It’s simply a robust technology platform.
What is?
"crypto" or this particular providers implementation of it?
Can anyone explain what the point of a Britcoin would be? The only thing I can gather from this is new ways to pay, but I can’t see how they would be different from to other digital payments currently available via traditional banking. What would the appeal be for the user? They would still be facilitated by private institutions so presumably wouldn’t make payments free for businesses etc.
I'd be interested to know, too. The common suggestions I hear are -
Easier to make payments between users (possibly lower fees, where there are fees)
Therefore cheaper and more efficient for banks
Govt gets more control of money (see also: fears of increased social control etc)
I'm sceptical of points 1&2. One key issue with crypto is it's a scammer's paradise: it's easy to transfer money to a scammer and no-one can refund you or reverse the payment. (There was a tale this weekend of a user who was making a transaction for $2 million, checked the wrong box, and ended up with $0.05 and no recourse.) So I think most people would still want to keep their Britcoins in a bank for the added protection it affords. And that would cost money and they'd charge you fees.
Point 3 sounds like a possibility though.
All the rest sounds like empty spin. "Maintaining trust in money"? What does that even mean? I trust the pound! It's the people managing it I'm not sure about...
Yeah Bitcoin is doing well at the moment – I am currently 20% up on my *very* small investment (just playing for a bit of fun) but my other currencies aren’t doing so well (Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash) so I am, as I type, 1.69% down on my initial combined investments.
@johndoh are you messing around in PayPal like me as I have exactly the same situation. Ethereum is doing my head in, lost a whole £50 on that in the last 6 months. Means I can't afford that yacht yet
The things which spring to mind are “service provider”. So this is a service they control? Doesnt seem an obvious fit for a decentralised technology aimed at avoiding that central control with all the associated overheads.
I don’t know anything about crypto but I’ve worked with service providers for some time. I’d imagine what they’ve done is build this cloud platform as an orchestration layer of sorts, pulling in various third party capabilities, probably held together by some proprietary “special sauce” and then packaged up and sold as-a-service. Crypto will just be one of those third parties, and more than likely several of the main currencies will be available.
Service providers generally aren’t in the business of re-creating wheels - there’s not enough margin in it. I would also imagine that whoever “owns” the crypto businesses will have teams of sales people working with service providers to help them build and monetise these kind of services as it helps drive adoption of their particular currency/product.
You might want to google binance and sterling withdrawals for todays headlines.
Nah, I only generate about 10 HNT a month and it’s basically free money, if it ever becomes worth anything I’ll put it in a BTC wallet.. 🤷♂️
Crypto will just be one of those third parties, and more than likely several of the main currencies will be available.
Rather unlikely if, as is claimed, they will be using it as the ledger of record. That sort of thing you would want on a private chain.
They might, possibly, be using blockchain but that is somewhat different to the common usage of "crypto" and still begs the question why.
@johndoh are you messing around in PayPal like me as I have exactly the same situation. Ethereum is doing my head in, lost a whole £50 on that in the last 6 months. Means I can’t afford that yacht yet
yep - all the other options sounded way too confusing and I am just doing this for a bit of fun (I only invested £400).
It’s simply a robust technology platform. How is that, in any way, gambling?
Because hypothetical uses for blockchain ledgers do exist. You can store all-sorts on them, that's never been questioned really. In principal it's not so different to your bank storing your information on a database of spreadsheets then encrypting it and putting it in a publicly accessible folder somewhere. Does that offer them any advantage over their current software? Perhaps, a lot of banking is done on systems several decades old, just look at the chaos every few years when one of the big banks tries to do an IT upgrade and the whole system collapses for a day.
Buying a bitcoin does not however get you any stake in that. You're not buying shares in a tech startup that's going to revolutionize banking any more than putting £100 on red is a bet on fiat currency.
the real value that a blockchain-based currency gives is the ability between two untrusted partners to electronically execute a trusted, guaranteed transaction.
When you have a bank this isn't needed as the bank acts as a trusted party - so if you send money to my bank account, we both trust that the banking network will sort out all the nuances of that and won't just run off with our cash. So banks have no need for the guarantees of an untrusted party as they are trusted (lets leave our political views of banks for a minute).
Banks are also big enough that their use, for individuals, is effectively free (it doesn't cost you anything to transfer me some cash). For big company-to-company transactions, the small margins that banks apply can add up to larger amounts that could be worth saving, but its unlikely that the sort of company transferring mutliple millions at a time will want to take risk of a "stablecoin" vs just pay a relatively small amount to continue to use barclays (or whoever).
imo britcoin is more about the risk of missing out/opportunity cost and to keep positioning ourselves at the front of the world from a tech perspective. Finance tech and standards in the UK is genuinely world-leading (we were the first to have realtime low-cost transfers, the first to have an ability to check participants bank details, etc etc), there's little cost to set up a britcoin vs the risk of all that talent going off to the EU
no very big institutional players will have any interest in their platform. Source : I’m a fairly senior techy in a big institutional bank
I'm similar m8 and of course they're interested (and some already there). Can't see JPMorgan or HSBC and their ilk moving their core banking services over any time soon, but smaller banks are already doing it. It's very interesting.
I was thinking about getting out of crypto and invest in nice safe regular banking instead.
Anyone got any hot tips about banks I should be investing in right now?
I tell a lie @5lab - JPMorgan are apparently moving their core banking onto VaultOS - a private cloud-native blockchain (Lloyds and Standard Chartered are there already).
Not exactly the same - but a great use of a ledger tech. 🙂
Anyone got any hot tips about banks I should be investing in right now?
Credit Suisse going cheap atm
Credit Suisse going cheap atm
Cool, doesn't get much more safe and stable than Credit Suisse. I just put all my crypto money into Credit Suisse and now I'm going to take a break and read the news 🙂
Edit: Just realised Credit Suisse's chairman is Axel Lehmann. That's a well known name in banking, isn't it?
JPMorgan are apparently moving their core banking onto VaultOS – a private cloud-native blockchain (Lloyds and Standard Chartered are there already)
I dont think that vault is based on blockchain. The only reference I can find to that being the case is some 7 year old press-releases that mention vault OS being a blockchain-based operating system - theres zero mention of either vault OS (it might have been rebranded) nor blockchain on their current site..
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/03/29/bitcoin-heads-for-best-quarter-in-two-years-outperforms-ether-gold-and-nasdaq//blockquote >
Make your mind up, is it a serious currency or an investment?
Can't it be both and more?
Can’t it be both and more?
Not really.
For money I want the cash to be roughly worth the same day to day in terms of purchasing power (thanks tories for the current inflation).
I dont want to buy a beer or two today and then wake up with a bit of a head tomorrow only to have it made far worse by realising I could have brought the pub. if thats a possibility (or even 100pints for the 1 today) then I am not going to be spending it am I?
Whilst you can speculate with normal money its really just an accidental feature of there being multiple currencies and people needing to switch between them. Its not really a good thing for most people or companies and is somewhat limited in how it can be used.
Anyone got any thoughts on what's happening in the crypto world these days? Are the days of making money by investing in it over? Too many thousands of shit coins?
I started late. My "portfolio" is worth 63% of what I spent on it. Probably shouldn't have tried to take advantage of ridiculously high percentage staking and liquidity pools.... and not selling high.
Time to change the thread to 'how do you decide which crypto currency to sell'?
Or diamnond hands?
A mate of mine is convinced it's always a 4yr cycle. Hold on tight and load up then there'll be another bull run. Probably exactly the same as saying "it'll land in black soon, it'll land on black soon."
I've got a few quid across a handful of coins, I did take out some profit a while ago, the remainder has dropped loads then crept back up a bit. I'm probably a few percent up on what I put in.
Bitcoin...1.29% up in the last 12 months.
Yay...?
https://www.coindesk.com/embedded-chart/TNdPJPg78zMTL
Bitcoin…1.29% up in the last 12 months.
it's up 179% in 3 years
bitcoin halving in less than a year, buy or hodl
Inflation since 2020? Nearly 20% - 1/5th of the value of everything you've ever worked for. Down to monetary policy since the last big crash in 2008.
I mean, they can blame the war in Ukraine, or some other "unforseen circumstance", but they did print a load of cash and give it to the super rich.
Kind of why bitcoin was invented, right? To take the power to print money out of the hands of governments...
Any Coinbase users? I’ve noticed ever since they binned off Pro and introduced Advanced, the fees have increased. Is that just how it is now?
Nearly 20% – 1/5th of the value of everything you’ve ever worked for.
Not exactly, champ...especially if you've got a fixed rate mortgage.
@politecameraaction - so you've £200,000 equity in your house. If inflation was running at target - 2% - then in the last couple of years your house would really be worth £192,080 (compound). Lets say inflation's run at 14% for the last couple of years - it's worth £172,980 in real money. That's a big old chunk isn't it.**
If your lifetime investments haven't outstripped inflation then they're worth at lot less too. And that's lifetime investments - not just the crap you've stashed in the last couple of years.
If, as Einstein said, tongue in cheek "compound interest is the most powerful force in the Universe" - then compounding high inflation is the flip coin of that.
**Edit: Yep, you could say house prices have risen by maybe 7%. But then - what about if the pound is being devalued by inflation and house prices fall too? That's a double kick in the nuts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65774620
Any Coinbase users?
Well they have to pay for the legal defence against the SEC somehow.
A mate of mine is convinced it’s always a 4yr cycle. Hold on tight and load up then there’ll be another bull run. Probably exactly the same as saying “it’ll land in black soon, it’ll land on black soon.”
Well, he's right. Or rather, based on past experience, he's right (which is, of course, no guarantee of future performance).
It's not exactly four years, btw. It's based around the halfings (the point where the BTC rewards are reduced by half every time 210,000 blocks are mined):
https://www.blockchaincenter.net/en/bitcoin-rainbow-chart/
The returns on each halfing cycle have been less each time. And for the first time the price in the current cycle dipped dipped below the price at the peak in the previous cycle so possibly the period of being able to make huge profits by loading up in the dips and selling during the peaks has passed.
Saying that, I'd expect some sort of pump around 2025 if, for no other reason, everyone will be expecting the price to pump.
Yeah, chevychase, the problem with your analysis is that you're simultaneously imagining the price of everything changes (inflation or deflation) but also the price of assets remains static. And that's just not true.
Litecoin is up 46% over the last year.
I'm still dabbling, but only buying the major crypto through Paypal now as other trading apps seem dodgier than the coins! 🙂
I still have coins in Kraken though.
Inflation since 2020? Nearly 50% – half of the value of everything you’ve ever shilled for. Down to Bitcoin being a terrible f****** idea
Bitcoin "inflation" by the same measure is running at 50%* over the last 2 financial years....
*Actually it's a lot higher as that's purely looking at how many pounds you could buy with it, and as you said, those aren't worth what they were 2 years ago either.
It’s not exactly four years, btw. It’s based around the halfings (the point where the BTC rewards are reduced by half every time 210,000 blocks are mined):
And you consider monitory policy that aims for 2% and accidentally hit 10% inflation is bad? But this is good?
Hate to say it, but it sounds like you're exact the sort of disaster capitalist you seem to hate.
And you consider monitory policy that aims for 2% and accidentally hit 10% inflation is bad? But this is good?
Hate to say it, but it sounds like you’re exact the sort of disaster capitalist you seem to hate.
I've not really got any strong opinions about whether BTC or crypto in general is a good thing or not. I think the first thing to do is establish what it is.
It's clearly a thing that has a lot of potential but potential for what exactly is not entirely clear. The most obvious is that it has the potential to eliminate the need for an intermediary currency and simply issue units of currency based on the thing itself, whether that's your attention (in the case of BAT) or providing network coverage (in the case of Helium).
I could be completely wrong and it turns out to be something else. I've said before, Crypto is at the internet in 1997 stage at the moment. The only thing it seems to be good for porn and money.
I don't think many people could have predicted just how ubiquitous the internet would be in 2023.
It's a thing and I think it's going to change the world. In some ways that change will be good and in some it will be bad. That's the nature of change but the only thing I know is there is very little point in wailing against a change that's coming.
Or maybe the whole thing is just Tulips. However, Tulips went up and then crashed. They didn't go through multiple cycles over the course of a decade.
Anyway, I understand enough about crypto to know how little I understand. Anyone who knows where it is going, ie to the moon or to crash, burn and disappear forever, only holds that opinion because they simply do not understand it at all.
Yeah, chevychase, the problem with your analysis is that you’re simultaneously imagining the price of everything changes (inflation or deflation) but also the price of assets remains static. And that’s just not true.
You didn't read the post dude. I didn't say assets remain static - I specifically addressed that point. But I'll add to my argument - most people are asset-poor.
And you consider monitory policy that aims for 2% and accidentally hit 10% inflation is bad?
What's accidental about it? We've been printing money since the 2008 financial crash. The net result of that policy was always going to be massive inflation - and an erosion in the value of all the wealth you've ever earned. A significant erosion. (On top of a decline in living standards in Blighty for the last 15 years that's a kick in the nuts).
Bitcoin was invented precisely because of a need to deny governments/central banks the ability to devalue our wealth - and therefore the value of all the hours of backbreaking work we've put in over our lifetimes - simply "because" - because history shows that they don't do it for the plebs, they do it to keep the wealthy in hookers and coke.
Without that ability then the economy would be subject to market forces rather than idiotic government policy. And I can take knowing things are massively more expensive because bad weather has hit crops rather than our governments decided to print money and hand it to the ultra-rich, massively expanding their wealth whilst the vast majority of people get poorer.
Let me ask you this - do you feel our economy is really delivering for you? NHS getting better, living standards on the up, more free time to spend with your family, as was the promise of our dominant economic ideology?