There’s a big difference between falling for a scam and making a gamble which doesn’t pay off though

I guess the blanket approach will save the banks money, so they don’t end up paying out to customers for failing to detect fraudulent activity.

A few years back I had stocks in a FTSE100 company. Management happy paid themselves out and the stock went to zero.

It was held in a ISA so no capital loss to claim.

You make your choices – you take the risk.

^Carillion by any chance? Got caught out there as well. Yep, accounting scandals are alive and well in the mainstream financial system too.

Forget Crypto… checkout Phunware Inc (PHUN in the States)

Up 1200% on the day !!

Yeah Enron, Worldcom, etc., there is always risk.

Crypto is just a pure speculative vehicle, however, IMHO, there is no underlying value to fall back upon. It will end up at zero.

Any helium miners out there? Seams brilliant but I’ve probably missed the boat on this one.

Well i’ve just put some money in Cardano. Anyone care to blow on my dice???

Any helium miners out there? Seams brilliant but I’ve probably missed the boat on this one.

Yep I’ve got a bit of a fleet on the go, always on the lookout for hosts. 🙂

Boing, boing, boing – anyone else enjoying the crypto markets bouncing up and down these last few weeks! 🙂

It’s certainly up & down at the moment, with the emphasis on down! Hey ho.
I’m not too bothered as planning on hanging on for a while. I’d prefer it to go up, up & up but….

A bloke I work with recently admitted that he invested some money from his sideline online business into crypto & is now a millionaire (in crypto at least). He’s working on an exit strategy from work. The git. 🙂

A friend of mine gave up work 2/3 years ago, took out a LOT of interest free credit card cash transfers, sunk it into Crypto, crystallised some gains into “fiat shares” and is now a millionaire on paper and retired. Huge risk, but has paid off for him and many others.

Any tips on where to start with Crypto – understand it’s likely to all be lost?

Any tips on where to start with Crypto – understand it’s likely to all be lost?

Easiest way is on one of the big Exchanges and with the big coins (basically BitCoin and Ethereum) but whilst you’ll have a wilder time than with say FTSE1000 shares you’d have to risk investing a lot to make any serious money

The other option is to try and get in on new coins early and hope they moon – trouble with that is a lot are scams and generally won’t be available on the reputable exchanges early enough.

Personally I have some BitCoin & Ethereum and also some more niche coins (but after they were available on major exchanges so not really early enough but it’s a bit of a wilder ride than BTC/ETH – although it’s all been downhill so far :p)

To start with just keep your coins on the exchange and if you start investing lots (and don’t want to be dependant on the exchange in case it goes tits-up) look to have your own wallet

StuF

Any tips on where to start with Crypto – understand it’s likely to all be lost?

Spend a bit of time getting your head around it.
Only invest what you are prepared to lose.
Realise that people who end up investing £1000 & becoming millionaires are the exception rather than the rule.
Stick to the more well established coins with higher market caps that are less likely to just disappear overnight, such as that squidgame scam coin recently.
Sign up to an exchange (I use Kraken) – there’s plenty of videos that talk you through the set-up process, how to transfer funds, buy & sell and the best way to buy (with the lowest fees).

I was really anxious about it & procrastinated for a good couple of years before finally sorting my shit out.
Had I got on with it & invested even a small amount when I originally started thinking about it, I probably would be about £100k or more up. As it is, I’m not. But hey ho. That’s life and my fault for not getting on with it.
I’m not day trading – just buying a small amount monthly and keeping hold of it for a while. If it makes some money, all well & good. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a bit annoyed but I’m not risking anything I can’t afford to lose & FOR ME the potential reward outweighs the risk.

I’m not day trading – just buying a small amount monthly and keeping hold of it for a while. If it makes some money, all well & good. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a bit annoyed but I’m not risking anything I can’t afford to lose & FOR ME the potential reward outweighs the risk.

^^Same for me. Just beer money every month into a few coins. Could make me rich in 5yrs, or I could lose the lot! 🙂

I use the Kraken App.

I got into this a couple of months ago. Just before the market decided to tank ha ha.Hoping it will recover soon.

Another recent trader here and echo @stumpy01 above.

I’m using etoro at the moment to get an understanding of what I’m doing, may change to kraken at some point.

Main reason I’m using etoro is I’ve got a few non crypto trades on the same platform as well.

Having a mix of the big two (ETH and BTC) plus some altcoins just to see what happens, after dithering and talking about it for ages I decided to put my money where my mouth was!

I’ve decided on a limit I’m happy to “lose” and won’t add any more just yet, having just bought in the dip. Be prepared to hold on for a while, I’m looking at this as an alternative to premium bonds. More risk but better returns.

Why bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme | Financial Times https://t.co/TedkS04BXO

— Jake (@JakeVK) December 22, 2021

Another Helium miner here, pretty new to it but it’s quite interesting.

@nickc i thought after all these months, even you would have seen what the space is capable of, but no……still spouting the same old rhetoric!! Meanwhile, many people have made PLENTY of cash (Fiat and Crypto) out of it! 😀

Did nickc write the article?

No one is denying that money can be made, that’s not in dispute.

I read the article earlier and thought of this thread!

Everyone is an expert in a bull market 😀

Ponzi schemes are to bitcoin as foreigners are to brexit. Or something.

No one is denying that money can be made, that’s not in dispute.

Literally; I’m making some newly minted riocoins as we speak.

There’s a good point from that article that hadn’t really occurred to me. I’d roughly estimated that the value in cryptocurrencies was the amount put in by the punters minus the amount skimmed off by exchanges, fraudsters and other middle men, but of course as he says you should subtract from that the cost of all the electricity paid for by miners, so the actual amount left that can be extracted by the lucky few gamblers from the gullible serious and far sighted investors who can see the striking potential of this amazing technology is actually quite small.

that the value in cryptocurrencies was the amount put in by the punters minus the amount skimmed off by exchanges, fraudsters and other middle men

I don’t think you can state value like that. The cost is maybe the electricity and middlemen etc, but the value could be higher or lower that that. The computations done have no intrinsic value of their own, unlike, say, gold or oil which have a speculative value but also a base, usable value to many people

Rio

There’s a good point from that article that hadn’t really occurred to me. I’d roughly estimated that the value in cryptocurrencies was the amount put in by the punters minus the amount skimmed off by exchanges, fraudsters and other middle men, but of course as he says you should subtract from that the cost of all the electricity paid for by miners, so the actual amount left that can be extracted by the lucky few gamblers from the gullible serious and far sighted investors who can see the striking potential of this amazing technology is actually quite small.

Does the same thing happen with gold, diamonds etc? Is the cost of finding, extracting, processing, storing, marketing, selling the precious material taken off it’s value?

I quote I heard.

Don’t be so arrogant as to presume your opinion is correct.

Crypto is the future – or not.

Claiming that bitcoin has an inherent value because ‘work was done’ to produce it sounds like a variant of the labour theory of value. Ergo it’s wrong.

Tarrantino releasing Pulp Fiction related NFTs on the Secret Network after Mirramax sued him for copyright infringement over NFTs in November. Only the owner of a Secret Network NFT can view them. So Miramax will have to buy them to discover if they need to sue him or not.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/05/quentin-tarantino-to-release-pulp-fiction-nfts-flouting-miramax-lawsuit/

Claiming that bitcoin has an inherent value because ‘work was done’ to produce it sounds like a variant of the labour theory of value. Ergo it’s wrong.

This statement demonstrates both a misunderstanding of “the Labour theory of value” and a lack of knowledge of how crypto works.

That work is done doesn’t give value it demonstrates security, which gives value to the currency associated with the token.

Noticed I could buy Bitcoin and Ethereum last week via the paypal, picked up a small amount and am down 1/4 a week later…

Noticed I could buy Bitcoin and Ethereum last week via the paypal, picked up a small amount and am down 1/4 a week later…

Well, if this was a stock, you should now be examining the reason for the drop (because no decent investment drops 20%+ for no reason) and deciding if/how it affects your investment thesis. If your thesis still stands you might like to average down, but if you’re less risk tolerant then probably not, better to simply hold. If your thesis has been compromised then it’s time to cut the loss and move on.

Noticed I could buy Bitcoin and Ethereum last week via the paypal, picked up a small amount and am down 1/4 a week later…

That’s just how it is – treat it as a gamble and a bit of fun – and don’t put your life’s savings in! 😀

That work is done doesn’t give value it demonstrates security, which gives value to the currency associated with the token.

The need to ‘mine’ (and thus ‘do’ work) new bitcoins (or any crypto) is an entirely arbitrary mechanic. A new coin could easily start with a fixed supply or expand based on some kind of queue or RNG based system. By your logic, it would have no value.

Security is demonstrated by the blockchain not being compromised. If someone failed an infinite number of times to break the blockchain the coin wouldn’t acquire infinite value.

Noticed I could buy Bitcoin and Ethereum last week via the paypal, picked up a small amount and am down 1/4 a week later…

That’s just how it is

You can hold or sell. Or buy the dip.

Who is buying the dip?
And who is getting out while they’re ahead before the bubble burst completely?
Who knows what the best thing to do is, it’s all very exciting

Or buy the dip

Or try catching a falling knife.

Every time a new block of transactions is added to a crypto currency’s blockchain, the “miners” attempt to solve a complex mathematical function using the new transactions as input data. The first miner to get to the answer is rewarded with some quantity of the crypto currency – this is how new crypto currency comes into the world. In the case of Bitcoin there are probably thousands of mining rigs around the world. The big issue with this scheme is that every time a new block is added to the currency’s blockchain, almost all of the considerable amount of electrical power consumed by miners is entirely wasted, since this is a race in which only one miner can win – all the other miners in the network who fail to find the answer fist just consume electricity to no purpose. I saw an estimate recently that compared the amount of power consumed by Bitcoin miners to be equivalent to a small country (I don’t remember which one).

All of that electricity has to come from somewhere, and almost certainly results in yet more CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, and mostly for no good purpose. So in environmental terms crypto, and in particular Bitcoin, is a major environmental disaster area. This is something which people maybe ought to take into account before diving in. Personally I won’t go near any crypto currency for exactly this reason, regardless of the financial risks and/or rewards that may or may not be involved.