How do you decide which crypto currency to buy?

This is all getting very exciting – for the first time ever since getting crypto I might even go into the green today! Currently just 0.3% down (including the transaction fees).

Make that 0.43% down…

Seems to go up and down more often than a pogo stick on Christmas morn.
With as many spectacular crashes too.

Be under no illusions – Crypto is nothing more than gambling – the only people who make any money in the long run are the trading platforms themselves (like casino’s essentially).

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.

I dabbled just after the ftx collapse last year, got a tiny bit of a BTC. Since then it rebounded a bit in Jan so I’ve taken the profits to buy a late Xmas present for myself and left the original sum which has veered from around -12% last week to +13% today.

I think the days of sky high valuations are gone and the volatility doesn’t really fit my risk appetite for bigger investments so don’t think I’m ever going to be a crypto millionaire, but then again neither are lots of people who once were!

‘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.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/06/britcoin-digital-currency-could-be-in-use-by-end-of-decade

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

@5lab

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/

Looks a lot like a dead cat bounce

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/03/29/bitcoin-heads-for-best-quarter-in-two-years-outperforms-ether-gold-and-nasdaq/

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…