Bubble time.  It's too volatile for me.
 
XMR has a potential bright future.  We will see.  BTC doesn't have a very bright future, in my opinion.  It's former lead developer called it a failed experiment.

By the way, GPUs are useless for mining Bitcoin.  How is this claim so often made in error?

veganfanatic
some other digital coins are mined with a GPU and are traded for bitcoin etc

True.  Nicehash is super popular.
I wish they offered other ways of payment.  Do they?  I would love to get paid by Nicehash in XMR.  XMR has a high potential of rapid growth with BTC atomic swaps in developement, as long as XMR isn't regulated at some point.
And after that growth, XMR has benefits which probably won't cause it to just bubble and burst.  We'll see.

GPUs are useless for mining bitcoin. ASICs are leagues faster than any GPU. 

Gotta laugh when people hype cryptocurrency. It just means they're wanting people to buy in so they can cash out asap with big profits at your expense.

Theres lots of ways to make money with cryptocurrency. I tried the mining route, but my utility rate is too high and cloud mining is just slow, in my opinion.

I'd rather have the tokens themselves, so just buy them, why waste money and time on equipment?

These days, I do trading.

I bought $1000 of Bitcoin about a month ago when it was $13133, so with Bitcoin in the $19,000 range, my balance is now at $1400. So I so I made $400 profit by letting it sit there. Should Bitcoin drop too much, I can always trade it for a stable coin, like Tether, and not lose value (minus transaction fees). That's the concept of value trading, basically you buy a chunk and based on trends, forecast, strategy or hope/hype that value goes up over time.

But I also do day trading, this stuff is anxiety provoking fun. In this case, the actual price doesn't matter, you aim for a percentage gain, watch the moving averages and buy when the price drops and sell when prices spike. I use the exchange "Binance" for their low transaction rates. Two months ago I started with $500 of Ethereum, I didn't stick with the same currency, probably traded a few dozen by now. The balance is just under $700, or about a half-percent gain per day. My goal was 1% a day, so I've lost here and there.

Right now I've taken an interest in trading "bots", which is basically software that does the buying and selling of trading for you, running 24/7. It would be nice to eliminate the greed, impatience and emotion from trading. I'm not going to be a millionaire, but I'd love a computer upgrade next year from this. I have my eye on Zen 4.

BTC is limited and harder now than ever. Other are more scary which pisses me off as video card prices rise out of reach.
 

I am so incensed I am considering suing the whole sector to punish them for deprivation
 
It would be a class action, and I am quite capable in law myself
 
 

Lately I have modernized my Apple toys, at least they are in stock
 
No video cards, no processors, see how good my EVGA RTX 2080 is while the supply of modern cards flees store shelves faster than poof
 
 

I don’t think people are going to be mining after the 1080 series. It’s harder to mine now and the majority of people who bought into the last bubble by buying a GPU to mine with probably never made a profit.

veganfanatic
Don't look now but a new digital coin bubble is taking hold with most of the digital crap up in value.

Bubbles burst.
Bitcoin has problems.
It was called a failed experiment by one of its lead engineers for a reason.  As he said, the only way it maintains an inflated value is if it is traded based on speculation.  If people actually try to use it, it fails, the system falls apart, and people lose faith in it as a form of payment.
There is no way I expect it to reach $100k, much less $318k.  It's too volatile.  Enough people will cash out, there will be enough of a value blip that people will panic sell, and its value will once again shoot back down, just like it has every previous time.
I think there are better cryptocurrency options.  The only thing Bitcoin has going for it is that it was a novel idea when it was created.  Not best.  Just novel.  Boomers trade it who know nothing about cryptocurrency, just because it is something that they have heard of.  It's not something to use as a long-term investment.
 
XMR has a slow-growing bright future in the next 5 years, I think.  Not as big, but not as much drop and financial ruin either.  The only major risk with XMR is if it becomes heavily regulated because of how anonymized it is.

Bitcoin is being treated as an investment. That is the only reason it is valued so high. As a form of currency, it is lacking.
See the link in my previous post as to why/how it is lacking.

veganfanatic

ty_ger07
Bitcoin is being treated as an investment. That is the only reason it is valued so high. As a form of currency, it is lacking.
See the link in my previous post as to why/how it is lacking.

 
I consider digital coins to be up there with Ponzi schemes
 

 
Digital coins have no more/less intrinsic value than US currency at this point. It only has as much value as the consumer has faith in that currency. Anything not backed by a precious metal or other tangible hard-good, is just a fiat currency that will fluctuate at the whim of those who make the decisions as to its value.
 
That said, I'd never waste my time on coin mining; the market is way too volatile and scammers way too prevalent, with no oversight or insurance policy from the federal government.

veganfanatic

ty_ger07
Bitcoin is being treated as an investment. That is the only reason it is valued so high. As a form of currency, it is lacking.
See the link in my previous post as to why/how it is lacking.

I consider digital coins to be up there with Ponzi schemes

The fact is that Bitcoin IS being treated as an investment.  That is the ONLY reason why its value is so ridiculously high at the moment.
 
I don't like it either.

veganfanatic
I should also point out about all the thefts of bitcoins etc

Well, to be fair, cryptocurrency is virtually impossible to steal.  The only people who get their cryptocurrency stolen are the people who treat it as an investment and buy it stored in a wallet that they don't control on an exchange.  I wouldn't be surprised if many of the thefts were inside jobs.  When it is on an exchange, there are too many people involved to trust in the safekeeping of the private key.
 
Instead, if you move and store cryptocurrency at a previously unused random address, the key securing it is virtually unhackable.
 
Here is an address and key generator: https://walletgenerator.net/
Move your bitcoin to a random address generated by that website, and store the key value in a safe place (I use a password manager's secure vault to store my notes), and it will be extremely secure.  The only thing it is lacking there is verification that the random address you generate has never been used previously.  It would be some astronomical chance, but it's possible, by some Godly force, to randomly generate an address and key which has been previously used.... like once in a septillion years.

Again, why Bitcoin is a failed experiment.  I STRONGLY recommend that Lehpron read this, and consider how long he is willing to invest in Bitcoin.
 
For example, a transaction I just attempted to make for illustration purposes:

 
 
 
 
A currency with a 24-hour transaction time is not a currency most retailers can use.  Could you imagine waiting a day for the ATM to process your withdrawal?