Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Is Bitcoin the new gold?

Cryptocurrency’s and the Blockchain are two completely different things.

There are hundreds maybe thousands of crypto’s out there and Bitcoin is just the first. It is hard to use as a currency because it is so volatile. It is easy to send back and forth between users with no one else knowing about it but it is hard to agree on a price. I could sell you my widgets at a good profit today only to lose 50% of my bitcoin value tomorrow. The opposite could happen also in which case my customer who bought my widgets feels like he way over paid for them. When you are in a very high-profit business like murder for hire, kidnapping or dope the anonymity of the exchange over comes the volatility of the currency. It works better for that than cash.

Blockchain is open ledger accounting that retains its anonymity of users—its decentralized—not controlled by government. Blockchain is going to change the internet—in ways that are hard to predict. Blockchain is going to change medicine, agriculture, business, education—virtually every aspect of our lives. It’s hard thing to predict.

I first heard about the whole internet thing in 1985 or so—I thought it was something for kids to play games on. Because of the internet Iam better informed today than I was in 1985 when i bought a newspaper every single day. It’s going to be similar with the blockchain

Whats the deal with the questions on the tax forms?

Also, can you create a "wallet" without coin or a very small amount?

Is there a way to vet or research the exchange or whatever they call it?

Don't know my azz from a hole in the ground about the whole subject but thinking if I were a bit more knowledgeable I'd risk a little next time it drops.

Blockchain tecnology is here to stay.

Many banks are starting to use Bitcoin. Including Goldman Sachs, Simple Bank, Ally Bank , USSA Bank and many others.

GBTC is an alternate to holding Bitcoin.

I think the IRS is trying to gauge how many crypto owners aren't paying taxes on their gains or reporting payments. Most likely they are more focused on the payment side right now, because the Pavlovian training all IRS agents go through causes them to salivate when they hear the phrase "unreported business income".



Yes. A wallet is just an address that the blockchain knows about. It has to be created before it can be funded with crypto and the blockchain does not care if it ever is. Hardware wallets are available for "cold storage", which means they can be plugged in to the internet, have crypto sent to them, then be unplugged and put in a safe. As long as the blockchain still exists and the hardware wallet can be connected to it, crypto can be sent or received from it.



Just searching the web for reviews is about it. My advice would be to open a Coinbase account, they are the most trustworthy exchange available in the US. They actually follow the laws where they operate, get the necessary licenses, etc, so are unlikely to be blocked by a government. They also keep most of their assets in the sort of cold storage described above, so if they are hacked the damage to their liquidity should be minimal.

A Coinbase account can be funded with a credit debit card and their interface is good. They do a good job not letting scam cryptos on their exchange. Their fees are high but they go toward security, interface, I think they have or will soon have a debit card, etc. For an account >$10k USD or so it would be good to skip straight to Coinbase Pro for lower fees and higher transfer limits.

One thing to be aware of is that all the exchanges limit the USD you can move off them. Coinbase Pro defaults that to $25k/day I think, and I know I got to $50k just by asking. So if you have 2 BTC you can sell them both and have $100k USD balance as soon as the trade is verified, but you can move only $25k per day to your bank and have to carry the balance with Coinbase.



This run is going to end at some point and BTC will pull back. No one really knows when or how much, but it will recover. I don't keep the kids' college money in crypto but do carry some cash in it that we'd not be hamstrung by if it crashed.

If you have a traditional brokerage account, just buying a blockchain mining ETF like RIOT or MARA is a way to get in on the boom without buying crypto directly.

Now that is interesting...are you asked to disclose how much and which crypto you bought, or are they just trying to get an idea of its popularity.

Just curious as to why you recommend Hashgraph?

Thanks for the quick reply.
Internet research on a topic I know zero about its great but its nice to hear from actual users that are in the game.

The hardware wallet, is that like an OS with data or just data? I guess my question is would that be something that would have to maintained/updated or more like an encrypted file that's just modified as needed?

TIA

It is just a Yes / No right under the name and address section. Something along the lines of "did you buy, sell, send, or receive any virtual currency in 2020?". That is it.

I think they are looking for a rough number of people involved. Assume 20% of the people actually involved will answer Yes, count them up and multiply by 5, then multiply that by the median USD flow through wallets for BTC. Easier than trying to figure out which wallets are owned by US taxpayers.

I learned more in 2 sentences from KKahmann than all the supposed explanations on Youtube. "I could sell you my widgets at a good profit today, only to lose 50% of their value tomorrow."
Legitimate productive business demands a stable currency, that must be why the US credit based dollar that we complain about is still the world's currency. It isn't the Euro, the Yuan or the Yen.
Stability...what a concept.

They usually run custom firmware which handles the initial cryptography to create the wallet and generate seed phrases, talk to different operating systems ver USB, display things on their screens, etc. I don't know if any run a full OS but if they do it is probably some kind of embedded Linux. They do get firmware updates from time to time. I don't believe any of these are strictly necessary for their operation, just bugfixes and feature updates like support for new cryptocurrencies.

I read something about a new one that never has to be connected to a computer. It displays a QR code for transferring on/off the device.

Important to note that the actual balance of the wallet isn't stored on the device at all, that is maintained by the blockchain. All the hardware wallet does is generate a wallet address and private key (or several if it is used to store multiple cryptos). People can still send crypto to the address even with the wallet disconnected. It only has to come out to take balance out. And if the device is physically destroyed, its private key can be restored on a new device using the original seed phrases, and its balance will be preserved.

beads and tobacco are better investments than crypto, biotech, energy etc

One guy says the blockchain stores funds on “cold storage” wallets for security. Implying that disconnected wallets are somehow secure.
Then the same guy(or another guy) attempts to explain how the currency isn’t stored on the wallet at all and that’s it’s just a key to funds on the blockchain.

These two statements seem to contradict each other.

Is one or the other true?

Sounds like another method to launder cash and hide gains and assets. Uncle Sammi isn’t going to allow this to continue for very long.

Timing the market or any investment is impossible or at best lucky. Either go in or stay out. Ya just don’t know when the bottom is the bottom until some time later then at that point one might have missed it. The people that bought in before the crashes and stayed in are doing just fine.

3 guys walking the dogs every night from 9:30 to 11:00 pm. 15 years ago

Retired engineer in his 50s... me, loud mouthed opinionated
Retired biz owner in his 40s ... big guy, loud mothed opinionated
Software engineer supervisor in 30s....mensch, married to a gorgeous PhD physicist .

My thing was investing in AMZN and TSLA
The big guy was buying Gold and farms in Uruguay.
The mensch was buying bitcoin

I am worth 11 times what I was worth then.
The big guy is worth 1/4 of what he was worth then.
The mensch won't answer the question if his wife knows about the bitcoin.

I'm sure there's plenty of pointy heads out there trying to figure out how to stop this. At best they can make it more inconvenient for people to get in or to get money out, they can't stop it.

It is at its root only Monopoly money. If I understand it correctly, that is - which is doubtful.

The oldest bank in America is accepting it. BMY Mellon.

As is Goldman Sachs and a few others.

GM is not yet accepting it as payment but Barra says it’s in their crosshairs for the future

Made me laugh out loud !

good input.