Cryptocurrencies

[Bad_azz]

if you transferred via bitcoin it would be done the same day most likely in seconds/minutes - assuming you have the wallet & so on already set up.
Hard to give figures as the markets are constantly changing.
1000GBP is about 17209804.75IDR via Bitcoin just now- minus the fees

*edit, I originally copied the wrong figures

Hard to say what the fees would be because we don't know what exchange you would be using.

 

[nyc]

First, Bitcoin is best suited for investment rather than transactions. My wife day trades and uses arbitrage but I'm a long term holder. I bought at 3jt and today's price is 59jt. For once in my life my strategy is working. I forecast 100jt in 2018.

Transferwise, it takes 15 minutes compared to 1-2 business days ACH. For some of us, the more important factor is it doesn't involve a central bank or government accounting. It's 100% peer to peer and cryptographically secure. So 15 minutes and much lower fees...

Connecting my two previous points, I had a friend that purchased a small (~$40 USD) product in 2009 with BTC. Today that is ~$16,000 USD. Buy and hold.

The final point I'll make is buy Monero. It's technology is superior to Bitcoin (anonymity). I bought at $40. Today the price is $116 USD

I think R Cameron, and myself, would appreciate how your method of exchange using the bitcoin method compares to say a bank or money exchange. Could you please make it easier for us to understand. i.e. TransferWise right now will Xchange GBP1,000 to IDR 17,061,129 and will be received on Tuesday.

 

[nyc]

if you transferred via bitcoin it would be done the same day most likely in seconds/minutes - assuming you have the wallet & so on already set up.
Hard to give figures as the markets are constantly changing.
1000GBP is about 17209804.75IDR via Bitcoin just now- minus the fees

*edit, I originally copied the wrong figures

Hard to say what the fees would be because we don't know what exchange you would be using.

Fees are determined by miners rather than exchanges. Withdrawal and transactions may be subject to exchange fees so choose an exchange wisely.

 

[Bad_azz]

Fees are determined by miners rather than exchanges. Withdrawal and transactions may be subject to exchange fees so choose an exchange wisely.

Yep, I was over-simplifying things. The exchanges vary too- but the main point being they tend to be cheaper than the traditional institutions.

 

[Bad_azz]

The more I learn about it all & the more world politics fluctuate into sillyness, I doubt the cryptocurrencies will go away.
It is still relatively early days & they are still emerging, so I really believe they are a very valid/viable option.
**disclaimer- they are still a risk- for me that adds to the fun, but don't sink your life savings in. It could hurt bad if the currency you buy into blobs (*technical term for goes tits up)

Edit- typo, I'm not very well today & my concentration is sketchy

 

[Davita]

OK! I understand that bitcoin isn't a simple money-exchange proposition as you don't know what will be the final amount you receive until it's done. TransferWise instantly displays the 'net of fee' amount, guaranteed for 24 hours,...as I produced on post # 20. Weekend transfers are slower than work days.

I can internet transfer from any of my HSBC accounts on three continents instantly as well but, if also wanting to exchange currency, will suffer a lower rate than TransferWise. A higher rate is available but need to tel. the Relationship Manager for that....no problem in Jakarta.

 

[Bad_azz]

OK! I understand that bitcoin isn't a simple money-exchange proposition as you don't know what will be the final amount you receive until it's done. TransferWise instantly displays the 'net of fee' amount, guaranteed for 24 hours.

It being done in a very small amount of time though. Time to go for a pee & it has probably done by the time one gets back- not always but mostly.
I guess people's hesitancy buying in is why the prices aren't tripling daily- so my best advice is buy in with a small amount to play around with and familiarise yourself. See how you like it & then go with the bigger amounts. That's what I have done & I learnt a whole lot more by just doing it, than by reading/watching videaos & talking about it.
If I hadn't liked what I was doing I would certainly have had a different tone in this thread.

** at this time I have nothing to gain or lose financially by making this thread. However I have learnt a couple of new things from the discussion & these have added to my experience with cryptocurrencies.

 

[Bad_azz]

Re traditional institutions for exchanging money here's my 2cents wolrth- they charge a fee & have a favourable exchange rate (to them). This rate becomes more favourable to them the quicker we want our cash. So the consumer loses out. They kind of have us over a barrel because almost all of the traditional institutions have the same MO. Bitcoin/Altcoins are peer to peer via an exchange. It cuts most of the crap out.
I like that, being as I am somewhat anti-establishment.

 

[Davita]

Incredible co-incidence...was watching AlJazeera and they introduced a Llew Claasen who is Exec. Dir. Bitcoin Foundation. Very interesting and when asked who should invest he was as cautious as B_A..."only with money one is willing to lose". He suggested that the current price was due to the volatility and he predicted it will settle at about half of its current $4,000 cost, maybe next year...meanwhile it will swing due to the popularity and some speculation from Hong Kong. If you want to see the program it's called 'Counting the Cost'.

 

[Bad_azz]

I think it prudent to be cautious when buying into the markets- be they stocks & shares/ or cryptocurrencies. The very high rewards possible has to be risk assessed in one's own mind against the very real risk of the markets taking a dive.

 

[dafluff]

Here is the thing that gives me pause about cryptocurrencies:

One of the main aspect of a currency is that it is scarce, or at least produced in limited amount. That's why gold is expensive, and water isn't, even though water is much more important to human life. In conventional currencies, central banks limit the circulation of currencies, with varying success.

Even bitcoin acknowledges the requirement for scarcity, so it has a built in limit to how many units can ever be produced (mined, or really, solved). So far so good.

However, there is absolutely no restrictions on how many types of different cryptocurrencies exist, and apparently there are something like almost 900 now (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/). Literally anyone can at anytime make a new CC.

I have no way of telling which CC is superior to another, or what will happen to older CCs if/when a new superior CC is developed. From a value standpoint, a lot of people will also prefer to buy a "cheaper" currency such as Ethereum, LiteCoin or Monero, limiting the upside of CCs that are already highly valued.

 

[Bad_azz]

Dafluff, in that respect it is similar to the stock markets when the internet was born.
Or when Betamax was launched... & that got splatted by VHS, which in turn got outclassed by dvds etc.
So it doesn't hurt to learn about new trends & keep an eye on how the market is moving & act accordingly.

 

[Bad_azz]

In my "wallet" I have a few currencies- I can watch live as they change price or I can just open the wallet every day/week whatever suits me. If I saw things were going down I might choose to sell & hang on to my profits (if i have any). Or I might choose to hang on to them & hope that they rally.
If we could predict accurately what will happen we would all be rather rich.

 

[Bad_azz]

As an example - one of the currencies I bought into 2 days ago was at £11:85, since then I have watched it go up to £13:45. Today it is hovering at about £12:79.
One other I bought at £9:93, it went up to £10:03 but has now settled back to £9:93 - so if I were to judge that one over just a few days performance I would ditch it because it is very slow. ( From a financial viewpoint people might think it very stable- from my viewpoint it is boring).

**I am not Rockafella or Branson - but I enjoy such things as these so I have "invested" meagre sums.

 

[El_Goretto]

Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread is forking (an O, not an A).

What happened with bitcoins early August is that it forked, meaning it split in half, or more accurately a new version of it spawned.

Why this happened is fairly complex but basically there are 2 groups of bitcoin stakeholders who disagree on the direction of bitcoin.

As the number of transactions increases, the backend technology of bitcoin needs to upgrade to keep up with it.

How and when this upgrade is supposed to happen is what these groups disagreed on.

So early August, a group decided to not validate their transactions the normal way, thus spawning a new version (validated differently from the original one): enter Bitcoin Cash.

So now we have normal Bitcoins (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) which are completely different now. The former is valued at around $4k, the later at around $600 (with wild variations).

Later this year, BTC is set to see the implementation of an upgrade. Wonder what will happen then. Spoiler: I have no idea.

 

[dafluff]

Dafluff, in that respect it is similar to the stock markets when the internet was born.
Or when Betamax was launched... & that got splatted by VHS, which in turn got outclassed by dvds etc.
So it doesn't hurt to learn about new trends & keep an eye on how the market is moving & act accordingly.

No it isn't. A stock has an underlying company, with actual financials that can be objectively evaluated. You can't just create a company out of thin air, and start selling stocks of it on the market, although many came close during the dotcom boom. And that ended pretty spectacularly.

CCs are literally creating more currencies out of thin air. It would be different if bitcoin was the only CC around, but now there are almost 900, many times more than there are real currencies, with more coming online.

 

[Bad_azz]

This is what I was referring to:
"I have no way of telling which CC is superior to another, or what will happen to older CCs if/when a new superior CC is developed. From a value standpoint, a lot of people will also prefer to buy a "cheaper" currency such as Ethereum, LiteCoin or Monero, limiting the upside of CCs that are already highly valued."

 

[El_Goretto]

CCs are an odd ball. Traditional conventional trading and financial wisdom says that they are a risky proposition. But yet we can't deny how much value they've taken since inception.

Remember not too long ago when the CHF was revalued unexpectedly, sending FC markets in a tail spin? Huge sums were lost. That kind of movement seems to happen every couple months with bitcoin, whether it be a hacking scandal, an unexpected government announcement regarding CCs, or technological backend drama.

Anyway, those who trade CCs, do you mind sharing what tools you use for trading, wallets, market news, charts, etc?

 

[R Cameron]

Investing (gambling?) in cryptocurrencies is one thing, and a thing very complicated that I don't expect to be explained in this one little forum post. No doubt there are massive forums dedicated to that topic alone.

However, I would think the idea of using crypto currencies for efficient transfers could be easily explained, is that reasonable?

Let's create an example. Say I have 5000 USD in a Bank of America account in the US, and I want to move it into IDR in my local BNI account. Is there a service (exchange?) that can connect to both and make the transfer take only a few clicks? Must I connect my US bank to a US bitcoin exchange and my ID account to an ID bitcoin exchange? Then I try to quickly buy the bitcoin in USD, transfer that bitcoin to my ID exchange account, and withdraw it to my ID bank?

 

[Bad_azz]

R Cameron: **Edit, misread your post:
you make a Bitcoin account / wallet & you transfer funds via the bitcoin account. The wallet generates a secure address to send coins to.
you can use 1 exchange to change to $ or IDR & then withdraw to the destination account.


Similar to how we use paypal I guess... similar but different- because it is changing the fiat currency to the digital & then back again, in your scenario. Therefore it needs the "middle"bit.


1 make the digital wallet.
2 connect with an exchange- they will want you to sign up & verify usually...
3 buy the BTC with your US dollars
4 send it to your wallet - takes less than a minute...
5 back to the exchange select sell btc/buy Idr/ withdraw to bank account then it will/should send the balance to your account. (sorry it has been a long day & my explaining things head is all screwed up)