Cryptocurrencies

[Bad_azz]

It is still only a few clicks once the basics are in place.
For example, me: I would send my GBP to the exchange & buy BTC (Bitcoin) then it gets electronically transferred into my digital wallet.
I then have to send the BTC back through the market/exchange to change it to IDR & into my bank.
There are places one can go & deal face to face too- but I am unsure if there are any around & about in Indonesia.

OR you can spend your digital currency at places that accept it as payment- the list of retailers/ travel companies/ hotels etc is growing. Much in the way that Paypal wasn't used for much other than Ebay at first but is now much more widely accepted- smae goes for BTC.

I am still learning- so if I got this wrong I am sure someone who has more experience will explain it better. x

 

[Bad_azz]

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/best-cryptocurrency-exchanges/

some of the basics explained in here- but some of the info re the exchanges is a bit off as per the comments section below the article.

 

[El_Goretto]

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?

Almost there, you just need a bitcoin wallet in between.

You are right that you will most likely need 2 exchanges: one that connect to your US account and one that connects to your ID account. But you won't be able to transfer directly from exchange to exchange, you need to withdraw your BTC from the US exchange into your bitcoin wallet and then transfer the bitcoins to the Indonesian exchange. From the exchange you can convert the BTC into IDR and withdraw the funds into your BNI account.

Going like this is not exactly anonymous because there are records everywhere.

Instead, you could use brokers on both ends instead of exchanges, and do the transactions in USD cash to BTC and then BTC to IDR cash.

Of course, I do not advocate for doing anything illegal and all funds transfered should be declared. But you get the theory.

 

[Davita]

Sounds complicated with no real benefit unless the net exchange rate is superior to TransferWise or direct from bank to bank.

 

[Bad_azz]

It is much more complicated to explain than to do Davita

 

[harryopal1]

A young friend who is in banking recently paid off his Melbourne house with gains from Bitcoin. His father is now hoping to make half a million in the next few years and then walk part of the Silk Trail. (If it hasn't become end to end super highway by then as the Chinese have now embarked upon major road construction.)

I read the link helpfully provided by Ms BA and got all excited. I then sent a question to a friend who is one of the handful of seriously wealthy people I know and he responded in his usual cryptic manner. ".people have made and lost big.I don't know enough so I steer clear "
.
I have to confess to being a long time lottery ticket buyer so I guess Bitcoin has to be better than buying lottery tickets. And probably better than gambling on the horses... which I don't. So, in my usual wishy washy way I aint done nothing.

 

[Davita]

I've been a big investor in my youth and made many gains in property, stocks, insurance and public utilities. I invested in companies making incredible capital gains and some paying huge dividends. I also got caught involved in fraud and spent some time in jail but I had enough cash to buy myself out. I've more or less cashed out now and become totally liquid except for the villa, the penthouse and the yacht.

Oh! we are talking about playing monopoly aren't we....

 

[harryopal1]

Ahh Davita, unfortunately people often don't see the humour in a written statement. I am afraid at least half the readers will be shocked and hereafter you will be known as the bloke who got caught for involvement in fraud and went to gaol. No doubt at your next court appearance this will be presented as proof that you are known as a person of loose virtue.

 

[Davita]

Ahh Davita, unfortunately people often don't see the humour in a written statement. I am afraid at least half the readers will be shocked and hereafter you will be known as the bloke who got caught for involvement in fraud and went to gaol. No doubt at your next court appearance this will be presented as proof that you are known as a person of loose virtue.

No problem....I've been known as a 'person of loose virtue' for some time now...

 

[snpark]

Like any investment, only invest what you are prepared to lose, by all means buy BC just to keep and resell in 5 years but I would recommend NOT to get involved with the trading side, which is what all these BC pyramid MLM schemes are selling. Buy 5, get 1 free etc etc it is all BS, very risky and volatile, just if you really want to get into BC then just buy and leave it alone

 

[satomoto]

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.

Bitcoin transfer time has ranged from a few minutes to a few hours. Today if you try to transmit bitcoin if will take you a few hours unless you want to pay 10 USD per transaction. Because of the massive trading in the market, the time to transfer has slowed down like a tortoise, the time it takes to transmit in minutes are the days of early 2017.

Things will change for the better as the bitcoin tech guys are making some changes, if all goes well we will be back to the days where 1-2 dollar fees will get the coins transferred in a few minutes. If you are interested on the technicalities, the project is called Segwit2X.

 

[satomoto]

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

You are right, Monero did have a surge last week, not sure the reason why. A welcoming sight for Monero holders as Monero has been lackluster of late due to all the speculation and money going into bitcoin and ether-based tokens (ala ICO). I don't hold Monero personally so it will be interesting who or what is causing the price pumps last week

 

[satomoto]

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.

Spoiler, maybe we will see a third coin lol

 

[satomoto]

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.

Alot of people fall into the misconception of "cheap". If a coin is sold at 1000 USD with 1000 circulation, compared to another at 100USD but with 100,000 circulation. Which is cheaper? Bitcoin can be cheap if you buy the divisible part, say if you buy 0.001 it will cost you just 4USD.

 

[satomoto]

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)

Try to take a look at Luno. I don't use them but they have checkout for IDR, so you most likely can buy with USD (or any major currency) and checkout in IDR to your Indonesian account.

Alternatively use localbitcoins, it's like ebay for bitcoins. They have an escow system so things should be pretty safe if you don't trade in super big volume.

 

[nyc]

BCH is free money for anyone that held BTC prior to Aug 1.

I like free money.

Spoiler, maybe we will see a third coin lol

 

[El_Goretto]

BCH is free money for anyone that held BTC prior to Aug 1.

I like free money.

How so?

 

[Anglian]

I'm very perplexed, which I suppose isn't too hard as I'm not into fincial wizardry, it seems everyone is a winner, but there must be some big losers sometime or other, I keep reading there is a finicial crash on the horizon, so if there is is this really just a Ponzi scheme were some people at the moment are doing alright

 

[Bad_azz]

I think long term the losers will be the traditional banks- just like the highh streets lost out when the malls started rolling into the towns

 

[nyc]

How so?

If you purchased BTC prior to Aug 1 you automatically have the equivalent amount in BCH because the fork effectively made a copy of the public ledger.

Extract your private key and import it into a BCH compatible wallet. Then sell on any BCH enabled exchange.