View Full Version : To the moon. Were doing it bros!!!!
josh s
04-14-2021, 12:59 AM
nothing matters now. currency is trivial. 120 billions coins of electronic dust. NTF's of your mothers harry pooter going for 1 kagillion dogees
blimey mate
Pakistani Hand Cannon
04-14-2021, 02:15 PM
i dont understand nunna this stock shit
UPN Zuch
04-14-2021, 07:12 PM
Dogecoin is literally a joke coin and if you made money on it great but you better get out now.
uh-oh
04-14-2021, 08:00 PM
word
i dont understand nunna this stock shit
“Cuz u a stupid hoe, brudda”
i dont understand nunna this stock shit
Yup I’m on your level... nor do I.
But how much you invest in that shit like... if I invested say 5k... never mind that’s a dum question to ask no one knows what’s going to happen.
The housing market is crazy though my house we bought 4 years ago and that was even at a high market price if we wanted to sell it right now it’d be 30-40% profit. Or if we wanted to sell it at even 20% low ball it to sell quick it’d be sold in a few weeks.
But that shit could burst at any time.
That Bitcoin type shit i dunno about.
Won’t sell my house even though we could...
I’d like to go elsewhere but that’d mean uprooting my daughter, my wife could get a job being an RN basically anywhere. Me, not so Minch I’d have to meet new people... and our family relies on my income a bit so.
A few of my wife’s cousins who are just low level basically idiots.. but had the cash to get some like 50-80k not nice houses they’ve been flipping them for almost double since the carona shit happened. I only know because I’ve been doing the dry wall and rough end carpenters work on it. They had no cluue... but it’s got to hit a bottom.. but they ... we’ll just since the carona made 250k one of them... other I’d guess like 100k
And that’s just luck these dudes are semi retards
Dogecoin is literally a joke coin and if you made money on it great but you better get out now.
Lol. Laughing all the way to the bank tbr
Lol. Laughing all the way to the bank tbr
What’d you put on vs how much you cash out at ...
How much money you make legit actual dollars?
josh s
04-15-2021, 12:19 PM
i dont understand nunna this stock shit
they should be teaching y'all this shit in school. diversify your portfolio
wutang is for the children
Answer
04-15-2021, 05:16 PM
Dogecoin is literally a joke coin and if you made money on it great but you better get out now.
it is a joke, but the shit jumped up about 40% since you posted this, and that's a LOT of money. The shit is stupid and worthless as technology, but all the rules are out the window when the people buying the shit are stupid, too
you need to diversify your bonds, nigga.
Lmao. You mad you aint on board with us stupid people?
Its funny, stupid people like me, we watching our investment go up atm. While smart people like you keep calling us stupid, but really you just deflecting the fact that you are the ones feeling stupid.
Ya..Thats a head scratcher, i know. But let that sink in... See.. ill be stupid all day. Cause like i said in the beginning. I invested just enough that if i lose it all i wont even notice it... But if it continues in the direction that it is, at the rate that it is... Well, its gonna be a life changer.
Fucking stupid, right?
I put 5k in March 11, I'm @ 17k today.
Lepreshaun
04-16-2021, 03:53 AM
I put 5k in March 11, I'm @ 17k today.
I’ve never owned 17k in my life
I’ve never owned 17k in my life
Lol It’s at 20k this morning and That’s only in dogecoin. I have ethereum, Bitcoin, zilliqa, multivac etc.
nigga u better invest that money sitting in ur bank account.
Im so fucking stupid.
Lmaooo. Its up 200,000.00%
Answer
04-16-2021, 11:38 AM
Lmao. You mad you aint on board with us stupid people?
Its funny, stupid people like me, we watching our investment go up atm. While smart people like you keep calling us stupid, but really you just deflecting the fact that you are the ones feeling stupid.
Ya..Thats a head scratcher, i know. But let that sink in... See.. ill be stupid all day. Cause like i said in the beginning. I invested just enough that if i lose it all i wont even notice it... But if it continues in the direction that it is, at the rate that it is... Well, its gonna be a life changer.
Fucking stupid, right?
Playing the lottery is stupid, too. But there’s many people who have won the lottery and made millions and never had to work again. That doesn’t mean they were smart to play the lottery, that just means they were lucky. The half of the story you’re not telling from that perspective is the millions of people who bought lottery tickets every week and won nothing. They wouldn't be giving out millions of dollars to the winner if they weren't making billions off the losers. Go to your local casino and talk to the dealers, I promise you they have dozens of stories of people who have completely ruined their lives, lost everything they had, ruined their children’s lives over the same shit. Gambling is gambling, some people will win and some people will lose.
Tbh what actually determines whether gambling at a casino is "stupid" is whether more people lose than the people who win. If you had a 95% chance of winning money every time you go to the casino, gambling wouldn't be stupid. Hell, it'd be stupid NOT to gamble. But that's not the reality, most people will end up losing and the house will always walk away with the money. That's why owning a casino isn't stupid. Technically, they're gambling with their money, too. They're doing the same thing you are, they just have a competitive edge that guarantees in the long run they're going to make more than they lose.
There are people who got into doge early and can use this opportunity to make a big payout. I’m not mad at that, if you walk away not holding the hot potato and make money off it, more power to you. Do I wish I could get free easy money without having to know anything or do anything? Sure. Who doesn’t? There’s also people who see the shit skyrocketing and try to get in on the action and end up losing thousands. Just today, the price dropped from 50 cents to 35 cents in less than 10 mins. I assure you there’s someone who lost thousands of dollars in that 10 minutes. Possibly even someone who can’t afford to lose thousands of dollars. That’s why it’s stupid. There’s no inherent value in dogecoin as a technology, it’s not inflationary. Bitcoin, ethereum, other altcoins have real future prospects that in the long term may or may not become a national and worldwide accepted currency, and there are clear signs of the world moving in that direction. There are also clear signs of push-back from lawmakers that don't want to allow that to happen, which is a reasonable argument to not invest in crypto. You ultimately have to weigh the pros and cons and try to do research to better understand whether it's something that's likely to have value in the long-term which is a reasonable argument to invest in crypto. There’s a difference in “investing” because you see an inherent worth in the future of something versus buying some shit because everyone else is buying it and hoping it will make you rich without understanding it, that's just gambling.
Don't think for a moment that there aren't groups of billionaires out there pumping and dumping dogecoin right now. They're the casino. They're the ones who decide when the value goes up and they're the ones deciding when it goes down. It's a pretty easy and obvious strategy. Buy a shitload of dogecoin, make the price skyrocket and everyone else hops on board because they see it skyrocketing and then they immediately sell off all their shares whenever they decide to. Key words, when THEY decide to. Then everybody else sells off and the price plummets because of knee-jerk reactions. Then they can buy it and drive it up, rinse and repeat. The average person doesn't have billions of dollars that make a significant impact on the price and can cause a big gain or a fast sell-off. That's why they're the casino, it's rigged in their favor. They're the ones with the power to manipulate the market. And because Doge has such a low value, it's a lot easier to manipulate than something like Bitcoin. The average person doesn't have the money to affect stock prices in that manner. So sure, you can go to the casino and win some money. If you do, that's great. It doesn't mean that going to the casino is a wise investment strategy, that's just how luck works.
UPN Zuch
04-16-2021, 05:05 PM
People will learn when they get stuck with the bag. Doge coin doesn’t even do anything. They don’t even have a finite supply of coin. They can make more whenever they want and drive the price back down if they want. It’s literally the dumbest investment ever unless you get out now.
I guess we will see. I vowed that i would not sell until it reaches 100.00 per coin.. im gonna ride it out. at this point.. If i lose it all then i lose it all. Ive already made my investment back. Im rolling off all profits now. If it hits 0.0, i still break even. So i aint pressed. I enjoy the volatility of it. Its one hell of a ride.
UPN Zuch
04-16-2021, 10:35 PM
100.00? Yeah you’re gonna lose it all. But if you don’t care then more power to you.
Yea idk bout hittin no hundred lmao
I jus took some profits
U must only got like a 100 bucks in there White Earl lol
Kuality
04-17-2021, 02:49 PM
People will learn when they get stuck with the bag. Doge coin doesn’t even do anything. They don’t even have a finite supply of coin. They can make more whenever they want and drive the price back down if they want. It’s literally the dumbest investment ever unless you get out now.
What are your main holding man?
Y3ah i lov3 doge.. but dont own any..
Take the profits n bail guys. This token has no use case tbh
By next payday it will go up again i GUARANTEE. Cred ...diamond hands bruh. Just keep HODLING! You wont be dossapointed. I cant lie.. when we dipped i almost gave in. But i realised that yo.. when i started this i said i would give it at least til the end of the year to see how close to the moon we get and im standing by that regardless. Good luck bruh.
Dope girl
04-18-2021, 05:50 PM
Good thread love
I don’t get this stuff and I’ve never really tried to although I definitely had 5k to invest in this when things started.. but since I’ve researched it’s too late in the game.
I invest money and know my profit margins in guaranteed stuff. Illegal and as annoying to deal with as it may be.
My boy is making a lot a money... a friend I work with and for... off flipping houses right now. I minorly invest because that’s all I have. Which obviously the housing market can fluctuate... but still even at the end of the day it’s a physical thing.
You can’t hold a dogecoin in your hand... you can always sell a house. So when this fad or whatever wears out, which it will... come say something.
But any of you who invested in it early and got lucky and made money, got for you I’m not hating.
Blue Bayou
04-19-2021, 02:18 PM
Agreed. Got for you all
UPN Zuch
04-19-2021, 02:41 PM
I don’t get this stuff and I’ve never really tried to although I definitely had 5k to invest in this when things started.. but since I’ve researched it’s too late in the game.
I invest money and know my profit margins in guaranteed stuff. Illegal and as annoying to deal with as it may be.
My boy is making a lot a money... a friend I work with and for... off flipping houses right now. I minorly invest because that’s all I have. Which obviously the housing market can fluctuate... but still even at the end of the day it’s a physical thing.
You can’t hold a dogecoin in your hand... you can always sell a house. So when this fad or whatever wears out, which it will... come say something.
But any of you who invested in it early and got lucky and made money, got for you I’m not hating.
Are you really deciding what’s real and what’s not by the ability to hold it in your hand?
I assure you cryptocurrency is real. You clearly know nothing about it if you are making a statement like that.
Kuality
04-19-2021, 03:59 PM
Are you really deciding what’s real and what’s not by the ability to hold it in your hand?
I assure you cryptocurrency is real. You clearly know nothing about it if you are making a statement like that.
Yea.
I would rather say hodl onto projects that could seemingly have a long term effect. Dots, flow, amd Ethereum.
Ive missed btc though should have had it when was less under a 1k. But many projects out there to bet on.
Are you really deciding what’s real and what’s not by the ability to hold it in your hand?
I assure you cryptocurrency is real. You clearly know nothing about it if you are making a statement like that.
You clearly didn’t read what I wrote little boy. I prefaced all that by stating I don’t know anything about cryptocurrency or even the stock market, many posts prior.
I don’t blame you for not reading it, but don’t comment if you haven’t.
And yeah, me personally I prefer to have something of value in my hand metaphorically speaking.
Incredible
04-19-2021, 06:44 PM
Snoop Dogg invested in it. Must be a good.
I don’t get this stuff and I’ve never really tried to although I definitely had 5k to invest in this when things started.. but since I’ve researched it’s too late in the game.
I invest money and know my profit margins in guaranteed stuff. Illegal and as annoying to deal with as it may be.
My boy is making a lot a money... a friend I work with and for... off flipping houses right now. I minorly invest because that’s all I have. Which obviously the housing market can fluctuate... but still even at the end of the day it’s a physical thing.
You can’t hold a dogecoin in your hand... you can always sell a house. So when this fad or whatever wears out, which it will... come say something.
But any of you who invested in it early and got lucky and made money, got for you I’m not hating.
If u believe its "to late in the game" to make an investment, then your a fool and you better just keep your money.
Thats the most ignorant thing ive ever heard. Its never to late man. Find something you like and invest. Smh
Incredible
04-20-2021, 12:39 AM
Swear I went and put $25 on this right after I posted I'm already up 2 dollars. Lol
josh s
04-20-2021, 12:54 AM
there's a finite number of doge coins that can be mined. (other sources say there's no cap) NO CAP
127 billion (113 billion coins have already been mined)
per wikapedia.
any ways. at 100.00 $ per coin the total value of all coins would be X. you get the picture. whats in your wallet? the dollars you're paid in are losing value in relation to other currency. but what happens in the blink of an eye will be wealth destruction. lambs to the slaughter
Right. Ik i understand the dogecoin problem. I am currently up. Way up. And i am gonna do like i said i would and ride it out to the end of the year at least. That is unless something crazy happens that makes me yank my shit out. I was close to wanting to pull..then it went way down.. (its come way back up since) and i realized yo. Your a fool if u yank.. its gonna go back up. Way too many people believe in dogecoin and this thing is far from over. Its gonna continue to go way up and i will be there with it. This is what i think anyway.
I’ve got $46.93 on my EBT card will they let me invest that shit or what?
What’s the transfer rate from food stamps to dogecoin? I couldn’t find it on Google someone help me out.
Blue Bayou
04-21-2021, 11:52 PM
Never change
Answer
04-22-2021, 10:25 PM
..dogecoin up! %104.
You still hodling?
Ya still holding. Im holding til the end of year at least
Pakistani Hand Cannon
04-25-2021, 11:46 PM
“Cuz u a stupid hoe, brudda”
if you quote me where ive typed "cuz" (& i mightve tbh lol)
i'll quote you sayin homosex shit
go!!
lol you dusty no hands having boxing analyst expert cause you watched a fight once while eating tacos hoe ass nigga
UPN Zuch
04-26-2021, 07:48 AM
Ya still holding. Im holding til the end of year at least
Why though? What kind of “goals” does doge coin have that makes holding it for the rest of the year a good financial move? Lol doge coin isn’t even real man. And before you say it, yeah I know it has gone up a couple diff times (via a literal pump and dump scheme) but why not take that money and invest it into something tangible? Unless of course you are only investing a few hundred dollars and the money doesn’t mean nothing and you’re just having fun. In that case I wish you the best of luck. Crypto is in a bull run and if you DO have some decent money in the market I would really suggest doing some research because there is money to be made with some of these real alt coins. Even Bitcoin is down heavy right now and is a GREAT investment for the rest of the year.
EDIT: bill run, not bill run lol
dead man
04-26-2021, 10:30 AM
whats everyone's thoughts on Cardano?
Word. Aye i feel you man. Tbh. I just got started with crypto/stocks.
Basically doge was the first thing i wver purchased. Ive got 6,753 dogecoin atm. I jumped into this cause i heard a lot of buzz. I dont claim to be no super enlightened cat with this investing shit or nothing though. One thing i do know and can see is that our base has gone from .04 to .26 cents and seems to rest fairly well there asside from maybe a minor dip that comes right back up now and then.
Im holding because i can see how many other folks are doing the same. There are a lot of people that intend to do what im doing and just hold for the long haul until this thing hits a dollar or better. I dont actually believe it will hit 100 but i also dont doubt that its possible just based on all the movement its made. I think it would be foolish to sell at this point. I dont have all my money wrapped up into it or anything.. i got about 600.00 in it. Which also includes other come ups that ive sold.. so really the only actual money thats come out of my bank towarda doge is about 250-300$ . Somewhere in there. Im currently way up and want to see how much higher this thing can go before it crashes and burns. It would be very unlikely that i lose anything on doge at this point considering im over tripple what ive spent on the shit (including my earnings from other cryptos that i sold and bought dofe with).. it would take a major dip/setback for me to go into the negative lol. And its fun bruh. Its fun tonplay with and watch. Its fun to see what the dogecoin crowd on reddit say and post with there memes. A lot of people on reddit believe in this coin and that makes me think that the potential it has is way higher than what its current max has previously been
So ya. All in fun for real. Its dope to see my few hundred go above and beyond 3 stacks on a regular basis. If this thing ever hits 100$ a piece. Shit, ill be fucking set. I aint missing the money i have in so im gonna ride it out bruh. Ive been forgot about that couple hundred. But i understand where your coming from.
UPN Zuch
04-26-2021, 02:14 PM
whats everyone's thoughts on Cardano?
I’m a big fan. It’s one of the 4 or 5 I’m invested in. I think it’s a good buy because it’s down right now, and they have a market cap that will be expanding quickly. Also, if Ethereum doesn’t get its gas fees down, Cardano go take off.
UPN Zuch
04-26-2021, 02:14 PM
Word. Aye i feel you man. Tbh. I just got started with crypto/stocks.
Basically doge was the first thing i wver purchased. Ive got 6,753 dogecoin atm. I jumped into this cause i heard a lot of buzz. I dont claim to be no super enlightened cat with this investing shit or nothing though. One thing i do know and can see is that our base has gone from .04 to .26 cents and seems to rest fairly well there asside from maybe a minor dip that comes right back up now and then.
Im holding because i can see how many other folks are doing the same. There are a lot of people that intend to do what im doing and just hold for the long haul until this thing hits a dollar or better. I dont actually believe it will hit 100 but i also dont doubt that its possible just based on all the movement its made. I think it would be foolish to sell at this point. I dont have all my money wrapped up into it or anything.. i got about 600.00 in it. Which also includes other come ups that ive sold.. so really the only actual money thats come out of my bank towarda doge is about 250-300$ . Somewhere in there. Im currently way up and want to see how much higher this thing can go before it crashes and burns. It would be very unlikely that i lose anything on doge at this point considering im over tripple what ive spent on the shit (including my earnings from other cryptos that i sold and bought dofe with).. it would take a major dip/setback for me to go into the negative lol. And its fun bruh. Its fun tonplay with and watch. Its fun to see what the dogecoin crowd on reddit say and post with there memes. A lot of people on reddit believe in this coin and that makes me think that the potential it has is way higher than what its current max has previously been
So ya. All in fun for real. Its dope to see my few hundred go above and beyond 3 stacks on a regular basis. If this thing ever hits 100$ a piece. Shit, ill be fucking set. I aint missing the money i have in so im gonna ride it out bruh. Ive been forgot about that couple hundred. But i understand where your coming from.
Good luck brother.
UPN Zuch
04-26-2021, 02:15 PM
whats everyone's thoughts on Cardano?
Also, if you are gonna invest in Cardano I would ALSO invest in Ethereum as well. One of the two are gonna land the big contracts during this bill run.
uh-oh
04-26-2021, 07:00 PM
whats everyone's thoughts on Cardano?
im a carvana guy personally
Kuality
04-27-2021, 02:39 PM
I’m a big fan. It’s one of the 4 or 5 I’m invested in. I think it’s a good buy because it’s down right now, and they have a market cap that will be expanding quickly. Also, if Ethereum doesn’t get
its gas fees down, Cardano go take off.
Brother, cant really compare Ethereum to Cardano.
Layer 2 is already coming up and out there.
Ethereum is a good bet. I really like ethereum. Cant say i know anything about cardano.
Earls gotta be one of the biggest pussies in the site, in all honesty and there’s a list that he tops.
You wildin son. Put the bottle down
UPN Zuch
04-28-2021, 12:46 PM
Brother, cant really compare Ethereum to Cardano.
Layer 2 is already coming up and out there.
Lol what.
You very well can compare Ethereum and Cardano. They are competing for the same money.
UPN Zuch
04-28-2021, 12:49 PM
Brother, cant really compare Ethereum to Cardano.
Layer 2 is already coming up and out there.
Here’s a good Reddit thread on smart contracts and the battle between ethereum and Cardano. Both are fighting over smart contracts.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/lmol0d/ethereum_20_eth_vs_cardano_ada_vs_algorand_algo/
So robinhood claims to be working on a wallet for crypto and also enabling withdrawls of bought crypto. No telling how long that will take. But its good news
Answer
04-29-2021, 09:49 AM
So robinhood claims to be working on a wallet for crypto and also enabling withdrawls of bought crypto. No telling how long that will take. But its good news
They will also be adding more altcoins eventually, but for the short term the main benefit of this is likely going to apply to the ones already on Robinhood (BTC, Eth, even doge, etc.)
Ya. Ill take it as it comes. Pretty happy about the news actually. Was really disappinted when i realized RH buys werent really posessions. Hopefully it happens sooner than later.
Incredible
05-04-2021, 07:58 PM
He'll yeah I've doubled my money...$1 soon.
Im up 5 xs yo, fuck, even more. lmmfaoooo. Keep on HODLing
Lets gooooooooo
Im up 5 xs yo, fuck, even more. lmmfaoooo. Keep on HODLing
Lets gooooooooo
I'm in at 0.54
Answer
05-05-2021, 02:48 PM
i took my gains and switched over to the peloton dip. mrs. bayou isnt gonna let one dead baby get in the way of getting fit for hot girl summer
Blue Bayou
05-05-2021, 03:06 PM
Definitely not
https://i.ibb.co/d6BKTCZ/FD26-DD80-E5-F5-43-EF-BF16-13-AD89-F0-FC8-E.png (https://ibb.co/wCy6kGt)
tab a screen resolution (https://whatsmyscreenresolution.com/)
Started with 5,500 on this portfolio in the beginning of March.
Pulling theses free bands out Friday and investing it all into Cardano, Ehtereum and Theta/Fuel.
Sounds like a smart decision
I'm in at 0.54
Better than never bro. Lets gooo
https://i.ibb.co/d6BKTCZ/FD26-DD80-E5-F5-43-EF-BF16-13-AD89-F0-FC8-E.png (https://ibb.co/wCy6kGt)
tab a screen resolution (https://whatsmyscreenresolution.com/)
Started with 5,500 on this portfolio in the beginning of March.
Pulling theses free bands out Friday and investing it all into Cardano, Ehtereum and Theta/Fuel.
Before elons SNL skit?
Idk, SNL Doge skit gonna either make or break it. I feel like its gonna make it much bigger. Wider audience of people will be tuned in after SNL. Maybe you shud leave some of that in there just in case.
whats everyone's thoughts on Cardano?
Prolly gonna jump on this in voyager.
So dead man
I hopped on the cardano train @1.49 average. Lets go
Also bought bittorrent, at under a cent you cant really go wrong. So grabbed 14,500 coins of that to, cause fuck it. Never know. Probably lose my 100 bucks there but figured for a 100$ it cant hurt so fuck it. Lets test the waters.
Anyone else own any bittorrent?
symetrik
05-07-2021, 04:57 PM
Started with 5,500 on this portfolio in the beginning of March.
Pulling theses free bands out Friday and investing it all into Cardano, Ehtereum and Theta/Fuel.
pulling out the day before SNL? jk earl already say that shit lmao
Everything in me is screaming sell but i wil continue to HODL. I have a feeling were gonna hit a serious dip. But everyonea gonna buy at that point and drive it right back up.
The other part of me says ita gonna land on the moon tonight during the A.M. hours.
Fuck it, im in for the long haul boys.
Answer
05-08-2021, 08:57 PM
Doge is honestly the most infuriating part of 2021 tbh. You have cryptos that are really worth something, fucking revolutionary technology built on the shoulders of satoshi, that are capable of fixing worldwide wealth inequality for the 3 billion people on earth who don’t have banks, and countries with currency volatility, decentralized finance that could finally make wallstreet and banking billionaires who use predatory loaning practices irrelevant, a hedge against government inflation and regulation, and the opportunity to create a decentralized internet that’s not monopolized by corporate interests and you all want to buy a currency with none of those benefits because lewl doggo is cute
Fuck people for real. It’s a continued paradigm of people who only give a shit about themselves and make no effort to be informed of their surroundings and selfishly continue to be the primary contributing factors to worldwide inequality. It's like someone literally created the cure for cancer and people all decided to use it as a lubricant to jack off with
Im saying, i just bought some doge, thats all
Split Eight
05-09-2021, 01:11 AM
lmao @ last two posts
uh-oh
05-09-2021, 10:22 AM
Doge is honestly the most infuriating part of 2021 tbh. You have cryptos that are really worth something, fucking revolutionary technology built on the shoulders of satoshi, that are capable of fixing worldwide wealth inequality for the 3 billion people on earth who don’t have banks, and countries with currency volatility, decentralized finance that could finally make wallstreet and banking billionaires who use predatory loaning practices irrelevant, a hedge against government inflation and regulation, and the opportunity to create a decentralized internet that’s not monopolized by corporate interests and you all want to buy a currency with none of those benefits because lewl doggo is cute
Fuck people for real. It’s a continued paradigm of people who only give a shit about themselves and make no effort to be informed of their surroundings and selfishly continue to be the primary contributing factors to worldwide inequality. It's like someone literally created the cure for cancer and people all decided to use it as a lubricant to jack off with
its almost as if people are human
Answer
05-09-2021, 02:39 PM
Just gonna offload this novel here
My goal is to discuss cryptocurrencies in a way that anyone can understand them, and I will certainly have some additional opinions to add in. Of course, my opinions are just my opinions, I am not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advice.
Also, I'll tell you in advance that I'm not making any recommendations on what to buy or what will "make you rich". My interest is in the technology, social, and economic side of things, and the possible changes that crypto brings. I frankly don't care which crypto ends up revolutionizing the world, as long as one of them does.
There ARE some oversimplifications, because my goal is to write to people without presuming any knowledge or getting too caught up in the terminology. If anyone wants to offer any criticisms, suggestions, or corrections I am absolutely open to them. I do not proclaim to be a Guru, I just ask that you do so respectfully
Let’s get started..
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin was the first successful implementation of cryptocurrency. It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, who has a super cool backstory because nobody knows who the fuck Satoshi Nakamoto is. There is speculation that Satoshi is a group of people, there is speculation that Satoshi is dead, nobody really knows. Satoshi was NOT the first person with the idea for cryptocurrency. There were others who came before Satoshi, one example being Bitgold which was idealized by Nick Szabo. What separates Satoshi from the others is that Satoshi solved a pretty complex Computer Science problem called the Byzantine General’s problem. More on that later. What you should know is that Satoshi was incredibly smart, and many Computer Scientists, Finance/Economic Gurus, and Lawyers have all acknowledged that Satoshi needed a pretty deep understanding of ALL these fields to do what Satoshi did by creating Bitcoin.
Ok but what IS Bitcoin?
Well, not so fast. Let’s talk about money first. Often people refer to “fiat” currency, which is a currency that is “established” by the government. The American dollar is fiat. I think technical terms can be a distraction when trying to learn new ideas, so instead of fiat, I’m going to just uses the term “money”. I will never use the term “money” to describe crypto, and that’s just to avoid confusion in this explanation.
What is money?
Well, technically anything can be money. If you look at the history of human civilization, there are people who have used all kinds of things as “money”. Tulip Bulbs, Stones, Salt, Shells, etc. At the end of the day, we as people need to come to an agreement on the things we’re willing to give and receive payments for. Let’s say I wanted to open my own cupcake shop and you come in hungry for some noms and you slap a 20 dollar bill down on the counter and say SIR GIVE ME YOUR FINEST CUPCAKE. I can 100% legally say nah.. I do not accept American dollars, I only accept Bitcoin. In fact, I can even legally pay my employees in Bitcoin, in fact many employers have already done this.
Of course government laws are going to vary country to country, but legally and more importantly, LOGICALLY there’s no reason why I can’t. It would be a somewhat bad business move on my part, because most people don’t have a convenient way to perform transactions with bitcoin, and I would probably lose a lot of business and go broke.
But money has physical properties, and some things just make “better” money than other things. We COULD use gold as money, but then we’d all be lugging around lots of heavy gold. But fuck, we’d never need to do a leg day again. But still.. that’s just not super convenient. There was a time when you could go to the bank and deposit your gold, and they essentially give you a receipt that says “Hey, you have THIS much gold stored with us at the bank”.
Now we just sort have the receipts and not the gold. Keep in mind, American currency hasn’t ALWAYS been backed by gold, it’s something they’ve changed their mind on more than once. The federal reserve still maintains a vault with a crap ton of gold, but that’s beyond the scope of this topic.
But one of the appeals to gold is that it’s FINITE. Once all of the gold on earth has been mined, you can’t just “create” more (at least not yet). When things are rare, they’re often more valuable. This is considered “deflationary” because over time the value actually INCREASES.
Typical money, however is considered “inflationary” because there’s simply no maximum to how much money the U.S. government can print out. The more money they print, the less your dollar is worth. Right now we’re seeing a lot of unusual spending to counteract the pandemic, and it’s hard to really predict how much that might increase inflation.
If I went back to 1920 with $100,000 it would be worth a heck of a lot more money than it is today. Inflation is always happening. That means if you just save all your money under your mattress and don’t invest it in SOMETHING (whether that be stocks, crypto, a house, paying off your debt, etc.) you’re ALWAYS going to be losing money because of inflation, which is somewhere around an average of 2% every year. So in 1 year, your $100 will be worth $98 today. In 10 years, it will be worth $90 today.
How do we as a society use money?Well there are important things to note. Arguably the most important is that we use a shit ton of “ledgers”. Ledgers are just big long lists of transactions and/or balances. I want this to be friendly to people who aren’t accountants, so here’s a very simplified version of a ledger for dummies like me:
Bob's Ledger:
Transaction || Account Balance
N/A || $200
Withdraw $50 || $150
Deposit $100 || $250
Pay Alice $10 for cheezburgers || $240
Alice could have her own ledger, and of course when Bob pays Alice $10, Alice’s ledger will be updated to add $10 to HER ledger. There’s also the concept of OWING someone money. For example, on the application “venmo” you can request payments from your friends. So if your buddy Elon owes you $50 cause he smoked all your pot, you can formally enter that transaction into a ledger to point out that Elon “owes” you money. Keep in mind, that YOUR account balance is still going to be the same and Elon’s account balance is going to be the same UNTIL Elon actually pays you. But you still have a record of debt, someone “owing you money” which is also a very important feature necessary for ledgers and economic growth.
Now there are many kinds of ledgers. If you’re a business, you have to keep track of ALL your expenses, the salaries you’re paying, how much money you’re making, any loans you receive, etc.
So who’s maintaining YOUR personal ledger? Well, it’s your bank isn’t it? They know everything about your account, and every time you put money in or take money out, you have to trust them to accurately make changes. You can go online and even view your transaction history which.. in essence IS a ledger.
What’s a potential problem with this?Well, for starters there is always the potential for fraud. Banks have historically engaged in some less-than-ideal business practices over the years. One classic example being the housing bubble in 2008. I’m going to REALLY oversimplify the complexity of what actually happened by saying they loaned out a crap ton of money for people to buy houses (mortgages) even though the banks KNEW those people did not have the financial ability to pay it back. Of course, the banks didn’t really care because if people can’t PAY those loans back, the bank just foreclose on them and keep the house along with the money. Eventually that blew up in their faces. There’s also a constant stream of banks loaning money to each other, putting it into investments, etc.
tl;dr the Bank does all kinds of crazy shit with your money. If everyone decided we all want to withdraw everything from our accounts tomorrow, the banks don’t actually HAVE enough money in their overall supply to pay everyone. Now I don’t want to mislead you into thinking Banks are just evil. They’re not (well, kinda). The investing and wheeling and dealing that they do with your money can actually be quite good for the economy. That being said.. the Banks are making profit off this. LOTS of profit. Profit that theoretically could be in my hands and your hands.
JESUS JUST TELL ME WHAT BITCOIN IS
Chill, Mary. What is the most important thing a bank does? They maintain those ledgers. Without that, none of the other stuff will work. But what if.. WHAT IF!! We could maintain those ledgers without actually needing a bank?
Well, that’s pretty much what Bitcoin does. It’s just software. If I send you 10 bitcoins (In my fantasies I actually have that kind of money) then it goes through the network and computers are used to automatically update the ledgers. It keeps a record of EVERY SINGLE transaction and dates all the way back to 2009 when bitcoin was created. Now you’re no longer trusting your bank to keep those records, you’re trusting a bunch of computer wizardry that’s not actually controlled by any one individual person or company. (Don’t worry, I’ll talk about the computer wizardry later)
Bitcoin has a finite supply just like Gold. Once all of it has been “mined” there won’t be anymore. Which means that if we as society all elect to use bitcoin, the value of each bitcoin will increase over time. More importantly, that also makes it a potentially good way to counteract some of the money you’re losing each year due to inflation. I personally think it’s unlikely that crypto will actually overtake something like the US Dollar, but they can certainly coexist in harmony.
It is all digital, so you don’t need to carry around cash or gold which is a pretty convenient feature for a “currency”. And it fits with many of the other ideal properties of a currency. It’s divisible, exchangeable, 1 bitcoin is always going to be equal to 1 bitcoin, and it’s clearly durable since you’re probably never gonna leave a bitcoin in your jeans and wash it by accident.
Most people want to get into cryptocurrencies selfishly because it’s beneficial to them. They see money to the moon want much rich quick doggo go quack quack. But there is actually another more ethical and economic reason why we should all be interested in cryptocurrency. There are currently 1.7 billion people in the world who don’t even HAVE banks, and they are statistically more likely to be impoverished. Making sure those people get banked and have equal financial opportunities as everyone else is not only the right thing to do, it’s also economically beneficial to us all because it introduces more people to the financial markets.
There are also countries that are using their own money, some of which are incredibly volatile (one day it’s worth a lot, the next day it’s worth a lot less). Cryptocurrencies are an alternative for them that COULD be more stable, and they also make it much more convenient trying to make transactions with people across the world. It cuts out some of the middlemen needed to do currency exchanges and online transactions and has much faster speeds for making payments and exchanges across the world.
And honestly, that’s the only explanation you need of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies you really need. I’m going to put off the more technical explanations for the end because I don’t want to scare people away.
But what’s the computer wizardry behind Bitcoin?Well, Bitcoin as I mentioned before, maintains a ledger. When I send you 10 bitcoins that ledger needs to be updated so that it removes 10 bitcoins from my account and adds 10 bitcoins into your account. But how do we determine whether or not that was a valid transaction? Well, if you’re familiar with checks (and I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid is reading this that’s never seen a check in their life. #oldmansadfeels) there are a couple things that you need to write on a check:
1. You have an account number (e.g. 8675309)
2. You’re putting in a dollar amount (e.g. $69 and 0/100 cents)
3. You have the person you’re sending the money to (e.g. Jenny)
4. You have a signature
These things are all represented when you make a bitcoin transaction. The software identifies and verifies that it’s you making this transaction in a secure way using cryptography. It takes a COMBINATION of your personal “private key” that nobody other than you can see, and COMBINES it with information about your transaction and converts it into an output that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to figure out what your “private key” is. This output is called your “public key” which everyone has access to.
Your “public key” is then combined with information about your transaction (such as who you’re sending cryptocurrency to, how much, etc.) and creates a digital signature that can ONLY be produced if the person who “signed it” has access to your private key.
Wait, real quick.. what is encryption?Well it’s a way to take an input of data and sort of scramble it so it’s difficult (but not impossible) to understand. An example is if you want to write a note to your friend in class about how hot Ryan Reynolds is but you don’t want your teacher to find out, you could both create a “language” where you change every letter in the alphabet to the right by one. So every “A” becomes a B and every B becomes a C etc. You can tell your friend Ryan Reynolds is “TP IPU!!!”
Now if you just see “TP IPU” it’s pretty hard to understand what that means. The average person would have to sit down and put some time in to try to figure out how to decipher it, but it’s not THAT secure or difficult to crack. However, for you and your friend it’s super easy to translate because you both know what the strategy is. Take “TP IPU” and move every letter to the left by one and you both know he is “SO HOT!!!”
But these computer algorithms are somewhat similar. They use a cryptographic “hash function” called SHA-256. Hash functions are not exactly like encryption, because they’re not designed be reversible. Let’s say my hash function is to multiply 2 numbers and I give you the number 1200. Now figure out what I used to come up with the number 1200.
It’s hard, but no impossible. There are a lot of numbers that multiply together to get 1200. In fact 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 30, 40, 48, 50, 60, 75, 80, 100, 120, 150, 200, 240, 300, 400, 600, 1200 are all factors of 1200. Without more information, I assume you probably couldn’t figure out which of these I originally multiplied in my head to get 1200. And this number is only 4 digits long, which is drastically smaller than any real number that would be used as a hash
But this information gets stored in a “block” which is basically just like a single page in a ledger. You can contain 500 transactions in a single block, so your transactions might be in a group with many other transactions, which is probably the same way the bank maintains their global ledgers. You might have your own account with the bank, but the overall bank database keeps a log of transactions for *everyone*.
All of these “blocks” are tied together. You can think of it like a conga line where the person behind you has their hands on your shoulders and you have your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you. Unless the person in front of you is Ryan Reynolds, at which point you might be putting your hands a bit lower, but please just be respectful when kids are in the room.
The point being that because each of these blocks is tied together to the next block that follows it and the block that comes before it, they cannot be changed without screwing up the entire conga line. If you make changes to any ONE block in the blockchain, it will make changes to ALL of the other blocks.
So how do we verify that these blocks are accurate?
Well, every block in the blockchain also has a certain number associated with it. Going back to the example where you and your friend are passing notes to each other, all you’re really doing is “shifting” the letters in the alphabet by 1 so that A becomes B, B becomes C, etc. But 1 was just a random number, you could’ve chosen to use 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Let’s call that number n.
Say I give you the sentence “rcfgrva qvqa'g xvyy uvzfrys”. I’m not going to tell you what the value of n is, you just know that you need to shift all the letters over by SOME number.
You would have to keep on trying different “shifts” until you finally get a coherent sentence, at which point you’ll know that the value of n = 13 and the message is “Epstein didn’t kill himself”
The blockchain kind of works like that. Again, keep in mind that I’m oversimplifying and that a hash function is much more secure and difficult to crack than our very simple “alphabet-shifting” algorithm.
But there is some number, where if the computer can “guess” what the number is (and the computer has to do this by literally just guessing and putting in random values until it receives “Epstein didn’t kill himself” at which point it knows that n = 13.
But if we just had ONE computer doing that, not only it would be super inefficient time-wise (guessing these numbers is very difficult and can take a lot of computation) and it also would NOT be decentralized. So the idea is that absolutely ANYONE can use their computer to do these computations for the blockchain. And ALL of these computers will get their own copy of the blockchain that they can potentially make changes to.
It’s worth noting that if only 3 people are using their computers to update the “ledgers”, it’s actually not very secure or decentralized. If 2 out of those 3 people conspire against the other person and have enough technical knowledge to feed the computer fraudulent data, they can very easily manipulate the “ledger” aka blockchain to say “hey, that other person owes us 2 million dollars”. But the more people we have using their computers, the more decentralized it gets and the harder it is to manipulate. Because it’s based on a group vote where computer 1 looks at their data, which says “Epstein didn’t kill himself” and computer 2 looks at their data, which says “Epstein didn’t kill himself”, and computer 3 looks at their data and it says “Epstein killed himself” and both computers 1 and computers 2 vote that computer 3 has invalid data and is a big loser.
This consensus mechanism was essentially how Satoshi solved the byzantine generals problem. The more computers there are, the more secure the blockchain is. It's easy to manipulate the blockchain if there's only 3 computers, but it's MUCH harder if there are 1 million computers. Once there’s a consensus reached on which data is valid, ONE of these lucky computers gets to write to and update the blockchain (aka ledger) with the blockchain that has the most work put into it.
Here are some phenomenal resources for more details about the technical aspect of it that put me to shame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIDL_akeras
But this process is basically bitcoin “mining”. Don’t get it confused, bitcoin mining is literally just leaving your computer on and letting it do all these computations for you. It obviously involves no real mining. It’s called “mining” because one lucky computer (hopefully YOUR computer), which managed to guess the correct number first, and that person will receive a certain amount of bitcoin. This is NEW bitcoin, that has yet to be “unearthed” from the supply, and this is the only way to “unlock” more bitcoin, similar to how going into a mine is the only way to “unearth” more of the world’s gold supply (which again, we noted there is a limited supply of both of these things. Once all of it has been mined, there will be none left. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins).
This act of guessing the number is called “Proof of work” because it proves that your computer dedicated it’s resources to computing for the blockchain. Having these rewards for “miners” incentivizes people to mine for the blockchain. That being said, the more powerful your computer is, the higher your likelihood of being able to update the blockchain. They actually have computers that were built for the SOLE purpose of mining cryptocurrencies. Your average laptop probably won’t be super-efficient at making you a lot of money
This brings up two interesting questions. 1, what happens when all the bitcoin supply is mined? Will miners have incentive to keep mining? And the answer is that they will still receive parts of the transactional fees.The hope is that once the supply runs out, it raises the value of those fees and will still keep incentivizing people to mine. It’s not also not impossible that changes to the bitcoin network may need to be made.
Another question to ask is if bitcoin relies on so much computational power, won’t that generate a LOT of wasteful energy?
Here’s a great video addressing and debunking this question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DidAwxWaDKI
While it’s true that Bitcoin can potentially require a lot of computational power if adopted on a more global scale, it can still theoretically be more “green” than using no crypto. In addition to this, “Proof of Work” is just one possible way of verifying transactions.
Note that Bitcoin was the first real implementation of it’s kind. Bitcoin is the giant that all other cryptocurrencies stand on the shoulders of. Many of the newer currencies have the benefit of being able to take everything Bitcoin does great and on finding solutions for areas for improvement. Instead of “Proof of Work” we can use “Proof of Stake” which platforms like Ethereum, Cardano, and many others are moving towards and will be far more energy efficient than Proof of Work. You literally just put your cryptocurrency up into a pool with a bunch of other people, and one user is chosen at random (but it takes into factor how much currency you’ve put in, how long you’ve put it in for, etc. so it’s not entirely “random”, some people have a better probability of being chosen than others). Then the person who won will have the ability to update the blockchain and receive the reward. All of the other aspects of how the blockchain, signatures, etc. work are all either similar or identical.
Now it is possible to create applications and credit cards that allow you to walk into starbucks and use Bitcoin to buy coffee (and they do exist already) but from what I can gather, Bitcoin honestly seems better fit to be a store of value, like gold. You don’t bring gold into starbucks and put it down on the register and say “give me a pumpkin spice latte” why the FUCK do you always make my job more complicated, Becky?
So basically all this stuff is just a complex way of tracking payments and storing value?Well, no. It’s so much bigger than that, actually. Newer cryptocurrencies are capable of faster transactions per second with less energy usage. You can already see our society making movement toward mass adoption such as being able to buy Tesla cars and baseball tickets with cryptocurrency. Keep in mind, credit cards were first created in the 50’s and you couldn’t just pull up to any McDonald’s and pay with a credit until 2002.
That’s a pretty good indicator of how slow we are to adopt new technologies on a larger scale.
And these are just basic building blocks that could potentially lead the way to a much bigger and much more robust cryptocurrency economy. I know you see that there are 80 billion altcoins on the market, and many of them might just be “get rich quick” scams, but there are also a lot of genuine competitors who are currently trying to race to be the first one to really shape the future of the world.
Think of all the things you do with money. Buying stocks, opening a line of credit, buying insurance, paying taxes. People are actively working to make all of these things happen in crypto. You might see people refer to this as “Defi” or “Decentralized Finance”. Even the popularity of NFTs where you can buy artwork with cryptocurrencies shows different and creative ways that blockchain technology can be implemented beyond just “bank transactions”.
If you ever hear the term “smart contracts” just understand that they’re basic computer programs built on blockchain technology that tell the computer how to carry out a transaction. You could think of it somewhat similarly to how a vending machine works. Nobody is telling it what to do, but it is understood in the vending machine’s programming that if you give the machine a dollar, it will dispense the item that you selected, that the item will not be poisonous or expired, in most cases you can expect it to be cold, and you will receive any change back that you’re owed.
These smart contracts make this type of Decentralized Finance possible and note that the Bitcoin platform (again being the archetype) does not have smart contacts. However, many platforms like Ethereum do have smart contracts and others like Cardano are adding them in (I mention these because they are my favorites)
As I stated, this also provides us with an opportunity to give the billions of people who don’t have it already, access to something like insurance. If you don’t have insurance and your house burns down or you get into an accident, you’re completely screwed for life.
It also opens up the possibility for a more decentralized internet. Right now, a handful of companies control a vast majority of the internet. I could build a website and ask you to let me use your computer as a server, and you could rent out your computer to act as the server for my website when you’re not using it, and in exchange I’d pay you in some cryptocurrency. If we move towards decentralized apps, or “dapps” which are much more difficult to change, we can eliminate the “middlemen” who maintain and control these applications. For example, Uber is just an application that connects you with somebody willing to pick you up and drive you. You pay Uber, they take a chunk of the money to themselves, and give the driver the crumbs leftover. Theoretically we could write an app that decentralized and eliminates the middleman. You alert the application and say “Hey, I need a driver” and it connects you to a driver who comes to pick you up. The driver can get a bigger tip, you can pay less money. You both win.
Alright, now I’ve been fairly bullish here. I have lots of hope for the technology and it is honestly the stuff that a revolution can be built on. But here are some slightly bearish outlooks (followed by bullish comments I couldn’t help but add on)
My biggest peeve at the moment might be Robinhood. Cryptocurrency (and currency in general) is not meant to be daytraded. How seriously would we take the US dollar if one day it was worth 40 cents and the next day it was worth $1.20 and then there were people just constantly trading them around all the time trying to profit off the changes?
The most important thing the cryptocurrency community can do as a whole to move towards acceptance on a national scale is stop buying every time the price goes up and stop selling every time the prices goes down. It’s not a casino or pyramid scheme, it’s revolutionary technology that has real life applications that can better the entire world, and you still have the chance to be at the forefront of it.
For Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be accepted by the SEC as a store of value, we need to prove that they’re not excessively volatile. Robinhood is increasing the volatility of cryptos. Daytrading is increasing the volatility of cryptos. LITERALLY everyone holding crypto would be far richer if they just held for the long term than daytrading would EVER make you, because it’s the actual ADOPTION and social acceptance/implements of the stuff is what makes it valuable. The $500 you made off doge isn’t shit compared to the money you could make if you’re holding coins for a platform that eventually grows into a trillion dollar industry (note that doge does not have smart contracts either).
This also seems like a convenient time to point out that the chair of the SEC has already stated that crypto is a store of value, and that getting the SEC on our side is 100% possible if people act appropriately. Mind you, the chair of the SEC taught on an entire class on Blockchain finance at M.I.T. and he is very much still on the fence in his position on cryptocurrencies and well-informed on the topic. Any narrative that says the SEC is wagging their finger at cryptocurrency without giving it valid consideration is false. They can be convinced, but we are the ones that need to convince them. It starts making wiser investment decisions.
This is all still pretty high risk and high reward. Don’t get too caught up in the hype of crypto because frankly it’s impossible to peg down which of the hundreds of competing platforms will still be around in 20+ years, and frankly if people get scared away from cryptocurrency because they had a bad experience where you told them to buy and they lost money, the process of moving toward these changes is going to take much longer.
Which brings me to my next point. There’s currently no crypto ETF. Why do you want a crypto ETF? It’s exactly like I said, there are hundreds of competing platforms and no way to be 100% sure that they will be around in 20+ years. An ETF basically gathers all of them into one big bucket (metaphorically). If the price of one goes up and another goes down, they cancel each other out. Generally speaking, an ETF is the “safest” way to invest your money and get slow, consistent gains with less volatility. That doesn’t mean ALL ETF’s are good. You can have an ETF with the worst 20 altcoins you can find on /r/cryptomoonshots and it’s absolutely worthless. But if you can gather up a bunch of the most likely ones to succeed and put them in an ETF, the outcome is much more likely to be positive.
How do we get an ETF?Win over the SEC. See my previous comments.
dApps are great in theory but they’re more complicated in reality. In general, the most difficult part of decentralizing this stuff is trying to update the software, and it’s going to be a long time before the status quo is changed, if ever. It’s entirely possible someone could write a piece of software with an incredibly hazardous bug in it and it’s more difficult to change.
In theory everything is supposed to be decentralized, but even in this intermediate stage of decentralization we just see changing of middlemen. Instead of us interfacing with bankers to maintain our money, we now interface with apps which are making companies profits every time they take a piece of the transaction fees. Which one is “better” really depends on the tradeoff between how much you’re paying them versus how secure you feel your money is (not in terms of "hacking" but "secure" in the sense of volatility. That your $10 today will still be worth $10 tomorrow), but as crypto becomes more common, it’s inevitable that those fees will increase and we’ll just be stuck with more of the same.. or worse.
Anyway, I honestly did not imagine myself writing this much. I’m 10 pages in on a word file. But this stuff is certainly very interesting to me. I’m incredibly optimistic about the possibilities that can come from crypto, but at the end of the day it’s the actions of the people who determine whether or not any of it actually has value in the future. In a sort of hyperbolic analogy, we could have a scientific breakthrough like a cure for cancer, where the underlying science, math, engineering that all went on behind the scenes were revolutionary and able to create something that’s never been done before and capable of making the world a better place, but it’s absolutely useless if everyone refuses the cure and people just sell it back and forth to each other in hopes of getting a profit rather than use it for it's intended purpose
As of now, even the safest cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum should be considered fairly high-risk with high reward potential. I've been assuming the best case scenario for crypto, but the reality is that the regulation and banning is absolutely possible anywhere in the world. Crypto will still exist underground, it's impossible to fully "Ban" crypto, but acceptance on the global scale that we would all like to idealize may be much harder/take longer to reach with resistance
While Answer wrote that novel like an idiot I'm loading up on doge.
uh-oh
05-09-2021, 07:36 PM
the only one that ever made sense to me was bitcoin, because i don't view it as a way to get rich. im not interested in fast money, watching the market and trading etc. i view it simply as a way to keep the value of the money i have earned.
the dollar has freaked me out for awhile and with covid and the printing of money i got even more spooked and have made an effort to throw 100 bucks into bitcoin whenever i felt i could afford it.
but now im contemplating selling it all. bide dawg might crack down on all crypto, and there is talk of fedcoin.
but yea i never messed with ethereum, litecoin or any of the other newer ones. cuz again im not doing it to make money fast, im just hoping the 100 dollars i put in today, is worth 100 dollars of goods down the line. if its worth more, great. i just know that the rate at which inflation is going any savings account or modest 401k IRA etc ain't gonna keep up
While Answer wrote that novel like an idiot I'm loading up on doge.
Atta boy
Answer
05-09-2021, 10:09 PM
the only one that ever made sense to me was bitcoin, because i don't view it as a way to get rich. im not interested in fast money, watching the market and trading etc. i view it simply as a way to keep the value of the money i have earned.
This is a perfectly valid outlook, but the major downside to Bitcoin is that it doesn't have smart contracts or many alternative usecases if decentralized finance actually makes waves. It's also not super usable as a currency. But still, bitcoin is solid because it will always be the OG, and if you have money in it, I'd encourage you keep it there. But it's a lower risk/lower reward type of deal at this point (imo). It isn't infeasible that Bitcoin becomes obsolete if the novelty eventually wears off (granted, you've got a LONG time before that could even potentially happen)
This is a perfectly valid outlook, but the major downside to Bitcoin is that it doesn't have smart contracts or many alternative usecases if decentralized finance actually makes waves. It's also not super usable as a currency. But still, bitcoin is solid because it will always be the OG, and if you have money in it, I'd encourage you keep it there. But it's a lower risk/lower reward type of deal at this point (imo). It isn't infeasible that Bitcoin becomes obsolete if the novelty eventually wears off (granted, you've got a LONG time before that could even potentially happen)
Yes, however it is still feasible in the near future.
Answer
05-09-2021, 10:45 PM
talk to em ouch
Nah son I can’t be dropping free knowledge that’s the type of shit people need to pay for. My mere presence to you lesser thans should be paid for.. don’t worry Im not charging yet... it’s in the works though.
Really though.. the meager amount I have I don’t feel comfortable doing shit like this... I know ways to make money off minor investment and been doing it for years. Granted there is risk involved.
I’m definitely smart enough to figure this stuff out as much as any of you are but I choose not to... that could be to my benefit or could be to my detriment.. I just turn a blind eye to things like this and personally I feel like I’m better off for it.
In laymen’s terms... fuck all this shit I don’t trust it and I’m not fucking around with it.
Answer
05-10-2021, 02:29 PM
While Answer wrote that novel like an idiot I'm loading up on doge.
how's that going for ya bud?
Eviction
05-10-2021, 09:20 PM
did you see where spacex literally taking a doge to the moon.
how's that going for ya bud?
Come back to me by the end of the month and see.
Answer
05-12-2021, 07:31 PM
Come back to me by the end of the month and see.
How’s that goin for ya bud?
Answer
05-12-2021, 08:20 PM
While Answer wrote that novel like an idiot I'm loading up on doge.
Aero are u ok? Are u ok? Are u ok, aero?
Were you struck by a smooth criminal?
Aero are u ok? Are u ok? Are u ok, aero?
Were you struck by a smooth criminal?
Never better thanks for asking.
Everythings down, slow week. Doge continues to go back up though. No worries Aero. Real talk its all part of the game. In a week or two the real magic will happen.
Michael Wrecka
05-14-2021, 10:25 PM
All about that ALGO and it’s 6% APY
Dope girl
05-14-2021, 10:28 PM
Let's get it
Answer
05-15-2021, 02:49 PM
While Answer wrote that novel like an idiot I'm loading up on doge.
While you were ignoring that novel like an idiot, the novel that bigs up ADA, which has climbed to an ATH with a 56% gain since I posted it, that shitcoin that’s only value is being part of Elon’s pump and dump pyramid scheme has been sitting at the same 50-55 cent mark
Not related to crypto, but I gave yall the play on peloton, too which was at least a 25% return.
You miss out some good money not knowing what you’re talking about. Get into ADA, either now or at the next dip if it comes, because as soon as they integrate smart contracts it will only go higher.
And while I’m at it, Eth is down a lot which makes it a buy because it’s still the long-term favorite
Ada is a good bet. Got in at 1.49. its up quite a bit since then. Good tip. But Aero. Doge aint goin away anytime soon. Hold tight. Cardanao is a smart bet to, though
I think bittorrent coin (btt) is a really smart buy atm.
Its gonna blow sometime later in the year and by 2028 should be huge in comparison to now. I currently own over 21,000 and still piling.
Get hip
Answer
05-19-2021, 09:08 PM
Well it’s been a day
Blue Bayou
05-19-2021, 09:18 PM
You all better have your retirement accounts maxed
UPN Zuch
05-20-2021, 04:18 PM
Fucking china.
Giving people financial advice in the form of DOGE coin should be a felony.
I will say it again..
It has no tangible use. It is a meme.
Kuality
05-20-2021, 06:10 PM
Zuch,
How well versed are you in Defi?
I advise nothing. i will share my own personal experiences, though. And currently. I am still up more than 4x's
Good day.
kungfugrip
05-21-2021, 02:44 AM
Just gonna offload this novel here
My goal is to discuss cryptocurrencies in a way that anyone can understand them, and I will certainly have some additional opinions to add in. Of course, my opinions are just my opinions, I am not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advice.
Also, I'll tell you in advance that I'm not making any recommendations on what to buy or what will "make you rich". My interest is in the technology, social, and economic side of things, and the possible changes that crypto brings. I frankly don't care which crypto ends up revolutionizing the world, as long as one of them does.
There ARE some oversimplifications, because my goal is to write to people without presuming any knowledge or getting too caught up in the terminology. If anyone wants to offer any criticisms, suggestions, or corrections I am absolutely open to them. I do not proclaim to be a Guru, I just ask that you do so respectfully
Let’s get started..
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin was the first successful implementation of cryptocurrency. It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, who has a super cool backstory because nobody knows who the fuck Satoshi Nakamoto is. There is speculation that Satoshi is a group of people, there is speculation that Satoshi is dead, nobody really knows. Satoshi was NOT the first person with the idea for cryptocurrency. There were others who came before Satoshi, one example being Bitgold which was idealized by Nick Szabo. What separates Satoshi from the others is that Satoshi solved a pretty complex Computer Science problem called the Byzantine General’s problem. More on that later. What you should know is that Satoshi was incredibly smart, and many Computer Scientists, Finance/Economic Gurus, and Lawyers have all acknowledged that Satoshi needed a pretty deep understanding of ALL these fields to do what Satoshi did by creating Bitcoin.
Ok but what IS Bitcoin?
Well, not so fast. Let’s talk about money first. Often people refer to “fiat” currency, which is a currency that is “established” by the government. The American dollar is fiat. I think technical terms can be a distraction when trying to learn new ideas, so instead of fiat, I’m going to just uses the term “money”. I will never use the term “money” to describe crypto, and that’s just to avoid confusion in this explanation.
What is money?
Well, technically anything can be money. If you look at the history of human civilization, there are people who have used all kinds of things as “money”. Tulip Bulbs, Stones, Salt, Shells, etc. At the end of the day, we as people need to come to an agreement on the things we’re willing to give and receive payments for. Let’s say I wanted to open my own cupcake shop and you come in hungry for some noms and you slap a 20 dollar bill down on the counter and say SIR GIVE ME YOUR FINEST CUPCAKE. I can 100% legally say nah.. I do not accept American dollars, I only accept Bitcoin. In fact, I can even legally pay my employees in Bitcoin, in fact many employers have already done this.
Of course government laws are going to vary country to country, but legally and more importantly, LOGICALLY there’s no reason why I can’t. It would be a somewhat bad business move on my part, because most people don’t have a convenient way to perform transactions with bitcoin, and I would probably lose a lot of business and go broke.
But money has physical properties, and some things just make “better” money than other things. We COULD use gold as money, but then we’d all be lugging around lots of heavy gold. But fuck, we’d never need to do a leg day again. But still.. that’s just not super convenient. There was a time when you could go to the bank and deposit your gold, and they essentially give you a receipt that says “Hey, you have THIS much gold stored with us at the bank”.
Now we just sort have the receipts and not the gold. Keep in mind, American currency hasn’t ALWAYS been backed by gold, it’s something they’ve changed their mind on more than once. The federal reserve still maintains a vault with a crap ton of gold, but that’s beyond the scope of this topic.
But one of the appeals to gold is that it’s FINITE. Once all of the gold on earth has been mined, you can’t just “create” more (at least not yet). When things are rare, they’re often more valuable. This is considered “deflationary” because over time the value actually INCREASES.
Typical money, however is considered “inflationary” because there’s simply no maximum to how much money the U.S. government can print out. The more money they print, the less your dollar is worth. Right now we’re seeing a lot of unusual spending to counteract the pandemic, and it’s hard to really predict how much that might increase inflation.
If I went back to 1920 with $100,000 it would be worth a heck of a lot more money than it is today. Inflation is always happening. That means if you just save all your money under your mattress and don’t invest it in SOMETHING (whether that be stocks, crypto, a house, paying off your debt, etc.) you’re ALWAYS going to be losing money because of inflation, which is somewhere around an average of 2% every year. So in 1 year, your $100 will be worth $98 today. In 10 years, it will be worth $90 today.
How do we as a society use money?Well there are important things to note. Arguably the most important is that we use a shit ton of “ledgers”. Ledgers are just big long lists of transactions and/or balances. I want this to be friendly to people who aren’t accountants, so here’s a very simplified version of a ledger for dummies like me:
Bob's Ledger:
Transaction || Account Balance
N/A || $200
Withdraw $50 || $150
Deposit $100 || $250
Pay Alice $10 for cheezburgers || $240
Alice could have her own ledger, and of course when Bob pays Alice $10, Alice’s ledger will be updated to add $10 to HER ledger. There’s also the concept of OWING someone money. For example, on the application “venmo” you can request payments from your friends. So if your buddy Elon owes you $50 cause he smoked all your pot, you can formally enter that transaction into a ledger to point out that Elon “owes” you money. Keep in mind, that YOUR account balance is still going to be the same and Elon’s account balance is going to be the same UNTIL Elon actually pays you. But you still have a record of debt, someone “owing you money” which is also a very important feature necessary for ledgers and economic growth.
Now there are many kinds of ledgers. If you’re a business, you have to keep track of ALL your expenses, the salaries you’re paying, how much money you’re making, any loans you receive, etc.
So who’s maintaining YOUR personal ledger? Well, it’s your bank isn’t it? They know everything about your account, and every time you put money in or take money out, you have to trust them to accurately make changes. You can go online and even view your transaction history which.. in essence IS a ledger.
What’s a potential problem with this?Well, for starters there is always the potential for fraud. Banks have historically engaged in some less-than-ideal business practices over the years. One classic example being the housing bubble in 2008. I’m going to REALLY oversimplify the complexity of what actually happened by saying they loaned out a crap ton of money for people to buy houses (mortgages) even though the banks KNEW those people did not have the financial ability to pay it back. Of course, the banks didn’t really care because if people can’t PAY those loans back, the bank just foreclose on them and keep the house along with the money. Eventually that blew up in their faces. There’s also a constant stream of banks loaning money to each other, putting it into investments, etc.
tl;dr the Bank does all kinds of crazy shit with your money. If everyone decided we all want to withdraw everything from our accounts tomorrow, the banks don’t actually HAVE enough money in their overall supply to pay everyone. Now I don’t want to mislead you into thinking Banks are just evil. They’re not (well, kinda). The investing and wheeling and dealing that they do with your money can actually be quite good for the economy. That being said.. the Banks are making profit off this. LOTS of profit. Profit that theoretically could be in my hands and your hands.
JESUS JUST TELL ME WHAT BITCOIN IS
Chill, Mary. What is the most important thing a bank does? They maintain those ledgers. Without that, none of the other stuff will work. But what if.. WHAT IF!! We could maintain those ledgers without actually needing a bank?
Well, that’s pretty much what Bitcoin does. It’s just software. If I send you 10 bitcoins (In my fantasies I actually have that kind of money) then it goes through the network and computers are used to automatically update the ledgers. It keeps a record of EVERY SINGLE transaction and dates all the way back to 2009 when bitcoin was created. Now you’re no longer trusting your bank to keep those records, you’re trusting a bunch of computer wizardry that’s not actually controlled by any one individual person or company. (Don’t worry, I’ll talk about the computer wizardry later)
Bitcoin has a finite supply just like Gold. Once all of it has been “mined” there won’t be anymore. Which means that if we as society all elect to use bitcoin, the value of each bitcoin will increase over time. More importantly, that also makes it a potentially good way to counteract some of the money you’re losing each year due to inflation. I personally think it’s unlikely that crypto will actually overtake something like the US Dollar, but they can certainly coexist in harmony.
It is all digital, so you don’t need to carry around cash or gold which is a pretty convenient feature for a “currency”. And it fits with many of the other ideal properties of a currency. It’s divisible, exchangeable, 1 bitcoin is always going to be equal to 1 bitcoin, and it’s clearly durable since you’re probably never gonna leave a bitcoin in your jeans and wash it by accident.
Most people want to get into cryptocurrencies selfishly because it’s beneficial to them. They see money to the moon want much rich quick doggo go quack quack. But there is actually another more ethical and economic reason why we should all be interested in cryptocurrency. There are currently 1.7 billion people in the world who don’t even HAVE banks, and they are statistically more likely to be impoverished. Making sure those people get banked and have equal financial opportunities as everyone else is not only the right thing to do, it’s also economically beneficial to us all because it introduces more people to the financial markets.
There are also countries that are using their own money, some of which are incredibly volatile (one day it’s worth a lot, the next day it’s worth a lot less). Cryptocurrencies are an alternative for them that COULD be more stable, and they also make it much more convenient trying to make transactions with people across the world. It cuts out some of the middlemen needed to do currency exchanges and online transactions and has much faster speeds for making payments and exchanges across the world.
And honestly, that’s the only explanation you need of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies you really need. I’m going to put off the more technical explanations for the end because I don’t want to scare people away.
But what’s the computer wizardry behind Bitcoin?Well, Bitcoin as I mentioned before, maintains a ledger. When I send you 10 bitcoins that ledger needs to be updated so that it removes 10 bitcoins from my account and adds 10 bitcoins into your account. But how do we determine whether or not that was a valid transaction? Well, if you’re familiar with checks (and I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid is reading this that’s never seen a check in their life. #oldmansadfeels) there are a couple things that you need to write on a check:
1. You have an account number (e.g. 8675309)
2. You’re putting in a dollar amount (e.g. $69 and 0/100 cents)
3. You have the person you’re sending the money to (e.g. Jenny)
4. You have a signature
These things are all represented when you make a bitcoin transaction. The software identifies and verifies that it’s you making this transaction in a secure way using cryptography. It takes a COMBINATION of your personal “private key” that nobody other than you can see, and COMBINES it with information about your transaction and converts it into an output that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to figure out what your “private key” is. This output is called your “public key” which everyone has access to.
Your “public key” is then combined with information about your transaction (such as who you’re sending cryptocurrency to, how much, etc.) and creates a digital signature that can ONLY be produced if the person who “signed it” has access to your private key.
Wait, real quick.. what is encryption?Well it’s a way to take an input of data and sort of scramble it so it’s difficult (but not impossible) to understand. An example is if you want to write a note to your friend in class about how hot Ryan Reynolds is but you don’t want your teacher to find out, you could both create a “language” where you change every letter in the alphabet to the right by one. So every “A” becomes a B and every B becomes a C etc. You can tell your friend Ryan Reynolds is “TP IPU!!!”
Now if you just see “TP IPU” it’s pretty hard to understand what that means. The average person would have to sit down and put some time in to try to figure out how to decipher it, but it’s not THAT secure or difficult to crack. However, for you and your friend it’s super easy to translate because you both know what the strategy is. Take “TP IPU” and move every letter to the left by one and you both know he is “SO HOT!!!”
But these computer algorithms are somewhat similar. They use a cryptographic “hash function” called SHA-256. Hash functions are not exactly like encryption, because they’re not designed be reversible. Let’s say my hash function is to multiply 2 numbers and I give you the number 1200. Now figure out what I used to come up with the number 1200.
It’s hard, but no impossible. There are a lot of numbers that multiply together to get 1200. In fact 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 30, 40, 48, 50, 60, 75, 80, 100, 120, 150, 200, 240, 300, 400, 600, 1200 are all factors of 1200. Without more information, I assume you probably couldn’t figure out which of these I originally multiplied in my head to get 1200. And this number is only 4 digits long, which is drastically smaller than any real number that would be used as a hash
But this information gets stored in a “block” which is basically just like a single page in a ledger. You can contain 500 transactions in a single block, so your transactions might be in a group with many other transactions, which is probably the same way the bank maintains their global ledgers. You might have your own account with the bank, but the overall bank database keeps a log of transactions for *everyone*.
All of these “blocks” are tied together. You can think of it like a conga line where the person behind you has their hands on your shoulders and you have your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you. Unless the person in front of you is Ryan Reynolds, at which point you might be putting your hands a bit lower, but please just be respectful when kids are in the room.
The point being that because each of these blocks is tied together to the next block that follows it and the block that comes before it, they cannot be changed without screwing up the entire conga line. If you make changes to any ONE block in the blockchain, it will make changes to ALL of the other blocks.
So how do we verify that these blocks are accurate?
Well, every block in the blockchain also has a certain number associated with it. Going back to the example where you and your friend are passing notes to each other, all you’re really doing is “shifting” the letters in the alphabet by 1 so that A becomes B, B becomes C, etc. But 1 was just a random number, you could’ve chosen to use 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Let’s call that number n.
Say I give you the sentence “rcfgrva qvqa'g xvyy uvzfrys”. I’m not going to tell you what the value of n is, you just know that you need to shift all the letters over by SOME number.
You would have to keep on trying different “shifts” until you finally get a coherent sentence, at which point you’ll know that the value of n = 13 and the message is “Epstein didn’t kill himself”
The blockchain kind of works like that. Again, keep in mind that I’m oversimplifying and that a hash function is much more secure and difficult to crack than our very simple “alphabet-shifting” algorithm.
But there is some number, where if the computer can “guess” what the number is (and the computer has to do this by literally just guessing and putting in random values until it receives “Epstein didn’t kill himself” at which point it knows that n = 13.
But if we just had ONE computer doing that, not only it would be super inefficient time-wise (guessing these numbers is very difficult and can take a lot of computation) and it also would NOT be decentralized. So the idea is that absolutely ANYONE can use their computer to do these computations for the blockchain. And ALL of these computers will get their own copy of the blockchain that they can potentially make changes to.
It’s worth noting that if only 3 people are using their computers to update the “ledgers”, it’s actually not very secure or decentralized. If 2 out of those 3 people conspire against the other person and have enough technical knowledge to feed the computer fraudulent data, they can very easily manipulate the “ledger” aka blockchain to say “hey, that other person owes us 2 million dollars”. But the more people we have using their computers, the more decentralized it gets and the harder it is to manipulate. Because it’s based on a group vote where computer 1 looks at their data, which says “Epstein didn’t kill himself” and computer 2 looks at their data, which says “Epstein didn’t kill himself”, and computer 3 looks at their data and it says “Epstein killed himself” and both computers 1 and computers 2 vote that computer 3 has invalid data and is a big loser.
This consensus mechanism was essentially how Satoshi solved the byzantine generals problem. The more computers there are, the more secure the blockchain is. It's easy to manipulate the blockchain if there's only 3 computers, but it's MUCH harder if there are 1 million computers. Once there’s a consensus reached on which data is valid, ONE of these lucky computers gets to write to and update the blockchain (aka ledger) with the blockchain that has the most work put into it.
Here are some phenomenal resources for more details about the technical aspect of it that put me to shame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIDL_akeras
But this process is basically bitcoin “mining”. Don’t get it confused, bitcoin mining is literally just leaving your computer on and letting it do all these computations for you. It obviously involves no real mining. It’s called “mining” because one lucky computer (hopefully YOUR computer), which managed to guess the correct number first, and that person will receive a certain amount of bitcoin. This is NEW bitcoin, that has yet to be “unearthed” from the supply, and this is the only way to “unlock” more bitcoin, similar to how going into a mine is the only way to “unearth” more of the world’s gold supply (which again, we noted there is a limited supply of both of these things. Once all of it has been mined, there will be none left. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins).
This act of guessing the number is called “Proof of work” because it proves that your computer dedicated it’s resources to computing for the blockchain. Having these rewards for “miners” incentivizes people to mine for the blockchain. That being said, the more powerful your computer is, the higher your likelihood of being able to update the blockchain. They actually have computers that were built for the SOLE purpose of mining cryptocurrencies. Your average laptop probably won’t be super-efficient at making you a lot of money
This brings up two interesting questions. 1, what happens when all the bitcoin supply is mined? Will miners have incentive to keep mining? And the answer is that they will still receive parts of the transactional fees.The hope is that once the supply runs out, it raises the value of those fees and will still keep incentivizing people to mine. It’s not also not impossible that changes to the bitcoin network may need to be made.
Another question to ask is if bitcoin relies on so much computational power, won’t that generate a LOT of wasteful energy?
Here’s a great video addressing and debunking this question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DidAwxWaDKI
While it’s true that Bitcoin can potentially require a lot of computational power if adopted on a more global scale, it can still theoretically be more “green” than using no crypto. In addition to this, “Proof of Work” is just one possible way of verifying transactions.
Note that Bitcoin was the first real implementation of it’s kind. Bitcoin is the giant that all other cryptocurrencies stand on the shoulders of. Many of the newer currencies have the benefit of being able to take everything Bitcoin does great and on finding solutions for areas for improvement. Instead of “Proof of Work” we can use “Proof of Stake” which platforms like Ethereum, Cardano, and many others are moving towards and will be far more energy efficient than Proof of Work. You literally just put your cryptocurrency up into a pool with a bunch of other people, and one user is chosen at random (but it takes into factor how much currency you’ve put in, how long you’ve put it in for, etc. so it’s not entirely “random”, some people have a better probability of being chosen than others). Then the person who won will have the ability to update the blockchain and receive the reward. All of the other aspects of how the blockchain, signatures, etc. work are all either similar or identical.
Now it is possible to create applications and credit cards that allow you to walk into starbucks and use Bitcoin to buy coffee (and they do exist already) but from what I can gather, Bitcoin honestly seems better fit to be a store of value, like gold. You don’t bring gold into starbucks and put it down on the register and say “give me a pumpkin spice latte” why the FUCK do you always make my job more complicated, Becky?
So basically all this stuff is just a complex way of tracking payments and storing value?Well, no. It’s so much bigger than that, actually. Newer cryptocurrencies are capable of faster transactions per second with less energy usage. You can already see our society making movement toward mass adoption such as being able to buy Tesla cars and baseball tickets with cryptocurrency. Keep in mind, credit cards were first created in the 50’s and you couldn’t just pull up to any McDonald’s and pay with a credit until 2002.
That’s a pretty good indicator of how slow we are to adopt new technologies on a larger scale.
And these are just basic building blocks that could potentially lead the way to a much bigger and much more robust cryptocurrency economy. I know you see that there are 80 billion altcoins on the market, and many of them might just be “get rich quick” scams, but there are also a lot of genuine competitors who are currently trying to race to be the first one to really shape the future of the world.
Think of all the things you do with money. Buying stocks, opening a line of credit, buying insurance, paying taxes. People are actively working to make all of these things happen in crypto. You might see people refer to this as “Defi” or “Decentralized Finance”. Even the popularity of NFTs where you can buy artwork with cryptocurrencies shows different and creative ways that blockchain technology can be implemented beyond just “bank transactions”.
If you ever hear the term “smart contracts” just understand that they’re basic computer programs built on blockchain technology that tell the computer how to carry out a transaction. You could think of it somewhat similarly to how a vending machine works. Nobody is telling it what to do, but it is understood in the vending machine’s programming that if you give the machine a dollar, it will dispense the item that you selected, that the item will not be poisonous or expired, in most cases you can expect it to be cold, and you will receive any change back that you’re owed.
These smart contracts make this type of Decentralized Finance possible and note that the Bitcoin platform (again being the archetype) does not have smart contacts. However, many platforms like Ethereum do have smart contracts and others like Cardano are adding them in (I mention these because they are my favorites)
As I stated, this also provides us with an opportunity to give the billions of people who don’t have it already, access to something like insurance. If you don’t have insurance and your house burns down or you get into an accident, you’re completely screwed for life.
It also opens up the possibility for a more decentralized internet. Right now, a handful of companies control a vast majority of the internet. I could build a website and ask you to let me use your computer as a server, and you could rent out your computer to act as the server for my website when you’re not using it, and in exchange I’d pay you in some cryptocurrency. If we move towards decentralized apps, or “dapps” which are much more difficult to change, we can eliminate the “middlemen” who maintain and control these applications. For example, Uber is just an application that connects you with somebody willing to pick you up and drive you. You pay Uber, they take a chunk of the money to themselves, and give the driver the crumbs leftover. Theoretically we could write an app that decentralized and eliminates the middleman. You alert the application and say “Hey, I need a driver” and it connects you to a driver who comes to pick you up. The driver can get a bigger tip, you can pay less money. You both win.
Alright, now I’ve been fairly bullish here. I have lots of hope for the technology and it is honestly the stuff that a revolution can be built on. But here are some slightly bearish outlooks (followed by bullish comments I couldn’t help but add on)
My biggest peeve at the moment might be Robinhood. Cryptocurrency (and currency in general) is not meant to be daytraded. How seriously would we take the US dollar if one day it was worth 40 cents and the next day it was worth $1.20 and then there were people just constantly trading them around all the time trying to profit off the changes?
The most important thing the cryptocurrency community can do as a whole to move towards acceptance on a national scale is stop buying every time the price goes up and stop selling every time the prices goes down. It’s not a casino or pyramid scheme, it’s revolutionary technology that has real life applications that can better the entire world, and you still have the chance to be at the forefront of it.
For Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be accepted by the SEC as a store of value, we need to prove that they’re not excessively volatile. Robinhood is increasing the volatility of cryptos. Daytrading is increasing the volatility of cryptos. LITERALLY everyone holding crypto would be far richer if they just held for the long term than daytrading would EVER make you, because it’s the actual ADOPTION and social acceptance/implements of the stuff is what makes it valuable. The $500 you made off doge isn’t shit compared to the money you could make if you’re holding coins for a platform that eventually grows into a trillion dollar industry (note that doge does not have smart contracts either).
This also seems like a convenient time to point out that the chair of the SEC has already stated that crypto is a store of value, and that getting the SEC on our side is 100% possible if people act appropriately. Mind you, the chair of the SEC taught on an entire class on Blockchain finance at M.I.T. and he is very much still on the fence in his position on cryptocurrencies and well-informed on the topic. Any narrative that says the SEC is wagging their finger at cryptocurrency without giving it valid consideration is false. They can be convinced, but we are the ones that need to convince them. It starts making wiser investment decisions.
This is all still pretty high risk and high reward. Don’t get too caught up in the hype of crypto because frankly it’s impossible to peg down which of the hundreds of competing platforms will still be around in 20+ years, and frankly if people get scared away from cryptocurrency because they had a bad experience where you told them to buy and they lost money, the process of moving toward these changes is going to take much longer.
Which brings me to my next point. There’s currently no crypto ETF. Why do you want a crypto ETF? It’s exactly like I said, there are hundreds of competing platforms and no way to be 100% sure that they will be around in 20+ years. An ETF basically gathers all of them into one big bucket (metaphorically). If the price of one goes up and another goes down, they cancel each other out. Generally speaking, an ETF is the “safest” way to invest your money and get slow, consistent gains with less volatility. That doesn’t mean ALL ETF’s are good. You can have an ETF with the worst 20 altcoins you can find on /r/cryptomoonshots and it’s absolutely worthless. But if you can gather up a bunch of the most likely ones to succeed and put them in an ETF, the outcome is much more likely to be positive.
How do we get an ETF?Win over the SEC. See my previous comments.
dApps are great in theory but they’re more complicated in reality. In general, the most difficult part of decentralizing this stuff is trying to update the software, and it’s going to be a long time before the status quo is changed, if ever. It’s entirely possible someone could write a piece of software with an incredibly hazardous bug in it and it’s more difficult to change.
In theory everything is supposed to be decentralized, but even in this intermediate stage of decentralization we just see changing of middlemen. Instead of us interfacing with bankers to maintain our money, we now interface with apps which are making companies profits every time they take a piece of the transaction fees. Which one is “better” really depends on the tradeoff between how much you’re paying them versus how secure you feel your money is (not in terms of "hacking" but "secure" in the sense of volatility. That your $10 today will still be worth $10 tomorrow), but as crypto becomes more common, it’s inevitable that those fees will increase and we’ll just be stuck with more of the same.. or worse.
Anyway, I honestly did not imagine myself writing this much. I’m 10 pages in on a word file. But this stuff is certainly very interesting to me. I’m incredibly optimistic about the possibilities that can come from crypto, but at the end of the day it’s the actions of the people who determine whether or not any of it actually has value in the future. In a sort of hyperbolic analogy, we could have a scientific breakthrough like a cure for cancer, where the underlying science, math, engineering that all went on behind the scenes were revolutionary and able to create something that’s never been done before and capable of making the world a better place, but it’s absolutely useless if everyone refuses the cure and people just sell it back and forth to each other in hopes of getting a profit rather than use it for it's intended purpose
As of now, even the safest cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum should be considered fairly high-risk with high reward potential. I've been assuming the best case scenario for crypto, but the reality is that the regulation and banning is absolutely possible anywhere in the world. Crypto will still exist underground, it's impossible to fully "Ban" crypto, but acceptance on the global scale that we would all like to idealize may be much harder/take longer to reach with resistance
The sheer word count on this post reminds me of that time Blue Bayou tried to convince me that he makes 17 million dollars a year as an international male supermodel
Answer
05-21-2021, 07:01 AM
The sheer word count on this post reminds me of that time Blue Bayou tried to convince me that he makes 17 million dollars a year as an international male supermodel
Usually when I drop novels on this site it’s because Ive been writing a book that covers a wide variety of topics and I plan to use some of it as content. Some of us are doing things that are productive rather than spending our 40’s on meth telling everyone how we used to be a top 5 text battler in the mid 90s when there were only 8 text battlers
Blue Bayou
05-21-2021, 08:04 AM
The sheer word count on this post reminds me of that time Blue Bayou tried to convince me that he makes 17 million dollars a year as an international male supermodel
I wish... its only like 10-12 million
kungfugrip
05-25-2021, 10:30 PM
Usually when I drop novels on this site it’s because Ive been writing a book that covers a wide variety of topics and I plan to use some of it as content. Some of us are doing things that are productive rather than spending our 40’s on meth telling everyone how we used to be a top 5 text battler in the mid 90s when there were only 8 text battlers
You could never write a book with that kind of punctuation and no nuanced storytelling ability. I can help you. I was once a top 5 text battler.
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