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  • Crypto Currency - Believers Only

Wally I’ve a mate who’s big into it with a crowd from his work. They’re getting cocaine that’s come straight from a Miami 1980 timewarp. Sounds far too complicated to set up and when he mentioned cryptocurrency that was as far as my interest went. So no, sorry, Wal.

    Smallman1 Give us a quick run down on how TCP/IP protocols work please Smallman? It powers the internet which doesn’t seem to have had a problem with people not knowing how it works under the hood.

    Convenience and functionality wins every time - as soon as there’s an app that makes a difference to convenience to people’s lives or offers something new, it’ll get mass adopted and people won’t give a shit about how it works.

      Wally Give us a quick run down on how TCP/IP protocols work please Smallman? It powers the internet which doesn’t seem to have had a problem with people not knowing how it works under the hood.

      Convenience and functionality wins every time - as soon as there’s an app that makes a difference to convenience to people’s lives or offers something new, it’ll get mass adopted and people won’t give a shit about how it works.

      Lol.

      Wal’s in a right old echo chamber.

        Wally Come on wal. People just fire up their browser and hand over loads of data to google. That’s how the internet works. And if you want to use the dark web you need to have some more understanding.

        Bitcoin is entirely traceable thanks to its public ledger.

        First you need to buy some, then put it in a wallet, but not a wallet that somebody might run off with, then you need to launder it so that the bitcoins you purchased using your debit card are not actually traceable to you, and they get used by a russian mafia gang instead, but get traced back to you (that is season 2 of this thriller) and then you need to hand over your address to somebody who posts narcs through the post to you. I cannot see any potential vulnerabilities in that at all.

          I do wonder about that but I don’t understand it enough. One can assume there’s a way all around those scenarios if these “businesses” have been running smoothly for a number of years now.

            benson

            People just fire up their browser

            This is exactly my point - me and you are around the same age - do you not remember what the internet used to be like before browsers existed? People with the old 14k modems hooking up to text pages and bulletin boards? Back then the internet was a nerd’s pursuit that was going to die in a ditch. It was oh so stupid and pointless wasn’t it? And then, bang, browsers came out which led to mass adoption and changed our way of life. Is it so impossible to actually conceive that something similar could happen with blockchain tech that leads to mass adoption?

            It took me 10 mins to register with coinbase and buy an Etherium coin a month ago (which has since just under doubled in value) I’ve no idea what you’re trying to say with all the cloak and dagger stuff in your second paragraph.

              LT42 Coinbase did an IPO on the NYSE recently and was selling at $350 a share. Etherium is in the top 20 companies in the world based on market cap. They are very much businesses and not “businesses” imo.

              • LT42 replied to this.

                Wally I’m talking about the darkweb “businesses”, Wal, I’m sure that’s what Benson is on about.

                  LT42 Right, well if you’re gonna do dodgy things, expect dodgy things to happen I guess? Don’t see how that relates to bit coin investing per se’. I seem to have went off on a slant here.

                  FWIW Benson, Bitcoin is anonymous - that’s why it was used with the Silk Road and such like. You can scan the ledger but all you’re gonna get is 256 bit hash values out of it. It’s fairly easy to cover your tracks I’d imagine unless you’re a complete moron.

                  • LT42 replied to this.

                    Wally FWIW Benson, Bitcoin is anonymous - that’s why it was used with the Silk Road and such like. You can scan the ledger but all you’re gonna get is 256 bit hash values out of it. It’s fairly easy to cover your tracks I’d imagine unless you’re a complete moron.

                    hence the reason you can get high grade “products and services” on there without the fuzz kicking in your door.

                    The ethereum stuff looks interesting. Can I buy a bit of a coin or how does it work, Wal?

                      LT42 Yeah you can buy whatever percentage of coin you want - I had something like 0.00004 of a bit coin for a bit.

                      Handy tip:

                      Install Coinbase, get set up with ID and all that.

                      Install ‘Coinbase Pro’ - it’s the same company so the same account with work and you can transfer between the two instantly.

                      Deposit your cash and buy your coins through Coinbase Pro to get much cheaper trading fees.

                      Coinbase is the noob version and it takes a large fee chuck out of your arse. The pro version looks like shit but is cheaper so buy through there and just watch the charts through the base version.

                      🙂

                      • LT42 replied to this.

                        Only downside to Coinbase is that it’s quite restrictive on which coins trade on there. Things like Dogecoin aren’t on there for example. I think it’s because it’s trying to build up a serious rep and doesn’t want people crashing and burning with meme shitcoins. But if you go with the major players, it’s fine.

                        I use Binance for anything I can’t find on Coinbase.

                        Currently looking into coin staking. Give your coins to a third party, get yearly interest way higher than a bank. Places like BlockFi and Celsius. Not taken the plunge yet though.

                        FWIW, Before I jumped in, I read ‘Cyptoassets’ by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar.

                        On reddit, I’ve been reading ethtrader, ethfinance and etherium sub reddits. They are pretty helpful and friendly places.

                        Wally

                        Wally Back then the internet was a nerd’s pursuit that was going to die in a ditch. It was oh so stupid and pointless wasn’t it? And then, bang, browsers came out which led to mass adoption and changed our way of life. Is it so impossible to actually conceive that something similar could happen with blockchain tech that leads to mass adoption?

                        Blockchain/crypto currencies are further up the technology stack, which is underpinned by the internet. The internet is more equivalent to the industrial revolution in terms of impact. The two aren’t really comparable.

                        The only comparable I see is the dot com bubble.

                          mono-stereo That’s fair I guess. I still don’t think people writing it off as just digital money are giving it a fair analysis though.

                          Well there we agree - there are hundreds of new coins promising all sorts of shit at the moment. The next stage is for 80% of them to die and for it to coalesce around a couple of big players to develop standardisation. I would say Etherium, being the first and major player in programmable blockchains (something bitcoin can’t do) will be one of the ones left standing after that phase.

                          Wally Sound, Wal. I’ll do some research later. 33k for an Ethereum coin right now but I could defo start with something smaller if it came to it.

                            mono-stereo Google Bitcoin lightning network.

                            Personally there are better projects out there which can smoke Visa and Mastercard for TPS (TXs per sec), hence why they are scrambling to get in on the act.