BIT COIN (S)

[evertony]

Have we argued? I thought we were just discussing our observations?!

Anyway, I value everyone's input, will I take the gamble?I do not know, will read up on it for a while (when I get time) and take it from their.

Any more indecisiveness and you'll miss the boat completely.....you said you're a gambling man and have surplus cash to invest in this level of risk....get it bought man. Better still invent your own faux-currency and be in right at the beginning - there'll be plenty of mugs lining up to donate their hard-earned.

 

[evertony]

I have just under 50 quids worth in my electrum wallet after the dea shut hansa down it is now pointless currency to me and probably millions of others

it is a currency used properly it leaves no paper trail but it is very limited to where it can be used
don't invest in it !!

Sell it to @bol-uk for abar £3000.00....he'll snap your hands off

 

[abelard]

might be paywalled, but anyone actually interested in this should read the Financial Times ongoing series (the ICOmedy Series) on crypto-currencies:

The ICOMedy Series

1. What does a crypto startup do with $230m?
2. From dot.comedy to ICOmedy…
3. In the crypto world, you can get something for nothing
4. ICOs and the money markets
5. ICOs now take Visa (plus other ingenious solicitation temptations!)
6. Meet Daniel Harrison, the man behind magic money machine Monkey Capital…
7. Introducing Alphachain, the Alphaville initial coin offering
8. In ICO utopia, there is no division of labour
9. Three reasons we believe Alphachain is exempt from SEC regulation
10. Cryptocurrency exchanges could be subject to SEC regulation, too
11. From max to minimum optionality with Dentacoin
12. The best Risk Factors are Crypto Risk Factors
13. Evolution
14. Of crypto-Apples and other fantastical fruit…
15. What is crypto’s agenda really?
16. When crypto portfolios go mainstream
17. Crypto-bailouts for struggling startups
18. So this is what watching a bubble feels like…
19. Don’t be fooled, the authorities are coming after ICOs
20. Westworld, cryptocurrency, and the gamification of women
21. Dubai or bust for Baroness Bitcoin

This one seems like as good a harbinger as any about what much of this is and where it's going...

Most of the fundraising in the crypto space goes like this:

1. Guy writes a whitepaper extolling the virtues of his latest blockchain project;
2. People give him money in the form of cryptocurrencies to develop the project.

For some bizarre reason, people sometimes hand over tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency for the development of a bit of software. At its simplest the whole frenzy of “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) is an exercise in project finance.

But not always!

Paris Hilton, the famed famous person, tweeted on Sunday that she planned to participate in the upcoming “Lydian Coin” ICO:

What is LydianCoin? Oh boy, you’re going to enjoy this.

LydianCoin is from a company called Gravity4, whose chairman and chief executive, Gurbaksh Chahal, pleaded guilty in 2014 to misdemeanour battery charges of domestic violence.

The digital advertising business claims to be “the world’s first A.I. big data marketing cloud” and is raising $100m (!!!) through the sale of Lydian “tokens” to finance the development of… well, nothing really:

100% of the proceeds raised by the sale of Lydian tokens will be held by LydianCoin Pte. (in fiat currency or cryptocurrency, as financial, security, and other considerations may demand) as reserves against the cost of services to be performed for Lydian token holders upon negotiation of the token back to Lydian.

If the whitepaper is to be believed, the whole idea here is that people will pay for Lydian tokens and use them to buy advertising campaigns from LydianCoin, which in turn licences its technology, products and services from Gravity4. The money won’t be used for anything. It will just sit there, covering the enormous balance sheet liability this ICO will create for LydianCoin.

We’ve often talked about how ICOs are like buying funfair tickets for a funfair that hasn’t been built yet. This is like buying tokens for rides at a funfair when you could just use your money to pay for the rides directly. All that’s really happening here is people are paying for services in advance of receiving them, like purchasing a giftcard.

The whitepaper acknowledges this odd turn, and has a section to explain why people should buy Lydian tokens when the services you receive are “otherwise available to be purchased in fiat currency”.

The answer is you get “exclusive access for a limited time” to stuff Gravity4 is developing for the future, “crypto-specific audience targeting”, and also that using Lydian tokens will:

…iteratively enhance the value of the Lydian tokens to consumers in the cryptocurrency space who want to focus their advertising and marketing messaging to those within the cryptocurrency space, and others who may be target consumers for crypto-industry services and products.

That sort of verbiage either suggests these guys are amazing or terrible marketers, we’re not quite sure.

The risk factors tell us LydianCoin may have to be wound down altogether if it’s unable to “establish the Lydian tokens’ utility”, which is a rather odd thing to include seeing as the explicit point of the tokens is to purchase services that already exist.

But there’s also a disclosure that Gravity4 “does not have significant experience” with blockchain projects, which is probably why Paris Hilton is promoting the scheme.

 

[evertony]

Fascinating stuff. Never really considered or understood crypto-currency.

Some great topics discussed in the Ale House....big thumbs-up to all concerned.

 

[abelard]

If I wasn't such a generous spirit, I'd be charging $500/hour to do people's Google searches for them

MORGAN STANLEY: 'Bitcoin acceptance is virtually zero and shrinking'
http://markets.businessinsider.com/...ut-retailers-wont-accept-it-7-2017-1002168071
http://markets.businessinsider.com/...ut-retailers-wont-accept-it-7-2017-1002168071
The price of bitcoin is up over 250% since last year, but acceptance of the cryptocurrency as a form of payment among top merchants has declined.

A research note out Wednesday by a group of analysts at Morgan Stanley led by James E Faucette said "bitcoin acceptance is virtually zero and shrinking," despite its impressive appreciation.

According to the bank, last year bitcoin was accepted at five of of the top 500 online merchants. Today, only three of the top 500 merchants accept bitcoin as a form of payment.

"The disparity between virtually no merchant acceptance and bitcoin’s rapid appreciation is striking," the analysts wrote.

The investment bank outlined three reasons for the decline in bitcoin acceptance among merchants.

The first reason has to do with the appreciation of bitcoin. Most owners of the cryptocurrency are unwilling to let go of their holdings to pay for goods because they expect the price of bitcoin to go up. This point underpins the bank's thesis that bitcoin mainly functions as an investment vehicle rather than fiat currency that you could spend on goods and services.

Issues with bitcoin's scalability, which has made transactions slow and expensive, is another reason the bank thinks merchants find bitcoin unappealing as a form of payment.

Finally, there has been a lack of pressure from the people who run the bitcoin infrastructure, according to the bank, to push merchants to accept bitcoin as a form of payment.

"The ecosystem has focused more on value speculation rather than the foot leather-eating work of increasing acceptance - way easier to trade speculatively than convince new merchants to accept the cryptocurrency," the bank said.

The bank notes that, while many merchants are uninterested in accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, many find the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency as a tech they could use to improve their infrastructure.

 

[degsy]

buy low sell high
looking at that graph it's too high.
Frankie says relax
degsy says swerve

 

[bol-uk]

buy low sell high
looking at that graph it's too high.
Frankie says relax
degsy says swerve

It could climb further you know

 

[abelard]

It could climb further you know

Your graph is more than four years old, and it comes from a bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, that imploded spectacularly after almost $500 million of bitcoin mysteriously disappeared. It has since filed for bankruptcy protection, it faces numerous lawsuits, and its CEO has been charged in Japan with fraud and embezzlement.

But as a careful investor who does his basic homework, you already knew all that... I hope

 

[bol-uk]

Your graph is more than four years old, and it comes from a bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, that imploded spectacularly after almost $500 million of bitcoin mysteriously disappeared. It has since filed for bankruptcy protection, it faces numerous lawsuits, and its CEO has been charged in Japan with fraud and embezzlement.

But as a careful investor who does his basic homework, you already knew all that... I hope

I refer you to the later, current graph posted which shows good growth.

 

[abelard]

I refer you to the later, current graph posted which shows good growth.

Good luck mate. No offence, but it seems like you should probably read a lot more first.

 

[mezzrow]

Paris Hilton, the famed famous person, tweeted on Sunday that she planned to participate in the upcoming “Lydian Coin” ICO:

She was told they would put her face on the coins?

If you invest in a major way in this mode of value, look out for the fourth step. It may go somewhere you find unfamiliar. [/musical humor]

 

[abelard]

She was told they would put her face on the coins?

If you invest in a major way in this mode of value, look out for the fourth step. It may go somewhere you find unfamiliar. [/musical humor]

You got me. the fourth step? *Googles*

As in, AA's fourth step? Take a moral inventory?

I would, but the profit margins are terrible ; )

 

[degsy]

It could climb further you know

look at the shape of the May/Jun 2011 graph and compare to now.
Then ask yourself the Dirty Harry question... do you feel lucky.

Knock yourself out if you do. Not my money.

 

[mezzrow]

You got me. the fourth step? *Googles*

As in, AA's fourth step? Take a moral inventory?

I would, but the profit margins are terrible ; )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode

 

[abelard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode

Ah, of course. Musical humour.

Looks like the ol' F# did for Croesus of Lydia too:

Death of son
According to legend, Croesus gave refuge at one point to the Phrygian prince Adrastus. Herodotus tells that Adrastus exiled himself to Lydia after accidentally killing his brother. Croesus later experienced a dream for which he took as prophecy in which Atys, his son and heir, would be killed by an iron spearhead. Taking precautions against this, Croesus kept his son from leading in military expeditions and fighting in any way. However, according to Herodotus, a wild boar began to ravage the neighboring province of Mysia, which soon begged Croesus to send a military expedition led by Atys to kill the boar. Croesus thought this would be safe for his son, as Atys wouldn't be fighting an enemy that could throw a spear. However, he sent Adrastus with Atys as a bodyguard in case they would be waylaid by bandits on the expedition. While fighting the boar, Adrastus accidentally hit Atys with his spear, killing him. Croesus absolved Adrastus for his son's death; however, Adrastus later committed suicide.

Campaign against Persia and testing of oracle
Croesus' uneasy relations with the Greeks obscures the larger fact that he was the last bastion of the Ionian cities against the increasing Persian power in Anatolia. He began preparing a campaign against Cyrus the Great of Persia.

Before setting out, he turned to the Delphic oracle and the oracle of Amphiaraus to inquire whether he should pursue this campaign and whether he should also seek an alliance. The oracles answered, with typical ambiguity, that if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire – this would become one of the most famous oracular statements from Delphi.

The oracles also advised Croesus to find out which Greek state was most powerful and to ally himself with it. Croesus, now feeling secure, formed an alliance with Sparta in addition to those he had with Amasis II of Egypt and Nabonidus of Babylonia, and launched his campaign against the Persian Empire in 547 BC. (The scholar Evans in 1978 examines the conflicting dates implied in Herodotus.) Croesus was intercepted near the Halys River in central Anatolia and an inconclusive battle was fought at Pteria. It was the usual practice in those days for the armies to disband for winter and Croesus did so accordingly. Cyrus did not, however, and he attacked and defeated Croesus in Thymbria and later in Sardis, eventually capturing him. It became clear that the powerful empire destroyed by the war was Croesus's own.