Bitcoin is still early

[ShredtheGnar]

For BTC to become widely adopted as a currency, it will have to stabilize in value. The fact that it is decentralized and not controlled by a central bank means that it can be valued by the open, free market? Seems like the “whales” can influence the valuation to a large degree based on Elon tweets. Current massive fluctuations can be attributed to “price discovery”? Trying to grasp how this becomes useful in commerce over the long haul. If you are a business, would you want to accept BTC as payment when it’s value is all over the place?

[jacoavlu]

For BTC to become widely adopted as a currency, it will have to stabilize in value. The fact that it is decentralized and not controlled by a central bank means that it can be valued by the open, free market? Seems like the “whales” can influence the valuation to a large degree based on Elon tweets. Current massive fluctuations can be attributed to “price discovery”? Trying to grasp how this becomes useful in commerce over the long haul. If you are a business, would you want to accept BTC as payment when it’s value is all over the place?

with a known issuance schedule and a generally expected future rise in price in usd terms (don’t @ me) bitcoin is effectively deflationary and yes holders are generally reluctant to spend a deflationary currency especially if they’re also holding an inflating currency. And so yes it may well be true that until those factors diminish bitcoin will probably not gain widespread adoption in the US as a medium of exchange - this is a point been made by elon and also mark cuban and the hopium folks don’t like it but there’s some truth in it

but also have to recognize the whole world isn’t dollarized, if you’re in turkey or venezuela or Nigeria there comes a point where inflation is so bad, goods are repriced daily, gov tries to enforce price controls, people don’t want to hold the native currency at all and bitcoin penetration in these places tends to be higher than US. stablecoins like tether are also used.

also noted a merchant can generally accept bitcoin and immediately convert to usd within the payment processor if they don’t want to hold btc, be exposed to the price volatility or deal with the security aspects

[nycEMMD]

For BTC to become widely adopted as a currency, it will have to stabilize in value. The fact that it is decentralized and not controlled by a central bank means that it can be valued by the open, free market? Seems like the “whales” can influence the valuation to a large degree based on Elon tweets. Current massive fluctuations can be attributed to “price discovery”? Trying to grasp how this becomes useful in commerce over the long haul. If you are a business, would you want to accept BTC as payment when it’s value is all over the place?

You're confusing the Bitcoin network with bitcoin the cryptocurrency. bitcoin the cryptocurrency still has some way to go to establish stability in price. We've already seen more progress in the past year as large institutions started buying, publicly traded companies started adding it to their balance sheets. We're not seeing as much volatility as we did during previous cycles with the big boys selling on small spikes and buying during small drops. I think we will keep seeing more and more stability as the value of the coin continues to appreciate and more and more large institutions start entering the space

The Bitcoin network itself is being used today to facility transactions, especially cross-boarder transactions with near instant settlement and finality. The bitcoin network has more use today because it can be used as a part of the current existing financial system to speed transactions and reduce fees. As a business, you can keep pricing your good in $$$ but use to Bitcoin network to settle transactions. I can come into your business, pay you using the Strike app with my BTC and you can choose to receive this payment in USD. I can even pay you in USD, that gets converted to BTC, transmitted across the network for a fraction of the fees you would normally pay if you accepted credit cards, while you receive the BTC and it gets converted instantly back to USD. I sent USD and you received USD but use the Bitcoin network in order to facilitate this.

[abds]

Asking for a friend (seriously). Instead of reading 153 pages or starting a new thread I figured I'd get a good response here... What's the best site to buy crypto; lowest fees, easy to use, can just keep on the account at that exchange vs portability to a cold wallet (if that's the right term)? Thanks in advance.

[jacoavlu]

Asking for a friend (seriously). Instead of reading 153 pages or starting a new thread I figured I'd get a good response here... What's the best site to buy crypto; lowest fees, easy to use, can just keep on the account at that exchange vs portability to a cold wallet (if that's the right term)? Thanks in advance.

I point people to strike bc they don’t sell shitcoins. That’s just me.

if it’s a reasonable amount ($5k maybe) I would never advocate leaving it on an exchange

[CordMcNally]

Asking for a friend (seriously). Instead of reading 153 pages or starting a new thread I figured I'd get a good response here... What's the best site to buy crypto; lowest fees, easy to use, can just keep on the account at that exchange vs portability to a cold wallet (if that's the right term)? Thanks in advance.

I use Coinbase Pro. It was the one I was most familiar with when I first started so I've just kept with it.

[Nysoz]

Yeah I used Coinbase Pro to buy then transfer to Voyager to earn interest. Not the safest as it's online and not truly in my possession, but it does something while I don't watch it lol.

[nycEMMD]

Asking for a friend (seriously). Instead of reading 153 pages or starting a new thread I figured I'd get a good response here... What's the best site to buy crypto; lowest fees, easy to use, can just keep on the account at that exchange vs portability to a cold wallet (if that's the right term)? Thanks in advance.

Like jaco said, if you only want to buy BTC, you can't beat Strike. They are the cheapest and you are also supporting a group of people that are doing good in the Bitcoin community, true role models. The only downside is that you can only buy BTC, no other coins or tokens

If you want to buy other coins and tokens, you'll have to use a centralized exchange. Options include coinbase/coinbase pro, gemini, binance.us, kucoin, crypto.com etc

I can vouch for 3 that I actually have used myself:

Coinbase pro: highest transactions fees out of the 3 but cheapest to withdraw coins off the platform
Binance.us: cheapest transactions fess out of the 3 but most expensive to withdraw coins off the platform
Gemini: Somewhat in between

They're all pretty easy to use. If you've used a brokerage app before like Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood (lol) and especially if you manage to use the Vanguard app, you will find the apps above very easy to use

I'll have to echo what everyone else said above, the most important thing is to take your coins off of the exchanges. While your tokens are on the exchanges, you do not own the private keys to your coins, the exchange does. Just like the money in your bank's checking account is not truly yours (if the govt goes to your bank and tells them to freeze your account, you better believe the bank is going to freeze your account) the crypto that you keep on the exchange is not truly yours either. When you withdraw your coins to a private wallet, whether it's a software wallet, hardware wallet or paper wallet, you are taking custody of your coins. Highly recommended you do that

If you do decided to leave your coins on exchanges, please at least do the following things in order to secure your coins as much as you can:
1: strong password, use a password manager
2. 2FA, hopefully not your phone number but as long as you have a PIN with your service carrier you might be ok with the phone
3. most important: whitelist addresses. You can activate this feature on any of the exchanges I listed above. If you don't do anything else for security, please at least do this one. You can have your password be 12345 and not have 2FA as long as you turn on Whitelisted addresses. What that does is it doesn't allow anyone to withdraw any crypto from your account without first whitelisting an address. In order to add an address to the approved address list, they have to add it and then wait 2-7 days for it to be approved. During that time, you will receive multiple emails detailing that a new address was added to your whitelist, giving you plenty of time to stop them from doing that

Wallets:
There's a few different types of wallets but the 2 you'll probably hear the most about are software (hot) wallets and hardware (cold) wallets.

Software wallets can be installed on your phone or computer. Think about coinbase wallet, trust wallet, electrum, exodus etc. The private keys are stored on that device and since the device is permanently connected to the internet, a hacker could theoretically access your private keys

Hardware wallets are small devices that look like thumb drives or key chains. Your private keys are stored on these devices. Since these devices are not connected to the internet at all times, your private keys are generally much safer there

The level of safety that you get is as follows: hardware wallets >>> software wallets >>> exchanges

I would say, If you only have a few hundred $, you can keep it on an exchange. Once you hit 1-2k, take self custody and move it to a software or hardware wallet. If you are planning of owning 10k or more, I would seriously look into getting a hardware wallet

[ShredtheGnar]

Anyone think that US regulatory actions might put a damper on the fun? If they can somehow deem it as securities there might be some issues. Looks like stablecoin will get regulated to some degree, but that looks more like protection for the consumer. Might kill some of the current high yields though. Anyone have a crystal ball?

[xraygoggles]

Asking for a friend (seriously). Instead of reading 153 pages or starting a new thread I figured I'd get a good response here... What's the best site to buy crypto; lowest fees, easy to use, can just keep on the account at that exchange vs portability to a cold wallet (if that's the right term)? Thanks in advance.

Coinbase Pro or Gemini. Both have solid platforms, low fees, and many coins to choose from. Both have apps, both use 2FA etc.

[nycEMMD]

Anyone think that US regulatory actions might put a damper on the fun? If they can somehow deem it as securities there might be some issues. Looks like stablecoin will get regulated to some degree, but that looks more like protection for the consumer. Might kill some of the current high yields though. Anyone have a crystal ball?

A few thoughts on this:

Gary Gensler has said he considers BTC and the rest of cryptocurrencies to be completely different entities. If any regulation is coming from the way of the SEC, it will likely not be directed towards BTC

Regulation is not a bad thing. It gives legitimacy to crypto in general. Right now it's the wild west. Cars didn't take off until the govt started regulating car manufacturers, ensuring certain standards were maintained. If you think more regulation will cause the price of BTC to plummet, I don't think you understand what makes BTC valuable.

High yields on stablecoins right now are mostly because people are willing to borrow those stablecoins for a higher interest rate in order to gamble. The yields will go down once the bull market ends

[jacoavlu]

Anyone think that US regulatory actions might put a damper on the fun? If they can somehow deem it as securities there might be some issues. Looks like stablecoin will get regulated to some degree, but that looks more like protection for the consumer. Might kill some of the current high yields though. Anyone have a crystal ball?

it’s pretty clear bitcoin is not a security and gensler has said this. It started from zero, there was no premine or presale, it is decentralized and new coins only come from proof of work mining

eth was almost certainly a security at initial offering though one might make an argument that it has morphed into something not a security today. So eth is in this weird gray area

pretty much everything else is almost certainly a security using the howey test (or just outright scam) but the sec is being pretty careful, it will be interesting to see how the case against ripple turns out. There is a nonzero chance sec loses the case. But they have to take a balanced approach so as not to harm consumers and put US in a disadvantaged position with regard to the innovation in general. We are not better off with heavy handed over regulation

but I’m not sure it matters one way or the other for folks like us. It’s not as if people buying eth or xrp or doge or cumrocket or whatever are going to jail if and when any get declared a security or not or if another agency is spun up to separately regulate “crypto” - there is already guidance on how people are to treat this stuff on their taxes

I think one important point is that you’re unlikely to see public traded companies really invest in anything other than bitcoin until there is more clarity bc they are going to be very reluctant to invest in something that could lose value and could be declared at some point to have been an unregistered security

[xraygoggles]

it’s pretty clear bitcoin is not a security and gensler has said this. It started from zero, there was no premine or presale, it is decentralized and new coins only come from proof of work mining

eth was almost certainly a security at initial offering though one might make an argument that it has morphed into something not a security today. So eth is in this weird gray area

pretty much everything else is almost certainly a security using the howey test (or just outright scam) but the sec is being pretty careful, it will be interesting to see how the case against ripple turns out. There is a nonzero chance sec loses the case. But they have to take a balanced approach so as not to harm consumers and put US in a disadvantaged position with regard to the innovation in general. We are not better off with heavy handed over regulation

but I’m not sure it matters one way or the other for folks like us. It’s not as if people buying eth or xrp or doge or cumrocket or whatever are going to jail if and when any get declared a security or not or if another agency is spun up to separately regulate “crypto” - there is already guidance on how people are to treat this stuff on their taxes

I think one important point is that you’re unlikely to see public traded companies really invest in anything other than bitcoin until there is more clarity bc they are going to be very reluctant to invest in something that could lose value and could be declared at some point to have been an unregistered security

bitcoin is also unlikely to be adopted by normal companies (discounting cultist weirdos like Saylor), because of accounting difficulties. If it goes down in value, it must be counted as loss, but if it goes up, you cannot add the gains to your balance sheet. Weird and unfair rule, but that's the way it is rn.

[jacoavlu]

bitcoin is also unlikely to be adopted by normal companies (discounting cultist weirdos like Saylor), because of accounting difficulties. If it goes down in value, it must be counted as loss, but if it goes up, you cannot add the gains to your balance sheet. Weird and unfair rule, but that's the way it is rn.

agree, I’m not among the “institutions are coming” camp - since MSTR and Tesla, which was almost a year ago, there’s been almost nothing

yeah the GAAP rules don’t make much sense and this applies to equities as well. Buffett talked about this at some length in his shareholder letter last year or the year before.

[xraygoggles]

Some thoughts on price action:

- BTC hit local bottom during covid crash (3/2020), then QE ramped out shortly thereafter (brrrrr meme)
- CPI spiked in Nov (11/2021), along with start of QE taper & announcement of multiple rate hikes in 2022.
- Coincidentally, BTC price topped out at 69k in Nov.
- Since then (as of 1/5/2022), BTC down 38%.

The conclusion I draw from this is twofold: it is a horrible inflation hedge, and it simply follows high beta speculative stocks when easy money exists.