Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[Edwin]

Added: somebody else clearly thinks it’s an idea with legs (though they reference cheap solar not negative cost electricity from overcapacity) - found this after posting the above...
https://www.envion.org/en/

It would be interesting as a thought experiment to try and determine what would be cheaper: an environment where power is cheap but cooling is hard (desert solar) vs one where power is more expensive but cooling easier (arctic location).

Another way to go might be to find a solar farm spot beside a big river, waterproof the entire mining rig, and cool it for free by immersing it.

 

[websaway]

Added: somebody else clearly thinks it’s an idea with legs (though they reference cheap solar not negative cost electricity from overcapacity) - found this after posting the above...
https://www.envion.org/en/

It would be interesting as a thought experiment to try and determine what would be cheaper: an environment where power is cheap but cooling is hard (desert solar) vs one where power is more expensive but cooling easier (arctic location).

Another way to go might be to find a solar farm spot beside a big river, waterproof the entire mining rig, and cool it for free by immersing it.

You seem to have a great capacity for thought. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

 

[Edwin]

And here is the other part of the puzzle. Microsoft did testing of sea-immersed server containers.
https://arstechnica.com/information...ooling-its-datacenters-throw-them-in-the-sea/

Could be a cheap way for countries to get large scale solar installations cheap: lease them for a while to roving bands of crypto miners, who share the spoils (just like physical gold miners do with the land owners) to dramatically shorten the capital investment repayment period.

 

[Skinner]

Where is good to buy ETH now ? Coinbase are having issue with barclays payments, so the current correction/dip is passing me by :/

I've been stuck in CFD land for too long, not sure who is decent.

 

[ian]

Where is good to buy ETH now ? Coinbase are having issue with barclays payments, so the current correction/dip is passing me by :/

I've been stuck in CFD land for too long, not sure who is decent.

To be honest, you are limited on where you can buy from when trying to convert from GBP/USD. Coinbase is the go to exchange, albeit not one experienced players use.

Sure I can help if anyone is looking to make a purchase, for a fee of course

 

[bonusmedia]

You seem to have a great capacity for thought. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

I'm sure that will cut deep, coming from our resident Express reader

 

[bonusmedia]

This ripple/XRP is interesting - the use case makes a lot more sense

 

[ausername]

I'm sure that will cut deep, coming from our resident Express reader

This is sort of off-topic, but also on-topic when looking at the thread title.... congrats / kudos for having the foresight so early on to reg the bitcoin domains. I had a cheeky look for .uk domains to reg (legally, where .co.uk domain holder didn't have rights), used sedo for inspiration + whois to double check rights. You've got a couple of cracking domains there.

(Unless you didn't reg them in 2011, but rather bought them later on and I'm just a spaz when it comes to interpreting uk whois).

 

[bonusmedia]

This is sort of off-topic, but also on-topic when looking at the thread title.... congrats / kudos for having the foresight so early on to reg the bitcoin domains. I had a cheeky look for .uk domains to reg (legally, where .co.uk domain holder didn't have rights), used sedo for inspiration + whois to double check rights. You've got a couple of cracking domains there.

(Unless you didn't reg them in 2011, but rather bought them later on and I'm just a spaz when it comes to interpreting uk whois).

Mine are all 2013. Didn't buy any sodding bitcoin though

 

[ausername]

Bitcoin domains the next best thing.

At least you didn't sell 100 Litecoin for $5 each.... like me.... and then spend $900 on a single bitcoin, which you then panicked and sold at $450... like me. That's my crypto record so far, and the reason I'm reluctant to have another go. Probably just not cut out for high risk investments, will stick to banging money in my stakeholder pension for circa-6% annual returns

 

[ausername]

Never realised before that I actually lost more money selling Litecoin that I did by selling Bitcoin, after having held them at around the same time.

People talking about the Bitcoin ROI.... those Litecoin would have been worth $32,125 today, the Bitcoin $15.625.

And the BTC cost me $900....

$900 worth of Litecoin at $5 would be worth $57,825

So Bitcoin isn't even where my regret should lie, Litecoin is my missed opportunity. Now makes me wonder whether there are similar growth opps in other alt coins.

I like the premise of Ripple but there are 39 billion of them.

 

[mat]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, you can apply it to anything, we would all be multi millionaires/billionaires now. If only I bought all the keyword domain names on my parents credit card when I was 12. Why did I not buy some Fever Tree shares last year??? Don't beat yourself up over it.

Also if it is winding you up this much, just stay out of it completely, there is a good chance you could make things even worse for yourself!

 

[newguy]

Yes is the answer

 

[ausername]

Mat I'm very philosophical about my rubbish crypto trades, I didn't lose much.

The bit that beats me up is not being able to make a decision as to whether to buy some crypto now!

You are right though, not my game.

 

[bonusmedia]

This is a cracker: https://www.theguardian.com/technol...n-long-island-iced-tea-corp-shares-blockchain

Company that makes Long Island Iced Tea changes their name to include 'blockchain' suggests they will pivot from Iced Tea to cryptocurrency, shares go up 400% overnight - despite said company having no actual blockchain business.

It's 1999 all over again.

 

[Edwin]

This is a cracker: https://www.theguardian.com/technol...n-long-island-iced-tea-corp-shares-blockchain

Company that makes Long Island Iced Tea changes their name to include 'blockchain' suggests they will pivot from Iced Tea to cryptocurrency, shares go up 400% overnight - despite said company having no actual blockchain business.

It's 1999 all over again.

Absolutely. In hindsight, the first dot-com boom/crash was hilarious (not so much fun when on the inside and watching a business fail by the hour, but...) - there were companies that had nothing to do with the Web adding ".com" to their name or coming up with some totally tangential way to claim they were doing something related to "online" and boom, that was the signal for their stock price to double overnight!

The crash itself was pretty breakneck too. Took a few months to play out (and the ripples went on for years), but the industry really died in the space of about 72 hours or so. All the flaky companies got flushed away just like that, either sold for pennies on the dollar or shuttered overnight.

There was a site that became the bible for anyone wanting to keep track of the carnage: F'd Company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070819043115/http://www.fuckedcompany.com:80/index.html

If you dig back through the entries, you'll see that at the absolute trough of despair moment there were literally dozens of companies a day going bust.

The related book was a good read (probably still is) - crudely satirical, but deadly accurate when it came to skewering the flaws in the failed business models.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0743228626/?tag=acorn06-21

(Come to think of it, amidst the dross, there were probably some "real" ideas that have either become successes since or which could still be revived - but they were simply far too "ahead of their time" back then)

 

[bonusmedia]

BTC seems to be in freefall now...

 

[Edwin]

I wonder if today is "the day"?

Down nearly 25% in the last 24 hours, and down 12% in the last 3... Some major trades too, over US$500,000 value each.

Some of the futures traders are going to get slaughtered, especially if they're leveraged to any significant extent. If there are enough "sob stories" in the papers, I guess it's theoretically possible the various futures/options will be withdrawn from sale (new ones, I mean - I can't imagine the existing ones would somehow be clawed back).

 

[Edwin]

A ton more companies pretending to be crypto-related...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-cigs-no-past-too-weird-for-new-crypto-firms

 

[bonusmedia]

Genuinely very sorry for anyone who's bought in recently. As with any crash there are going to be those who've taken on too much risk and lives will be turned upside down.

Slightly less sympathy for pro futures traders...