[Fastskiguy]

Originally Posted by rsibole

Reading a history of Bitcoin, when Bitcoin started out there wasn’t really a price for it since no one was willing to buy it. The first time Bitcoin actually gained value was on October 12, 2009 when Martti Malmi, a Finnish developer that helped Satoshi work on Bitcoin, sold 5050 Bitcoins for $5.02. This gave 1 Bitcoin the value of $0.0009.

Reading further, the first transaction using it in the USA was a pizza shop accepted 9-Bitcoin in exchange for a large cheese pizza. At today’s “value”, a single Bitcoin is “worth” a little over $16,000 USD, down from its all time high of $67,567 on November 8th, 2021.

In other important financial news and just in time for Christmas, the Golden Gate Bridge is once again for sale after recently being purchased by a resident in The Villages for $99.95.

$0.009 to somewhere around $16,000 per since 2009 is a pretty good return. Obviously there has been some volatility between then and now but still.

Joe

[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by Larchap49

Crypto did not crash. One exchange crashed. Similar to one crooked stock brokerage stealing investors money and crashing.

Hmmm, Bitcoin is down 68.5% year to date. If that’s not a crash, explain what is? Some of the Crypto exchanges both crashed, and burned.

[Joe C.]

Hey, remember the Star Registry? You sent them money, and a particular star somewhere up there would be named after you. Really?
Crypto currency has about as much solid backing as that.

[FormerHeadhunter]

How Crypto Currency works… an analogy in layman’s terms.
Not long ago a merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain Village. One day he came to the Village saying he wanted to buy these monkeys. He announced that he would buy the monkeys at $100 each.
The Villagers thought that this man must be crazy. How can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?
Still some People caught some monkeys and gave it to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey.
This news spread like wildfire and People caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.
After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys at $200 each.
The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys. They sold the remaining monkeys at $200 each.
The merchant then announced that he will buy monkeys for $500 each.
The villagers start to lose sleep. They caught six or seven monkeys which was all that was left and got $500 each.
The Villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.
Then the merchant announced that he is going on holiday for a week, but when he returns, he will buy monkeys at $1000 each! He also said that his employee will be in charge, and would take care of the monkeys he bought pending his return.
The Merchant went on holiday.
The Villagers were frantic and very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell at $1000 each as was promised by the Merchant.
Then the Merchant’s Employee contacted them and told them that he would secretly sell them some monkeys at $700 each.
The news spread like wildfire. As the Merchant promised on his return that he would buy monkeys at $1000 each, they would achieve a $300 profit for each monkey. The next day the Villagers queued up near the Monkey Cage.
The Employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each. The rich bought monkeys in large lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and bought the rest of the monkeys.
The Villagers took care of their monkeys and waited for the Merchant to return. However nobody came! Then they ran to find the Employee. However he was not to be found.
The Villagers then realized that they have been duped buying the useless stray monkeys at $700 each, and were now unable to sell them.
This Monkey Business is now known as Bitcoin!

[OhioBuckeye]

I’ll stay with our good ole U. S. Currency!

[PJackpot]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

The first time I heard about cryptocurrency, I decided that I would never invest any money in it. It had "SCAM" written all over it. I have no sympathy for those who recently lost their money investing in it and being scammed. And, I don't care whether or not Sam Bankman-Fried is ever arrested and prosecuted. I only invest in things that I fully understand and that clearly have the potential to add value to the overall economy.

Once I read Warren Buffett said "he wouldn't purchase all of the Bitcoin in the world for just $25 if he had the opportunity"....that was enough for me to stay far away.

[sowtime444]

Sure there are a lot of scams in cryptocurrency. But saying they all have zero value is also like saying the SWIFT network has zero value, the Moneygram network has zero value, the computer networks that keep track of stock market trades and execute them in the right order have zero value, and the spreadsheet software on google docs has zero value.

[Scorpyo]

Originally Posted by rsibole

Reading a history of Bitcoin, when Bitcoin started out there wasn’t really a price for it since no one was willing to buy it. The first time Bitcoin actually gained value was on October 12, 2009 when Martti Malmi, a Finnish developer that helped Satoshi work on Bitcoin, sold 5050 Bitcoins for $5.02. This gave 1 Bitcoin the value of $0.0009.

Reading further, the first transaction using it in the USA was a pizza shop accepted 9-Bitcoin in exchange for a large cheese pizza. At today’s “value”, a single Bitcoin is “worth” a little over $16,000 USD, down from its all time high of $67,567 on November 8th, 2021.

In other important financial news and just in time for Christmas, the Golden Gate Bridge is once again for sale after recently being purchased by a resident in The Villages for $99.95.

Say what? Who bought my bridge? I didn't sell it!

[ithos]

The Bitcoin maximalists hate the exchanges and all other crypto. They have to since the only way they can rationalize it as a store of value is that it can not be replicated. But of course it can because it is a virtual asset. There is no law or force of nature to prevent it unless you can convince all of mankind to think like you do.

But if you are a true believer then know that they are advocating keeping it on a cold wallet. So what does that entail?

Per CNBC

1. Plug your cold storage device into your computer.

2. Download the software provided with your cold storage wallet.

3. You’ll be given a seed phrase or backup code.

4. To access your device, you’ll have to set up a pin. Once you have a pin, you’ll be able to add your crypto to your cold storage wallet by clicking receive, which will show you your cold storage wallet’s address.

5. Keep your cold storage somewhere safe and remember, if you lose it along with your seed phrase, your money can’t be recovered.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by JMintzer

You "fully understand" the Stock Market?

If so, you're the only one!

The stock market details and ups and downs can NOT be predicted / "understood" in the short term. An investor can NOT pick an Individual stock and invest ALL their money because they got some TIP from a TV financial show or a friend who knows someone high up in some company or industry. That amounts to gambling, not investing. People get TIPS on long-shot stocks and act on them. That is a good way to lose hard-earned money.

There is a way (a method) to use the market to accumulate wealth over TIME. You MUST have 20 or 30 years of TIME. Which most seniors do NOT have.......but their GRANDCHILDREN do! The reason having TIME works so well is because the US stock market and that of most western countries have a graph that (OVER TIME) goes from lower left to upper right. Barring a nuclear holocaust over TIME the market ONLY goes IP
........to be continued

[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by Mrfriendly

Take a $100 bill out of your wallet, look at it and say, “wow I just lost 8% of my money to inflation in only one year.”
If you don’t invest then you just lost money

Look at the value of you bitcoin holdings on January 1, 2022, then look again this morning, look at it and say, "wow i just lost 68.5% of my money before I even consider that I lost another 8% on top of that to inflation in less than one year." If you simply put your money in a money market account you would now be earning close to 4% and you wouldn't have lost 68.5% of your initial investment.

[Fastskiguy]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

The stock market details and ups and downs can NOT be predicted / "understood" in the short term. An investor can NOT pick an Individual stock and invest ALL their money because they got some TIP from a TV financial show or a friend who knows someone high up in some company or industry. That amounts to gambling, not investing. People get TIPS on long-shot stocks and act on them. That is a good way to lose hard-earned money.

There is a way (a method) to use the market to accumulate wealth over TIME. You MUST have 20 or 30 years of TIME. Which most seniors do NOT have.......but their GRANDCHILDREN do! The reason having TIME works so well is because the US stock market and that of most western countries have a graph that (OVER TIME) goes from lower left to upper right. Barring a nuclear holocaust over TIME the market ONLY goes IP
........to be continued

Looking forward to part 2!

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

The stock market details and ups and downs can NOT be predicted / "understood" in the short term. An investor can NOT pick an Individual stock and invest ALL their money because they got some TIP from a TV financial show or a friend who knows someone high up in some company or industry. That amounts to gambling, not investing. People get TIPS on long-shot stocks and act on them. That is a good way to lose hard-earned money.

There is a way (a method) to use the market to accumulate wealth over TIME. You MUST have 20 or 30 years of TIME. Which most seniors do NOT have.......but their GRANDCHILDREN do! The reason having TIME works so well is because the US stock market and that of most western countries have a graph that (OVER TIME) goes from lower left to upper right. Barring a nuclear holocaust over TIME the market ONLY goes IP
........to be continued

So, here is how it works. You get your 20-year-old grandchild to start investing because they have the KEY ingredient in a method to use the stock market to build wealth. It can be called the Warren Buffet method or some call it "buy and hold". To use this method you need time (20 or 30 years) and patience and investible funds. Then, what you CAN'T do is pick only one stock to buy and hold for 20 years. Won't work - the chance of loss is too great. You can't even buy 10 stocks - the chance of loss is still too great. You must buy ALL the stocks in the market, actually MOST all.

So how the He__ do you buy most of the US stock market? Before 1993 you could NOT. Then Electronic Traded Funds ETFs were created to mimic the S+P 500, which was basically the WHOLE US stock market.......available for purchase at a low overhead cost to investors big or small. There are several call letters for different companies that cover the S+P - (SPY), (VOO), and (IVV).............. (google those)
........You can't beat the market, but you can buy the market and go with it............upward.........over time

[Worldseries27]

Originally Posted by formerheadhunter

how crypto currency works… an analogy in layman’s terms.
Not long ago a merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain village. One day he came to the village saying he wanted to buy these monkeys. He announced that he would buy the monkeys at $100 each.
The villagers thought that this man must be crazy. How can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?
Still some people caught some monkeys and gave it to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey.
This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.
After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys at $200 each.
The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys. They sold the remaining monkeys at $200 each.
The merchant then announced that he will buy monkeys for $500 each.
The villagers start to lose sleep. They caught six or seven monkeys which was all that was left and got $500 each.
The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.
Then the merchant announced that he is going on holiday for a week, but when he returns, he will buy monkeys at $1000 each! He also said that his employee will be in charge, and would take care of the monkeys he bought pending his return.
The merchant went on holiday.
The villagers were frantic and very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell at $1000 each as was promised by the merchant.
Then the merchant’s employee contacted them and told them that he would secretly sell them some monkeys at $700 each.
The news spread like wildfire. As the merchant promised on his return that he would buy monkeys at $1000 each, they would achieve a $300 profit for each monkey. The next day the villagers queued up near the monkey cage.
The employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each. The rich bought monkeys in large lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and bought the rest of the monkeys.
The villagers took care of their monkeys and waited for the merchant to return. However nobody came! Then they ran to find the employee. However he was not to be found.
The villagers then realized that they have been duped buying the useless stray monkeys at $700 each, and were now unable to sell them.
This monkey business is now known as bitcoin!

found a couple of branches

[jedalton]

Same here