Cryptocurrency
 

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.

You "fully understand" the Stock Market?

If so, you're the only one! ;)

I agree with you except this Bankman guy and his "girlfriend" need serious jail time. You can't transfer money from one business to another especially this crypto baloney.

Ever since crypto crashed there has coincidentally been a large increase in the amount of lightly used Teslas available on the market. Read between the lines on that!

I feel the same way about people who lose money in the stock market, they should know better and that, IMHO, it’s a Ponzi scheme. No sympathy here.

Any jailtime for FTX's "Environmental & Social Initiatives Adviser"- Gisele Bundchen? FTX did not have a Board of Directors, but they had her.

Wow. No sympathy? It's unfortunate that there are some people who aren't as all knowing as you. Careful, falling off that high horse can be painful.

Greed
 

Cryptocurrency today something else tomorrow. The old saying "If something is too good to be true, then it's not true". Everyone wants to make money on their money, but there comes a point when the payoff defies reality. Cryptocurrency is just one in a long line of scams where people were enticed by their own greed, and it won't be the last.

I am wondering what you point is?

FTX Demise Effect On Crypto
 

FTXs demise had no affect on the price of Bitcoin or other crypto currencies. Those who held crypto in their "wallets" did not lose money because of the FTX scandal. Those who invested currency or crypto with FTX lost money.

I have no sympathy because I think the people who lost money were a victim of their own greed.

The no sympathy comments = no empathy. Not anyone I would want to know.

Spoke with my financial advisor several months ago about cryptocurrency and he said some people don't understand that it gets taxed like any other earnings. He said he had to thoroughly explain that to some holders because they thought otherwise.

And then there's OBJ who decided to take his NFL paycheck in cryptocurrency which then proceeded to drop and he lost a lot of money.

It’s a faith that requires endless suckers to pay a higher price. Just another version of Ponzi scheme. Remember the Tulips

Hmmm
 

Holding something in your "wallet" that is backed by nothing, is still worth nothing. If bitcoin failed today and went bankrupt, there aren't any assets to siez

Crypto
 

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

US currency is best bet
ar

I'm also wondering what your point is. It's an open forum called "investment talk" where people share opinions.

Thanks for the rant, by the way, that so called scam happens to not be and as well make me quite a nice tidy sum of profit. But for those that think everything is a scam or conspiracy.... have a nice one.... oops sorry I forgot

Good Afternoon!

For what? For a guaranteed loss due to inflation? Over the long term nothing is better than diversified equities and/or real estate.

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

I invest. But, when you buy stock in a company and make a profit, the company gets your invested money to grow the company and to sell more products. So, everyone benefits. I don't see the same comparison with money "invested" in cryptocurrency.

Bigger fool
 

When you buy crypto you buy a piece of paper hoping that a bigger fool comes along and pays you more for just a piece of paper. With stock you own a fractional piece of something.

Proving superiority

You can do whatever you want to do in an unregulated business environment. Some people demand less government, less regulation, and less “red tape.” They got that for which they asked.

What piece of paper? Cryptocurrency is nothing more than digital vaporware, an imaginary image of value.

I think i am missing something - Are you just making your opinion public or you want to tell us something?

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.

Just expressing an opinion.

$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

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.

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.

How Crypto Currency works
 

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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