Adventures in Cryptocurrency

[bada bing]

I've had a little luck with crypto, pretty much by accident. 18 months ago I was making a few purchases online and noticed a couple vendors were giving a 10% discount for using bitcoin. I knew vaguely what it was and decided to research it a bit. I ended up buying 2 bitcoins on coinbase at a cost basis of $800/coin. I ended up doing ~6 transactions for online purchases, spending a total of 1/2 of a bitcoin. The transactions were definitely not a strong point for bitcoin, it took between 1/2 and 4 hours for the transactions to complete. I left the remaining 1.5 bitcoins in a wallet on my laptop and forgot them. Fast forward 16 months and I read the hoopla back in Dec about the value exploding and I ended up selling my Bitcoin as soon as I figured out how to turn it back into cash - another big drawback to bitcoin. I sold @ $17.6K/coin, which was the price when I had everything set up to cash out - luck of the draw. After deducting for the initial online purchases, I got back $25K for my original $1.2K investment.

I transferred $15K of the profit into my checking account and left $10K in coinbase. In the intervening 8 weeks I've done 4 quick in-n-outs into ether coin with the coinbase account and have booked a few % profit on each trade, the original $10K is now $11.9K. I haven't had a loosing trade and I haven't left the money in ether for longer than 6 hours. It has been in ether for 24 hours total in the last 8 weeks.

A few things I've experienced:
1: The idea that crypto is a replacement currency is BS. The transaction speed and cost is a joke.
2:It isn't nearly as easy as it should be to turn crypto back into $$$. That is another drawback at the current time.
3. It is amazingly volatile. It is sort of hypnotizing to watch market action on an exchange. I also currently *think* that it may be possible to day trade crypto. There appears to be some momentum follow through that is predictive on a short term basis. I've only had 4 quick trades, but all 4 were profitable for ~3-5% in just an hour or two. Or maybe I was just lucky. At any rate, I will probably play with a few more trades until I get burned. It is the "house's money" I am playing with (bad way to think, I know).

Since crypto pofits measured in $$$ is a zero-sum game, the money that lucky people like myself haul out of the system is coming from someone else less lucky. There is no way that any of the current crop of crypto are relevant in 10 years. Something may emerge that is state sponsored using blockchain, but the current crypto is a fad.

Another adventure in crypto will be when I do my taxes for 2017 and 2018. The gains will be straightforward to report, but I am wondering how much scrutiny the IRS will put on them. I have ~$25K in longterm gains in 2017 and $1.9K in short term gains so far in 2018. My original buy in was ~$1200 ($1600 - purchases made with coin for ~$400)

[Winemaker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by flintnational Maybe we can work out a trade. I am about to bottle a kit Amarone. Will you take real wine in exchange for Cryptowine? You know, similar to the way Cryptocurrency dealers will take real money for cryptocurrency.

No deal, I have enough wine. I don't think I have enough cash. If that is a deal breaker for you, I'm willing to sell units that own this Cryptowine exchange, CryptoCellar, and CryptoWine lists. This is going to be huge, I can see it already.

[NYEXPAT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bada bing I've had a little luck with crypto, pretty much by accident.

Speaking of luck, I recently read a story about the rapper 50cent. It seems a few years back he agreed to accept Bitcoin for some of his album sales. Apparently, he received 700 Bitcoins ($450,000) and forgot about it. Recently, he discovered, he now has $7 million dollars worth!

[Texas Proud]

Reviving the thread....


I have off and on watched what was happening to bitcoin as I thought it was way too high.... it recently has dropped below $6,000...


What happened to all the people saying how it was going to keep going up, up, up?


I still think it is going to continue to go down...

[Blueskies123]

When they said it was going up up up I was fairly sure we were near the blow off top, I saw the same hyperbole in 2000 and 2008. If it drops 90% from the high like internet stocks did in 2000 I might dabble in a bit.

[NYEXPAT]

I have been trading it, both long and short on another thread here. I stopped a few weeks ago as I had no time to follow it. I would love to buy some in the $1,000.00 range, but I can't be bothered with all that "wallet" BS or having to constantly roll over "futures" contracts.

[NYEXPAT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYEXPAT I see the next support level they will be gunning for is $5450.

This still holds true for today.
My favorite analyst on "crypto" is Rakesh Upadhyay from cointelegraph.

[Shanky]

For those of you who are not greed-heads. Interesting crypto-currency concept here. (Holochain)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://holochain.org/#pageTop

[NYEXPAT]

Ok, I will put on a hypothetical short on tonight at $6205.00.