Blockchain update

[GRG55]

Re: Blockchain update

http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/11/27/it-just-got-real

"clicks and eyeballs"...

[*T*]

Re: Blockchain update

Well, it is an early stage bubble. But we've had quite a few bubbles in bitcoin already. It's not going away.

[Mega]

Re: Blockchain update

What Ho "T"
Long time, no see.............how's it going?
Mike

[*T*]

Re: Blockchain update

Hi Mike -- going well thanks. Bitcoin has been good to me. I still have my gold -- it's not doing much.
Hope you are well.

[jk]

Re: Blockchain update

it will be interesting to see what happens with the advent of btc futures trading. might be like gold

[*T*]

Re: Blockchain update

It will. The main difference is the cost of storage of btc is basically zero (unless you want insurance and there is basically no insurance market). It will establish a borrow curve for btc, which will be a benefit. The market is still very immature.

Long/medium term, the main price impact I think will be to pave the way for an ETF. ETF arrives, we have mainstream money, and the top is in.

It's a very interesting dynamic. It's basically bubble dynamics, played out in accelerated time.

[jk]

Re: Blockchain update

It will. The main difference is the cost of storage of btc is basically zero (unless you want insurance and there is basically no insurance market). It will establish a borrow curve for btc, which will be a benefit. The market is still very immature.

Long/medium term, the main price impact I think will be to pave the way for an ETF. ETF arrives, we have mainstream money, and the top is in.

It's a very interesting dynamic. It's basically bubble dynamics, played out in accelerated time.

agreed. i think the futures market alone will be the doom of btc - it has so much more leverage. think of the size of the market for pm futures vs the size of the physical market.

[*T*]

Re: Blockchain update

agreed. i think the futures market alone will be the doom of btc - it has so much more leverage. think of the size of the market for pm futures vs the size of the physical market.

I don't think it will kill btc; it's been through a number of bubbles already.

[Southernguy]

Re: Blockchain update

Meanwhile, Tezos is in serious trouble
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-1...ds-largest-ico

[akkibaba]

Re: Blockchain update

Any advice on;

TKN
BNB
XLM

Thanks

[*T*]

Re: Blockchain update

Any advice on;

TKN
BNB
XLM

Thanks

yes: don't bother. Just hold the top three/four. They are risky enough already.

[shiny!]

Re: Blockchain update

NiceHash was hacked; their bitcoin wallet containing 4736 BTC was stolen. Supposedly everyone's individual bitcoins were transferred into NiceHash's wallet before being stolen.

Ever since this bubble formed, I've been kicking myself for cashing in my one and only bitcoin years ago because I found the whole thing too complicated to use. It was worth about $500 then. But then I read things like this. Nothing digital is safe.

[Southernguy]

Re: Blockchain update

You can keep your bitcoin in an electronic wallet. I think it would be safe there.

[Adeptus]

Re: Blockchain update

You can keep your bitcoin in an electronic wallet. I think it would be safe there.

Not really actually. Storing crypto currencies securely is unfortunately one of the big challenges still remaining in this field. There are many different types of wallets: Desktop wallets, Mobile Wallets, Web wallets, Hardware wallets, Brain Wallets, Paper Wallets, Vanity Wallets. Most fall into one of two categories: Hot Wallet or Cold wallet. A Hot wallet is one that is or can be connected to the Internet and your private keys exposed. A Cold wallet is at minimum a wallet that contains your private keys and is not or in some cases can never be exposed to the Internet.

Bitcoins (or any other crypto) are NOT actually stored in any wallet, contrary to intuition. All Bitcoins are stored on the blockchain. A Bitcoin wallet simply stores a set of digital keys (called PGP private keys), which are nothing more than a long string of seemingly random numbers and letters like this "02a1633cafcc01ebfb6d78e39f687a1f0995c62fc95f51ead1 0a02ee0be551b5dc" which grant the holder of such a key the ability to spend/send Bitcoins. That's it. So, securely storing your digital crypto currency amounts to basically ensuring that NOBODY, by any method, can get a copy of your private keys. Private keys are stored in a file, so it all comes down to how can you keep that wallet file containing your private key secure? Running a Bitcoin wallet software on your windows computer with your private key located in some folder is pretty much the worst possible security you can have for your digital wallet, short of tweeting your private keys to the world. Windows OS has N security issues patched every month and so its very common for such wallets to get hacked. Without going into a lot more detail, right now the best way to store your Bitcoins or more specifically, your Bitcoin private keys, is to keep them in a "hardware wallet", which is essentially a small device that has been designed by security experts that has only 1 purpose, to secure your private keys. Two well recognized and respected companies in this field are https://Trezor.io and https://www.ledgerwallet.com/. If you had to pick one of the two, right now the Ledger is considered slightly more secure than Trezor, but really, picking either of them is FAR better than using any other wallet out there. These wallets are designed to store 10's of millions of dollars worth of crypto currency. If you want to store beyond 10's of millions, then you need to go full paranoid and consider the Glacier Protocol.

Some basic questions that come up:
1. What happens if somebody steals my hardware wallet?
A1: Hardware wallets require a pin and/or password to access them, and even an expert who takes apart the wallet cannot extract the passwords from said wallet.
A2: When you first get your wallet, you are asked to make a backup of a series of 12 to 24 words that through some fancy algorithms translate to your private key. Memorizing these 12-24 words (also called a 'seed phrase') in the right sequence is also considered a "brain wallet", which means it's all in your head and anytime you want to access your bitcoins, you use a special electronic wallet that you can input those words and you will have access to spend/send your Bitcoins. The upside is there is nothing to hack. The downside is if you fall and bump your head on a rock and forget 1 or some of those words, say goodbye to your Bitcoins forever. Putting those 12-24 words on a piece of paper or its corresponding private key string of letters & numbers is called a "paper wallet". So, you can lose your physical hardware wallet which in theory is unhackable, and you can recover all your crypto currencies simply by having a backup of the seed phrase or private key.

2. How do you securely store your backup of your hardware wallet's private keys?
A1: Another hardware wallet! So buy 2 of them, and ensure that both of them use the same seed phrase and you can access either one at any time and you can access all your crypto currencies. Be sure to keep them in 2 different geographical locations at any given time! The further apart they are, the safer your crypto assets are.
A2: Just buy 1 hardware wallet, and keep a paper wallet backup of your private keys in a different geographical location, like (ironically) a bank safe. A better paper wallet is to actually stamp your private keys onto a stainless steel plate which won't melt until 1300 degrees celcius and won't corrode with water in case of a flood. If you want to get extra paranoid, then cut that steel plate in two and store each half at two different bank vaults, or ship one half to another continent.

Q3: If hardware wallets keep your private keys offline and not connected to the Internet, how can you send any bitcoins from them?
A1: Sending a Bitcoin (or any crypto currency) from a wallet with your private keys requires a process called "signing a transaction". That is, you input how many bitcoins you want to send, to what destination public PGP address (i.e. the receiving address of whomever you want to send the coins to), then using your private key to sign that transaction. Once signed, an output is generated that is sent to the blockchain and which updates the ledger that you now have -1 Bitcoin than you previously had, and Bob's receive address (whom you are sending the Bitcoin to) now has +1 Bitcoins. So, the brilliant point is, you can perform the signing transaction process off-line with your private keys that are also offline, then connect the hardware wallet to your PC and only send the signed transaction (which doesn't contain your private keys) to the blockchain, and voila, totally secure transactions!

The above is just scratching the surface of how crypto wallets work. Another significant advancement in the past few years was the introduction of Multi-Signature Wallets (aka. Multi-Sig). Which basically means you split the private key amongst multiple trusted people (i.e. your wife + father + lawyer + son) and in this example a transaction can only be signed if 3 out 5 (you are the 5th) sign the transaction.

Some articles on the subject:
https://coinsutra.com/bitcoin-wallet/

This guy has some fantastic videos that go much deeper into this subject. Scroll to bottom to see his 3 or 4 videos about wallets
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgo...P3JAgVw/videos

[Adeptus]

Re: Blockchain update

With all the bitcoin hype and price exploding in the past few days, the media is in an all out frenzy talking about Bitcoin. Some of you have also sent me private messages asking more about it. Of course, this is all going to come crashing down and very hard. No parabolic curve in exponential price rise is sustainable, just don't ask me when the price will come crashing down. I sold my last Bitcoin at $10,200 and who knows... maybe this now keeps going to $40,000. For me, it was an easy call. It represents a very small part of my crypto portfolio, and I bought those bitcoins when they were worth just a few hundred dollars. Here's a short humorous video showing some of the past bubbles. This time is not going to be different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg

Now, what I do recommend is that people use this time to get more educated on the subject and to that end I can certainly try to help. So here's some great resources for you to consider:


LOPP's Bitcoin Educational Resources list:
https://lopp.net/bitcoin.html

DOCUMENTARIES:
1. Banking on Bitcoin – Free on Canadian Netflix.
2. The Rise & Rise of Bitcoin [trailer] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcwnpvODd-8 (3 mins) - Full movie $4.99 (http://bit.ly/2f2OfKg)
3. The Bitcoin Phenomenon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pWblf8COH4(Q1 2014, 35mins)
4. The Bitcoin Gospel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zKuoqZLyKg (2015 - 49 mins)
5. The Blockchain and us - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iF73cybTBs (2017 - 32mins)
6. Bitcoin - The End of money as we know it. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pA-3lLH_Zg (1 hr, 2016)
7. Trust Disrupted. Bitcoin and The Blockchain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gYkqsxi2gc - (2016 - 44 mins)
8. Everything you need to know about Bitcoin - Vice Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNssKmeXrGs (2014 - 1hr)
9. History of Digital Currencies & Bitcoin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cod7U9IIz5U (2014 - 7 mins)
10. The Impact of Bitcoin - A japanese documentary, English voiceover - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs40FVL7s2Q (2014 - 26 mins)
11. Life inside a Bitcoin mine - Chinese documentary, English subtitles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I (2015 - 9 mins)
12. Ulterior States - I am Satoshi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQGQXy0RIIo (2015 - 53 mins)

EDUCATIONAL YOUTUBE Videos & Channels:
1.Canadian Senate Hearing on Bitcoin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNGFZDO8mM (Oct 8, 2014 – 2 hrs_
2. Andreas Antenopolous Youtube Channel - 180+ videos on Bitcoin & blockchains - rated #1 speaker on Bitcoin world wide: https://www.youtube.com/user/aantonop/videos
3. What are Blockchains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WG7D47tGb0 (3 mins)
4.Online Courses: Bitcoin & CryptoCurrency Technologies- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNc...vOQzFzQ/videos
5.Khan Academy on Bitcoin & Blockchains: https://www.khanacademy.org/economic...oin-what-is-it
6.TED videos on Blockchain: http://bit.do/TEDblockchains
7.Epicenter – Interviews with the leading blockchain developers & researchers: https://www.youtube.com/user/epicenterbtc/videos
8. How Bitcoin works (5 min version – not technical) 5 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&v=t5JGQXCTe3c (highly recommend this one!!)
9. How Bitcoin Works Under the hood (technical) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE (22 mins)
10. The bitcoin revolution - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ce5tV-pgg (4mins)
11. 19 Industries the Blockchain will disrupt (10mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3psxs3gyf8


There's hundreds of hours of material here. It's a deep subject. There's no perfect place to start, and there certainly is no finish, it's a fast evolving field. If you are very new, start with a couple of documentaries and then go next to material that may answer your questions - you will have a LOT of questions :-D

Enjoy your trip down the rabbit hole ;-)
Adeptus

PS. Thanks to Crypto Currencies, I am going to officially quit my job in January and retire decades ahead of time! My advice: Go learn about crypto currencies, after a major correction make a significant well informed set of diversified investments. Never invest more than you can lose, but dont buy just tiny amounts (you'll regret it when you see your first 10x event). Buy a hardware wallet (or 2 or 3) to store your crypto tokens. Give yourself a 3-5 year time horizon to absorb major crashes. At one point I lost 70% of my initial investment... now I have enough that I can retire very comfortably. Good luck!


PPS. My top new picks & curren prices (I am not a financial advisor etc etc):

a) EOS - $4.00
b) Tezos - $3.66 (futures token only, the blockchain for this has not been released yet, so the real Tezos tokens are not yet available, ETA March 2018)
c) Cardano - $0.11

I see each of these with 10x to 200x potential over the next 2-3 years. I suggest waiting for the Bitcoin price to crash, which will likely take these coins down with it. After the crash should be a safe time to get in. Each of these have EXTREME risk and the downside can be 100%, but the upside is massive, so invest accordingly. Good luck