Bandwidth Place 2

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't exchanges only useful when you need to make transactions? In an investment scenario your money would be staying "within" your wallet file (which you should protect, maybe even leave on a drive not connected to the internet) 99% of the time.

When you do need to make transactions, distribute them among many exchanges if you're worried.

Also, I don't think the fear of becoming "all gone" can be applied to a cryptocurrency at all. No one has the power to make a cryptocurrency go away. It is not centralized, by design.

Likewise for another non centralized system, the MPAA/RIAA can take down as many torrent sites as they want, torrents don't die.

Again I'm not an expert in the matter of cryptocurrency, but I just have read about a lot of shady stuff going on within the cryptocurrency realms.

Consider the following:

There is some initial investment pool of say perhaps a billion dollars. Various people throughout the world invest random sums of money building up this pool of cash that has been "translated" into these digital coins. So we have 1 billion dollars invested.... into a digital currency. How in the world does this investment ever grow? Initially these things were worth fractions of a cent, and they have climbed to well over $200 per digital coin in some cases. Where does that money come from? Aside from people buying the digital coins at this new "rate". But what makes it worth $200 per coin when someone paid a fraction of a sent for it? So all of a sudden, Papa John's pizza is willing to accept one small part of one digital coin for a pizza when before it took thousands and thousands of these "coins" to get that same pizza.

I can see it working, so long as everyone is willing to agree that "hey, this is the going rate" and we will pay $200 per coin. Then something happens, the market crashes and suddenly their $200 coins are worth $60 each.


I'm not very educated in finance, banking or investments.... but these cryptocurrencys seem way too volatile to be using as an investment vehicle. I think they only reason it went anywhere at all would be the fact that people try to do illegal things with this supposedly "untraceable" currency. Which I really don't believe it's untraceable either.

How's your main paragraph point any different from your usual government fiat currency like USD? The reason modern currencies, including USD, have any value is ONLY because we the people choose to believe that it has value. No major currency is backed by gold/silver anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

In monetary economics, fiat money is an intrinsically useless product, used as a means of payment.

This is no different for cryptocurrencies.

As for volatility, that's the whole point of dragon making this thread - investing. Making an investment in something stable gets you nowhere. See these currencies like you see stocks. There is inherent risk on either side, but that's part of the game.

Sure there are pretty reliable stocks that keep on growing, but they only grow slowly. Volatile investments are best done when young as we'd have many years to recover from any mishaps and have a chance of winning big.

P.S. Does government backed currency not also have shady things going on? Isn't that shady shit even worse given that they're institutionalized with politicians and big business in bed with each other? Is the incumbent system really better? Is it better by design?

You are correct in the fact that the USD is not that much different other than the fact that it has been a lot more stable then any of these digital monies have been.

I don't see the general population willing to buy into them, at least not for a long time if it ever does catch on.


As far as the investing goes, maybe it's just my particular style but I'd rather not roll the dice. I'd rather take safe bets.
High risk investments never seemed to be something that interested me. Sure, you can say that IF I had invested my $500 into
BitCoins that I'd be filthy stinking rich right now... but I could have just as easily lost my $500. That is the nature of high risk,
you just never really do have any good idea about what will happen.

I'd like to revisit this thread/idea.


I'm heavily considering investing into hard physical assets vs contributing into my 401k.

This is the first 401k I've ever had, and I put quite a pretty penny into it every week. Something
like almost $400 a month on my end and another $100 that the company matches. However,
I've been hearing that the government plans to "take" IRA's/401k's and roll them into their
"T-Bonds". If and when they do that, our money is as good as gone.

Also, the dollar is weak and getting weaker all the time. I feel it's a sign of this gigantic ponzi
scheme coming to an end. I really believe that will happen, but when is the question. So I have
been considering shifting my "savings" into something more tangible. Consider this, value of gasoline has
always maintained a pretty tight ratio with the "buying power" of a dollar bill. It's even getting worse,
in the fact that gasoline is "worth" a lot more then it used to be because of the fact that big oil can
influence the prices to put more coin in their pocket. All that a side, if say you had purchased a million
gallons of gas in 1993 when it was about $1 per gallon and held it to today (assuming it would still be
good) then your million dollar investment is now worth over 3 million. If you had kept your million dollars
in dollars, then your million dollars aren't even "worth" a million dollars any more because their buying power
is so much less then what it used to be. According to calculators, you would need about 1.6 million today, to
buy what 1 million would have bought in 1993. Holding on to your gas, that you bought with a million dollars
and selling it would net you nearly triple what you paid back in 1993. Your effective buying power would also
double. Gas is somewhat of a bad example, because the people in control and bending us all over and their isn't
much anyone can (or mostly is willing) to do.

So the real point of this post:

What should we be doing to protect our buying power? I have no faith in the dollar, and really I think it's a matter
of time before all currencies get to this point. When you have something that can readily be expanded at the will
of those who control it, the value and stability of that currency will always be in jeopardy. The dollar will continue
to hyper inflate, those who hold onto dollars will lose their rear ends. I really don't trust stocks and/or the stock
market. These guys are trying to make money for themselves, if you win or lose isn't important to them. Them making
money is important to them. I don't know that I really even trust cryptocurrency, as what can you do is your currency
is suddenly "gone"? Call the police? Who can you sue?

At this point I think really that the only way to really preserve your buying power would be to have something physical,
something you can hold in your hands, something like precious metals.


Thoughts?

lol

If we're considering owning tangible shit that will always have value (and more importantly, DEMAND), I would think liquor (provided they don't expire quickly lol). No ones buying your precious metals when the economy is shit, but they'll still want to get drunk.

palmboy5 wrote:If we're considering owning tangible shit that will always have value (and more importantly, DEMAND), I would think liquor (provided they don't expire quickly lol). No ones buying your precious metals when the economy is shit, but they'll still want to get drunk.

No one in the economy that collapsed. Buy there are many other economies in the world, which are doing much better then we are.

I guess to be fair, PB has a good point. IF there is a complete collapse of the U.S. economy then
things are going to have value based upon sheer necessity for survival. You can't eat silver, or
heat your home with it. It can't give you light, or protect you from people wanting to harm you. It
can't transport you from place to place....

As much as I believe a collapse is all but a guarantee, IF it does happen it probably won't be for a
while to come yet. The problem of borrowing more and more money into existence brings with it an
issue of hyper inflation pushing the currency to the point to where it will barely be worth the paper
it's printed on. If they can always "borrow" more (make) money into existence and we're incredibly
in debt because of these loans then we are always going to have to borrow more to pay off the old
loans. It's a cycle that is almost inescapable.

Silver is poised to dip below $19 an ounce, and it's speculated that it could drop off quite a bit here in
the mid term. I think I'm going to reduce my 401K contributions to 6% (and the company will match it
up to 3.5%) and take the other 6% (and probably more) and invest it into silver. I'm just going to hold
off a bit before doing it.