Bitcoin crashes...

With your background it sounds like you could explain what a £ is and how one is created and why it isn't a "collective delusion".

Meanwhile, I include this link JP Morgan's Fines To Date: A Brief History (JPM) and is of course led by the great Jamie Dimon.

This link shows how many times Bitcoin has so far died Bitcoin Obituaries.

Martin.

I get the impression that a spinoff from bitcoin is distributed ledger technology or distributed databases, these things look like they could be useful.

There is a very good TED talk on this, that I liked. https://youtu.be/k53LUZxUF50

Some of the share tipsters in Australia are going nuts and sending out lots of teasers about bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market, something significant happening this month with bitcoin splitting in two ?

Must admit I dont understand bitcoin, but I am also puzzled that my retirement savings and house ownership are also only 1's and 0's in various computers.

Bill

Martin

I deliberately left the latter part of the Wiki quote on JPM/Jamie Dimon in, in order not to mislead. Just because of what JPM has done, and none of the financial institutions' track record is squeaky clean, it doesn't take away his quote on Bitcoin.

Regarding Bitcoin obituaries, history suggests that greed will always overcome common sense - it has been a fact since the South Sea Bubble in 1720, and in reality there are also plenty of recorded cases prior to that. Whilst there is still a suggestion of money to allegedly be made out of Bitcoin, people will still continue to pile in headless, regardless of the warnings.

Since £ (and in reality you mean the concept of a currency, not just sterling) and Bitcoin have pretty much nothing in common, and this thread is about Bitcoin, I couldn't see the point of having a discussion about currencies, even if I had the time or inclination, of which I have neither. If you need to understand the concept of currencies, there are plenty of far better qualified economists than me (which I am not) around.

if you just want to have a meaningless discussion about currencies and global economies, I will skip that one thanks - I've drunk my coffee whilst typing this, I need to go back to insulating my workshop.

I know enough to know world economies are built on a model of growth, which is a deck of cards waiting to collapse, and it is a one way street with a big hole at the end of it

David.

A quote from the JP Morgan article I linked to: "All in all, JP Morgan was fined $35,241,500,000 in a three-and-a-half year period".

So for you to respond by saying "Just because of what JPM has done, and none of the financial institutions' track record is squeaky clean, it doesn't take away his quote on Bitcoin." gave me a really good laugh and the penny dropped that you were just teasing me. You little devil

Martin.

Martin

I meant the quote 'Bitcoin is just a bubble'.

So, I'm afraid you totally misread me.

I will conclude my part in this discussion here, because I don't want to waste any more of my time on it.

...but, but you haven't told us what insulation you're using!

Cheers, Martin.

One question.

The people who are making such gains on bitcoin... are they paying investment taxes?

Neil

Ah, that's different

I'm just doing the garage doors for now as the rest of the garage is fairly well insulated, apart from the loft space which I shall do next year.

There are two pairs of 2m wide ledged and braced timber doors, faced with 10mm T&G which has warped in places so daylight shows through, so a lot of heat gets lost through them.

I have filled in the spaces between the ledges and braces on the inside of the doors with 25mm Xtratherm (Celotex by another name), and faced off the doors over the top of that with 5mm ply to tidy it up and hold the insulation in place.

Apparently not, in Paradise.

Martin.

Is it fire retardent? That stuff needs treating with care after seeing what happened at Grenfell.

Martin.

To be honest i'm surprised people haven't got bigger problems to worry about than bitcoin, if people wanna throw their money at computerized data that's fine.

But it certainly isn't my thing. I'm more worried about real things.

Michael W

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the most important innovation of our lifetimes and will become ubiquitous.

It won't be too long before you can pay for your computerized data online magazine subscription in bitcoin and probably at a discount over an equivalent debit/credit card payment - in fact you could probably pay by the page, directly from the built-in wallet of your web browser.

Martin.

One question. The people who are making such gains on bitcoin... are they paying investment taxes?

They are like shares or gold, you pay when you cash them in, subject to capital gains tax rules

Cash in only a couple and your gain is tax free

Cash in a thousand and you pay 40% odd

The honesty of your dealings is up to you, just like with the rest of your life

(If the IRS catch you being naughty then they will tear you to pieces)

A few questions if anyone can answer them?

Where do the individual coins come from?

as they take a $1000 each to mine when a Crypto Currency (CC) starts where do the coins come from to sell on to people at $1 each...who stands to this loss?

Are Bitcoins(BC) limited to 21 million or are all individual CC's limited to that number each or indeed all CC's ever going to be limited to 21 million?

I can see that with BC at $6000 and rising its a good return on your $1000 energy cost to mine one but when they started they were only pennies each as new CC releases are

as they take a $1000 each to mine when a Crypto Currency (CC) starts where do the coins come from to sell on to people at $1 each...who stands to this loss?

It's like any business, early adopters stand to make the most gains or take the huge losses, (Like with Uber etc)

Cryptos are "Disruptive Technology" like Uber and driverless cars and robots

Bitcoin etc disrupts financial services as an alternative store of wealth

Anyone can do a startup but getting big and credible is a huge task which only a few will succeed at, it takes a lot of know-how and risk capital to get up to the dizzy heights of an established trading crypto

There are loads of cryptos around on the net but as with messaging apps only a few will be the big players with the necessary liquidity, all the moreso with cryptos because Bitcoin can buy and sell the lot of them with a few mouse clicks

How do you 'catch' someone who has bitcoins?

Nope, but then it isn't Grenfell Tower.

Edited By David Standing 1 on 08/11/2017 10:15:15

1st law of finance - The more money you have , the less tax you pay. BTW I hear that tulips are the next big thing, don't tell anybody tho'.

How do you 'catch' someone who has bitcoins?

The same way you "catch" someone who has a numbered offshore account, they've got to acquire assets eventually with it to derive any benefit, this is not a new thing for an IRS auditor

Britain has an unusual ally in fighting Tax Evasion, the NHS

You can run away abroad but once that first $100,000 dollar medical bill for a bleeding nose rolls in lots of naughty people return for those health freebies and get nabbed, even Ronnie Biggs eventually surrendered

The Isle of Man recently lost it's NHS status and the rich were not happy bunnies

The IRS also has time on it's side, and as much legal power as the anti-terrorist chaps

At risk of repeating stuff already expressed here because I haven't got time to read everything...

Bitcoin is one implementation of Blockchain technology

Blockchain itself has immense value and will be disruptive to many industries. The value is the ability to guarantee transaction authenticity as copies of the data are decentralized, to change a stored value means hacking many nodes of the network at the same time which is practically impossible. How will blockchain be disruptive? in commerce when a deal is done, the deal information can be stored in the blockchain and as mentioned distributed, for example, recording royalty payment agreements, bank transactions, anything of commercial worth where the integrity of the data and guaranteed accurate point in time reconstruction is required

Companies will pay to have a guaranteed audit trail for their data - retention periods for bank transactions are typically 7 to 10 years for example, and implementing local audit of business data on IT systems is a real headache - I happen to be working on this for an Investment Bank right now...

Personally I am avoiding Bitcoins - and I am not offering this as advice - because it's relatively easy to set up your own Bitcoin and do an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to float a company using your own crypto currency. There is no regulation for Bitcoin so in practice one could set up a company, issue an ICO, retire on the proceeds, day trade against your own Bitcoin and have no legal obligation or regulatory imperative to run the company so floated. IMHO dishonest and abusive, but perfectly legal, and I know of someone who has done just that...