Right - because the US dollar is on the gold standard.
If your greenbacks are worthless box them up and send them over, I’ll find a use for them. Ditto for your crypto - unless it’s Ripple. That’s still a bit toxic IMO, so you can keep it.

Where do you recommend purchasing Bitcoin from? The Vanguard stock gives me some peace of mind I guess.

Just bought some. Let’s see what it does...

Blast from the past from 2010, guy shows you how to buy bitcoin with paypal by purchasing 10 bitcoin for $30:

<iframe width="507" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YmPg4V-YE0k" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Have to say, I'm pretty happy with LTCN, which I bought approximately 2 months ago.

Just checked on it this AM.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1610114693.png

I used to use Coinbase for the big 3 and Bittrex for the rest until they stopped trading in NY. Now its just Coinbase.

But I also don't have a lot of crypto holdings any more and I'm kicking myself for not hanging on to all of them.

I used the Robinhood trading app.

lol.....what an old mans point of view that is. Clearly you have no idea what the real world is like now. Living in the past. My adult kids, and most kids these days, never even touch real cash. They do all their transactions electronically. They use apps on their phones and internet banking. Get with it old man.

So how many of you in here willing to sell parts to receive crypto as payment?

I am glad we are talking about bitcoin here. I am a HODL'er and a miner.

How do you short bitcoin? Is it even possible?

https://99bitcoins.com/short-sell-bitcoin/#:~:text=To%20short%20Bitcoins%2C%20you%20need,an% 20equal%20number%20of%20Bitcoins.

A bunch of crypto currencys rather than one main standard does bother me.

Unstable and intangible, that's it's down fall. Great for day trading because of it's volatility. However, gold and sliver have a history on the periodic chart, bitcoin not so much. It will be killed by regulation in the end. It's a bubble, just like tulips.

Heard that the last time it went up.
And the time before.

If it’s a bubble it’s quite resilient to bursting.

I was going to accept Bitcoin as payment for a car 8 months ago. AU$8500 in BTC. Buyer changed his mind at the last minute and just transferred normal credit to my account. Be worth a hell of lot more now. Bugga!

https://ycharts.com/companies/GBTC/discount_or_premium_to_nav

GBTC is backed by real Bitcoin.
Each one is worth 0.00095028 BTC.
And they charge a fee of 2% that reduces this value each year.

So while it’s an asset backed security it’s worth a lot less than the asset that’s backing it. The premium when I had a lot of it was closer to 50% btw. When it was 19k GBTC was $33. I’d be pissed if I’d held it vs holding BTC.

It’s relative value -IMO- dropped as it became easier to transfer cash into crypto wallets - I was constrained to 10k a week into Coinbase - 1/2 a Bitcoin then and I had to jump through hoops to get it that high. I could buy GBTC through my trading account up to the cleared cash I had in hand.

Edit: had to go check. Coinbase will let me transfer 50k a day from my bank or 250k a day through a wire transfer. Personally unless you are buying in an IRA I’d hold the asset.

You should be concerned about the reverse.
Have you ever actually withdrawn USD from Coinbase?

Dozens of times, usually faster than other bank transfers, and WAY faster than Paypal.

Recently?

June was the last time. Just checked and took 2.5 days to get to my account. The last time (ever) I used PayPal it took 9 days and their response was "so?"

Can you do a small withdrawal to USD and tell us the outcome ?

No thanks, they charge a fee for withdrawals and the smaller the amount, the bigger % the fee is

Find someone who has Coinbase Pro, they get free withdrawls

Yes. Several times. Never an issue.

I used an Aussie based exchange, Independent Reserve. Cashed out $10K once and it was in my account the next day. Done another $5K recently, and same thing. There's now so much legitimate money tied up in Bitcoin, I doubt it will ever fail.

Coinbase is/was apparently down for a big chunk of the day. Not a good look for a firm looking to IPO soon.

???

They were never down today, there were some issues with delayed transfers and they implemented a fix for it with 35 minutes.

https://status.coinbase.com/

Interesting 25% correction this weekend
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...leys/roker.gif

Still up 10% YTD

Big swings are nothing new, and of little consequence to long term holders...much like the big drop in TSLA today.

a guy I know bought bitcoin real early with the intention to access some 'illicit ****' ... ( nothing THAT illicit, calm down !) Then he found another source and forgot he had bought the bitcoin. Then one day he remembered and looked at the value had jumped quite HIGH, so he began to take notice of the fluctuations. Not much later he decided to buy more and then some more....then he sold it all at a profit, but it had gone up again so he felt stupid so he immediately bought back in ( real beginner-mistake stuff ) but he held on, & suddenly he had a cool million of this invisible money, soon after that he had almost TWO Million. He had moved from Switzerland to L.A. by then. He later lost half of it or so he says. So he is an 'almost millionaire' now, but it drove him crazy, I think, & His wife dumped him. He wears custom shirts has a new Milgas and fly's all over the world business-class but never works. He is a 'bit' crazy actually, he also wears these expensive slipper-shoes that they sell on Madison Ave. a character. He was such a fanatic about the whole thing he was trying to convince his pals about it, early on he even gave me $15 of Bitcoin, years ago, but I never kept track of the platform and it's gone. I pretty much immediately forgot how to access it since I wasn't really paying attention to the whole thing at the time, that's where bitcoin miner's come in. I wonder how he is doing these days...He is fun to hang out with. For any skeptics; bitcoin is here to stay, or something similar certainly is for all the reasons stocks, bonds, paper money, gold and silver have solidity, this new virtual-currency has the one thing the others don't: to effectively use any of the early forms you pretty much have to turn them into virtual currencies, right? Bitcoin and the like are already virtual, so they have that going for them, amongst other things... btw my g/f (now wife) once figured out that the $15 of b/c would be worth a nice lump if i had held on to it, but she still married me..

NYT article today
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks& pgtype=Homepage


Nice pull quote from a guy who's bitcoin he was also gifted/paid-in but lost the password, now worth 200 Million:

“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way, ‘Do you make your own shoes?” he said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.”

And someone who is pleased with it:
“The risk of being my own bank comes with the reward of being able to freely access my money and be a citizen of the world — that is worth it,” Mr. Abed said.

Kind of a stupid quote. It's not hard to be your own bank. Take stack of cash and hide it under the mattress. Not that complicated. In this case, take USB key and password and store uber the mattress. That problem use that these individuals were careless because the coins had little value initially.

mea culpa

That's exactly right.

It is ironically funny that now coins (and wallets) are so valuable, how many people keep their private keys locked away where? In bank's safety deposit boxes:)