Crypto currency?.....are you on board or not?

[KevinK]

Just wondering if anyone here has gotten into buying/selling/trading crypto currency (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Etc....) recently with how the market is going?

It's easy to say "I should have bought in sooner" ....I am in that boat most definitely


Before you rip on it, I do very roughly know two people that I went to college classes with a few years ago (one was 23, one was 25) are now essentially retired.....yes, that's right, they have enough money to very easily never work another day in their life with the surge in Bitcoin prices that happened in December.....and the few times I hung out with them. they were surviving on $1 cheesy double stuffed burritos from t-bell....so it's a pretty amazing story to say the least.

What is your take on it all?....is it a trend? ....here to stay?.....a interesting "collectible" as Mark Cuban puts it?

[tttaylorrr]

i wouldn't buy too much right now. the price has been going down for a while, but honestly i believe this isn't something that's going to go away any time soon. if you have the money to, then i'd invest it. it can be a crazy market, but in the looong run there will definitely be a return.

i'm in that same boat too lol; my father and i have been watching bitcoin for just over a year. one day my dad came home asking me all about it after a conversation with his coworkers and he decided he wanted in.

[Craiga 01453]

Truth be told, I still don't even know anything about it.
I see some memes here and there and have overheard a few quick discussions about it, but that's all...

[dylan815]

Go bit-coin!

[bcr229]

Back when BTC could be had for under $100 a friend advised me to buy one or two, just because. I should have listened.

BTC should be treated as any other high-risk investment - diversify and don't put more into it than you can afford to lose.

[KevinK]

Back when BTC could be had for under $100 a friend advised me to buy one or two, just because. I should have listened.

BTC should be treated as any other high-risk investment - diversify and don't put more into it than you can afford to lose.

That's kind of what I would advise as well at this point to anyone looking to get into it....roughly 10% of your portfolio at max. Ripple/XRP seems to be the most intriguing to me at this point however....it's main purpose is to be used by banks to quickly transfer money internationally, it's been overall resilient (more than any other coin at least) to market dips/crashes, and it's being rumored that Coinbase will add it before the end of the month.....and if that is in fact the case, the price will go up exponentially.

...but I also think Bitcoin is just at it's entry stage, as exchanges progress in technology, security, and support I think Crypto is going to do well.

So that's my little teaser


Still, as you said, a high risk investment, definitely not a blue chip stock.

[SDA]

There is always a scheme out there to make a few rich and a lot not rich. They said the same thing about the gold rush, housing market, and other speculation industries. Cypto currency is excellent for the few people who are controlling it and a pyramid scheme for the multitude that are now trying to strike it rich. Once something is widely known it is already too late to invest.

[KevinK]

There is always a scheme out there to make a few rich and a lot not rich. They said the same thing about the gold rush, housing market, and other speculation industries. Cypto currency is excellent for the few people who are controlling it and a pyramid scheme for the multitude that are now trying to strike it rich. Once something is widely known it is already too late to invest.

I would agree that just about any market can be manipulated, pumped, or schemed in some form (shoot, do you remember the Hunt brothers and the silver market?), but to me that doesn't necessarily mean I, personally, back out of all markets as a result, which is why diversification is important. Crypto has been excellent for me personally even though I certainly didn't get into when I was told to (should have), and I'm not in a position of great wealth by any means.

In general I would agree about something being widely known as being at a point where it's too late to get in, but not always.....EVERY stock teaser publication, and I mean EVERY publication was pushing Amazon and Netflix stock for literally YEARS.....you would have needed to buy just a LITTLE bit to do extremely well on it.

You also have to have a bit of luck, and be a little bit crazy to do extremely well in some of these markets.....real estate has made many, many, many lower/middle class individuals progress to the upper class. It IS much harder to get into now days though with all the red tape resulting from the 09 crash.

My $0.02.

[larryd23]

I find crypto-currency to be a little too speculative at this point in time. If we bought in early, we would all be happy. Then again, if we bought Amazon shares two years ago at $308, we would have been just as happy when it passed $1200 a share today.

I did try mining Bitcoin for a while. It was fun getting everything set up. It didn't take too long to fry my PC (it was expected) and ended my career as a Bitcoin miner. There was a time when you could make significant amounts of money mining Bitcoin. Those days are long gone. If you're interested, there is simulation software on the internet that will allow you to calculate your rate of return mining Bitcoin. For the most part, with the cost of power in the northeast, it's a losing proposition.

[AbsoluteApril]

Sounded like a pyramid scheme when I first heard about it and way too easy for the coin/wallets to be hacked/stolen.

I am really HATING the side effects - huge price increases and low stock on high end graphics cards right now, right when one of our PCs is taking a dive and we need to upgrade/replace. Graphics cards that were $700 are over $1200 used, this is ridiculous.