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Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and You: Navigating the Future of Tech (a NeoGAF discussion thread)

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Disclaimer: nothing herein constitutes financial advice. Consult with a qualified financial adviser before making crazy life decisions about magic internet money. Don't invest anything you're not willing to lose.

Hi everyone. It's Tyler, your resident cryptomonger, here to help you probably not actually understand what the fuss is all about with crypto. The cryptocurrency market is currently valued at somewhere between $0 and $1 trillion depending on when you read this OP. What's Bitcoin? What's crypto? What does it matter? Let's try to find out with some Q&A, and then we'll get into ongoing discussion.

What's a bitcoin?

Technical answer: magic internet money.

For the lay person: using sha-256 cryptography and public/private key pairs and a distributed public ledger appended through mathematical puzzle solving that auto adjusts its difficulty depending on the average computing power of the overall pool to average out to finalize a new block of data about transactions occurring within the system every ~ten minutes, a decentralized, trustless, immutable, borderless, deflationary exchange of value has been established by an unknown party under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but controlled via consensus of the network that has since been established.

Here's an 11 hour Princeton lecture series on how it all works.

Or I guess you could watch Andreas. He's cool too.

What are all these other cryptocurrencies?

There's a crypto for everything. The second biggest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap at time of this writing is Ethereum, which is also blockchain based and currently on a Proof of Work system similar to Bitcoin, but can do some interesting stuff like act as a platform for derivative cryptocurrencies using the ERC20 token standard (which is how most ICOs -- initial coin offerings -- are performed), execute smart contracts using the Solidity programming language, etc. There are well over one thousand currently circulating cryptocurrencies. Most will probably fail. Be careful.

What's the use case for all this stuff?

The possibilities are vast and are already being explored in many directions. By being borderless and potentially accessible to anyone with a phone, cryptos can serve to bank the unbanked, of which there are over 2 billion people in the world currently. Cryptos, despite their typical market volatility, can also be far more stable than some national fiat currencies, and can protect people in unstable nations like Venezuela from hyperinflation or arbitrary forfeiture. They can also give people in developing nations unprecedented access to the world economy. And, yes, millennials can also try to day trade it to get rich, and probably fail horribly but sometimes not and then they'll have a youtube channel about how smart they are.

Beyond that, blockchains have the potential to disrupt many existing industries and technologies by eliminating the need for a middleman. Imagine a rideshare service without an Uber or Lyft running it, just rideshare operators and rideshare users, a token traded for rideshare use with a value established by market forces, and a blockchain to track transactions and identities with associated reviews. That's doable. Concert tickets that can't be scalped? Doable. Smart contracts (properly audited) can also eliminate the need for escrow, by finalizing a transaction between parties only when specific mutual conditions have been met. Money can be blockchain. Identity can be blockchain. Contracts can be blockchain. Titles and deeds. You get the idea.

How does one buy a crypto?

Depends on where you are. In the States, Coinbase or Gemini can get you started with exchanging USD for Bitcoin or Ethereum. Then, if you want to get really adventurous, you can trade Bitcoin or Ethereum for a thousand other cryptocurrencies somewhere like Binance or Cryptopia. If you're in South Korea, you're probably day trading half your net worth in crypto already and don't need me to tell you what Bithumb is. Please don't jump in blindly, either way. Take your time, read, listen, watch, and learn.

Is it still possible to mine Bitcoin or other cryptos?

Mining bitcoin isn't profitable anymore unless your electricity is free or very cheap and you have access to very expensive ASIC miners, generally. However, other Proof of Work based cryptos have been designed to be ASIC resistant and can be mined for some decent profits on consumer GPUs and to a lesser extent CPUs. As of this writing there is actually a worldwide GPU shortage due to crypto mining. If you have a high end graphics card and want to heat your home in the winter with it, one of the easiest ways to get started is by joining a mining pool like Nicehash, which will automatically choose the most profitable mining algorithm for you at any given time and then pay out in bitcoin. Be mindful, though, since Nicehash was hacked recently and any mining pools or exchanges are prime targets for hackers to steal crypto from.

How does one safely hold onto crypto without being hacked or robbed?

There's not really any such thing as FDIC insurance for cryptocurrency yet, and crypto transactions are typically irreversible, so if someone takes yours you're probably not seeing it again. Protocols like Bitcoin are highly resistant to attack on the blockchain itself, but if you hold crypto on an exchange website or some smartphone app, you're likely holding it on someone else's private keys and not yours, so if an exchange or an online wallet gets hacked you could lose your crypto at any time, potentially. If you're playing around with small amounts you may not care about security much, but if your crypto holdings become significant, control your private keys. Consider a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S or Trezor if your holdings are significant. Use two factor authentication on everything. Be mindful of phishing urls and scams. Do your due diligence, always, and don't blindly trust anyone or anything on the internet about the crypto space.

Tyler, what are your crypto picks?

I'm not here to shill something I may or may not hold, or to get you to subscribe to a newsletter or some crap. I've found the world of crypto to be absolutely full of misinformation, shilling, scams, and schemes. I can offer some commentary and friend advice to my community to try to help everyone navigate this space, and some useful links. I follow crypto pretty closely, too, and I'm happy to discuss it in general with you all and do the whole forum discourse thing. We'll get into talking about all sorts of various cryptocurrencies as this thread goes, presumably.

Is the market going to go up or down from here?

Both. Whatever it is right now in hundred of billions of dollars of market cap is listed here.


This is the best knowledge repository I've come across for the crypto world. Yes, there's a whole lot to learn.


Fresh start for 2018. Governments are making their own, fortunes are rising and falling, Zuck's "investigating" it, and millions of people are dipping their toes in. Let's talk.
 

TBiddy

Member
Great idea for a thread. I feel like there's a lot of misinformation out there, and while Reddit is a decent resource, I fear that half of the posts there are shilling their favorite shitcoin, hoping to make it jump 200% in value.

What is everyones strategy? Personally, I'm keeping away from daytrading, so I'm mainly in it to HODL. My current portfolio looks like this:

Modum
Cindicator
Ambrosus
IOTA
Monetha

Most of my luck has been with MOD and CND. CND especially has been good to me the last week or so.

As always, don't invest more than you can afford to lose. The market may crash and burn tomorrow, for all we know and Coinbase could close, making it difficult to cash out your gains.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
These cryptos don't serve regulatory function.. they will be dealt with, believe me.

The standard crypto is gonna be ACChain from China..
 

shpankey

not an idiot
Cool thread 😎. I’m just getting started but have made a few hundred bucks by sheer (dumb) luck and being forgetful and dropping $10 into it early and leaving it.

One thing I’ve heard mentioned is ‘tether’. Can someone explain what that is and means?
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Cool thread 😎. I’m just getting started but have made a few hundred bucks by sheer luck and being forgetful and dropping $10 into it early and leaving it.

One thing I’ve heard mentioned is ‘tether’. Can someone explain what that is and means?

Right, so...

1) The most annoying part of trading in the crypto space is typically the conversion between fiat and crypto. Depending on where you live that could be a taxable event, your bank could have a prob with it, bank transfers to and fro can take days (an eternity in the crypto trading world), etc.

2) The crypto market is almost entirely pegged to Bitcoin to some degree. Meaning, on a good day 1000 cryptos will increase in value, and on a bad day 1000 cryptos will decrease in value. What do you do when you want to day trade crypto, buy low and sell high?

3) Typically the crypto exchanges that trade the smaller market cap tokens don't accept fiat deposits at all. Their trading pairs are mainly between bitcoin and the altcoin in question (and more recently ethereum trading pairs have emerged)

Enter: Tether, aka USDT, aka Monopoly Money. It's pegged to the US Dollar, so when you're holding crypto and the market is up, you can move your holdings to Tether and retain your gains instead of losing your position when the entire crypto market downswings at the same time. And because it's not really the US Dollar, there aren't any regulations for it and crypto exchanges can trade it and utilize it freely.

The problem, of course, is that Tether is NOT ACTUALLY THE US DOLLAR. Allegedly Tether is backed 1:1 with USD as more Tether is "printed" and released into the market to support the volume of crypto trading occurring, but to my knowledge there's no real evidence of this being true. At any point this can and probably will all come crashing down, and awareness of just how sketchy and precarious the whole Tether situation is is finally being paid attention to in the general crypto space.
 

llien

Member
None of the existing systems could even remotely handle the daily transactions that we are doing using banks, cards, paypal, etc. Last I checked blockchain file was 65GB

Governments can EASILY outlaw usage of crypto currencies.

The main possibility that is explored at the moment is buying for less to sell for more later on - stock market gamble.

Unlike stuff like gold, which has its industrial uses, crypto "goods" are absolutely useless.
 

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
None of the existing systems could even remotely handle the daily transactions that we are doing using banks, cards, paypal, etc. Last I checked blockchain file was 65GB

Governments can EASILY outlaw usage of crypto currencies.

The main possibility that is explored at the moment is buying for less to sell for more later on - stock market gamble.

Unlike stuff like gold, which has its industrial uses, crypto "goods" are absolutely useless.
Crypto currencies have as much value as people are willing to pay for them. It's the exact same with everything else. BTW, I believe the bitcoin blockchain alone is around 155GB currently. it seems like your information is quite dated. Perhaps you should read the OP and skim some of the resources there so you can have some notion of how the things you're denouncing actually work. The only point you brought up that I think of any value is the lack of scalability in most bitcoins. Platforms like Cardano utilizing POS as opposed to POW as well as blockchain pruning seem like the best bets going forward. Simply due to the fees associated with trading bitcoin, it's viability as a useful monetary substitute in daily transactions is severely limited.

At any rate, there's definitely a demand for crypto currencies, otherwise there wouldn't be SOOOOOO much money invested in it. Where there's demand, there's value.
 

llien

Member
Crypto currencies have as much value as people are willing to pay for them. It's the exact same with everything else.
Most of "everything else" has actual uses, beyond "being bought and later on sold for more".

Perhaps you should read the OP and skim some of the resources there so you can have some notion of how the things you're denouncing actually work.
Perhaps you could be more specific about the overlooked details.


At any rate, there's definitely a demand for crypto currencies, otherwise there wouldn't be SOOOOOO much money invested in it. Where there's demand, there's value.
10 Millions Russians can't be wrong.
And not like there is a handful of major players that could manipulate bitcoin price.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Cool. Much reading and watching to be done come the weekend.

One quick question. What if any is the relationship between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash? I see on my Coinbase account that they've separate listings, but are they complete distinct Cryptos, or are they aligned in some fashion?

10 Millions Russians can't be wrong.
And not like there is a handful of major players that could manipulate bitcoin price.

I think most people are aware that Crypto is pretty risky and best not to put the kid's college fund on the line versus what you can afford to lose going in and see if you can spin that into something.
 

Tumle

Member
Most of "everything else" has actual uses, beyond "being bought and later on sold for more".
This little snippet just shows that he is right, about you not reading the OP..
There are many uses of a block-chain other than keeping track of transactions..
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Cool. Much reading and watching to be done come the weekend.

One quick question. What if any is the relationship between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash? I see on my Coinbase account that they've separate listings, but are they complete distinct Cryptos, or are they aligned in some fashion?

Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin that emerged out of a dispute over whether or not to increase the block size of the Bitcoin blockchain in order to handle more transactions per second as Bitcoin has grown in popularity. Bitcoin's blocks are about 1MB and get added to the blockchain about every ten minutes on average, and that translates to about three transactions per second that can be confirmed. Obviously that is not enough to handle global scaling of the protocol as a currency.

Change to Bitcoin's protocols can only happen via consensus. Part of the community was in favor of increasing the block size from 1MB to a larger size, which would be a bandaid for transaction congestion and high fees that Bitcoin has been facing recently, but larger block sizes at the scale of mining that Bitcoin operates with would lead to much more centralization of mining, arguably putting Bitcoin in greater danger of 51% attacks. By that I mean: if you control the majority of mining, you control the consensus of what gets written onto the public ledger of transactions, and a malicious actor with 51% of mining control could manipulate where bitcoins are flowing etc.

The consensus ended up deciding against increased block sizes...sort of. Segwit (segregated witness) is a block size increase too, and that has been integrated into the Bitcoin protocol, but that's a different story. Anyway, consensus decided to rely on what are called second layer solutions to deal with the scaling problem. The primary second layer solution in development right now, which will work on top of the current blockchain without changing it directly, is Lightning Network. You can learn more about Lightning Network here. It's a really neat idea and the first successful live LN transaction just took place earlier in the week.

So Bitcoin kept its 1MB block size (aside from adopting Segwit), but the contingent that wanted larger block sizes decided to hard fork Bitcoin into a separate crypto. Basically anyone can hard fork Bitcoin at any time, because the blockchain is public from the first block all the way to the present. If you want to hard fork Bitcoin, you just choose a time to do it and then fork the blockchain off with a different protocol and set of rules and miners and all that from that point onward, and both blockchains will coexist independently thereafter. When a hard fork happens, anyone holding Bitcoin basically gets a stock split and their Bitcoin holdings are duplicated on the hard fork as well since their coins will have existed on the ledger in both places prior to the fork happening.

Hypothetically, a hard fork of Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash could actually supplant Bitcoin that way, since people would have both and then consensus would decide which one was superior or more valuable etc.

Long story short, Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin with 8MB blocks instead of 1MB blocks. It doesn't have nearly the transaction volume of Bitcoin so the block size increase isn't actually relevant; it could have 1MB blocks right now and still be effectively fee-less since it did not usurp Bitcoin. It's also, to my knowledge, very very centralized in terms of mining at the moment, just as feared really, so the crypto community doesn't have the same confidence in it as a store of value. However, everyone holding Bitcoin at the time of the fork got Bitcoin Cash 1:1, which was fun since Bitcoin didn't actually lose value in the process but a new coin with value was created, and Bitcoin Cash does have some measure of usefulness for transferring money with low fees when Bitcoin and Ethereum are congested as they often are lately.

There are a lot of, err, crypto-politics involved as well. Bitcoin.com is controlled by Bitcoin Cash interests and not Bitcoin interests, so people learning about Bitcoin via Googling can end up being led down an unintended direction. Bitcoin.org is Bitcoin's official site.
 

shpankey

not an idiot
Awesome info.

One quick question, when I buy coin on coinbase from my account, it has like a 2 week time from when it goes in apparently. What price will I get, the price it was at time of purchase for me, or the price it is on the day it finally goes through? I suspect this is part of the tether stuff you mentioned, but wasn't positive.
 
Awesome info.

One quick question, when I buy coin on coinbase from my account, it has like a 2 week time from when it goes in apparently. What price will I get, the price it was at time of purchase for me, or the price it is on the day it finally goes through? I suspect this is part of the tether stuff you mentioned, but wasn't positive.

You get the price it was at time of purchase.
 
Awesome info.

One quick question, when I buy coin on coinbase from my account, it has like a 2 week time from when it goes in apparently. What price will I get, the price it was at time of purchase for me, or the price it is on the day it finally goes through? I suspect this is part of the tether stuff you mentioned, but wasn't positive.

Also fyi - coinbase isnt realtime values, so you can track a coins value a bit in advance on like coincap/coinstats app to ensure you get a price youre happy with. Not neccessarily always worth it, it i do it occassionally
 
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I would get into mining but due to several socioeconomic factors I cant at the moment. Only downside to this is the exorbitant price increases in GPUs at the moment. Almost 1K dollars for a 1070 Ouch.
 
I would get into mining but due to several socioeconomic factors I cant at the moment. Only downside to this is the exorbitant price increases in GPUs at the moment. Almost 1K dollars for a 1070 Ouch.

Yeah I lucked out when I bought my 1080Ti last year, got it for $720 on special.. GPU prices are crazy currently. Though I'm part of the problem as my 1080Ti been mining Ether for the last 3 months.
 

PSYGN

Member
I bought Neo when it was called AntShares at $7, and I bought Ethereum when it was $200. It's stupid the amount of profit I've made even after taxes. But I also know that it can all turn to crypto dust. I see this more as gambling rather than investment. The vast majority of my money is inside index funds and the stock market is doing really well since Trump became President.
 
I bought Neo when it was called AntShares at $7, and I bought Ethereum when it was $200. It's stupid the amount of profit I've made even after taxes. But I also know that it can all turn to crypto dust. I see this more as gambling rather than investment. The vast majority of my money is inside index funds and the stock market is doing really well since Trump became President.

Speaking of index funds. There is a new cryptocoin (technically a token) called Crypto20 that is supposed to work like an index fund based on the top 20 market cap coins. Assuming the market as a whole continues to grow over time I was thinking it’d be a good token to make regular investments in, but I’m still not sure if I trust it
 
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Yeah I lucked out when I bought my 1080Ti last year, got it for $720 on special.. GPU prices are crazy currently. Though I'm part of the problem as my 1080Ti been mining Ether for the last 3 months.

Buying one GPU isnt the problem. Its the warehouses or mega rich people that just buy up huge quantities of them.

Buying one or two isnt the problem.
 
Found a new hobby in daytrading. It's completely replaced gaming for me XD

Atleast now I can potentially get some money out of it instead of only spending it on games. (Assuming ur smart enough to take out ur initial investment and continue with ur free coins)
 
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Buying one GPU isnt the problem. Its the warehouses or mega rich people that just buy up huge quantities of them.

Buying one or two isnt the problem.

It’s not impossible to find one but stock levels are an issue and re-sellers are taking advantage of that by pumping up prices second hand
 
Awesome info.

One quick question, when I buy coin on coinbase from my account, it has like a 2 week time from when it goes in apparently. What price will I get, the price it was at time of purchase for me, or the price it is on the day it finally goes through? I suspect this is part of the tether stuff you mentioned, but wasn't positive.

If you're in the US you can use GDAX with your Coinbase account to buy, fees are less apparently. Though as I live in Australia I can't use GDAX to test.
 

bigedole

Member
How often do the altcoin traders amongst us cash out to fiat (USD, EUR, etc)?

So I first dipped my toes into crypto back in early August. I bought what was then 1 BTC ($4k) and separated it among several different currencies. I day traded those for a couple weeks and after making some bad calls, decided I was not good enough at that game to continue doing so and I settled on investing in just a couple projects. I only use Bittrex, so my options were somewhat limited, but my portfolio ended up 75% ARK, 15% OMG and 10% DNT. During the December boom, DNT did exceptionally well and I decided to convert all I had back into BTC and then Fiat which covered my initial $4k stake (and made my wife happy that I couldn't just lose our whole investment). So from that initial $4k, I've already broke even on fiat since I actually cashed out some, and then I have 1500 ARK and 110 OMG which is probably worth around 11-12k USD right now. I'm pretty happy that I decided to get into crypto when I did and I strongly advise people to cover their initial stake when it seems reasonable to do so. The market fluctuates wildly and the peace of mind it offers is (to me) pretty significant.

I'm also firmly in the HODL camp. Potential for profits is definitely there with day trading, but it was far too stressful for me and I was not educated/good enough to consistently turn a good profit. Research the projects, try to pick ones that have promising use cases. Crypto is really reminescent of the dot com bubble. Some day, there will be a reckoning and 90%+ of the different coins that exist will probably be wiped out. But if you are with one of the 10% that make it, and were actually worth the investment in the first place, you could be on the ground floor of a google or amazon type investment opportunity.
 
I cashed out half of my holdings just after new years, when things when shooting up so quickly a big correction/dip was inevitable

I've still got a decent amount held (for me at least)
 
Speaking of index funds. There is a new cryptocoin (technically a token) called Crypto20 that is supposed to work like an index fund based on the top 20 market cap coins. Assuming the market as a whole continues to grow over time I was thinking it’d be a good token to make regular investments in, but I’m still not sure if I trust it
Invested in the ICO .. really like their concept and their weekly email updates are rather nifty. (not shilling, just like to see projects follow through on their promises)
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
In pretty major news, Robinhood announced no-fee crypto trading support starting rollout in February, and listing significantly more cryptos than Coinbase (though only Bitcoin and Ether to start with for trading). That was...about 21 hours ago. And there are 450,000 people on the waitlist already. No, 475,000. No, 500,000. This maaaaaaaaaaaaaay be significant for small investor on-ramp in the US, particularly millennials, who want to get into crypto disproportionately already.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/25/free-cryptocurrency-trading-app/
When you place a buy or sell order, Robinhood gives you an estimated price, connects to a slew of trading venues, exchanges, and market centers to find the lowest price, and uses its economies of scale to improve to score better prices over time. To counter market volatility, Robinhood puts a “collar” around your trade so if it can’t execute it at close to the estimated price, it waits for the price to return or lets you know.

And in case the price of a coin skyrockets or plummets, you can place limit orders to set a price where you automatically buy or sell. The full list of coins you can track is Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum Classic, Zcash, Monero, Dash, Stellar, Qtum, Bitcoin Gold, OmiseGo, NEO, Lisk, and Dogecoin.

Dogecoin on a major US brokerage. Must...not...meme....
 
Lightning MainNet node setup.

Lightning Network is growing at a rate of approximately 40% per day. Note of caution if you're funding the MainNet with your own funds, this is still very experimental ... but very cool .. you dont get much more bleeding edge that LN

https://medium.com/@dougvk/run-your-own-mainnet-lightning-node-2d2eab628a8b

https://decentralize.today/struck-by-lightning-bitcoins-true-killer-app-491092574cd8

World Crypto Network latest episode (as of 26th Jan) is packed with info

 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
But it's only available in certain states right? For the no-fee crypto trading part.

Yeah, only some states initially, but we can assume they'll be looking for widespread compliance ASAP after this announcement, along with building out their list of tradeable cryptos beyond BTC and ETH given what they're tracking already.
 

bigedole

Member
Yeah, only some states initially, but we can assume they'll be looking for widespread compliance ASAP after this announcement, along with building out their list of tradeable cryptos beyond BTC and ETH given what they're tracking already.

Unfortunately last I saw, Oregon is not on the list yet hehe. I'm kind of scared of the wide spread adoption of crypto trading by society at large, especially people getting in simplyfor the convenience. It's a very alluring prospect, but it's very clear that a lot of money is being invested in worthless products right now and I feel like it's going to blow up at some point. Whether it's because of the USDT shenanigans, or more fraudulent schemes like Bitconnect, something is going to trigger a collapse and I hope people prepare themselves for it. If you're going to invest, know what you're investing in and why you're investing in it! Chasing quick profits is a viable option but be ok with losing that money if you do! If you want long term (1 year +) growth, try to understand the purpose of the blockchain/platform and whether that seems sustainable when the speculative bubble bursts.
 

Battlechili

Banned
I appreciate cryptocurrency due to how it doesn't involve middlemen like banks and the like handling your funds, but as someone who primarily games on PC, its becoming an increasingly frustrating thing due to its popularity resulting in GPU rarity. The prices of graphics cards are insane lately, and whereas you used to be able to build a good PC for comparatively cheap prices, its gotten to the point where buying prebuilt PCs is cheaper. In this regard, cryptocurrency from my perspective is seemingly hurting PC gaming and discouraging people from getting their own gaming rigs. It concerns me a bit. Maybe changes will take place in the graphics card industry to help alleviate this, but for the time being things are pretty bad and that worries me.
 
I appreciate cryptocurrency due to how it doesn't involve middlemen like banks and the like handling your funds, but as someone who primarily games on PC, its becoming an increasingly frustrating thing due to its popularity resulting in GPU rarity. The prices of graphics cards are insane lately, and whereas you used to be able to build a good PC for comparatively cheap prices, its gotten to the point where buying prebuilt PCs is cheaper. In this regard, cryptocurrency from my perspective is seemingly hurting PC gaming and discouraging people from getting their own gaming rigs. It concerns me a bit. Maybe changes will take place in the graphics card industry to help alleviate this, but for the time being things are pretty bad and that worries me.

Once Ethereum goes Proof Of Stake GPU prices should come down quite a bit. At least until the next profitable Proof Of Work coin takes over, and there is a lot of them around
 

Kadayi

Banned
I appreciate cryptocurrency due to how it doesn't involve middlemen like banks and the like handling your funds, but as someone who primarily games on PC, its becoming an increasingly frustrating thing due to its popularity resulting in GPU rarity. The prices of graphics cards are insane lately, and whereas you used to be able to build a good PC for comparatively cheap prices, its gotten to the point where buying prebuilt PCs is cheaper. In this regard, cryptocurrency from my perspective is seemingly hurting PC gaming and discouraging people from getting their own gaming rigs. It concerns me a bit. Maybe changes will take place in the graphics card industry to help alleviate this, but for the time being things are pretty bad and that worries me.

Yeah I was recently thinking of upgrading as my current GPU can't quite handle my larger monitor with all the bells and whistles on, but FC...you're talking around £600 for a 1070Ti atm. I think I paid about £300 for my 970 and that was only a couple of years back...wtf... :(
 
Yeah I was recently thinking of upgrading as my current GPU can't quite handle my larger monitor with all the bells and whistles on, but FC...you're talking around £600 for a 1070Ti atm. I think I paid about £300 for my 970 and that was only a couple of years back...wtf... :(

It’s pretty crazy, but TBH as long as there is a profitable coin out there to mine this problem will persist. Once people with decent GPUs realise how easy it is to mine and make money it’s a slippery slope until their gaming rig is solely a mining rig
 
I’m using coin tracking for taxes and it’s pretty nice. The export file doesn’t import into Turbo Tax online so I either have to add them manually or buy the desktop version.
 

Sàmban

Banned
I turned a 10K investment into well over 100K in less than a month. I'd like to claim I was an expert but it was all dumb luck. Lost quite a bit during the January crash but I'm still in the high 90Ks. I can't cash out because it'll bump my tax bracket and I don't have the money to pay short-term gains taxes on my profits. Aint that some shit GAF
 
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demented

Member
Once Ethereum goes Proof Of Stake GPU prices should come down quite a bit. At least until the next profitable Proof Of Work coin takes over, and there is a lot of them around
Some of my mining friends already moved on, say zcash is better mined with nvidia cards so they're doing that.
 
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