I’m not understanding how bitcoin works realistically and from what I have read I still don’t get the concept.
Im trying to get someone’s input on bitcoin and see if its worth investing or is this just some future animation creation?

If you don’t understand it don’t buy it. That is good advice for anything really.

There are a ton of short articles and short you tube videos that explain it. No point in reinventing the wheel in this thread. Go spend twenty minutes watching videos and if it doesn’t click don’t buy any.

Virtual Tulips...

Honestly the premise was that a complex mathematical problem would be solved and would "back" the coin "mined" on a computer.  However it's a valueless speculative item that is currently under federal review due to manipulation being done over the past year.

Bitcoin works the same way that the US$ works, it is backed by nothing, (like the US$), and only has value because people think that it does.  (Like the US$).

However bitcoin is limited to 21 million units, while more US$ can be created each year.  This makes bitcoin a potentially deflationary currency, whereas US$ is a potentially inflationary currency.  (Doesn't mean either always acts that way, but it does describe the potential trend.

I wouldn't recommend speculating in bitcoin unless you have a healthy amount of conventional investment assets.  If you do, I would keep the per centage of bitcoin assets at a small amount.

Whatever you put into bitcoin, kiss it goodbye.  Maybe it goes back up, maybe it doesn't.  Nobody knows what it will do.

I have had a lot of fun with my bitcoin speculation.

Bitcoin is the reward for solving complicated mathematical equations on the blockchain. The blockchain is a digital ledger that is kept by hundreds of thousands of storage units around the world. Basically, all information stored on the blockchain cannot be changed, only amended by subsequent blocks. This provides a record of all transactions and revisions in a trust-less environment.

The underlying blockchain tech is really what businesses are focused on for information storage, transfer and security.

bitcoin is electronic cash that can be sent P2P without going through a bank, a completely decentralized system. The blockchain is the backbone of the tech which is basically a public ledger used to record who has what money. It's a really cool concept. But thats a small overview, look up Andreas Antonopoulos' explanation, he breaks it down good. I think its worth buying a couple hundred dollars worth just because. Coinbase is a good exchange.

Each bitcoin (BTC) is divisible to the 8th decimal place, so each BTC can be split into 100,000,000 units. Each unit of bitcoin, or 0.00000001 bitcoin, is called a satoshi. A Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is an attempt to create a monetary system not under the control of any government.

As such it is doomed to fail.  Eventually it will be outlawed for all intents and purposes.  If not in actual fact.

From a technical standpoint bitcoins are mined by solving very complex math problems with a computer.  The complexity of the problem to be solved is such that your computer will use more value in electricity than it can make by solving its way to a valid bitcoin.

The only even modestly profitable system for mining bitcoin today are the latest version of specialized ASIC-based mining rigs, which do nothing BUT mine bitcoin.

Even the systems made for mining bitcoin two years ago are now no longer able to make a profit unless you're getting free or nearly free electricity to run them.

Short and simple answer:  STAY AWAY from bitcoin.  Its value trend is downward and with government resistance to its existence, it has no future.

A dollar spent on bitcoin is a dollar wasted.

Why then do we appear to be inching closer every month to a ETF of bitcoin and crypto? Why are investment firms releasing their own stable coins for this space?

It appears we are quickly moving towards institutions moving into the crypto space. The SEC is cleaning up shop and this is necessary to move past the retail sector into the big league.

I see more momentum behind bitcoin ahead and crypto in general. Whats more, if you study the space you can see business looking into these public networks very hard to assist them with numerous supply chain management problems. Any nation who forbids the use of crypto is going to be shooting themselves in the economic foot as these technologies create near frictionless transactions between corporations and even the trading of value from DEVICE to DEVICE or from DEVICE to BUSINESS.

I am just a casual who has been reading into this tech and looking for players who are following KYC practices and who have a working product. I maintain a 50% position in BTC and then follow altcoins which "have jobs" and/or "solve problems" for businesses.

Crypto is gaining momentum especially behind the scenes where developers are hard at work... All of this being masked by the daily bad news of the bubble popping.

Pretty strong statement there. How much have you got in the game in Crypto?

If the answer is zero, it's just an un-backed opinion.

I've got zero in it as it's a rigged soon to be worthless, outlawed game. Very few winners in that game and it will be the ones pulling the strings.

I wont reveal my hand, thats crazy talk. My opinion is backed by my *continued* personal invesment. Luckily I have DCA'd in and I am young, so a lost year to me is worth the potential of future returns in this new market. All I know is after much self study and reflection on the technology, I beleive we are sitting on something that is likely as powerful as the internet with use cases we wont be able to see until suddenly its integrated with our day to day life. This space has been perking the ears of Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, as well as heavy venture capitalist investment. The pressure to offer an ETF has been building and will perhaps reach green light status sometime in 2019. The Swiss market already launched an ETF heavily weighted with BTC and XRP. More and more banks partner with ripple. DNVGL is partnered heavily with another crypto I like and have launched their own dapp on the platform.

Harvard and MIT have allocated a portion of their endowment for crypto investments. Crypto custody and security protocols are being developed to handle institional demand. The SEC just released statements that have spooked the ICO projects and they are in the process of unloading ETH for cash. This will clear out the weak projects and those who are unable to refund investors.

I am investing in coins who are on the right side of KYC laws and who are registering or likely to register/comply with the SECs demands. I look for coins that fit with the Howey test. I look for networks with strong business use cases which can also be used to launch public dapps.

If I am wrong I threw away a significant amount of money. Ok.  That was gun money that I gave up for the last year, money I could afford to lose. I will move on as I am not over extended. If I am right, and the market returns to even half of its previous ATH... Well. That's that.

You can find posts like this from 2013 as well.  That's why I'm so disillusioned with crypto at this point despite making a boatload on the last bubble.

Don't worry though.  You'll get your Cryptobubble 5.0.  It's going to happen even if cryptocurrency is ultimately worthless.

Is there a way to invest in a blockchain technology company without investing in Bitcoin?

I see bitcoin as eventually being worthless. All it's worth seems to be tied to blockchain. Blockchain isn't/won't be exclusive to cryptocurrency. I see bitcoin fading away as soon as something more useful comes along. Like digital cameras when smart phones became main stream. Smart phones use digital cameras, but stand alone digital cameras are essentially dead. Bitcoin is worthless unless it becomes the new rock solid stable currency which it will never achieve. No one above the age of 30 is going to put much into it when it swings 70% over 6 months, and associated with all that risk.

Now if someone integrates that technology into something that makes daily life better, then that could be something huge. Like say if blockchain technology could eliminate identity theft and shit like that. That would be something cool to invest in.

What do you think of the incoming regulation and SEC pushing the industry to work inside securities law framework?

I see it as inevitable that these actions will clear away some of the weak projects and leave us with more mature projects who actually have a use case.

The tech has long been immature, but now here we are with some mainets launched and onboarding of clients into the blockchain. The economic model is still being fined tuned as we can see the different issues around mining, staking, etc. Haven't been fully solved. Here we are with companies and foundations working with international regulatory bodies. Here we are with large investment firms which see opportunity in emerging tech. Here we are with blockchains seeing cooperation from large tech and non tech partners in banking, regulation, accounting, electronics, and so on.

Holding network tokens to me is akin to holding digital access to a distributed network that reduces friction between users / companies and increases trust at the same time. The Accountability of all products from supplier to buyer is the biggest and furthest reaching use case I can see implemented soon. Low hanging fruit if you will. The question is how much is the value is in the network and how much demand will there be to access the network?

Im willing to sit for a few years and see how this plays out.

Forget about Bitcoin, look at the technology, blockchain has many actual real world applications where it can do a lot of good. Like a lot of new technologies it takes time to be adopted and accepted, try to find projects/"coins" that actually might have a use, not all the shit coins out there that are a solution looking for a problem.

I by no means have all the answers...

While I get where you are coming from, any currency is backed by the strength of the economy that uses it.  While I think the US Economy has serious cracks in it, it may still be the best house on a bad block.  Additionally, it is essentially backed by oil because oil is traded in the US Dollar.  If the oil market changes, and they have been trying to change it, then that could spell serious problems for the dollar.  Losing our current trade ware could also create issues.

Someone else hit the nail on the head about it being created so that it can't be controlled by any government.  The problem is that by not being controlled by any government, it is controlled by every government.  China has manipulated it a couple of times.  I guarantee you that some politicians wanted to make a quick buck so they sell, then an announcement comes out that it is illegal in China so the price drops significantly and they get to buy.  Then after the price bottoms out it is legal again and the price runs up so that they get to sell again.

Since there are no trade consequences, no one that will go to war with them over the currency, no real regulators to slap their hands over manipulating it, anyone with enough power and money manipulate the market.  I don't think that crypto will ever go away because you can bet govt's are using it for their dirty dealings so in that way it is useful to them.  However, they won't let it threaten their own currency.

On interesting little factoid is that there are bread crumbs for every transaction embedded in bitcoin.  So, all of those dark web interactions for child porn, sex trafficking, drugs etc are embeded in it.  I don't think they would crack down on that because it would be like prosecuting someone for the cocaine on their $100 bills, but people are theoretically holding highly illegal images in their crypto without knowing it.

It is backwards of that.  A currency will be stronger if the economy is weak.  If the economy is strong, the currency will weaken.

Look at the Great Depression, and then fast forward 3 decades, the postwar economy had been very strong, but inflation was rearing its ugly head.

No currency is backed by anything today.  Its value will be determined by supply and demand, and if more currency is created than there is demand for then inflation will ensue.

If you have 1 Bitcoin and I have 0 Bitcoins, you have nothing and I still have my dignity.

FYI..ran across this while perusing a Govt. auction site. No other info as that auction was over and no links.

October 19, 2018 - The U.S. Marshals are auctioning approximately 660 bitcoins in connection with various federal criminal, civil and administrative cases during a six-hour period on Nov. 5 from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. EST

Interesting that the Feds recognize the value. Given the latest crash in BTC. I wonder what it went for ?
More interesting.. all in one lot or broken up into blocks, offers for specific numbers of BTC..?
Not to mention.. why they did not just simply cash it out through an exchange.
Lots of questions if they did in fact auction those off to the public.

I am in. Not heavy enough to get hurt. Care is probably a better term. So the current state of crypto makes no difference. I do find it all interesting.
Watching from afar !

Maybe I am cynical, but here is my question.  Why would anyone want to buy crypto from the gov't?  The whole point is that it lives in the shadows.  Just hearing that this happened the way that you described it makes me wonder if they aren't looking to hammer people trading crypto and not paying taxes on gains or something.  Either that or they have figured out a way to track it once they have it in hand and they want to see where it goes?  I don't own any, I don't really care what happens to the market or anything else, but that all sounds fishy to me.

It's really dumb to tie your dignity to something like that.

There's no morality or immorality with cryptocurrency.  It's just an interesting experiment that has a pretty wide range of uncertainty in terms of future usefulness and intrinsic value.

Some people think it's going to change the world and be worth trillions and others think it does nothing useful that existing systems don't already accomplish and is therefore worthless.  It'll be awhile before we really find out.

There's no reason to treat it in any way other than dispassionately.