
A beginner’s guide to getting started in the cryptocurrency world - sherm8n
https://blog.goodaudience.com/a-beginners-guide-to-getting-started-in-the-cryptocurrency-world-69c50516be71
======
option_greek
I'm currently reading Digital Gold by Nathaniel. As I progress, its clearer
that bitcoin might or might not be a great economic tool but its an awesome
case study in game theory. I think the real innovation of Satoshi (whether he
intended it or not) is to keep the players (how ever big or small they are)
chained up to the eco system. At every level of new expansion, new players
(usually bigger than current ones) join in the game and gets entrapped in the
net. Then the game uses these players's strength to pull it self forward.
There are real risks to bitcoin at points of these expansions. My guess is
that if too strong players join at a time when the net is not yet ready for
them, there is a risk that they break free of the net and destroy bitcoin.
Here too game theory comes to its rescue. Assuming the net is not strong
enough at any given time, there is little chance that the whole thing attracts
stronger players. This is why I believe bitcoin has better chances of success
than other crypto currencies. Its a constantly evolving monster that will
gobble up everything eventually (Isn't it beautiful :))

~~~
roymurdock
I haven't read the book, but this 2013 paper from Princeton economists Kroll,
Davey, and Felten [1] describes the game theory that keeps strong players from
destroying the network (aka a 51% or "goldfinger" attack):

"It is often asserted (for example, in the Bitcoin white paper [22]) that a
cartel can double-spend Bitcoins. In a strict sense, this is true: a cartel
can spend a Bitcoin by paying it to a player Alice, receiving goods or
services, and then shifting the consensus choice of history to a branch where
that coin is instead paid to a different player Bob...

Bitcoins have value because people are willing to trade them for goods and
services. If players were unwilling to accept Bitcoins for trade or unwilling
to spend Bitcoins for fear of having their payments nullified, the value of
Bitcoins would diminish significantly as players lost confidence in the
system...

Worse, because players are encouraged to generate a new identity for each
transaction and because identities are not linked to any side information,
players cannot easily determine whether a proffered payment is coming from the
double-spending cartel or an honest user.

A rational player should refuse to accept any payments when there is a
significant threat of double-spending. As a cartel must outmine the entire
Bitcoin network and thus outspend the entire Bitcoin network for as long as it
would remain a cartel, we believe it is very unlikely that a cartel could
double-spend enough to recover the cost of the attack."

The question at this stage, with the price of Bitcoin so high, is if this
rationale still holds. What if a cartel were able to double spend one (or
multiple) of the big 40 "whale" Bitcoin accounts before destroying the entire
network? The one-time billion dollar theft could offset the cost of putting
together the computing power to pull off a 51% attach, especially if the
cartel assembled that power maliciously through a botnet.

[1]
[http://www.econinfosec.org/archive/weis2013/papers/KrollDave...](http://www.econinfosec.org/archive/weis2013/papers/KrollDaveyFeltenWEIS2013.pdf)

~~~
Slartie
You cannot build a botnet large enough to out-hash the army of dedicated ASICs
that's responsible for todays' Bitcoin hash rate. Not even a botnet that
merges all personal computers in the world would be able to do that - ASICs
are just that much faster.

But - some miners and mining pool operators are rumored to be among the bigger
Bitcoin whales themselves. They already own (or at least control) a large part
of the ASIC hashing power. None of them is even close to 51% today, but then
you also don't really need 51% to pull off a double-spend attack, 30-40%
should do it, as long as you pull that hashing power from the legit network at
the same time. A cartel made up of the top miners and mining pool owners
should be able to comfortably reach this critical mass of hash power. So
effectively it comes down to whether they assume that it's better for them
financially to continue supporting the networks' health or to pull a one-time
heist, destroying the networks' credibility in the process. For the moment,
the former seems to be still true. But nobody knows for sure whether that may
change some day...

~~~
Drdrdrq
Especially as financial motivation is not the only reason for pulling that
off. Currently majority of the miners are based in China. What happens if
state orders them to approve a transaction of their choosing?

EDIT: I am not saying this is a probable threat, but there are some risks
associated with Bitcoin.

------
cowpig
Having been introduced to cryptocurrencies the technical route, I'd never
really been exposed to the brand of hype in these Andreas Antonopoulos videos
before. I guess I've never watched a televangelist either, but I imagine this
would be the equivalent.

This piece of bullshit in particular stood out to me:

> Where were you when libor was fixed? Where were you when gold markets were
> fixed? When high-frequency traders used front-running...

It's odd that he uses these examples to support the "trustless" blockchain
architecture, because blockchain does nothing to improve any of these. The
opposite is true: it makes it far easier to manipulate markets because all
transactions are anonymous, censorship-proof, and it's impossible to recover
funds from bad actors.

Not having to trust a central authority for the ledger does nothing to prevent
collusion or frontrunning in markets. From what I've seen, cryptocurrency
markets are constantly being manipulated in ways that are both unethical and
illegal.

> Bitcoin vs Ethereum is like Sharks vs Lions...

He claims that Bitcoin specializes in ways that Ethereum does not, but this
isn't true: effectively, Bitcoin is a subset of Ethereum. He claims that
Ethereum "scales 10x worse" than Bitcoin, but I don't know where he got that
number from: the reality is more nuanced, but by any practical measure,
Ethereum is already better-equipped to scale and the protocol is actively
evolving (as opposed to Bitcoin's, which is immutable as long as its community
remains as toxic as it currently does).

If he means the size of the full blockchain, in practice Ethereum implements
compression techniques that make it much more compact--the Bitcoin blockchain
is currently at about 100gb, while the uncompressed "archival" version of
Ethereum is at 300gb but the standard compressed version only requires about
15gb.

In terms of transaction throughput, Bitcoin has a stupid hard limit of 1mb per
10mins of data, and so Ethereum far outscales it in that regard. If you hear
the term "lightning network" as a counterargument, you can ignore it: the
lightning network doesn't yet exist, and when it does, it will have several
practical problems, including that it requires onchain scaling to work[1].

[1]
[http://cowpig.github.io/bitcoin/cryptocurrency/2017/06/24/Se...](http://cowpig.github.io/bitcoin/cryptocurrency/2017/06/24/Segwit-
and-Lightning-Network/)

~~~
keymone
Seems you’ve bought into Roger Ver’s snake oil. 1mb limit isn’t stupid, it’s
what creates the fee market which makes spamming the blockchain very costly
and keeps blockchain size in check. Already you wouldn’t be able to sync the
ethereum chain from genesis block, I can still do that on raspberry pi node in
less than two weeks. Whether the limit should be upped is still a question up
for debate but the reason it wasn’t yet is because there was no consensus
about it and contentious hardforks are dangerous.

~~~
cowpig
> Seems you’ve bought into Roger Ver’s snake oil.

I've heard this a few times online despite not really knowing anything about
Roger Ver. I am capable of coming to logical conclusions on my own.

> 1mb limit isn’t stupid, it’s what creates the fee market which makes
> spamming the blockchain very costly and keeps blockchain size in check.

Very costly in the sense that an individual Bitcoin transaction curently costs
about $20, an order of magnitude more than my bank transfers cost.

> Already you wouldn’t be able to sync the ethereum chain from genesis block,
> I can still do that on raspberry pi node in less than two weeks.

I literally synced the Ethereum chain on my laptop last weekend.

> Whether the limit should be upped is still a question up for debate

This is only true if you are using the phrase "up for debate" in the sense
that smoking being bad for you is up for debate, or that we should do
something about climate change is up for debate, or that net neutrality is up
for debate: there are powerful self-interested actors for whom the obvious
conclusion is expensive.

~~~
keymone
> Very costly in the sense that an individual Bitcoin transaction curently
> costs about $20

you've cherry-picked the exact point in time when due to various factors
("civil war" between bitcoin and bitcoin cash supporters, propaganda
campaigns, price rally) transaction fees are at their peak. if you look at the
graph - [https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#all](https://jochen-
hoenicke.de/queue/#all) you'll realize that for majority of this year
transaction fees were well below 50c. this is what happens if you blindly
believe the echo chamber.

besides, i'm not convinved all and every transaction belong on the chain.
chain provides bunch of very strong guarantees that no other system in the
world provides - it's ridiculous to claim that those guarantees are not worth
anything.

> I literally synced the Ethereum chain on my laptop last weekend.

lol, nope. let me guess, `geth --fast`? well, i suggest you go read up on what
`--fast` means. i challenge you to try syncing from the genesis block.

> This is only true if you are using the phrase "up for debate" in the sense
> that smoking being bad for you is up for debate

no, it is literally up for debate. there is a multitude of bottlenecks
involved in having a healthy blockchain and a network around it, they are all
affected by bumping the blocksize in non-trivial ways through secondary and
tertiary effects. and it's not even obvious we can handle the primary effect
of growing blockchain and utxo set - that quite literally leads to
centralization of full nodes via making it prohibitively expensive to run it
which runs against one of the core tenets of bitcoin itself.

~~~
cowpig
> you've cherry-picked the exact point in time...

I picked this number because it's what I paid yesterday

> lol, nope. let me guess, `geth --fast`? well, i suggest you go read up on
> what `--fast` means. i challenge you to try syncing from the genesis block.

I used Parity, and instead of suggesting I "go read up on" something I already
understand, maybe you'd be more convincing if you made an argument as to why
the difference should matter (it doesn't).

> bunch of broad, abstract claims

I can't argue with any of those because you didn't provide any reasoning or
facts to address.

~~~
keymone
> I picked this number because it's what I paid yesterday

right, so you got unlucky and now you're sad, i get it. just don't start
misrepresenting what's actually happening.

> the rest

there is plenty written on both scaling and checkpointing/snapshotting, seems
you've picked your side, don't see the point spending my sunday evening
convincing you of anything. time will tell.

~~~
ericb
> there is plenty written on both scaling and checkpointing/snapshotting,

Not the op, but I'd be interested in seeing sources. I haven't made up my
mind.

------
cvsh
I don't get how one can be a self-proclaimed "HODLer" and also preach about
how cryptocurrency is the future of money. Assets you can reasonably call
"currency" and assets you speculatively buy and hold seem like fundamentally
incompatible categories. BTC or something like it may indeed be the future of
currency, but that certainly won't happen until the current speculative mania
reaches some kind of equilibrium.

~~~
deefcee
What the HODL meme stands for not selling your BTC for fiat. It is somewhat
misleading since spending BTC (which is not the same as selling) is definitely
not "holding" in any sense. The intent is telling the new users not to succumb
to fear and sell on drops but stay strong in their belief in the technology.

~~~
if_by_whisky
Spending BTC is fundamentally the same as selling.

~~~
TomMarius
Yes, you're of course true - in the literal sense. The intended meaning is to
not sell for fiat.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Or, to be more precise, not sell for fiat because of mistrust in long term
bitcoin value.

------
rblion
This is how you know a bubble is coming, when you start seeing articles like
this. It's starting to feel like 1999.

~~~
etr-strike
For the first time in history people can decide which characteristics they
desire in their money.

People look at bitcoin and see money that can be sent anywhere without needing
approval from anyone. They can store their money themselves. They can program
their money. They know the supply of their money can’t discretely change
underneath them.

Some people are opting to change their dollars to btc. Some are opting to
hedge a small amount into this new system in case recent monetary experiments
explode. Some people are speculating (as they do in forex markets today).

Just because more people want to explore this brave new world doesn’t mean
it’s a bubble.

~~~
rblion
I'm not knocking the concept of cryptocurrencies as a whole, just like I would
never knock the Internet as a whole. However, I would say that a lot of people
speculating with stars in their eyes without understanding the underlying
technology makes me wonder when a market correction event is going to happen.

Currently on my Facebook feed there is a kid I know who is a tech support
agent but now posting pictures as a "Bitcoin daytrader" and now offering
classes on the subject. There is another girl who is a model for rap videos in
Detroit and she posts screenshots of Bitcoin prices to show how well off she
is now. I've read about hackers walking away with millions of dollars in a
cryptorobbery (now a real thing). The next thing is an Ocean's 11 sequel where
George Clooney and Brad Pitt pull off a cryptoheist.

I think the real innovation is blockchain and that there will be a major
cryptocurrency to rise out of one of the smaller markets. I get the feeling
(just a hunch) that Bitcoin will be lycos/altavista/yahoo that will inspire a
Google. Maybe that company already exists (Ethereum?), maybe not.

~~~
rafiki6
Probably not. Currency isn't a search engine. It's a fundamental piece of an
efficient economy. There's a reason we went to fiat currencies. I like a lot
of things about bitcoin actually. I want to see an energy based currency
evolve (without the actual expenditure of energy). That currency can basically
be a formula that calculates value based on energy consumption and output. I
think something like that would allow for a more sustainable economy.

Electricity Backed Currency:
[https://papers.ssrn.com/soL3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166](https://papers.ssrn.com/soL3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166)

------
soVeryTired
Is there a cryptocurrency out there that doesn't hand outsize rewards to early
adopters? I feel like I could get much more excited about something like that.

~~~
Drdrdrq
I don't think so - that wouldn't make sense. Any cryptocurrency's survival
depends on early adopters, so it makes sense to award them. Note that their
risk is higher too. Don't believe that? Join them. :)

~~~
spookthesunset
That is cool and all, but if bitcoin was ever even close to being "mainstream"
you can bet your ass there would be a bazillion articles, FB posts, tweets,
etc from people who do _not_ like the idea of being locked out of the economy
unless they buy "the future of money" from a relative handful of early
adopters. Such an idea is, to be blunt, complete horseshit. The idea that
every person on earth needs to first purchase Bitcoin from a handful of early
adopters in order to continue to participate in the economy is flat out loony-
toon nuts. No matter how Bitcoin evangelists try to frame it, it's just not
gonna happen.

Don't think that the lack of discussion about this means it isn't an issue. It
is a _massive_ , _massive_ showstopper to Bitcoin adoption. The reason you
don't see more people talking about this is because Bitcoin is absolutely
nowhere near becoming the default currency used by anybody. Much easier to
beat up on all the other massive technical flaws in Bitcoin...

~~~
craigc
I am not sure that long term BTC will actually replace USD or another
government backed currency. I think it would take a LOT for that to happen. If
that does happen then that means the value of the USD and every other currency
will decline at the same time as the value of BTC increases which could lead
to a global financial collapse.

That said, if it were to happen, I don’t think you will have to buy bitcoin
from a handful of early adopters. It is more likely that your employer would
start paying you in Bitcoin when it becomes inevitable. Those same early
adopters who hold a lot of the wealth will likely use their wealth to invest
in startups/charities/companies/etc. the same way as entrepreneurs and rich
people do today.

~~~
johnny22
and from where would they get the bitcoin?

~~~
craigc
I meant that early bitcoin investors will invest in companies and put money
into various organizations which will then be paid out to their employees.

For existing companies, they would need to purchase, but if a significant
portion of US dollars moves into bitcoin then it is likely every company would
start having to hold a portion of their cash in bitcoin as a hedge long before
it actually overtakes the dollar.

~~~
UncleMeat
Which magnifies their wealth. You don't invest in companies to distribute your
wealth to the people. You invest in order to make more money.

Capital tends towards centralization, not equitable distribution.

------
arca_vorago
I got into bitcoin in the early days. I'll spare you my whining about how I
could have been a millionaire, but I eventually wrote it off. Now, many years
later, I remember my reasoning, and to some degree it still stands.

Anonymity is the killer feature of a currency.

This is why right now I am keeping an eye on Monero more than anything.

~~~
aphextron
>Anonymity is the killer feature of a currency.

How is Bitcoin any more anonymous than cash?

~~~
7171u
He meant Monero not Bitcoin.

------
anigbrowl
Good summary for hackers, but I wanted to raise one point:

 _No, seriously, please read it! The Bitcoin white paper should be required
reading before anyone is allowed to interact with this technology._

What the fuck no. If you want to build something yeah maybe, but this is
exactly what's _wrong_ with cryptocurrencies at the moment - it's somewhere in
between a cult and a club for insiders. This is why we have shitty wallet
software and lots of existential uncertainty, rather than products that
regular people can use with confidence _without needing to understand how they
work_.

You don't require kids to read Adam Smith on the fundamentals of fiat currency
before they learn how to buy candy. But when you go to the Bitcoin Website
you're offered some 10 different wallets and told to 'educate yourself' with
hardly any further help.

This approach is extremely exclusionary. When you write a beginner's guide,
your job is not to mint a new cryptocurrency expert, it's to help someone
understand why they might want to use cryptocurrency, get a wallet, put
something in it, and complete a transaction (eg by getting them started with
some low-risk variant like DogeCoin).

I've been following Bitcoin since shortly after it got started and the biggest
hurdle to cryptocurrency adoption is the 'secret handshake' mentality that
aspires to make a special currency for people in the know for private
advantage, rather than offering simple, reliable, and accessible tools to
people who need an alternative to the official economy (as much because of
poverty or social exclusion as ideology). All people need to know about
cryptocurrency theory is that it's secure, whether or not it's private, and
how volatile it is.

~~~
philipwhiuk
It's not a good summary for hackers. It tells you sweet nothing about how
Bitcoin actually works in practice. Where's the information on SegWit or the
block size or in practice how the protocol works? Nowhere.

It's a hash together of what the author has seen on Bitcoin and thinks is
cool.

It's an attempt to convince an idiot that's it's really complicated and they
should BUY BUY BUY HODL HODL.

It's a terrible article and Bitcoin is a terrible mix of core developers who
are innovating crazy solutions on top of crypto with spurious documentation,
server farms run on cheap electricity in various places of a disreputable
nature and college kids investing their student loans on internet money. Plus,
now, a small amount of the general public who read an article or two and are
playing the high stakes casino tables with their savings/rainy day money.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well I'm OK with it for hackers in terms of citing the original white paper
and so on. It doesn't promote itself as anything other than introductory
piece. But I take your point about it not really meeting anyone's needs well.

------
chx
Here's a much better primer:
[https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)
The Problem with Calling Bitcoin a “Ponzi Scheme” Much shorter and by the time
you finish you will have a firm knowledge of what to do with
crypto"currencies".

~~~
CloudYeller
Interesting read.

------
lproven
No, _here_ is the current best guide to cryptocurrencies:

[https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-
Contracts-e...](https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-
ebook/dp/B073CPP581)

------
jorgec
Bitcoin in a nutshell: A small group of companies decide the price of bitcoin
arbitrary, the price is not backed by real money or a commodity but thin air.
The price is not even decided by supply and demand.

------
viach
I'm afraid, when you read about something in the news, it is already too late
to "getting started", meaning investment related activities. Imho after each
word , of course.

~~~
nightski
It's gone up in price by a factor of 21 this year. What are you even talking
about.

------
kmfrk
Getting a wallet always felt like the biggest issue. I looked at Ethereum very
early on before it caught on, but the wallet situation for that and zcash is
so overwhelming and confusing, especially since a multiplier of 0 for a hacked
wallet defeats the purpose.

At this point, a wallet for my iPhone that I can back up to say iCloud
(accepting the risk that comes with that) and that isn't going to get wiped by
accident due to a patch would probably be ideal.

I remember trying to get into bitcoin by signing up for Mt Gox, and we all
know how that went. "iPhone-hosted" seems like the ideal thing, but I don't
know if there's something like that?

~~~
lucaspiller
I’m in the process of writing up an article that explains what I think is the
best way currently: using a wallet supporting BIP32, 39 and 44.

A hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger are the most user friendly ways to do
this right now, but yes, to the average user it’s a steep learning curve.

~~~
zebnyc
Bought a Trezor. Wish I could reverse my decision. While secure and works
great, their dev team is not the most responsive and they are showing no
inclination of supporting other ALT coins / crypto platforms like NEO. At
least, Ledger Nano has supporting NEO and is looking to add support to other
ALT coins.

Not fun when you plunk down a hundred dollars to realize that you have to buy
another device once you start getting interested in other ALT coins.

------
EGreg
I like Bitcoin except for the Proof of Work part. It has led to an arms race
which causes tons of electricity to be wasted around the world.

I think the only reason for Proof of Work is to make it seem like "mining" is
some expensive activity. But it doesn't have to be. It's a bit silly,
actually.

In practice, PoW just winds up "electing" the next miner who you hope will
compile all the transactions they see into a block. That's a single point of
failure, they can charge inordinate fees, they can be DDoSed, and so on.

~~~
philipwhiuk
I love how mining is essentially transaction clearing but nobody calls it that
because it might sound like there was actually just a proxy for financial
system at the bottom.

Miners are just another form of payment system like Visa. You have to pay them
transaction fees to process your payment. Sometimes it's reasonable, sometimes
it's insane.

Bitcoin has solved exactly zero problems.

~~~
AgentME
The benefit is the miners are fungible. If one miner wants to enforce
unusually high fees or restrictions on what kinds of transactions can be sent
(such as which countries can send funds between each other, etc), then it just
means that if that miner mines a block, some transactions have to wait an
extra block to get mined by a miner without those extra restrictions. And it
will be more profitable for that miner because of the extra transaction fees,
so in practice miners don't impose extra limits.

~~~
EGreg
And how many extra blocks will they have to wait when a cartel of mining pools
controls most of the hashrate?

------
chinathrow
I've had multiple non-tech friends coming up to me and asking for my judgement
regarding crypto currencies and whether they should invest in Bitcoin now.

I asked them whether they invest in managed funds, stocks, foreign currencies
and whether they go to the casino. If they answer with four times "no", then I
tell them to hold back on the pure greed/fomo/speculation/hype.

------
juanmirocks
Also note that coinmarketcap lists for every token, which markets (i.e.
exchanges) have it. Example for Cardano (ADA):
[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/#markets)

------
kjrose
I love it from the perspective as a gamble. However, I get myself stuck on how
difficult it is to get cash out of bitcoin.

I wonder if the price pressure is due to that.

~~~
Slartie
I recently pulled out my initial investment by using Kraken (in EUR via SEPA
bank transfer, so my experiences only apply to that), and it was super-easy
and fast. Deposits usually took 2 days to clear; the withdrawals took just one
business day until they showed up on my bank account. So it was even faster to
get money out of it than to get it in.

Kraken's trading engine is utter crap, but as an on- or off-ramp for fiat it
seems to be worthwhile. I guess for USD it should work just as well, though
GDAX/Coinbase seems to be the most-used on/off-ramp there.

~~~
kjrose
In Canada I’m having a harder time to find a liquid exchange to go back to
CAD.

------
djhworld
The article links to a guide on how to mine Ethereum on your PC, is it really
viable to do this these days?

~~~
lucaspiller
If you already have a GTX 1060 or RX 470 and above, then yes you can probably
still turn a small profit. However if you are looking to invest, it’s probably
going to more profitable to buy coins than to buy mining hardware (at least
for ETH).

------
lee101
Great starter guide, i also like to recommend the getting started page in the
Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/)
thread.

As people have already pointed out there are some things @aantonop says that
aren't true like that bitcoin doesn't suffer from pump and dumps or front
running, often exchanges not only run their own front running market making
bots that get priority if they are the same price as other orders in the
orderbook, but there are massive scandals without transparency & truth like
the whole tether debacle, no one knows so you can assume the worst...

Extreme volatility right now to checkout our live forecasts/charts for pro
traders: [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) currently based on poloniex
data.

We also have a referral program where you can earn .003 BTC every paying user.

Theres also an API/bulk data for those technical HN types so you can build HFT
systems on our platform.

~~~
FireBeyond
> the getting started page in the Reddit
> [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/)
> thread.

That page is actually [https://bitcoin.org/en/getting-
started](https://bitcoin.org/en/getting-started) and has nothing to do with
Reddit.

Even the FAQ videos are heavily, heavily biased towards the /r/bitcoin
mantra/meme "hodl! hodl!" position.

------
zamazingo
It's all good and what not but how do you buy bitcoin without either giving
away all sorts of private information about you to a website or having to meet
strangers?

~~~
antonvs
You can use a Bitcoin ATM:
[https://coinatmradar.com/](https://coinatmradar.com/)

Warning, the exchange rates and/or fees tend to be exorbitant.

------
gaetanrickter
More guidance here too "It’s Not About the ICO, It’s About the Trading
Vehicle" [https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/its-not-about-the-
ico-i...](https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/its-not-about-the-ico-it-s-
about-the-trading-vehicle-38fa3425e9e3)

------
dmitrygr
"a beginners guide to buying while I pump and dump"

------
brndnmtthws
I'll go ahead and plug my project (which just hit 100 stars on GitHub):
[https://github.com/brndnmtthws/optimal-buy-
gdax](https://github.com/brndnmtthws/optimal-buy-gdax)

It's a tool for buying from GDAX, which if used correctly will result in close
to 0 in fees paid to Coinbase/GDAX (it's the same entity).

~~~
bcongdon
Cool! I've been looking for something that does just this

------
X86BSD
No mention of monero? To me that’s a glaring omission in a beginners guide.

~~~
spookthesunset
Hyping Monero won't make Bitcoin go up in price. That's why it isn't included
in the beginners guide...

~~~
X86BSD
This statement completely makes no sense to me. I was not “hyping” monero but
merely noting it’s absence in a beginners guide to CC. Nor do I own bitcoin or
care what that bubble does.

~~~
rocqua
You got your parent comment wrong. He was not accusing you of hyping monero.
Instead, he was accusing the author of the article of trying to inflate the
bubble. Notably, parent thought monero would not fit in the narrative of the
author.

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659087
I think the current Bitcoin hype cycle is ultimately going to be damaging to
the future of the sector as a whole. Bitcoin's capability to actually be used
as it was supposed to be is currently a terrible joke, and thousands of people
who couldn't grasp the most basic concepts about it even if they tried are
throwing large amounts of money at something they don't understand at all. The
current state of Bitcoin tech is so far behind what the hype would have you
believe.

The number of posts from people who delusionally believe Bitcoin is a sure
thing, "safer than a savings account", and has nowhere to go but up has
increased exponentially in recent weeks.. along with posts from people taking
out loans to "invest".

That's going to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many new 'adopters'
(speculators) when the rate of incoming greater fools slows down and the
market takes a massive downturn.

This won't end well.

------
down
As much as the elitist HR folk like to showcase the shortcomings of bitcoin,
fact is that bitcoin is so much better than gold and fiat, which can be mass
printed, or have you money blocked in the bank, how it happened in argentina
and Greece, Cyprus, where people got a 40% haircut on their deposits over
100k, (check the inflation now in Turkey 13%) the money in the bank, you don't
own them, bitcoin is at core a movement against banks, the whole argument
against bitcoin is like the people were saying cars are so much worse than
horses, because there are no paved roads, you need gas, maintenance, are
noisy, can't scale, etc.

~~~
thisisit
> you money blocked in the bank, how it happened in argentina and Greece,
> Cyprus, where people got a 40% haircut on their deposits over 100k

Ok, how does bitcoin solve a scenario where, bear with me, a country starts
blocking the internet? Something which happened during Egypt revolution:

[https://www.accessnow.org/five-years-later-the-internet-
shut...](https://www.accessnow.org/five-years-later-the-internet-shutdown-
that-rocked-egypt/)

~~~
avar
You'll still have 100% of your money instead of 60% in this example, and even
if the entire local internet infrastructure was destroyed you could just take
a flight out of the country with your bitcoin wallet on a USB stick.

~~~
nickrivadeneira
How are you paying for that flight?

~~~
avar
With local currency, literally nobody has significant BTC holdings such that
they'd be impacted by a measure only targeting >$100K account balances, and
not enough local cash to buy a plane ticket.

