
Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled - tomduncalf
https://status.coinbase.com/incidents/5fj9rx0py3bq
======
garybro
I've made about $110k profit this year in crypto on a $21k investment earlier
this year, and I think this is all a giant bubble. I was at my parents' house
for Thanksgiving and a commercial with Ron Paul talking about Bitcoin came on,
which coincided with around the time it went to $10k, and it hit me really
hard that this isn't going to last forever (and probably will hurt sooner
rather than later). I liquidated everything and just entertain myself doing
some day trading on GDAX. I don't hodl anymore.

The entire thing is absolutely stupid, and isn't going to last forever. People
are way too bullish on it. People who have no business investing in it are
taking on debt to do so, with no clear exit strategy other than "the moon." A
lot of people who don't have any money are going to get absolutely toasted
when the pendulum swings the other way. They're in it to get rich. They have
no idea what blockchains are. They just think they're buying magic internet
money people get rich from.

To put a little perspective on how ridiculous this all is: Last night after
Coinbase came back from maintenance, there was the (expected) sell-off, so I
figured I'd make a quick buck and bought 300 LTC for about $241 each, then
sold it a few minutes later for $251 after the instant rebound and went to bed
with a nice $3k profit. I woke up this morning and was astonished to see that
LTC was about $380. This was in the course of about 5 hours. Had I not sold it
last night, I would have made almost $40k. I'm a little annoyed about that,
but again: this is a stupid, irrational bubble that makes absolutely no sense.
It's entirely speculative.

I think crypto and blockchain has a future, but it has to solve a few problems
first (transaction fees/time and anonymity). None of the big three currencies
do that well enough yet. This bubble is going to pop soon and I'm worried that
a lot of people are going to get impacted badly.

~~~
charlesdm
Even if it is a bubble, that doesn't mean it can't go another 20x from here,
depending which crypto you put your money in.

There's cheap liquidity (ho ho ho said the FED and the ECB), there are
institutions (pension funds) that are starting to buy in, and in comparison,
the dot-com bubble (which was mainly a US led bubble, not global) went to
$5.7tn to $1.7tn. Gold is worth $8tn globally. Why couldn't Bitcoin get to
part of that level, e.g. $2tn?

It sure looks like a bubble, and it probably is, but it could literally be the
largest bubble in our lives -- unlike one stock in the market, this is a
global phenomenon + you only have a few currencies that matter.

~~~
exelius
It's strayed so far from fundamentals that it's bound to crash. I really hope
it's not that big when it does...

~~~
CPLX
Bitcoin doesn't have fundamentals. Stocks are a claim on assets, buildings,
inventories, and future profits. Real shit, like a parking lot full of trucks
or something. Those are the fundamentals. Cryptocurrencies dont have anything
like that.

To the extent that there is an analogous concept it's their utility as a means
of exchange. Which outside of drugs and hard drive ransoms is minuscule at
best.

~~~
DenisM
You’re forgetting currency control evasion. If a businessman from a country
with tight controls wants to move money out of the country he would buy
bitcoin and then sell it the other side of the border. This sort of activity
is going on all the time, and it creates demand for crypto currencies.

~~~
analyst74
I don't see how bitcoin can facilitate currency control evasion. The
government can simply shut down all local exchanges, and some already did.

~~~
DenisM
With amounts this large they could meet in person to trade.

~~~
Kadin
If you have to do that, it doesn't seem particularly advantageous over
existing methods. You're meeting in person, exchanging cash illicitly, etc. If
someone is willing to do that, why not just buy USD in a foreign bank account
directly? (That's my understanding of the current system; people with clean
histories open accounts with varying amounts of money in USD / EUR / JPY
jurisdictions, then transfer control of those accounts to someone else, for a
small profit margin, who then transfers them again, in exchange for cash at a
significant margin, in, say, China.)

Either way, someone ends up with cash CNY and the other person ends up with
electronic USD or EUR or whatever.

The immediate limiting factor is the vulnerability of any in-person
transaction to traditional law enforcement mechanisms, and the eventual
limiting factor is that the exchange rate is going to be impacted by the
demand for cash CNY. Eventually nobody is going to want to sell you USD (or
whatever) for your cash-in-a-bag CNY, or will only do it at exorbitant rates.

~~~
speedplane
I don't disagree with this, but if true, then it means that the value of
cryptocurrency comes at the expense of other currencies. Every time someone in
china sells their renminbi to buy bitcoin, bitcoin's value increases while the
value of renminbi decreases. If that is the case, then bitcoin does indeed
have value, and will reflect the differential of the cost of renminbi vis-a-
vis its value on the world market.

------
zMiller
This thread's audience is obviously a 'developed nations' one.

From our perspective yes, Crytpo's use case as currency make absolutely no
sense (yet), we tap our Visa card to pay instantly with no fees and no fraud
liability, hard to beat.

As a store of value however there is a very strong use case in the western
world. Of the top my head, it is estimated that 10% of our GDP is in off shore
havens, think about that infamous 1% moving just half of that 10% into Bitcoin
..

I digress..

If you venture your mind a little outside the borders of our empire and think
about the 'unbanked' parts of our planet, entire populations whom live under
poverty for the sole reason that they do not have access to the equity and
efficient markets directly. If you look there, people are DYING for something
like Bitcoin and other crypto's. There is absolutely no reason an African
farmer to have to sell his Oranges to Europe in Euro then buy it back from
there (Sell Euro to local currency) for local use.

Currency is an abstraction, an expression of a market, just like language is.

Here we tap to pay and need everyone to protect us from fraudsters,
pornographers, money laundry , <insert your favorite horse man of the
apolocyple here>, in other parts of the world , that far out number the
western world in population, they don't care to be protected by the above
because quite frankly the price they pay for that 'protection' is insanely
oppressive governments that use the above to legitimize the oppression.

It is exactly in those markets where you start to see a VERY stong use case as
both store of value and currency for crypto and it is exactly that market that
will drive the world's demand for good UI for crypto that will eventually
usher in mass adoption.

~~~
bllguo
Africa is actually more sophisticated than the US in many ways regarding
fintech

Anyway, this is a straw man. Who is saying cryptos are useless? People are
saying that they are a bubble, that the valuations are irrational.

~~~
zMiller
Totally Kenya's mobile payment system evolution from SMSing minute refill
codes, to an actual legally recognized form of payment is the original
Blockchain in my mind :) But that is exactly my point, in that market , there
is demand and need for innovation that means crypto (while inflated right now)
is here to stay. People who call Bitcoin a 'Ponzi scheme' , type of plant or
apply whatever reduction on a very complex and innovative product are just
mind boggling to me.

~~~
geofft
M-Pesa is a centralized service run by Vodafone, quite the opposite of
blockchain. It only resembles blockchain in that it involves electronics and
it's recent, but by that standard, we'd call credit cards or PayPal "the
original Blockchain".

And as far as I know, it's denominated in Kenyan shillings, not in its own
currency (i.e., hype about M-Pesa does not result in something with Bitcoin's
to-the-moon valuation relative to the prevailing currency in the land).

I suspect that most Bitcoin detractors, whether those who call it a Ponzi
scheme or simply those who oppose proof of work, will be absolutely thrilled
with the growth of more _centralized_ electronic money transfer systems that
are denominated in existing fiat currency. I know that I've been personally
happy to use Square Cash, Apple Pay, EMV cards, etc. in the US. No mining, no
or low fees, high security, quick, and suitable for small transfers.

And the fact that this is how M-Pesa works is an extremely strong existence
proof that Bitcoin is not needed by the "African farmer".

~~~
dwild
I think you misunderstood him.

What he said is that others countries that doesn't have a solid electronic
transaction system are actively trying new stuff. In that case, M-Pesa won
that race but the fact that it was centralized isn't why it won, it won
because it was needed.

Now does Bitcoin is needed for another country? No idea, but I would have said
the same for M-Pesa.

~~~
geofft
But he specifically used the word "blockchain." I'm making two claims: first,
that blockchain-based systems (for most people's definitions of "blockchain"
other than a meaningless buzzword) are _worse_ for people in situations like
that of the "African farmer" than centralized systems, and second, that the
vast majority of Bitcoin detractors dislike it specifically because of things
related (directly or indirectly) to it being a blockchain-based system.

For instance, "Bitcoin is a bubble" only makes sense if it's its own unit of
currency. "M-Pesa is a bubble," "Square Cash is a bubble," etc. aren't
meaningful statements to make; they just support transmission of the
underlying currency. ("Kenyan shillings are a bubble" is a meaningful
statement, but I've never heard anyone claim that you should use
cryptocurrencies to insulate yourself from hyperdeflation of a fiat currency.)

"Bitcoin is environmentally dangerous" only matters if proof-of-work is
relevant; in a centralized system, you don't have the problems that lead to
you wanting to even consider proof-of-work.

"ICOs are a scam" doesn't make sense in a centralized system. "The transaction
rate is too low" isn't a complaint anyone has about a centralized system (the
usual complaint about the US markets is that the transaction rate is too
_high_ , and HFT should be throttled). And so on and so forth.

~~~
passwordreset
"bubble": stocks have been said to be in "bubbles". If a person claims "M-Pesa
is [in] a bubble" he would be talking about the market cap of the company, in
the same way that "Bitcoin is [in] a bubble" speaks to the market cap of
Bitcoin on some exchanges. Quite meaningful, actually.

"environment": Proof of work systems ensure that the ledger is secure and
worthy of trust. Proof of Authority systems require trust, where the ledger is
secure "because we say so." Isn't this the major reason why people are fleeing
from legal tender? People can't trust the issuers, the processors, or the
banks because they're colluding with politicians who provide bailouts using
taxpayer dollars?

"ICO scam": absolutely makes sense in a centralized system. Are you actually
claiming that people don't create scam companies with centralized currencies?
Because why? Even legitimate companies can be slandered for the same reasons
that people call ICOs "scams". The Franklin Mint, for example, produces coins
which are sold on late-night infomercials that have little-to-no intrinsic
value, but people buy for speculative reasons. Are they a scam? The reasoning
is identical.

"slow/expensive transactions": One of Bitcoins main value propositions is
aiding in international transfers. The centralized systems were too slow and
expensive, so a better alternative was developed. Saying that speed and
expense aren't complaints that people have made about existing centralized
systems is simply wrong.

And so on and so forth.

------
sedtrader
A lot of emotion with LTC. People are downloading Coinbase and buying LTC
simply because it is the cheapest on Coinbase. This is definitely a bubble,
really cant deny that anymore. All emotional, non-rational behavior.

~~~
phil248
Having purchased several cryptocurrencies recently, I can attest that I am
certainly not acting rationally. But at least I'm having fun!

~~~
wott
I should start a business selling thin air. Thin air from France, thin air
from Japan, thin air from Mexico, and so on, you can collect them all, it is
super fun. Then I could introduce cold captured thin air, warm captured thin
air, etc. Wet thin air, dry thin air for year 3. More fun every year.

Even better, I should sell just a paper (well, an electronic one) stating you
own some thin air. Hey, geeks, how cool can this get?

I am sure I could find buyers in the same market as cryptocurrencies.

PS: This is not directed at you, but you expressed the level of pointlessness
and... void that reigns in this 'market', so I picked your message to place my
joke/rant.

~~~
__sha3d2
I'm not kidding when I say that you would be surprised at the size of the
market for canned air. I made this same joke several years ago and then looked
into it and was blown away.

~~~
notjustanymike
Canned Air: It'll Blow You Away

------
jatsign
98% of their funds are stored offline in a cold wallet. I bet they exhausted
their hot wallet supply.

[https://www.coinbase.com/security?locale=en-
US](https://www.coinbase.com/security?locale=en-US)

~~~
jonknee
Why would they need the actual coins to allow trading? Only transferring would
require access to a wallet.

~~~
function_seven
Seems like selling qualifies as a transfer, no? I think you can still receive
and send LTC to other wallets, you can't convert to USD.

~~~
zwily
Selling doesn't do an on-chain transaction though. It's only on-chain when you
withdraw (or deposit).

------
rdm_blackhole
I understand that at the moment it may seem like all the cryptocurrencies are
in a bubble but honestly, I don't mind because it is forcing the banks to stop
their stupid cash grab and loosen up some of their rules.

What about the stupid fees that bank charge you to have the privilege to have
you as a customer?

What about the fact that at the moment it takes 3-5 business days to make a
simple bank transfer to another bank?

What about those insane fees when you try to buy another currency through the
banks?

What about the fact that I have to call my bank and plead my case when I want
to transfer an unusually large amount of money to somebody else because of
them blocking the transfer and now I have to spend 1 hour on the phone to
solve that issue and prove that I am the one who initiated the transfer?

What about the fact the bankers have brought the world on the edge of a great
depression due to their greed and left millions of people underwater on their
mortgages?

Bitcoin/LTC/ETH may not solve all the problems that we are facing now, it may
not have much practical use at the moment either, but I 'll be damned if I
give more money to the banksters.

~~~
paulcole
>What about the stupid fees that bank charge you to have the privilege to have
you as a customer?

Pardon my ignorance but don’t banks provide a service? If they charge too
much, can’t I find a bank that charges less?

What makes their fees “stupid”?

~~~
jachee
If I give a bank my cash, it is I who am providing them the service of
liquidity, so that they can have money to loan to others (as a service) for
interest.

The only way I could find a "bank" with lower fees was to abandon banks
altogether and switch to a credit union. I swear it's like all the banks
collude to determine market rates for how many and how high of fees they can
all charge their customers, to the point where—as a regular consumer—they're
all indistinguishable.

Not only are the credit union's fees lower (or non-existent in some cases) the
interest rates are higher and there are no shareholders to appease, except for
other members of the credit union.

~~~
paulcole
Don't banks provide the service of reducing the danger of holding cash or
storing money in a risky investment?

------
davidgh
Watching this whole thing really has me scratching my head. Honestly - the
value of BTC in a decade is anyone’s guess.

For me, I have a modest holding (in terms of its USD value today as compared
to my other investments). After much wrestling, I’ve decided to just let it
sit and be done with it. If it crashes back to pennies, oh well. If it goes to
the moon, I’m glad I had a piece of the action.

As much fun as it seems, I’ve made the deliberate decision to not try to game
/ day trade it. It’s been possible to try to make money like that in Vegas for
many years and that’s never been that interesting to me, either.

~~~
acjohnson55
Define "the moon"?

~~~
davidgh
The “moon” is the value required to have the jaw of your doctor / lawyer
neighbor hit the ground when you tell them “I own one bitcoin”.

~~~
acjohnson55
What's absurd about that concept is that it supposes that there's a day coming
when people who haven't already bought Bitcoin will want it so badly that
they'll be willing to enrich people who are buying in now. I think people who
bought in a year ago will be the ones who can claim that sort of reward, at
best.

~~~
davidgh
When Bitcoin was $1,000 you could have made the same argument in suggesting it
would never go to $15,000.

Buyers today are not considering “should I or should I not enrich those who
bought earlier”. They are simply making a bet that the value might go up and
want to own some if it does.

As an asset rapidly increases in value and the underlying driver of that
increase is not well understood, all sorts of unexpected things can happen.
The question is not how big will the bubble get, but who will be left standing
when the music stops.

------
zerostar07
This means that people are investing small amounts and going for the cheaper
coins using coinbase. which means that cryptocurrencies may be having their
facebook moment at this time , and their network effect is about to get a LOT
bigger over the next months. While people may only invest small amounts (and
coinbase can and should make sure they do), cryptocurrencies will come out of
this extremely strengthened if a significant number of people end up owning
even a small amount of any coin. Unlike tulips which wither, these people are
not likely to sell their bitcoins even if there is a correction. A world scale
network of people owning coins can be a giant leap for the world economy, as
coins are much more resistant to censorship than the internet itself proved to
be, and unless a new kind of gold is discovered , they may prove to be a much
better, easier to transfer store of value. This bubble may never burst. All of
this is speculation (of course) - I wish coinbase (which seems to carry the
bulk of the wave of newcomers) would release statistics about their number of
users.

~~~
scribu
> Unlike tulips which wither, these people are not likely to sell their
> bitcoins even if there is a correction.

[citation needed]

Even long term investors in traditional securities often get panicky during
bear markets. They sell their holdings, even if the underlying value hasn't
really changed.

~~~
zerostar07
on the one hand bitcoins dont physically wither, on the other hand, it's about
the personalities of people who own it. I don't know who pumps the bitcoin
bubble, but much of the bitcoin is owned by people who can't quickly cash it
out for USD or EUR because it's either illegal, not taxed or going to face big
taxes. many of them are also ideologically driven. Sorry i dont have
citations, i m (fittingly) speculating over these

~~~
scribu
> much of the bitcoin is owned by people who can't quickly cash it out for USD
> or EUR because it's either illegal, not taxed or going to face big taxes.

That's certainly an interesting aspect, but I thought you were talking about
all the new, smalltime buyers of cryptocoins, which I assume don't fall into
this category.

~~~
zerostar07
yes sorry about that. i assume however that people investing a small amount
will not panic, because they really don't care. It's like buying an expensive
fad fashion item, that is then left to collect dust rather than being sold.
fear of missing out is driving adoption atm

~~~
scribu
Huh... that seems like a separate category from the domestic speculators I was
thinking about.

But then, how does an influx of a large number of fad buyers strengthen
cryptocurrencies in the long term, if these buyers just completely forget that
they own cryptocoins after the hype dies down?

~~~
zerostar07
when facebook was growing they went all-in for growth, because they knew if
they got the network effect enough, they would have won, and they did. Coins
have to grab the opportunity to reach everyone before governments start
clamping down on their growth (which i m sure will happen not long from now).

getting people to own cryptocoins (and having a wallet) is really a trojan
horse. just like smartphones turned nontechy people to app buyers, the
ownership of a wallet creates a platform for many things which i don't know
yet or i would be rich.

------
tabeth
Can someone familiar explain why cryptocurrencies aren't a bubble? They both
seem to exhibit similar characteristics.

Clearly, are shown by the site here, these aren't nearly as liquid as fiat
currencies, nor are they really used to purchase anything.

So... What is it?

EDIT: upon thinking about it, MLM wasn't the term I meant.

~~~
xutopia
Today I went to one bank to transfer 60k from one account to an account in a
different bank. I paid 7.50$ to get a certified check from Bank A. Went to the
Bank B near my house to deposit it there. Unfortunately the branch near my
house isn't where my account is. They tried faxing a photocopy of my certified
check to the other branch but the line was busy. They're going to continue
trying until 3pm today when they close. After 2 hours I see the funds are in
my account but I'm not allowed to access it because I'm limited to only 2000$
per day. They didn't call me as per instruction once the funds were in my
account.

During that same time I transferred 15k$ from one crypto-wallet to another. It
took 10 minutes all told.

Sure there are lots of people who are buying crypto because they think they'll
make loads of money but a significant portion of us are in it because we
dislike the infantilizing ways the current banks hold us hostage.

~~~
rdslw
Let me guess, do you live in USA by a chance?

My first hand experience (2017) is that US banking oferring (from a european
guy perspective) is a eyes opening experience.

* There is no instant bank wires (free ones) between major banks. Or at least the same days ones, working reliably through most of banks.

* You get paper checks from your bank :)))))

* Small business (sold a car, got a return from landlord) give you money on checks, also accept only paper checks if you need to pay them on the spot (in the office).

* your bank charges you a monthly fee, to protect you from overdraft (wtf is this on debit account??), he shall block from happening at the begining - we call it "protection racket" in Italy.

* boa/citi and others have websites with design from 2005, not to mention mobile apps..

* you can't send money from bank account to a different bank to your unsophisticated friend (plumber, maid, or mr sandwich) just knowing his phone.

* when you withdraw money from coinbase to your connected US bank account, you pay 1,5% of face value. WHAT? PERCENTAGE FEE? This is USA banking thing, as the very same coinbase, charges fixed 0.15 EUR fee per no matter how big wire if you're european.

* major us banks got two factor just two years ago in terms of security.

* tap to pay (we call it paypass) is also almost 10 years after europe.

* first chip card in citi was offered to me in 2015 or 2016? Still magnetic (easily copied) card is used in majority of points in the USA

etc..

Some of them are chaning in the last two years, but mostly for sophisticated
customers, small banks, and people not being able to use those features
between different banks. It will still take a lot of time to catch up with a
Kenya from Africa...

~~~
stephengillie
> _you can 't send money from bank account to a different bank to your
> unsophisticated friend (plumber, maid, or mr sandwich) just knowing his
> phone._

Banks in the USA do not allow deposits into accounts without account holder
permission. They won't let you stop by a branch and deposit into a friend's
account (to pay them back) without a formal arrangement, so it's easier just
to find your unsophisticated friend and give them cash directly. I'm not sure
if this is due to a law, or our culture of security theater.

~~~
phil21
> Banks in the USA do not allow deposits into accounts without account holder
> permission. They won't let you stop by a branch and deposit into a friend's
> account (to pay them back) without a formal arrangement

This is not (universally) true. I've had many friends/family deposit checks
for me at my local branch when I'm out of town/on vacation/whatever. I've done
it myself for other people. I believe the banks in question were Wells Fargo
and US Bank.

YMMV based on bank, but there is no regulation preventing this.

~~~
stephengillie
I was turned down by both Bank of America and Columbia Bank (local WA State
bank), as it violated their security procedures at the time - this was about
10 years ago.

The reasoning presented was a little suspicious - they envisioned someone
"forcing" you to unwillingly take a loan (of like $100) by depositing it into
your account. Then they would demand their $100 back and use this as leverage
to blackmail or otherwise disrupt your life.

But I don't totally disagree. To me, depositing money into another person's
bank feels...improper - like performing an oil change on someone else's car,
or taking someone else's books back to the library, or walking into your
neighbor's unlocked house to lock all the doors. There are very good reasons
someone would want these done for them, and also edge cases where these would
cause an issue for the other person. It's a moral grey area to me.

------
maxencecornet
So what ? It's not the first time it happened with Coinbase, and probably not
the last

~~~
astrowilliam
That's what happens when a business is trying to scale to meet crazy demand.

~~~
scurvy
Can't they just click the auto scale button in AWS? Isn't that the entire
point of cloud services?

~~~
SilasX
That works, so long as you've refactored your infra to the point that the
computational resources (whether server nodes or hard disks or or database
shards) are modular enough that you _can_ just add more stuff and it will play
nice with everything else. That objective -- not a cute UI that lets you
change one of the numbers -- is the hard part.

And yes, it is to Coinbase's discredit that they haven't done so, but
(assuming you're not joking), they could very well not be at that stage. It's
typical for startups to have technical debt like that.

~~~
scurvy
Can't they just get a bigger boat? Scaling via hardware is a good fix until
systems can be made modular for scaling.

~~~
cwkoss
Most scalable systems have some 'singletons' somewhere in the stack. At a
certain scaling point, the singletons must be made scalable to multiple
instances, which often entails making a new singleton to manage these
instances.

In this way, scaling often gives you an order of magnitude or two of available
additional capacity, but periodically requires new dev work to support further
increases.

------
EGreg
I wonder, what are these exchanges like GDAX, BitMex etc. doing with their
dollar/euro/etc. reserves?

They obviously need to keep dollars on hand in order to cash everyone out. But
what if Bitcoin goes up in price? If there is a run on the exchange later they
may have to sell their bitcoins on the spot market to cash people out.

Banks reinvest money held into loans and other speculative investments. But
what do you do when as an excuange / market maker you stand ready to buy and
sell at any time?

Here is my concern: while it was just two guys meeting up to exchange $ for
bitcoin, the $ kept circulating. But these exchanges may be locking up more
and more USD just so they have enough to cash people out on demand. As a
result, there is a real transfer of wealth to bitcoin and USD is getting
frozen in exchanges.

If this continues for 5-10 years more, wouldn't bitcoin become millions of
dollars and bitcoin holders would be able to buy up anything vs dollar
holders? One bitcoin holder could buy half of NYC already, and who can stop
them?

~~~
where_do_i_live
Huh - that is nonsense. They hold the exact amount of USD that their customers
have deposited. They are custodians - not fractional reserve banks.

~~~
nhaehnle
Well, they probably moved some of those funds into longer term bonds, so there
could be some liquidity issues. But those would be unrelated to the price of
BTC, and would be only temporary. There should never be solvency issues for a
vanilla exchange.

Things look different with margin trading though. Margin trading implicitly
implies a loan from the exchange to the trader. If the market moves too much
against the trader, exchanges typically automatically force their positions to
be closed. The problem is that if the price moves too quickly, the proceeds
from this transaction may not be enough to cover the loan to the trader. So
then the trader can end up owing money to the exchange, and it may be
difficult for the exchange to get that money. That can lead to solvency
issues.

------
hartator
I just hope cryto speculators won’t ask to be bailed out when everything will
fail.

~~~
kombucha2
Already happened basically!

~~~
kss238
How? When?

~~~
kombucha2
Tezos wants a bail-out ;) [https://coinvedi.com/record-ico-tezos-founders-
seek-bail-out...](https://coinvedi.com/record-ico-tezos-founders-seek-bail-
out-from-foundation/)

~~~
kss238
Seek = "already happened"?

~~~
kombucha2
Seek = ask

~~~
kss238
Yes obviously. But you earlier stated that "Already happened basically!" in
reference to a crypto bailout. So again, how is "seek" equivalent to "ask"
here?

~~~
kombucha2
Parent comment i replied to - "... hope cryto speculators won’t ask to be
bailed out... "

To which I replied that someone has in fact already asked for a bail-out.

Title of Article - "Record ICO Tezos Founders Seek Bail-Out From Foundation"

It's only a matter of time before someone in the cryprocurrency sphere asks
for a bail-out for reason or another.

~~~
kss238
Gotcha, I thought you were saying that a bailout already happened. It's
obvious to me now that you were saying someone has already asked for a
bailout.

------
exabrial
Man, Coinbase is having major scalability issues... They should hire Peter
Lawrey: [https://www.todaysoftmag.ro/article/1618/low-latency-fix-
eng...](https://www.todaysoftmag.ro/article/1618/low-latency-fix-engine-in-
java)

Disclaimer: I am not Peter Lawrey.

------
Dangeranger
An economics professor told me once;

> Bubbles grow against walls of doubt. It is when the bubble must stand on
> it's own that it bursts.

If these markets level out, and people stop investing because you can no
longer get 20% returns every week, that is when things are going south.

------
codedokode
While cryptocurrencies are mostly used for trading, I think it is a technology
with great potential.

There are still several unsolved problems with cryptocurrencies like having to
keep a large database on disk and slow transactions (and illegal status in
some countries). They are not protected from 50% attack by governments. When
they are resolved, it can become really good alternative to card systems.

VISA has many disadvantages compared to Bitcoin:

\- it uses outdated technology and is absolutely insecure (card details are
easily stolen and sold in large volumes, they still use unencrypted magnetic
stripe)

\- it can require paperwork and a deposit to accept payments. It is difficult
if you do something legally gray (for example, related to porn)

\- it is difficult to get a card without identification even if you are not
going to do anything illegal

\- transaction cost is high for small payments

\- US government forbids to use VISA on some territories for political reasons

\- merchants often refuse to accept cards from some banks or some regions (for
example: Digital Ocean doesn't accept some prepaid virtual cards)

\- companies can collect and exchange customer data when they pay with a card.
Because it has your name.

\- the data on transactions from all countries go through systems controlled
by US

It is only natural to replace those outdated magnetic card systems.

------
ceejayoz
With the price spike (Litecoin's up a hundred percent today alone), I wonder
if the hot wallets ran out of coins to transact with?

~~~
jjallen
You would think they would buy for themselves commensurately with client
purchases so they wouldn't get into this situation.

Maybe they try to and couldn't keep up? Would be fascinating how this stuff is
managed behind the scenes.

~~~
ceejayoz
The recent speculation spikes have been pretty remarkable. I wouldn't be
shocked if they occasionally exhaust hot wallets. I'd love to know what the
process is - do they have coins in cold storage in the offices in safes? Bank
vaults? Multi-person signatures?

~~~
Klathmon
They don't really talk about it, but I'd imagine it's multi-signature offline
wallets that require a few people and an assload of physical security to
spend.

~~~
jjallen
Yeah I can't wait to read books about this stuff in a few years, probably
soon! Hopefully Brian Armstrong will write one.

------
jliptzin
What is causing the sudden rise in litecoin?

~~~
sd_mikey
My guess is that the there are a lot of newbies now on Coinbase (#1 app in the
Apple AppStore). They are buying the cheapest “bitcoin” without actually
understanding what they are buying. This has increased demand for the cheaper
of the only three options in Coinbase thus increasing price.

~~~
sidlls
Yes, and I've cashed out handsomely as a result of being lucky enough to
predict exactly this.

For clarification: I bought some $1000s worth of LTC when it was under $100
shortly after the Futures news hit. It was pure gamble on my part and I could
have easily lost instead of the other way around.

I also bought a few ETH coins when it was around $400 but haven't cashed those
out yet. I'm predicting my LTC gains will be wiped by ETH losses.

~~~
make3
christ you must have made ridiculous money with this

~~~
sidlls
Well, ridiculous in the sense that the whole phenomenon is absurd or
relatively to what some people earn in a year, sure.

But I only made about 2.5x my wager, which wasn't much (less than $10000, more
than $1000).

Also, as noted, much of a LTC gains could easily be eaten up by ETH losses.
BTC is too expensive for my gambling taste.

~~~
jeffwass
To me, this kind of comment drives home the insanity of the crypto craze right
now.

Complaints of "only" making a 2.5x return.

Or proposed strategies elsewhere in this thread of buying a coin, selling half
"when" it doubles, not "if".

~~~
sidlls
I wasn't complaining. The "only" was in response to suggesting I made "huge"
amounts of profit. I didn't gamble that much, and so I didn't make that much
even with the return. My profit was less than my paycheck. 2.5x is better than
anything I've ever made in equities (in fairness 90% of my strategy there is
selling covered calls on dividend paying stocks) and far and away my best
gamble on a percentage return basis. I doubt I'll ever be as lucky as that
again.

But I agree it does highlight how insane the crypto craze is.

------
junk_f00d
Many here insist it's a speculative bubble. And while I might agree that
perhaps BTC is in such a state (this may extend toward LTC, ETH, etc), I'm
curious to know your thoughts on the less popular and lower market cap "alt-
coins" such as the Y-Combinator backed Request Network and Quantstamp. It's
hard to say anything in crypto is truly undervalued at the moment, but I
believe if anything is, it's projects with real utility that extends beyond
speculation.

For those that believe in the technology that blockchain, DAG and smart
contracts offer there is a lot up and coming projects that might contribute a
lot to the space (and beyond into the real industry world, potentially).

~~~
ryanwaggoner
My .02 BTC (now worth $351.44) is that cryptocurrency is here to stay. The
runup might be a bubble, might not, doesn't really interest me that much. The
long run for this technology feels very strong to me so I'm buying to hold.

I think BTC and ETH are the lowest-risk coins right now. 99% of the coins are
going to fade away, so that's where the real bubble is. Some random ICO pops
up and within months their token market cap is hundreds of millions based on
nothing other than a vague buzzword-laden plan?

~~~
junk_f00d
While I agree that BTC and ETH are likely lowest risk long term, I'm not
exactly throwing money at crypto for the low risk portion of my portfolio and
don't mind doubling down on a more dangerous gamble since I've researched my
holds pretty well, imo.

Further, I'd argue that BTC and ETH are both extremely overbought at the
moment, and reflect more of what a bubble is than many of the lowly alt coins
that have real use cases (not that BTC and ETH don't). I feel you're
underestimating the potential of some of these smaller projects, the problems
they aim to solve and the progress they've made towards solving them.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_" some of these smaller projects"_

Which ones? There are hundreds of these things, and my personal view is that
they're mostly worthless. I really don't think the hard part at this point is
coming up with a cool use case for cryptocurrency, or even building the
technology that works (though many of these alts have yet to even do that).
The hard part is adoption, and my estimation is that almost all of them will
fail at adoption. Time will tell, I guess.

 _I 'd argue that BTC and ETH are both extremely overbought at the moment_

You might be right, you might be wrong. It'll only be clear in hindsight.
Which is why I don't time the market or trade. I just buy and hold for the
long run. It's a small portion of my networth, weighted towards BTC and ETH,
but I'm buying some other alts with 1-2% of my net worth (total).

In the long run, the cryptocurrency market will be worth $0 or trillions, so
I'm not particularly worried about whether I got in when it was $10 billion or
$500 billion or how it goes up and down in the meantime.

~~~
junk_f00d
>Which ones?

ChainLink, as this project is aiming to incorporate outside data into the
blockchain and smart contracts. This has plenty of real world use cases. This
could be what the internet is to a computer, but for blockchain. Zen Protocol
is also working on a similar idea, but they incorporate smart contracts into
their project and have improved upon ETH's model a bit (not charging gas for
failed contracts to name one example). I see no reason why this wouldn't be
adopted if they can deliver.

Request Network, a project backed by this very website, is working to create a
currency agnostic payment platform that may compete directly with PayPal and
demands far less fees. There is a pretty incentive to adopt this over vendors
listing individual currencies for payment methods, and everyone saves money
due to lower fees.

RaiBlocks and ByteBall diverge from the blockchain and instead rely on DAG
tech, and have extremely fast confirmation times because of this, and scale
upward excellently. There is incentive to use these in the crypto space
because transfer times and tx fees are too high, but we'll see how the outside
world reacts.

Ripio Credit Network is working on making a decentralized lending platform to
allow (currently) South Americans access to reasonable lending solutions, but
I see this extending to a much larger global scope if successful. There is
pretty clear incentive for adoption here, you can read about their potential
customer base.

Just to name a few, I invite you to research a little more as a lot of these
products are pretty amazing, and I'd be curious as to why you think the above
are "worthless". But yes, adoption is the biggest concern. Personally, I don't
see cryptocurrency ever going back to $0, the technology is better than
existing models of centralized banking and middle men. Unless something comes
along that disrupts the disruptor, I think it's here to stay for the
forseeable future.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I appreciate you sharing all this (genuinely), but you missed my point, which
is that most of these will fade away. Having cool tech isn't enough.

 _Personally, I don 't see cryptocurrency ever going back to $0, the
technology is better than existing models of centralized banking and middle
men. Unless something comes along that disrupts the disruptor, I think it's
here to stay for the forseeable future._

I agree, but not enough to put more than a small slice of my net worth in at
this point. Fortunately, if it doesn't go to zero, it'll probably 100x or
1000x again, so I'll be fine with just a small slice of my net worth :)

~~~
junk_f00d
I understand your point of the likelihood of it fading away, but the tech's
always being taken more and more serious on an industry level and becomes more
robust after every crash. Many of these solve unique problems, even if the
majority of the market leaves and cashes out, blockchain still needs oracles
(ChainLink), and there is still demand for the others I listed (currency
agnostic low fee payment platforms, decentralized lending for 3rd worlders,
faster transaction times, etc etc).

Maybe I'm biased because I place more of my portfolio on these, but I have
witnessed lot of these alts becoming more and more established everyday and
predict this trend continue if industry adoption continues at it's current
rate (and there is economic incentive for it to do so).

------
dclowd9901
Is there really so little else to invest in that plugging money into magic
scarcity is the best bet?

~~~
cwkoss
If you are a value investor, everything on the S&P500 has been overpriced and
overbought for the past several years. Best bet is all relative.

I think allocating a small percentage of wealth to an asset with 10% chance of
going up 20x, and 90% change of going to 0 (net expected value 2x) is a
rational diversification. Crypto seems to be fairly uncorrelated to broad
market. (This is actually a more bearish perspective than I hold, but wanted
to point out that it can be rational to hold an asset which is likely to fail
as long as there exists a significant chance of order-of-magnitude returns)

------
randomsearch
Bitcoin looks like a bubble to me.

The way I think about investment is that you should only invest if you have a
clear and rational reason to do so.

There is a rational reason to use fiat: you need to pay taxes in it. The
government also provides all sorts of guarantees about your cash when
deposited in a bank. These are solid, irrefutable arguments.

Investment in bitcoin seems to be based on an argument along the lines of “we
need to change currency because centralised is bad” or “it’s just another form
of gold”, or worse: “because it will keep going up”. None of these arguments
make sense. Yes, maybe bitcoin will become a big currency. But why? Can you
give a watertight answer as for the value of fiat? Some people answer “it’s
decentralised”, but that is clearly untrue. Miners and exchanges are the
centralised concentrations of power in bitcoin, but they are unregulated.

The idea of cryptocurrency is interesting and exciting, but investing in
something purely because it’s interesting or exciting is only a good idea if
you’re happy to lose that money. No doubt bitcoin is important as a
technological milestone, but that does not make it a good investment.

When bitcoin crashes, it could undermine various startups, which will have a
knock-on effect to the startup bubble we’re in. Presumably that won’t be
enough to crash a stock market, unless bitcoin reaches astronomical levels.

Hmm. Maybe I should buy some gold.

------
perseusprime11
For those on this thread who still think Bitcoin as currency, try flipping
this on its head and think of Bitcoin as a store of value and ask why it would
not make sense. Like most things in this world, value is perceived- we
attribute vakue to Gold, Diamonds, etc. Why wouldn’t Bitcoin be in the same
bucket as a store of value?

------
qwerty456127
I've just went by the link (never visited that site before) and it says "THIS
REQUEST HAS BEEN RATE LIMITED You're making too many requests to our servers
from this computer..." immediately.

~~~
nielsbot
Are you checking from your office? Big company?

~~~
qwerty456127
No. From home. And every time I try - I see this error message only.

------
joering2
Tulip Mania comes to mind...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania)

~~~
LAMike
Tulip mania lasted 9 months. Bitcoin is 9 years old.

~~~
ceejayoz
Tulips were sold before the mania, just like Bitcoins were.

------
wusatiuk
issue resolved. :D

~~~
maxencecornet
Wow those guys are fast

They're pretty good at scaling to meet that crazy demand

------
beebmam
Coinbase is a joke of a service. They're telling me it will take 8 days to buy
a Litecoin.

Is this for real?

~~~
jrm2k6
Use your credit card. Transferring funds between your bank account and
Coinbase takes forever.

~~~
beebmam
I just used my credit card about 9 hours ago. I've had the money taken out of
my credit card, but I've yet to see the coins appear in my wallet for sending
or selling. It shows in coinbase that the transaction was "Completed", but I
have nothing so far.

How long does the credit card process take?

------
tomduncalf
Looks like it's back up again!

------
rootsudo
I made $10,000.

Wow.

~~~
freeloop3
I made $3 million :)

~~~
swyx
holy shit. just on litecoin?

~~~
freeloop3
No, I bought in 2013 for $10k at about $7 per BTC. I had about a $300k net
worth at the time, so it seemed like a good play. Periodically sold and
distributed into several alt coins over the years (eth, dash, monero,
bitshares, etc.).

I could have made a lot more if I didn't sell so much, but at the time a 10x
increase seemed like a one in a lifetime event. When it increased to $80 per
btc, I sold 80% of my investment.

When it hit $1000, I felt bad about selling so much during the last run up,
that I didn't sell at all. I took the crash back to $200 in stride. I was
convinced that crypto was following a pattern of boom and crash, and then boom
again and that in the coming years there would a final "big wave" as the last
market (finance and retail) opened up to it. It appears that that is what
happened. I've already sold a lot, avoided taxes by making a CRUT (a tax
shelter) but still have about 50%. I plan to sell some more in January,
because I think this wave is going to peak rather slowly (because, let's face
it, finance and retail are _dumb_. It will take finance a long time to shift
direction, and public perception is going to change slowly, IMO. For example,
the housing bubble went on for a year after it seemed obviously to have
reached its peak.). Also it works to my advantage considering taxes to wait.

My general advice now is if you see an investment you are unsure of but could
pay off big time, you should invest a little at least. A basket of risky
investments can be a huge windfall even if not all pay out.

Also, when you think a risky investment has run its course and is going to
crash, it's usually a good idea to not sell all of it and leave maybe 10% just
in case.

~~~
swyx
i agree.

------
dzonga
my coworkers and their families, who don't really know anything about bitcoin,
are buying in like btc is water! when shit like that happens, you know the
bubble is about to pop!!

------
yalogin
The question is which is the worse bubble Bitcoin or Litecoin?

~~~
moistoreos
Bitcoin has integration into a lot more payment options. But, that doesn't
mean the price will come crashing down any time now. I think a drastic
correction is due.

------
polock
I never felt that. I'm on actively trading Litecoin now.

------
Romanulus
Coinbase is not prepped for the influx of traffic... it's enraging, especially
when there is money on the line. Their reputation is tarnishing more and more
every day.

------
down
would love to be a bubble, to drop in price so I can get in, but I don't think
so, if you compare bitcoin with gold, bitcoin is better, the "gold" brand is
stronger still with its history, but not so much among the new generation,
unless bitcoin gets to 7 trillions, the gold market cap, I would not wory
about being a bubble.

~~~
smileysteve
> if you compare bitcoin with gold, bitcoin is better

If you have access to a computer that has many many gold plated connections.

Gold is still superior for restarting civilization after an apocalyptic event.

------
ybrah
Coinbase is rolling in the dosh right now

------
anorphirith
So much for a "decentralized" currency system. Actually coinbase and the other
players are and will be worst actors than banks if this presque monopoly isn't
solved

~~~
toddmatthews
coinbase is just an exchange, or a way to buy/sell crypto. once you own
crypto, you no longer need to use coinbase. coinbase never advertised itself
of being decentralized

~~~
anorphirith
I am well aware of that, the emphasis here is the prevalence of coinbase in an
ecosystem that is supposed to be decentralized

~~~
toddmatthews
and my point is you need something to onboard people from fiat to crypto. it
doesn't happen in a vacuum

------
anonymous24
As i thought, money is backup by a government. It is represented for a
country's power. But for Crypto currency, there is no country backup it. It's
kind of scary though.

~~~
amalag
Bitcoin has succeeded in creating a scarce resource backed by computing power.
That's about all.

