Cryptocurrency

Ken Anderson

Greeter
Staff member
I don't have any money in cryptocurrency, and probably never will, nor have I done a lot of research into it. For me, it's a bit like solar power in that it's something I wouldn't mind understanding better, but when I research it, it bores me, and I don't learn much. However, as an American, I refuse to allow my ignorance of a topic to prevent me from having an opinion and expressing it strongly.

Before you go running to AI or to a search engine to find something that will explain cryptocurrency, keep in mind that this is the stuff that bored me. I could do that for myself if I were interested, but I'm more interested in the discussion. I don't want this to be a boring thread, so I'd rather we stick to the stuff that we actually know. If you're familiar with crypto and deal in it, or whatever it is they use to refer to people who actually use cryptocurrency, you may feel free to bore me with a lot of complicated tech stuff if you must, but please don't copy and paste stuff that you don't really understand yourself, since that would fall into the realm of double-boring.

By the way, I used solar power for the sake of personal comparison; this isn't a discussion of solar power. It's about cryptocurrency.

I don't consider myself to be a blithering idiot when it comes to tech stuff, and I was pretty early on with computers, learning to program before anyone told me it was supposed to be complicated. There was a time when I welcomed learning new stuff, so I would try pretty much every operating system that came along later. But, I'm old now, and while I still enjoy learning new stuff, it was a lot easier when I was younger, and new stuff came with paper manuals, which I actually used. In fact, when they started substituting digital manuals, I would sometimes print them out. I own several programs, which you might know as apps, that I bought because they looked like they might be useful, but I never used them because I didn't feel like figuring out how to use them. Vector graphics come to mind, but this isn't a thread about vector graphics, either.

Over my life with computers, I have lost a whole lot of stuff when computers crashed, programs became obsolete or corrupted, drives crashed, or from viruses, and even stupid things that I might have done myself. I don't know that I want my money in something that might just go away for reasons that I am unlikely to understand.

Then, we come to government-issued cryptocurrency, which seems to be promoted as being more reliable than any of the other crypto schemes available. Wouldn't government-issued cryptocurrency remove most of the advantages of cryptocurrency? If not immediately, wouldn't you realize that, at some point, the government is going to track every transaction made through its cryptocurrency? When a new administration decides that you have too much money, wouldn't they simply move money from your crypto account to someone else's or to their own? Aren't taxes and other "fees" simply going to be taken from your crypto account? In what world is something run by the government more secure?
 
Bitcoin is something I wish I had gotten on board with when it first came out. It started out at under 10¢ in 2009, spiked to over $120k a year ago, and is now at $80k. I don't understand what drives its value, since it is really nothing tangible. It's valued by buying & selling activity in the market just like stocks, but there is no underlying entity you theoretically own a piece of...it just "is."

I do know that it is accepted as payment by some places, and can be converted to cash (whatever that is these days) and deposited into a bank account. There have been horror stories of people forgetting/losing the credentials to their account. They are screwed. There is no recovery process. All your money is gone. *POOF*

I feel as though I would not trust it, but I doubt that there is a supply of paper money to back up our bank deposits.
 
Bitcoin is something I wish I had gotten on board with when it first came out. It started out at under 10¢ in 2009, spiked to over $120k a year ago, and is now at $80k. I don't understand what drives its value, since it is really nothing tangible. It's valued by buying & selling activity in the market just like stocks, but there is no underlying entity you theoretically own a piece of...it just "is."

I do know that it is accepted as payment by some places, and can be converted to cash (whatever that is these days) and deposited into a bank account. There have been horror stories of people forgetting/losing the credentials to their account. They are screwed. There is no recovery process. All your money is gone. *POOF*

I feel as though I would not trust it, but I doubt that there is a supply of paper money to back up our bank deposits.

That sounds a little too "Enron-ish" for my comfort zone.
 
I want to get in on xrp. But before I do, I want to be guided on how to get my money OUT. If it is just spending on things they accept crypto on, not interested. I want a checking account for it and I think one broker has one with coinbase. I have an etf that holds it for now.
This sounds like I know something. I don't. I just searched for it once.
I also have a lottery ticket that did not win today.
 
I want to get in on xrp. But before I do, I want to be guided on how to get my money OUT. If it is just spending on things they accept crypto on, not interested. I want a checking account for it and I think one broker has one with coinbase. I have an etf that holds it for now.
This sounds like I know something. I don't. I just searched for it once.
I also have a lottery ticket that did not win today.
I think they all have a way for you to transfer funds to a checking account at any institution.
 
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