What the hell is (a) bitcoin?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

The way I'll be planning for that future is with a bullet to the brain. I don't need or want that.

[G. Keenan]

Reese probably not too happy about the recent dip in the NASDAQ.

[Superorganism]

Reese Witherspoon is turning into a tech bro

It’s never enough for these people.

[G. Keenan]

Reese Witherspoon is turning into a tech bro

It’s never enough for these people.

She's probably being paid by one of the crypto exchanges to post that. The exchanges are buying naming rights to stadiums and paying celebs like Matt Damon to do ads.

Piece in the Washington Post on this today -- Cryptocurrency is suddenly everywhere — except in the cash register

Billionaire tech executive Michael Saylor has called bitcoin “the seminal invention of the human race.” His website describes it as “a bank in cyberspace” offering a “simple, & secure savings account to billions of people.” He recently claimed ownership of 17,732 bitcoin worth about $740 million.

But one thing Saylor cannot do with bitcoin is pay for the $18 shrimp cocktail at Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place several floors below his penthouse apartment on Washington’s Georgetown waterfront. Though Tony and Joe’s has an ATM that can convert cash into bitcoin, the restaurant won’t accept it.

“I would take Monopoly money before I took cryptocurrency,” said a manager, who declined to give his name.

Saylor ranks among the bitcoin “whales,” a super-rich class of investors who control an outsize portion of the asset. In addition to his personal holdings, Saylor’s company, business software maker MicroStrategy, has plowed its corporate reserves into bitcoin and borrowed to buy more; it now holds roughly $5.2 billion in the digital currency.

Indeed, the top 10,000 individual investors in bitcoin own roughly a third of all digital tokens in circulation, the NBER research found, a greater concentration of wealth than exists with dollars among the richest American households. In the second quarter of last year, transactions over $10 million accounted for more than 60 percent of activity in the growing decentralized finance market, the crypto-enabled alternative to traditional financial services, according to a report by Chainalysis.

And today’s pool of investors is increasingly diverse. A poll over the summer by NORC at the University of Chicago found that 44 percent of those who bought or traded cryptocurrencies in the past year were non-White, 41 percent were women and 35 percent had annual household incomes of less than $60,000. The survey also found that the average participant was younger than 40 and did not have a college degree.

[Leroy]

Fortune favors the brave or whatever.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Dude, bitcoins so worthless. I'm I mean what the [expletive]. Tride to play some poker tonight because drinking and poker go together like bread and utter .And it was good until I mnaged to lose the $80 in my gambling accout. Which reminded me I need to gamble more. That's my news years resolution. More speculation. Less not speculation. Ayway, I have a bitcoing account too. Always good to have in case of emergency which this certainly way. When trying to get the money from one account, in an exchange wallet, to the other account, in a casinoe, I mean 3 hours of my life gone. All to find out what I said in the first ten second was correct.

There are different types of codes, apparently. Legacy codes. Not legcy codes. Some start with 1. Some start with q. Blay blah blah. So, this uber easy to transfer money is not able to be transferred. Ended up talking to the technician for hours. Super nice guy. Really smart. I said, dude, why are people buying crypto. And, the policy line is you can make money and there are ways to do it and blah blah blah. I was like....bull [expletive]. It's all worthless, no?

Blah blah blah. I told him we have no work to be done. KInd of like two eath movers with a shovel trying to move kilamajaor and he said he was good so long as he was talking. Which we did. He for a while defended crpto. It's speculation. But then we got to the point where the coke and shrroms was wearng off and I needed to go to bed. End of story. But i did think it was relevant to this thread. always thinking of you guys so there ya go. also would love a recording of that call.

[Radbird]

Dude, bitcoins so worthless. I'm I mean what the [expletive]. Tride to play some poker tonight because drinking and poker go together like bread and utter .And it was good until I mnaged to lose the $80 in my gambling accout. Which reminded me I need to gamble more. That's my news years resolution. More speculation. Less not speculation. Ayway, I have a bitcoing account too. Always good to have in case of emergency which this certainly way. When trying to get the money from one account, in an exchange wallet, to the other account, in a casinoe, I mean 3 hours of my life gone. All to find out what I said in the first ten second was correct.

There are different types of codes, apparently. Legacy codes. Not legcy codes. Some start with 1. Some start with q. Blay blah blah. So, this uber easy to transfer money is not able to be transferred. Ended up talking to the technician for hours. Super nice guy. Really smart. I said, dude, why are people buying crypto. And, the policy line is you can make money and there are ways to do it and blah blah blah. I was like....bull [expletive]. It's all worthless, no?

Blah blah blah. I told him we have no work to be done. KInd of like two eath movers with a shovel trying to move kilamajaor and he said he was good so long as he was talking. Which we did. He for a while defended crpto. It's speculation. But then we got to the point where the coke and shrroms was wearng off and I needed to go to bed. End of story. But i did think it was relevant to this thread. always thinking of you guys so there ya go. also would love a recording of that call.

Congrats!

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

lol, I vaguely remember writing this. It did not disappoint.

[G. Keenan]

So what happens to crypto value when the Fed starts issuing digital dollars, which it inevitably will at some point, let's say in a decade or so. China is working on the same. Unless crypto has become useful enough by that point to retain utility against competition from digital dollars, won't its value plummet overnight? Right now crypto values are sustained purely by techno optimism that blockchain is the future of money. If actual money becomes digital so I can use digital dollars to buy my Fortnite avatar a new outfit, who needs Bitcoin, apart from drug dealers and speculative traders?

[Arthur Dent]

Aren’t dollars already digital?