To ask if anyone dabbles with bitcoin?

[MollyWantsACracker]

Disclaimer: I am totally clueless

I bought a few euro worth today, just for fun really

Anyone else?

So, if I have £2000 right now is it a good time to buy litecoin or similar or have I missed the boat entirely? I can afford to lose it, as it was a gift ive never had access to, it's been sat in a bond that's just matured and having been tied up for 5 years it's made next to nothing. Honest opinion anyone? I was hoping to cash the bond out to buy bitcoin or similar months ago but I wasn't able to and can't help but feel I'm really late to the party now.

If it were me I’d put it in etherium.

I think bitcoin has done most of its growth

Bitcoin Cash is really interesting - since I've done nothing with mine since the fork in July/August, I've still technically got mine (I'm currently spending too much time on my cointracker app which charts them all) so would like ALL of them to do very well, but especially Ripple since (amazingly) I have more than one of them.

Bitcoin Cashers are evangelical about it - it is the One True Coin as far as they are concerned and Other Bitcoin is a very bastardised version.

I’ve just had an email from Hargreaves Lansdown to say that XBT (I hold some of that in my SIPP-roughly the equivalent of 5 Bitcoins worth) has just disposed of their Cash holding and that Certificate holders on 1 August will be able to apply. Hargreaves is finding out whether they can apply on our behalf (as they are the registered holders) so I might be getting some Cash compensation there as well. Potentially good news! Not sure if I will have to keep it in my SIPP or whether I would be able to cash it out early?

Bet they sold it before today’s massive rise though!

Wow. Woke up to a big plummet this morning. It’ll be interesting to see where the bottom is. At least my sitting on my hands worked as I didn’t buy any Bitcoin Cash.

We haven't bought any bitcoin, but have watched with interest. Has been interesting seeing this unfold and hear the analysis on Bloomberg every day.

Noodle, we watch it through Hargreaves Lansdown.

Noofly!!!

Yes, it is a significant correction - all my cryptoholidings are currently down apart from plucky little Ripple. A friend had a theory that some of the recent rise was Thanksgiving and Christmas-related (conversations, presents). I hope that's not the case because that's a lot of small-investors hit. On the MrNoofly barometer though, it'd be interesting to know how prolonged the plunge would be before they are absolutely, unequivocally your Bitcoin again.

MrNoofly wants to know what my floor is. He was very unhappy to hear that I don't have a floor. I'll just hunker down for a bit...

I was a bitcoin thousandaire yesterday 😂 today I am not!
Holding on to my fraction though- I think it will go up again and if It goes down significantly I will use my profit from a quick dip in and out of litecoin to buy more...

At least the stockmarket’s doing well so all my duller investments are ticking away nicely while my pretty Bitcoin money goes poof!

Any thoughts on bitcoin cash?
I’m thinking of throwing a few bob at it...

I'm finding this all fascinating. A friend recommended I get into it a couple of years ago. I ignored him and he has just cashed in huge sums.

I don't think it would do me any good to get involved, I have quite an obsessive personality and I'm not sure I'd like the person I turned into if I bought in.

So is everyone sitting tigjt and hoping it goes up or are people starting to bail? Husband wants to bail, I want to keep going!

We're holding. Price seems to be on its way back up ...

Saying that though I am preparing an exit strategy now. I wanted two grand in the account which I managed to achieve yesterday with a couple of small trades. Now I'm going to withdraw the original £600 I put into it so at least my initial deposit is safe. Then I'm going to continue trading with the remainder making sure than anything over £2k is taken out and put on my credit card!

DH is holding out for the price to reach £15k then he's going to withdraw the £3600 he put into it, again to protect the original deposit. Then he's going to keep trading with the £4K profit he's made.

I will be keeping my (very modest) investment in situ to see what happens. If the money I put in is lost in the process, so be it. At the moment, I am happy with my Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash/Ether/Litecoin/Ripple mix (particularly happy with the latter at the moment since it's bucking the trend - earlier today Ripple (XRP) reached the dizzy heights of £1 each but wouldn't rule out putting a bit of money into other cryptocurrencies at a later date. (All of the ones above do slightly different things. For instance, Bitcoin is primarily storage, Litecoin P2P, Ripple is designed for banks to do transactions (or something like that).

Also holding. Am getting a bit bored with the current sideways movement and may take a few days off from monitoring it.

Yeah it is a bit boring at the minute - I'm waiting on £14k and then implementing my exit.

Hanging in there also.

All my zillions (ie literally few bob that wouldn’t pay for a wet weekend) is on coinbase. Should I get it off there and how?
Wah 🤓

I haven’t RTFT but I wanted to point out some of the lesser spoken about downsides to bitcoin and other crypto currencies in case you aren’t aware

1. It is used to FUND ALL THE BAD PEOPLE. Where do you think ISIS / human traffickers etc get there funding from? A lot of it is from criminal activities with the proceeds being returned using crypto currencies. To be honest, this is enough to stop me using it but I do have very strong morals

1. It’s harmful to the environment. Bitcoin mining uses vast amounts of electricity

1. Exchanges are very unsafe. There have been instances of vast numbers of bitcoin being stolen and there is absolutely no come back to the original owner ( look up Mt. Gov) as just one example.

Yes, some people have made a lot of money with bitcoin. However, a lot of people are now dabbling in a world they don’t understand and are very likely to get burnt. I sincerely hope that nobody has invested anything they can’t afford to lose.

Slumpity slumpity slump slump slump on the back of South Korea regulation news. I don’t actually see this as a bad thing as the speculation is completely out of hand.

Molly, ideally yes, you should move it off Coinbase. You shoudn’t really leave coins on an exchange because of the risk of hacking. You could look into something like an electrum wallet (no personal experience of it, but it is very popular and well rated). I think there’s a way to avoid Coinbase fees as well when moving if you move them to GDAX first and then to a wallet - if you google you’ll find instructions.

OH and I have a small amount invested in Bitcoin and Lightcoin. It's stored in a wallet and we didn't spend anything we'd miss. We bought it just as prices were starting to go up, and at the moment it is worth more than we bought it for, but we'll just leave it to see what happens. I spent quite a bit of time learning about cryptocurrencies and the blockchain before we put any money in it, so I do kind of understand what it's all about.

I have noticed that there has been an awful lot of negative press about it over the past few weeks. I wonder if someone is getting nervous about its potential...?

bigly placematting