The Crypto Rollercoaster

[LemonSwan]

Hi all,

I have decided to take the plunge and start investing in Crypto.

Pretty hairy experience and thought I would make a thread to see if we can get other MN crypto investors all together for moral support while we ride the rollercoaster.

Any one out there?

@YouWereGr8InLittleMenstruators

But he's right, and I am so pleased he's making the point. Does the impact of those staggering carbon emissions not bother you? I had this conversation with my otherwise green and environmentally switched-on neighbour on the allotment a couple of months ago. She'd just started playing around with cryptos, despite our homes being on land widely predicted to be under water way before the end of the century on account of rising sea levels.

I'm in crypto because of carbon emissions not despite them.

Bitcoin mining is driving investment in green energy technology, because miners need energy not just now, but in 10, 20, 50 years time. The sustainability of their business relies on cheap, renewable energy.

Fossil fuels are finite, which means that as they run out, they become not only more environmentally harmful to mine, but also more expensive. For most firms, electricity is just one bill among many, for crypto miners, it is their entire bread and butter. A mining org that does not have access to renewables has an increasing cost base and will eventually go underwater.

Bitcoin mining is the greenest large scale industry, bar none - with 74% of the energy used coming from renewables

This is a good (8 min) watch from Andreas Antonopoulis

Tbh I havent researched it in great depth but I am sceptical to this energy consumption drama.

You could play all kinds of whatiffery comparing various energy things and whos to say whats more important.

For example..
UK tea consumption is 6% of the UKs energy use. 6.324 TWH for only 66.5 million people. So 0.095 TWH per million people, or 665 TWH per world population if everyone wants to drink as much tea as us.

Its an important part of our culture but really holds no actual intrinsic value to be using such high energy.

So even if we argue crypto has no value - which is highly debatable. We are all happy to use 4/5 x more energy on tea on a per person basis than crypto.

I also think as time goes on (from my very limited knowledge); that asset wise - bitcoin will become more like a house and other more efficient staking based cryptos (ADA and ETH2) will be like your current account. You change the position on your house once every 5 years or so, not every day.

From an environmental/ ecology point of view we are fucked anyway. So its all academic.

"I also think as time goes on (from my very limited knowledge); that asset wise - bitcoin will become more like a house and other more efficient staking based cryptos (ADA and ETH2) will be like your current account"

People with significant amounts of bitcoin do use it a bit like a house to get a "mortgage" on. You can borrow against bitcoin, rather than selling it and this is increasingly what people are doing rather than selling.

Check out Blockfi/celcius (risky, you dont own your keys) or compound/aave (using wrapped bitcoin on the ethereum chain).

Glad my limited imaginings seem to be true. It seems too expensive to just buy and sell on a whim or use as a cash account, it really is there as a store of value*

*when Elon the White Walker isn't trying to bring down the kingdom!

Hes really pissing me off today. He has the power/ knowledge to help make bitcoin more environmentally friendly if he has such an issue with it. Instead he's having an ego fuelled twitter spat. I am hodling because I cant afford to sell in the red, but its alright for him the billionaire. He's fucking with the small man because he cant allow himself to not 'win' an argument.

Besides, he's hardly using flipping wind power to get to space.

Why are you not selling. Its a good price compared to six months ago.

@LemonSwan

Glad my limited imaginings seem to be true. It seems too expensive to just buy and sell on a whim or use as a cash account, it really is there as a store of value*

*when Elon the White Walker isn't trying to bring down the kingdom!

Hes really pissing me off today. He has the power/ knowledge to help make bitcoin more environmentally friendly if he has such an issue with it. Instead he's having an ego fuelled twitter spat. I am hodling because I cant afford to sell in the red, but its alright for him the billionaire. He's fucking with the small man because he cant allow himself to not 'win' an argument.

Besides, he's hardly using flipping wind power to get to space.

Thats why people are starting to use it for collateralised loans.

The Musk stuff is a massive and deliberate distraction A tonne of coins were moved onto exchanges just before his tweet, suggesting that there was prior knowledge and they were primed to sell.

This is basic market manipulation - sell a load, watch the price come down, watch others sell as they panic, then buy them back cheap. There areall kinds of rules to stop this in Tradfi, but in crypto you are your own bank and you have to rely on your own wits to see through what other people are saying and why, especially those that are heavily invested in it.

Its crashed again. Who would be so unwise as to invest in this. Only those able to manipulate the price to their own advantage.

And crashed again. Why just why is anybody falling for this unregulated crooked market.

@Viviennemary

And crashed again. Why just why is anybody falling for this unregulated crooked market.

No idea, but if they are selling I am buying :)

My wages just went up in value :)

@Viviennemary

Be freedy when others are fearful!

I am a long term holder and have seen my portfolio smashed to pieces, and I for one am glad, i get to average down my holdings significantly.

This is a long term 15 year + hold for me, so I welcome this plunge!

Wild! what a ride lol

Woah still falling. Hows everyone doing? I had to abort ship. Still came out +£800 on my 5k investment earlier this month but should have exited earlier

Whos holding, whos sold?

I’m holding my Cardano. I bought at 35c for the first lot...when I average out my costs over different purchases, it’s 66c. They were €1.90 last week and €1.09 now. But there is a lot of good stuff coming out about them, so I expect it to go way back up.

[quote fromdownwest]@Viviennemary

Be freedy when others are fearful!

I am a long term holder and have seen my portfolio smashed to pieces, and I for one am glad, i get to average down my holdings significantly.

This is a long term 15 year + hold for me, so I welcome this plunge![/quote]
Do you ever spend any of it though?
I read an article that said long term holders consider crypto too valuable to spend any of it!

magicstar
Good choice, I would be holding too if I bought at that price. My average open was 1.17 so in hindsight it was a good decision to sell.

I expect it to go up as well tbh. I am going to wait for this to settle and buy back in.

@lightand - I don’t spend it, it’s my long term goal pot.
As soon as it reaches the value of my mortgage, out it come. Pay off my mortgage and forget I ever had it.
If it doubles in value following on from my sale, so be it. I would have real life benefits from my investing.

@fromdownwest do you mind me asking if your initial investment was very big?

Initial was £50
Then over time as I built up knowledge and confidence I drip feed 10% of my net income into it each month
This may be crazy, I just see real long term value in it.
I stick to ETH and BTC primarily
I have some small holdings in REN and COMP.
However, I am investing on the assumption I may lose it all. So it’s not for the faint hearted.

I've held all of mine, it's pretty scary seeing it drop 50% but I'm still at double my investment.

It was always a long term investment for me as I believe the adoption is still years away. I'm expecting 5-10 years and then perhaps I can take early retirement or pay off mortgage and live comfortably.

Given the technology isn't yet widely adopted this is to be expected, I could have taken out my profits but my real goal is to buy a family home (single parent in V expensive area) and despite 5X my investment if I'd withdrawn it, I'd still be nowhere near the deposit I'd need so it would have sat in the bank.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I expect it will bounce back over the next couple of months.

I have a friend who is down $600,000 this week so I don't feel too bad

Wow $600,000 down is staggering.

I now own 1,000 Cardano, but I'm prepared to hold onto them for a long time. Hopefully I'll get some good return on them.

I was doing some matched betting and had a good week so invested my winnings in Bitcoin and Dogecoin....now that was bad timing. But I'm not worrying as it was basically free money to begin with.

@fromdownwest

Initial was £50 Then over time as I built up knowledge and confidence I drip feed 10% of my net income into it each month This may be crazy, I just see real long term value in it. I stick to ETH and BTC primarily I have some small holdings in REN and COMP. However, I am investing on the assumption I may lose it all. So it’s not for the faint hearted.

Are you using [Compound Finance](compound.finance/)?

You dont need to borrow, you can just put your COMP and ETH there, and pick up interest + additional COMP governance tokens.

You are taking on smart contract risk, but Compound is a pretty big and well supported protocol. If you are worried about contract risk, you can take out insurance on Nexus Mutual.

If you decide just to hold on to your COMP, you can use them to vote, or delegate for someone else to vote in the protocol on your behalf.

This is a pretty good podcast on how to use COMP.

podcast.banklesshq.com/11-how-to-go-bankless-with-compound-robert-leshner

🚀

Bitcoin all time high today. I only know one person in real life that’s into crypto, we’re still the early adopters.

It's been a good investment over the last year!
So pleased because we didn't have the funds to invest in the early days when we wanted to, and we bought at a bad time and suffered losses for a while there......

I'm very much a newbie and only have peanuts invested (invested £50 in bitcoin a couple of months ago, it's been up and down but doing well at the moment.) I really can't decide how much I want to put into crypto, how do you all decide?