Bitcoin / Bitcoins / Crypto Currency

Just read the full paper. Its really powerful stuff.

Apparently Bitcoin has the same electronic waste output as the Netherlands. Which is really depressing, that something as inefficient and wasteful as Bitcoin is only on a level with one European nation.

Similarly, I learned recently that Bitcoin's overall power consumption is under half of the energy used by inactive home appliances in standby mode...in just the United States.

I hope you guys aren't interpreting this as whataboutism from me, this is more me despairing at the state of our species!

BTC taking a bit of a hammering after China has declared it (and all other crypto-currencies) illegal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58678907

They like to remind people its still illegal there. I mean, how many times have they done that this year alone? BTC aside, Xi is doing a right number with the world economy at the moment.

Was having this chat with a crypto colleague earlier. We reckon this is at least the 8th or 9th time China has banned crypto. We've lost count.

Although this time seems more serious. I expect that China are about to announce a state run cryptocurrency.

Definitely a digital yuan on the horizon - I wouldn't expect anything too soon until this Evergrande debacle has come to some sort of conclusion. "We're close to fucking the international economy, but check out this new thing that we want to become a new world currency standard".

Yeh I assumed this was to discourage a load of money being shifted to crypto if Evergrande does tank the economy there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_MfXIRQIwc&ab_channel=AnthonyPompliano

There's A LOT of U-S-of-A energy in here, but once you're past that, it's hard to deny the guy. Twitter adopting the Lightning Network is huge.

And bitcoin is back.

Enjoyed Hacking Capitalism on R4 earlier, touched on the place for crypto amongst African farmers and banking the unbanked

Does anyone have a crypto.com card? Interested to hear your thoughts if you do? I signed up today.

You stick £300 (or more) into their coin, leave it there for 6 months and you get a (I think) pre-pay card with 2% cashback and £10/mo towards a Spotify subscription. It seems like it'd be difficult to lose money at those rates... Even if the coin halves in value you only have to hold onto it for about a year before you break even assuming you put like £200 of supermarket shopping on there each month

I heard about the card last month and thought it was interesting and made a mental note to sign up, and then they ran a big ad campaign over the last few days and I missed out on a 75% price rise. Oh well.

Now here is the part where I spam you with my referral link. If you sign up we get $25 each.

But that isn't really the point of me posting here - I'm curious if anyone's used it, had a bad experience, whether shops accept it, how the rebate works, etc.

Edit: oh wait, the cashback also is in the form of that coin, not cash. But I presume you can sell it immediately?

^ although it kinda of does seem to be too good to be true, I am getting 2% cashback on my spending now, and got £10 back for Spotify. The £300 has gone up to £370 (but very volatile)

I haven't received a card yet and apparently it's a long wait so I'm using a virtual card with Curve

Thought I'd hit the jackpot with cashback when I was planning to put £xxxx in to my Vanguard ISA and a test transaction went through... But no cashback on that class of transaction unfortunately. Wonder if I pay council tax through it?

Also if you stick £3000 in their coin you get 10% interest on it apparently. But that's far too risky for me

Have they slashed the rewards? £3k staked is only showing 3% cashback now unless I am reading it wrong

Edit: Is the 10% for staking rather than cashback rewards?

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. It's 3% cashback on the card spending and 10% "interest" on the £3k staked (so after the 6 month staking period you'd have ~£3150 if the price stayed the same). If you plump for the £300 tier like me you get nothing back on your coins except for any capital gain.

I tried DeFi staking with a measly £50 as an experiment, and I am apparently getting 12.6%, but I've only had it in there a couple of days

You had any indication when you will receive your physical card?

Nope, just says "issued ✔" in the app. From what I've read on the internet it could be between 2 weeks and 2 months (but those people might be in different countries)

As I mentioned above I've loaded up the virtual card on my Curve card, which is a (free) physical card, so I can pay for stuff with that if I can't use GPay or whatever. It's kind of like a transparent wrapper card that charges stuff to an underlying set of normal cards. Also it lets you pay on one card and then change it to another at a later date, and if one payment fails it tries another card, etc. - quite a handy product. Unbelievably Curve also offers 1% cashback in the first month so I've been getting 3% until today 😁

(Curve's not a crypto product, just fintech or whatever you want to call it - I can refer people to that as well but I'm not sure what's in it for the referee)

Edit to add: I think the Curve referee gets a fiver and I get another month of 1% cashback

OK, might come back for a referral code at some point, will do some more reading but it looks a good product and unlikely to get too burnt long term

No worries :)

I think the coin just hit ATH yesterday or today so possibly not the best time to buy in!

Has that dude with the $4.5bil of SHIB got anything out yet?

Not the walwet split thing...

Can someone explain that anyway? Whys that important?

Everyday is an ATH at the moment, not to worried about buying in around here given where the next month or two should go. Also long term it looks like there should be a decent amount of demand outstripping supply if they manage to hit their target of 100m users.

My crypto.com card just shipped FYI. So hopefully it'll be here in less than two weeks overall. I think they're made/shipped from the UK so maybe we have a shorter wait than other people in Europe/ROW

Good to know, looks like Biden might of given a buying opportunity as well

Sorry for the noob question but I did UTFS to no available and there's nothing in the first page to help so... I want to gift my 10yo godson some crypto (I was thinking algorand as a greener alternative to bitcoin/etherium, but I assume it doesn't matter which currency) and have cleared it with his parents who will help convert it back to £ when he wants it. My question is, has anyone done this before and have a recommendation for how I should do it and/or is there a recommendation for a provider (coinbase?). TIA

Whats the goal of this gift? Nest egg for the future or crypto education?

I did it in the past and just used paper wallets but not sure there are any paper wallet generators for algo. You can just create the wallet and gift them the seed phrase, if feeling fancy get it engraved on steel for them