Bitcoin price $100K for the first time

[levtweeney]

I’ve got accounts on KuCoin, Binance and Coinbase.

I love to explore the different coins. Always on the lookout for the “Next big thing” 😂

I try to buy a little every month but haven’t for a while as the price is a little high at the moment. I’m waiting for another bear market (decline in price) before dipping back in.

[sully301]

i have a very small amount of ethereum and i obsessively watch it each day. i've heard it's going to reach 5000 by christmas and possible 8000 in the spring

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by novocastrian

surely no one can a guarantee 100% on anything

the best you will ever get is 5 nines (99.999%)

there is always a risk

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Not sure why the 5 nines applies?

If the crypto was only that safe it would have been broken many times over 15 years? But has not been.

Systems around it certainly can be less safe but they aren't bitcoin, which holds the real value. When bitcoin is much more adopted these things will be improved/regulated simply because so many peoples' assets will be at risk.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by Moorlandman

Bitcoin/crypto currency.

Can I use it in Argos to pay for Christmas pressies? no
Can I use it to buy drugs and other illegal items? yes
Can I use it to gamble on unregulated Casinos? yes

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Yes, less useful for day to day payments at the moment especially when we have much better working alternatives.

Great for buying drugs etc. So is cash but more importantly there is criminality in every financial system which never gets the headlines. Bitcoin had such early success because criminals like the anonymity and that they didn't need to trust other criminals. The blockchain is the bit allowing anonymity but it can be changed easily. You could do it yourself and submit it to the bitcoin network and if most like it then we have a better bitcoin. But criminals don't need bitcoin or even one of the many other cryptos, they could write their own and use that. It would be easy to drive most of the criminals out from the real bitcoin in time making it safer than almost any other method. The blockchain is a bit like nuclear power. It can't be uninvented and like anything else it will get abused - that's life, not a weakness of bitcoin.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by Moorlandman

All works well if everyone is honest.

At least with a bank there is some protection from scammers.

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Bitcoin is designed specifically to deal with anyone trying to double spend some bitcoin. They can submit it to the system to try to steal but there are so many honest copies of that transaction already that the bad one is discarded.

You're right about the bank which for practical purposes provides all the security we need. Bitcoin was designed to cut the bank out of the deal because banks mean humans and humans cause huge financial crises and create economies with unwanted inflation and other nasties. But it's early days, for those that want it then any number of regulated front ends can be tacked on but it can still be bitcoin doing the work.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by salmim

Could AI one day be a threat to Crypto security?

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As mentioned before if AI cracks the crypto that secures bitcoin then it's going to be able to crack code with much more dire consequences elsewhere so don't worry about it.

The good news is that if the "anonymous" version of bitcoin persists then AI will be great at being able to trace who made what transaction so we can catch those criminals who might be so dumb as to use the most secure ledger on Earth when they could be doing business so much better elsewhere.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by sully301

i have a very small amount of ethereum and i obsessively watch it each day. i've heard it's going to reach 5000 by christmas and possible 8000 in the spring

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I no longer follow ethereum but I do have long development phases in mind for bitcoin where it will reach certain numbers. In fact when I first invested (after I'd taken a punt a few months earlier with a few quid) it was the hardest bit to figure out. So at the moment bitcoin is larger than the silver market and the next target might be seen to be the gold market which is an order of magnitude larger. So a price near to £1M a coin would be reasonable.

Bitcoin can be seen as a replacement for all the central banks the other functions of which would not be needed or much less so in what would be a very different World economy. At this stage the price would be much higher.

Not bad for an experimental thing that started from zero

[novocastrian]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

Not sure why the 5 nines applies?

If the crypto was only that safe it would have been broken many times over 15 years? But has not been.

Systems around it certainly can be less safe but they aren't bitcoin, which holds the real value. When bitcoin is much more adopted these things will be improved/regulated simply because so many peoples' assets will be at risk.

See more...

Just because its never been broken dosnt mean there isnt a 0.001 % chance it could be surely

enterprise IT would never guarantee 100% uptime it as always 99.999%

nothing is 100%

[Loopylooloo]

I bought 500 XRP for £200. They are currently worth around £1000, an amazing profit but I still want to hold them to see if it goes higher. Not sure if that’s wise but I kind of like the idea of them sky rocketing! It’s not a huge investment to gamble with. I understand absolutely nothing about any of it though!😂

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by novocastrian

Just because its never been broken dosnt mean there isnt a 0.001 % chance it could be surely

enterprise IT would never guarantee 100% uptime it as always 99.999%

nothing is 100%

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Okay I see where you get the 5 nines from.
No there is no chance because of the way the maths works. It's complicated but to give you an idea of what we're talking about. When you are assigned an account number in the Bitcoin network it is an enormous number. It is so large that no one will ever guess it so there is no need for a special number. The chance of failure is for practical reasons zero.