Is anyone else starting to become a bit worried? mod note in first post

Whelo79

grindle wrote: »

Because hopefully new entrants will notice that those posters keep ignoring points placed against them and then they can make their own judgements. Maybe I place too much hope in human judgement but I refuse to believe that most people want to be ignorant and deluded. I've done this cynicism-deflection in many other forums about many other subjects over a great period of time.
I think maintaining a positive sentiment about a clearly positive philosophy helps adoption whatever the case.
There's one guy around here involved in crypto-speculation at the sidelines who was one of the most ignorant towards one of my other main preoccupations on the internet, yet I haven't seen him post stupid shít since mountains of data started being published. Maybe JohnnyFlush and his ilk will succumb to reality in the same way?

Or maybe they keep screaming "ponzi" while they dream of their properties doubling in value so they can take advantage of the next generation? Who knows?

Well I commend your effort and persistence man. Fair play.

ZeroThreat

grindle wrote: »

Because hopefully new entrants will notice that those posters keep ignoring points placed against them and then they can make their own judgements. Maybe I place too much hope in human judgement but I refuse to believe that most people want to be ignorant and deluded. I've done this cynicism-deflection in many other forums about many other subjects over a great period of time.
I think maintaining a positive sentiment about a clearly positive philosophy helps adoption whatever the case.
There's one guy around here involved in crypto-speculation at the sidelines who was one of the most ignorant towards one of my other main preoccupations on the internet, yet I haven't seen him post stupid shít since mountains of data started being published. Maybe JohnnyFlush and his ilk will succumb to reality in the same way?

Or maybe they keep screaming "ponzi" while they dream of their properties doubling in value so they can take advantage of the next generation? Who knows?

haha, that gave me a laugh, perfectly sums up the attitude of the askaboutmoney.com owner and his cronies - they were banning comments there back in 2005-2006 from people expressing doubt at a permanent growth in property prices, while the owner was making frequent appearances on RTE at the time, saying that Irish banks were the best regulated in the word, and telling people they they'd regret not investing enough money in bank shares in future years.

Of course this guy had invested several million himself in Irish bank shares, but rarely mentioned this.

His current hatred of crytpos seems to stem mainly from the fact that he doesn't have major leverage in the area, unlike his babyboomer era investments. Its similar to the likes of Jamie Dimon's disdain for cryptos, he hates what he can't control.

CryptoReview

We are still only at 50% of the markets all time high. Onwards and upwards 🙂

Anthracite

ZeroThreat wrote: »

haha, that gave me a laugh, perfectly sums up the attitude of the askaboutmoney.com owner and his cronies - they were banning comments there back in 2005-2006 from people expressing doubt at a permanent growth in property prices, while the owner was making frequent appearances on RTE at the time, saying that Irish banks were the best regulated in the word, and telling people they they'd regret not investing enough money in bank shares in future years.

Of course this guy had invested several million himself in Irish bank shares, but rarely mentioned this.

His current hatred of crytpos seems to stem mainly from the fact that he doesn't have major leverage in the area, unlike his babyboomer era investments. Its similar to the likes of Jamie Dimon's disdain for cryptos, he hates what he can't control.

It is interesting how we all learn isn't it. Unlike how people in the mid-2000s who were arguing that we were looking at a bubble were shouted down, here the people making the same argument are politely engaged with and their arguments treated seriously.

Dohnjoe

ZeroThreat wrote: »

Jamie Dimon's disdain for cryptos, he hates what he can't control.

He's just calling it out. And he's right. Waffen Buffet the same - they all see the fact there is little financial logic behind the market value of most of these things

Logic has little to do with a market that can drop 50% in a 48 hour period

Shauny2010

Dohnjoe wrote: »

He's just calling it out. And he's right. Waffen Buffet the same - they all see the fact there is little financial logic behind the market value of most of these things

Logic has little to do with a market that can drop 50% in a 48 hour period

Their is Financial logic, having a network that can verify transactions that no-one controls. These transactions can be anything from a simple payment to a smart contract that could do anything from payrolls to financial derivatives. The possibilities are massive, thats why there are so many projects. Yes some are scams, some are legit and yes wild speculation exists. But to think it has no financial logic is naive.
As for Buffet, he also said Amazon, Alphabet and Bitcoin had no intrinsic value.
The market cap of all the crypto's combined is still only a fraction of even Facebook

banie01

So how do posters feel the market will react to the next round of future expirations?
Drop?
Status quo?
Rise?

I'm betting on a drop, I'm hoping that the whales will be playing both sides of game!
Locking in their gains from the @$9000 and above futures and then selling into the market and dropping the price.

Well that's the hope for me anyway

Thargor

Yeah Im hovering over the sell button for my ETH soon unless BTC starts to move over $10k again, a good run but the longer it holds here the more nervous I get.

Pintman Paddy Losty

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

My BTC/USD price prediction for May 01st:

$9100

My long term outlook is not good however.

Well, as the clocks struck 00:00 and we entered the summer and the first of May, my prediction was absolutely spot on. It's reassuring to know that my technical analysis skill and my equations have proven to be correct once again.

To those of you who PM'd me to say thank you, you are more than welcome, however I will now only be sharing my prediction privately for a modest fee. A discount applies for members of this forum. To those of you that doubted me, and directed scorn and venom towards me, I forgive you. Hopefully you have learned from your mistake.

My long-term outlook still remains very poor. I would not advise buying or holding BTC in the medium to long term.

Dohnjoe

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

It's reassuring to know that my technical analysis skill and my equations have proven to be correct once again.

Did you make money on this?

If so, show us the trade tickets. If not, why not?

Bob24

Dohnjoe wrote: »

If so, show us the trade tickets.

Silly request to be fair. I doubt anywone would want to post personal financial details on a public Internet forum.

Tinder Surprise

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

To those of you who PM'd me to say thank you

PM's from your alternate personality (JohnnyFlash) don't count

Slideways

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Did you make money on this?

If so, show us the trade tickets. If not, why not?

Why would he? Does he need to prove anything to anyone? From what I can see he called a market prediction and was proven to be bang on the money

JohnnyFlash

Least the dude made a prediction. Some of the other day traders and investors around here didn’t. I think their own technical analysis starts and ends with ‘I hope it goes up’.

Agree with not holding in the medium to long term. Cryptocurrency is starting to crumble at the foundations. Tether and bitfinex to crash, Tron’s pump and dump to be one of the biggest ever, teh EOS madness to come to a halt. If the SEC decide ethereum is a security then game over.

makeorbrake

Slideways wrote: »

From what I can see he called a market prediction and was proven to be bang on the money

He was and is making big fat claims. If he is so supremely confident in same then of course he would be backing himself by putting cash money down. Remember the Oracle is now offering his musings as a service for a fee.

It's a guess. He guessed right. Even a stopped clock can be right a couple of times.

hots

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

Well, as the clocks struck 00:00 and we entered the summer and the first of May, my prediction was absolutely spot on. It's reassuring to know that my technical analysis skill and my equations have proven to be correct once again.

To those of you who PM'd me to say thank you, you are more than welcome, however I will now only be sharing my prediction privately for a modest fee. A discount applies for members of this forum. To those of you that doubted me, and directed scorn and venom towards me, I forgive you. Hopefully you have learned from your mistake.

My long-term outlook still remains very poor. I would not advise buying or holding BTC in the medium to long term.

How much?

ZeroThreat

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

Well, as the clocks struck 00:00 and we entered the summer and the first of May, my prediction was absolutely spot on. It's reassuring to know that my technical analysis skill and my equations have proven to be correct once again.

To those of you who PM'd me to say thank you, you are more than welcome, however I will now only be sharing my prediction privately for a modest fee. A discount applies for members of this forum. To those of you that doubted me, and directed scorn and venom towards me, I forgive you. Hopefully you have learned from your mistake.

My long-term outlook still remains very poor. I would not advise buying or holding BTC in the medium to long term.

Just curious, were you able to correctly predict the bull run in Dec/Jan?

JohnnyFlash

makeorbrake wrote: »

He was and is making big fat claims. If he is so supremely confident in same then of course he would be backing himself by putting cash money down. Remember the Oracle is now offering his musings as a service for a fee.

It's a guess. He guessed right. Even a stopped clock can be right a couple of times.

What’s your price prediction for the 1st of June?

lifeandtimes

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

What’s your price prediction for the 1st of June?

Ill throw my hat in the ring , my predition on 01/06/2018 for BTC is $11k :cool:

Edit: what would be more impressive is to pick an alt coin and make their prediction so ill pick the one im most confident in ETH will be $820

Pintman Paddy Losty

makeorbrake wrote: »

He was and is making big fat claims. If he is so supremely confident in same then of course he would be backing himself by putting cash money down. Remember the Oracle is now offering his musings as a service for a fee.

It's a guess. He guessed right. Even a stopped clock can be right a couple of times.

I've made 2 predictions on this thread. On both occasions I was remarkably accurate. I am the only person here who has been willing to put their cock on the block and stand over my technical analyses. The rest of the so-called experts here have stuck to mealy-mouthed fluff about their belief in the core principles etc. Stopped clock. :rolleyes: A bitter and unbecoming response.

I congratulated H0neybadger when he sold his Verge tokens right at the height (mind you, suspiciously he only revealed this after the crash rather than before...). I would have hoped a similar level of camaraderie would have been shown to me after my success.

JohnnyFlash

Prophets are rarely acknowledged in their own lifetime, Paddy. Don’t let it get to you. You’ve called it right twice now, and you aren’t even a canny ‘day trader’ or crypto ‘investor’.

JohnnyFlash

Anyone looking at the BTC/USD market on GDAX? There’s literally nothing happening. Entire minutes passing with zero trades. There’s nothing organic at all happening in the market. The Tether lads would want to fire up the printers and get some fake dollars into the liquidity pool.

makeorbrake

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

What’s your price prediction for the 1st of June?

I'm not the one declaring myself to be the Oracle and charging people to impart 'wisdom'. You are...oops, PPL is (or is that the same thing....??)

makeorbrake

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Prophets are rarely acknowledged in their own lifetime, Paddy. Don’t let it get to you.

Maybe people here are interested in Profits rather than Prophets complete with their snide remarks....

h0neybadger

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

I've made 2 predictions on this thread. On both occasions I was remarkably accurate. I am the only person here who has been willing to put their cock on the block and stand over my technical analyses. The rest of the so-called experts here have stuck to mealy-mouthed fluff about their belief in the core principles etc. Stopped clock. :rolleyes: A bitter and unbecoming response.

I congratulated H0neybadger when he sold his Verge tokens right at the height (mind you, suspiciously he only revealed this after the crash rather than before...). I would have hoped a similar level of camaraderie would have been shown to me after my success.

The difference between me and you, is if I’m going to post a prediction, then I would provide info to back up my prediction.

However I never posted one. I merely said I sold my verge coins and what price I got for them.

You guessed your BTC price prediction (I say guessed, as you provided zero info on your lucky 2 predictions)..

It’s hard to take anyone’s word for anything when you say your “technical analysis” lead you to this figure.

I guess time will tell.
But over the years, many people, popular, not so popular, streamers, youtubers, Redditors and even boards members have made predictions that have all turned out to be pulled straight from their arseholes.

But please, prove me wrong.
Feel free to send me a PM, I’ll give you my email, my address. Phone number.
Come meet me. I’m in Ireland this week. Show me your analysis methods. And I’ll put 10BTC on any coin you can clearly show to have researched to increase, or I’ll sell 10BTC and buy back in once your prediction for a price drop is clear. And I’ll give you 50% of my profits from it.

Please, prove me wrong. I would be very happy to see this.

Dohnjoe

Slideways wrote: »

Why would he? Does he need to prove anything to anyone? From what I can see he called a market prediction and was proven to be bang on the money

I "predicted" 500 euro Eth by xmas, months before that. Anyone can make predictions.

If someone is actually convinced that their TA can actually predict future prices - they will put money on the line. It's a very big tell when they don't.

e.g. I predict Bitcoin at $9800 on June 1st

If it's correct, I'll be smarmy and boast that my TA is infallible
If it's close, I'll play it as "close enough" and besides my "other prediction was correct"
If it's far off I'll blame some extreme market event that my TA didn't "account for"

Seen these "predictions" for years, some have been bang on multiple times - means nothing if they have no skin in the game.

JohnnyFlash

I predict a price of 7600 on the 1at of June. That’s presuming the Tether/Bitifnex scam doesn’t implode, or that Binance aren’t caught being up to funny business. When is that dude in Japan due to sell the next tranche of those MtGox coins?

LoLth

mod note:
Ok, thats enough. If a prediction were made by a supporter of cryptocurrency everyone would be praising their skill. Its made by a sceptic and they are derided.

There is currently no evidence that PPL and JohnnyFlash are the same person. If you believe they are, then lets do it this way, PM me with your proof and if you convince me, I'll ban both of them. If you do not convince me, I ban you.

@Pintman Paddy Losty: if you want to sell a service on Boards we will allow you to put a modest link in your signature (as we have done with others in the past) but please do not advertise unless you want to talk to boards HQ to arrange a rep account. Now you have been informed.

ps. anyone complaining that a boards user will not share their algorithm/analysis data should possibly give any large stockbroker house a ring and ask them to share their formulae and datasets.

Pintman Paddy Losty

h0neybadger wrote: »

The difference between me and you, is if I’m going to post a prediction, then I would provide info to back up my prediction.

However I never posted one. I merely said I sold my verge coins and what price I got for them.

You guessed your BTC price prediction (I say guessed, as you provided zero info on your lucky 2 predictions)..

It’s hard to take anyone’s word for anything when you say your “technical analysis” lead you to this figure.

I guess time will tell.
But over the years, many people, popular, not so popular, streamers, youtubers, Redditors and even boards members have made predictions that have all turned out to be pulled straight from their arseholes.

But please, prove me wrong.
Feel free to send me a PM, I’ll give you my email, my address. Phone number.
Come meet me. I’m in Ireland this week. Show me your analysis methods. And I’ll put 10BTC on any coin you can clearly show to have researched to increase, or I’ll sell 10BTC and buy back in once your prediction for a price drop is clear. And I’ll give you 50% of my profits from it.

Please, prove me wrong. I would be very happy to see this.

I'll gladly share my prediction for a 50% stake in the profits. There's no way I'm parting with my TA data and equation though. It's a complex mixture of game theory, bayesian analysis, sentiment analysis, machine learning, and a good old-fashioned nose for making money. It's too valuable just to share with some random punter on the internet. I've proven its effectiveness two months in a row.

@LoLth Apologies for the advertising, I may contact boards HQ about becoming a verified rep. I've already had a number of queries from people wanting to purchase the next PPL forecast. May need my own Talk To forum at this rate.

h0neybadger

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

I'll gladly share my prediction for a 50% stake in the profits. There's no way I'm parting with my TA data and equation though. It's a complex mixture of game theory, bayesian analysis, sentiment analysis, machine learning, and a good old-fashioned nose for making money. It's too valuable just to share with some random punter on the internet. I've proven its effectiveness two months in a row.

@LoLth Apologies for the advertising, I may contact boards HQ about becoming a verified rep. I've already had a number of queries from people wanting to purchase the next PPL forecast. May need my own Talk To forum at this rate.

2 predictions doesn’t make it infallible. Plenty have done the same, with a lot more results and eventually they got caught wth their pants down.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to buy anything off you.

But the sheer bang of smugness off your post there just makes you seem childish...

JohnnyFlash

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

I'll gladly share my prediction for a 50% stake in the profits. There's no way I'm parting with my TA data and equation though. It's a complex mixture of game theory, bayesian analysis, sentiment analysis, machine learning, and a good old-fashioned nose for making money. It's too valuable just to share with some random punter on the internet. I've proven its effectiveness two months in a row.

@LoLth Apologies for the advertising, I may contact boards HQ about becoming a verified rep. I've already had a number of queries from people wanting to purchase the next PPL forecast. May need my own Talk To forum at this rate.

Is it just Bitcoin you’re studying, Paddy, or are you looking at other coins? Any dark horse there that you think might moon?

grindle

I'd be slow to give credence to this part of LoLth's post:

LoLth wrote: »

If a prediction were made by a supporter of cryptocurrency everyone would be praising their skill. Its made by a sceptic and they are derided.

Praising their skill? I'd congratulate them on their luck if anything, or on their ability to sniff out news before most others had. I don't consider myself skilled as a trader whatsoever. I've made some good calls in the moment, but no TA where I've planned far ahead. Should I have my back slapped for calling near the top of IOTA at it's big run towards the end of last year? Nope. Got lucky. Things looked way overheated so I dropped it. It could have doubled from there - the market felt mental. Doesn't matter much either way as I tagged profit but if it doubled I'd have FOMO regrets.
Memelines/TA apparently works when everything is sideways and fluctuating and well done to Paddy if he put money into it, but it gets absolutely destroyed in the inital days or weeks of a full bull or bear market. I'd rather keep the gains I've made from believing in ideas and implementations a little bit earlier than others rather than put in the apparent effort which memelines need to gain profit.

I'd also also question the need for the sceptic's thread. We're happy to accept valid criticism - JohnnyFlash, I am sceptical about a LOT of the same things you are, you just have to start rebutting the points made back to you instead of ignoring them and sidestepping with magic beans and self-asserted lambo-memes!
You despise ALL of it. It's very likely that the truth of what's "necessary" or what's "valuable" about blockchain is in the middle somewhere. It's increasingly unlikely that anybody who's 100% against blockchain is correct - this amount of infrastructure doesn't get built and this amount of money does not get pissed away easily by big companies, blockchain devs commanding $200k+ a year minimum, IPOs and the SEC are genuinely feeling threatened by a trend less than two years old. This process will only get more streamlined, less wasteful, bulding blocks better built and maintained.
Even ETH - which is as advanced a working system as we have - is an utter pain in the hole to work with development-wise and is quite frustrating to deal with in comparison to a standard enviroment where there's an element of plug and play (**** it, googling and C&Ping large swathes of work with relatively minor changes or porting it appropriately to a similar system) and devs have to figure out how to get their own sub-projects within a project to interact, probably guided by a manager or two who have a manager above them telling them how they wish it would go.
With a lot of this stuff, this is the first time many of these teams have faced these questions. It's beyond what's learned in college because it isn't really being taught there yet (certainly not at any high level) and best practice is still being sniffed out. Nobody knows what best practice is. We still don't know what the ideal consensus algo is, if it's been found yet, or if it could even exist. But it's considered worth searching for.

Shauny2010

Can Paddy predict what the price of any of the cryptos will be in the next 5 minutes??
No
Then how the hell can he predict the price in 5 months time

ZeroThreat

Shauny2010 wrote: »

Can Paddy predict what the price of any of the cryptos will be in the next 5 minutes??
No
Then how the hell can he predict the price in 5 months time

I asked earlier did he manage to predict the bullrun in Dec/Jan, didn't get a response yet though.

JohnnyFlash

ZeroThreat wrote: »

I asked earlier did he manage to predict the bullrun in Dec/Jan, didn't get a response yet though.

I can't speak for the man himself, but it's as obvious as the nose on your face that much of the bull market in the 2nd half of 2017 was as a result of Tether. Jesus, you could buy bitcoins using fake money and up the price, while others were getting out their credit card and lumping real money into Coinbase. That's not cool at all.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/tether-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-cryptocurrency-worrying-markets.html

Look at this graph.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1250/1*KuVnYeCueMSw7vJRboYAog.png

The name of Philip G. Potter will become utterly infamous in crypto circles. And I'd also suggest looking at how Binance uses Tether. I might be proven wrong, but I'll eat a fedora if Binance starts accepting FIAT currency. This is fraud on a pretty epic scale.

makeorbrake

grindle wrote: »

I'd be slow to give credence to this part of LoLth's post:

LoLth wrote: »

If a prediction were made by a supporter of cryptocurrency everyone would be praising their skill. Its made by a sceptic and they are derided.

I agree entirely. I have pressed the 'thanks' button for a number of JF's posts with regard to highlighting the Tether issue. I've no problem in hearing the counter argument. I think it's healthy as otherwise groupthink happens. As an example, for this reason I believe checking in on discussions on bitcointalk are completely pointless.
However, what I don't like from the 2 guys is a prevailing attitude that comes through which has an edge to it and is anti-crypto in spirit ie. neither of you want crypto to succeed, you both despise it. Additionally, you have both blatantly insulted those of an opposing view on here. I've no time for that. Constructive discussion however (with no snide overtones) I do welcome.
I participate on another board where proponents of crypto are in the minority. I have to say it's refreshing (so long as it stays constructive and not emotive).

I have no intention of paying for PPL's mystic abilities. If I was to pay for guidance into researching crypto, it would be Grindle I'd approach. Very insightful contributions to this forum - kudos.

JohnnyFlash

I've no skin in the game. I won't ever be buying crypto. I've nothing against people who have money out there in the ecosystem, but I'm allowed say why I think this is a bad idea. If ye all end up millionaires as a result then more power to you. If you've already cashed out and taken profits, then bless your brass balls. If you're hodling in the expectation that we are only getting started in this space (or chasing investments during December's ATH), then I fear for you. Here's some of my reasons for being pessimistic:

1) Energy usage. Extraordinary amount of power being used to validate transactions. Bitcoin alone uses more power than the entire energy consumption of Ireland and Denmark put together. Both countries with enormous cloud computing data centers. Really, for what? Speculation, store of value, as a currency? None of them make sense.

2) Tether. I keep going on about this, but it simply cannot be ignored. There's 2.2 billion fake dollars floating around between Bitfinex, Binance, and a few others. This is being used daily to keep the price of Bitcoin at a certain price. Even today the daily trading volume of it is 3.9 billion. Every tether has been traded almost two times. TLDR: that's fake money being used to buy bitcoins, so they can be sold off on FIAT exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken. There's absolutely no new real money entering the space at all. I'd really recommend DYOR on this.

Here is the graph showing tether being printed:



Here is the corresponding price of Bitcoin:



3) Regulation. There's going to be a crackdown on the entire space by US Government. Most of these ICO's are securities. Which means they will be subject to the same scrutiny as any other financial instrument.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/ethereum-falls-on-report-second-biggest-cryptocurrency-is-under-regulatory-scrutiny.html

4) Scams. The entire space is becoming overwhelmed with exit scams. Litecoin is still the most glaring for me. Tron is a massive shítcoin, but mooning on the idea of them launching their mainnet. Look at DAO, Verge, Walton etc. There's nothing there only marketing, badly written whitepapers, spurious linkedin profiles, and the idea that someone will buy those coins for more than you paid (real money) for.

5) Technology. Blockchain just isn't a very good idea. This article sums it up far better than I ever could: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec

S.M.B.

Decent post JF, opening paragraph is still a little antagonistic but your further points are reasonably made.

grindle

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

1) Energy usage.

2) Tether.

3) Regulation.

4) Scams.

5) Technology.

1. Agreed! Some will counter that the banking industry as it stands uses more but I don't think two wrongs make a right and that crypto devs should hold themselves to a higher standard than banks.
This is, unfortunately, one of those cases where security trumps speedy progress. You seem to think it's as easy as a flick of a switch, just change the consensus algo and see what happens?
Anyway, you know who else agrees with you that PoW is terrible for the environment and must be replaced? Vitalik!
Note the date. 2.5 years and PoS still not implemented. That's not due to laziness, it's due to the difficulty of the task and the myriad possibilities which have to be kept in mind before prematurely ejaculating bad code into the protocol.

2. Agreed! Hopefully DAI kills this.

3. Agreed? This isn't a problem for users really, more of a slight barrier to entry for ICO devs. Still much cheaper than an IPO by orders of magnitude so this isn't really a problem in my eyes. If it cuts down on scams then all the better!

4. Agreed on most points - shítcoins be shítcoining. Not sure why the DAO is on your list as a scam? It was a poorly tested contract, not a scam.

5. Vehemently disagree! Finally, something we can truly disagree upon.
So many terribly made points in this that it's hard to concentrate, but he clearly falls into the "It hasn't changed my life yet so it never will" category.
His idea that any transfer of value on blockchain is invalid because the DAO had a bug in it is boggling. So... A slice of code failed, therefore every instance of code is worthless? I hope he felt truly smug about that as he uploaded his text to Medium and his words were transferred electronically around the world. Are his words worthless because they're presented to us via code? I wouldn't think so. Or at least that's not the reason they're worthless.
He doesn't seem to be be aware that smart contracts can (and would, in his example) act as an escrow. He thinks a user's main account can be drained by the contract? Funny stuff.
He's also presuming the novelist is selling directly via their own shoddily-built contract rather than via a service like Publica which has had bounties to find bugs in the relevant contracts? He hasn't done even the slightest amount of research here.
Even if this book-selling crypto-company-contract decided to act maliciously it will take all of an hour or two before their business has no more customers. No worse than buying off a scammer on adverts tbh.

A lot of risk will be moved off the table if Vyper replaces Solidity as the de facto contract language, but that's likely still years away.

His section where he balks at the notion of voting via blockchain I really don't understand - he tries to paint the software writers as "hey guyz, just another third party, same but different!" but there's an astonishing gulf between trusting an open source contract with thousands of devs having the ability to confirm validity vs trusting the Afghan government. Possibly the stupidest point he made in that piece. Nightmare governments DO exist right now, they do skew and cheat votes - what frame of mind is he in where he thinks having every element of data verifiable is just as bad as having a closed off system where - as in the case of an election in the Niger Delta - there's a voter turnout of 120%?
Is he genuinely braindead? "Merp, derpherp phleeble phleeble, verifiable data is just as corrupt!"
What a mong.

"Blockchain systems are supposed to be more trustworthy, but in fact they are the least trustworthy systems in the world."

...continues to list things which aren't blockchains, rather elements of humanity. Not to go all Dan let Sac and Scroobius Pip on him, but...
Centralised exchanges? Not a blockchain.
Insider trading? Not caused by blockchain.
Smart contract hack? Not caused by blockchain.
Price swings? Not caused by blockchain.

Do any of those things devalue what blockchain is? Nope. They place a mirror in front of us and show why we should trust morally-pliable humans less.
He seems a little untethered to reality or at the very least lacks the ability to grasp the human touch required to make an act malicious.

His point about trusting mining pools and how they're not controlled by smart contracts? BTC is not the only coin. PoS is arriving! Yay! He can cross that point off his list. The only people who'll have to trust PoW in future are the people who value it for whatever reason. None of his concern and none of mine.

Product delivery? Mmmm. For the dark web you'll always have to have some element of non-traceability required which necessitates trusting the criminal. It's not ideal but we can hardly incorporate their products into the IoT and have their packages tagged and blockchain-enabled/verified - if you want to do something a specific government deems "wrong" you'll have to take the risks on either side, even if it's not ideal.

His last paragraphs are all over the place and ignorant of the real world in action.
"Want a deflationary currency? Just elect some other lobbyist-plant who promises not to screw you ove... Oh wait, he did it too."

Most of his points make little sense, the ones that are almost there are due to humanity being corrupt whether we interface with fiat or blockchain. Hardly blockchain's fault.
"But it's been here ten years!"

Let me get my passage-of-time-calculator out... Huh... That's approximately fúck all time. In the grand scheme of things it's a rounding error-worth of time. Yet detractors are annoyed it hasn't already usurped the world? But that's also what ye don't want to happen... Just trying to get this straight because it's the way every detractor speaks, so...
If it's innately valuable then it would already be the most valuable thing ever, no ifs, ands or buts? That's the benchmark?
Does that seem reasonable to you? Because you've spouted it before. Does that seem sane or reasonable to you?

Dr Bolouswki

Whether your blether about Tether brings it and bitcoin together, it hardly leaves us in hot weather when you look at all the coins and graphs altogether. All sheep, including you, the wether, are prone to following at the touch of a feather.

While the graphs look rather impressive, if you jiggy on over to any website that graphically illustrates price trends in crypto, EVERY SINGLE GRAPH for almost every moderately established coin looks like that and followed the exact same timeline. While I consider Tether to be a nonsense, you cannot come to the conclusion that Tether is propping up the entire market or even just Bitcoin.

Dr Bolouswki

This one's for you Johnny. Bitfenix and Tether.

JohnnyFlash

Dr Bolouswki wrote: »

This one's for you Johnny. Bitfenix and Tether.

Bitfinex’d hasn’t posted since the start of April. He was calling it right about Tether though up to that point. If you visit coinmarketcap and see that Tethers daily volume is exceeding their market cap, and then see that trading volume on GDAX for Bitcoin is below about 11k coins then the market isn’t organic. It’s open market manipulation with no real fiat entering the system. I’m not implying there’s anything untoward with GDAX/Coinbase btw. I think they’ll be a bag holder when it all goes tits up.

lifeandtimes

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Bitfinex’d hasn’t posted since the start of April. He was calling it right about Tether though up to that point. If you visit coinmarketcap and see that Tethers daily volume is exceeding their market cap, and then see that trading volume on GDAX for Bitcoin is below about 11k coins then the market isn’t organic. It’s open market manipulation with no real fiat entering the system. I’m not implying there’s anything untoward with GDAX/Coinbase btw. I think they’ll be a bag holder when it all goes tits up.

You know what Johnny you've got my attention, how can the 24 hour supply be higher than the market cap and total supply?

banie01

lifeandtimes wrote: »

You know what Johnny you've got my attention, how can the 24 hour supply be higher than the market cap and total supply?

Wash trading would account for the volume traded.
As an example, 1 USDT in circulation, this USDT is exchanged to a crypto. The new tether owner then trades his acquired USDT for further crypto and rinse and repeat.
Each trade in the 24hr period adds 1 to the daily USDT trade volume without actually increasing the circulating supply.

lifeandtimes

https://medium.com/@mccannatron/12-graphs-that-show-just-how-early-the-cryptocurrency-market-is-653a4b8b2720

Fantastic article.

Through all his reseaech(And a little assumption where required) this guy claims that we are only roughly in the year 1994 when comparing cryptocurrencies and the rise of the internet

Dohnjoe

lifeandtimes wrote: »

https://medium.com/@mccannatron/12-graphs-that-show-just-how-early-the-cryptocurrency-market-is-653a4b8b2720

Fantastic article.

Through all his reseaech(And a little assumption where required) this guy claims that we are only roughly in the year 1994 when comparing cryptocurrencies and the rise of the internet

Or we're in the golden age

We'd just prefer to tell ourselves we're in early days yet because - conflict of interest, we all want to get rich

JohnnyFlash

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Or we're in the golden age

We'd just prefer to tell ourselves we're in early days yet because - conflict of interest, we all want to get rich

Refreshing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a boatload of cash. Fair fücks. I’m a relative auld lad now, but I’d just suggest ye exercise caution when it comes to some of these investments. It’s the Wild West out there lads. If it looks too good to be true then it is.

unkel

An neon address sign for an imaginary coin called YLAMBO (Yellow Lambo) just sold for USD400,000. It's art!



Perhaps we need not worry at all. Natura artis magistra.

JohnnyFlash

Wouldn't be hugely worried about this dip below 9k. CME futures were up today, so there was money to be made by shorting the market. What is really worrying for Bitcoin is the lack of trading leading up to that. There's been no new money flowing into crypto since January. It's a race to infinity on producing ICO's based on Ethereum, and this bizarre 'arms race' between Binance, Bitfinex, and Okex on how they deal with Tether. Cause everyone wants Tether when things are going badly. But Tether is worth less than nothing.

mik_da_man

Things seem to be taking a bit of a tumble at the moment...