Cryptocurrencies

[MajesticSoup]

I use a ledger. It works fine, but I still get super paranoid connecting it to my PC incase I have viruses or something.

[dangocurry]

I use a ledger. It works fine, but I still get super paranoid connecting it to my PC incase I have viruses or something.

I see! Personally I have been thinking of getting one like the ledger NANO X. Since I would personally like to hold on crypto even after moving out of japan, thinking of getting one.
Also, were you affected by the ledger data leak sometime last year? Something like that, kind of tarnishes the image of security for ledger.

By the way, what's your outlook on current crypto market?
I came in like early dec last year, so it's been all up except XRP. I know that DCA is usually recommended in crypto. But given that current prices are ATH, do you still continuing DCA here or wait to let the steam cool off a bit?
All the big money coming in crypto is quite different from the 2017-18 bubble. Things look more stable this time but you never know!

[MajesticSoup]

I use a ledger. It works fine, but I still get super paranoid connecting it to my PC incase I have viruses or something.

I see! Personally I have been thinking of getting one like the ledger NANO X. Since I would personally like to hold on crypto even after moving out of japan, thinking of getting one.
Also, were you affected by the ledger data leak sometime last year? Something like that, kind of tarnishes the image of security for ledger.

By the way, what's your outlook on current crypto market?
I came in like early dec last year, so it's been all up except XRP. I know that DCA is usually recommended in crypto. But given that current prices are ATH, do you still continuing DCA here or wait to let the steam cool off a bit?
All the big money coming in crypto is quite different from the 2017-18 bubble. Things look more stable this time but you never know!

Don't listen to me or you'll FOMO, but...

I've sold crypto about 4 times this year alone because I suspected there might be a crash. Had I held on, I would be up more than 300,000 JPY. Feels bad.

Crypto is in a bubble, there's no doubt about it, but the problem is that when it pops, it might be a pop from 10,000,000 -> 6,000,000 (BTC), in which case you'd have been better off DCAing in now right? Or it might actually come crashing down (much more unlikely as time goes on). If anyone had any amount of confidence in their outlooks they'd have made big decisions with their money.

Me? I chose to leave a huge amount of my net worth in crypto. I wouldn't have been able to hold as hard as I have if I didn't believe in it, though.

[dangocurry]

I use a ledger. It works fine, but I still get super paranoid connecting it to my PC incase I have viruses or something.

I see! Personally I have been thinking of getting one like the ledger NANO X. Since I would personally like to hold on crypto even after moving out of japan, thinking of getting one.
Also, were you affected by the ledger data leak sometime last year? Something like that, kind of tarnishes the image of security for ledger.

By the way, what's your outlook on current crypto market?
I came in like early dec last year, so it's been all up except XRP. I know that DCA is usually recommended in crypto. But given that current prices are ATH, do you still continuing DCA here or wait to let the steam cool off a bit?
All the big money coming in crypto is quite different from the 2017-18 bubble. Things look more stable this time but you never know!

Don't listen to me or you'll FOMO, but...

I've sold crypto about 4 times this year alone because I suspected there might be a crash. Had I held on, I would be up more than 300,000 JPY. Feels bad.

Crypto is in a bubble, there's no doubt about it, but the problem is that when it pops, it might be a pop from 10,000,000 -> 6,000,000 (BTC), in which case you'd have been better off DCAing in now right? Or it might actually come crashing down (much more unlikely as time goes on). If anyone had any amount of confidence in their outlooks they'd have made big decisions with their money.

Me? I chose to leave a huge amount of my net worth in crypto. I wouldn't have been able to hold as hard as I have if I didn't believe in it, though.

Yes, personally I don't have a large networth in crypto, just put 100k in around dec and it's going up and up. But in general as crypto is very volatile and as you have stated, it might come down, however it might be.
I would like to increase my holdings in crypto over time so, that's why I wanted to have your outlook on the situation. Given everything is sitting at top(crypto and stocks too), everything is bound for correction over time.
I was thinking maybe hold off DCA in crypto and go into equities and bonds for some time, when the bull run for crypto stops maybe buy in little more. But the more I stop, the more up this run is going!

[7 Potatoes]

I was just verified with BitFlyer and sent a test amount of money via furikomi but they haven't confirmed they received it yet which is worrisome. I read somewhere that deposits are made on Sat or Sundays. Find that very strange. I'll let you all know what happens. BitFlyers app has an English version which made the verification process really easy for me (except for the middle name issue)

[Viralriver]

I was just verified with BitFlyer and sent a test amount of money via furikomi but they haven't confirmed they received it yet which is worrisome. I read somewhere that deposits are made on Sat or Sundays. Find that very strange. I'll let you all know what happens. BitFlyers app has an English version which made the verification process really easy for me (except for the middle name issue)

Interested to hear an updateo n this when you have one.

To others; are there any major differences between the different 'companies', bitFlyer, etc? My main worry is that they're not registered in Japan and it would cause a taxable event in two different countries? But absolutely no idea about this..

[captainspoke]

This via Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/crypto (and my bold, below)

Coinbase Mafia Shows How Tight a Circle Holds Sway Over Bitcoin
Matthew Leising February 27, 2021, 10:00 PM GMT+9

Coinbase Global Inc.’s filing to become a publicly-traded company provides a glimpse into the remarkably small circle of mostly men who command the incredibly lucrative digital landscape.

This U.S.-based power list starts with Brian Armstrong, the now billionaire chief executive officer of Coinbase, and his co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, who went on to create Paradigm Operations. Fellow billionaire Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon, are among the original venture capitalists that will reap large windfalls from the direct listing of the exchange.

Even though verified users of Coinbase, the largest U.S. digital-asset exchange, jumped 34% to 43 million last year as Bitcoin more than quadrupled, control of the largest cryptocurrency remains narrow. Less than 2% of the anonymous ownership accounts that can be tracked on Bitcoin’s blockchain control 95% of the digital asset, according to researcher Flipside Crypto.

Included in the influential group of U.S. holders is Dan Morehead, who founded Pantera Capital Management in 2003 and launched the first U.S. crypto fund in 2013. Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert has created an empire that touches every corner of the crypto world. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss bought their first Bitcoin stake in 2012 when it traded as low as $8 and then co-founded Gemini Trust Co., the first crypto firm to be regulated by New York state as a trust.

Like many within this select circle, Ehrsam seemed perfectly poised to adopt the new digital world. He played video games professionally in high school, then studied computer science at Duke University before becoming a foreign-exchange trader at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York. Yet he grew bored at the bank and as he looked for things that interested him after work, he discovered Bitcoin through a Georgetown professor’s blog. He was instantly fascinated.

“I would literally trade Bitcoin in the bathroom on my phone at Goldman,” Ehrsam said in an interview. Bitcoin was going for about $6 at the time, compared with a record $58,000 last week. Back then, the main way to buy it was on the now bankrupt exchange Mt. Gox or through intermediaries, and Ehrsam realized there needed to be an easier way to buy and sell crypto.

Cryptocurrency has surged since introduction
After meeting Armstrong on the Bitcoin subreddit forum, they started Coinbase in 2012 out of an apartment in San Francisco. Armstrong declined to comment.

Morehead remembered the early days of Coinbase as he was creating the Pantera Bitcoin fund in 2013. He’d been an investor for a while, taking huge macro risks on things like Russian privatization and farmland in Argentina, bets with very steep downside potential but that could also pay off enormously if successful.

“I was first attracted to Bitcoin as an investment, it was something really interesting to learn about,” Morehead said. In 2013, however, amassing a large stake in the new digital currency wasn’t easy.

“I sent $2 million to Coinbase, and I started trying to buy $2 million of Bitcoin,” Morehead said. “My daily trading limit was $50.” Pantera has grown into one of the largest holders of cryptocurrencies and has invested in over 50 startups, including Circle, Bakkt, Polychain Capital, Shapeshift and Zcash, according to its website.

In the early days, though, Morehead had to contend with the drugs and criminals narrative that dogged Bitcoin. He went to every major university endowment in 2015 when Bitcoin was at $100 to tell them they should have it in their portfolio.

“The conversation was all Silk Road, drugs, whatever,” he said, referencing the early black-market exchange shut down by U.S. authorities.

That dark element to Bitcoin didn’t deter Wilson at Union Square and DCG’s Silbert, both of whom were series A investors in Coinbase. The company’s shares changed hands in recent private transactions at levels that would value Coinbase at close to $100 billion, a person familiar with the matter have said.

Union Square has focused its cash on about 15 firms in two main areas, infrastructure providers like Protocol Labs and Helium and in other crypto investment funds like Polychain Capital and Autonomous Partners. Wilson declined to comment.

That’s a far cry from what Silbert has created at DCG. Among its nearly 300 investments and acquisitions it touches upon every part of the crypto market. Among them, it has stakes in Etherscan, the block explorer used for the Ethereum blockchain; Coindesk, a crypto news service; Genesis Global Trading, one of the largest over-the-counter crypto dealers and lenders; Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics firm; Decentraland, a virtual world built on Ethereum that sells plots of digital land and has its own cryptocurrency Mana.

Silbert also created the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in 2013, which is the largest crypto investment product with assets of about $31 billion. Silbert declined to comment.

A lack of a career on Wall Street helped the Winklevoss twins approach Bitcoin with an open mind, Cameron Winklevoss said.

“Tyler and I didn’t have 20 years of capital markets experience when we came to Bitcoin,” he said. “We were very open to this possibility and that’s how we’ve always been, driven by curiosity.”

The brothers famously battled Mark Zuckerberg over the early fate of Facebook, an experience that left them with lessons about Bitcoin.

“In the early days of Facebook, in watching and being a part of that ride, we saw the power of networks, and so many people dismissing social networks as a fad,” Winklevoss said. Yet he’d watched as 90% of the Harvard University student body signed up for Facebook within 48 hours. When Bitcoin came around, the twins recognized the same forces at play.

“It’s a money network,” Winklevoss said. “What happens when you put an economic incentive around that network? That’s possibly the most effective network in the world.”

For Paradigm’s Ehrsam, the size of Bitcoin and crypto in general has exceeded his wildest dreams. If you’d told him in 2012 that Bitcoin would top $1 trillion as it did at one point last week, “people would think you were absolutely insane,” he said.

“The idea of a new digital money seemed very strange to most people because a new money has never come about in our lifetimes, at least as Americans,” Ehrsam said. “So you’re not used to seeing a phenomenon you’ve never seen before.” That will eventually change.

“It just takes time for a powerful new idea like that to permeate society and build trust in it,” he said.

[mighty58]

Why does the writer put "mafia" in the title, and state that the biggest investors are "mostly men"? I had real problems getting past that initial hyperbole. A blind monkey could randomly pick any industry and find that there is a "small circle" of people at the top, and that those people are "mostly men".

[7 Potatoes]

I was just verified with BitFlyer and sent a test amount of money via furikomi but they haven't confirmed they received it yet which is worrisome. I read somewhere that deposits are made on Sat or Sundays. Find that very strange. I'll let you all know what happens. BitFlyers app has an English version which made the verification process really easy for me (except for the middle name issue)

Interested to hear an updateo n this when you have one.

To others; are there any major differences between the different 'companies', bitFlyer, etc? My main worry is that they're not registered in Japan and it would cause a taxable event in two different countries? But absolutely no idea about this..

Sorry for not getting back sooner. I had to call Bitflyer to sort out my problem. It took about 35 minutes to get through but they were nice and allowed the furikomi to go through. I then had to "update" my bank info on their site. My problem was I didn't write the same name as was on my bank book. A very common problem for us foreigners. Everything must be exact. So, now everytime I furikomi them, the money is received almost immediately. I believe from my research that Bitflyer is originally a Japanese company. Registering in Japan with Japanese bank info and ID etc would make you qualitified for Japanese taxes.

[TJKansai]

A friend who is a crypto Bitcoin fan holds his in a cold storage Treasur. I know he bought in around $8,000, and wouldn't be surprised if he had 10-50 coins or more. He was a big physical silver and gold horder for a long time, but finally bailed on those and says Bitcoin is the bomb.

Personally I would be worried if I had that amount in a device that had a password I could lose (or lose the device/have it stolen, for that matter).

I did set up a Bitflyer account. After a week they got back to me and said I had to fix my name to match my bank account. That got done in a couple days.

I believe in the blockchain concept, but don't trust any of the crypto currencies. I am aiming for under 1% of assets on that type of investment.