Miners: computers which perform the cryptographic work required to secure the network and, in proof-of-work (POW) coins like Bitcoin, receive 'block rewards' (i.e. Bitcoin) for doing it. If you're playing with Bitcoin, you can't do this without major investment; if you're playing with an altcoin like Ether and you've got a recent graphics card, go for it. Online wallet: A Bad Idea(TM). Exchange: place where you can trade something for something else (literally 'exchanging' it). Lets you trade crypto for Real Money, for example, or crypto for other crypto. Some try to encourage you to lose everything by offering things like leveraged shorts or longs (bets that the value will go up or down, where the actual increase or decrease is multiplied by 10x or 100x - meaning a 1% drop in something you thought would go up is enough to wipe you out at a 100x leverage). The domain of day traders. Paper wallet: the public and private keys for a given cryptocurrency address or range of addresses, printed on a bit of paper. Assuming the computer you printed it out from is never online and your generator isn't a fake, completely secure - until you lose it or it's stolen. You also can't (or shouldn't) spend directly from a paper wallet: if you want to use your coins, you need to 'sweep' the full balance into a 'hot' wallet then throw away the now-useless paper wallet. Hardware wallet: a device which stores the public and private keys in a chip that isn't directly accessible from your computer. Secure like a paper wallet, except you can actually spend from it securely. Nice, but expensive. There's also: Hot wallet: a wallet on a computer connected to the internet from which you can spend, but which is as a result vulnerable to attack. Warm wallet: something like a Ledger Nano S, which you *can* spend from but which is a bit of a pain in the arse 'cos you have to get it out of your pocket, hook it up to a PC that has the software installed, unlock it, load the software, verify each transaction, and so forth. Cold wallet: a wallet that you can't spend from without considerable effort and which is therefore more-or-less immune to attack - like a paper wallet or a hardware wallet locked in a safe. You should be storing all your stuff here, with only a bit in one of the two above. Also, be aware that while they're called 'wallets' it's completely the wrong term: they're keychains, holding the public and private keys you need to transact with your coin on the network. It's important, because a real wallet full of cash can't be copied; a cryptocurrency wallet can. Bought a pre-printed paper wallet on FleaBay? There's no guarantee the sender didn't keep a copy of the private key, and you won't have any idea until you've loaded it full of coin only to see it vanish before your very eyes. Oh, nearly forgot: Cloud mining: A scam. Do not give a cloud mining operation any of your money. Ever.
Out of curiosity, do you HODLers have any exit strategy/plan? I.e. do you even care about converting your crypto into fiat for consumption? If not, then how do you adjust your strategy to ensure that you might need to be able to purchase something with your holdings
Yeah: when half of my holdings can buy me a nice house, I'll cash out half my holdings. Until then, hold the line! (Also, don't forget capital gains tax: if you cash out more than your allowance, which is £11,300 per year in the UK, you'll be liable for 20/28% CGT on everything above that. Do NOT try to dodge the taxman on this one, they'll always find out.)
Looks like Nicehash is back up and running... and I am earning $6 a day with my rig (below) pulling just 290w an hour from the wall. I'm really tempted to set up another dedicated miner with some 580s.
I've told myself i'll keep a minimum of 3 Litecoins and 1 Eth until it goes up enough to pay off my car and whatever is left on the credit card by that point. Hopefully mid/late 2018 Crypto would have left me completely debt free, which would be a success in my book - I'm not in it to get rich or retire early.
The absolute majority of what I invested in crypto is in BTC, stored in a hardware wallet with no real plan other than wait for a couple years as I believe BTC will continue to rise in the coming years. But if 2017 is any indication for how crazy 2018 will be I'll probably get tempted by some extreme rally and cash in the lot (followed by inevitable regret when it rises even further lol). There are some random alts I hold as well, but I only invested small amounts, you could pretty much call that gambling as the chance of any alt rising from the sea of alts is really tiny. When it comes to buying stuff with it, I mine random sh*t coins using a profit based auto switcher, swap it for BTC, fund a prepaid card with it and that is my spending money from crypto.
*checks Coinbase* I think it's time to look away and pretend I don't have any "investments" right now...
It was all going so well... Ripple was up 30%, I was making gains despite the rest of the market. It couldn't last: Ripple's down 30% in a hell of a swing, and now I have considerably lower unrealised gains than I did yesterday. Let's hope for a Christmas miracle, eh?
My point of view is: "Oh no, Bitcoin is only up a mere 60% from 1 month ago, how horrible, such terrible returns!"
Yeah, it's all come out in the wash: I'm now a whopping 1.3% away from where I was this time last night. Happy days. Mind you, when the sea of red was in full force I was in two minds about throwing a bunch of extra cash into it and I'm really regretting not doing that now!
You and me both, Gareth! Never mind... I'll just sit with my current coinage and wait for the New Year to see what it brings for crypto. This Ryzen refresh won't pay for itself, y'know? Come on, BTC!
It's a sell order for Verge, which occurred the day before Bitcoin took a dive and Verge nearly doubled. And that's why I don't try to time the markets!
That was just one mistake of a series i made i turned £100 into £1500 in a week, then though 3 days totally smashed it back down to £300. Speechless. In the future i'll just hodl i think.
It's the way forward, I tell you! I'm up rather a lot from my modest flutter of a year or so ago, doing basically nothing.
*checks Coinbase* Ok, I give up trying to understand this stuff - in the time it took for the journos to write up the "Crypto bubble has burst" article's, everything is back up again! Decided to consolidate my losses half way through the crash, bought back in at the low, feeling much better now!
