Educate me. It seems that President Trump, and his family, are heavily invested in it. I have not seen anywhere where it could be spent. I have heard of some places (online) of which cyber currency is accepted. If I am not mistaken I think Cliff Pennocks accepts it.
I think it values wildly, like stock market stocks. I hear that if one bought in at the beginning they would be rich now. I do not even know when the beginning was.
I have a good friend of 30 + years who tells me this will eventually replace the currency we use now. A resetting of system with what is called stablecoins. New Bills in Congress, like the Genius Act will force Tether (?),USDC (?), and other stables (?) to absorb the US Treasury debt. That way they can dump the debt they can't pay back on the American public. Which is claimed will stoke more hyper inflation pushin Bitcoin and all real assets higher. Claimed is the middle class will be wiped out if it hasn't been already.
I know that all sounds like a conspiracy theory but they are all conspiracy theories until they come true. I am not scared, I just want to know more about cyber currency.
We bought 50 bucks of Doge when it first came out (just to "let it ride", and dip our toe in it). two days later, it went up to 505 bucks. It crashed back down almost immediately and is currently at around 130 bucks.
I don't trust any of it, (especially the ones where they don't even know who actually created it...like bitcoin!)
But like a lot of things, if you HAVE $$$$, and "get in early", you can make out like CRAZY - (like me and your mom!)
It's complicated, and I'm a simple man, the guy (or gal) beneath me (your mom?) will probably provide you with more information (that you can "take to the bank" (with your mom))
Hah!
ps- Maybe invest your life savings on NFTs - come spend your money on a jpeg, it's a "one-of-a-kind" (JUST like your MOM!)
[This message has been edited by TheDigitalAlchemist (edited 05-30-2025).]
I have always considered Cyber Currency to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. There is nothing "tangible" to it. Sort of like a digital pyramid scheme.
How in the hell can someone set up a rack full of expensive processors and "mine" something (Bitcoins?) from... where?! Pulled out of someone's nether regions? The celestial bit-bucket? It just doesn't make any sense.
Now if someone wants to try to educate me, please feel free. I'll attempt to remain open minded. But you've got to make it make sense, to someone who lives in the real world.
[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 05-31-2025).]
There are lots of videos and articles that you can find that explain how Bitcoin works. It is a crypto currency that uses blockchain. Blockchain is just a fancy way of describing a public ledger. Every Bitcoin wallet is publicly viewable and every transaction is also public. The data for the wallets and transactions are widely distributed. The owner if a wallet is whoever has the crypto key for it.
That is how it works. It has value because people place a value in it. That is no different than any other currency. If the public has a high trust in a currency as a medium of exchange, then it has value. If the public loses trust, then the value goes down as people demand more of the currency to buy goods and services.
While this may sound like some strange witchcraft, it is not much different than the currency we use every day. Most countries in the world use fiat currency. The currency only has value because some government say it does. If you dive even deeper, you will find that the vast majority of the currency out there is created from debt. When a person takes out a loan from a bank, the bank does not go into its vault and set aside the money for the loan. They create the money out of thin air by entering some data into their electronic record. You go and spend the loaned money and it goes into circulation. When you pay back the loan, the money actually disappears with the loan. The bank pockets the interest which is how they keep the lights on.
Now throw into the mix credit cards, lines of credit, mortgages, and various business loans. I forgot what the exact number is but it was well over 80% of our money is created from debt. There used to be a control on that in that banks were required to have a certain percentage of deposits for the loans they made. That was the reserve rate. So if the reserve rate was 10%, a bank could loan $9 for every $1 it had in deposits. The reserve rate was eliminated during the Covid lockdowns and as far as I can tell it still have not been reinstated. So banks can loan an unlimited amount of money out. That is a big chunk of the money printing press which causes our inflation. If you want to reduce inflation and increase the value of your money, then pay off all of your debt.
Compared to our actual system of money, I crypto currency is much simpler IMO.
Originally posted by Doug85GT: There are lots of videos and articles that you can find that explain how Bitcoin works. It is a crypto currency that uses blockchain. Blockchain is just a fancy way of describing a public ledger. Every Bitcoin wallet is publicly viewable and every transaction is also public. The data for the wallets and transactions are widely distributed. The owner if a wallet is whoever has the crypto key for it.
That is how it works. It has value because people place a value in it. That is no different than any other currency. If the public has a high trust in a currency as a medium of exchange, then it has value. If the public loses trust, then the value goes down as people demand more of the currency to buy goods and services.
While this may sound like some strange witchcraft, it is not much different than the currency we use every day. Most countries in the world use fiat currency. The currency only has value because some government say it does. If you dive even deeper, you will find that the vast majority of the currency out there is created from debt. When a person takes out a loan from a bank, the bank does not go into its vault and set aside the money for the loan. They create the money out of thin air by entering some data into their electronic record. You go and spend the loaned money and it goes into circulation. When you pay back the loan, the money actually disappears with the loan. The bank pockets the interest which is how they keep the lights on.
Now throw into the mix credit cards, lines of credit, mortgages, and various business loans. I forgot what the exact number is but it was well over 80% of our money is created from debt. There used to be a control on that in that banks were required to have a certain percentage of deposits for the loans they made. That was the reserve rate. So if the reserve rate was 10%, a bank could loan $9 for every $1 it had in deposits. The reserve rate was eliminated during the Covid lockdowns and as far as I can tell it still have not been reinstated. So banks can loan an unlimited amount of money out. That is a big chunk of the money printing press which causes our inflation. If you want to reduce inflation and increase the value of your money, then pay off all of your debt.
Compared to our actual system of money, I crypto currency is much simpler IMO.
Good information Doug !
I don't know why the value fluctuates. I read somewhere that cyber currency had to be backed up by the Dollar. As was the case when the dollar was backed by gold.
The dollar, .... is one of the best currencies in the world. Is crypto currencies in some countries better / more valuable than others ? HMM, .
Crypto NFT's etc anything that "hold value" through blockchain doesn't hold any value for me personally. I don't see myself investing anytime soon. On the flipside I see the useful application of blockchain in providing pedigrees for physical materials/products though the use of tracking mechanisms such as QR barcodes through public exchanges, but that in an of itself doesn't creat or store monitory value to me.
A resetting of system with what is called stablecoins. New Bills in Congress, like the Genius Act will force Tether (?),USDC (?), and other stables (?) to absorb the US Treasury debt. That way they can dump the debt they can't pay back on the American public. Which is claimed will stoke more hyper inflation pushin Bitcoin and all real assets higher.
I know that all sounds like a conspiracy theory but they are all conspiracy theories until they come true. I am not scared, I just want to know more about cyber currency.
I believe your friend is right about supporting US debt with stable coins, in extension, bitcoin. The cynical me also thinks the development of bitcoin was not organic, rather a deep state/CIA operation to further support US debt, and allow for the development in the private sector for advanced tokens and coins, which later can be used to bring everyone into the digital control age, IE: Central Bank Controlled Currencies, CBDC's, (not a good thing for freedom).
I got into BTC in 2015, understood it was a speculation a couple years later, have been scaling out over the years into physical assets, in other words, profit taking, but I still own some.
Back in the day, BTC price moved by supply/demand cycles but over the last couple of years it has been institutionalized, the banks have taken more and more control with ETF's Options, Futures and do control pricing for their own profit. (It acts more like a stock now, not unlinked like old days)
While not investment advice, I believe that everyone should have 'some' crypto, as an educational experience, and as a hedge outside of the US dollar. 'If/when' anyone gets into crypto, stick with the top 10 coins/tokens, get your own hard cold wallet like a Trezor, and keep learning about it as it's a fascinating world, including staking. Coinbase while pricey for transactions is a good place to start.
In same fashion of holding some crypto, everyone should hold some gold/silver, I keep mine vaulted for security reasons at SD Bullion, Kinesis and One Gold. You'll like One gold, set up account in 2-minutes, buy sell trade 24/7/365, transfer money back into your bank account. Kinesis Money System actually pays a monthly dividend (Holders Yield) in gold/silver on your holdings, accepts crypto to purchase too.
All fiat paper currencies created in the history of the world, (over 1,200) have failed, the US Dollar is not different or immune, you still have the chance to be proactive or become a victim, the choice is yours.
So there are a few types of crypto currency that you need to be aware of as you dig into this.
Store-of-value coins -like bitcoin- are meant to store wealth and bring long-term value.
Stablecoins - like USDC and UST- are tied to a FIAT currency (like the dollar), though they are not backed by them
Meme coins -Like Trump and DOGE- are informal community coins
There are a host of other 'coins' like transactional and privacy, but we're getting into minutia at that point.
Note (and it seems to be a bit of confusion here) that Bitcoin is NOT a Stablecoin, as it is not pegged to any FIAT currency. It is a store-of-value coin. Also note that most "Stablecoins" are extremely volatile and unstable, and the majority have collapsed. USDC is one of the very few exceptions. The vast majority of cypto that has gained and maintained real value is store-of-value coins, and even those are only "stable" when compared to other crypto currencies and are extremely prone to pump-and-dumps and widespread market manipulation. Memecoins, especially, never maintain value and are all completely (or near-completely) worthless after their first short runs; 97% of them are completely worthless within a year of launch, with the only long-term exceptions to that rule being DOGE and SHIB. While it wouldn't be fair to say every single meme coin ever released is a purely a scam, DOGE really appears the only long-term exception that rule, and it is has been used in countless pump-and-dump scams itself.
Also, I think there is some misinformation about the GENIUS act, which forces Stablecoins to be backed by FIAT currency reserves, not just algorithms. That's looking to target the source of that majority of Stablecoins' instability, and put them more in line with coins like USDC. It does not mandate or facilitate stablecoins absorbing treasury debt that I can tell.
Opinion time: Crypto "investing" is not actual investing anymore than /r/wallstreetbets is; it is obfuscated gambling for folks looking to get around traditional investment vehicles...that is unless you have enough capital to sway markets, at which point its an opportunity for graft. But for you, and me, and 99% of people, you are hoping to buy in low on a hugely speculative and volatile good, then time the market appropriately to sell off after a boom without getting crushed in a bust. Without insider knowledge or manipulation, you are simply guessing and hoping for luck. Yes, there are plenty of people who gambled on Bitcoin in the early days and are fabulously wealthy for it...just like there are plenty of people fabulously wealthy from playing the lottery or hitting a Vegas jackpot. I believe there is a purpose and a place for store-of-value coins, just not in any investment portfolio.
Samuel Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, is an American entrepreneur who founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and was convicted of fraud in 2023, leading to a 25-year prison sentence. He misappropriated billions of dollars from customers and investors, resulting in one of the largest financial frauds in history.
What often gets overlooked is that blockchain is fundamentally a decentralized, tamper-proof ledger - not just a way to hold "digital currency."
Every transaction or smart contract is permanently recorded, cryptographically secured, and publicly verifiable. Once it’s on-chain, it can’t be altered or falsified. This is what gives blockchain its real value - not some artificially imposed scarcity.
That’s the revolutionary power here: you get a trustless, shared source of truth. Yes, tokens might have a limited supply, but their true worth lies in the immutable record-keeping system that supports smart contracts, digital ownership, supply chains, identity systems, and much, much more.
To make this work however, a blockchain needs a global network of participants to process and store these transactions. That takes time, computing power, and electricity. The associated coin is the incentive that motivates these participants (miners or validators) to do this work - and do it honestly. Without that reward, there would be no reason for anyone to maintain the network’s integrity. These coins are also used to pay for transactions, helping to prevent spam and prioritize usage.
These transactions (and the coins involved) are stored in the very same ledger that the network maintains. So the system forms a closed loop: users pay fees in coins, those fees go to validators who maintain the ledger, and that ledger in turn records the coins and their movements. That’s why coins also have monetary value: because they are essential to the functioning and security of the blockchain, and because you can only obtain them by either participating in the network or buying them from someone who has.
In contrast, meme-coins exist only for the coin itself. Often, they don't even have their own blockchain; they piggyback on existing ones like Ethereum and offer no real functionality beyond being traded. They don’t support smart contracts, can’t host decentralized apps, and have no inherent utility. Their value is driven purely by hype and speculation, which is why they can collapse to zero overnight.
That’s not the case with coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or XRP, whose value is rooted in the functional infrastructure they support; as platforms, payment systems, or smart contract environments. Their value isn’t just what people believe they’re worth, it’s what they enable.
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