if you'd bought $100 worth of Bitcoin in 2010...$72MM now

[wvjohn]

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/22/bitcoin- ... -2100.html

If you bought $100 of bitcoin 7 years ago, you'd be sitting on $72.9 million now
The price of bitcoin hit a fresh record high on Monday nearing $2,200.
Monday also marks the seventh anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, which is widely considered to be the first transaction using the cryptocurrency.
If you bought $100 worth of bitcoin on May 22, 2010, you'd be sitting on around $72.9 million today.

Monday marks the seven-year anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day – the moment a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 bitcoin on two Papa John's pizzas.

More important than the episode being widely recognized as the first transaction using the cryptocurrency is what it tells us about the bitcoin rally that saw it break through the $2,100 mark on Monday.

Bitcoin was trading as high as $2,185.89 in the early hours of Monday morning, hitting a fresh record high, after first powering through the $2,000 barrier over the weekend, according to CoinDesk data.

On May 22, 2010, Hanyecz asked a fellow enthusiast on a bitcoin forum to accept 10,000 bitcoin for two Papa John's Pizzas. At the time, Hanyecz believed that the coins he had "mined" on his computer were worth around 0.003 cents each.

Bitcoin mining involves solving a complex mathematical solution with the miner being rewarded in bitcoin. This is how Hanyecz got his initial coins.

The cryptocurrency has many doubters as it continues to be associated with criminal activity, but it has still seen a stunning rally. Here are two facts, on Bitcoin Pizza Day, however, that highlight this:

While being worth $30 at the time, Hanyecz pizzas would now cost $21.8 million at current bitcoin prices
If you bought $100 of bitcoin at the 0.003 cent price on May 22, 2010, you'd now be sitting on around $72.9 million
A number of factors have been driving the rally:

Recently passed legislation in Japan that allows retailers to start accepting bitcoin as a legal currency has boosted trading in yen, which now accounts for over 40 percent of all bitcoin trade
Political uncertainty globally has driven demand for bitcoin as a safe haven asset
A debate within the bitcoin community about the future of the underlying technology behind bitcoin known as the blockchain has been taking place. There was fear at one point this could lead to the creation of two separate cryptocurrencies but those worries have largely subsided with an alternative, more palatable option now being put forward.
For an in-depth look at the factors driving bitcoin, click here.

Bitcoin has rallied over 117 percent year to-date.year to-date.

[Err]

Don't remind me. I still regret not buying them when they came out at $3 a coin. I think they peaked at $1,700 about a week ago.

[Pugsley]

Good luck converting bitcoin into that much cash! They can say its worth 1,000,000,000,000 a unit and its still worth nothing because not everybody takes it and its a pain to convert into anything real.

[wvjohn]

Bitcoin closed just shy of $2300 today.

[Genom]

It's actually pretty easy to convert bitcoins these days. I've held onto 10 for a few years that I got back when they dropped off the 800 dollar high so if I sell now I make a nice 8K profit, but I'll hold them for now. I assume it will cycle again and crash down into the 2-300's in a few months, and then start creeping up again over a 2-3 year span, maybe make an extra 20K. We shall see.

[FlyingPenguin]

Steve Gibson made 20 bitcoins in the early says. I wonder if he still has them?

[Pugsley]

So what do you have to do to get cash in hand for the bitcoins you have? is it as simple as using paypal to pay somebody or do you have to find people willing to "buy" bitcoins?

[Err]

You can make purchases with vendors that accept them or you can sell them on an exchange. I don't have anything except a about $4.00 in Feathercoin and $3.00 in Litecoin that I tried mining a few years back so I've never participated. This site shows the current market as well as all the currencies:

http://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

If you click on the currency, it will take you to a website that explains the currency and in turn will provide links to exchanges. From what I've read, you'll need to connect a bank account in order to turn them into USD. There are also fees for the transactions.

[FlyingPenguin]

Companies that accept Bitcoin:
https://99bitcoins.com/who-accepts-bitc ... -bitcoins/

[Pugsley]

I guess its gotten better since silk road is gone. Seems the rep of bitcoins is a bit better then it used to be.

[wvjohn]

Wall Street and friends are apparently jumping in with two feet on Etherium coins. http://wolfstreet.com/2017/05/15/crypto ... ipple-sec/
What the Heck’s Going on With Cryptocurrencies?
by Wolf Richter • May 15, 2017 • 102 Comments
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Up 10,000% in 16 months? These charts truly depict our crazy times

“One word, a question: Ethereum,” said the guy at my swim club on Sunday. “What do you think? It’s a ten-bagger since January.” Meaning that the value of the cryptocurrency has multiplied by ten in the four months since January 16.

It’s actually more than a “ten-bagger.” At the end of 2015, it was worth $0.90. As I’m writing this, it’s worth $91.30. Those who bought it at the end of 2015 had a ten-bagger on their hands by January 16, 2017. Those who bought at that time also have ten bagger on their hands. Those that rode it all the way up over the 16 months have a 100-bagger. For percentage fans, that’s a gain of 10,000%.

Here is the chart of this financial miracle (via WorldCoinIndex):

d of insane instability. But it really doesn’t matter what it is as long as it is going up.

By “market capitalization,” ethereum is now the second largest cryptocurrency at $8.4 billion.




The largest one is bitcoin with a “market cap” of nearly $30 billion. It’s the granddaddy of the cryptocurrencies. The value of a single bitcoin, at $1,789 on Sunday, is 46% higher than the value of one troy ounce of gold. In mid-May 2015, bitcoin was at $240. Over the two years since, it has soared 645% (via WorldCoinIndex):



Number three in line, in terms of “market cap,” is Ripple, which now trades for $0.215. There are a lot of them, and all of them combined are valued at $7.3 billion. It’s up from $0.006 at the end of February 2017. So in the 11 weeks since, it has soared by 3,542%. Or to use my friend’s term, it’s a 35-bagger in 11 weeks. This is its ludicrous chart (via WorldCoinIndex):



It’s not some kind of bad joke. This is being played with real money. That it will inflict maximum pain on the latecomers – whenever this happens – is now perfectly clear.

There are over 830 “alt-coins,” as the alternatives to bitcoin are called, out there, with new ones being added constantly. The “market cap” of all these cryptocurrencies combined, according to the Financial Times, has pierced the $50 billion mark. So this starting to involve serious money.

But there are a couple of issues with this miraculous scenario, according to the FT:

An increase in initial coin offerings (ICOs) – unregulated issuances of crypto coins where investors can raise money in bitcoin or other crypto currencies – is fuelling the market and drawing attention from lawyers and financial professionals.

Many fear ICOs, which are trying to market themselves as an alternative to venture capitalists as a way of raising cash for businesses, breach existing securities law.

“An ICO issues crypto tokens rather than stocks and bonds, but that’s irrelevant to the substance of the activity, which is raising capital from the general public,” said Ajit Tripathi, a director in fintech at PwC. “Capital raising activities need to be regulated to protect investors . . . The question is how sophisticated are these investors?”

Many of these investors may not be “sophisticated.” But others appear to be highly sophisticated, now that the sums involved have gotten big enough for them. The FT:

Observers say many individuals are trading alt-coins from corporate IT departments, concentrated in the financial sector and falling under the radar of senior executives. Many are sitting on virtual fortunes, but are unable to liquidate their cash as banks clamp down on measures to avoid money laundering.

“Systems are being used here by employees to increase their own individual wealth. In the process, corporate systems are coming into contact with the fringes of the criminal world,” Brian Lord, former deputy director for intelligence and cyber operations at the UK’s electronic espionage agency GCHQ and now head of cyber practice at security group PGI, told the FT.

Big sophisticated traders – including hedge funds and others – are in this trade, not because it might make some real economic sense, but because, as the charts above show, these things can be pushed up quickly with enough money involved. And if enough new people can be drawn in due to the ballooning hype, then the big boys can get out, once they figure out how to deal with the banks’ concerns about money laundering.

For now, the SEC and other regulatory agencies have turned mostly a blind eye, as they usually do. Later, when it’s too late, after considerable wealth has been transferred from those getting in late to those getting out in time, the SEC might get interested in it. And that act alone could reverse some of those charts above.

For now, cryptocurrencies remain relatively small compared to derivatives. Oh, and the unintended consequences of trying to regulate that monster. Read… $500 Trillion in Derivatives “Remain an Important Asset Class”: Hilariously, the New York Fed

and here come the big boys on ethereum ...

http://fortune.com/2017/02/28/ethereum- ... -alliance/
Big Business Giants From Microsoft to J.P. Morgan Are Getting Behind Ethereum
Robert Hackett
Feb 27, 2017
Thirty big banks, tech giants, and other organizations—including J.P. Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and Intel—are uniting to build business-ready versions of the software behind Ethereum, a decentralized computing network based on digital currency.
The group, called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, is set to debut at a summit in Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday, during which members J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, +1.25%) and Banco Santander (SAN, +2.02%) are scheduled to demonstrate a pilot of the financial technology as it exists today. The pair plan to show off a "spot trade" on the foreign exchange market for global currencies using an adaptation of Ethereum as the settlement layer.
Ethereum uses a blockchain, often referred to as a distributed ledger, to record and execute transactions without the need of a middleman. Instead of a centrally managed database, copies of the cryptographic balance book are spread across the network and automatically updated as any payment takes place.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, first introduced the concept of a blockchain to the world in a foundational white paper nearly a decade ago. (You can read more about Ethereum, a more flexible and developer-friendly alternative to Bitcoin with its native cryptocurrency, Ether, in this Fortune feature.)
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The Ethereum alliance arrives as a challenger to several other extant blockchain ventures. The R3 consortium, for example, counts scores of partnering banks among its members, despite recent high-profile departures by Goldman Sachs, Santander, and Morgan Stanley. It has created "Corda," its own take on a blockchain.
IBM (IBM, -0.40%), meanwhile, has spearheaded another initiative known as the Hyperledger Project, part of the non-profit Linux Foundation. That group maintains the "fabric" blockchain codebase, which as been used in supply chain trials with Wal-Mart (WMT, -0.08%).
Much of the interest to date from traditional financial firms involves "private" blockchains, meaning permission from an authority is required before a party can join the network. The original versions of Bitcoin and Ethereum have public networks that anyone can join. (At press time, the market caps of their cryptocurrencies were approximately $19 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively.)
Alex Batlin, blockchain lead at Bank of New York Mellon, said that while the Ethereum alliance will focus on the development of private blockchains, the hope is that these will one day link up with the public Ethereum blockchain, which is open to all.
"That interconnection of public and private chains actually creates a very strong network," Batlin said on a call with Fortune. "Each chain strengthens the other at an exponential level."
In the view of its proponents, Ethereum's public and private networks will become analogous to intranets versus internets; they will share standard protocols, but have different configurations for privacy and security, depending on each organization's needs.
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Members of the Ethereum alliance include Accenture, BBVA, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, BP, Cisco, Credit Suisse, ING, Thomson Reuters, and UBS. Also joining is IC3, or the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts, an academic group consisting of researchers from universities such as Cornell University, UC Berkeley, and Israel's Technion.
Several representatives from alliance firms cited the energy surrounding Devcon2, Ethereum's fall developer conference in Shanghai, as the focal point that led to their collaboration on this effort. Despite multiple hacks on Ethereum-based applications and a controversial splitting of the Ethereum network, enthusiasm in the network has apparently not diminished.
J.P. Morgan is responsible for developing the basis of the blockchain tech for the alliance. Called "Quorum," the bank's code has been designed to add privacy protections into the mix, among other tweaks.
The partners will help each other develop the foundations for different use cases, such as post-trade settlement, payments between banks, and supply chain tracking, while competing on applications and services built atop the networks. The top priorities for the alliance now include ensuring scalability and security.The other founding members of the alliance are BlockApps, Nuco, AMIS, Andui, CME Group, ConsenSys, Fubon Financial, brainbot technologies, Chronicled, Cryptape, The Institutes, Monax, String Labs, Telindus, Tendermint, VidRoll, and Wipro.

[Genom]

Personally I have my coins in a local offline repo. If I want to convert to cash or use to buy I can transfer directly to the vendor, or to convert to cash I move them to a coinbase account and use their service to convert to bucks. Paying a small service fee of course, but takes 5 minutes and an hour later the cash is in my checking account.

[Losbot]

I was interested in getting some crypto-currency but haven't decided on which. What's the easiest and trusted way to convert from cash or credit card to a crypto-currency?