Bitcoins - about to hit $5,000 per coin today!

[OneMoreRep]

Anyone see this?

I've said it before, the US dollar as the world reserve gives the USA a lot of leveraging power all throughout the world. It also keeps our position strong as the top world superpower. We lose our standing as having the world reserve currency and we will lose everything. Our relevance will disappear, much like with the British and Dutch empires when their currencies became 2nd & 3rd tier.

Janet Yellen already critiques cryptocurrencies (particularly Bitcoin) and has mentioned several times the need for regulation. Now, her old boyfriend at the Fed, Jerome Powell, is making a digital dollar a "high priority". While I think the crypto train is too far gone to completely stop in its tracks, the value of cryptos can certainly take a further nosedive if the US govt and the fed go after them.

The digital dollar is now high priority for the Fed

https://www.axios.com/digital-dollar-priority-fed-f4daa0a8-0bb1-41d9-8c8d-f75a0d65b2a9.html

The U.S. is starting to get serious about a central-bank-backed digital currency, with recent comments from top officials laying out the strongest support yet.

Driving the news: On Tuesday Fed chair Jerome Powell told Congress that developing a digital dollar is a "high priority project for us," but added that there are "significant technical and policy questions."

• On Wednesday Fed researchers released a report titled "Preconditions for a general-purpose central bank digital currency," detailing just what some of those questions might be.
  

Why it matters: More consumers and financial institutions are transitioning toward digital payments, putting greater pressure on policymakers to ensure the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency remains intact.

The big picture: Powell's "high priority" language and the ensuing report reflect a shift in rhetoric and action from the Fed, which had previously urged caution and patience on the development of a digital dollar.

• Treasury Secretary and former Fed chair Janet Yellen had similar comments earlier this week, saying, “It makes sense for central banks to be looking at” the issue.
• “Too many Americans don’t have access to easy payments systems and banking accounts, and I think this is something that a digital dollar, a central bank digital currency, could help with. It could result in faster, safer and cheaper payments, which I think are important goals.”

What's happening: Cash accounted for just 20.5% of all in-store payments globally, down by nearly a third from 2019, according to a report from financial services company FIS. By 2024 FIS expects that to drop to 13%.

• "The pandemic accelerated the decline of cash by over three years, exceeding in 2020 our previous projection for 2023," FIS analysts note in the report.

Between the lines: Perhaps more important than the decline in cash usage is the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies and the acceleration of real-world testing by China's central bank of its own digital currency.

• Data analysis company MicroStrategy announced Wednesday it had purchased another $1 billion of bitcoin, while payment processor Square announced it had added another $170 million of the cryptocurrency.
• China on Tuesday said that the People's Bank of China was extending testing of its digital renminbi to the city of Chengdu, which is home to 16 million people.
• And the PBOC announced it would be participating in a cross-border payment project with the central banks of Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong that would explore distributed ledger technology.

"1"

[obsidian]

I have a question - am a complete noob with this.

Say someone is sitting on a huge bitcoin wallet that netted them a shit ton of of profit - like 30-40 million.

How do they convert that to actual cash?  Who pays it, is the transaction tracked for tax purposes, etc?

I had read there were bitcoin atms at one point, but wondered about large scale.

Also, anytime someone gains in a market, someone loses.  Who loses when the bitcoin appreciates......in other words, if someone wants to cash in their bitcoin, there needs to be a buyer at that price, right?   I know the brokerage houses play this function in the real market...or something like that.

If someone with a huge bitcoin wallet wants to sell it all they could create an account on Coinbase or a competitor and send the Bitcoin to their Bitcoin wallet on Coinbase. Then they can sell all the Bitcoin to dollars. Or they can sell it to a stable coin and have it collect interest. The interest rates for stable coins are much higher than you could get with savings accounts in traditional banks.

If they want all the money in dollars they can hold the dollar value on Coinbase and then start withdrawing on a daily basis. There is a $50,000 per day limit. Or they could contact Coinbase and ask for an increase. I am sure they would increase it for a large holder. The whole point of limiting withdrawals is to prevent a run on the bank situation. Coinbase has a finite amount of funds available and they have a large user base.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/pro/trading-and-funding/trading-rules-and-fees/limits

Deposit & Withdrawal Limits
Deposits of cryptocurrency are unlimited. Deposits of fiat currency (US Dollar or Euro) are limited by payment method. Deposits via wires are unlimited, but deposits of fiat currency via ACH transfers or SEPA are limited based on your weekly bank transfer limit. You can see your weekly bank transfer limit by going to your Limits page.

Withdrawals of both cryptocurrency and fiat currency are limited. Coinbase Pro account holders have a daily withdrawal limit of $50,000/day. This amount applies across all currencies (for example, you can withdraw up to $50,000 worth of ETH per day).

To be considered for higher withdrawal limits, please go to your Limits page within Coinbase Pro and select Increase Limits.

[OneMoreRep]

If someone

Hey Obsidian,

I just recently bought my nephew some alt coins on Binance.us. I literally opened an account for him and used my debit card.

Someone told me that he will now NEED a Nano ledger x in order to safely store his coins. But then I read online that the coins are safely stored on Binance.us. So what's the actual truth here?

"1"

[obsidian]

Lol.  Not a chance.

Institutional investors might disagree. A retail investor might not see this happening. They are not the ones that could push the price up that high. Institutions also don't care about high gas fees. Bitcoin's price was not pushed to 50k because grandma and grandpa bought BTC. It was large investors that pushed it up.

There is a lot of fud goin on about Ethereum right now because of the high gas fees. But Ethereum has major partnerships with Fortune 500 companies. Ethereum 2.0 is a big improvement but slow in development because Ethereum has many live projects on it. It is not easy to upgrade with all these constraints. Plus you have proof of work miners in the mix securing the network. Cardano does not have these constraints and is already in full Proof of Stake mode. But it has few partnerships. That could change moving forward. However even Cardano is not yet complete and still not 100% live.

[obsidian]

Hey Obsidian,

I just recently bought my nephew some alt coins on Binance.us. I literally opened an account for him and used my debit card.

Someone told me that he will now NEED a Nano ledger x in order to safely store his coins. But then I read online that the coins are safely stored on Binance.us. So what's the actual truth here?

"1"

I have a Nano Ledger S and it is a pain in the ass. I stored some alt coins on it because Binance US does not support them yet - TRON for example. There is a digital display with buttons on the ledger and you have to unlock it every time you want to access the coins. The Nano S can also only store a limited number of cryptos because of storage space limitation. The Nano X is a better option for sure because it has more storage space and you can have many crypto wallets on it. I wish I had that one. I bought mine 3 years ago before the X was available. Technical prowess is needed to use these.

There is the risk that he could lose the ledger or his access keys. I would read up on what options are available if that were to happen.

So I think Binance and Coinbase should be ok for storing it. I have been storing cryptos on both for 3 years without issue.

If he had millions of dollars in cryptos then that is a different matter and a lot of planning would have to go into placing it in cold storage and I am not sure what the best route would be in that case. I personally would be nervous storing all that on a Nano Ledger knowing the device could break, I could lose my keys or the Ledger etc. It is a USB device after all and have we not all had a USB flash drive fail over the years?

Even storing it at a bank vault is a risk if anything happens there.

[OneMoreRep]

I have a Nano Ledger S and it is a pain in the ass. I stored some alt coins on it because Binance US does not support them yet - TRON for example. There is a digital display with buttons on the ledger and you have to unlock it every time you want to access the coins. The Nano S can also only store a limited number of cryptos because of storage space limitation. The Nano X is a better option for sure because it has more storage space and you can have many crypto wallets on it. I wish I had that one. I bought mine 3 years ago before the X was available. Technical prowess is needed to use these.

There is the risk that he could lose the ledger or his access keys. I would read up on what options are available if that were to happen.

So I think Binance and Coinbase should be ok for storing it. I have been storing cryptos on both for 3 years without issue.

If he had millions of dollars in cryptos then that is a different matter and a lot of planning would have to go into placing it in cold storage and I am not sure what the best route would be in that case. I personally would be nervous storing all that on a Nano Ledger knowing the device could break, I could lose my keys or the Ledger etc. It is a USB device after all and have we not all had a USB flash drive fail over the years?

Even storing it at a bank vault is a risk if anything happens there.

That's what I thought as well. I was going to buy him the ledger X, but then I thought it was probably not the best idea, because (as you said) if he loses it, he loses all of his money.

Thank you sir.

"1"

[Bindare_Dundat]

I wouldn't be surprised to see eth drop significantly lower  for the short term

[Bindare_Dundat]

That's what I thought as well. I was going to buy him the ledger X, but then I thought it was probably not the best idea, because (as you said) if he loses it, he loses all of his money.

Thank you sir.

"1"

Buy a safe and leave it in there. Crypto isnt stored on the ledger. The nano holds the private keys you need to access your crypto. As long as ge doesn't lose his 24 word access phrase, he's ok.

  Plus you can store many different crypto account info on it but unfortunately you have to rotate them off and on the screen to be seen. There's only so many visible at a time. The x stores more than the s.

[obsidian]

Cool, thanks for sharing. Very interesting.  I have an rx570. Can I use that for mining? Lol j/k

Does it have 8GB RAM? If only 4 GB then no the Ethereum DAG file is now almost that size. It has to be loaded in the RAM of the GPU. All my GPU cards have 8 GB or more. The 1080 ti has 11 GB and then 3090 has 24 GB RAM. 6 GB cards can still mine Ethereum. You can still mine Ethereum Classic with less than 4 GB RAM.

Looks like you can make more than $2 per day mining ETH with a RX470 8 GB card today. That number goes up when there are a lot of transactions going on. Right now it is relatively quiet with Ethereum so my profits are a bit less.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth?HashingPower=29.5&HashingUnit=MH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=100&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1

You can also check this site:

https://whattomine.com/

If you want more info I can tell you which mining pools to go to and what software to use. I'll post the configurations here.

[obsidian]

I've been using Ethermine and in the past Nanopool.

I had a nightmare experience with Ethpool which is more suitable for very large mining farms. I was stuck on that pool in 2018 for 1 month trying to get to the top of the list to claim a block reward of 3+ ETH. I kept falling back in the queue as massive 100 GH/s + farms came from behind and took the rewards on a daily basis. For reference a RTX 3090 can mine at up to 120-124 MH/s. An AMD RX470 can achieve 29.5 or maybe 30 MH/s.

1 GH/s = 1,000 MH/s
100 GH/s = 100,000 MH/s or the equivalent of more than 800 RTX 3090 graphics cards which are selling for close to $2,000 each!

So I was at risk of having to mine for 2 months or more before ever hoping to get a mediocre reward of 3+ ETH. Those large farms also got rewards on top of the fee based on if they were the dominant miner for a certain period. So they got a 3.2 ETH payout + 5-7 ETH in rewards. A cool 8-10 ETH payout on a daily or hourly basis depending on their hashing power.

I ended up buying hashing power on NiceHash and pointed that to my miner address on Ethpool. I bought it with Bitcoin and sent it to my NiceHash account. I purchased about 80-120 GH/s for a period of 3 days. The length depends on how much Bitcoin you paid. You can change the hash power on the fly but the higher you go the faster your Bitcoin is consumed. If you stop the lease before all of your allocated Bitcoin is spent you get to keep the leftover Bitcoin. It works kind of like a Taxi service where the meter is running.

So I had the NiceHash 80-120 GH/s miner along with all my rigs mining on Ethpool and within a few hours I was at the top and got a 3.2 ETH payout. And I did not get a reward. That was an expensive lesson to learn. I dropped Ethpool right after I got my payout and went to Nanopool and then after that Ethermine. Been with Ethermine ever since. I also mined ZCASH on Flypool for about 2 weeks with my Nvidia cards. Earned about 3.5 ZEC in that period. ZEC mining is not possible with a GPU anymore.

Mining was a bad idea in 2018.

[Bindare_Dundat]

Does it have 8GB RAM? If only 4 GB then no the Ethereum DAG file is now almost that size. It has to be loaded in the RAM of the GPU. All my GPU cards have 8 GB or more. The 1080 ti has 11 GB and then 3090 has 24 GB RAM. 6 GB cards can still mine Ethereum. You can still mine Ethereum Classic with less than 4 GB RAM.

Looks like you can make more than $2 per day mining ETH with a RX470 8 GB card today. That number goes up when there are a lot of transactions going on. Right now it is relatively quiet with Ethereum so my profits are a bit less.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth?HashingPower=29.5&HashingUnit=MH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=100&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1

You can also check this site:

https://whattomine.com/

If you want more info I can tell you which mining pools to go to and what software to use. I'll post the configurations here.

Its an 8gig. Thanks man. Appreciate the info. My buddy tore down his rigs and has a shitload of 1080 cards. Maybe I can ask him for a few.

[obsidian]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/its-too-early-to-tell-whether-this-time-its-different-applies-to-ethereum/ar-BB1e1lfX?ocid=uxbndlbing

[obsidian]

Its an 8gig. Thanks man. Appreciate the info. My buddy tore down his rigs and has a dhotnooad of 1080 cards. Maybe I can ask him for a few.

No problem. You'll have to tweak the GPU so it uses less power and overclock the RAM. Fan has to be set to about 60-70%. I flashed a custom BIOS to my RX580 cards but you can also set it with software I believe. Phoenix Miner is the one to use now or Team Red Miner. Claymore Miner stopped working. There are rumors the Russian mafia killed him lol! He's been making millions in fees off his Ethereum miner. All these miners have a developer fee of 1% or so. For 30 seconds every 1 hour I think the miner mines to their wallet. And then it goes back to your wallet.

If you can get the RX470 to mine at 29-30 MH/s and only use 90-100 watts it would be a good setup.

https://ethermine.org/start

This is an old video...

[obsidian]

Its an 8gig. Thanks man. Appreciate the info. My buddy tore down his rigs and has a shitload of 1080 cards. Maybe I can ask him for a few.

There is a TLB bug with the Nvidia cards. I think it affect the 1070, 1080 and 1080 ti cards. The 1070 ti cards are not affected. Basically as the DAG of Ethereum increased in size the performance of the GPU cards dropped and more power has to be used to get the hash rates up. There is no fix for it because it is a limitation of the hardware. Nvidia was contacted about this and that was their response. AMD was able to provide a fix for it. That being said I did notice a small drop in hash rate with the 1070 ti and RX580 cards. But not as much as my 1070 and 1080 ti cards.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/blockchain-drivers/110847/9

Robert_Crovella
Moderator
Aug 11
Here is the reply. Please note that I likely will not be able to respond to any follow-up questions about this. Therefore, if you ask a question, and I do not respond, that is the reason. I’m not permitted to share any more details than what is presented here:

We’ve confirmed that the performance drop is due to the size of the DAG exceeding the total on-chip TLB capacity on the Pascal GPU. As a result, there is an increased number of TLB misses, which affects performance. Because the TLB is a fixed capacity hardware resource, and the ETH algorithm accesses the DAG randomly, we don’t believe there are any software optimizations that could reduce the TLB miss rate.

In the Volta generation, TLB coverage was increased by 4x, and large DAG sizes (up to ~8GB, which won’t be reached for many years) will still fit in the on-chip TLB. So these newer GPUs (Volta and beyond) will show much less performance sensitivity due to DAG size

[Griffith]

http://www.coindesk.com/canadas-ci-global-files-for-what-would-be-worlds-first-ether-etf%3famp=1

Canada’s CI Global Files for What Would Be World’s First Ether ETF

If approved, the ETF would trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker “ETHX.”

The world’s first ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) may be on the way, after CI Global Asset Management filed a preliminary prospectus in Canada on Thursday.

In an announcement, the firm said its proposed “CI Galaxy Ethereum ETF” would be the first ETF in the world to invest directly in ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network.

If approved, the ETF would trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the ticker “ETHX.”

Galaxy Digital Capital Management LP will act as the ether sub-adviser and execute trading on behalf of the ETF.

ETHX will invest directly in ether with its holdings priced using the Bloomberg Galaxy Ethereum Index, owned by Bloomberg Index Services.

“Ethereum is the leading candidate to be the base layer of Web 3.0, and ether is a growth asset that provides investors exposure to the explosion of decentralized applications,” said Mike Novogratz, chairman and CEO of Galaxy Digital, in the announcement.

[Bindare_Dundat]

Seems like some acclerated panic selling and profit taking going on. This is going to get ugly if a small bounce gets rejected. Both look like possible  reverse cup and handle patterns forming. Bearish.  Then the FUD will really start. Snowballing effect. How many will still be buying on the dip?

Still holding my btc. All my eth now gone. That might change over the next few days.

[Griffith]

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/grayscale-buys-ethereum-dip-as-eth-drops-below-1600/amp/

Grayscale Buys Ethereum Dip as ETH Drops Below $1,600

The crypto asset manager purchased 15,521 Ethereum in the last 24 hours.

Grayscale, the world’s largest digital assets manager, purchased nearly $25 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) in a single day after the price of ETH dropped below $1,600. ETH has dipped nearly 20% in the last 5 days.

According to the latest data published by crypto analytics firm, Bybt.com, Grayscale has accumulated a total of 15,521 ETH in the last 24 hours in an effort to take advantage of the recent crash in ETH. As of writing, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency is trading near $1,600 with a total market cap of $185 billion.

The crypto asset manager now holds 3.17 million ETH with a total value of more than $5.1 billion. Grayscale purchased 238,784 ETH in the last 30 days. The firm reopened its ETH Trust in late January 20Grayscale has accelerated its efforts to accumulate ETH in the last few months.

Recently, the company released a report on ETH and highlighted the potential benefits of ETH 2.0. Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale mentioned in December 2020 that the institutional interest in ETH-related investment products has grown significantly.

Grayscale’s total digital assets are valued at approximately $38.7 billion. The value of the company’s digital assets has dropped by more than $4 billion in the last 5 days. Despite the recent dip, Grayscale’s crypto assets have grown significantly since the start of 2021 as the company started this year with $20 billion worth of digital assets under management.

[obsidian]

I do like Bitcoin and will get some when alt coins have caught up a bit. I feel like the BTC market cap is just too dominant right now. Also the potential return on investment will be less compared to smaller market cap alts like Cardano. Cardano has been on a roll lately. 72% of Cardano is staked which helps to keep the price stable.

https://www.arabianbusiness.com/banking-finance/459254-dubai-crypto-fund-says-to-dump-750m-worth-of-pretty-useless-bitcoin

Dubai-based FD7 Ventures, a global crypto investment fund with $1 billion under management, on Friday announced plans to sell off $750 million worth of its Bitcoin holdings over the next 30 days to increase positions in Cardano and Polkadot.

According to the company, the increase in these altcoin holdings will better serve the needs of FD7 investors who are looking to diversify their portfolios in the growing cryptocurrency space.

“Aside from the fact that Bitcoin was first to market and society has given it meaning as a store of value, I think Bitcoin is actually pretty useless,” said Prakash Chand, managing director at FD7 Ventures.

“Projects such as Cardano, Polkadot and Ethereum are the foundation of the new internet and Web 3.0,” he added.

The FD7 Ventures announcement comes as the value of Bitcoin slumped by more than 9.5 percent in the past 24 hours following the cryptocurrency’s recent surge to record highs.

The price of of the cryptocurrency is now valued at just above $46,000, down from $51,600 a day before.

The cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of $58,000 on Sunday as a series of institutional investors put their weight behind the controversial blockchain technology.

Chand, previously founder of Ask The Doctor, and Q Dhalla launched FD7 Ventures earlier this month, aiming to help investors looking to diversify their portfolios into the growing cryptocurrency space.

Investors are looking at safe havens in everything from lumber to sugar to bitcoin as the dollar depreciates.

“I’ve been lucky enough to spend lots time with the brightest minds in crypto and I’m willing to bet that each of Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot will be more valuable than Bitcoin within the next few years,” said Chand.

Both the founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, and the founder of Polkadot, Dr Gavin Wood, were part of the original seven co-founders of Ethereum.

In their current roles, Hoskinson and Wood lead projects that are regarded as having the potential for significant worldwide impact, added Chand.

FD7 Ventures, which also has offices in Toronto, said it has already begun the process of converting their Bitcoin to Cardano and Polkadot and expects to complete the conversion transactions next month.

Chand said earlier this month: “Being a purchaser of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since 2011, I have watched the industry mature. From family offices, to business leaders and entertainment figures, we are seeing an increased demand for investment alternatives. As the space grows, execution risk remains in both storage and custody, and vetting of credible investment alternatives. Our mission is to offer a de-risked and credible path for seasoned investors to enter the space.”

The company said it has made its first three investments in projects based out of Toronto and Dubai.

[Bindare_Dundat]

CARDANO doing well. Up over 30% since getting in. So glad I got out of Ethereum when I did.

[obsidian]

CARDANO doing well. So glad I got out of Ethereum when I did.

Yes it is doing well. There could be a correction after March 1st when the Mary Hard Fork is released. All the hype is building towards that date. I'll be buying more ADA in the dip. Ethereum will still make moves but Cardano was the main asset that moved up the past few days.

Charles Hoskinson is cocky but very smart. Listen to his thoughts here on Ethereum 2.0

[Griffith]

I also have some ADA.

What are your views on Polkadot?

[Bindare_Dundat]

Yes it is doing well. There could be a correction after March 1st when the Mary Hard Fork is released. All the hype is building towards that date. I'll be buying more ADA in the dip. Ethereum will still make moves but Cardano was the main asset that moved up the past few days.

Charles Hoskinson is cocky but very smart. Listen to his thoughts here on Ethereum 2.0

Why would it drop after the hard fork?

[Bindare_Dundat]

I also have some ADA.

What are your views on Polkadot?

I'm not familiar with polkadot but I do know Ethereum is losing people to both ADA and polkadot for the time being.

[Bindare_Dundat]

I follow this guy.

No screamming, no fast talking, no hype. Very good investing advice, imo.

[polychronopolous]

I wouldn't be surprised to see eth drop significantly lower  for the short term

I wouldn't be surprised if Cardano passes up Ethereum in market share over the next 12 months.

Of course with Bitcoin you don't have to worry about this because it stands alone and has a giant moat.

I expect a dog fight between that next tier which includes Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot. I wish the best of luck for people who choose to speculate on who comes out on top.