Mostly right...

My transactions at Coinbase are with a certain credit card that pays me 1.5% cash back on my purchase, which helps offset the transaction fee.

I bought $1092.00 dollars of bitcoin yesterday. When you make the purchase, they deduct the transaction fees. The value of it today is $1089.00. $3.00 difference. My cash back was $16.00. So, I'm actually ahead by $13.00.

Yes, currently transactions are expensive, but they will go down. This is a baby with growing pains.

It's not going away. Just today, the worlds largest bitcoin exchange, bitFlyer, entered the US market, with license to trade in about 40 states.

They will compete against Coinbase.(and others). Coinbase investors include USAA and NYSE...they aren't going to sit around and just passively watch their investment get eaten by bitFlyer. One of the first places an exchange can make changes is in their fee structure.

bitFlyer is going to offer zero fees through December. So, the pressure is on...let the games begin!

Speaking of mining...I stepped into those waters also. I paid $220.00 for a two year contract. I'm making about .50 per day. It's not a crap ton of money, but do the math. If everything stays the same, at the end of two years I will have received about $365.00. Minus my contract cost, I have a return of $145. Put $220.00 into the savings account or a CD, and see if you get that rate of return.

It's almost impossible for a mere mortal to mine bitcoin any more. You have to have a specialized mining rig. Best bet is a mining contract where they are scaled up to mine bazillions of hash's per minute.

The problem solving is for human knowledge. Some of this crypto currrency has underpinnings of computer sciences that will be deployed in health care and financial markets over the next decade. Some of it is also crap.

Lastly, and once again...don't do any of this with money you can't afford to lose. Same thing they say with the stock market.

This hurt you?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-3 ... hing-again

No. I mean, some assets declined, but I took some profit out on the high side of the roller coaster ride, so I'm technically still in the black. Bitcoin is back up to $10k, with a short spike to $11k, so I expect the other cryptos to follow soon, if they haven't done it yet.

I'm thinking we should have a bitcoin forum. Lot's of info to share. Not pushing crypto, but learning points on how to do it.

IRS is sniffing around

So if you have coinbase why do you need Montero 5oo?

Coinbase only recognizes three cryptos: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and LiteCoin.

If you want to mess around with other coins, you need a different "wallet" to store them. Sort of like the difference between the wallet you keep in your pocket, and a safe. You could put dollar bills in your pocket wallet, but not a brick of gold...just won't fit. Need some other place to store it, like a safe. Same with digital currency...not all of it fits into one standard wallet, or is traded on all the exchanges.

Using the lingo of the cryptocurrency world: Coinbase is a platform to deposit fiat currency, and exchange it for one of the three crypto currencies above. And, reverse. When you want to make a withdrawal, you can only convert one of the above three.

So, here's a transaction flow path for me: I have Monero on Bittrex. Let's say I want to cash out of Monero. I go to the trading floor of Bittrex, and sell my Monero. All "sells" are only recorded in Bitcoin. So, I've sold my Monero, and have more Bitcoin. Bittrex will not exchange crypto for fiat. I have to move my Bitcoin from Bittrex to Coinbase, and then sell the Bitcoin on Coinbase, and then withdraw my fiat. (dollars).

In the case of the Monero wallet, as it turns out I didn't need it. I didn't know that at the time, because I didn't know then what I know now.

I bought Monero on a different exchange, and did not know I could transfer it directly to Bittrex. So, I got a Monero wallet...it's just a learning curve thing. The down side was that it locked up hundreds of dollars waiting for the blockchain to synch up.

Another learning point if anyone goes into this: Don't transfer large sums of money until you have verified that the flow path is active and verified.

I bought a hard wallet called a Ledger Nano. In order to test it out, I transferred about .04 into it from Bittrex. Success! Then, I transferred $4.00. Yeah, more success. Then I transferred more. Now, the transfer fee was .19. Yes, I paid nineteen cents to transfer four cents. Better than making a mistake with a lot of money.

I view these micro-costs almost like costs of college...pay to get more educated. (hopefully....).

Not all goes so well. I tried moving bitcoin from the Ledger Nano to Bittrex. First try was .02, next try was $2.00. Both transactions failed.

This next part, I don't know what it really means...the transaction was three parts: The amount of money I wanted to move, the fee to move the money, and "gas". Seems like the transactions failed due to running out of gas. I was like, are you shitting me.

I'm learning on the fly...

A couple more notes regarding moving crypto around, and cashing out:

As mentioned above, Coinbase only transacts in three cryptos: Bitcoin, Ethereum (Ether or ETH), and Litecoin. Each one of them has their own unique wallet.

If you try to deposit Bitcoin into an Ether wallet, you will lose your funds. Very important to know when you are moving funds around. The beginning and end wallets have to be the same. There is no cross chain conversion.

If you want to cash out, select the Sell page.

The default "wallet" that comes up first is Bitcoin. There are up/down arrows on the right side of the wallet that will let you toggle between the three crypto wallets.

As you step through the process, you can select how much of a selected crypto to sell, and before you complete the transaction a summary will appear to show you how much you are selling, how much the fees are, and what the net transaction will be.

Here's another note, mainly about "gas". It's gonna get a little long, but I think it's important so as not to end up down a rabbit hole.

I got a hard wallet called a Ledger Nano. I tried to send ether from the Nano to Bittrex. It failed. The total downside for me was a loss of probably fifty cents, and a lot of frustration due to an failed transaction.

What I've learned:

If you get a hard wallet (and you should), use it as a vault. You wouldn't normally make day to day transactions out of a vault. You would go to the vault, get a cash box, take the cashbox to your cash register and commence your transaction business.

In my case, I've downloaded MyEtherWallet (MEW) along with MetaMask. On the MEW page, it advises to download one of two interfaces: EAL or MetaMask. I opted for MetaMask, and it's been fairly straight forward to use. MEW is the portal to the internet for ether, and MetaMask is the front side control, like a cash register.

As you recall, every wallet or vault has a unique identifier called an address. To move move funds from hard wallet (the vault) to MetaMask (cash register):
Open MetaMask, and copy the address.
Open hard wallet, select send. Paste the copied address in the send bar. Choose amount to send. Press go. Done. Now, you have funded your cash register, so to speak, and can go out into the internet and conduct crypto business.

Also, if you feel that you might run out of gas on a transaction, MetaMask allows you to up the gas amount. How much to increase? I don't know yet. I was in a chat room this morning, and it was suggested to up the amount to 50000 if sending ether to Bittrex, and any unused amount of gas is returned to your account, ensuring a successful transaction.

The kicker with Bittrex is that they use "smart contracts" to fulfill the transaction. For some reason, that uses more energy, which takes more "gas". So, it's important to try and determine if wherever you are going to send ether uses smart contracts or not.

Nate - bro - I want to thank you. I've learned more hands on stuff from you than the investment junkies I hang around with. They talk about a little of this stuff, 3rd person at best. Thanks.

I went to the casino and walked away with $200 inside of 20 minutes. How long would it take me to get that amount in crypto currency?

5 seconds if you have a good amount of money and pay attention to the ups and downs.

Depends. How much did you walk in with.

Why do people invest in the stock market....essentially the same thing.....a gamble.

yeah, doesn't mention he staretd with $20000