I (finally) read Bitcoins whitepaper today...

in #crypto7 years ago (edited)

It was about 9 pages and I needed cliff notes to read it. I think with the cliff notes I understood about 60% of it. It cleared up a few questions and provoked a few more. It made me realize just how little I know about both technology and economics. Some of you guys really know your stuff!

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The main takeaway is that I know understand what a proof-of-work is - a computer solves a puzzle and we know the coin is legit. Now to learn what all the other proof-of’s are.

It also helped me to understand why bitcoin became such a big thing in the circles that it did and a little more about the mindset of the crypto scene. It was also interesting to imagine talking about blockchain when it was the only one around.

I still don’t really understand how coins and blocks interact with each other, how many transactions fit on one block, what happens if you are the first or last transaction on a block, or how bitcoins first started being traded, like if you wanted to buy a btc before these markets were around, how did you do it, and where did that coin come from? Did the miner sell it or was it generated somehow from somewhere?

Tomorrow I’ll try to (finally) read the Steem whitepaper.

That’s 35 F-ing pages, I sure hope it’s easier to understand.

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Too much crypto excitement today. I don’t really have the concentration tovwrite about anything else. I did pretty well with Tron and Enjin. I didn’t have much invested cause I barely had anything to invest, but it felt good to hold twocof the biggest movers today. I moved my gains in Tron to bitshares and iota, but I hope to move them back when the price drops. I kept Enjin where it is. What do you think of this move?

Hopefully I’ll be back to creativity and steeming tomorrow!
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You are THE renaissance man. I'm going to leach off your interpretations until I get the chance to read white papers - and then will probably opt for cliff notes lol.

This is the first time in so long I don't have the top 5 cryptos ! note to self to pick up Cardanao (though its newness and position makes me skeptical) - tron, and that other E coin you speak of.

One suggestion - day trading is a tough gig. I've definitely experienced the most gains by, you know. hodling ;-) That said, maybe I'm missing out on the quick flips - living in NY State with limited access to exchanges makes that a bit tough. Once you've made some more gains to reinvest - consider picking a few you really believe in for holding purposes.

The ups and downs will be gut wrenching if you watch whatever it is daily - but so far at least, the long term thing pays off. Though we are in uncharted territory with cryptos at their peak (to date, any way). Then again, if the technology behind the cryptos you pick for long term is solid, and backers are good...I think the old school Buffet-esque strategies of investing can apply (yes, I know, he wouldn't touch cryptos - I just mean how he invests in companies with long term potential and management and all that).

Don’t learn from me! I’m a newb. I have some insight cause I understand psychology and trends well. I’m very intuitive with most of what I do.

Cardano looks great! Raiblocks and Neo too, though you may have missed the best time to buy any of these.

Tron seems overinflated to me at this point, it’s jumped to number 5 and they don’t seem far along in their development. Enjin will grow for sure, but it’s a game right coin so it’s niche, I think the whole market needs to grow for Enjin to reach its potential cause I don’t see it on the top 20.

I’m hoping to make big gains on substratum and wabi. If anyone watches, they probably realize I learn about half the coins I know from Data Dash on youtube.

TenX also seems like it has a lot of room to grow.

Those are my amateur assesments. I’m trying to find good coins on the second page of coinmarketcap cause I think a lot of growth is going to be about those coins purging coins that don’t deliver on promises and aren’t very original from the top 100. If I hear something good about a 100-300 ranked coin from teocreliabke sources, I put some sbd into it. I don’t feel very emotionally invested though cause I started with 0, and loss is still more than I started with. Try to invest in a way that you can control your emotions X-D

Steem power will be my biggest inverstment for the foreseeable future, about 50%, then 25% in top 10, 25% to play around with, ranked 50-250

I probably have something in about 10-12 cryptos - and I mean, timing was everything. I cannot get over how lucky I was (ether at $10! Nem at...whatever it was in early spring lol, my favorite brag of my lone btc back at $400...less a brag and more just, amazed). I didn't read whitepapers (shame shame!) but checked forums and tried to at least get a basic grasp of each one.

You may be new - but you are a fast learner and have a natural talent for teaching/explaining. Why read a whole white paper - when I know you'll distill the important parts down and translate them to English.

I don't think I've ever even been to 2nd page of coinmarket cap, let alone 3rd (but you're so right - it's way down on the list where the less discovered gems are). As crazy as it sounds, I don't think I even stumbled into crypto back in 2013 thinking about investing...I mean kind of, I hoped they'd go up - but part of me didn't even expect them to. And plenty didn't - they were BTC knock offs - but a lot did. Of course, returns are incredible and exciting...but like you say, it's all about controlling emotions and not FOMOing too hard now that even alt coins are in mainstream headlines.

I think I saw Tron on a major news outlet the other day - that means you are probably right about it being inflated right now. Gonna check out the others you mentioned, and sources too - down the rabbit hole for me lol.

One I'm kicking myself for not putting a bit into is Sia Coin...been watching it for too long.

I think overall - cryptos are in a bubble right now (but not the end of the world bubble, bubbles are fine, normal and happen in every sector). No idea what stage though. I wish we could just catch a glimpse into the future to see if our core holdings all make it out and up - or sink!

I’m with you on Sia...but I don’t know about it enough to jump in now, it may also be overinflated.

I say as long as you keep half your stuff in more “stable” coins and the other in riskier ones, you are bound to come out ahead, maybe way ahead, maybe just a bit. I’m not putting too much into bitcoin until they fix the scaling and get the fees down, until then it’s litecoin dash and Etherium for me. I’m putting a lot into EOS too because Dan knows how to build things that people can use. Whether or not they work in the long run is yet to be seen but at least I know that will go up in the future.

Being at steemit automatically makes us more knowledgeable than the average layman. Find two or three people you trust here and one or two on youtube and compare what they say, make your own deduction and BOOM, you are a millionaire.

Yeah - I'm going to share a secret...this is a confessional. I don't believe in BTC long term. It's got first mover advantage - and some heavy institutional investors behind it - and that's about it. I still maintain it will always have 'collector value'...but for all the problems you mentioned, and then some...

You're probably right on Sia - FOMO-vestors are just looking down the charts, seeing what's up and throwing in money. Wait til it settles down.

Did you hear about Verge coin? $1 last year would be $1 million today. I think I'm gonna take a $100 and go for every coin that's like $.00000001 lol. And find these crypto sages you speak of haha

Yay Steemit - Dan + co were pretty brilliant with Steemit - the only way to ensure people use your crypto is to create an eco-system that depends on it...genius.

Mining is the only way bitcoins are created so yes, every bitcoin originally came from a miner. So in the beginning you mostly mined your own or bought some from a miner.

What happened if the miners didn’t want to sell any? How did you go about finding a miner to buy from?

If no miners would sell then there would be no market. I haven't studied early days too much so I don't know exactly what happened. I just know that bitcoins are created with every new block and they go to the miner of the block. So logically every bitcoin was bought from a miner at some point. In theory, eventually a miner and a buyer would agree on a price and that would become the first transaction. With bitcoin, the first transaction was someone bought a pizza for 10,000 bitcoins. As more people began buying and selling exchanges probably started up.

Thanks for answers! I still don’t understand how bitcoins are created with every block if there is a limited amount of btc though

My pleasure! :) When btc started, there were 50 new bitcoins created every block (10 minutes). Every 4 yearsish (i think) the amount of bitcoin created per block is split in half. So it went from 50 to 25 to 12.5 which is where we are now. In a couple years it will go down to 6.25 per block. Eventually there will be no more bitcoins created. That will be at around the 21 millionth bitcoin.

Hmm this only creates more questions! But you’ve helped plenty!

I did read the steem whitepaper before signing up. The bits that were in English were easy enough to understand, there was some maths but I couldn't make sense out of it (because my brain is mildly defective, I can't say how sound the maths was XD) I don't remember any of it now XD

I'm still amused by your swing from "let's not have too much crypto chat in this channel as it's everywhere else already" to I'M TOO EXCITED TO WRITE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE ATM XD

goatsig

I feel like a total sell out. Look at the payout compared to my creative writing! :-/ I’m sorry...

I guess it’s easier to relate to steemit at large talking about crypto and I have things to say about it now. I’m gonna try to write some opinion pieces, almost like Optimism at the end of the world style on crypto soon

Oh stop apologising and accept my good-natured teasing :D

goatsig

SELL OUT! HOW DARE YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY! YOU'RE GOING STRAIGHT TO CAPITALIST HELL :-P

Seriously. Be happy. Cha-ching (I was super happy for you when I saw the $ value on this!) Keep posting your creative writing, but if you find a niche that does well on the way, be happy. Like I said above, you have a talent for teaching - and this is something people want to learn about. A ton of creative energy still goes into it. As long as you enjoy it - that's all that matters. you have built a loyal following, and we (ok at least I - I can only speak for me) like that you have a blog with all kinds of different subject matter.

Two niches we know do well on here are posts about Steemit and posts about crypto. Nothing wrong with making a few extra bucks from that knowledge - the more you make, the more time you have to put back into your other creative work (and the more $ you have to invest in cryptos, and retire early - and do whatever the FCK you want at that point ;-) )

I don’t believe in money but I can’t help it’s if everyone else does. The landlord won’t be able to kick me out for not paying rent if I buy the land. The airline company can’t deny me a flight if I refuse to pay when I own the airline company :-D Haha just playing with that second example....or am I. I’d make sure all the people flew for free! “Poor? Fly for free?”

I wouldn’t write these if I didn’t enjoy them. That would be a sell out in my view. But hell, if I enjoy it and get paid more, why not. The goal is to get a few more thousand followers and then share more fiction and creative writing.

And definitely don't lose sight of that goal (duh, like you would, and like my suggestion to not lose the goal would have any power if it wasn't...the things we humans say lol)

I know I commented on someone's post somewhere - hopefully not repeating myself on yours - but if it wasn't money, it would be crops or seashells, etc, etc.

Once you buy the land - well at least in the good ol US of A - Uncle Sam can still kick you out for not paying taxes :-P You never own anything over here lol (that way they can keep you chasing those denominational scraps of paper!)

Looking forward to reading more creative stuff - of every genre - wanted to get something up, but hitting the road for a few days...'see' ya when I'm back :-)

Slowing down and studying white papers has been so, so, so essential to my climb up the learning curve. The current state of the SMT whitepaper on my iPad (app pictured is LiquidText), lol:

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I've been on a study binge this week, which has cut into my writing time. I really do think it's that important, and I'm glad to see somebody else geeking out. Per our discussoin the other day, beneath my long-ass treatise of a post, I'm glad to report: my latest post actually met my (actually reasonable) word goal!

You are so cerebral dude! Cool! I’m sure you’ll understand this stuff much better 5wncme in the end. I just read things 3 or 4 times and never take notes haha, I scold my students for doing this too haha

I should try that app sometime, looks fun

I’ll check your post in a sec!

Cerebral, obsessive, crazay: I’ll take any of those :)

and I guess I missed the fact that you teach. cool! it makes sense now that I know it, b/c your writing is super pedagogical and not overbearingly so. what do you teach?

I teach languages....which is embarrassing cause I had to check pedagogical in the dictionary. I’m good at teaching people HOW to self study languages. I teach language as an art, not as a science. You learn faster when you learn it as both, but in school we treat almost everything like a science so I try to provide balance.

You are an academic, so if you are obsessive or crazy, it just comes with the territory. I’m sorry I can’t always keep up with the language in your writing. We need some people like you in the mix though, and when I have time I try to take the time with it. You add a lot to this community!

i don't think you have nothing to invest. You have the power to explain a shitty thing in an awesome way.....
I will wait untill tomorrow to know from you about Steem whitepaper.

I have time and effort to invest, and I guess it’s turning into Steem! Thanks!

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