The artist invests in Ripple
I was never a person who had a smooth relationship with money. I am the worst salesman in the world, and that is maybe why I am so fond of being a Creative Commons artist. Giving things away always was my first instinct.
On the other hand - I was always good at investment. I am not sure why, but I suspect that it has something to do with me being very good at playing games. I attack things analytically and am good at doubting my feelings.
Somehow that ability has been a very good thing for me dealing with crypto-coins, and the crypto world has been a very good thing for me - because there is one thing that I always wanted money for - time to make my art.
So today I bought some Ripple. It has been halved in a fortnight and I prefer to buy when things are down. My main reason was not to make a large profit on the purchase though, but mainly to create an address where people can tip me for creating CC-art. I am not sure how many people here use Ripple, I haven't seen too many posts about it, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there! Steemit can be a hard place to survey sometimes.
So is Ripple something people on Steemit own? and are there other coins you can recommend that will be fitting for tipping. BTC and Ether are very heavy these days, would be nice if people could send me 5$ without paying the same amount in fees.
Here is my new address if you like to send some quids my way.
Ripple: rBENrZprLN4sjiVEi8JX5rH48k1B9GK9Gd
Go to my Diaspora page to browse through my hig res. art and download and print if you like it. It is Creative Commons -by 4.0, which means you can have it all for free.
Many people don't like Ripple because it's not really decentralized and predictable by its nature because the Ripple company has the majority of the supply in its control and can free more of it at will. Though I had little Ripple, bought at 20 cents but sold it when it rose to 50 cent and then the rest when it had the massive bull run to $3.
Not saying Ripple is bad, and it's probably a good buy when it's so low from all-time-highs but I'll probably keep my hands away from it because I'm personally not exactly sure about it.
Obviously STEEM or SBD is best for tipping. Litecoin is also decent but still has a small transaction fee. But the best one, along STEEM, would be Bitshares because it has zero fees, like STEEM. The reason for this being @dan who has been a developer for both STEEM and Bitshares which has a similar witness system like STEEM. (Also working currently with EOS, he's just too good at whatever he does.)
If you're not familiar with Bitshares, it's a decentraliced exchange software and therefore much safer than centralized ones which are vulnerable for being hacked, like we've already seen many times being happen. But being decentralized, there's no way to shut it down, or you losing your funds, unless you leak your own keys/password/backup phrase. It's definitely worth to check out. You can make a free account HERE. Heads up: that's my referral link, so if you make an account following it, I get a small fraction of your transaction fees (the fees are still the same whether you make an account through ref link or not) and if/when you upgrade your account to a 'life time membership' which grants you 80% fee discount forever. So if you feel like being generous, use it :D
@intelliguy made a simple tutorial on how to make a free Bitshares account. But don't use his affiliate link, use mine (just kidding; obviously you can do whatever you want):
https://wallet.bitshares.org/?r=gil-galad
Sorry for this shameless affiliate link dropping but wouldn't refer people to anything that I would think isn't good (and how the heck could I refer people if not like this anyway?)
This got little extended but take your time as you wish :D
When my time comes for a Bitshare account, I will surely use Gil-galad's wallet!
'Gil-galad's referral link' I suppose what you ment since I'd prefer to keep my wallet by myself 😅 But with this assumption, thank you @nyarlathotep!
Potato, Patato -- all that matters is the presence of Gil-Galad in the digital age!
Haha! He is reborn to reform the last alliance between Bitshares and STEEM to attack the evil centralized forces of Sauron.... ehem, I mean, central banks.
Thanks for the long comment! Steem is great for tipping indeed. I use it myself :) But I hadn't thought of bitshares even though there has been written a lot about it here on Steemit. I'll have one more look and use your link if I decide to try it out.
Ok, cool!
Thanks for this extended explanation. Can I be greedy and ask for more? (I'm still very new to all crypto coins, and I'm trying to soak up as much as I can.)
Apart from diversifying investment, what is the value of having both Steem and Bitshares? Or, another way to put it perhaps: what is the purpose of Bitshares? What is its intended use? (Especially since @dan was behind both it and Steem, I'm assuming each was meant to perform a different function?)
Of course!
So, Steem's purpose is meant to be the currency to reward content creation and engagement with other people in it's own ecosystem which is continuously evolving, hence it's a great one to hold.
Bitshares is different in that it is the currency for its own decentralized cryptocurrency exchange software. Whenever you do an action, like placing a buy order, you pay a small fee ( buy order fee: 0.00092 BTS ~ $0.0004 OR 0.000184 BTS ~ $0.00008 IF you upgrade your account to a lifetime membership which costs about 110BTS )[Source] to the network, witnesses, who mine blocks and keep the network safe. So Bitshares works as a gas fueling the network; from every action, a fee is sent to the witnesses as a reward for securing the network.
Being decentralized means that your funds are 100% safe when you are in control of your password and keys which you can manage inside the software, which is a huge upside compared to the centralized ones (Bittrex, Bitfinex, Binance etc.) vulnerable to Ddos and hacking attempts which can lead to losing your funds. That's why it's never recommended to store large sums of value in centralized exchanges for a long period of time.
And the fees are pretty damn cheap, like I mentioned above, even compared to Binance (0.1% fee taken from the sell order, 0.05% if you use binance coin) it'll get much more expensive.
Being decentralized means also that it doesn't fall under the regulations of centralized models and regulations (at least it's not supposed to) that are already taking place in South Korean exchanges with taxation and KYC's (know your customer, identity verification). I mean sure: you can make Bitshares and all the cryptocurrencies illegal but that isn't going to stop them from functioning.
I hope this makes some sense.
It does. Thanks! Though it does raise another question for me, since I know practically nothing about the centralized exchanges. :)
I totally get the value of decentralization and the low fees, and how those fees would fuel the BitShares network. But a more basic question: why does a cryptocurrency exchange need its own coin or currency? Why don't the fees just get taken out of the traded coins?
Does that make sense?
That's exactly what centralized exchanges are doing. Centralized exchanges don't need their own currency because they aren't network but a one center point where all the data is stored. Binance just happened to launch one with a purpose of getting discounted fees with it and thus, trying to get more people involved to their exchange. But that's all it does, the exchange platform is still the very same centralized model as Bittrex or Bitfinex.
I wasn't sure if you're question applied also to decentralized ones but I assume you understood it based on what you said about Bitshares.
Interesting. So would you say the following is correct: the reason to invent Bitshares was in order to capture a large market of cryptocurrency traders? Meaning, we will offer lower fees than everyone else, and we will keep everyone within the exchange by having them use our own tokens. ?
I guess I'm still not getting why this is more attractive (to the creator of BitShares) than just offering lower fees without the invention of a new token. Except (?!) transactions with other crypto coins require higher fees, due to their energy consumption? Maybe I'm reaching...
Well, kind of, but the main reason behind Bitshares is that it's decentralized exchange. And we need the coin for it be decentralized. Why? I'll explain this as throughouhly as possible, so hodl on.
Ok, so we need to understand that Bitshares isn't actually a token (token is a smart contract in a network, for example OMG is a token in the Ethereum network) but a protocol. And the point of its necessity is easier to understand when we don't think of it as a currency that we just have some x amount. Then what is protocol? Protocol is a set of communication rules in a given network. IP-protocol, for example, was invented for local Intranets to communicate with each other forming the Internet as we know today.
But then we have cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, Neo, Ethereum, Bitshares. These are all protocols that are utilizing the idea of blockchain, which enables the information being spread, decentralized, across many computers running a node, a ledger, containing all the history of transactions, and comparing the data with every other ledger, a consensus can be reach that a transaction, or data, is in fact authentic with a proven history.
But all of the currencies/protocols have their unique set of rules of how the nodes communicate between each other; Ethereum and Bitshares allow writing smartcontracts, or tokens, to be created but Bitcoin doesn't (at least for now). Why? Because the rules are different.
Tldr version; Bitshares' point is to be decentralized ie. secure for storing funds, in order for Bitshares to be decentralized and secure we need a protocol - set of rules - utilizing blockchain, Bitshares is a protocol built specifically for exchanging between funds, Bitshares as a coin is needed in the network as reward for the miners/witnesses as an incentive for securing the network, without any reward there would be nobody running the node and wasting electricity.
Really good you're asking because it forces me to understand these concepts, too.
Thanks! This is well explained. And yet...
I have a five-year-old. He was asking me about electricity recently. I told him what I could. But he said he still didn't understand. Then I had him watch a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode about it. He paid attention and absorbed. But at the end, he turns to me and says, "Daddy, I still don't understand." I told him that was okay, he'd get it eventually.
Anyway, that's about where I'm at with cryptocurrency. :) I think I still have more to absorb.
I would not invest in ripple based on it goes against a lot of the ideals in crypto currencies that I do support, like the coins being in control of the users, something Ripple is not from my understanding, mined all by the Ripple company. I am not exactly for the company, but that is personal tastes. There is money to be made from it still no doubt. For long term investing I would go more along the lines of Litecoin and even Bitcoin Cash and for quick flips I would almost always go for Dogecoin.
@steevc told me so... I didn't know that it was a company that mined it, so it does go against my ideals too. But now I have the account so people can tip me.
I will probably go for a Litecoin account as others have suggested too. And... well Bitcoin Cash, Monero... Not sure if I will ever get a tip on those, but nothing bad about having a few available.
Thank you for the advice, and info on Ripple.
You know, I didn't care about Bitcoin Cash until I was on Yours.org. Sign up, tell them Crypto Collectibles sent ya, you do not have to leave Steemit to use it. OpenBazaar is incorporating Bitcoin Cash as I type this as well. I used to sleep on that coin being very stubborn on OG Bitcoin and not wanting to accept the forks, but as someone who enjoys altcoins, I am no longer anti this and see the benefits and personally see it in use.
Yours! Well, that was one thing I wanted to examine, but then I had too many problems with illness and such, and forgot about it. I will buy some Bitcoin cash and check it out - I even think that I already have an account, but never got to use it. Thanks for the tip!
I'm also not a fan of Ripple, but I'd suggest you to have a look at Stellar Lumens (XLM). It's also a fast blockchain mainly made for payments, but it's opensource and has a volatile community building lots of projects. But most of all: I like the logo 🚀
I am also not a fan of Ripple... anymore :) Steemit has really something to say when the topic is CryptoCoins! I will keep my account so people can tip me in Ripple though.
Yeah, not fan either after crashes but i'm holding some think it will go up.XLM seems good and is only green one today of my coins (besides EOS which i bought in the summer)
I have an ambivalent opinion about ripple. It is really a coin designed for bank's use. Specifically it tries to substitute SWIFT as a communication's standard for them.
It has some very heavy investors and a bright future. But i can't see it as a "real" crypto. It is not really decentralized, which i think is a medular characteristic of this kind of coins.
But i am shure it is a great investment. It has all the potential to be great!
I like the part with the heavy investors and the bright future. Maybe my 250€ can be 700€ before I clothe myself in the monk's robes and go the blessed way of open source and decentralisation once again.
Thank you for the comment.
I hope you get something out of it! I am not an investor myself, I am way too emotional and the rollercoaster of the crypto market is not healthy for me. I am a delicate flower, what can I say. HAHAH just joking. I leave it to my dude to do all the investing for me.
I am that dude - my wife is the delicate flower with a language that make sailors blush. Linux-dude, bicycle reapir-dude, Investment-dude (yea, me too), handsome dude (that is one of the harder dudes to pull off), looking after the kids dude (that is the easy dude).
You're already cool and shit, but I am always impressed by how extremely cool your wife is too! Hahahahaha. I feel like if we lived in the same city, our daughters would be friends. My daughter is an artist too, I am biased but she is very good...surpassing even me when it comes to drawing actual anatomy I find hard. (hands and feet, proportion) but she is very private and doesn't want for people to know who's making the art. Which I respect also. Your daughter's drawings are excellent! Takes after her father, for sure. Although in a different style. :)
Everybody is impressed with my wife :)
Sounds like the same type of girls :)
I also have Ripple. But just for investment reasons ;-)
I know that some people accept donations in ZCash, Monero, Dash und Litecoin. The fees are much lower than in BTC.
Sunny Regards from Germany,
Sebastian | @naanoo
Thanks, that is useful. I thought about also having a Dash account, but not the others. Until now I have only received donations in Bitcoins and Steem though. Maybe I do not have Ethereum readers for my comic?
The situation with Bitcoin should improve, as the lightning network is about to launch. I'm awaiting way lower fees in the near future. Than BTC should be the No.1 Coin for donation, because everybody has it.
Monero is very popular among early adopters - like the folks you find here. Ethereum ... why not? The fees are moderate and most crypto-enthusiasts have it.
Sounds good with the lightning network, just read about it.
I will consider making a Monero wallet - and I am buying from my Ethereum stash so I will still make that available to people. If the Akasha network is ever going to work I will be able to get some donation there too.
I really do not have an idea about Ripple but would read on it for more info
You can start reading the comments here. There is info I didn't know :)
Btcoin price is going up day by day.It's very good news for us. Cryptocurrency is the best i think......
But it has fallen quite a lot since December.
Welcome to the world of crypto investment :-)
Hehe
Wonderful Creativity Thanks for sharing with us