by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | December 6, 2013 4:10 pm
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Travis, Re: Bitcoins. Thanks for TOFTT
Interesting recent article in the NY Times about Bitcoin fraud…
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/in-the-murky-world-of-bitcoin-fraud-is-quicker-than-the-law/?_r=0
I have been reading lots today on Bitcoin. I decided to open an account to check it out too. Went to MtGox.com and needed to upload id and residency docs. They said it is taking 10 days to verify because they are so busy right now. Then I looked another exchange: https://www.cryptxchange.com/. They advertised no documents needed to verify an account but when I went there it said:
“Cryptxchange is temporarily
down!
Our accounts at Chase bank have been frozen, we are in the process of migrating to a different bank alongside establishing offshore accounts in Panama. Cryptxchange should be fully functional by December 31st.”
Interesting………
Hi Travis,
Very educational as always. Thank you.
I was wondering what you thought of QTS as it appears to be an REIT focusing on data centers?
Similar business, IPO about two months ago, similar indicated yield just under 5 percent. Haven’t looked at them in any real detail yet.
Travis,
Thanks for education on Bitcoin! Since you are in a buying/selling mood what are your thoughts on the LEAPS you have with VRNG after congress passed the bill to stop frivolous patent lawsuits? Will the put a dent in Frank Curizo’s “black box” pitch?
There’s a lot of uncertainty still in that bill, which passed the House very quickly — including some pushback from inventors and small business. I don’t see it having a big impact on
Vringo right away, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Not sure about AMBCF. I brought below .08 so I have a slight profit. Near as I can figure $22 million is about 15 cents a share of cash backing or twice what I paid. As long as they don’t squander the money on trips to brazil for Carnival and the World Games, I think I’ll let it ride for awhiule. At least I’ll get bragging rights next thanksgiving for ignoring your prudent thoughts and taking a bath.
Travis, your idea of buying a couple of bitcoins sounds intriguing. How do you buy them?
Can you provide the URL to the site where you would buy them? There is so much “noise”
hitting the airwaves about bitcoins, I can imagine it could just be “ripe” for fraud.
Thanks.
Frank
I would use Coinbase. A lot of Merchants use it now.
Coinbase accepts only U.S. bank accounts and VISA cards from the U.S. to fund your coinbase account — for the time being.
Et tu Travis? Dabbling in bitcoins at maybe $10-20 each a while ago would have been understandable but now, at $1000 each?
Just trying to figure out how it works … I’d call it “pre-dabbling” 🙂
Travis, what would you say approximately should be the % of portfolio for COR or REITs overall? Like 1-5% is reasonable?
There is no “should.” Every person is different and I can’t, even if I were allowed to, give that kind of specific advice. I can say that each of the four REITs I own and mentioned above is roughly a 1% position — ranging from 0.57% to 1.5% each of my equity portfolio. I also have a direct real estate ownership fund that’s sort of REIT-like from an old retirement account that would be roughly a 3-4% position.
Travis, Where pray tell are you going to buy your BitCoins.
FYI, I will write more after I’ve been through the process of buying, selling, and perhaps actually doing something with Bitcoins to see what it’s like but for my initial foray I chose Coinbase as my “digital wallet” to use for these transactions.
Not sure that this is the best of them, but it has worked well so far — as I said, it’s early and I’ve bought a handful of coins (which have been both down 25% and up 20% in value in the few days since I bought them, reinforcing the “this is a terrible currency” feeling), but I haven’t done anything else yet. If you’d like to try Coinbase, you can do so using my referral link and they’ll give you and me both a $5 bonus — just click here if you’re interested in that.
And yes, JUST EXPERIMENTING. There are no real compelling fundamentals to this market yet, and no reason why Bitcoin couldn’t be up or down by 75% within a matter of hours, so I have sized my experiment accordingly. Be careful.
I am concerned that China and India have both shut down trading in Bitcoin. Also the IRS has notifed Bitcoin traders that they must comply with some banking rule that prevent s money laundering.I can only imagine the IRS is working day & night to comeup with another 20k pages of regs to tax Bitcoins.
Worthwhile concerns, to be sure. It’s very unlikely to be considered a currency by the IRS any time soon, in my opinion, so I’d guess that it will get taxed like a stock or other financial asset with capital gains or losses when you sell. I haven’t received any notification from the IRS and haven’t heard of any decisions made by the IRS on Bitcoin yet, but that’s my guess. I’d also wager that Bitcoin might end up being reportable if you hold it outside the US or over a certain dollar amount, like foreign bank accounts, but as far as I know it’s entirely up in the air as far as the government is concerned and people will probably be fudging together some best guess with their tax accountants for this year.
I’m part of a Bitcoin mining pool. That means we’ve built a number of “miners,” which are purpose-built computers, and by hooking up with other small-time mining outfits we are able to muster the computing power to solve enough blocks to make it worthwhile. Bitcoin’s meaning in the global economy arises from the instability of fiat currency. Currency only has meaning as a medium of exchange because….well, because we say it has. Even gold and silver only have value because we “agree” that they have value. You can’t eat them, drink them or load your gun with them. Just so with the dollar, or any other fiat currency. It has value because we collectively agree that it does. So it is with Bitcoin. If we agree that it has value, it does. And unlike the US dollar, when we get to the end of the Bitcoin algorythm, the Fed will not be able to just go ahead and print more. It’s a deflationary currency, which is what makes it so attractive to users and investors. Of course there is a volatility factor, which at this writing (1/15/14) has settled in the neighborhood of USD 815-850. But my observation is that as BTC becomes a viable currency (and yes, there are plenty of “legit” transactions in BTC), the volatility will settle, and BTC will trade like any other FOREX currency.
hey Everyone,
Back in 2013 when I was a recipient of Mike Robinsons NOVA X report I read at length the story of BITCOIN, ITS CREATION, ITS PURPOSE ITS METHODOLOGY, ITS THEORUM REGARDING BLOCK CHAIN AND HOW ONE STORES BITCOIN ON A WALLET.
WELL NEEDLESS TO SAY I DIDNT LISTEN. AND IN HINDSIGHT ALL THINGS 20/20, ID BE FILTHY IN IT. JUST FILTHY WITH MONEY. IT IS 4 YEARS LATER AND EVERY TIME I SEE BITCOINS PRICE(brrrruckagh)sorry, I just puked a little. IN THE WORDS OF CHARLIE BROWN…AAAARRRRGH! No offense to you Travis, my good man, but Mr. Robinson nailed it then. I have a funny feeling hes on to something again. Honestly, I don’t see BITCOIN OR ETHEREUM OR OTHER C-COINS GOING AWAY SOON.
Tis my humble opinion, albeit tainted with regret.
Interesting! How did the bitcoin you bought do so far?
Those first Bitcoins I bought are now up about 7,000%. I bought steadily for that first year or so, and then sold the majority of them along the way as the returns got ludicrous, so my crypto returns are less than that overall, but I still have a position. Ethereum I bought a little later in mid-2014, but it has been a faster mover from those levels so that position is up about 9,000%. Again, have sold quite a bit along the way as well. Cryptocurrencies are currently about 3% of my portfolio, similar to the physical gold I own.