Topic: 8th Alt coin thread. Or what to do now that asics are all over the place. - page 70. (Read 81547 times)

1.  WTC was #54 by market cap on July 3/4/5, today it is #44 by market cap.  What happened?

Did they get awarded a patent?  No.

Did GlaxoSmithKline announce a real partnership or business deal?  No.

On July 5, WTC had approximately 32,000,000 coins in "circulation" and the price was bouncing around $7.00 - $7.20.  Today, the price has been around $6.90.  (10,000,000 of the 32,000,000 were in one single wallet address -- I'm going to guess Mo' Bling controlled that fat wallet.)

How, then, could WTC climb 10 spots to #44?

9,000,000 coins were mysteriously added to WTC's "circulation" in a matter of hours a few days ago.

I'm not the only one who noticed:

https://cryptovest.com/news/waltonchain-wtc-restructures-funds-millions-of-coins-moved-to-new-wallets/

WTC is capped at 70,000,000 coins.  Out of nowhere, 1/8 of the total supply gets released into "circulation"

32,000,000 x 7.2 = $230,000,000 market cap
41,000,000 x 6.9 = $282,000,000 market cap

And that is how you go from #54 to #44.  I cannot find even one single critical article about this.

I asked my Magic 8 Ball about this odd behavior and this message floated up through the inky blue haze:  HERE COMES THE PUMP

2.  Do an internet search on "bitcointalk.org gerymakgyaer" (I think this idiot is trying to spell Jerry McGuire, as in "show me the money") or start here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2127069.msg42051254#msg42051254

This is a *big* deal.  

Please go look at the last posts from this account.  No one is claiming the account has been hacked or stolen.  Go through about three full pages of prior posts from this one, *single* account.

Notice:

-Huge number of ICO announcements from this account

-Wallet *releases* for several different projects from this account

-Project update announcements across multiple different projects from this *one* single account

-"Road Shows" and City meet-ups *exactly* like Master Li Xiaolai talks about in PasteBin -- from this account

- Where are the articles about partnerships coming from?  medium.com/@[CHINESE_PONZI_COIN_PROJECT]  Pay attention to that medium.com/ hub as it appears over and over.

Please search for this account and go through the last posts so that you can see with your own eyes what I am talking about.

I was going to pick a few of the coin projects and tear them apart, but I lost the appetite.  But do watch for the ANN regarding the "Aviation Supply Chain" coin.

How is this possible *unless* all of these projects are connected in some way?

As I went through page after page, I recalled a scene in The Big Short about Steve Eisman.  The words that I recalled were this:  "Short everything that guy has touched."

Whoever is behind this account, I am betting 95% of these ICOs and new coins are:  Ebola-laden plutonium.  At least 95%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25EUhZGBws

[smarmy guy talking about CDOs = Jerry McGuire account;  Angry Steve Carrell = Me]  That's exactly how I feel today.  I cannot believe what I am seeing.

At the 5:56 mark comes the quote I am talking about.  Short everything this guy has touched.

For a while, I found it funny that the WaltonCoin C team of shillers was covering Bitcointalk, while their B shill team covered Reddit, and their A paid-for shill team probably sits on WeChat and medium.com and whatever else is big in Asian social media all day long.

This isn't funny anymore.  

This fraud is so widespread that when it blows up, and it will, it will drag down good coins as well.  At least in the short term.

****
I can't prove this.  But I think in about 6 years we will all read about how this happened.  Everyone was wondering why the Bitcoin MemPool climbed so high a day or so ago.  I think Asian Whales stepped into the market in a coordinated way to stabilize everything and "paint the tape" green.  This Li Xiaolai recording went viral last week in Asia.  It's a big deal over there.  The best way to keep the Ponzi going would be to support the market until the uproar over Li Xialoai's comments dies down.

Crazy tin foil hat stuff you say?

Read Galbraith's "The Great Crash of 1929," only mentally substitute in "Whales" every time you see the phrase "pool operators" in that book.  Did you know that from 1927 to 1929 the small guy *assumed* that the stock market was rigged and manipulated by the big "pool operators" -- but played along anyway?  Do you want to know why?  You will have to read the book.  It is like a ghostly echo from the past of what is going on right now over in Asia.

buying trading holding =  mining hodling

What  makes mining attractive is:

 power cost/coin value

even now in hard times  with tighter margins  it still is a certain profit.

an example 45th at a 50/50 power cost/ coin value

means  about 400 usd a month  after power 200 cost 200 profit  or  sell 300 in coin hodl 100

so 200 power cost 100 profit now 100 held.

this is my power cost  is king model  of course it is a small kingdom.

made true by fully paid off gear and the solar array  which always cost me 50/50

45 th is 5 kwatts or 120 kwatts a day at 18 cents nj summer cost 21.60 x 30 = 648

so no home mining  as 400 usd against 648 = -248

vs +200  

my power issues = size of the array I am allowed 4500 kwatts

but it is certain $$

If the array was bigger I have tons of gear sitting .  So I wait for more power.


I have 4 idle s9's
I have 10 idle L3's  about 13kwatts  or 9400 kwatts a month

the s9's would earn 500
the l3's would earn 550

that is 1050   at 50 50 it would be 525 for me.  but the large solar is not ready

for me to earn 525 at a hosting place  I need  5.6 cents a kwatt.  the solar deal is very good when profit is low.

 I am just waiting for power for the gear.

all the idle gear is  paid for .

To me trading is not what I do or will do it is certainly uncertain.

i know alt coins can go to shit in no time.  but when you're making $10 per card per day, I'll mine shitcoin llc @ those numbers.   no one is making me hold these coins long term.  I'm free to flip them to whatever shit coin or btc if i please. 

phil says the the name of the game is cheap power.  I think the name of the game is also niche coins.  maybe he is right. maybe i am right.  maybe we are both wrong. wtf knows.

Haha, in the Chinese  text, Li directly says:
 NEO也同样是个傻X项目，达鸿飞手里没有几个币。  NEO again like the others is a tw..t (fk...n) project , Da Hongfei (the founder)  doesn't have a penny in his hands.


Funny thing is, Li Xiaolai's name in Chinese characters can jokingly read as:  Li  laugh  is coming   unfortunately it looks like no laughing  at all

Trading or buying and holding is very different from mining and holding.

I have mined and held about 15 coins  but every one was done in the mine 3x   sell 2x and hold 1x method.

ie spend  1000usd  to mine 3000 usd worth of a shit coin

then sell 2000 usd worth holding the 1000 I usually list that 1000 worth  at 6000 .

this means if coin tanks and  zeros out I am up 1000
if the coin takes off I am up 7000.

you can not do this with trading or buying coins.

and at the moment mining 1000 in power no longer gets 3000 in coin.

I need to be relaxed as the game is in turmoil at the moment.

I find your post to be both alarming and disturbing.

Are you saying that all Chinese backed coins are ponzi schemes? Not that i've invested in many of these coins, but i do have NEO which is dubbed as "China's Ethereum" in my portfolio. Maybe now is indeed a good time to look for an exit opportunity.

gave you 9 merits.

and here is what the whale is talking about

top 100   of 1633 coins

https://coinmarketcap.com/


1   Bitcoin Bitcoin   $105,381,084,020   $6,146.13   $3,609,980,000   17,145,925 BTC   -3.83%    sparkline   
2   Ethereum Ethereum   $42,659,385,384   $423.83   $1,445,600,000   100,652,589 ETH   -4.53%    sparkline   
3   XRP XRP   $16,816,694,009   $0.428315   $172,630,000   39,262,444,717 XRP *   -4.68%    sparkline   
4   Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin Cash   $11,561,246,322   $670.84   $320,276,000   17,234,088 BCH   -4.85%    sparkline   
5   EOS EOS   $5,993,761,456   $6.69   $571,115,000   896,149,492 EOS *   -6.11%    sparkline   
6   Litecoin Litecoin   $4,343,541,221   $75.70   $258,428,000   57,376,608 LTC   -3.17%    sparkline   
7   Stellar Stellar   $3,411,406,932   $0.181786   $34,523,000   18,766,059,717 XLM *   -4.37%    sparkline   
8   Cardano Cardano   $3,202,356,190   $0.123514   $35,459,900   25,927,070,538 ADA *   -5.69%    sparkline   
9   Tether Tether   $2,722,760,545   $1.01   $2,311,350,000   2,707,140,346 USDT *   0.38%    sparkline   
10   IOTA IOTA   $2,604,489,363   $0.937025   $35,523,600   2,779,530,283 MIOTA *   -5.76%    sparkline   
11   TRON TRON   $2,066,403,976   $0.031429   $157,218,000   65,748,111,645 TRX *   -6.00%    sparkline   
12   NEO NEO   $2,006,283,500   $30.87   $104,825,000   65,000,000 NEO *   -8.31%    sparkline   
13   Monero Monero   $1,919,807,915   $118.37   $27,406,500   16,219,251 XMR   -4.97%    sparkline   
14   Dash Dash   $1,707,675,004   $208.48   $236,842,000   8,191,113 DASH   -4.14%    sparkline   
15   Ethereum Classic Ethereum Classic   $1,639,034,183   $15.92   $201,529,000   102,981,577 ETC   -2.63%    sparkline   
16   NEM NEM   $1,386,549,000   $0.154061   $8,248,870   8,999,999,999 XEM *   -7.94%    sparkline   
17   Binance Coin Binance Coin   $1,357,684,367   $11.91   $24,628,200   114,041,290 BNB *   -6.20%    sparkline   
18   VeChain VeChain   $1,146,334,262   $2.07   $39,633,600   554,545,494 VEN *   -6.81%    sparkline   
19   Tezos Tezos   $1,146,009,851   $1.89   $5,198,960   607,489,041 XTZ *   -9.65%    sparkline   
20   OmiseGO OmiseGO   $919,562,430   $6.56   $24,542,000   140,245,398 OMG *   -4.45%    sparkline   
21   Qtum Qtum   $666,853,805   $7.52   $101,174,000   88,664,516 QTUM *   -4.69%    sparkline   
22   Zcash Zcash   $662,153,702   $152.57   $41,147,300   4,340,056 ZEC   -4.29%    sparkline   
23   Lisk Lisk   $518,992,517   $4.81   $6,964,140   107,916,152 LSK *   -6.14%    sparkline   
24   Bitcoin Gold Bitcoin Gold   $496,673,128   $29.01   $8,515,830   17,119,399 BTG   6.67%    sparkline   
25   Bytecoin Bytecoin   $496,504,299   $0.002700   $5,137,240   183,890,481,254 BCN   -5.00%    sparkline   
26   ICON ICON   $495,005,526   $1.28   $28,896,000   387,431,340 ICX *   -11.06%    sparkline   
27   Ontology Ontology   $482,417,793   $3.19   $55,188,200   151,292,175 ONT *   -8.82%    sparkline   
28   Zilliqa Zilliqa   $478,946,363   $0.063218   $18,701,400   7,576,143,444 ZIL *   -7.96%    sparkline   
29   Decred Decred   $430,675,118   $56.12   $2,712,760   7,673,553 DCR   -5.76%    sparkline   
30   0x 0x   $403,239,285   $0.754451   $8,218,000   534,480,417 ZRX *   -10.03%    sparkline   
31   BitShares BitShares   $397,968,933   $0.150699   $12,064,500   2,640,820,000 BTS *   -4.86%    sparkline   
32   DigiByte DigiByte   $396,237,070   $0.037680   $6,464,450   10,515,789,997 DGB   -3.63%    sparkline   
33   Aeternity Aeternity   $381,235,474   $1.64   $4,768,020   233,020,472 AE *   -6.15%    sparkline   
34   Maker Maker   $364,459,445   $545.41   $311,568   668,228 MKR *   -4.24%    sparkline   
35   Siacoin Siacoin   $353,191,161   $0.009915   $8,288,500   35,623,662,789 SC   -6.77%    sparkline   
36   Steem Steem   $336,834,331   $1.27   $2,105,330   266,190,132 STEEM *   -3.33%    sparkline   
37   Augur Augur   $330,657,800   $30.06   $3,137,970   11,000,000 REP *   -5.73%    sparkline   
38   Verge Verge   $316,825,598   $0.021046   $3,468,350   15,054,315,539 XVG   -5.16%    sparkline   
39   Nano Nano   $301,422,287   $2.26   $4,522,070   133,248,289 NANO *   -5.64%    sparkline   
40   Bytom Bytom   $298,826,989   $0.298082   $53,483,100   1,002,499,275 BTM *   -3.69%    sparkline   
41   Bitcoin Diamond Bitcoin Diamond   $296,211,082   $1.93   $3,724,540   153,756,875 BCD   -8.22%    sparkline   
42   KuCoin Shares KuCoin Shares   $292,584,332   $3.22   $2,354,140   90,730,576 KCS *   -4.39%    sparkline   
43   Pundi X Pundi X   $267,129,968   $0.003069   $6,134,750   87,048,745,609 NPXS *   -10.30%    sparkline   
44   Dogecoin Dogecoin   $264,222,236   $0.002293   $4,241,540   115,253,556,393 DOGE   -4.22%    sparkline   
45   Basic Attention Token Basic Attenti...   $263,631,000   $0.263631   $4,727,580   1,000,000,000 BAT *   -0.88%    sparkline   
46   Waves Waves   $259,126,000   $2.59   $11,431,300   100,000,000 WAVES *   -4.83%    sparkline   
47   Waltonchain Waltonchain   $258,242,977   $6.43   $9,795,980   40,144,099 WTC *   -8.82%    sparkline   
48   Golem Golem   $235,068,327   $0.280096   $2,687,820   839,242,000 GNT *   -6.48%    sparkline   
49   RChain RChain   $229,271,451   $0.635500   $323,813   360,773,330 RHOC *   -1.82%    sparkline   
50   Stratis Stratis   $223,925,872   $2.26   $1,976,160   98,931,658 STRAT *   -5.67%    sparkline   
51   Status Status   $219,787,474   $0.063331   $9,071,190   3,470,483,788 SNT *   -8.35%    sparkline   
52   Populous Populous   $219,458,672   $5.93   $4,982,930   37,004,027 PPT *   -5.16%    sparkline   
53   Wanchain Wanchain   $201,155,789   $1.89   $2,564,040   106,152,493 WAN *   -10.32%    sparkline   
54   Hshare Hshare   $196,844,880   $4.55   $23,398,000   43,223,188 HSR   -7.49%    sparkline   
55   Mixin Mixin   $185,933,958   $423.79   $299,074   438,746 XIN *   -7.16%    sparkline   
56   DigixDAO DigixDAO   $178,601,400   $89.30   $439,839   2,000,000 DGD *   -3.68%    sparkline   
57   Bitcoin Private Bitcoin Private   $169,425,112   $8.27   $222,100   20,486,291 BTCP   -10.68%    sparkline   
58   Mithril Mithril   $165,089,148   $0.488697   $31,642,100   337,814,941 MITH *   -2.49%    sparkline   
59   IOST IOST   $164,208,240   $0.019549   $11,596,900   8,400,000,000 IOST *   -4.08%    sparkline   
60   Komodo Komodo   $156,055,990   $1.50   $997,294   104,254,872 KMD   1.17%    sparkline   
61   Aion Aion   $152,261,706   $0.871196   $3,766,550   174,773,193 AION *   -6.53%    sparkline   
62   Huobi Token Huobi Token   $150,646,103   $3.01   $31,724,700   50,000,200 HT *   -5.59%    sparkline   
63   MaidSafeCoin MaidSafeCoin   $149,328,719   $0.329970   $1,844,480   452,552,412 MAID *   -3.09%    sparkline   
64   GXChain GXChain   $146,800,200   $2.45   $9,558,530   60,000,000 GXS *   -1.59%    sparkline   
65   Ardor Ardor   $144,912,869   $0.145058   $918,258   998,999,495 ARDR *   -5.85%    sparkline   
66   Loopring Loopring   $143,986,460   $0.251692   $9,170,510   572,074,043 LRC *   -4.74%    sparkline   
67   Nebulas Nebulas   $141,004,500   $3.10   $26,932,400   45,500,000 NAS *   -10.26%    sparkline   
68   aelf aelf   $136,828,750   $0.547315   $11,653,000   250,000,000 ELF *   -4.61%    sparkline   
69   Ark Ark   $123,724,555   $1.19   $1,134,710   103,800,122 ARK *   -7.37%    sparkline   
70   MonaCoin MonaCoin   $122,599,602   $2.02   $375,766   60,809,675 MONA   -4.39%    sparkline   
71   ReddCoin ReddCoin   $116,522,314   $0.004045   $1,273,850   28,808,713,174 RDD *   -4.79%    sparkline   
72   FunFair FunFair   $116,485,184   $0.023247   $1,926,170   5,010,848,189 FUN *   -6.45%    sparkline   
73   Kyber Network Kyber Network   $112,401,993   $0.837991   $4,391,360   134,132,697 KNC *   -2.75%    sparkline   
74   Emercoin Emercoin   $108,989,045   $2.60   $1,889,190   41,993,483 EMC   -7.55%    sparkline   
75   Loom Network Loom Network   $107,425,798   $0.177815   $2,474,470   604,143,619 LOOM *   -8.82%    sparkline   
76   Dentacoin Dentacoin   $107,359,582   $0.000330   $48,797   325,226,613,094 DCN *   -5.02%    sparkline   
77   MCO MCO   $106,016,249   $6.71   $12,310,600   15,793,831 MCO *   -10.31%    sparkline   
78   Cryptonex Cryptonex   $103,908,855   $2.29   $1,449,100   45,369,300 CNX   -6.65%    sparkline   
79   WAX WAX   $103,047,154   $0.110702   $1,223,840   930,851,783 WAX *   -9.44%    sparkline   
80   Bancor Bancor   $102,744,288   $2.01   $6,095,160   51,080,221 BNT *   -3.82%    sparkline   
81   Gas Gas   $100,854,612   $9.96   $2,775,380   10,128,375 GAS *   -6.88%    sparkline   
82   MOAC MOAC   $100,092,834   $2.79   $127,538   35,897,055 MOAC *   0.30%    sparkline   
83   Nuls Nuls   $99,088,800   $2.48   $5,593,770   40,000,000 NULS *   1.66%    sparkline   
84   Veritaseum Veritaseum   $98,748,383   $48.49   $2,262,800   2,036,645 VERI *   -5.72%    sparkline   
85   Dropil Dropil   $98,740,125   $0.004929   $285,639   20,030,820,036 DROP *   -6.55%    sparkline   
86   Kin Kin   $98,245,805   $0.000130   $566,827   756,097,560,976 KIN *   -1.67%    sparkline   
87   PIVX PIVX   $97,610,162   $1.72   $1,170,060   56,650,298 PIVX *   -2.13%    sparkline   
88   Power Ledger Power Ledger   $96,884,373   $0.259236   $9,128,030   373,730,395 POWR *   -10.31%    sparkline   
89   Decentraland Decentraland   $96,736,410   $0.092118   $6,714,200   1,050,141,509 MANA *   -3.32%    sparkline   
90   CyberMiles CyberMiles   $95,803,327   $0.138352   $7,984,520   692,460,729 CMT *   -4.38%    sparkline   
91   Ethos Ethos   $95,596,907   $1.24   $2,053,960   77,297,497 ETHOS *   -11.40%    sparkline   
92   QASH QASH   $91,479,850   $0.261371   $2,142,330   350,000,000 QASH *   -3.81%    sparkline   
93   Paypex Paypex   $90,118,635   $1.32   $55,224   68,428,768 PAYX *   -4.83%    sparkline   
94   Polymath Polymath   $88,492,857   $0.320139   $1,168,100   276,420,107 POLY *   -8.28%    sparkline   
95   Factom Factom   $86,764,967   $9.92   $107,187   8,745,102 FCT *   -6.72%    sparkline   
96   ZenCash ZenCash   $86,299,479   $20.25   $706,000   4,261,850 ZEN   -8.18%    sparkline   
97   Cortex Cortex   $85,083,914   $0.568012   $22,600,400   149,792,458 CTXC *   -3.32%    sparkline   
98   ZCoin ZCoin   $83,822,203   $16.20   $1,130,550   5,174,274 XZC   -5.30%    sparkline   
99   Noah Coin Noah Coin   $83,072,523   $0.002541   $581,727   32,687,957,978 NOAH *   -4.89%    sparkline   
100   Elastos Elastos   $82,017,674   $15.62   $6,411,040   5,252,493 ELA   -9.09%    sparkline   
Next 100 → View All
* Not Mineable
Total Market Cap: $242,311,694,847
Last updated: Jul 12, 2018 11:37 PM UTC

© 2018 CoinMarketCap


these are mostly all fluff.

I can find Chinese transcripts on PasteBin, but I don't read Chinese.  I have not found the audio file and I have not found the complete English translation transcript.  Like I mentioned, I am looking.

But any search of Li Xiaolai's "foul mouthed" recording will start pulling up the same articles and YouTube postings that I came across.

Sites are selectively posting the highlights, which I am working off of.

Here is one of the sources, I wrote to the author and asked her if a complete English transcript is available anywhere:

https://technode.com/2018/07/06/li-xiaolai-recording/

Here is the audio recording (I think, but of course the spoken language is Chinese)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywUe9ORqi1g

Here is a Chinese speaker offering her English translations from parts of the recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSXJaPnDDi0

Here is a PasteBin Chinese transcript, you can use Google Translate but the result is pretty rough:

https://pastebin.com/0brkws4q

^source please R0mi if you have the original
Li Xiaolai's recording much in the news of late http://news.8btc.com/chinese-bitcoin-superrich-li-xiaolais-foul-words-roil-crypto-in-china

Sometimes you happen to be thinking about shrimp, or a plate, or a plate of shrimp and then a Red Lobster commercial flashes up on your TV.  "Synchronicity" is the quaint term for this phenomenon.

A week ago, as I was first learning about a Chinese Ponzi Coin (whose name must not be mentioned), there was another interesting and related development on the opposite side of the world that I just learned about because, well, I have a day job so I have catch up on news when I have spare time.

Li Xiaolai is a Grand Chinese Crypto Whale.  He has opened exchanges, he has backed wildly profitable coin projects, and he is a Billionaire a few times over as measured in USD.  He knows a thing or two because he has seen a thing or two when it comes to Chinese exchanges and Chinese coin projects.  Last week, a recording came to light of a conversation Li Xiaolai had in private some months ago.  I had never heard of this guy, but start searching for his name and he is everywhere.  He is Mr. Big in the Chinese Crypto space.

There are three different camps of opinion regarding the recording:

a. It is real, but he's just complaining because he missed out on some really profitable coin launches and he is griping and smacktalking out of spite, envy, and ego.

b. It is fake, sensationalist bullshit.

c. It is real, and he is explaining in private how he sees the *entire* Chinese Ponzi Coin ecosystem -- Li did not realize he was being recorded and he was just telling it like it is.

I think the recording is a mixture of c. and a.  Some of it is defintely smacktalk about specific individuals he doesn't like, for whatever reason.  But I think the general statements about the Asian Crypto space, and what I am going to call Chinese Ponzi Coins from this day forward, are real unvarnished admissions.

I have not yet been able to find a completely translated English transcript but I am looking.  If I find one, I will edit this post and add the link.  The Google AutoTranslation sucks.  That left me comparing several different sites which translated some of the highlights.  This is my loose paraphrasing of what several sites reported and while this is 'loose' paraphrasing, I think I am capturing the gist.  If you read this and you are fluent in Chinese, perhaps you can translate and post some of the other sections from the recording in your comments?

Here is Li Xiaolai's wisdom as it pertains to Chinese Ponzi Coins:

'Chinese coin projects are not about value investing.  If you think this has anything to do with value investing, you are an idiot.'

[Think about that admission for a moment.  What Li Xiaolai is telling you is that every white paper you've never bothered to look at for every Chinese backed coin project out there is beyond worthless because these are not even  'real' projects with real business plans - none of them are.]

'I had a key insight early on.   These blockchain coin projects are not about technology, they are about eyes and hearts and building large communities of people who believe in you.  The project may be trash, the technology can be really bad, but if you can get enough people to believe in your project you can make money anyways and continue to cheat them.'

'You should start a coin project with a celebrity that will attract people.  The most important thing is to build up the community of true believers because nothing else matters.'

'If you can get enough douchebags to follow you, you will be victorious.'

By the way, "air coins" when you see that -- I think should have been translated as:  SuperStupidShitCoins.

Li Xiaolai goes on to describe how whales like himself harvest the life savings from all the "leeks," or ordinary little people who are stupid enough to fall for these Chinese Ponzi Coins.  He doesn't feel sorry for fleecing leeks, it is just a part of life.  In this regard, Li Xiaolai mirrors P.T. Barnum's outlook on people: it is what it is, why not make money on the foolishness and stupidity of other people?

Now, I ask you:  are you a "leek," or are you a whale?

Here is the easy answer.  If you are Net Jetting around the globe on a monthly basis, then you may be a whale; if you are not, then you are definitely a "leek," even if you hate admitting that to yourself.  It sucks, right?  Well, man up and admit it.

What is "value investing"?  

Warren Buffet has been talking about that topic for 50+ years up in Omaha - you can find Berkshire Hathaway's annual report/letter for each year pretty easily and download and read it.  It means something like taking a $1 of your hard earned cash and buying one share of a real company, with real management, that sells a real product or service where you can actually *audit* how much money people are paying for the product or service.  I emphasize that word "audit" for a reason.  Finding these companies which have a leg up on everyone else involves a lot of work -- a lot more work than skimming a 25 page "white paper" that is 80% copied and pasted from prior "white papers" for different coins.

"In the short run the stock market is a popularity contest, but in the long run it is a weighing mechanism."  
  - Warren Buffet

The current ***MASSIVE*** Chinese Ponzi Coin ecosystem is entirely based on winning today's popularity contest.  Social media, relentless shilling, fake airdrops, paid for puff PR articles, paid for sponsorships, controlling specific social media sites -- that's what all of these projects are about.  PERIOD.  

The Chinese Ponzi Coin whose name must not be mentioned is just one example out of hundreds more.  The long term weighing mechanism does not matter to people like Li Xiaolai because he will take off in his private jet to some beautiful island that he owns off the coast of Australia when this blows up.

Over the past six months, one cockroach after another has come crawling out into the Crypto kitchen and just stared intently up at me, refusing to budge or scurry away when I flipped on the light.  First one, then another, then another... and I am finally realizing the whole damn kitchen is infested on a scale I had never even imagined.

You think you are savvy enough to know that this market is manipulated, right?

That describes you, doesn't it?

I guarantee you, you don't understand how deeply and truly manipulated this market, especially all of these Chinese Ponzi Coins, has become.  You don't.  And you know what?

I'm a leek, you are a leek, and it's Okay.  Time to admit it and start acting rationally.

1.  There will be a "Black Monday" event that takes down the universe of these Chinese Ponzi Coins.

2.  The day that happens, no matter how hard you pound on your keyboard, you won't be able to access your exchange account because the web traffic will crash the exchanges.

"And you will KNOW what the word PANIC means ON THAT DAY!"  [Said in my best Samuel Jackson voice].

3.  A day later, two days later, when (if) you are able to finally access your account, that Bullshittium Chinese Ponzi Coin you purchased based on a tip at $2 and then gleefully watched soar to $41, if you are able to sell it, you will be lucky if you can sell it for 0.40 cents.  And if you were working on 3x leverage and credit... Uh-oh.

4.  In between today and that event, some of you will truthfully make 10x, 100x, even 1,000x trades on some of these coins.  I don't doubt that.  But the music will stop, it always does.

Do yourself a favor in the meantime.  If you get interested in a coin, take the 10 minutes to download the white paper and glance at who, allegedly, is on the team.  If it involves anyone who has some connection to some prior Chinese Ponzi Coin, no matter how successul the prior pump and dump operation was, no matter if you made some good bank on that prior Chinese Ponzi Coin, that actually is not a good thing.  You should treat that so-called project as if it were Ebola-laden plutonium.

If you are trading and speculating on these Chinese Ponzi Coins, you are playing what I believe to currently be:  The World's most dangerous financial game.

PS.  To those who wish to reply "FUD!" or "I made 1,000x on this coin!" -- this is my standing response:

Fine, I believe you.  Take your life's savings and continue trading and speculating on these Chinese Ponzi Coins.  When you have made enough money so that you are able to retire to Bermuda and buy a lovely house overlooking the emerald-blue sea, send me a post card telling me what an idiot I was.

PSS.  Go to NetFlix, watch "The China Hustle".

You are looking at retail prices.  Companies buying these chips en mass from Xilinx get a very steep discount.  I mean other companies are making boards with these and I guarantee they aren't spending 50k on a chip:  Senseless on the forum custom made a board with these chips, notice the price?  https://fpga.land/collections/vcu1525/products/vcu1525-blockchain-edition-with-mods-no-ram?variant=10231717363827    $3500.  Currently the dev board is selling for $6500 on avnet.

I mean FPGAs aren't a threat in the sense that they obviously aren't readily available to the average consumer who hasn't done their homework and still difficult to buy if you know.  We aren't going to see FPGAs rival GPUs in quantity but a little goes a long way with these.

238 FPGAs going to town:  https://bsod.pw/?address=XM9P9FrE4k7kmXMmkWnp9miqVo5jyy9vyF 

I haven't used it since version 0.5.11 at the beginning of December but back then it was feature filled but still a little rough around the edges.  For example there is a paper trader mode where it would apply your strategy to an exchange but not execute the actual trades.  It would then show you your gains and losses had you been trading for real.  But at that time if you restarted or shut down the server, you would lose all of that data. I was running it on my windows mining rig so it wasn't that feasible but I know they were working on fixing that and judging by their changelog this is very actively developed.

I will say though that while this is billed as basic trading bot it does require financial knowledge and the ability to understand charts (all of the indicators, etc).  It comes loaded with a bunch of strategies but you really have to understand statistical terms to really know how to tweak them or even understand what they are.  There is support for pretty much every exchange and trading pair, which is actually overwhelming.  Binance alone has 370 trading pairs, so take that and add 50+ exchanges with the same amount.  You have to know what pairs trade heavily on what exchange, etc.  (at least when I used it) each trading pair had to be selected one at a time, along with a strategy applied to it.  There was no way to mass select pairs and strategies, which i dont know if this would be feasible to begin with.

Support for the bot is good and documentation is decent but it is kind of like reading a manual for a racecar;  It will tell you what all of the parts do and how to put them on, it won't tell you what tires are the best or the best settings for the engine or the best track to race your car at.  They however have a forum for this info:  https://forum.gekko.wizb.it/ 

TL;DR this isn't a magic money making machine but if you invest some time and effort and know what you are doing, it could be

Oftentimes the devkit for an FPGA will be less expensive than the actual FPGA. A cursory search of the VCU1525 on the Xilinx website says it uses the XCVU9P-L2FSGD2104E Virtex UltraScale+ FPGA which has a single unit price of $47000US at DigiKey, Avnet, etc. Yes, that's $47k for just the IC...

So, I'm not thinking the FPGA threat is all that serious and do very much think that Xilinx will radically increase the price of the devkit if they sell even a few more than predicted, especially outside of the usual channels; customers contemplating the use of such an expensive IC will expect - and get - a lot of handholding from Xilinx.

Hey nsummy, i'm particularly interested in the Gekko trading bot you linked. Nice find!

I'm just starting to install and reading more on it's features but it seems to be a legitimate bot that is safe to use (basing on the fact that the entire code base is available on Github). Do you have any personal experience on this you could share, like have you made a profit using pre-defined "strategies" in this bot?

The issue with the FPGAs are that the ones discussed are expensive development kits that are designed for giant companies to use for development and evaluation.  They aren't mass produced and meant for general public consumption, and are priced accordingly.  Mining is not driving them up in price. Also anything that is meant to go into data center is going to be much more expensive than consumer products.  I might end up eating my words but personally I think anyone buying a VCU1525 for mining is going to be in for a rude awakening and a lighter wallet.

As far as render rental, it will be interesting to see how this ends up, but ultimately I don't think it will be that profitable.  Kind of like SIA, its a day late and a dollar short;  AWS, Google Compute, and Azure already offer this service.  It will be a race to the bottom to offer lower prices then them.

I see this pretty much as the problem with FPGA's  the  price has risen from 4k to 6k which is like the S9 jumping up in price from 900 Jan 2017 to 1500 Sept 2017 to 3000 in dec 2017 and then down to 440 with a coupon today.

FPGA production has never been like GPU production.  1 fpga for 100's of gpu's  maybe for 1000's

At the moment

 raven with x16r
 BTG   with ebwf and 144,5 algo
 BIS   

are all asic free in theory so they would be good for FPGA  but there are not a lot of coins without asic interest.

Which means FPGA  can be attacked by asics very easily.

Hopefully render rental / render pow takes off for gpus  as it is far more promising for gpus to do this.

If there is no mining, the FPGA will be flooded into the market. Compared to mining, specific FPGA has smaller usage.

I have been thinking about why traffic is heading downwards on my favorite Bitcointalk threads and I have a theory.  As GPU mining gets wiped out in this cycle, there is less and less to talk about with regard to mining programs, settings, issues.  And there is only so much to be said as far as "I hate ASICs/I like ASICs."

I think miners are spending more of their time and energy trading and, as a consequence, disappearing into Telegram, Discord, and Slack channels.

If you haven't watched the movie "Wolf of Wall Street," it's worth watching.  If you were going to set up a boiler room operation today for crypto currencies, let's say somewhere in Asia, how would you do it?  You would not be reaching out and making individual phone calls today.  I think you would hire people to sit in a room and make positive statements all day long on social media about the coins you were trying to promote.  They would just sit and type away.  Log in, log out, log in under a different identity, log out, create a new account, log in, log out.  Each person monitoring so many threads and different sites relating to a number of assigned coins.

A lot of cryptocoins, certainly the majority, are essentially "penny stocks" all gussied up with new hot catch phrases.  When the air goes out of a penny stock, it often goes out in a single day and it never comes back.

I found it interesting that, over the past few days, when I read every prior post of certain individuals, their entire history seemed to consist of nothing but positive comments for a collection of 6 to 12 different coin projects.  All positive, all pretty much the same the content.  But not just for one coin, more like for an account of different coins that they had been assigned to.  And it's not just the haiku bot at work.  This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but I think it has been growing.  And I think more people are embracing this and making no apologies for it.

If you are spending much more of your time trading, I would be careful.

Sometimes doing nothing can be the best option.

I agree with everything except for FPGAs not having any other use or resale value. If the proper software/bitstreams either exists or can be made, then you can use FPGAs for all sorts of useful things. The resale market is going to be much smaller, but they will still be of interest to people doing specialized work.

As for GPUs, I really hope either rendering or some type of protein folding research becomes a worthy option for GPUs since they're really good at it (at least the high end models).