Crypto

octatonic

Who trades crypto here?
What are you using?
Coinbase?
Kraken?
Something else?

WiresDreamDisasters

Binance. Swissborg.

RaymondLin

Binance, much more variety and easy to use.
Uniswaps if you want biggest gains but biggest risk.
Coins that get onto Coinbase will be "made it", so if you can find a coin that isn't on Coinbase and then eventually get on it, you would potentially make 5x or even 50x.

fastonebaz

Blockchain.  Easy and clear to use.

ThePrettyDamned

I created a binance account, saw the huge number of options and realised I knew nothing about it, so backed off. 

RaymondLin

ThePrettyDamned said:

I created a binance account, saw the huge number of options and realised I knew nothing about it, so backed off. 

It’s basically gambling and right now it’s bull market so lots of people are making money.  I made £200 from £500 then lost £200 in a week, then made £200 again and then lost £80 of that...then car needed fixing so pulled it all out to pay for it. Overall I made about £130 so not all bad.  I still have £100 in OMI which has doubled since I bought it, it was 3x at one point but this one I plan to leave it long term.

Had I left the crypto I held in Binance untouched, I would have doubled my money.  But the day after I took it all out everything dropped 30% and for about a week I was like “phew, I escaped just in time”, and the BTC went all time high, ETH went all time high, BNB went all time high, even Doge did a 3x gain!

ive seen some crypto do a 150% gain in half a day.  Regular stock market do not do a yo-yo like this, it’s a gamble.

ThePrettyDamned

RaymondLin said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

I created a binance account, saw the huge number of options and realised I knew nothing about it, so backed off. 

It’s basically gambling and right now it’s bill market so lots of people are making money.  I made £200 from £500 then lost £200 in a week, then made £200 again and then lost £80 of that...then car needed fixing so pulled it all out to pay for it. Overall I made about £130 so not all bad.  I still have £100 in OMI which has doubled since I bought it, it was 3x at one point but this one I plan to leave it long term.

Had I left the crypto I held in Binance untouched, I would have doubled my money.  But the day after I took it all out everything dropped 30% and for about a week I was like “phew, I escaped just in time”, and the BTC went all time high, ETH went all time high, BNB went all time high, even Doge did a 3x gain!

ive seen some crypto do a 150% gain in half a day.  Regular stock market do not do a yo-yo like this, it’s a gamble.

Exactly - it was updating by the second seemingly, and as it was hard to understand what tangible thing I was investing in, I decided I'd leave it alone. Maybe it'll be an enormous mistake. 

RaymondLin

ThePrettyDamned said:

RaymondLin said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

I created a binance account, saw the huge number of options and realised I knew nothing about it, so backed off. 

It’s basically gambling and right now it’s bill market so lots of people are making money.  I made £200 from £500 then lost £200 in a week, then made £200 again and then lost £80 of that...then car needed fixing so pulled it all out to pay for it. Overall I made about £130 so not all bad.  I still have £100 in OMI which has doubled since I bought it, it was 3x at one point but this one I plan to leave it long term.

Had I left the crypto I held in Binance untouched, I would have doubled my money.  But the day after I took it all out everything dropped 30% and for about a week I was like “phew, I escaped just in time”, and the BTC went all time high, ETH went all time high, BNB went all time high, even Doge did a 3x gain!

ive seen some crypto do a 150% gain in half a day.  Regular stock market do not do a yo-yo like this, it’s a gamble.

Exactly - it was updating by the second seemingly, and as it was hard to understand what tangible thing I was investing in, I decided I'd leave it alone. Maybe it'll be an enormous mistake. 

I made £200 originally and one morning I stupidly bought one crypto with 3/4 of my fund and then lost £200 in about 2min.  I felt sick....it took a week for me to recover especially with the little amount I was playing with.  Things can change fast, really fast.  People do pump and dump all the time.

WezV

I put a minimum amount on a few currencies on Binance and have just been watching what happens to familiarise myself with it.

octatonic

Cheers folks.
I’m using Kraken but find the interface annoying.

Doge is doing well though.

ToneControl

my mate has made a living trading on spread-betting (etc) on indices, stocks, FX for decades
every day he is making cash on swing trading as the markets go through patterns that he can accurately predict most of the time
he won't touch crypto, because it does not have the same kind of patterns, it is very chaotic

typically these investments are done on margins, i.e. you are borrowing cash to make a much larger trade than you have in cash. obviously, if you have £100 but are investing £1000, then if the investment value decreases by 10%, then you have lost your £100. Since crypto is so volatile, it is far more dangerous to invest in it

for normal indices, you can get a 5% margin, so with £100k in the bank you can invest £2m
Would you bet £2m on bitcoin for example? If is dropped 25% quickly (as it has), you'd lose £500k
With a private investor account, you'd lose your £100k margin if it dropped that amount
Many brokers will only let you trade in "professional accounts", which means they can also sue you for the other £400k
Very scary stuff

octatonic

Yeah I’m not doing anything like that, 
Just a few hundred quid that I wouldn’t otherwise miss.

meltedbuzzbox

been using coinbase and binance for the last year. 
I have an account on KuCoin but haven't used it in anger yet. 

wibble

Out of interest, what are people using for tax calculations?  Cointracker/koinly or other online options? 

You have to be careful because every trade, even one crypto to another, is a tax event.

RaymondLin

wibble said:

Out of interest, what are people using for tax calculations?  Cointracker/koinly or other online options? 

You have to be careful because every trade, even one crypto to another, is a tax event.

You get an annual £12,800 tax free capital gains allowance.  It’s a long way before most of us who just dabble a few hundred for fun need to worry yet.

But I am not sure how you calculate tax going from say BTC to ETH because you typically sell BTC into say USDT which is a tether (kinda of) to the US dollar but not 100%, and then into ETH.  USDT is still a crypto.  So when you go from BTC to USDT is a trade into dollar but not and USDT has its own highs and low vs GBP.  It’s not like you are selling a stock into GBP and then buy another stock.  The true number in profit or loss in GBP is only when you cash out.

any case, I have an accountant, I’ll just send her my Binance account history if needs be.

RaymondLin

Just to illustrate how volatile the crypto space is, Doge shoots up every time Elon Musk says something about it.  It’s a meme coin, it’s the poster child on the value of crypto. Where some crypto have things like NFT going for it, Doge doesn’t pretend to be anything else but a meme yet it’s shooting up because Musk made a tweet.  No one else making tweets on it seems to make any difference but Musk, it’s weird.

phil_b

Crypto currency uses an awful lot of energy and helps black market transactions. But I guess its here to stay

RaymondLin

phil_b said:

Crypto currency uses an awful lot of energy and helps black market transactions. But I guess its here to stay

The simple greed of humanity will be the fuel to keep it going.

octatonic

RaymondLin said:

Just to illustrate how volatile the crypto space is, Doge shoots up every time Elon Musk says something about it.  It’s a meme coin, it’s the poster child on the value of crypto. Where some crypto have things like NFT going for it, Doge doesn’t pretend to be anything else but a meme yet it’s shooting up because Musk made a tweet.  No one else making tweets on it seems to make any difference but Musk, it’s weird.

Doge has hit $0.30 now.

octatonic

RaymondLin said:

phil_b said:

Crypto currency uses an awful lot of energy and helps black market transactions. But I guess its here to stay

The simple greed of humanity will be the fuel to keep it going.

If all goes well, yes.

WiresDreamDisasters

You need to do some research. It's not simply "gambling" - that's total BS. There's fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and good ol' due diligence.

Avoid DOGE. It's fundamentals are poor. It has unlimited supply and no market cap. It's a troll coin that is funny at first and I did make a bit of money on it, but it's a pump and dump coin.

Look for projects you believe in. I like AUDIUS, UTRUST, REEF, MATIC, ETH, and UNISWAP.

Crypto is the future of currency, end of story.

I'm currently up about £500. Two weeks ago I lost it all. I just hodl'd through the dips and add to my positions.

Word on the street is that BTC will hit $100K this year. ETH will hit $3000 very soon. Then they will retrace and retest and then re-enter price discovery. The trick is to time it right; sell at a high, buy the dip. Dollar cost average your entries and your exits, and don't ignore profits. Take some back and store it in a tethered stable-coin like USDT or USDC.

I'm not a financial advisor.