It’s not an investment, it’s a punt

Agreed. With currency speculation there is a least some logic as to why the pound goes up or down whether you agree with that is another matter.

Bitcoin seems to have a life of its own it is also not protected some of these exchanges have been robbed or went bust and you lose the lot.

The bit I don't get is how easy is it to cash in?

The other thing is people complain that the banks and the governments manipulate the standard currencies yet according to The FT the majority of Bitcoins are owned by less than 10 entities in other words a cartel.

Like You say Tom a punt .

Edited by Badger11 (07 Jan 2021 10.58am)

Yep, everyone listen to Badger.

When I do cash out I'll tell you how I did.

Sounds very sensible.

I would agree that people shouldn't risk money they can't afford to lose.

I only put in 12 hundred myself...The price of a flagship phone.....hardly going to make or break me.

Bitcoin and a bit over a week ago....the verification process involves photos and such and took me a while.

I've been looking at other coins but you really need to know what you're getting into with them and it's a learning curve.

With Bitcoin you have charts going back around ten years to look at and so you get a handle on how stable or not it's been in recent years.

Mate, not trying to put a dampener on things, but you do know you have bought at the highest ever price right?

That said, no one has any idea what they will do over the next few months.

My advice would be to stay away from any other crypto and only buy bitcoin. It’s become the poster boy for crypto and appears to be out performing all others.

Good luck, and remember, only sell when you are in profit!

Edited by Stirlingsays (08 Jan 2021 9.01am)

Exactly this. I've posted at length about all this before. You are right, a very small percentage of all the people that own bitcoin, own most of the bitcoin. So many ironies abound. It's the internet hippy delusion all over again. 'This time it's different'. Sure.

It was devised as a currency, an alternative currency free from regulation and central government control – hardly anyone uses it as such because it can be worth 30k one day and 10k the next.

It will never become competitive to fiat or 'established' currency as governments simply won't allow it – the only scenario where it does win out is if it allows itself to become regulated and potentially pegged to a fiat standard. Which, will never happen and even if it did it would kill it overnight. This is already starting to happen – see recent news around the SEC and Ripple (XRP). Governments will create their own version of it within the fiat system that can be regulated, tracked and controlled.

However, there is clearly money to be made due to the massive swings, FOMO rallies and increasing amounts of laypersons piling in with no knowledge whatsoever about what they're doing or even what it is.

Re. cashing in – it's fairly easy if you trade via a third party such as etoro, although there are negatives to doing that if you actually want to spend it, for example. Exchanges are shady as although some claim to have cash reserves as you say they're unregulated, you're not protected and there's no guarantee that you can cash out some or all when you want.