It's currently at $24K dollars per coin.

That $4K over the all time high of 2017.

I think this time is different. The major institutions are getting into it.

Of the 18.5 million coins released, there's only 2.5 million left to be mined over many years.

There are some huge predictions for it next year. Some as high as $300K per coin.

Interesting times. Massive global money printing will cause inflation in a few months. The way to protect loss may well be Bitcoin. It is proving to be a better store of wealth than gold.

BTW it is estimated that 4 to 5 million Bitcoin have been lost, basically from when it was close to worthless and people weren't using exchanges, though there have been some major exchange hacks/losses.

The best way to store it is probably an offline cold wallet. Not your private keys, not your Bitcoin, the saying goes.

Coinbase is a major exchange that claims to have your money insured and your keys in cold storage.

The trouble with exchanges is they charge around 1.5% to buy crypto with cash, and the same for the reverse. So in times of high volatility you can end up buying and selling a lot to protect yourself, and even in a rising market, end up giving all your profits to the exchange.

So if you decide to get into it have some balls, do your own research, and make a long term gamble on it. Expect 30% price swings on it sometimes and stomach it.

Or dollar cost average buy buying a bit every month.

Or just stay well clear. It is a risk.

Or just go down the casino and put everything on red:)

You do have to be a bit useless to lose. One philosophy, which is a good one I think, is NEVER sell it at a loss. The price fluctuates so much you can almost guarantee you can do this. You might have a long wait, however.

If you bought at the all time high in 2017, you'd now be nicely in credit, for instance.

Obviously the rewards for mining it are high at the moment. So the demand for the best hardware will be high.

Bitcoin spends an awful lot of time consolidating - about 80% of its time, but occasionally goes on rallies as per now.

During each rally you hear about huge price predictions that will be reached in a years time but as of yet I haven't ever seen them come true.

That said this time I am not so sure. As we all know these are strange times and especially next year is going to be very interesting WRT the economies of the world.

As the human population continues to increase viruses will have a good say in trying to stop it. Fair play in some sense, and maybe for the human population as a whole it isn't such a bad thing. The bull run that is the increase in human population definitely needs a consolidation period of the highest order and yet nearly all governments are publically blind to it.

Since its introduction, though, the % increase in price must surely have made it one of the the best investment opportunities ever seen.

Remember, folks, there's a pretty fixed supply of this stuff. And only 900 odd coins a day being mined at the moment. That's nothing to service a world population.

In ten years time there's not much doubt in my mind one Bitcoin will be worth a ridiculous amount of sterling or dollars.

1) Nice thinking.

2) Cash out the same way you came in. But when you do, give a lot of thought to the people you helped live a better life.

Bollocks? Probably. But it suits the current mood.

Very good video on how Bitcoin works.

Currently, that's true.

However, it might be possible to build quantum computers in the future to do so within smaller timeframes, such as years.

Reliance on web security and Bitcoins may not stand the test of time.

I thought I had made the quantum computer point but I hadn't.

TBH if that succeeds everything is fucked. Not just Bitcoin, the world's banking system and any digital secret information held on public networks will become exposed.

That said Alexa is still a moron and hasn't got much cleverer over the past few years so it would seem. The current state of AI is far behind where many rate it IMHO. I think the real threat from AI is not AI but bugs in critical systems especially nuclear related ones.

I personally think the quantum computer cryptographic hacking dream is decades away.

I can imagine various governments pushing loads of money into it trying.

It's just such a good opportunity to sell them a lemon for a lot of money it isn't true.

Hm, I have an idea...

No denying life these days is very different to three or four decades ago. The advances have been huge. What amazes me personally is I am still programming computers in a manner that hasn't really changed that much for nearly 40 years. The choice of libraries to use has expanded massively, no doubt, though. And that's where the power has come from. CPU power seems to be in a bit of a rut.

Things have changed a truckload generally. Especially where France is concerned;)