Bits and Pieces -The Good, The Bad & The Fugly
News, Rants and Thoughts
Millions lost within my circle of friends. Foundational principles ignored.
The last #bitsandpieces post I wrote named December of 2017 as the specific month and the year when crypto would be known worldwide. The reasons I gave were stated last post. I could have said "Mark my words" - here is more.
Venezuela and Russia have centralized cryptocoins now. And by centralized, I mean poison. China uses Ripple and Saudi Arabia is going to join that bandwagon. And by Ripple, I mean poison. There are also two other centralized poison coins in the works that I know of.
The Ugly
when email became commonly accepted, scams were not far behind.
Advertisements to invest and coin scams are off the charts, new exchanges that "do it better" (until they don't), and the ICO game have caused many people to forget the foundational guidelines of being your own bank, ie; holding crypto.
Profits, (ticking numbers on a website) have caused people to forget that exchanges are just people who wrote some code and then they want you to send them crypto. Laws have not even bee written yet to force them to give it back. But, the sheer euphoria of watching those numbers rise causes such joyful bliss that people gladly power down whole Steemit accounts, empty secured wallets, and search the sofa-cushions for pocket change so that they can send it on over to bitgrail, binance or fillintheblank.com because of their 10+ years of trustworthy service... Oh wait...
The Bad
when the whole basket falls
Several friends have come to me with their story, how they bought into a new fangled this or that with all the gimmicks blazing. Now they are left with only broken egg-shells.
I try to console them...
- "Well at least you have all the Steem you bought" (bright side?) until I look at their SP and see 0.000.
- "Well I know you have a ton of Ethereum" as I look over at the familiar stack of GPU boxes stacked six feet high... "No, I invested that too."
- "What about the Dash I sold you?" and I see them look toward the floor.
Don't get rid of something you have in your hand for a $number.number on a web page.
Even the best .com exchanges get hacked. Some of the oldest, most trusted ones have taken hits. But, two that I know of, have reimbursed their customers fully. But what if they can't next time.
Only the decentralized crypto-coin itself is secure. Only when secured correctly. Only when stored safely.
As prices go up, I make my coins more secure, pulling all holdings off of android devices, and old laptops. I was late in doing so because the value of some coins was tiny. Then they went up one by one, from nothing to thousands. It happened faster than I could create dedicated - off-line - encrypted - devices to hold the coins.
Still other friends have lost private keys. Some have been hacked and even lost email accounts, recovery email accounts, and everything related to their identity. Yes, even access to exchanges with 2FA. The hacker changed the phone number associated... well, you know. It makes me wonder about "vault7" - something I heard about which is like an information leak but more like a treasure trove of hacking tools.
The Good
reviewing the foundations - most important of which is self control
Better late than never
Always hold your own private keys.
- generated while off line
- written and stored away from prying eyes
- copied and stored off-line and encrypted
Diversify (not all your eggs in one basket)
- hold some of each crypto that you like
- decide on a maximum for any one holding (no, not 100%)
- never invest more than you are willing to lose
How much should I place on Bittrex, Poloniex, Bitfinex, CoinRocket etc.?
I choose zero because two of the named sites were very poblematic for me
- If you have 100,000 - you should put $1,000 maximum on an exchange.
- If you want to use two exchanges, then $500 on each.
If you are using Windoze or Crapple, none of the above applies. Your computer is compromised at the moment the first electron that hits the bios. (look up uEFI sometime)
This is not financial advice. The large corporations on the internet have access to your accounts. Even if what I just said is not true, why would you risk it? Would you have your house keys hanging in plain sight on a tree outside the house? How about leaving your car running while inside the mall?
Err on the side of caution.
The Unimportant
one should own none of these because of this title and the content below
There is a crypto called bitcoin that I mined at one time. First the GPU's stopped producing enough to care about. Then the BFL's I bought turned into book ends, again, unable to produce 0.001 in a month. Then bitcoin became unusable - more costly than Western Union and slower than snail-mail.
December 2017
But it looks like the coin might be dying because there are way fewer transactions in line to be recognized by the network. I think everyone just gave up on trying to send via this coin. I highly doubt they would try to fix BTC after sisteen months of clogged traffic and disappointing transaction times/fees.
Today
Resource: Blockchain's unconfirmed transactions page.
If they are fixing it. We should still consider using something quicker, with no fees. Eh- hem enter Steem? The audio world upgraded from 8-track-tapes... Time to use the SSD Micro of coins.
This is my own cynical view on BTC. I have not used it since 2016 and I no not plan to go back to it. I have waited many hours for transactions to clear while holding a stranger's money. Face to face trading is what I do. It has to be quick.
Thanks for taking time...
Remember. Your job is to make sure people know that simply putting it "on the blockchain" does NOT mean that it is on the Bitcoin (or another reliable decentralized) blockchain.
Thank you for posting @htooms.
A very good read......a reminder from time to time is not a bad idea....how easy it is to forget......and yet.....just as your very apt illustration demonstrates.......we are in the Wild...Wild West.
All the best. Cheers.
At the dawn of email, there was fear that the USPS may be replaced. That fear was only a crumb compared to the fear the banks are feeling right now. I pray that people will not fall for any centralized solution offered by the corrupt politicians.
It is the wild west for sure but that analogy relates more to surviving scams and crypto holders doing their homework before rushing into something. to this day there are emails about a rich Nigerian inheritance that cannot be claimed without my help. And, of course, I always send my banking information promptly so they can have the money that was left to them.
Very humourous @htooms.
Good to see you here at Steemit.
Cheers.
posts that are useful to me, thanks for the information.
Great post @htooms
That's a very well written post, witty yet informative and opinionated.
I find it really strange that people who do trade cryptos, and I think most of them trade other cryptos than bitcoin as well - are still sticking to the bitcoin as the base currency and when he's down - the whole market is collapsing.
Now - this is only logical that it happens in coin that has only BTC pairing, but in those that pair to fiat - it's just not rational! is it because there is a lot of stupid money in the markets right now? I'm not sure.
The point you raise are exactly the reason I've bought a Trezor and a Ledger hardware wallets, that way I can rest assured that my coin are securely sleeping in their wallet, offline and relaxed :)
This is also the reason when A very good friend of mine told me he bought some thousands of STEEM - I pretty much forced him to move it to a steemit account, and since he is an hodler - I just helped him to power it up and delegate it to minnowbooster, that way he is much more secured - a hacker will not be able to touch his funds, and he earns some interest on his investment :)
It pains me to know that someone was able to obtain keys and email passwords from one and that others were conned into investing everything on a relatively new site. A Trezor is nice, but it's also small and could be lost or maybe misplaced easily. Still. Good thinking.
I am not comfortable delegating SP, though I was doing it once a week when I ran the #takemyvotes give-away a long time ago (before Steemit implemented delegation). My delegation was nothing more than a bot that followed each vote that the winner placed. Thus my account would vote on every post the winner voted on.
I have heard good things about minnow booster, and the returns are good. But I still see a lot of posts that are very good, yet receiving zero payout. I am not a bot, I curate actively every day.
I feel secure knowing that my SP would take 13 weeks to power down if a hacker obtains my active key. During the first week, I would notice the decline and stop them using my owner key.
It is quite nice to have such thoughtful responses as I have my morning coffee. Thank you.
Thank you - after enjoying such a good post I felt I most draft a quality comment.
I know personally someone working for minnowbooster, and I know they try really hard to be moral and fair.
I'm not sure what I think about the bots phenomenon - I didn't check it but I think that even if a post enters the trending page - most of the votes it will get will be dust votes from inexperienced users that will not upgrade his payments by much - so unless the revenue you get for buying votes is lucrative by itself - I'm not sure how important it is.
Maybe it makes the post view-able to some whales so they read it and upvote it if they like it, but that's completely fine with me - they will upvote it only if it's worth it.
I am pretty sure I miss something, otherwise the bots wouldn't be so popular - but I'm not sure what.
I use bots for when I am away from my computer. I have a list of people that need support, the new users that I brought on board, and lists of people that have supported me in the past. I am sure that I would vote on them if I were able. If I can't, the bots do the voting for me.
Why?
Because any large account sitting idle is a wasted investment. If I leave for the day and forget to turn on my bots, I will come home and see my accounts at 100% voting power and my friends lacking the support they were hoping for. If I am gone for more than a week, it may be enough time for some of the new users to become discouraged.
From my perspecive - if I am absent for a long time, I earn nothing in curation rewards.
Thanks for your support..It is encouraging.
Excellent comparation with the movie @htooms
아직은 잘 모르지만 당신 글을 계속 지켜볼게요.
블럭체인....많이 궁금합니다.
I thought I lost everyone on that point. Pow - extra credit and you don't have to stay after school.
It is good to hear from you! This information is spot on! Vault 7 will take you down the rabbit hole and you may never get out! lol
Keeping as much off an exchange and in cold storage is definitely the best idea!!
I have been trying to get a post out once a week. The long ones eat into my recreation time, but I am always reading blogs here. Did you notice that Steem didn't get hit as much as the other cryptos?
I can imagine they do! At least you’re curating! Steem has held up exceptionally well compared to other cryptos! There seems to be a decent amount of positive news in the press about Steem from getting picked up by major outlets to receiving one of the top rankings from Weiss!
Thanks for that. I am so behind the times on news because of trading and local meeitngs, as I said, I am a face to face trader and I do a lot with metals.
I have not even taken the time to find out why bitcoin is faster - I just went to https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions (I will put that in the main post , it's a handy reference)
You should also check the recent steemitblog post by Ned - I am reading it between comments.
I will check it out now! I still need to get you some of the 2017 steem rounds. Maybe we can group it with the 2018 steem rounds! We are trying to get it as close to spot as possible!
Sage advice that rings all too true. Thank you for composing this post. ‘The moment the first electron hits the bios’. Wow! Very powerful words. I’m off to look up uEFI. All best.
Let me know what you find. I know what it does by experience.
What a fantastic post!
"You still have all the steem...till I looked in their wallet" God, that's happened to me and it is super cringe worthy, why didn't they keep some steem??
I sold most of these people their first crypto. It is hard to hear that they lost it. All of the stories came in this month too.
Ah, that sucks man, would definitely be hard to hear :(
this is just personal thinking, I am very sure steem will become the main Crypto of the future, although china and Arab two countries that have great influence in the world using Ripple
What is my main reason for that, since steem is available to everyone from where it comes from and how it exists, and also to the present of the steem wallet, in the social mesia steemit has well-accounted security
I think everyone is need for the two reasons I mentioned above, but for now I have not invested in steem, my reason is that for now I work with daily wages in steemit media, but I will definitely invest in steemi, in time it
Countries like Ripple because it has an owner. It is centralized. So, therefore they can control it. Steem and other crypto currencies cannot be controlled. Governments do not like things they cannot control.
I have not learned about Ripple, but I see in market vip indonesia Ripple is still affected by up and down Bitcoin, that means Ripple is also not an independent coin
If the government wants a coin that they can control, the government can use steem by signing up into a witness steem, so every country listed as a witness steem they can control it together
But if there is only one single currency in the world, it also will not be good because there is no market competition, it's all just my personal thoughts
Tremendous post dear friend @htooms, you reminded me of my father when I made some that other macanas, more than one would have felt that you went to him.
I do not have much experience in the cryptographic world, but something basic to understand what you are talking about and you have a lot of reason.
The prices of cryptocurrencies have risen significantly that there are many owners of what is foreign to the expectations of being able to get a lot of money without any cost.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience, it is not very common to see one person help another selflessly.
Again congratulations for the great contribution you make with the platform and its people
I wish you a prosperous day
Thank you for all the kind words. I wish you the same. I think you are one of the most active people on Steemit. You are certainly a loyal follower.
Could you tell me what you know about steem? :)
That would take many many posts. I will tel you this. I have a lot invested in Steem.
I do not fully understand. what you will give the phone. it would be nice to help each other :) 🙏
Very good ¡¡.