If you end up with more dollars than you started with then you made a profit and did not lose money. The fact that you could have made more profit in a different investment doesn't change that fact.


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@Imjosh kudos for honesty. Churn is an investment killer and while crypto has lower spreads they are still there and the emotional / intellectual capacity to keep track is very challenging.

That is what i thought as well. The thing is those posters kept telling me if you bought an altcoin at 0.0007 btc but sold it at 0.00065 btc even though your altcoin went up... let say it went up from 5 dollars to 6 dollars but btc went up more than 20 percent, you are going to get less btc than you started with. I mentioned yes that makes sense... but because btc price is higher, then there is profit. They kept mentioning how no you lose money here which doesn't make sense.


Is there a reason why several posters agreed with this? They kept mentioning you need to sell that altcoin at a btc price higher than when you bought it at. Thus if you buy an altcoin like lisk for 0.0007 btc, you have to make sure it sells higher than 0.0007 btc.

So many questions you ask. I advise do not go into trading. You seem no good from what post.
Of course if you buy 300 at 0.0007 and sell 300 at 0.00065 you would have lost compare to HODLING in BTC. Maybe up some $ but that just because of BTC rise, you could have more if just HODL. If you buy 300 at 0.0007 and somehow trade to 400 to sell at 0.00065 then make money.
But PLEASE you not seem good for this. Not mean to be mean but be REAL i see lots people like you lose money. If want just buy and HOLD.

Paulyjames I put the odds of you succeeding at trading at nearly 0%.

Yes if you buy 300 at 0.0007btc and sell 300 at 0.00065btc you lose compared to holding in btc. I understand that.


So the purpose of altcoins is to get more bitcoins right? But isn't the main purpose to make $? I thought the purpose was to make money? I get the fact that if you held the bitcoin instead, you would have made more money. But im talking about if you want to get bitcoin and use that bitcoin to buy altcoins. I already have bitcoin that im holding for a while. I do not want to use those bitcoin to buy altcoin because odds are good that the bitcoin im holding will go up etc.


So because of that, i want to invest in altcoins because you can daytrade and because coins can go up a lot. Yes it can go down a lot as well. Thus buy at 5 dollars and sell at 6 dollars etc but buy a good amount of it.


You say buy and hold. The issue with this is you aren't making going to have weekly or monthly profits if you plan to hold for a long time. Yes if it 3x after a while, you 3x your money. But i want to have some money coming in sort of consistently. Of course this would only work if i buy a coin at certain price and sell it at higher price which could take a while if a coin just goes down a lot etc. The thing is if altcoins were all traded against usd or usdt... then in that example, that means you make money and btc price is irrelevant right? I never invested in stocks ever but what i do know is if you buy a stock at a certain price, you want to sell it at higher price and when you do that, you are suppose to get the usd equivalent in your stocking trading account. Thus its easy to calculate profits and losses.


Because if you guys are telling me you are losing compared to btc... well if you buy a coin at 1 dollar and it goes up to 5 dollars, you 5x your investment. But if bitcoin 6x's, then you would lose money compare to holding in btc. That makes sense. But at the end, you are still making $ right since even though you receive less btc, btc went up and you still make $?


So this is what makes not much sense. The other poster did say you made a profit because you started with more dollars than you started with. Isn't that the most important thing here?


Thanks.

I want to use another example. Say there is an altcoin that cost 5 cents only. Let say you decided to buy 10000 shares of it for 500 usd. Lets just say btc is 5000 at that moment.


Let say after a while, that altcoin skyrocketed from 5 cents to 5 dollars. Many coins did this in the top 25 but i know its very hard for something like this to happen now. Let say when you are ready to sell the coin, bitcoin went up from 5000 to 10000. So here... if you were to sell your 10000 altcoins for 5 dollars each, you get 50000 usd worth of btc. I know in this example you clearly gained against btc because the altcoin goes up 100x and btc 2x only. But no matter what happens to btc price.. your profit in terms of usd is still 50000 -500 = 49500 less trading fees right?


Now lets use same example. The 5 cent altcoin stays at 5 cents and you sell it at same price. And let say btc goes all the way down from 5k to 2500. You then decide to sell the altcoin. So your profit/loss when selling the altcoin should be about 0 less trading fees. So your profit should be slightly negative. Bitcoin went down 50 percent so you did made profit against btc. So when you get your btc back when you sell the altcoin for btc, you get double the btc you invested.


However, the most important number here is the profit/loss right? You all kept mentioning how you want more btc than you started with because if you buy an altcoin for 0.0007 btc and sell it for 0.00065 btc, you lose. You lose against holding the btc. But when you do your taxes on this calculation, this is still a gain right assuming the coin went up when you sell right? Again i understand what you guys mean when you say well you lost compared to holding in btc because you would have made more if you held the btc instead. But you are still making profit here so i don't really understand why that is that of a big deal. Obviously the dream scenario based on what you all are mentioning is if you bet on an altcoin, you want it to go up and you want btc to drop... that way you made not only profit... but you made more profit than if you just held that btc instead.

Pauly these posts are akin to triple checking that a flush beats a straight while depositing on Stars. You sound way over your head if this is the part that is getting you confused.

For your question, you pay your taxes in fiat so that is your profits. The price of BTC is irrelevant to your Alt sale for BTC as most people in the US are taking the conservative approach that BTC for Alt is not a like-kind exchange.

If you sold stock in Microsoft (Alt coin in this analogy), you would have to pay taxes on your profits for your cost basis in USD. It doesn't matter that Apple (BTC) went up more in that time and that you found someone to trade you Microsoft stock for Apple stock.

Where do you guys altcoin like NEO? I have coinbase where there are only 3 options

Pauly, assuming for a second that you aren't an elaborate troll account, your feverish questioning and inability to understand basic mechanics of exchange rates indicates that you it would be one of the biggest mistakes of your life to invest in these coins. It is obvious you will suffer constant emotional pain as a result of your enormous discomfort with trivial elements of crypto investing. You also seem to believe that gaining a profit is assured, which it absolutely is not. You stated somewhere that you want to pull out profits consistently--you are going to get demolished by these markets. I repeat, the fact that you don't understand basic mechanics of how exchange rates work means you should NOT invest in these coins under any circumstances. I know that is why you are asking, but you shouldn't need to ask (and even when it is explained ten times over you still don't understand). STOP looking at crypto, buy a Vanguard ETF instead.

KB24 I use Bittrex right now, but am probably going to switch to Binance for lower fees soon. Bitfinex was by far my favorite but they closed their doors to USA.

Let's all give a big thanks to BCC for shaking things up and making investors see value in alts. Everyone ITT is crushing it right now! I get the feeling this is sustainable too, not just another pump and dump.

Hi there. Well i calculated profit/losses with fiat. But the other posters kept mentioning you lose money which does not make sense. Yes thats what i thougth... the sale of alt for btc is not relevant at all. So if say an altcoin goes up and i sell it, well even though i receive less btc because btc price went up, there is still profit. People kept mentioning you need to profit btc.


Yes im not that good with exchange rates. Well the only that that confuses me is calculating profits/losses here because it seemed to be very simple until someone said thats not how it works. But someone else said there is profit in my example.

Pauly if all you care about is making money then just put your fiat into a savings account and make 0.5% per year.

If you care about maximizing your earnings, then you should focus assets that will help you do that.

Diversifying is probably a good option either way.

All you people telling him not to are just gonna make him want to all the more.

Godspeed, pauly, I hope you crush it. Hope you crush it in USD terms, BTC terms, and whatever else you can come up with

paulyjames

if 1 btc = 1 alt coin

you use 1000 btc to buy 1000 alt

btc goes up by 100% and alt breaks even

you decide to cash in your alt for btc, you now receive 500 btc for 1000 alt. (because btc value is now 2:1 alt)

IN SUMMARY: you still break even when converted to fiat you just missed out on the btc double up.

for the tax part of the question: you obviously pay taxes on what you profit, so although you're btc balance is now 50% less you still break even in fiat.

incredible, BTG currently trading at $238. so much better than trying to ICO some ****coin, just fork BTC and premine 100k coins. cha ching!

Dumped all mine at $130. Not mad.

Same... kinda didn't have a choice with Bitfinex shutting me out and having no way to transfer them. Mildly mad, would have held.

monero killin it lately

After dismissing mining earlier itt, I decided yolo. Did a ton of research, and I managed to snag a 6x 1060 3gb rig a guy was selling on craigslist due to him moving across the country w/ his wife. He had listed it at 1600 initially, but didn't sell for weeks, and I eventually snagged it for 3.4 eth or about $1250. The cards alone are around $200 each, so got a pretty solid deal imo. It has the ~best 1060 3gb card (Zotac GTX 1060 3GB Mini) and he already spent hours setting up the best bios for the cards. Some of the other 1060 3gb cards can't get above 18 MH/s even with overclocking, but these babies are hashing at 21-24 apiece. He had it set up on a large metal rack, which was too large to transport, but luckily it was only 2 months old so he still had all the original packaging, so we dismantled it and wrapped it up. I wound up re-assembling it on a small metal rack I already had in my house, which was a fun project in itself. Been mining for a week now with no problems.

Currently mining eth at ~140 MH/s, at current rates I will break even in ~153 days https://www.coinwarz.com/calculators...160000&hc=1250

An issue is that eventually the DAG will be too large for eth to be mined on 3gb cards, currently predicted sometime in mid to late 2018. The good news is that the rig can easily switch to other alt-coins with similar to no loss in break even date. After testing, it mines monero at ~3050 H/s, and zcash should be around 1650-1700 or so. Plan to fool around with zcash after I get back from thanksgiving, as it looks like it might be slightly more profitable atm per whattomine.

I bought one 1060 card 6mo ago. I figured investing in the coins was better than investing in cards but I wanted to get a better idea of the process and motivations of the miners. I think I average about $40/mo on the card and probably spend $10/Mo in electricity. I’m close to break even and It’s not at all worth my time and effort but it’s given me some insight into the process.

I somewhat like the idea that I’m just doing my share of the accounting in the system as I don’t keep track but my mining fees and coins mined are roughly equivalent in value.

My overall theory on case of use for crypto coins.

1. Store of value, this is the easiest to implement from a logistics and infrastructure standpoint. Bitcoin does this very well and the price seems to reflect its success.
2. Cash and or check, bitcoin doesn’t do this well and this needs much more infrastructure to flourish. It’s up for debate whether the traditional banking system does this better but I would say that there room for a anonymous coin at the very least, and any coin that is going to come out on top in this needs to be very fast and efficient. Litecoin, dash, zcash, even eth are all gaining ground for these reasons.
3. Beyond basic smart contracts, this is the realm of eth and other similar coins this takes even more internal and external infrastructure and will develop more uses but it will take more time. It’s not that eth isn’t quality tech it’s just that the case of use is lagging behind some of these other coins. That’s why the price hasn’t been catching up as fast.

A lot of alt coins seem to be waiting on infrastructure and a lot of the projects are slowed by the high incentives for developers to work on even more alt coins.

I think a crash in the alt coin market could drive money back into the blue chip coins and reinvigorate the development of their infrastructure.

It’s going to take time but we should see tons of new and interesting crypto tech.

I'm not usually in the ICO/startup game but there's been some interesting rumours coming out of QSP. Do your own due diligence.

Take some responsibility. You clearly had a choice where you held btc at the time of the gold snapshot. It wasn't obscure information.

I did but I wasn't aware the coins wouldn't be transferable.