Actually I not only use bitcoin for long term investment, but also as it was actually meant to be used, i.e. as a mode of currency transfer. I needed to transfer money from offshore account back to Malaysia, so I bought BTC using the offshore account, and transferred it to my Malaysian exchange, then sold it off to get MYR.
Pretty convenient, sold it yesterday night, got my money in my Maybank account this afternoon.
I get a much better exchange rate if I were to compare with normal TT.


Nobody can accurately predict the future, but the bet is on BTC hitting new highs in the foreseeable future.
Several countries are looking to "sort of" regulate bitcoin, to an extent, but so far none have been successful, as bitcoin, due to its inherent decentralised nature, is regulation-resistant.
I see long term growth in cryptocurrencies......not only in bitcoin, but also ether. Not too sure about the others.


I sold on XBit Asia after comparing with Luno. Surprisingly I got a better price at XBit Asia, so I just went ahead.
The liquidity is too low on XBit Asia, though.


There are currently two schools of thought on this topic.
One says that the price will crash if the ETF is rejected. However, the other school says that the public sentiment has already factored the rejection into the current price, because the public already expected that it will be rejected anyway.
Personally, I think there is a real chance that it will be approved, and if it is, then the price will soar.
But if the ETF is rejected, I expect to see a correction, but not significant enough to be a crash. I'd be mildly surprised if it went below USD 1000.

Good for you!
Personally, I "predict" that we should soon be seeing at least 0.016 in the near future, as the general public slowly takes in and digests the news of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Slow and steady is the way I want it to go.
Crazy spikes in DASH and Augur, not sure what triggered the bull, but they are rising too fast, fanned by public euphoria. Everything points to signs of a bubble that is going to burst soon.

Well said.
You are your own bank. You control your money. And with great power comes great responsibility.

Personally, I've not used Poloniex yet, but please beware of the maker/taker fees and the withdrawal fees, if any.
Those can easily eat into your profits.



This post has been edited by wengherng: Mar 2 2017, 11:46 PM

Yes, unfortunately, all the usual verification documentation is required.
I've done it with both XBit Asia and Luno, just to give myself more options.
Not very happy with having to disclose such personal information, but no choice.
I don't really trust Localbitcoins.

Technically speaking, although both are cryptocurrencies, ETH does not compete or contend with BTC as they were developed to serve different purposes entirely.
Purely in terms of price, though, nobody will be able to predict how either one will be priced in future. One thing is for sure, both are here to stay.
But with BTC having a market capitalisation of 20 times more than ETH, if ETH wants to overtake BTC, there is still quite some ground for it to cover.


Nope, both XBit Asia and Luno are online exchanges......you only deal with the exchange, you never meet the buyer.
You just log in, transfer your bitcoins to the exchange account, set up your sell limit, and that's it.
Once someone agrees to your price and buys your bitcoins, then the exchange will execute your sell order automatically and fund your account with MYR, which you can then withdraw to your local bank account.
It's very convenient. Just like your normal stock exchange.

Well, I wouldn't call it "dangerous" but I definitely wouldn't use an exchange to store my bitcoins, that's for sure.
I hold my stash in cold storage, and only transfer the amount I need to the exchange.
Meaning, my account on the exchange is usually 0.000000 BTC.
When I need to sell 1 BTC, I only transfer 1 BTC to the exchange, and execute a sell order for 1 BTC.
When somebody buys my 1 BTC, the exchange notifies me by email, and I log in to the account, and see the MYR in my exchange account, and then I just execute a withdrawal order, and the next day I see the MYR in my bank account.
The above scenario does not take into consideration the fees that are applicable, as different exchanges have different fee structures.
But in order to sell on any exchange, your BTC must be in the exchange account.


This post has been edited by wengherng: Mar 3 2017, 11:15 AM

Hang on......let me go get my crystal ball......aaaaaannnddd......my crystal ball says it doesn't know either......
If I could predict the future like that, I wouldn't be sitting in front of my computer typing on forums......I'd be sucking rum out of coconuts on some exotic beach in the Bahamas instead.
Having said that, I do not think it is outrageous for ETH to overtake BTC at some point in future, just that it would take some effort and time.
Having ETH hit USD 100 by the end of the year is not really that hard, though.
We're only in March, and ETH is already nearing USD 16.
As cryptocurrencies become more mature and mainstream, there will be much more capital inflow to the industry, and demand will always drive up the prices in the long term.

Well, there are several exchanges available in Malaysia, and I only use XBit Asia and Luno, so I really can't say which one is the cheapest.
From personal experience only, so far, XBit Asia gives me slightly better returns.
If you are going to sell in many batches of very small amounts each, personally, I think one thing you have to consider is the transaction fees. Transaction fees generally do not vary too much whether the transaction amount is large or small, so making many small transactions will actually eat into your profits rather significantly.
But of course, if privacy is your main concern, then this might be acceptable for you.

Ah damn, you're right, sorry about that.
I am still thinking in BTC terms.
ETH is now trading at 0.016 to the BTC, which is roughly USD 20.
You're right, my bad.

Just as with any bitcoin transactions, it will only show in the blockchain ledger when a miner successfully completes mining a block and adds it into the ledger.
Depending on how much transaction fees you paid (usually determined by the exchange that you sent from), it could take anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour.
The higher the transaction fee, the higher the priority and the faster your transaction will be confirmed.
Personally, the fastest confirmation I ever got was less than 2 minutes, and the longest I had to wait was something like 40 minutes.
Some exchanges even specify that they will only update your account when more than 2 or 3 confirmations are available in the blockchain.
Don't worry, your transaction is safe, just congested in the queue (assuming your sent to the right address!)

Congratulations!
More to come.
Let's hope the ETF gets approved next week.

The recent pump and dump of cryptocurrencies is kind of annoying to me.
DASH rose 100% in 2 days, only to lose more than 20% of it within the last 24 hours.
Several other altcoins have been experiencing the same trend, albeit on a lesser scale.
None of these were really backed by actual fundamentals; just pure speculation by the masses, pump and dump.
Makes it difficult if you are really trying to use the altcoin for something legit; so hopefully this does not happen to bitcoin or ether.
On the other hand, I understand that it's been a money-making party for day traders over the last 72 hours.
I guess that's just not my cup of tea.

Exchange for direct MYR/ETH transactions, I don't think so, at least I've not heard of one yet.
It might be possible with P2P platforms like Localbitcoins and Remitano, I'm not too sure.

Interesting article, with many valid points, although I do not agree with some of the arguments raised.
Basically, it's like a prospectus for any unit trust, with generic warnings about the risks and dangers of investing in it. The author seemed resigned to the notion that the entire COIN ETF idea itself was a joke and destined to fail, no two ways about it.
Me, on the other hand, I am not that pessimistic; although I am not entirely sure that the price and market of BTC will be as rosy as people think it will be after the ETF approval, I still think that the ETF will have its own part to play in the grand scheme of things.


You raised a valid point there, but personally, I do not equate BTC to the US dollar or any other fiat currency in existence, but rather as a hybrid of sorts......something between gold and US dollar, for example.
It serves as both a medium of transaction, and also a store of value.
I am thinking further in the sense that opening up such influx of cashflow into the ETF will definitely raise awareness of cryptocurrencies to the general population, therefore potentially greatly increasing the adoption of BTC both as an investment vehicle and also in transactions.
Sort of like there are people buying gold ETFs but also at the same time many people are also buying and trading physical gold.

Sure, BTC has got its massive problems to solve, like its block size limit which is choking the system and causing the long transaction confirmation times, but I also believe that we are approaching the threshold, the final tipping point where BTC has to evolve in order to survive; and I have no doubt that it will......too much is at stake with too many big players involved that failure is no longer an option, I do not think they will allow BTC to fail.
Maybe I'm just being naïve.

Short term volatility is probably expected, as with all major events.
Like you, I also think core is getting a bit desperate.
But thinking over the longer term (i.e. 3 years and more), I remain optimistic still.

Why do you say that parity is dangerous?

To understand this, you need to have a basic understanding of the fundamental differences between Bitcoin Core, Unlimited and Classic.
This website gives a very basic explanation of the differences:

https://www.crushthestreet.com/articles/dig...hats-difference

If no consensus is reached in the near future, the whole bitcoin system could be choked to a point that makes transactions impractical/impossible, and then there could be no other choice than to implement a hard fork (complete split into two or more separate individual systems), which nobody really wants to happen.

In very simplified terms, yes, it would become something like ETH and ETC.
But actually there were very specific sets of circumstances that allowed both ethereum forks to remain in existence in parallel to each other, which bitcoin *might* not experience (nobody really knows for sure).

For example, if enough percentage of voters went ahead with Core (e.g. 95% as Wootz mentioned), then all of a sudden, you have two "bitcoin chains", one with 95% of the hashing power, the other (Unlimited) only with 5%.
Imagine, with only 5% of the computing power on Unlimited trying to do all the mining and transacting, and with algorithm-difficulty adjustment happening only once roughly every two weeks, we would suddenly see hundreds of thousands of transactions going in queue, confirmation times will become incredibly long, and it could be months before the adjustment becomes fully normalised and the backlog cleared, by which time, most people would have abandoned Unlimited as it is just too impractical to use anymore, which means the price will drop to the abyss and finally nobody wants to be holding these coins anymore.

Not to mention the fact that miners on Unlimited will be under extreme risk of a 51% attack from Core if they wanted to, and also it is important to note that miners mining on Unlimited can only spend the newly mined coins within Unlimited, which makes it extremely unattractive financially.
If you were a miner who spent tens of thousands of dollars on hardware and trying to recoup your investments, it definitely makes financial sense for you to always go with the majority, and you are not going to waste your time and resources doing worthless work that doesn't earn you back your investments.

The same for businesses and also large corporations accepting bitcoins and involved in the blockchain, they will have to make a decision on which one to adopt finally. Again, it makes business sense to go for the majority/more popular one.

HOWEVER, for the casual user like you and me, we will probably not notice any great differences in terms of usage or trading.
Well, maybe your hardware wallet provider might need to update its software, but that's about it.
When the dust settles, then you can decide whether to use your coins on Core or Unlimited (but once you make the first transaction, it will permanently mark the coins as either Core or Unlimited, and there's no turning back).

Sorry for the long post, but I suppose that addresses your concerns?

WTF there's a BTC ATM in Ipoh...?!
Where???

OK I might check it out later.
Did a quick check online and found that it is in Meru, Ipoh.
Never knew that.

Currently XBit Asia's fee is 0.25% for Maker, and 1% for Taker.
But starting from 11am on 10th March 2017 (this Friday), for will be no more Maker/Taker fees.
They will be switching to Buyer/Seller fees.
Buyer fee will be 0.5%, and Seller fee will be 0.8% per trade.
Also, note that there is a network fee of 0.0003 BTC per transfer, if you are transferring your BTC from your XBit Asia account to your hardware wallet, etc. This fee is for the miners.