Anyone on here ever done any of this bitcoin and crypto malarkey. Friend of mine said about trying it a few years ago so I jumped on board as I had money spare at the time. Just checked it after spending about 2 hours trying too get online. Seems like the value has gone up on it at least

Anyone more experienced in this area

Yup been in it for a long time. Enabled me to leave my corporate job. Whilst it has provided financial freedom my main interest was the technology. I am about real world usage and application. Had a patent and software running on core banking network 👍

Is it really as good as its made out too be. I can't rely get my head round it. Got an account with binance n that's just confusing as hell so wouldn't mind understanding it a bit better

There is a reason people use banks as the custodian for their money 👍 Why crypto currency on a blockchain has a lot of advantages and freedoms to manage it yourself you need to manage it yourself. With that comes the need to understand the various security models to stay safe.

Binance is a trading platform, effectively your are dealing direct between the trading pairs just like you otherwise have to pay others to do on your behalf on LSE or WallStreet. It’s not a platform to hold your assets safely; you do that in a wallet. Personally I prefer Coinbase Pro as a trading platform; especially as they also do fiat currency pairs making it easy to withdraw profits. But be aware they do have links with tax authorities and so report on your trading activity.

I would suggest to read read and read if you want to do stay in and not loose. Only tonight I helped two friends who were being targeted by phishing scams to steal their tokens.

Protect it like you would with other share certificates. But if you are active and follow the market then some good gains can be made. The swings are crazy at the moment which is quite cool if you can use them in your advantage.

What ever you do, don’t forget your signing keys

And remember there are fewer bitcoins in circulation than there is population in the United States, yet has global reach. So it’s got quite a bit to go in my option. There will be a few more corrections, but next points will be north of $50K then we should go straight for the $70k’ish. I’d not be surprised if this time next year we are north of $100K per Bitcoin.

I guess really it's quite easy in hindsight, buy when it's cheap, sell when it's expensive.
I'm going to do some reading on it but sounds complicated but like anything I suppose once you learn it, it starts too become easier.

Probably the easiest way to think of it is like the old Swiss numbered bank accounts. My grand mother got it instantly when I explained it. Their bank accounts didn’t have names, just numbers. Then she had secondary codes to verify who she was. This principle is exactly the same 👍 Bless her RIP.

I wish I had a grandmother that had a Swiss bank account  Got - 2017 SDV8 Autobiography in Loire Blue
Had- 2008 TDV8 Vogue SE in Java black
Had - 2007 S/C in Stornoway Grey

I have an I.T. shop and my eldest boy effectively runs it now that I've retired. He has spent a few years developing Bitcoin mining systems and we have a few systems running earning decent money mining the bitcoin transactions, current making in excess of £90 per day after electricity costs. It does provide a lot of heat as a bi-product! BMW i3 Electric Car
2012 Full Fat RR 4.4 TDV8 (now gone)
2006 VW Touareg 3.0 TDi V6

Nice! I’ve been involved in a project to do that for greenhouses on industrial scale. Reuse the heat generate by the miners to heat the greenhouse. Naturally with a lot of regulation in between. It was a great idea with some useful benefits

You'll have to forgive me for the dumbness her chaps but how do you do the mining? Is the heat that's reused from the computer system or am I barking up the wrong tree

I'm not well up on the technicalities of it all, we have some systems built with 12 graphics cards in them. The mining software uses the processors on the graphics card to process the bit coin transactions and you get payment for processing.
Were running about 4.5Kw continuously, this gives us some waste heat to use which we heat our premises and others free of charge. I can get you more info if it's of interest, my boy would be happy to advise. BMW i3 Electric Car
2012 Full Fat RR 4.4 TDV8 (now gone)
2006 VW Touareg 3.0 TDi V6

That makes sense mate if your system is usinh that much electricity. I'm going too hazard a guess but I assume he's running a few computers etc.

Id talk too him but me and computer systems don't really work properly as it's simply something I don't really get. Give me a car or a human n that's a different matter. Can fix humans n cars with no trouble lol

I find bitcoin a difficult concept to get my head around. It's not physical, it doesnt exist in the real world. People seem to make money from it, if people are making money from it where does it come from? it seemingly appears in thin air..... MAGIC! BMW i3 Electric Car
2012 Full Fat RR 4.4 TDV8 (now gone)
2006 VW Touareg 3.0 TDi V6

To be honest; mining Bitcoin with graphics cards is a thing of the past. The complexity is now so great that you will never “win” and solve the puzzle in time.

You can still do it for some other coins but even then it’s not profitable anymore unless doing it on industrial scale with cheap electricity.

The normal banking system is no different really. If you transfer some money to someone else you aren’t really transferring money. Simplistically put all you are doing is telling your bank that you want to transfer funds to someone else. The bank then uses one of the interbank settlement systems to make a request but also not actually transfer the money. It becomes an obligation based upon which the other bank artificially increases the number on the recipient account. At several times a day a consolidation is made of all obligations upon which there is a settlement. The central bank maintains such a ledger and total balance. No real money involved at all. A blockchain does a very similar thing with a number of advantages; mainly the immutability. Many banks are already using blockchain for that process.

The nice thing with crypto currencies is that you can do this yourself, at greatly reduced costs and increased speed.

You say its a thing of the past but it makes a tidy profit at the moment, over the last 4 years he's exceeded £100k so not to be dismissed too quickly.

Whats the current best practice? BMW i3 Electric Car
2012 Full Fat RR 4.4 TDV8 (now gone)
2006 VW Touareg 3.0 TDi V6