As a total novice, what platform would you advise using?
Gave up on Coinbase and was about to sign up with Coin Corner until I needed to verify by sending a bank statement, and decided against it.
I use bitstamp for trading,but to be honest, despite the fees I still buy using coinbase and then transfer the crypto currency to a different exchange. I always seem to struggle using my card on any other site.
A friend of mine has been recommending changelly which supposedly allows card payments.
Coinbase was the one I was most keen to use, but they won’t verify my ID so gave up on them.
Id like to know more about bitcoin, I currently feel like I kind of know… but equally, possibly know nothing. where can I best drink up that sweet, sweet information?
Hi! If you’d like a quick overview this is quite decent
If you’ve got a bit of spare time and also are looking to get a bit more involved I’d really recommend this:
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Might be worth sending them a ticket, there’s many benefits to them helping you get started. I would suggest kraken but the last time I used it, it was pretty terrible for trading, I guess it was okay for purchasing set amounts and the fees were low.
Thank yoooou 
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How do you know it’s undervalued?
Will preface this response with “in my opinion”
it’s currently $0.16 for a token, this is for a distributed way of publishing, storing and owning data on a blockchain, which I’ve not seen many if any other projects facilitate at that price.
Yo London Disers, there’s a free after work lecture on Bitcoin and Blockchain at the Museum of London on 9 January:
Thanks for this probably will attend 
If anyone is interested in how taxation in the UK works with crypto currency they might find this interesting
Not necessarily unsympathetic to this point of view but it’s worth noting that the banking crisis of 2008 is exactly why some folks got involved in cryptocurrency in the first place.
that is really helpful, thanks. been wondering what my tax liability might be
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There are certain aspects which I definitely think are problematic not least the power consumption caused by bitcoin mining which given that it’s nowhere near its market cap is quite worrying and also why I don’t really support it.
Decentralized applications which forms a major part of the use of many of the other tokens, could potentially result in the democratization of software platforms which could potentially be a very good thing.
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Without going all #fakenews
It’s worth mentioning the methodology behind that particular fact is quite controversial
I mean I don’t actually trade bitcoin (partly because of this, partly because the fees for bitcoin transactions are ridiculous) but…you don’t actually need that many miners for the bitcoin network to “work” and regardless of the size of the bitcoin network number of coins produced will actually decrease over time.
It’s quite possible that the size of the network will decrease as it’ll be less cost-effective for people to mine bitcoin.
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Regarding the link with energy usage to do the mining - I’m quite interested in the merits of that being viewed as a benefit. In that having a currency that’s inherently tied to something as fundamental as our ability as a planet to generate electricity seems more… honest (?), or at least kinda tangible. I suppose that’s as compared to the relatively arbitrary basis for the gold standard we used to have.
(I’m guessing that I’m likely missing vital information here and basically just describing using energy futures as a currency. Are energy futures a thing? Probably. I’m out of my depth here. Is it showing? 
)
This is an interesting point but this has really only become a factor fairly recently given the huge growth of the network. Earlier on in bitcoins history, people could mine relatively easily with single or dual GPU devices.
That said there probably is something to be said about this being an equalizing factor as it prevents one person from cornering the market as the cost would be prohibitive to a lot of people.
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I’m currently doing quite nicely. I have around 3.5 bitcoin and 3.8 bitcoin cash, bought for around £30 in 2013, which I HODLed accidentally. I’ve sold around 0.3 to pay for a laptop and a holiday for 2, so anything else is just a bonus.
I think ripple is due a crash. I think the current run-up is being driven by FOMA from the bitcoin rises, which I’m pretty sure will never happen again, for any altcoin. The fact it has a company behind it that holds about half of the tokens seems dodgy to me, as I think it is a tactic to overstate the market capitalisation.
It’s impossible to know whether it is a good idea to sell or HODL at this point. The problem is bitcoin has no real value over any other altcoin, other than it being the first. If the transaction fees stay high then people will just switch to something else. I think the big make or break event will be when the lightning network comes, as if it works it will make it usable as a currency, rather than as a pure store of value.
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Interesting opportunity going on at the moment one of the larger cryptocurrency listing sites has decided to exclude Korean exchanges due to them listing coins at a rate far higher than other exchanges which has caused the overall price of bitcoin and more or less every other coin to fall
Could be a useful opportunity for some folks to get involved if they’re interested.