Bitcoin Forum

I've been active within crypto for over 5 years now, and since the recent Bitcoin spike, there's been a lot of questions from newer community members in this alt-discussion forum. I've experienced and been in many of the situations you have, along with many of the other veterans of the crypto-world, that linger here. It's ultimately my passion to share what i know, and assisting others with wisdom and insight into all things related to crypto.


I invite you and anyone to ask any question pertaining to cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The only types of questions i will not answer, are those specific to a crypto, questions like "What do you think about Ethereum?" "What coin are you investing in?" ... etc.




This thread is open for anyone to ask questions, and anyone should feel free to answer them. The thread will be modded in-case of spam (from Google) and inconsistent discussions not pertaining to the topic.

from the number of bounties on bitcointalk this is an ETH token, in your opinion for the future, will there be a new trend with tokens that will match ETH tokens?

Which coin / token in your crypto portfolio you hold the longest because you think that the price does not match the prospects of the project. Tell us how you heard about bitcoin and how you bought it (p2p or stock exchange).
You have created a very interesting topic and I will look after the questions. I hope people will not ask the same questions and will read the topic from the very beginning!

Back in 2014-2015, there was a trend to fork Bitcoin and create a coin pertaining to meme's and etc. This was a big thing, and this is when coins like DogeCoin, EarthCoin and every imaginable Xcoin appeared on Bitcointalk. From BBQCoin, FoodCoin, WaterCoin, Titscoin and etc. This was the trend!

Now, 3-4 years later, we are in the period of ERC-20 tokens, very similar to those coins back then. Now tokens, are getting more serious and are trying to capture industries and rework them entirely. These are basically the majority, a token that functions in a larger system.


Could something else come and replace ERC-20 token standard? Probably, but it's hard to realize and understand what this can be at this moment. Personally, i suspect that ERC-20 token is a very basic concept and more advanced blockchain years down the line will make ERC-20 tokens look like the forks in 2014-2015. When it does happen, it will revolutionize crypto's, just how Ethereum did. Basically, the next big blockchain that revolutionizes the current ERC-20 token trend, will be a top 3-5 crypto. Some new blockchains have serious potential in regards to this, but there isn't anything revolutionary (easy to use essentially) to overthrow ERC-20 yet. ERC20 will be around forever, just like all Bitcoin POW coins, and Peercoin's POS coins.

All technology is an advancement and a step up from another. The next major milestones, i think, will eventually be done by large fortune 500 companies like Intel and etc. The most talented developers in Crypto will get recruited by these companies.  

On a side note: Qora was the first crypto that attempted smart-contracts (one could say NXT though). Qora was the ethereum before ethereum imo, sadly it never took off because of development and technical problems.

Original Ann: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=522102.0
NEW Ann: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1358722.0


My weakest understanding is with technical aspects of blockchain and how they are fundamentally designed. I can't go into details, perhaps someone will comment on my remarks here that knows a bit more about what's occurring with the more advanced blockchains.

The longest coin i've ever held is of course, NXT, the first ICO to occur here on BTT (i didn't invest in NXT ICO), but invested in it when it hit it's first exchange (some scammy/shitty one). While most development behind NXT transferred to Ardor project, i hold just the Ardor equivalent i had in NXT (and sold my NXT). So basically Ardor, which is NXT reborn (fork).


The first time i heard about cryptocurrency was through some money making forum (mid 2013), pertaining to marketing, ads and etc. I eventually stumbled upon a Goldcoin post, and i was intrigued because the concept was so different from almost everything else. I searched a bit further (thro the Goldcoin forums), and realized what Bitcoin was, everyone was talking about it. This was just as Silk-road incident was just about to occur, which led to the first spike in Bitcoin price to ($1100-1200 USD). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(bitcoin). I was watching Bitcoin's market, and it was fucking crazy! Bitcoin went from $150-200 usd to $1k usd in like 1 month, day after day, new heights and gains. It was so bizarre to witness such a thing, as a fresh crypto guy.


There was major news behind this, and the first major flood of crypto currency individuals came to these forums to search for more information and see what this was all about (including myself).

If any single event caused Bitcoin to become noticed by the masses, it was Silk-Road, then a bit later the MT. GOX incident.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox

I read your past posts, I really admire your knowledge in the field of crypto, you are very talented！
As an old member of the forum, you can raise objections to the Merit system. this is very rare for higher rank member. Yes, for newbie/jr.membr, the merit system is very difficult to overcome. It is a talented person like you, and now only got 35 Merits, not to mention newbie.In the long run, your views are correct, As the times passes, the entire system will come to a halt, due to the unreasonable replenishment rates and the lack of user-understanding of how the system functions.It will cause the forum to lose its vitality.
I read your topic "Bitcoin's bubble is going to be corrected"，I want to ask you a few questions.

1. Now there are more money in the crypto market than in 2014. In the past, due to the low total amount of funds in the market, once the funds flow into the market, the bear market is easy to reverse, but now there must be a very large amount of money flowing into the crypto market to reverse the bear market now,I think it is very difficult. How long do you think the current bear market will last?

2. Due to the large amount of scam ico, investors are afraid to invest in ico, which will make it more difficult for those really good project financing. In the end, a good project may also fail because it cannot raise enough money. It will form a vicious circle, and more investors will not dare to invest, so ICO is getting worse. Do you think the current market is like this?

3. Ethereum and its ERC20 brothers are now going downhill, will Ethereum be replaced? Who is most likely to replace Ethereum？

Maybe my understanding is superficial. If there is something wrong, please point out！ thank you very much!
I will continue to pay attention to your posts and learn more from you.

Im myself following crypto market for long now and as most of the community is concerned about the current negative sentiment in the market that is here since many months, i will like you to comment on the market situation and when we can expect recovery and bulls back?

Well i am not new but still relatively new. I joined this industry as a spectator in 2016 and recently starting doing bounties and airdrops. I don't have any investmet, actually lost all my 25k usd worth money to a hyip site. Anyway What i want to know is that is it possible for me to make a living out of here because i don't have a job and i am doing full time bounties. Nothing else.

Can i live in making a living out of here ? i have been doing around 20 bounties right now but they all promise to pay about 3, 4 months later. And 2 of my bounties have already said that their softcap not met so no coins for anyone.

What do you suggest ? Oh and for the job, i tried but no luck. So...

 

Thank you for the kind remarks!

I want it to be clear, that any financial advise i give you should use at your own risk. I'm not a genie, and i can't predict the future, i can only tell you what i know from my experiences. Some of what i tell you may be incorrect, some of it may be spot-on, i warn everyone to never take what other people say for granted (even myself).



1) The perception of "big money" flowing into the market is very tricky, people don't often acknowledge that total volume is based on movement, for every coin sold, there's a person that bought it.. obviously. So, at any given moment, you can cut the total volume in half for any coin and determine that that volume for people buying/selling. MOST traders actually sell at a loss, because the markets are so volatile it's very tricky if you haven't been involved with the coin, if you don't understand the exchange and what type of overall market you're in, then you're going to lose money.

As the markets get bigger, it's going to be much much more difficult to "pump & dump" coins, due to the capital needed to manipulate the markets. The big manipulators of the market have built positions years ago, and or are such large investors (with a ton of money pooled together or not), that their influence on the markets can still be seen. Other than that, for the most part, today's market is heavily reliant on sentiment, if people see a 1% decrease, other users are more likely to sell (especially if you're a day trader and do not have a handle on the markets) and the cycle continues creating massive losses for everyone.

When will the bear market end? Who knows. I really can't determine that or give you a clear explanation. My biggest go-to secret is viewing news on a daily basis (with big instutions getting into bitcoin, ETF's and etc), along with historical prices. I don't really expect the markets to enter a bull-ish period by the end of this year, i think Bitcoin may recover a bit, but i doubt it'll reach 10k again this year. It will be much more clear by mid-next year on the current situation of the markets. If you really wanted a number, i personally think the markets won't recover for another 1-3 years (until BTC surpasses 20k again), potentially even longer.

A LOT can happen in months/years with crypto.



2) Yeah it is. But, there's a lot of big industries and outside influences/talents that are being attracted to crypto, with that, they bring experiences in marketing, development and etc. The barrier for entry for new ICO's increases daily, more and more money is needed to really see a successful ICO through.

The current ICO's occurring need little investment, and in-turn, they get little funding these days (especially since it's a bear market). It's going to become more and more clear over the next 2 years that 95% of the ICO's launching are pure shit, and the good projects will have their turn in the light, always.

The biggest problem for me (as an investor) is the separation of Bitcointalk, and all these newer sites to market ICO's and team's going at it solo (without any website help). It becomes very difficult, if there's no major names or backing behind the coin (marketing aswell), to realize these coins in the current climate.

There's a lot to say on this, but hope this introduction is significant for you.



3) Ethereum will not be replaced anytime soon. It's the adopted standard, the easiest to develop on (since a lot of people have created ERC-20 Tokens). The thing with smart-contracts and platforms that get built ontop of is the accessibility for developers, information available and prooven tech. Ethereum has all those qualities. Other coins (in the future and now) may have more significant blockchains and better features, but the current climate ERC-20 is just fine.

The major problem with ERC-20 is availability and how bloated the blockchain will be. Especially when the next major bull-markets occur, it took me like 2days to get a transaction through when cryptokitties was a thing (it destroyed ethereum's network, flooded it).

People will always try to use better blockchains for what they are trying to achieve and marketing purposes, but for most purposes currently, ERC20 satisfies most. Until this climate becomes more sophisticated and evolves into a new level, ERC20 will remain supreme. It could be another 2-5 years before Ethereum becomes severely underthreat, especially if the next bullmarket occurs, Ethereum will not be able to cope with the amount of tokens build on its platform (the number of tokens out there has increased significantly since December.)

Sorry to hear about your losses, if it's any comfort, i sold two (of three) of my NEMSTAKES for roughly 4k USD in total (in 2014 or 2015 can't recall). If i held onto those other two, i would of had an extra 4-6 million USD. Very few people have been in that type of situation, and i still kick myself to this day for making that dumb mistake, but it happens all the time in crypto, i was fortunate enough that i haven't lost majorly yet in crypto. When i started in crypto, i took out 2 loans for 600 USD, and since then, i only put about another 600 usd ever into crypto. I sit on profits from my initial investments, no matter what occurs. I only lose what i did not convert to USD.

All in all, i've lost for being in dumb in crypto, not real money i invested personally. Even though i have lost millions. If that makes sense, haha.



There are a few ways i'm going to view this problem.

1) If you truly believe in crypto, and enjoy your profession here, then i highly recommend you do what you love to do despite what situation you're in. Because when the time comes, and you were in the right place at the right time, you could come out very wealthy over-night (if you were lucky enough).

2) In terms of making a living off of bounties, it's a very tricky subject. Money from bounties is staggered as you said, you're not getting paid RIGHT NOW, but in 3-4 months. Who knows what can happen, more than often these coins die, in some cases they rise expoentially. You can expect about half of those bounties will be total failures and bring you no profit, the other half may bring you good returns, and 1-2 will actually be the majority of the money you make. I can't give you hard ratios, but from my experience, 1/10 1/20 coins i view have some potential.

You can make a living in crypto, but you have to be very smart and aware. Those individuals who do make a living from bounties are examining every piece of information, from analyzing markets daily, analyzing the direction of their coin, and the most important step, understanding weither or not the bounty coin you're doing has any future. I would recommend not relying on bounties initially to make a living, instead of treating it as a 2nd job, that may be very lucrative for you. It's very unpredictable and i can't give you a hard MOST DEFINITELY you can make a living, because it's hard to understand how other people view certain coins and how they research.

Again, i'll stress in entering bounties like you're going to invest in the coin, because you are investing in them, with your time and effort. If the teams lacks transparency, details for their coin or something doesn't seem right then avoid it and move on.

It's an acquired talent and skill to realize what coins succeed, and what coins fail, and often it's out of anyone's control entirely. Even I still struggle to this day knowing which coin is going to be in the top 100, or total fail. This is due to the amount of other coins launching at the same time, the TRUE intentions of the team (which is always unknown), and overall the trends with the markets, and exchanges they get listed on.

There are many many forces that determine which coins are good or not, and how profitable they will ultimately be.



If you're careful, smart and research into coins to get a better understanding, you'll come to a point where you come to an epiphany in what crypto-currency really is, and how many shitcoins there are out there and how to maximize your time and gain a lot of income/profits. This takes a lot of dedication.

Once more, you can make a living, but it depends how much you need to live. I'm not an expert bounty hunter, but i understand how coins fail/succeed and all the problems and discussions other bounty hunters bring up. The best thing to do is find a group that discusses bounties heavily, this will help you understand more.

This is what Vitalik Buterin said at the China Blockchain Industry Summit yesterday. Does this mean that cryptocurrency is already unprofitable?

Even the best minds in crypto can't say with 100% certainty the direction of crypto. I generally agree with what he has stated, but there's one fundamental flaw, and that's where big money resides.

Most are certain that Bitcoin and cryptos in general will experience explosive growth at least once more, when the average institutional investor enters crypto (wall-street in general). Most are waiting for a final legitimization and recognition form the U.S. and around the world.

Along with this prospect, there's a lot more to consider in the broader context of the worlds monetary systems, and potential failures in the future (collapse of USD and other currencies could occur, unlikely, but could). Vitalik was reluctant to mention the growth of Bitcoin initially in 2013, and the "doom and gloom" many had in their minds during 2014-2017, people still predicted Bitcoin could reach 10k USD, but the vast majority (even myself) never believed it would occur within a few years.

Crypto will recover, while we may not experience substantial growth (everything has an upper limit), the general market capitalization is often estimated to be a 2 trillion dollar market (every time i calculate earnings it's based on a 2 trillion mcap, 1 day to 100 years from now, who knows), about 1000% increase from what it is now.

Vitalik's logic is this: the jump from 10 Million mcap, to 200 billion is ENORMOUS, but, the jump from 200 billion to 2 trillion is even more grand (not by %, but by sheer money involved), thus making the later growth even more substantial. I acknowledge what he was trying to say with 10k+ % increases, which will become more of a rarity, but the end of major explosions of growth will not end, but slow down forsure. The top 50 crypto, will hold their positions, unlike what we've seen in the past. There will always be flukes, and new technology that overthrows existing, and that's one reason i will always be hesitant on accepting Ethereum as the standard or etc.

On the flip side, in this current market, coins have shrunk quite a bit (in some cases by 90%), what would happen if bitcoin suddenly went back to 20k in the next 2-3 years? Guess what, the same gains will be made again on those coins, only this time, some may even go even higher because of their current valuations against BTC. There are many many perspectives to look at. Just because Vitalik is founder of Ethereum, doesn't mean he suddenly knows everything about crypto. He's a very intelligent guy, do not get me wrong, but, I don't fully believe he understands what he's talking about sometimes, and i've been reading and hearing his words for the past few years now.

Is Vitalik overall right? Yes in the context of what i written above, but mostly no imo. I firmly believe he's talking only in the perspective of ERC20 token launches, and is neglecting any new and upcoming tech that will overthrow Ethereum's monopoly hold on the smart contract system or even Bitcoin itself, years from now.


As with everything anyone says, there are nuances. Vitalik is in a position of power, and he can dictate what the markets will do (especially with ETH) to a minor extent. His words are valued because he built the second biggest (mcap wise) and largest blockchain (factoring in all contracts), but everything he says is just an opinion, just like with any person. It's easy to be negative in a negative environment, and for that judgement to be accepted. Just like how everyone thought they'd be a millionaire in a positive environment. No one can predict the future, we can only base our current knowledge on all past knowledge and experiences. This is how we draw conclusions for the future.

In my personal opinion, crypto is a long-way from mainstream adoption. Until you sit down one day and your accountant and says "Disney is doing well and we have great forecasts in the next year, but Bitcoin is expected to outperform Disney within the next 10 years..." then you truly know mainstream adoption has occurred, when institutions/businesses and etc recognize the legitimacy of crypto and blockchain.

Most people don't even know the function and still do not recognize the legitimacy of the blockchain. I don't call that mainstream adoption, I call that mainstream awareness. Bitcoin had mainstream awareness in 2009-2010 btw, i remember walking down my highschool hallway and seeing a picture "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto." This was a big thing on the internet, and did catch mainstream news i believe also. People were aware of Bitcoin that far back, but had no clue what it was or what it even meant. I guarantee this is how some of the oldest guys here on BCT found about Bitcoin.



EDIT: In case you are curious, this is what vitalik was ultimately talking about, summed up in 1 graphic. No one knows where we are on this graph, you can only speculate. Most would say "The Chasm" right now, but guess what, "The Chasm" happened in 2014 aswell. And that's what my entire post above is about:

Thanks for your questions thus far, hope they help you a bit.

If my posts are too long, just let me know, i want to give you in-depth insight and answers to really make this thread worthwhile.

In your opinion, Are those coin or token from airdrop are worth to hold? Can you say that you have to dump it when the price in the market is pumping or it's better to hold it and wait when the price is mooning?
Thank you for your answers.

1) Dump when you think the market has peaked (sometimes you can get caught in bear trap, and coin will go higher).

2) On very very rare occasions, you'll sell and the market will hold somewhat steady near its peak. Holding airdropped coins and gaining value over years is so rare, that you'll be looking for this unicorn all your life. Don't wait, unless you have undying faith in your coin. One recent (somewhat of an) example of this rare occurrence, is with Hydro (airdropped coin). https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hydrogen/#charts even though it held somewhat steady, it still pumped and dumped heavily.

3) If you absolutely have faith in the coin, sell high (on pumps) and buy back at about 35-70% discount (depends how near the peak you sold), good rule of thumb. There will always be a chance, no market climbs forever.

4) With any airdrop coin, the price will peak (talking about like 100-200% increases here btw), at one point or another, then the price will fall heavily. My advice to you, is gather every airdrop coin's market history and compare their pumps and dumps. (aside from NEM, which was a unicorn and a crypto bounty/airdrop hunter's dream)

5) I always tell myself this 1 rule "What goes up must come down," and it has always been true, law of gravity applied to crypto markets (what i say to myself). The trick is how far up, how far down and how long; That's a millionaires secret.


Warning: This is just my experiences and what i've learned. Always DYOR and invest/trade carefully.

Thank you for your answer. Vitalik Buterin’s words scared me，but your answer gave me confidence. My assets have depreciated by 80% this year. Most of my altcoins have not been sold in time. I invested $50,000 in 2017-2018. Now I am I have to cut my expenses, my life is getting worse, fortunately, dogecoins has risen a lot this week, so this week I sold some dogecoin and changed some money to live.
I now hold BTC, ETH, EOS, XRP, ADA, WAVE, BTM, LYM, REBL, Dogecoin, STX (it's dying), MOT (very bad coin), etc. I open my wallet, various altcoins, I am thinking about change them all to bitcoin, but it seems that this is uneconomical.
Your answer is not long, because it is worth it, I need someone give me confidence to support me at this hard bear market.

One thing i'm pretty certain of, is bear markets in crypto won't last forever, there are forces that will always try to manipulate the markets into bulls, causing FOMO panick like 2017. And trust me, big whales seen this fomo and will utilize it again. And yeah it is scary, a nice sum of your money is invested.

Privacy based coin's have mostly died out with new wave of investors. As you are aware, back in 2014-2015, this was a major major trend. In the current climate, more investors are being drawn away from the initial ideals that you and I are aware of, decentralization, anonymity and etc. And that's one of the most disappointing things for me, and i'm sure many others who adore cryptos. I want it to be clear, there is a lot of manipulation and advertisements for "decentralized anonymous coins," kinda like coins want to have EVERYTHING in their blockchains, but i do not consider those privacy coins at all.

The flood of shitcoins (ICO's pertaining to industries) have ultimately drowned out any innovation in these areas. Most privacy coins (ICO's) pertain to DASH forks, MN coins, and have ultimately flooded the market, where these coins have no value whatsoever, just like the majority of ERC20 tokens. The projects that are seeking to innovate, are few and are COMPLETELY drowned out by the mass flood of shitcoins, i see these coins and i feel bad, because 3 years ago, their coins would of been within the top 100 today. The barrier for entry of coins has grown and will keep growing, more and more capital will increase proportional to time.
 
In regards to Monero, I don't expect any privacy coin to contend with Monero in the future, it's amazing because there was so much fud behind Monero in the early days and yet it succeeded above all other priv coins, especially over it's father, Bytecoin (the original coin that incorporated cryptoknight on the darkweb). There's a lot of history and reasons why Monero ultimately succeeded above and bytecoin, and i won't go through and give a history lesson here.

There will always be a small niche within crypto for anonymous based coins, but unfortunately, (again) the need/want for privacy coins has become much much less significant. There's also a huge negative connotation against these types of coins (propaganda mostly), and many feel these types of coins are too closely associated with illicit acts. They are very easy to manipulate, and often those creating these types of coins are creating them to serve one selfish-purpose or need, coins like DASH and Monero are successful because they were pretty transparent, in the early days, with what they wanted to achieve.

Monero is the king of anonymous coins and share somewhat of a throne with Dash, again i don't really see that changing ever. Monero is the Ethereum of privacy, and until the technology and development significantly increases over the next few years, or there's suddenly critical vulnerabilities with the protocols that handle the blockchain obfuscation (the way Monero is private for those who don't know), then there will be a need for a new contenders, and new contenders will fill these voids.

I'll be honest here, i know little about Zcash, i never have taken my time to really understand the underlining Zerocoin tech, and why it's more significant (or contends with) than cryptonight. My weakest understanding resides with technical blockchains, and i hope someone out there will eventually give you a better understanding of these chains. But, the option to become private or not, is a gimmick to a certain extent, if that's how Zcash works. You either are going to buy a coin for 100% anonymity or safety, and for prooven tech, or you're going to invest in something else. There's not really a desire for a coin to handle both your private transactions, and public transactions. I think XSPEC is a fork from Zcash, in which i have had some experiences with the wallet and etc, it's just not a nice feature to have, or very essential. If i personally wanted to be private, i would always go with Monero or Dash, it's just much more practical. That's purely opinion btw, i actually have no real use for anoncoins, but they are some of my favorite coins to trade/invest with.



In regards to the markets: If you calculate the top 100 coins, and how many of those are strictly privacy-based coins, it's very small <10%. Even though, privacy coins are the truest crypto-currencies and the truest successors to Bitcoin, in the sense the reincarnation of Satoshi's vision for decentralization and anonymity, unfortunately, most ideologies are lost or manipulated for profit with newer investors.

What is your opinion on governance? Do you believe that it is possible to have governance using only the tools of the protocol? I mean, solutions that do not involve forks, whose differences are resolved only by voting.
 
Do you believe that projects using PoS can function without a central authority and in a totally distributed way?

What's your opinion about regulation, will it be good or bad for the entire Cryptocurrency industry?

Can you explain in detail what you mean by "there are forces that will always try to manipulate the markets into bulls"? Does this mean that the rise or fall in Crypto is artificial?

This is an interesting topic started. Finally, a member concerned to other members as well. I have a question that I have been dying to ask, why are altcoins have this pattern of a spike when it comes to launching, and then downhill from there. Cause usually, when i browse in altcoins, I usually see red few days or to a week after public launch, quite frustrating for potential investors. Thank you for your response.

DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) aka coin governance is a very tricky subject, and i believe is in its infancy. The overall idea of a DAO is a peak into the future and perception of a utopian society.

Due to the nature of this subject, i'm going to remain somewhat limited in my answer, because there are many implications that can be drawn from DAO and how ultimately it will impact the world. I'll strictly answer in terms of crypto.


In a short answer yes, i believe it's possible, because we already see examples of this occurred, namely with the most successful DAO, Dash. But even then, it becomes somewhat vague into the extent this has, and how actions from the blockchain votes are interpreted and acted apon by the humans who are physically working and hiring new indviduals.

The idea of DAO stems from the POW and POS debate, in which who ultimately has power over the network. Consolidation of the network's power in POW is determined by miners, and how large their server warehouse is for Bitcoin mining, and thus, 51% (if you control 51% of the network power, you basically make Bitcoin invalid and unstable, which is a highly talked about subject, but i don't hear about it much anymore.)

Within POS, your power is determined by the strength of your wallet, how many coins you hold. This system favors the 80/20% rule, where 20% of indviduals control 80% of the network (or 20% of the indviduals in POS chains, hold roughly 80% of the coins), which is a natural occurrence within the world. POS is basically the re-incarnation of this economic principal/theory, into the blockchain. Even though, it wasn't initially intended like this (i think), i don't know how Sunny King interperted POS initially (he was the founder of POS with peercoin), i believe he created this system to secure a network without the mass power consumption needed. That was a key feature.

There are 2 major examples of governance i'll look at, DASH and DAO. Basically, within DASH the system is not perfectly democratic, as you still need invested power (ghashes) or collateral for master nodes for the ability to vote. The network is controled by whales, and not your common man, again obeying the 80/20% rule, which is a common occurrence in the world (again not going to say if this is good or bad, because that's a whole different topic). Just know, this system works as the evolutionary traits of human, are always drawn to leadership and this rule.

Now with this system if functions based on the participation of the community and users to propose ideas, if there's no proposal of ideas, then there is no function of the DAO. You can see the failure with DAO in Bitshares, i believe for a while there were no proposals, thus the coin died/failed in that instant for all intensive purposes, because companies just don't ever "cease" when it's working as intended, companies consistently improve and better themselves.

So in essence, if there is no community, there is no proposals, there is no DAO. And if that were to ever occur with DASH (unlikey), it would die utterly. My point being is the function of governance in crypto is as good as the community, and with proposed ideas the system continues to better itself. It still requires human input, and a real-physical work to be done by indviduals. This leads to the dash organization, and how they implement their ideas and how they express the decisions of the community.

Dash is currently undergoing a lot of internal issues, namely with their 10% Expenditure (10% of the supply held by the devs/executives) to execute ideas, and continue to fund the project, but they are going bankrupt essentially, and how DASH will operate with this real company structure years from now, remains unknown. DASH will ultimately fail entirely, if they can't fund their own workforce, then who will enforce the proposals propsed? Who knows. In this sense, DAO is a failed system. But, DASH is inherently a crypto, so don't take what i'm saying as DASH is eventually going to 0 or the market is going to crash, that's not the case at all.

In the sense that DAO is an input from investors/holders of a coin to have voting power to determine the direction of a coin, essentially "shareholders of blockchains" then yes it succeeded. But, this overly complicates matters, and as seen time and time again, power is abused.




In regards to Airdrops, and POS. There are very rudimentary systems in place to completely neglect centralization of power when distributing the coin, but all are flawed (because of manipulation and accountability). The only way a pure POS coin will ever work, is if an AI (high (self-sufficient), not the propaganda marketed of Software AI) itself conducted one (as far-out this idea sounds), without bias and without flaws in the distribution, without any human intervention. This is impossible now, so the entire system for POS in this respect has failed.

There will never be a perfectly distributed coin and never be a perfectly governed coin, because we are human. For reasons i listed above with DAO, POS suffers the same faults.

Do these systems work? Yeah, to a degree. But blockchain is in its infancy. We didn't have much innovation in 2018, and this problem of DAO, POS and distribution is still a long way off to being solved. Solutions to these fundamental problems, will create new billion-dollar blockchains.





There's a lot more to say about DAO, POS and Distribution coins, and in no way is this a complete answer, this is just a brief-touch-up. My ideas/thoughts are fragmented here because this topic is so large, and there's a lot to discuss for each paragraph i've written. If you have one specific questions, then please let me know, it'll be much easier for me to discuss 1 specific topic, instead of a huge one. My answer is not perfect, was a bit reluctant to answer this questions because of that.

First, there will always be a bigger threat to cryptos than regulation, and that's quantum computing.


I can't get into major details in regards to this, so i'm only going to address regulation in the sense for coin launches.

There are 3 things to consider when ICO's get regulated: innovation, capital/investments/monetary gain for the country and competition. Competition in the sense of owning an industry (U.S. and silicon valley, China and manufacturing... etc). How many trillions of dollars has silicon valley brought to the U.S.? Could blockchain one day be on this scale, who knows. But regulation will ultimately dictate these factors.

Crypto will eventually be entirely regulated, but not in the common sense, because innovation is always occurring and there will be coins that launch that double down on the fundamentals of decentralization, anonymity and etc. In the truest sense, cryptos will never be regulated by their nature. And if people want to use crypto anonymous, there will be nothing governments can do. They can't ever control a blockchain and all that. It will require a whole special oversight and branches of government to oversee cryptos, so it's essentially a futile effort in that regard. Transactions can't be controlled, the system can't be controlled and the user's sending (anonymous coins) can't be idenitifed. These are major problems that will never be solved within the next decade.

The only way a government can fully control a "threat" or blockchain in general, is to ban it all-together or allocate enough resources to track down individuals through blockchain, which is very difficult/impossible, especially if someone intentionally hid their tracks or used anonymous coins, aka Monero.

On the flip side with ICOs

Governments have to be very very careful not to stifle this industry, because blockchain technology will create thousands of jobs and bring in significant capital, along with the prestige of being at the edge of technology (for the country). This is why i actually appreciate with how the U.S. is approaching this, small steps at a time, figuring out small ways to implement rules before they go big dick and issue big executive decisions. I don't agree with all their decisions though, and i think there will always be ignorance and resentment towards blockchain tech, this is another problem for another day though.

In regards to regulation for ICO's and coin launches, regulation will be good and bad. Again, it will stifle innovation and may chase the entire industry out of a country, so regulations have to accommodate competition among governments and "be friendly" to these operators, or else they'll completely lose the entire industry from their country. You can already see this occuring, how come ICO's don't get launched in the U.S. and how many innovators did they stifle by introducing the SEC into ICO's, regulating that. A fatal mistake for the U.S. and same goes with China.

Now ICO's are mainly getting launched from European/South American countries and Russia. Soon that will not be the case either. So, what i predict what will occur is the volume of ICO's will all be consolidated into a few countries who are ICO friendly, and thus the volume of coins launching will eventually be dramatically reduced. Now, there will always be coin launches and people who won't abide by these rules, but i'm disregarding them for this post.



This topic is very broad, and this is just a glimpse of what will occur and circumstances that could arise with coin launches only (obviously there are regulations for exchanges, traders, investors, illegal activity, taxes... list goes on). The entire debate will occur for a long time, and in the meantime, Blockchain tech and some crypto's will outlive governments and generations of people. This is the reality.

It's artificial and not artificial at the same time. Crypto markets are governed by one MAJOR force only, sentiment, how people feel emotionally. To a lesser degree, crypto is governed by supply and demand; but, we are not quite here yet to discuss this topic.

The biggest definition i can give crypto, and the underlining tone to this space, is profits and making money... greed. This is the underlining tone, the devil in the details very few discuss and want to avoid completely. And it's very obvious, there are very few people who actually see blockchain as academic.

When there is money to be made, there will be maniuplation, corruption and greed. And that's why ALL markets are manipulated, and every crypto has corruptions or fundamental flaws, simply because you can't control the markets. This is all because the openness and ability for anyone to enter crypto at any point. Now the reason for all this, is because of regulation and anonymity within crypto, which is why i won't go too much further into this topic.

Some people enter crypto to invest for the future, and put money on tokens/coins they have faith in. That's totally fine, and that's ultimately what the majority of people are doing. But, these are not the 20% of individuals who own 80% of the total crypto-mcap.


So again, yes crypto markets are artificial, but at the same time, it obeys natural behaviors for becoming adopted (in a very broad sense). It's all supply, demand and sentiment. These are ultimately the 3 forces that crypto markets are governed by.


On a side note: I'm sure all of you have seen messages for pump and dump groups, heard of whales and all that. That's all manipulation of the markets. The guys with the most capital will always govern the markets, just like the real-world.

Thank you for the compliment, but i will not discuss anything about investing in particular coins or my portfolio.

The longest coin i've held is NXT which in turn is ARDOR now. But, that's not a project i would invest in today; because, it's a coin i already have and also because i would not chose to (it's 50/50 for me and a very personal answer fyi). This answer is not intended to be specific in anyway.


But, i did basically answer your entire question. Please view here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4930584.msg44427470#msg44427470

This is due to the quality of coin launches, and nothing to determine quality other than your average investor (whom are less educated about crypto, trading, investing and having knowledge about businesses in general).

There is movement in a positive direction, investors and traders are getting smarter overall, but crypto is still new (relatively speaking). There are few rules & regulations for the average person to enter crypto and invest their savings, unlike, the real-world where traders/investors need to be qualified/licensed and have oversight. Now crypto will eventually have this (it's inevitable), but it will stifle innovation and the decentralized fundamentals of the blockchain, set before us by Satoshi, so this is a very tricky question in that sense at this current time. There will eventually be regulation, but there will never be true regulation in the common sense we know of Wall-street and etc, especially with anonymous coins.


In regards to the markets, as i discussed previously (2 posts above), there's a lot of manipulation and consolidation of power/wealth among the "whales" or individuals with large amounts of capital. Along with that, 100s of coins get launched on a monthly basis, and there's only so much wealth to go around (liquidity) in the markets. So when a coin is launched, it's at maximum hype and potential, people in crypto always determine that "this is the next big thing" "this will overthrow XX coin, This coin will be listed in the top 100" essentially, expectations for the coin to perform outweigh what has been really created, what the true reality is (again due to education and knowledge). I'm very outspoken in this regard, and you can immediately determine that 90% of coins launching are shitcoins, coins that have no fundamental insight or purpose other than being vehicles of profit for the creators and big whales.

This in turn creates a climate, where coins get listed to an exchange, the market is un-tapped/fresh and unknown (no-one knows the ceiling or potential ((energy)) behind the coin who has invested in it and etc), so the expectation that the coin will rise because of hype and positive sentiment from investors/community members. Then, because the markets are governed by 1 major force, sentiment, any decline whatsoever, or dump by maniuplative forces, creates a wave of negative sentiment, fear, doubt and uncertainty... causing a panic among invested income, then eventually a collapse of the market. When a decline occurs, there are many ready to profit from it, but it can create a cataclysmic spiral for the market, and it may never recover.

Also note, that all markets are pegged to Bitcoin or Ethereum, and almost all valuations are predicated on their performance. So when we are in a bear/bull-market (because of Bitcoin mainly) markets may behave in a different fashion.

This cycle has been completed so many times, that it has been ingrained in the fabric of crypto's (right now 2018), essentially individuals now are more prone to dumping than before (years ago, because of significantly less liquidity) because of how commonplace this effect is, creating a feedback wave and expectation that the coin is eventually going to decrease and that they will eventually lose on the markets if they don't sell.


To a lesser degree, this is also because of market liquidity, volume, and the particular exchange listing. There are more qualities and some left out details, that get attributed to this, but, this a generic overview of what occurs.


Of course there are nuances and exceptions, but the majority of coins behave in this fashion.

 


 

How do you think that Winklevoss twins' application for the Bitcoin ETF on September 30, 2018，will it be approved or not?

If this time fails, then do you think there is a possibility of success next year?

The SEC has always believed that there is currently insufficient evidence to show that Bitcoin derivatives have sufficient market size, and that bitcoin still has doubts about fraud and price manipulation. So what do you think should be done to make the Bitcoin ETF approved?

In regards to the first two questions, i could speculate on it, but that woulden't help anyone. It's all speculation currently, and there's more to Bitcoin ETF's that the public realizes or understands. One is, no one knows anything about the SEC views Bitcoin ETF's and all that.


There's nothing that can be done, that hasn't already occurred. It's all about how the outside world views Bitcoin and it's capabilities, and if the facts prevail. If they feel "fraud, price manipulation and market size" are factors that lead to a decline, then so be it. Inherently, the world has to come to accept Bitcoin and blockchain for what it is, the capabilities are and what's ultimately going to come of it. There's nothing that will be done to Bitcoin Core, or the mining process, or cryptocurrency in general that will change. The only thing that will change, is which """cryptocurrencies (but it's not at all a crypto btw)""" are allowed, such as Ripple's centralized XRP.

It's still pretty funny to me that the SEC claims "price manipulation" behind Bitcoin, AKA "no one can't control the supply, so it's manipulated." Where as the most legitimate argument they have is sufficient market size for a legitimate ETF, which could also say price manipulation. Regardless, they have to maintain volatility ranges and govern how markets operate. It's very curious to see Bitcoin become an ETF, because it actually can't be controlled by the SEC or anyone.  

Again, it's all speculation and only time will tell how long from now Bitcoin ETF's will come in to play, and how they will impact the markets in a very fundamental fashion, from creation of ICO's, legitimization, total market cap and etc. ETF is another gateway or hurdle that Bitcoin is getting tested with, and so far, Bitcoin has passed every test and hurdle in the past 8-9 years. It will happen, but, when is the question? Like you said Sep 30th, 1-2-5-10 years from now? Who knows.


All i can say with this, is there are big hands at play in the financial industry who want to see this occur, and big hands that will do everything in their power to disrupt and DE-legitmize Bitcoin, due to the threat to their business practices. It's not a matter of if at this point, it's a matter of when.

how do you think now on market already many of erc-20 tech 's coin.it will effect crypto 's value?

Are blockchain the future of governance and large cooperation and organisation?

Already answered this, see: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4930584.msg45592514#msg45592514

If you're looking for a specific answer, let me know.

Thank you for your previous answer, I will continue to ask questions.   ;D

Why are many blockchain projects now, and their ideas are very good, but it is difficult to practical use?
Let's take a look at the myriad of ANN threads, about using blockchain technology in the construction industry, about using blockchain technology in the logistics industry, and about using blockchain technology in the retail industry.
But the unfortunate truth is, is any project really successful now? This is also a point that I and my friends are confused.
When will the blockchain era really come?

Note: There may be some unclear ideas, bad grammar, and bad sentence structures for this post, i don't really have the time to go through and edit this to perfection. I really hope this serves as a basic introduction, this is by no means fully-fledged out, i briefly covered a few topics here relating to ERC-20. Hope it helps you guys.




@coin8coin8 No problem, it's my pleasure.

In regards to ERC-20 tech coins, industry related coins and etc, i do not find any favorable at all, and personally, i immediately filter them (in my mind). This is due to a variety of reasons, and i understand many of my arguements here can be countered.

When looking at ERC-20 tokens, it's very obvious that many are trying to acquire a certain niche and exploit these areas that have not been incorporated in a real-world. I often think, that many of these types of industry-related tokens, health, construction, based on "diamonds or etc," transactions, rewards and the list goes on and on, are setting themselves up for acquisition by a real-world industry.

Lets face it, in order to compete in the real-world, there needs to be a clear innovation that has acquired a massive amount of users. If that idea or business has enough support, then acquisition by a large company, that pertains to that industry, would be likely to buy-out the entire idea/platform. It's all about cost and R&D. In the broader perspective though, no crypto has achieved any mass-adoption, or has (my guess) about even 10k concurrent real-users (who are not investors) using their platform. It's just not something that's being done at this current time, or has been accomplished.

For those reasons, all these ERC-20 token niches are bullshit. Along with that, the amount of capital to compete with real world industries such as: Steam games, health insurance companies and etc will require 10s of millions, if not 100s of millions of USD to actually be on the radar of these existing companies. If one of these companies saw blockchain a threat to their core business model, they will actively R&D it themselves, and launch/incorporate these ideas on their own terms, unless they are skeptical about blockchain, in which they will acquire some of these ideas many many years down the line (it won't be any token being used today btw, for reasons that 90% will die).

There's a lot more that goes into this, and that's how customers trust businesses with their personal information, quality of the business products (which is the biggest issue), customer-acquisition costs, feasibility of the idea, and a core business model for profits. The business that are successful today, that were funded through ICOs (thus given out erc20 tokens) pertain to a CRYPTO SPECIFIC industry only, such as: mining, pools, services and etc.

While, blockchain security is flawless, it's still the security in who you're dealing with, with an unproven concept, that is coming out of the middle of nowhere in various parts of the world. Coupled with that, is the idea of legality issues that arise, every industry is heavily regulated when it comes to dealing with customers and many of these businesses revolving around these token creations are neglecting any of this. Most coin teams neglect: how customers are acquired, neglecting the reality of blockchain which is not known by the avg person, adoption or even use on a daily basis.


Those are briefly some problems/issues, but for the length of this post going to avoid going into specific detail in those various of areas. There's ultimately A LOT to say, too much so that i can't give you a really good explanation, just a tease.


These tokens ultimately effectively acquire some market share, and increase the entire mcap/user-base around crypto, there's not denying that these tokens are helping crypto's adoption on a fundamental level. But, i'm still amazed on how insignificant their impact on crypto is, because Bitcoin is so dominate over all cryptos that it puts everything else to shame. There's a lot more i can go into about these tokens and their impact on the broader market, but just understand, the markets are saturated, and because of saturation, i suspect 90% of these ERC-20 tokens will die in the next 1-3 years. Just like how, 80-90% of POW/POS coins from 2014 are dead now, history repeats itself.


In short form, no, most of these coins are not successful, or will ever see success. If you ever research deeply into these types of tokens, you'll come out with viewing about 5-20 other ERC-20 coins who've attempted the same thing, for the same industry, with the same ideas. Thus, leading me back to the original point of this topic, ERC-20 coins are a failure, because they are getting utilized for greed and monetary profit.

Will investors make profits on these coins, yeah sometimes, more often than not, investors actually lose money on ICO's and they quit crypto forever, calling this entire industry a scam, a fraud and fake. That's because, people do not understand that crypto/blockchain is only 1 small part of industries they are investing in, they have no acquired knowledge or sufficient background in understand WHAT REALLY makes up the "gaming industry (dominated by steam, nintendo.. etc)" or what really makes up industries in healthcare logging... etc.

This is why, 80-90% of the top coins on CMC, that are erc-20, are concept-driven, technically advanced coins. Because almost every industry related crypto, is a failure. There are very few coins that are showing any success or ideas that have been prooven somewhat successful, and the tokens/coins that are successful, you and I will never know what it is until you hear in the news "XXX erc-20 token has made a partnership with Steam games." because of the mass flooding of shitcoins, scams, and money hungry teams.



When will the blockchain era truly become adopted? Most say that blockchain and crypto has been mass adopted, but they are incorrect on so many levels. Yes, there are big companies accepting crypto, there are companies "Looking into blockchain tech." but how many of these companies incorporated blockchain tech into a core part of their business? NONE, only a few banks are starting to experiment with transactions.

Blockchain tech is still many many years away from becoming part of our daily lives, thus, becoming adopted on a global scale. My words of advice, invest in the technology, not the business.

Hi，friend, Thank you for answered me so many questions, I am here to say goodbye to you today, I have invested too much time in crypto, but the bear market has made my life difficult, and my friends around me finally have a chance to laugh at me, I used have been promoting Bitcoin to them all the time, but now they think it is a joke. I have to sell most of my coins to repay the bank's loan, even my company has closed down, I am sad, but I have no choice.
Maybe  I will come back when the market gets better, but who knows if the bull will return?
Have a good day！

Hey, no problem it was quite fun for me!

I'm very sorry to hear that, i truly hope everything goes well for you and at least you come out with understanding of what this field entails, so when the time is right again, and if you decide to return, you'll return without having to spend hours and hours trying to understand this environment.

Best of luck, and i hope everything works out well for you in the end.

If you ever want to have a brief chat in the future, feel free to pm me anytime

I admire your wealth of knowledge, how you have been taken your time to answer every bit of question asked on this thread and you sincerity in answering some questions that appear tricky.
I have taken some to be my mentors on this forum, seeing and reading through your posts today, has made me not to have a choice, but to also have you as one of my top mentors in he crypto space.
As regards the longevity of cryptocurrency, some people are afraid it might end soon. Then, what s your opinion, do you think it is likely to last long than expected?
Can government regulations also kill it, perhaps they eventually have their ways?

Hey Classica,

Thank you for your very kind remarks, actually made my morning.


In a short answer, cryptocurrency will never cease to exist.

We have to break up the longevity of crypto (and blockchain) this up into 3 fundamental parts: Applications for technology, the crypto markets themselves, and can a crypto be actually killed by anything?


To start, it's very easy to have negative sentiments, in a negative market.

Contrary to what we've heard, and the explosion of crypto in 2017-early 2018, massive gains. One would immediately come to an initial conclusion, big gains, a lot of people made a lot of money! Not necessarily, i would argue that the majority of people who invested in 2017-2018 lost big, lost very big, and countless stories here on Bitcointalk and elsewhere can somewhat prove this claim. Of course some people made money, but a lot more lost. I would go on to loosely correlate and cite the 80-20% rule here, where 80% of anything is controlled or gained by 20% of individuals, and the remaining 80% of individuals control just 20% of something. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say, those big holders from 2014-2017, those 20% of individuals, most likely made out with 80% of all the wealth in that last bull-run.

Cryptocurrency by its very nature is decentralized. (In the most ideal condition) As long as there are 2 parties supporting a network (via pow, pos or any other algo to support consensus of blockchain), then that network is 100% safe (again discounting any other manipulative outside sources for a moment). So 2 people is all it takes 50-50 split of ownership of a network, then that blockchain would be consider alive, real and functioning. That's all it takes. It's not entirely reasonable to conclude that most cryptocurrencies, specifically the most well known coins, will ever cease to exist, ever. Bitcoin, Ethereum, BCash, EOS... etc, this networks will function as long as there are a handful of people willing to support the network, and by supporting the network, they are also securing it. Thus, if someone is willing to spend energy and time into securing something, then it must have value.

Some may argue that we are in a period of the trough of disillusionment, the cycle of all technology, and that crypto is dying, dead or etc. I would argue this is just the beginning, could anyone honestly stand here and say, in 1-5-10-50-100-1000 years from now blockchain was just a dead end then? Pretty ridiculous sentiment, especially if you understand human nature and technology itself. Again, it's easy to be negative where negativity is the dominate force, but to be optimistic and look beyond the next few days, weeks, months and years of your life, and understand what could happen in that time-frame requires dedication, along with a deep understanding of yourself. Are people in crypto to get rich quick, of course, but there are others that are here out of passion and again, understanding of what this field represents; they understand this is a maturing process, adoption and use don't happen overnight, it can take years and decades. Just like the Internet wasn't adopted overnight (created in 83', it took nearly 2-decades (about 15-20years).

As for regulations, now i'm a bit of proponent against and for regulations, why both? Because, if we take a look at what's being accomplished in the regulation space, we basically are witnessing (at least from the U.S, mainly the SEC - security exchange commission) a lack of understanding, and biased reactions towards crypto. There are those who are for blockchains, because they recognize a boom of capital income for that particular state, making it friendly enough for new startups. If we look across the world, no major government has outright banned the use of any crypto, simply because it'd be completely useless to do so, and that's not only because they have no control of the network, neither can they truly understand which of their citizens are holding or using crypto, it comes down to the simple argument of the advancement of technology. Now we are getting into the true meat here.

Blockchain and the whole of crypto represent a glimpse of a utopia that almost every liberally-minded person is essentially striving for. In essence (from my interpretation), technology (which is applications of mathematics and physics) is the gateway to a better world, a future world, a world made more efficient and interconnected. The stuff you hear late night on BBC's Click. If you come to a deep understanding on how fast new and upcoming tech is being utlized, you will shortly come to an understanding of what the potential for blockchain's incorporation into the real-world represents. And guess what, people did take notice of blockchain, hence the explosion of ICOs, Utlitiy tokens, Security tokens, etc. people are wanting to capture these parts of the future, incorporating their blockchains or coins into niche environments (health, gaming, etc list goes on). In almost every industry, blockchain or a cryptocurrency integration has major advantages, it could streamline processes, reduce costs, add transparency and the list goes on and on. This is why you see so many trying to capture these niches, this space, funding start-ups through ICOs, in hopes of building a successful business, getting rich, and potentially even being at the forefront of technology, revolutionizing industries!

That all sounds fantastic, and yes governments and people in government (the non-retarded ones) understand this to an extent. You can't simple kill a piece of technology, because guess what, those business that are creating new cryptos and ICOs are going to be moving elsewhere, and up-and-coming industry where millions...billions are being poured into, suddenly vanishes from your country. Not only that, it's more effective for opening a new stream of revenue through taxation, then it is to outright legalize something, if enough people are willing to use it, then there is nothing a government can do to stop it, and this couldn't be more truer for a crypto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States) Now many lawmakers and some individuals do not have the capacity to peer into the future, and nature an up and coming field, and this is where you get negative sentiments from, where you get individuals criticizing crypto and calling it useless and etc.

Why would crypto be called useless, or that it has no value? It's quite simple, because while all crypto's utilize blockchain, the currency, commodity or whatever definition you want to attach to Bitcoin and other alts, remains speculative, simple because it's not adopted (widely used for practical purposes). Now i understand whoever is reading this far, that there are countless arguments, situations, scenarios where this is absolutely false, especially with other cryptos. I also know that we are currently in this adoption phase, where businesses are trying to figure out what exactly they can do with blockchain and crypto, how it's applicable to their (or other businesses), and how they can draw a profit from. But, at the end of the day, some individuals take an alternative path and view crypto from a purely transaction standpoint, being a store-of-value, or a means to transact a transaction quickly, cheaply and anonymously. Hence all the discussions about the dark web, illegal, laundering and etc. Being negative about anything is quite easy, humans are quite good at pointing out faults, it's easy to label Bitcoin as speculative, or worthless and etc, but ask yourself deeply, why are they saying that? Do they truly understand the capabilities that Bitcoin represents and influences?

Einstein once said something like this "i stand on the shoulders of James Clark Maxwell." who is the father of electromagnetism, which is the very essence of what ALL technology is built off of today, it applications in EVERY place and is used everywhere (imo the most important discovery in the 19th century outside of theory of evolution). Maxwell never got the recognition during his time, simply because no one could comprehend a non-physical reality, one governed by a new force, a new theory of fields. Bitcoin's reputation as a crypto, will continue to influence many. That's why we are seeing advancements of Blockchain and crypto, Bitcoin laid the foundation and future devs will build on those core ideas. While it's not the shinning gem on the block, or has great functionalities like Ethereum, it still represents this idea, this sole vision of what can be done with what Bitcoin was built on for the future. Thus what Bitcoin has done, and what Satoshi created was not a means-to-an-end, but a new beginning.

Regulation will never kill crypto, nor would any lawmaker or government sensible enough would want to ban crypto. Will they try to regulate it, tax it, of course they will. Will people abide by these rules, of course. So to an extent, regulations will win in the end, but will only legitimize crypto/blockchain further for the masses. But, you can't regulate the world, and somewhere on this earth, there will be a place that will be idyllic for crypto's and ICOs to be created from, free from big-brothers hands, creating any crypto you can dream of, without any authority telling you otherwise. We are already seeing the flower beginning to bloom on these topics, and we can get much deeper into this conversation (for another day). Cryptocurrency and blockchain will be around till the end of time, or evolve accordingly to survive. Only a futuristic quantum computer or a completely revolutionary vision/redesign of blockchain completely may put the current understand of blockchain on its heels. But, there's essentially nothing you can really do (unless a total blackout occurs) to kill any crypto or blockchain. Even some ICOs that are being shutdown, guess what, those crypto's are not going anywhere, for example: Paragon and Credits, just because they can kill the business, doesn't mean they killed the crypto. Are those cryptos crippled, yeah they are, mostly because they served one niche purpose and those weren't fully realized. Will these crypto's become speculative investments, profit mechanisms, or see someone willing to build from their ideas or continue operations, you can count on it. But, those cryptos are still alive in to their very core.

Value is only derived from someone else wanting something (outside of essentials that life needs to survive), and as long as there's one person in this world that sees value in crypto, then crypto itself will never cease to exist.

Great process.

As you mentioned above for quantum computing, does this mean the end of the cryptocurrency?
But I think quantum computing can also be used for encryption, which can make the cryptocurrency really impossible to crack.

Short answer, no.

It's perceived (from what i've known and read) that we are about anywhere from 20-100 years away from a usable, everyday, quantum computer. The essence of it, no one knows when this will occur, or if it can even be achieved in our lifetimes. This subject is pretty in-depth overall, and I'll briefly go over what exactly a quantum computer is and how crypto will ultimately benefit and (fail) due to this enormous milestone for humanity.

To begin with, a bit represents a 1 or a 0, the most fundamental way to interpret the very fabric of reality into machine (or digital language). Essentially, a 1 means on, and a 0 means off. Computers behave by interpreting data in this fashion, reading bits, or a string of 8 bits (a byte), in order to process information. 0 essentially means no information, or a gap, a 1 means some sort of information is present. Thus, stringing these values, will ultimately denote a character, or any piece of information desired.

A Qbit is a quantum entangled pair of particles. Entanglement is inherent in quantum mechanics, a phenomenon whereby 2 particles, no matter the distance, will react instantaneously inversely to the particle entangled with (spin, polarization..etc). A Bit is binary it can only occupy one state, a 1 or a 0, with a Qbit, it can occupy both a 1 and a 0, called superposition. As you can imagine, this has drastic implications on the amount of information that can be processed.

The problem is, the current quantum computers are very unreliable, unstable and require a temperature near absolute 0 to even function (superconductor). Coinciding with that, you need enough Qbits to compute anything reasonable (100-150 is the latest), therefore the power of a quantum computer right now, is virtually useless. To create a near-absolute 0 environment requires an enormous amount of energy, to remove energy from the system, it's impractical for all intensive purposes. The colder the temp, the less resistance, and you need virtually no resistance (superconductor) to handle a Qubit operation. (i encourage you to read further, I'm not expert on material sciences)


Leading into cryptography -

The implications of the amount of information that can be processed due to the Qbit will directly affect all forms of encryption as we know it. Bitcoin utilizes SHA-256 encryption, and to crack a Bitcoin key: "it takes on the order of 2^128 basic operations to get the Bitcoin private key associated with a Bitcoin public key." - Wiki. I should note, there can be 2^256 different variations of private keys, and it would take roughly 0.5-0.6 billion years to compute all the variations with a modern supercomputer. That's very roughly 1/28 or 2% the age of the observable universe. Not practical or feasible to even think about or attempt. But, a quantum computer theoretically crack SHA-256, obtain private keys, rendering Bitcoin's blockchain useless. I should note, that transacting Bitcoin and announcing your public key happens in seconds, so what is perceived if you have 1 address, it's still somewhat impractical to cracking your public key, to obtain the private-key, even with a quantum computer.

Now, there are a lot of cryptos that have mitigation against quantum computing already created. IOTA, NEO and Qtum, there are various of others. Each one of these blockchains handles quantum resistance differently from what i understand, IOTA with DLT, Neo with ECC and Qtum with QRL. Not going to go into the specifics.

Essentially, with our current understanding it's very feasible to create quantum resistant blockchains, and all cryptos already have some sort of resistance already built into them. As we move forward in the decades, cryptos will fork off into newer algos or will already have mechanisms in place to defend against these types of attacks. Bitcoin has essentially done this, first mined with CPU, GPU and now ASICs. The various of forks were to prevent a 51% attack, first from the threat of GPUs and then ASICs, ASICs representing the epitome of power for computing hashes p/s, today. The second is brute-forcing (as expressed above) is obtaining private keys from the public key. As you stated, quantum computing can be used not only as an attacking mechanism, but also be used to encrypt information itself. Thus, somewhat nullifying this entire discussion.

The problem is that everything is mostly theory (not quantum mechanics) in terms of prevention against quantum computing.  I don't and very few actually know the mathematics behind all this stuff. And because of that, this answer is going to remain somewhat incomplete, unless someone else wants to weigh in on this topic that's more well-versed in computer science and quantum mechanics.

I will ultimately say, the biggest issue will reside with a quantum computing machine from an unknown party. Governments are no doubt working on these things, and the biggest issue for cryptos is not if, but when a quantum attack will occur. The prevention against these machines will quickly follow. But, it will have a significant impact on the entire market, you will see (no matter what occurs) an enormous sell-off, because of the fear, uncertainty (negative sentiment) and threat they pose. I believe, once a quantum computer is stable enough to operate, the first target is cryptography and all forms of encryption held over the internet. I really do not believe public companies like Intel and etc. will be the first to build a practical, stable quantum computer; simply because there is too much at stake for a government not to be investing in this technology for cybersecurity purposes. You can see glimpses of what computing power is doing to nations, just look at how the U.S. is reacting and telling it's allies not to use China/Huawei's 5g network capabilities/infrastructure. What would a quantum computer mean for governments across the world? Power, whatever it means to have a nuclear capabilities, by multiply that by some large arbitrary large number for how much significance a quantum computer has. The world is not disconnecting from the net anytime soon, in fact we are in the beginning. The IOT is real, somewhere in the future (if humanity hasn't annihilated itself), i image our consciousness will be uploaded to achieve near*-immortality.  


If this topic interests you or anyone, i highly recommended just researching these field. There is so much information out there, and what was presented in the post above is really basic. Begin with the basics of Quantum Mechanics, then research further into the specifics of quantum-entanglement and superposition; Lastly, cryptography and encryption in general.

Thank you for your answer! Your knowledge is much larger than I imagined.

No Problem


For everyone else, there's a lot that's been answered in the past few pages; but i encourage you, if you have any questions to feel free to ask them!

Bump, been a while since I've answered some community questions. Although I've covered a wide-range of topics here and on my previous thread.

Between crypto investment and trading, which do you recommend for a crypto enthusiast with low capital?

Which of the coins should such person trade or invest in?..

We are near contemporaries and I was happy to see you made a merit source, even if that was a year or more ago -- you're one of the few true heads who really stuck in out in Altcoin Discussion even after it became overwhelmed by spam. Here, let's try to test your memory:

What is one coin that you truly thought was going to moon, perhaps even rival bitcoin because you believed it was that awesome, but then sank into nothingness?

Most of us come across these types of coins every once in a while, but for you -- what coin's failure surprised you the most?

1. Now that the court is demanding for users data from centralized exchanges do you think that users will stop using centralized exchanges and finally move to DEX? Are centralized exchanges going to lose their reputations after this?

2. Some new projects are still finding it very hard to use exchanges like binance to raise fund through IEO because of the cost, what could be the best solution for such young crypto projects?

3. If IEO have good hype presently will they perform as good as ICO did in 2017 when the bullrun and altcoin season are present?

Will the price of BTC ever go down in 2020?

Personally; i think when you have low capital and you are an ethusiast; it is best to choose trading; by choosing trading you have an opportunity to learn and practice; you get an opportunity to develop and perfect a working strategy without feeling the impacts of losses or mistakes. Believe me, if with your little capital you are able to understand the philosophy and psychology and motives involved in trading; investment will come easiest for you.


I do not like to choose coins for enthusiasts; but if you are trading for profits or investment, bitcoin, litecoin and etherum comes handy if you can do your own research about them. Altcoins investment are superb too if you can find the right one

This really depends on the reason's you're getting into crypto in the first place. It also depends on if your life depends on the capital you're expending and your experiences with investments and trading prior to crypto.

It's critical to understand that whatever capital you put into crypto, presume that you will never get a return or may lose a substantial portion of that investment or trade. If you make a profit, great.

For newcommers, I do not recommend trading, I recommend investing in the top 5-15 cryptos with substantial liquidity and a overall a solid presence. The further you go down the crypto market ranks, the more risk you incur.. for better or worse.


To Wenbing's point, trading is not as easy as some make it appear to be. Yes, if you become highly skilled in understanding the underlining psychology in crypto, are excellent with micro-managing and have a solid understanding of all the core principals of what makes a successful trader, then by all means. But trading is not for everyone and the vast majority who day trade, lose or on average, make as much return as someone who "goes long."

I do not personally trade, I do not have the aptitude or patience for trading crypto's anymore.




I do not speculate on crypto prices. There are hundreds of crystal ball readers who will be more than happy to give you their predictions. But just understand, never trust anyone or any authority on crypto prices. That's a ticket to disaster and massive losses. No one has your interest in mind but yourself, trust only yourself. Crypto is money and everyone is trying to do everything in their power to get that money. That's the rule of the game.


That being said, TA and etc. are all tools based on the history of crypto. Every prediction and analysis is where crypto has been and the current state of crypto, then one draws a conclusion for the future. The bottom line is no one knows anything or where crypto is headed. More importantly, it's fundamental to understand sentiment of people in crypto. More often than not, it's a significantly more potent tool than any TA can yield, but sentiment is very abstract area and nearly impossible to get a full grasp on without big data.

Thank you for the complements, I always try my best to give back to the crypto community. There's a lot of misinformation and manipulation on a regular basis. It's super important for people to try to continually bring integrity and non-biased (as much as humanely possible) to this field.


As much as I would like to answer your question, it really doesn't matter what coins I've invested in or what surprised me, unless you're genuinely curious. In reality, everyone has a coin that has disappointed them or did not live up to their full-potential or what they were marketed as. That's the nature of crypto. If you can dig in deep and filter the shit, the lies and the truth then you're way ahead of everyone else in this space. The golden word - research.

If anyone has been in crypto since at least 2017-2018, then chances are that the vast majority of those individuals invested in something that is now worthless or dead. If you somehow invested in a crypto that now resides in the top 50 today, then kudos to you, you're probably (and I'm guessing here), among the 5-10% of those who made a wise choice.


And sorry, I will not mention any specific crypto's I've invested in/traded in previously. Although, I may have mentioned somewhere else.

What do you think will be the direction of the crypto market in 2021?
And what do you think of crypto mass adoption when it will be achieved?

I do agree with you; and this is one reason why we have to keep re emphasizing to newbies and ethusiasts who are just taking up a seat in the crypto space to never borrow to trade or invest in cryto currency. Start up capital for every newbie traders or investors, must be funds that we can survive without.

But also on the contrary; i think and believe that trading is easy; but the processes to have a good trade history is where the complications comes in. How many learning traders are willing to sacrifice time and patience  to follow up a process to the profitable end?
 

Uh, OK, I wasn't necessarily asking about coins that you personally had invested in, just one that you thought was really going to make it big time and then didn't.

For example, for me personally I thought WAX (WAXP) was going to explode this year but it really hasn't. I am not (no longer) invested in WAX but given all they have going on, I'm surprised they're not at least 3x higher by this point.

My cousin made in excess of 1 million usd following the suggestions of a member here. He started with less than 2000 dollars.
Those that he invested in previously sunk over 90% and he is buying them all over again?
Is that a sensible move? I am invested in some of those also but is it true regardless of the actual technical value or potential design excellence most investors are of the mindset that only the latest projects have a chance to make the top 10 or the big time.

Do you think marketing and hype sway investors more than the technical superiority due to many not being able to evaluate or understand the designs? And the advantages they offer?

Ah, Worldcoin back in 2014. I thought it was going to make it the big time, like overthrowing Bitcoin. I was pretty naive and new to crypto, turned out there was some scam or dumping that occurred, can't even recall. It was a much different era back then though.

- There was another coin called eMunie that was around 2014-2015, was in development for like a year or two. Thought that would be massive. Turned out to be a massive scam.
- Syscoin is another, but the Mintpal fisaco permanently damaged their reputation and prospects.

More recently, It's been me being surprised that X coin gained or moved ridiculously high and sustained, (recently, Band and Elrond), but I never invested in them.


To be completely honest, I have of course have my own portfolio (I don't directly invest in any crypto or trade though) and I've always been super bullish on every crypto I acquire (usually from projects/teams I work for directly), but nothing really surprises me massively anymore. I've seen crazy gains, crazy losses, huge fakeouts and etc.

I don't really see much potential in any crypto anymore to usurp the current status of the majority of coins. There will always be new gems, but chances are that we won't see them until they are massive, even I miss major crypto launches despite spending hundreds of hours per month researching and reading about old and new cryptos. I've been acquiring a more cynical view of cryptocurrency teams and new coins to launch in the past year. This is mainly due to DeFi shitcoins that flooded the environment and continue to do so, 2017 ICO boom all over again. Although, DeFi token launches now mimic the crypto climate in 2013-2015 rather than 2017-2018. Strange how cyclic things seem to be in retrospect.

1. Now that the court is demanding for users data from centralized exchanges do you think that users will stop using centralized exchanges and finally move to DEX? Are centralized exchanges going to lose their reputations after this?

No, CEX will not lose the confidence of traders or investors. I will even argue they will never be usurped by DEXes.

Let me be quite frank here, there are many negatives to centralized exchanges: centralization of crypto supplies, security vulnerabilities, monopolistic tenancies, hacks... etc. But, for an average person, a DEX will always be a niche.

If people are attempting to avoid or are afraid of the law, then I'm going to assume they are most likely doing something wrong or not according to their countries law. Does that make it bad? That's not really for me to judge. There are of course scenarios were there are legitimate reasons why someone would absolutely need to be off the radar, such as people from authoritarian counties, China and etc.

For the average person, a CEX will be the most convenient and in most scenarios, the safest option to invest/trade cryptos with.


Does this thought process strip away the ideals of what a crypto is. Yes. But, I'm talking reality here and tendencies of human behavior and what has transpired over the last years. Binance continues to be largest exchange because they consistently innovate, are the most convenient, safe and trusted. Binance is also the most centralized and monopolistic exchange in all of crypto, especially now that they fall under Chinese law since Hong Kong has been stripped of its democracy.

The biggest threat to crypto in the immediate future is Binance. But I've not seen any conversations, critiques or warnings of what a danger Binance poses to the entire crypto ecosystem. That's because no one really cares anymore. As long as investors and traders can make money, then any exchange that's not a scam will be sufficient.


2. Some new projects are still finding it very hard to use exchanges like binance to raise fund through IEO because of the cost, what could be the best solution for such young crypto projects?

A general rule of thumb is that the market dictates what a good and bad project is. This is determined on how experienced teams are, how balanced they are, what types of resources and connections they draw from.

There are hundreds if not thousands of teams who would love to make a crypto and have attempted to do so. The reason many fail is due to having various of issues, including poor communication, marketing, tech, bad ideas, useless ideas, etc etc. I could make an enormous list for you on why teams fail and can't raise funds. It generally means because the project is a failure.

A good team and good project will almost always succeed to raise funds and launch whatever they are launching. Bad projects can succeed too, often maliciously or by a miraculous mirage.



3. If IEO have good hype presently will they perform as good as ICO did in 2017 when the bullrun and altcoin season are present?

This is a highly speculative question. If you want to ask me a different variation of this question, I may answer it.

In summation, the general trend in crypto is that altcoin rises come on the heels of any major Bitcoin gains. Most altcoins don't follow Bitcoin's trail though, they follow Ethereum's gains. Ethereum follows Bitcoin. So, if you're waiting for an alt-season boom ever, then watch Ethereum. Eth generally dictates all the ERC-20 tokens and competitors.

But yes, Bitcoin booms generally coincide with altseasons, if Bitcoin doesn't dump too quickly.

What is the most underrated project in your opion? And can you explain it in an abbreviated way cause I dont have much time to read the newspaper

What innovation do Ethereum need to go further in the future?

Thank you

To me, i feel that LTC AND Tron are a pair i feel are so underrated in the crypto currency space. i say this because when we compare the  relative characteristics of litecoin when compared to bitcoin in terms of speed of transaction amongst others; you will realize what am saying.

Also, when we compare Tron blockchain and etherum blockchain (i am not saying tron is better), we will realize that tron speed; smart contract relatively easy; and price solidity and volume; you would see that tron is underrated.

I am not sure how best to define the differences; if you can state better than this please help.

What a detailed explanation! You said we only know two things in crypto, which are; crypto past and crypto presence. But, there are traders and investors that have mastered the art of predicting the future prices, and almost always appear to be as they predicted.

What can one do to ensure that one's prediction of the future of crypto prices is accurate?

---

Do you mean i can only become better in crypto through experimentation? I should use the little capital i have to experiment. you know that every experiment has two sides; which are either you win or you loose.

What if i loose the little capital, how will i continue my experimentation in the journey of crypto mastery?


[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Yes, this is typically a wise move. But I wouldn't count on being as "lucky" or well positioned as the first time he/she invested. I really don't want to speculate any further on this matter.


It's a balance. There have been countless projects that have both technical superiority and have seen success and marketing-based projects that have seen significant success. I would argue, on average, a technical superior project often wins the long-race over marketing hype/sway over investors. This is at least true to a significant extent. The outliers remain once certain crypto's hit a "threshold," shitcoins like XRP, Bitcoin clones and etc, with hundreds of million or billions in volume.

Monero or Dash for example have held tightly in the top-50, their presence is solidified not based on hype, but the technical superiority they offer.


There are hundreds of examples and types of coins you can pick and choose from to argue both points, marketing or technical.


For new coins, it's a balance. At the start, new coins need significant hype and attention to achieve milestones or goals such as getting funded or etc. But, without sustained and continued improvements to technical foundations or continued innovation, they will eventually die out due to the lack of hype or excitement. The majority of marketing can't exist without a solid technical foundation or a tech team that is continually delivering on objectives. Marketing in crypto is at its core, communicating what the project is doing.


I can get much more detailed on this, since it really does pertain to what I work on with teams. If you want more information or want a more detailed explination, feel free to ask a more specific question.

Please do not shill or talk about specific coins in this thread. There are thousands of areas where you can shill or talk about a coin you like or think will do well or ask for people to shill you the next billion dollar investment. This is not the place for it. Please read the topic post.

No one has truly mastered the art of predicting future prices. More often than not, you're being highly misled. The very few who day-trade and are successful. They're usually not the average individual's who are tweeting or shilling out the coins they are invested in on a daily basis. There is a lot of noise in crypto, from news, to "influencers," to shillers and a whole lot of manipulation in between. The majority of day-traders lose heavily.

There is nothing you can do to ensure a prediction is accurate, the future is not certain and will never be certain. No one has a crystal ball. All you can do is estimate with the current data, knowledge and etc that you currently have. There of course many things you can do to reduce risk, such as controlling markets with more liquidity, social engineering, analyzing big data, and etc. But if you're not actively at the helm or leading these efforts or have direct insight, then you're just a pawn, a fish for the whales. There are many who seek to social engineer or pretend they have capital or insight, but again, the majority are creating this illusion, for the more ignorant, who believe without actually understanding what's occurring to them.


I'll stress again, no one has a crystal ball. If you truly read even the best estimates and wash away the excuses or inter-personally make excuses for them, then you will find the truth.. that they know no more about the future of crypto than you do. That's the honest reality. The ones who do make an accurate prediction, most likely did it out of pure-luck or predicted based on common knowledge and understanding. There are general and blanket statements you can make, like "Bitcoin will go to 20k again." But this is a purely empty statement, because I did not associate when. Bitcoin will go to 20k again in the next 100-years. Do you believe me? If you're in crypto and invested in Bitcoin this statement seems laughable, since the majority will almost concur with my line of reasoning even without evidence. All I would need to do is draw some trend-lines, do some elementary-school drawings of technical analysis, and suddenly I will become a "prediction expert" What if now I predicted Bitcoin will go to 50k in the next 1 day and backed it up with the most ridiculous TA chart? I'm willing to be I would get people to believe me.

The point I'm making is that predictions find the grey area based on current trends, sentiments, volume, capital.. etc. If they are even remotely close, that indvidiaul is claimed to be an expert. If you have significant capital or are a big name making a prediction, then of course that prediction must be correct! Not the case at all. They have their personal investments at stake and often are claiming 50-100k Bitcoin, but in reality are ready to cash out at any insignificant profit.  Predictions that can be argued one way or another. Predictions mostly based on past trends, but mostly just sentiment "how do you feel about Bitcoin's current price/market as a whole."

Anyways, this is something that truly is frustrating in crypto for me. There are so many opinions and so much noise, they actively devalue the entire crypto sphere with their "Get rich quick, get rich quick in 1 day" mentality. The most detrimental and dangerous types of individuals to crypto are these types of morons.

Detailed learning i must confess; and yes few people have mastered the acts of predicting bitcoin price movement over and over again. To also be able to predict such as individual; then we have to study, and widen our knowledge gap to an extent that we are able to apply fundamentals analysis to every facets of the economy and achieve the positive results.

I think its hard; because it requires personal commitment and real consistency.