I think because you don’t have to register any personal information when creating a BTC address, the anonymity is still there. If, however, you use the same address across the internet, it becomes easier for people to start tracking your address, and it’s just a matter of time before they can use that information to narrow their search down to find you, if they so choose. If you rotate addresses and never reveal too much information publicly about yourself, there are not many things that a perpetrator can do to discover personal details about you.

I made several small investments on HashFlare, and now I'm screwed. My lifetime contracts are now only 1-year contracts, and the amount of hash power I "own" for these limited contracts won't even allow me to net enough to reinvest my earnings into more hash. I was fine when they said that the minimum withdrawal was upped to 0.01BTC, but now that it's 0.05BTC? Yeah, in my mind, they have confirmed that they are a Ponzi operation. So convenient how it comes at a time when accounts should now be maturing enough with reinvestments to continually withdraw profits from their "mining" efforts.

It's just too convenient for them to point fingers at everyone for the sudden changes, and for me, it's beginning to look like the beginning of the end. I'm only in for a couple hundred bucks, and have withdrew most of that already, but chances that I'll reach my 0.05BTC threshold again for my next withdrawal before my "lifetime" contracts expire? Doubtful.

There he is. It only took 4 posts before someone undoubtedly called out Bitcoin Cash as the answer to high fees.

You do understand that BCH's chain isn't protected from this same scaling issue, don't you?

I'm just going to leave this here, as it's buried 13 pages back on the forums... And since people don't like to read the news on the website. Maybe if I put this in bold, people will see it:

C-CEX IS ON HOLIDAYS AND WILL BE IN LIMITED MODE UNTIL APPROX. JAN 20

Here's the funny thing... I have not cashed out any bitcoin this holiday season for needing money. Nor did any of my real-life network of Bitcoin hodlers; and there are quite a few of us. So if 0% of my real life network cashed out, do you think there really is a large enough percentage of people cashing out for the holidays to dump the price? Please...

And stop giving advice; you're not a financial advisor. You don't know what's going to happen in the coming weeks, so stop suggesting what people should do. And i'm not just talking to you; I'm talking to everyone who always says shit like "hold on to your coin for the next couple of weeks" or "sell while it's high because it's going to drop again". People that give ANY kind of advice like this are just contributing to the volatility of Bitcoin.

I don't think a lot of new people to bitcoin realize how fees work. Just because you send $20 in fees doesn't mean that the miners will confirm your transaction before others. $20 fees for a transaction of 3 BTC? Yeah, chances are that your transaction will be stuck in the mempool for a while.

Fees are based on a satoshi per byte basis, so they're relevant to whatever amount of bitcoin you're sending. So for those of you saying that you had a transaction cleared with only paying $10 for a fee, shut up lol. Try sending 0.5BTC with a $10 fee...

It's sad that the miners ultimately control the transaction fee, and being that there are many of them, the competition of "transactions going to the highest bidder" is one of the biggest flaws of Bitcoin. I like how so many people are saying that this will be fixed soon.... How, really? By forking to a new "Bitcoin" again?

And for the Bitcoin Cash nut riders that say BCH fees will always stay low; don't be so naive. There's no protection in place from this happening on the BCH chain, either.

I just sent a transaction of about $100 worth of Bitcoin for $12 and it took almost 3 days to confirm. This time last year, I sent about $100 worth for $4 which took a couple hours. And in 2015 around this time of year, I sent a transaction of about $250 with a fee of $1.28, and it was confirmed within minutes.

I’m starting to worry about the high fees and overflowing mempool and quite honestly starting to explore alternative currencies until this problem is resolved... IF this problem is resolved, that is.

I’m the opposite. I believe that bitcoin will outlast the US Dollar. I don’t have any facts to back up my theory, but I think that the dollar is literally going to be worthless while crypto takes over. I feel like digital currency is the future of US economics.

This is such a complex question with such a simple answer...

I'll start by saying that just because the bitcoin blockchain forks doesn't mean that it's bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core are the two major competing "Bitcoins", but as far as the mass majority of users are concerned, Bitcoin Core is still considered THE Bitcoin.

Regarding the alternative cryptocurrencies... Essentially this doesn't mean anything when compared to Bitcoin's finite supply. It's almost like how the prices or availability of silver, copper, bronze, steel, tungsten, etc rarely affect the price of gold. Yes, there is slight influence, but not enough to truly impact the longevity of the value of gold.

Coins that are newly "spawned" generally fall to the wayside. I would say that over 80% of newly launched altcoins are rendered ineffective within the first 100-day lifespan of the coin, and the remaining coins exponentially kill themselves off within the first year.

Bitcoin is like the "gold standard" of the crypto world. Other coins use blockchain technology to try to create a coin, but it will never be Bitcoin. It's as if you were to create a new fiat currency and say that your new currency is now worth the same as the US Dollar... No one will value your currency just because it's new. And chances are that your new currency will never reach the market cap that the dollar has reached. The same principal applies with newly created coins. Unless they're revolutionary and adopted by a mass following of users (such as the top 10 on coinmarketcap; hell even the top 20), these coins will always be worth very little compared to the big dogs.

The major cryptos will prevail while the shitcoins fall out of the cryptoeconomy. And Bitcoin will more than likely continue to remain the gold standard of crypto, which will allow it to not only retain its value, but continue to grow its value.

Hope this kind of answers your question.

Your Bitcoin is essentially worthless if you can't cash it out or use it as a form of currency. I can't see how you're a Sr. Member, yet still imply that BTC is worth what it is because of it's tie to US Dollars... When the USD crashes (yes WHEN, not IF), Bitcoin prices will RISE if anything... And not only can you exchange BTC to other crytpos fairly easily, you can cash out in any currency you choose, or choose any BTC-to-Credit Card service out there to withdraw from ATMs or use BTC on-the-fly at any merchant that accepts CC.

Not only that, there are plenty of merchants online that now accept BTC...

With all that said, as long as there is movement around transactions for BTC, the hodlers have nothing to worry about. And seriously speaking, I hope you don't think that there won't be a crypto economy when the dollar crashes. I can only see crytpocurrency getting stronger at that point. Crypto is the new form of currency.

Congrats! Always good to find money that you’ve forgotten about lol. Unfortunately, I don’t have any nice things to say about c-cex. Their customer “service” and support team are horrible, and they pretty much withheld and kept a couple hundred bucks worth of coins from me. They only responded to me when I made my support ticket public here, and then they stopped corresponding with me altogether. Haven’t used them since, and I will never use them again.

Sorry, but any professional company or exchange shouldn’t take a vacation over the holidays for so long. They should have enough staff to at least run their support team through the holidays. Just goes to show you what kind of exchange that c-cex really is.

I hope you gain access to your account and I hope you find some coin in there

From the article:

“Although nothing has been confirmed, it seems as if this project is more than likely going to happen.  Durov had insisted that Telegram would not be sold, no matter the price – not even an offer for 20 billion would make him jump.  According to him – that’s a guarantee of a lifetime.”

This concerns me. It’s like when a new CEO takes over a company and calls an all-hands meeting to say that “nothing will change; it will be business as usual.” Chances are that this is a premonition of upcoming changes lol.

And as others have said, introducing a new alternative currency isn’t great for the crypto world. If there is no value behind this new coin, then it’s just another spam/scam coin... the only way that I see this working is if the new “Gram” is used for in-app currency, which then means that Telegram will charge for more of its features.

Yup, telegram is a pretty big platform, but I’m hoping that this doesn’t end up becoming a move that causes them to shoot themselves in their own feet.

I personally use telegram quite a bit, so I’m curious to see what advances from this announcement, and I hope they’re not just creating a new coin for the sale of creating a new coin...

Yes. Same thing happened to me. It ended up that my account was compromised because I registered my email on a new bitcoin faucet-type site that required my email registration. “Hackers” will try to use your same login credentials as the ones you’ve used on their sites on many other sites out there.

The fix to this was for me to register a new email address for the sole purpose of using for site registrations, while keeping my main email address to only be used for trusted sites and exchanges.

I’ve also enabled 2FA on every site that allows it, and changed my bitcoin addresses on the different sites that I am registered to.

Regarding c-cex, open a support ticket explaining the situation, and hopefully they get back to you to unlock your account. In my opinion, though, they are a shitty exchange, so it may be best to find another exchange that doesn’t operate the way they do. Hope you didn’t lose too much from being locked out.

Good luck!

For anyone asking if the ride is done, and if the trends are finished... May I remind you that after every spike/rise-and-fall, there was the same argument... That the transactions were taking too long; that they were getting too expensive... And so many people continued to say that Bitcoin is now dead... For everyone that continued HODLing, it paid off.

There are always people that will buy when the price is high, and then lose money on their investment. These people are idiots, and the very reason why the price fluctuates the way that it does.

Every time this happens, I look forward to buying Bitcoin on sale... These shakeouts are just the industry's way of resetting itself and getting rid of all of the greedy people that are just a buck short and a day late getting into the game. Bitcoin is far from being "over", but if you have to ask whether it is or not, then you truly aren't suited for this type of industry.

Because you're having a bad experience with the chain, you're calling this coin dead? Feel free to send me your 4BTC then brah. I'll gladly take them off your hands.

As @xnpu mentioned above, there is a throttling that is happening right now, and it's due to people discovering Bitcoin for the first time, and undoubtedly some spamming going on by haters against BTC. Is it unfortunately that the network can be attacked and become vulnerable due to spam? Absolutely. Does that mean that Bitcoin is dead? Nope. That's just spreading fud, and it's only hurting the industry.

How about you stop creating fud based on your opinion. Whales aren't "cashing out nowadays".

What is happening now is called a shakeout. It's nothing new to the bitcoin world, and usually follows an upswing trend. Anyone who's familiar with Bitcoin doesn't really get scared when this happens; we look at it as an opportunity to buy more Bitcoin "on sale".

FYI, if you don't know what a shakeout is:



In this instance, it's not really "bad news" that is causing the shakeout; it's just the greedy individuals who are now selling because they only bought in to make money because everyone else was making money. Oh, and maybe the high transaction fees...

Are you kidding me? You're wearing the avatar, and endorsing the company as a brand by wearing the signature, and you're going to be so brazen as to ask for some insights about it when there are 10 pages of it here, and a whole website with video DEDICATED to letting you know what it is? Your excuse: because you're "kinda lazy"??

What the hell have these forums turned into?

It's clearly stated in the original post... How does that confuse you?

I don't think there are any doubts or questions about the speed of transactions, like you indicated in your original post. And I don't think that banks CANNOT keep with the changing times; I believe it's that they WILL NOT keep up with the changing times. First of all, the volatility of Bitcoin doesn't make them any more comfortable with utilizing Blockchain technology, as most banks undoubtedly associate blockchains with solely Bitcoin. If their current method isn't broken, why would they try to fix it? Secondly, I don't ever see banks utilizing blockchain tech. Why? Because the transparency entailed by utilizing the blockchain is a vulnerability to and for banks. Why would they show any of their transactions publicly?

Going back to your original statement, though, speed is not the issue here. The volatility is. The transactions fees is beyond the control of any bank or institution, and currently are astronomically exorbitant. THIS will be the main factor as to why banks won't even consider using blockchain tech. Yes, we know there are many blockchains (not just for Bitcoin), but banks don't and will not spend time, energy, and resources into developing or researching them simply because of their ignorance.

Oh, and referencing your statement saying that Bitcoin can keep up with changing times? I'm not so certain about Bitcoin Core anymore, what with all the ridiculously high transaction fees and bottleneck of unconfirmed transactions at the moment. We're FAR from being a mainstream currency, and to be limited by the small amount of transactions that are able to be processed almost seems archaic at this point. So I would say that I disagree with you when you say that Bitcoin can keep up... I don't think it can at the moment.

Let's put this in a way that is easier to understand. It seems as if you're confused as to how the 21m Bitcoin cap works.

Let's say, for argument's sake, that there is only 1 billion dollars of US currency available, and hypothetically speaking, that the Federal Reserve will never print additional currency into circulation again. Let's say that I break up the dollar into cents. I send someone 25 cents, and they, in turn, send 20 cents to someone else, who then sends 10 cents to someone else. Does this mean that there is more than 1 billion dollars of currency available? Nah.

How is bitcoin any different? I'm trying to follow your argument, OP, but you're saying that there will be more than just 21 million bitcoin because people can own up to 8 decimals of a fraction of bitcoin? Maybe I'm confused as to what you're trying to portray, but then your title is misleading.

If you're simply referring to the fact that bitcoin doesn't have to purchased as a whole unit (of Bitcoin), then yes, you're absolutely correct. But if you're trying to implicate that there will be more than 21 million bitcoins in circulation when all are mined, then what the hell are you talking about?? lol