Tether's probably the biggest threat to crypto's well being at present. And questionable operations mindlessly adopting it are only going to hasten its demise. Presumably Tether have no say over where it's traded. They could do with a veto I think.

Bitcoin has never been illegal in the US. Why would it be? All it is is software at heart.

It does however have value so to be traded freely it's going to be subject to regulations. By the looks of things there are plenty of parts of the US where being compliant with that is far more trouble than it's worth.

What have they been?

This is a great read - https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-dollar30000-in-bitcoin/

TLDR - the guy lost his seed and pin and had to wait for a Trezor vulnerability to be exposed and a tame coding genius to exploit it to save his BTC.

Have you found yourself in a similar situation where your carefully thought through plan to secure your funds bit you on the arse?

Also let us not forget that soon enough 80% of all coins that'll ever exist will be mined. Then it's 120 or more years for the remaining 20%.

All of those coins will have to prised out of an owner, not someone who has to get rid of them as fast as they mine them to pay their bills. That's an extra layer of friction for buyers.

People need to remember that the price is set by a microscopic number of coins available on a small number of exchanges. At any one time there'll probably only be a few tens of thousands of coins sat in order books. That being the case some genuinely stupid valuations could be reached with a relatively modest outlay.

And the higher the price gets the less enthusiastic sellers will become as long as they have no pressing needs. Demand is potentially not too far off infinite. Supply is painfully low.

I'd be confident of being made whole by Bitpay or Xapo if their cards were shut down. I wouldn't be inclined to trust the majority of crypto card providers including the subject of this thread. Any prick can become one. Visa and Mastercard don't seem to give much of a shit about who issues them.

If it wasn't a hack of some sort then it's safe to assume that the bigger providers would still be issuing worldwide cards. This tells us that either that Wagecan has a unique provider or they or their provider is lying to Visa somewhere along the line and it's only a matter of time before they're found out.

Now less than $700 away. Does anyone, OP in particular, wish to withdraw their mindless and sweeping statement before they wind up looking like another casualty bleeding on the roadside of history?

Mainstream is something that sneaks up on you. And before it's declared mainstream the world needs to decide what it wants Bitcoin to be.

I think the most likely outcome will be some sort of savings vehicle in which case it'll have to be available to retail investors through normal channels. It's a long way from that yet.

Didn't the SEC shut down some company that glued Bitcoin or Blockchain to their name a while back? I can't quite remember the details but it was exploding in price for no good reason. 

Even after all this time if you asked most people who are shouting 'blockchain' what they intend to use it for they'll just give you a blank look and shuffle away.

If this fork actually happens, and I still need convincing that it will, then I wouldn't expect every wallet to have the perfect solution. Everyone needs to do careful research about what wallet providers will be doing.

Certain wallets like Mycelium and blockchain.info haven't lifted a finger when it comes to BCH and that was months ago and that was far, far more simple as it had replay protection. I don't think they'll want anything to do with something with no replay protection.

People in most cases will probably be on their own so they need to be careful. As for selling anything if it's actually possible without losing coins, if it happens then I'd be keeping my powder dry. Some powerful forces will be vying for the top.

I don't think anything is certain at the moment. There's a big difference between miner signalling and actually going through with it. And even if it does you may not end up with two coins if it doesn't have replay protection.

It's going to be dead interesting to see how it pans out. I think it won't pan out how many are expecting.

Most people can't look beyond the next five minutes so there's no way they have the vision to throw money at something that may or may not pay off 10-20 years down the line.

There are certain areas that the modern mind set doesn't suit any more. Deep long term investment is one of them. That's why governments do it and no one else.

Yes, but not in the way some would think.

The reality of 'Cyprus and Greece are adopting Bitcoin' was probably 5-10 more real people giving it a go. Everyone else wanted cash Euros. All the rest of the pump was the usual people sitting on exchanges using it as an excuse to fleece more people.

Future political earthquakes will be similar. No new people will be coming in and it certainly won't be in response to what's happening to them. It's pump fodder.

No mention of here? - https://www.quadrigacx.com/trade/btc/cad

I thought it was the number one stop for Canadians.

The usual reason exchanges are very differently priced to the norm is that they're small and illiquid markets. If everyone was on there the price would naturally move to the mean, but as there are so few it's down to individual orders and there may not be very many of them.

I can't imagine the Canadian market is a very big one. I'm in the UK where there isn't a proper exchange so you're stuck with P2P mainly. Prices are all over the place because of that too.

They said it'll outgun a desktop computer which does indeed mean it's a toy. It's a very cool one all the same. It's a concept.

As sites are now mining with your browser it's about time we saw phones and other devices mining alts too.

They can't kill it. They can deter 95% or more of users which is as good as doing so by strangling the exchanges. A Bitcoin that can't easily be exchanged suddenly becomes a lot less attractive to most people.

It would only be truly effective if all governments did it at once which is why it's an exceedingly unlikely scenario. If Belgium squashed it you'd simply nip across to the Netherlands.

It's been on the play store for a wee while marked as early access and therefore unstable. As far as I know it's never been a web wallet. Are you thinking of something else?

Let's see BTC integration into gaming, any game, first and then we can move into VR. I find it pretty weird that there aren't any monetised games with any Bitcoin provision. I guess it rips some profit away from them but it would also attract greedy gamers.

Incisive analysis from the thread opener. This is the level of intellectual rigour that makes me revel in being part of this forum. I'm so proud to have witnessed it and hopefully I'll get to meet the OP some day so I can thank him for his years of careful consideration.

I wonder how many threads and posts there are now that begin with 'bitcoin will never reach X price'. There must be hundreds from 1c upwards.

I haven't seen a Youtube ad in years. Adblockers take care of that.

A decentralised version of the world's most dominant platform for that medium is going to be a huge waste of time. No one's going to use it. It's too late to usurp it.

It might be an interesting experiment anyway, but so far every decentralised everything - openbazaar, bitsquare - is a ghost town. People like a bit of company.