It is definitely helping when it comes to keeping capital inside the crypto market, but that's not entirely because of people not seeing a reason to withdraw fiat, but more so that they can't withdraw.

The only way to withdraw fiat is to sell your USDT to Tether/Bitfinex. If you take into consideration that most holders of USDT are likely not those who injected it in the ecosystem, you'll see why they can't withdraw fiat.

I totally wouldn't feel comfortable sitting in USDT for a long period of time. I get its utility in being an easy to move fiat alternative for traders and investors, but the aftertaste is horribly sour.

I honestly find this whole bull trend to be tiring in terms of the time and effort put into a trade that might or might not turn out to be profitable, and that while simply hodling has been giving people an easy and comfortable ride up.

There are always those who sell or place a short to get back in lower, then get surprised by a green candle and don't change their game plan because they don't want to close at a loss.

Most people aren't made for trading yet continue with it because it's either addictive, or people desperately try to gain back whatever they lost with the last couple of trades. In both cases it mostly doesn't end well.

I don't think anybody is doing that, but the whole point of this is the exposure Bitcoin gains from it-- it has been covered by mainstream media worldwide. It's free and much needed advertising for Bitcoin.

Of course, there are always people who say that Bitcoin doesn't need it, but this is just free exposure and it happens to be positive as well. We have been through times where things were completely the opposite.

This exposure will help people remember that Bitcoin is making moves forward. More and more legitimate use cases emerge helping to feel nocoiners more comfortable that Bitcoin is here to stay.

Currently it will, but eventually there is a ceiling even for Bitcoin. We're doing exceptionally well because this market hasn't been taken over by cash settled products yet, which it eventually will be.

Bitcoin's supply is so extremely low that institutions will create liquidity around a product of the underlying asset, but without actually being backed by it. CME's futures platform is just the beginning of that.

Sure, it will take years and years to be there, probably a decade or so looking at how these products wrecked the gold spot market, but it's only a matter of time, not if. Definitely not something to discard.

So? You blame people for following their local taxation policies? You know that most of what people own in Bitcoin and spend is withdrawn from a centralized exchange?

I don't blame people for being vigilant about how they spend their coins and what taxation policies they are subject to. It's isn't worth it to be pointed at your not declared spendings and then be fined for it.

And then we have the merchant side of it, do you blame them too for following the guidelines? The consequences for them to not follow the guidelines are much worse than for individuals not following them.

I get your point but you're going a bit too fast here assuming everyone is here for the same reason as you are.

Brian Armstrong in a Q&A said that Coinbase is observing the developments around LN, but don't have any immediate plans to do anything with it. I guess that means they value adding shitcoins more for the time being.

Overall, LN is still experimental despite the growth it has gone through in the last 12 months. An exchange needs to be certain that it works and is safe enough to be deployed on a large scale.

The main thing here is that it would require exchanges to tap into their cold wallets and transfer a chunk of that to fund their channels, which means more risk because the private keys are exposed to the internet all the time.

People are different, so are their coding skill sets. By that I mean that what one considers to be a super secure exchange, might be considered an exchange ripe for a hack, so totally not secure in that case.

Another thing is that the far majority of the people have no clue about how secure or not secure an exchange is. Can you tell me what makes you consider a secure exchange aside from basic security features all exchanges already rock?

People's "trust" in an exchange is usually based on volume because that according to them means an exchange is used by a lot of people, where they completely disregard wash trading and other forms of trickery.

It's just their site that banned certain countries. If you want to use that exchange you can still do so, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a centralized platform completely in control of their main Binance platform.

For that to happen decentralized exchanges need to be as fast as centralized exchanges in every way. Traders and market markets bring in liquidity, and as long as they avoid decentralized exchanges, nothing will change.

That being said, for low value buy low sell high trades, decentralized exchanges are working well more often than not. People don't use it because of their volume bias, which is a shame.

Well, we don't know that yet because Coinbase boots people without a reason and from there they can't do anything but accept no longer being able to use that platform ever again.

Coinbase has much more to lose so it's even more likely for them to pull out their big guns to protect their bank accounts and relations. I'm just glad they allow people to withdraw their coins after being booted.

I can see a time where a breach of terms might result in a penalty that costs you a certain percentage of whatever your entire balance is. This is something not entirely uncommon within the banking space.

Easier at first glance maybe, but not really if you think about how you can be held responsible for certain transactions even a decade later with how transactions once confirmed are recorded in the ledger for ever.

Firms involved in blockchain analysis are getting better at what they do with every day that goes by, their tools too. I would say that Bitcoin is probably the least favorable option based on that.

By the time people are more educated about how Bitcoin works under the hood, they will refrain from using it to participate in the practice of money laundering and other illegal activities with severe penalties as punishment.

I first have to see it to believe it. Most people here tend to jump on the hype train without actually thinking about the incentives of the traditional system behind the scenes. I'm pretty sure they will try to firmly regulate it.

The best we could get out if this is regulatory clarity, which will help businesses and startups to know where the line is they shouldn't cross, where it's very much a grey area today.

I even think that governments like these grey areas because it allows them to selectively attack certain players without a valid reason. We'll see where it goes, but don't expect things to become pro Bitcoin.

It's a safe bet. I think that these perma bulls are realizing that predicting ridiculous price levels isn't helping them to gain any recognition, therefore play it safe and increase the probability of being right.

News outlets don't care-- the moment we see Bitcoin's market cap hit a trillion dollar, they will refer to this guy as the expert who correctly predicted this move. I'm quite sure that this is what these people are after.

I remember how CNBC last year referred to Ran Neuner as the expert who correctly predicted the price to drop a lot, while this guy was just blindly guessing. His second prediction was far off because he ran out of luck.

Gold? It's not going to do anything for your portfolio in the coming years. It's literally a waste of time and money with how it hasn't done anything to outperform inflation in the last 5ish years.

The derivatives market has got a firm grip on gold and it will only get worse, plus in order for gold to do well it needs political instability and chaos. It will get dumped the moment confidence kicks back in.

If you don't want complete exposure to Bitcoin you're way better off replacing gold by an allocation to tech stocks. Tech stocks have performed exceptionally well in the last couple of years.

Thanks. I quite often see people post how they would have bought tens thousands of coins back then, totally not realizing that it was very hard to even impossible to do in some cases without the contacts.

Also, it's always hindsight talk-- back in the very early days Bitcoin was so experimental that people wouldn't put more in it than they were comfortable losing, so definitely not tens of thousands of dollars worth of it.

Not one average joe would put himself through all that hassle just to obtain a few coins of something that's so experimental. This makes me respect early birds even more.

That's not a risky flow of thought with how we went up this year.  

The thing that people seem to forget about is how markets tend to do the opposite of what the majority is thinking. It wouldn't surprise me if we take another dive and say goodbye to 5 figure levels for a while.

The price has gone up so much that even a 40-50% correction would still not be all too bad. Most people before the pump didn't give Bitcoin a single chance of breaking $10k this year, and now they expect $20k and beyond.

I think Bakkt going live or not this month will play an important role in the short term. It might give Bitcoin either a push towards new yearly highs or push it off a cliff towards a new higher low well under the $10k mark.

Getting rid of any type of speculator in a market that's overly dominated by speculation isn't going to happen, so it's pointless even focusing on that. I would say 5-10% utility and 90-95% speculation.

As far as fud goes, it's part of every market and people need accept that. This is how Bitcoin's market has always been and still be when we're years away from where we are today.

People here pretend to be hodlers instead of speculators, but are constantly busy trying to guess where the price will go tomorrow, how manipulated the short term price is after a correction, etc. Just chill out for a moment.

There have been a few, but all these problems were caused by people being too careless. It definitely sucks for people to lose money like this, but come on, common sense is something people clearly lack.

I would have expected that people would take their security and internet etiquette more serious now they own crypto, but it really seems that people still consider it to be a fun thing or whatever.

OGs use Electrum too, but none of them fell for phising attacks and other attempts to gain access to their coins. Probably a sign that crypto by a long shot isn't user friendly enough for most average people....

Bitcoin's path is clear, which is to function as store of value. It's gaining adaption on a daily basis as being that. Optionally, LN might also add utility in form of instantly and near free transactions.

I add more importance to a store of value than anything else-- cheap and fast day to day transactions are likely going to be taken over by centralized stable coins because they work as money and do that today already.

We have had tons of altcoins with each a different utility and roadmap, but none of them signal that there is actual demand for them. Crypto as a whole is just overhyped, so is the blockchain as technology.

The mass media is designed to target average joes who will not do their own research, which shouldn't come as a surprise. They know exactly how to scare off these joes and won't shy away from playing it dirty.

It's the same with certain countries in the middle east where there are some problems. Instead of pointing at how local the problems actually are, they scare off people by saying that the whole country is going through a war.

In a way it's all market manipulation through proxies. People need to step up and do their own research for once. As Trump likes to say, FAKE NEWS. The mass is such an easy to convince bunch of sheeps....

Spending Bitcoin in the US is a pain in the ass because whatever it is that you spend your coins at, it is considered a taxable event. If they make it so that this is no longer the case, then it might actually boost Bitcoin's currency aspect.

Instead of cashing out profits by selling them for fiat and pay tax, people might choose to spend their coins, which might also boost LN adoption and liquidity in the long run. I'm definitely looking forward to what comes out of this.