I wonder, if a company is really serious on getting their product known, why stick to the good 'ol ICO if there are many other ways to get the brand out? I understand that it's one of the easiest form of advertisement but why would you pursue something that is illegal in most countries, let alone offers your investors little to no security once the crowdsale started? Most of these ICOs popping out are just there to collect gullible people's money and that's it. No matter how legit or how good a project is, if it's done through ICO, then I wouldn't trust it one bit.

Theoretically the price will boom given that the mineable supply is already exhausted and the only way to acquire more bitcoins is through fees and whatnot, and that is to assume that the hard-capped limit remained @ 21 million and no significant changes had been made to the source code.


Could be a plausible idea since the mining craze is slowly shifting towards the alts recently and the bitcoin mining industry has somehow remained silent for the past year. I also wonder about the same thing, but am more inclined to think that these miners would remain faithful in hashing bitcoins simply because you can't get alts without BTC if you're a regular trader/investor that doesn't have the gear to mine your desired alts.

On paper, yes, but as what we've seen recently, the influx of bitcoin users alone wouldn't drive the price upwards that easily. There also needs to be some form of positive momentum built up for the bulls to do a massive push, and regular users alone wouldn't be able to achieve that. Price is dictated mostly by supply and demand, yes, but if the demand is weak, or the users don't have enough buying power, there'd be no significant push in the price even in the shortest time.

And sadly people are wasting their money in these types of projects knowing that it could end up being a total scam and the dev/coin team would be running away with their money. The number of ICOs that I see that would have no practical use for people nowadays have increased worryingly, that's why the government also became strict on ICOs popping here and there and other countries just banning them at all. This is the lowest point of crypto, I should say, since most people care about their profits only and the actual purpose of cryptocurrencies have been forgotten.

I'd rather trust an old system that I know I built and have cleaned thoroughly rather than trusting a computer pre-built by a company that comes with free spyware and backdoors. Well it is still passable if the computer wouldn't be connected in the internet after you have used it on generating a paper wallet but then again there's still a huge possibility that this computers would be connected to the internet since, well, it's brand new. If you aren't comfortable in using one, stick to hardware wallets or better yet use a machine that wouldn't be used again.

Just a wild guess, I suppose, as there are no upcoming events by that date and not everyone would be buying bitcoin to push the price up. The same scenario happened in 2017, January was the gloomiest month followed by insane price rises in the last week of February and onwards, and that's with the China ban rumors circulating around but the market doesn't seem to care at all. The pattern has repeated for 3 years straight now that's why some traders are hopeful that it will repeat again this year.

Well selling is also ideal if you've already made much from a certain coin and you know that sooner or later it will go down as was the case for most coins. Most of the time, these coins would be overbought and would later on lead to some heavy crashes and whatnot, so if you've successfully identified that then the next sensible thing to do is to sell a sizable amount of your stash and hold, say 20% for future holding purposes. If you'd only hold even with the losses and later on get temper issues, then that's the time you'll experience big L's.

For all you know, the staff of these exchanges are only few, and that's the reason why support tickets take too long to be replied or to be even read by their team. It's not that they're deliberately ignoring you or what, it's just that these tickets also pile up on their end causing a lot of delays on the replies and whatnot. I know that since I've worked on a similar venture for a short time period. Also, exchanges who do maintenance on the regular doesn't mean they have the best security features and whatnot; they just take the time to check what needs to be done on a certain area and improve it for the betterment of their service.


That's not how it works. No matter how secure your hardware wallets are, if the security in your own system is bleak, there'd still be a way for hackers to get in and take whatever they want.

Like any bullish movement, the bearish sentiment would also face a decline if momentum shifted towards the bulls, or if there's enough reason for the price to push for higher highs. Right now, the market seem to be stagnant, and the up-down price action between $11k and $10k is just a normal movement in the market given that not all traders seem to not be in the market yet. Most are hinting that this has something to do with the upcoming Chinese New Year, some thinking about the recent crackdowns on bitcoin and stricter tax laws and regulations being implemented. One could only guess by now, and even the best of the TA guys could also go wrong with their analyses.

That's not how it works, apparently. It's not a matter of faith if you'd ask me, but rather business and what's better to do with the money generated in a year of successful trading. There are no known cause as to why this is happening, but then again, we're still in January and yet everyone is already complaining. You're a bad businessman if you made lots of money in an uncertain investment and stick all of your profits in it due to greed.

There are no concept, just traders moving around to get where the action is. As for the case of alts and btc, traders pull out their money from btc and trade alts and vice versa whenever they feel like or whenever there is something huge happening on another market. Though that's one explanation, you still can't rely to that and use as a basis of price movement since there are still a lot of factors that come in play that defines the price of crypto.

I usually do some research on the team behind the coin and see their previous projects just to check whether this would be a serious work or not. As for the features, those are just fancy jargon to lure people in their coins and invest as these things sound "serious" for them. Even with the plethora of coins with amazing features, only BTC, LTC and ETH are widely<used since most people in the crypto world have accepted them as a highway to get other coins on their hands, so yeah, that doesn''t matter much on a trader's perspective, only the dev team does.

On where I live currently, citizens are required to report it voluntarily and personally to their country's tax department. If you haven't and they found out, that would already be tax fraud/evasion in their books and may land you to jail and serve for up to 20 years. The government doesn't have a way to find out, but if they asked these exchanges for such records, then you could end up getting jail time if you haven't reported it or pay the necessary tax and continue trading without anxiety.

So you basically recovered 3 files, one is a full wallet.dat file and the other two are just addresses? The litecoin wallet file could be recovered, however if there are no private keys associated with the other 2 texts you've recovered, then basically you cannot recover them unless you have your private key or your wallet.dat file.

As for your second question, I suggest you try to just join a pool of the coin you are trying to mine. That's easier than to solo mine and most pools only ask for 0.1-1% of your mined coins which I think wouldn't hurt the bank. Best coins today are zcash and ETH for me since even with the difficulty adjustments, it still gives you the best profit for your cards.

An economic depression could kick you out of your stable real job the second it affects the company you're working for. There are no guarantees in the present times even if you're skilled into something but not valuable enough to be paid by a company that needs to lay-off some people. On the other hand, the cryptoworld only has limited opportunities, but the opportunities are great if your skill set matches some promising job descriptions around especially for developers and coders. The OP is kinda bias and tends to lean on the side of "real job" since it hasn't explained that crypto has similar opportunities and disadvantages. It just so happened that a lot of newbies are being burned and sharing bad experiences with crypto because first and foremost, they don't know what they're doing and crypto hasn't been around for ages.

What's the whole point of paying for an intermediary if you can pay the miners without having to go through all of this shenanigans? At first I was kinda hopeful whether LN would deliver or not, but after churning every single bit of detail I get about LN, it turns out that this would benefit a select few, especially the off-chain intermediaries who'd receive some cut on the tx. It's not a scalability solution but rather a compromise just to make ends meet in the meantime until a feasible scaling soution is implemented. I share the sentiment, but wouldn't call LN a scam.


What is your proposition, then?

Most of the time, prices can be associated with supply and demand, as what's also the case with other traditional tradable assets. In the case of bitcoin, for four straight years now, the price takes a huge hit on the first weeks of January and typically pushes sometime in mid-February onwards. It could be that most traders by this time are trying to diversify their assets or liquidate their profits before starting another run for it. No definite answer but it is very likely that most traders are cashing out for personal expenses or whatnot.

Not expecting any movements from either ways, but am still seeing a possible decline towards $8000 if the resistance @ $10000 proved to be too weak to hold. Also, there aren't much news circulating around to make the traders hyped and go nuts, so probably this kind of stagnation will last for months if momentum hasn't shifted back for the bulls. Somehow it feels 2014-ish since there aren't any major declines or rises, and I'm good with that.

As what would my seniors always say, the world is one giant ponzi scheme; you'll only know it once you start paying off your first bills. Honestly, even if you teach kids early on how the world works, especially in their finances and whatnot, they'd only forget about it not unless they're really mature enough to think of the future. Most of these people would only know how difficult it is once they start experiencing it first hand e.g. paying for your student loans and any other debts you incurred while finishing your studies. Financial education only comes into mind when people are already in great debt, or to those who want to achieve more in life. Bitcoin can't teach that, even your professors can't teach you that. It starts within oneself through discipline and self-exploration about these things. There is a thin line between knowing what financial freedom means and actually having financial freedom, and in most cases, people are only inclined to be placed on the former.

I fear the day when crypto is centralized and the governments are issuing them for their own benefit like fiat. They're already inching closer and closer in gaining control over crypto, and once they achieve that, we're not far from being watched yet again on how we handle our hard-earned money. These "regulations" are just their front to make it look like they care, but in reality, all they care about is control over their people and not really the welfare of their people. But on the other hand, for bitcoin to flourish, proper regulation should take place, so as much as we'd love to be free from the chains of the government, we cannot escape it since we still need authenticity and authorization to properly use our coins.