I couldn't care less what someone's rank is, but there are endlessly repeating patterns that makes many people ill disposed towards them.

There's campaign farming which consists of totally meaningless posts made in an attempt to rank up, there's the endlessly repeating one of people asking questions in threads with the answer on the first page in extremely bold letters, there's the asking of questions that could be googled in a second.

I've never seen a noob rounded on if they're writing quality posts. Most don't so they are rounded on.

This is the big question. Miners are replaceable. Replacing Core would be nearly impossible. I think more people who signed it will flake out as the time comes until it's clear that the creation of yet another Bitcoin will be inevitable. That definitely wasn't their plan so it's likely the idea will die off.

Nope. They've said they have more than enough, and probably too many already. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the rewards run out. More than a quarter of all XEM is tied up in them. 

They're headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, if there are any left.

They're definitely dodgy but when they're not being a festering tumour slowly murdering the crypto market, they do actually work as an exchange should. That's what keeps people coming back like battered wives.

I think I'm right in saying it can hold five at the most.

If you run out of space and have to remove one, you're not going to lose anything. You'll just lose the ability to access it. If you want to swap coins uninstall one of the others, reinstall and then whatever you need will be accessible again.

Where I'm at these days every bank ATM has a camera in it, dunno about the ones in stores, so whatever idiot goes straight to cash out winds up leaving a nice record of it.

If we're talking robbery rather than carding, cards can be blocked. If people use them in physical stores then they're filmed. They also need physical access to them and you in the first place.

With crypto none of that is necessary. It does make nefarious and anonymous demands much easier.

You can be tootling along in your self driving car and then suddenly receive an email threatening to chuck you off the next bridge unless you cough up.

It's rather strange how much more effort is given to physical crime when the online variety must be on its way to far outgrossing it these days.

Yes. The lack of vision demonstrated by people here consistently blows my mind. There's endless threads about people selling at 10k. That's a really stupid level to sell at. That means that the game has just about started to begin.

It nudged $5000 with shit exchanges, massive infighting and stunning ignorance from the majority of the world.

Let the sellers blow it and regret it forever.

I'm not sure about the offshore aspect, but there are EU banks dealing with Bitcoin business though they may not welcome new relationships.

As far as I know Coinbase's EUR operations use LHV bank in Estonia - https://www.lhv.ee/en/

LHV also seem to be crypto friendly in general - https://www.coindesk.com/lhv-bank-exec-we-support-bitcoins-values/

That would be my first port of call.

I'm not sure if Kraken's main bank is Fidor, but they do integrate them for customers. The UK version of Fidor doesn't offer business accounts. Maybe the German one does.

I think we've already had our dip. Perhaps there'd be another modest one if they ban OTC stuff and block international stuff, but the vast majority of damage has already been done.

The Chinese market is already irrelevant and it's slowly dwindling away to nothing.

Anything beyond the Chinese exchanges closing is guesswork at the moment.

There's one document that's been circulated extensively listing the foreign exchanges they intend to block with the Great Firewall, but there's no confirmation of that anywhere.

As the primary reason China is stopping these exchanges is their hatred of capital flight, I'd be surprised if they allowed bank transfers above a few thousand dollars out of the country.

I've never heard of Chinese citizens transferring fiat to Western exchanges as there's never been a reason before. As banks have been forbidden from having anything to do with crypto such transfers would be cancelled I presume.

It's utter rubbish put out by a nobody. Amazon will be the very last to accept it. They have no incentive and no interest. There are enough services doing gift cards so that'll have to be enough.

I don't think it's anything to do with supply. Supply in general is massively overstated as an effect on coin prices. The only thing that matters is what's on the actual exchanges.

I'd say the main reason is that ETH has evolved into not much more than an ICO generator and ICOs are about to get a walloping from multiple angles. If it isn't regulators going after them, it's the people who poured millions into shite that will deliver nothing.

I'd hazard to guess that China accounts for a tiny fraction of Bitcoin transactions compared to places like the US. The only reason for Bitcoin to move there is to exchanges or miners moving rewards. There's no Bitcoin commerce, no gambling, not much of anything.

Its markets have been extremely important in the past, far more important than they proved to be when they were shut down. It was a mirage. And it is of course the capital of mining. There are some very deep pockets there.

Chinese agitation is the prime ammunition of market manipulators. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with next when China has faded away and the upcoming fork fails.

It's a nice idea, but generations have grown up expecting to pay for nothing on the internet. And when there is a fee for something people will often spend a whole hour or two of their valuable time looking for a way out of paying for it.

I'm happy to micropay myself, but I wonder how many out there are up for it. Kim's whole fortune comes from people not wanting to cough up for anything. Still, I'm sure some creative things will come of it but perhaps not what was initially expected.

The first man through the door is also the first to get a shotgun blast in the face. That's just how it is.

Everything else has had the easiest of rides in comparison and they've leached off all the infrastructure Bitcoin has created too.

Whether that equates to more value in the future, that's a hard one to call. It's often the trailblazer who goes down fighting while the horrible upstarts feed off its quivering corpse, but we're talking money here so it's a rather different thing.

For a bunch of authoritarians they ain't half wishy washy. When I'm global dictator the first thing I'll exterminate is uncertainty, then I'll kill every living thing on the planet.

https://qz.com/1059179/huobi-and-okcoin-chinas-two-biggest-bitcoin-btc-exchanges-were-themselves-to-150-million-in-idle-client-funds/

https://twitter.com/bitcom21/status/910579598588391424

I think this is a largely forgotten but large factor in this. Huobi and OKcoin were gambling parked customer funds in dodgy wealth schemes without telling them.

They're going to get nailed to the wall for this among other things.

It got us Segwit which is a wonderful thing, though we'll never know how big a factor UASF was in that. The hard fork bit is reckless, rushed, put together by nobodies and the companies shouting loudest for it like Bitpay are starting to look like real penises.

I can't see how it's going to succeed in its present form. At the same time its failure would strengthen Core even more and perhaps it's time there was a reminder that it can't always be their way or the highway.

A lot could change between now and then. There might not be any of the Chinese miners or pools around by then to signal it.

Hell yes. The level of media coverage these days is quite amazingly level headed compared to a few years back. Back in the day you would find one article in ten or less that took it seriously. These days those old school hatchet jobs stand out like sore thumbs. Journos who blindly condemn it just wind up looking stupid.

The Chinese 'ban' dragged on for what seemed like forever in late 2013 into 2014 too. It felt like it was impossible to get actual facts and no one knew what would happen. In the end it settled down but I'm not surprised this current stuff has happened.

There's always an army of people who want to make you believe Bitcoin is on the edge of disaster.

And the Chinese thing isn't FUD. It's real. And it'll pan out fine.