Boy, don't underestimate how security blind or careless in general people are. If people still save their passwords on emails and on their notes app, there will always be people that will download unnecessarily dumb stuff like this. I even have friends in the computer science field that loves to download cracked premium apps(.apks) on random websites on the web. This is one of the reasons why while I personally use a phone running Android, I actually mostly recommend iPhones to people, one big reason being how Apple is a lot more strict on the apps entering the App Store. Google needs to step their game up.

Quite a simple but witty way of scamming from him, but kudos for you for actually spotting that. Even though it might be obvious for a lot of people, I'm pretty sure also a lot of people can be tricked by this. See how a simple double-check saved you from losing so much money. If only everyone did what you did and spent just a few measly extra seconds by actually double-checking everything, there's a significant amount of people that wouldn't get scammed; and this applies both inside and outside of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

I don't think OP meant getting into his business literally, but anyway since you've mentioned it, screw BitPay. If someone's planning to receive bitcoin payments for their business, go with BTCPay. BitPay is just so bad that I don't even know why businesses still use it. All those huge fees and they don't even display addresses.

Lol yea. That's pretty much 98% of people in Philippine bitcoin/crypto Facebook groups in general. Majority still think that bitcoin is a moneymaking scheme than what it really is. I don't think I really can blame the people though. Poverty rate is still high, and as well as the percentage of people that aren't lling to do the hard work but instead prefer "easy money".

There's going to be a short-term dump in price in my opinion. While "banning" bitcoin is really impossible, making it illegal to have ownership of bitcoin is definitely possible, and would no doubt spread fear to those bitcoin holders that doesn't even understand that it's impossible to ban bitcoin. Pretty much the speculators that leave their funds on exchanges like Coinbase I'm guessing. In the case of a banning, I expect them to panic and dump their bags. Long term though? The price movement caused by the ban probably wouldn't matter. And of course, the more knowledgeable people would just continue to hold their bitcoin on their non-custodial wallets.

If you really want something that's more "private", online wallets aren't the way to go. I'm not sure if they do, but online wallets may have trackers that could take some of your data through your web browser. Go for reputable non-custodial software wallets like Wasabi[1] or Samourai[2] instead. They have their own features that makes your transaction more private.

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[1] https://wasabiwallet.io/
[2] https://samouraiwallet.com/

It's more of on the television media than social media to be honest(even though there are a lot of scams being spammed on social media). Some people on social media tend to call out these idiotic news on social media, like this one: https://www.facebook.com/manilabulletin/photos/a.147434127984/10158103662047985/

Sure, but the demographic of filipinos that actually know what bitcoin is and is promoting bitcoin in a non-scammy way is very very small. I'd argue that the decently knowledgeable people is even lower than 5% of the bitcoin "enthusiasts" in the Philippines.

Coins Pro isn't fully released yet, so you'd have to join the wait list to be able to test things out, so expect the liquidity to be not-so-good. Personally haven't traded using it though, I'm just a little bit too used to USD pricing. The UI looks fine, but seeing PHP prices is just weird and foreign to me.

For now, if you're sending funds to the Philippines via bitcoin, I'd suggest you do it through Abra.com instead. Yes, you can't set your own prices as well, but the prices tend to be better. Probably around 1-2% less cuts compared to Coinsph. Not that big of a difference but it does add up.

Even though I definitely don't like it because screw KYCs, you really can't blame them. I'm pretty sure requiring KYC is a requirement for them to be able to legally operate in the United States because they're doing it through a 3rd party, Uphold. Hopefully it's only temporary though. Hopefully they find a way to do it on-chain instead(though I doubt it). But then again, whatever. We're not forced to receive the rewards anyway. We can still freely use Brave for it's privacy features without submitting anything.

The newer mobile-friendly iteration of software that Bitcointalk is going to use, Epochtalk[1], is still on the works.

If you're really that impatient and you're a developer and want to contribute to speed up the process, check out their GitHub repository here[2], or, you can at least test out the test forum[3] and report the bugs you're seeing/experiencing.

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[1] https://epochtalk.org
[2] https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk
[3] https://www.cryptos-currencies.com/boards

While a lot of centralized website/platforms definitely doesn't respect our privacy(Facebook, Google, and a good number of other big platforms), "centralized" doesn't necessarily mean you don't have privacy. Bitcointalk is centralized, but it doesn't mean it doesn't respect our privacy. I'm pretty sure Theymos doesn't do any unnecessary tracking, but still  use Tor just to be sure. Along with other good privacy-respecting centralized services out there.

Unfortunate. Ingat ingat lang, gawa ka na ng contingency plan pag sakaling mag full-on mala 2017 bull market tayo ulit. Pag umabot nanaman sa mga TV news stations na tumaas ang presyo ng Bitcoin at bumango nanaman ang pangalan ng Bitcoin, mahirap na. Just in case lang.

Yep. This applies inside or outside bitcoin & cryptocurrencies.

Basta't may pera sa isang bagay laging may mag tatake advantage nito.

What? Of course not lol. Take a look at what happened to Venezuela. Did fiat currency save them? Hello no. It was actually the opposite. Take a look at what happened to the Venezuelan Bolivar's value: https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/venezuelan-bolivar-is-worth-more-as-toilet-paper/  It's valued so low that Venezuelan Bolivar bills were pretty much on the sidewalks.

While I'm not saying that bitcoin is the right bet to make in a recession, it may definitely be better than holding fiat.

I don't know why a lot of people think that a bitcoin ETF will make bitcoin rise in price either. Not saying that a price rise won't happen, because an ETF can give bitcoin a lot of legitimacy in the eyes of the masses, but it's just like any other open market whereas people can long or short bitcoin. In fact, it's also really possible that an ETF would drop bitcoin's price. In the end, it still, as always, boils down to supply and demand.

Could be either. ETFs will be used by people who doesn't care about financial freedom/sovereignty but only cares on the speculative aspect(whether bullish or bearish) of bitcoin.

Pretty much all existing coins/tokens right now are priced based on hype, and far less for it's actual utility. Hence why a lot of people are taking advantage of these hype cycles to either trade for dollar profits, or BTC profits. I mean, take a look at XRP. It's still in the #3 spot for some reason. It's just because they have a huge amounts of followers(and probably mostly bots) on different communities, but mostly on Reddit and Twitter. I thought XRP would be dead last year but for some unknown and mind-boggling reason they still have holders. Definitely a lot of speculators in the cryptocurrency space that doesn't do even a tiny bit of research.

Hirap nyan ah. Ngayong malayong mas mataas na ang presyo ng bitcoin compared sa last few years(besides Q4 2017), sana nakalipat ka na ng tirahan. Hindi ko naman sinasabi na masasamang tao ang mga nasa skwater's area, pero pag alam ng mga tao na marami kang pera, well, let's just say na iba ang nagagawa sa tao pag kailangan talaga ng pera. Not necessarily na hoholdapin ka, pero pwede ka ring gawing utangan. Tawagin ka pang madamot pag di ka nagpautang. 

Precisely! When I was very active on Reddit back in the day, and some newbie asks some question concerning bitcoin, I always respond in a way that's easy to understand regardless if it's technically correct or not. One example would be when talking about wallets, whereas I sometimes say something along the lines of "coins stored in your wallet", even though the wallet technically doesn't hold any coins, but only holds the private keys. Sometimes I think too much technical info actually does more harm when explaining stuff to the older crowd.

Non-custodial wallets are the way to go if you don't have that much bitcoin. If you have bitcoin that are worth a lot though? Definitely get a hardware wallet like the Ledger[1] or the Trezor[2].

That's where your 12-24 word phrase backup comes in. You simply import the 12-24 phrase onto your new device's wallet app, then you're good to go. Most if not all wallet apps right now has pin/fingerprint locks already, so your funds should be safe unless you picked a bad pin like "0000" or "1234".

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[1] https://ledger.com/
[2] https://trezor.io/

If your wallet actually has 2FA features, chances are, it's a custodial wallet, which you definitely shouldn't use. Reputable non-custodial software wallets mostly has just pin locks or fingerprint locks, not 2FA. Looks like you need to do a bit more reading: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631151.0

Precisely. One of the reasons why bitcoin exists is to hopefully protect us from economic uncertainty due to bitcoin being a non-correlated asset. But then again, not everyone knows that. I'd bet that a big percentage of the bitcoin holders doesn't even know that bitcoin was birthed a year after the financial crisis of 2008.