It might not be extremely profitable, but if he connects to a pool that generates a decent number of blocks per day, and keeps the cost of running low, he may be getting a marginal profit which for most people probably isn't worth it, but for OP it might be. Some people mine to hold for a longer period of time because they expect a significant increase and don't mind the lower initial rewards.

The thing that people who are starting with mining tend to underestimate is how they don't factor in how hard the difficulty can increase, and that over the long term, it has always a bias to the up side. If you keep running the same one or two miners without adding any new miners, it's going to be a penny game that you will lose.

Their hunger for control doesn't have a limit to it.

It's getting quite scary over there with how China is busy installing super advanced face recognition cameras on every corner of the street to track what people are doing and where they are going. If you combine that with their own financial system they control every aspect of, you are no longer a human but just a number in their database.

In the end, all these stablecoins are a solid reminder for people why Bitcoin is such an important tool. It's free advertising for Bitcoin. Can't complain about that. 

It's just a glimpse of what we can expect globally. The US is usually setting the trend where other countries follow because they think there is plenty to gain now Bitcoin is worth more than ever before. I have paid all my due taxex because it's inevitable that tax agencies will eventually have insight on what traders/investors have been doing.

A lot people here have probably never paid a single penny in tax and don't know how to properly report their activities. The whole system is messed up where the tax mafia doesn't have mercy for those who make a mistake in their report. It's recommended to look for a professional and have that person review your report and make changes where needed. Better safe than sorry.

I'm glad that I paid all my due taxes because I don't want to look over my shoulder every moment. I just assume that my data got compromised and there is nothing that I can do but to be honest about my on-exchange activity.

I personally would never sign up to a service called YouHodler. It's no longer coincidence that a service having a shitty name usually means that the people behind the service are not professional and not competent enough.

The problem with people is that the few satoshis they think to make have more priority than their security and privacy. People act shocked and think it's bad that it happened, but a minute later they continue gambling on garbage exchanges and send their data to an ICO project so that they are allowed to participate.

Unfortunately, people only seem to care about the price after they have bought their coins, which usually is around the top of each run. They only think about their $13,000 entry point and the current price of $9800. That Bitcoin went up from below $4000 to nearly $14,000 is irrelevant. They probably expected the price to hit $1000 on the way down and like $20,000 on the way up.

I'm fine with the price even testing the $6000-$6500 range because that's another higher low if it holds. If you before the blast from $4000 to $5000 asked people if they expected the price to break $6000 this year, most of the answers would be no because of how bad the sentiment was then. In the end, people pretending to be hodlers shouldn't complain and load up on more coins if that scenario plays out.

I don't mind more Libra-like currencies. Everything that's centralized will eventually be replaced by something better, which is where crypto stands out with Bitcoin and to some degree Ethereum.

Most newbies that enter crypto are confident that the shitcoin they invested in will replace Bitcoin or Ethereum because it's faster and can do so much more. People are so used to seeing internet companies come and go, that they automatically assume the same logic applies to crypto. They have to adapt to how things work in crypto land and figure out that things are different here.

Due to how Libra is gaining more negative attention from the side of governments, they suddenly acknowledge that there is a difference between centralized and decentralized networks. This is quite a milestone in my opinion. One we can be proud of.

Once you see these politicians throw with non arguments you know there isn't an other way for them to win this battle. Munger referred to Bitcoin as harvested baby brains, Buffett referred to Bitcoin as rat poison, and Sherman considers Libra worse than the 9/11 attack.

The banks that were largely responsible for the crisis a decade ago have received billions in support while the average people that were affected by it lost everything, that's pretty fair.... Institutions that are meant to drive an economy have done nothing but bet against for or against it because they knew they were the ones messing around with the housing market.

If that isn't enough, the deepest point of the bear market was where institutions of all sorts bought hundreds of thousands of homes to flip them later on at exorbitantly higher prices. Sherman is paying his bills largely with money donated by institutions providing credit to businesses and people at home. Shall we call it blood money?

I quite often do already spend my coins, both on and off chain. I'm not really that bothered by the $0.50-$1 on chain fees. I'm used to pay way more in fees than that through PayPal for purchases. An advantage is that as long as you include a decent enough fee, the payment processors the merchants use tend to accept them without a single confirmation, which means it's an instant payment on my side.

Lightning actually settles the transaction instantly and that at a fee rate of 1-5 satoshis on average depending on the number of hops.

When it comes to spending it's important to replace every satoshi that you have spent. I know it might not be the most convenient thing to do, but it's a great way to not lose out on future gains.

The BitLicense is expensive because there is not enough user demand within NY to justify the time and money you have to spend to get it. This is why a lot of crypto related businesses prefer to ignore NY because it's just not worth the hassle. I can perfectly understand that. NY has been over-regulated for decades. It affects more industries than just that of crypto.

I like that businesses ignore NY because it's a clear indication that this state is not competitive compared to the other states. It's losing out and this is how it should be.

I actually don't hope for anything. Bitcoin is forcing governments and central banks to start accepting the reality that Bitcoin can't be wiped off the table the way they probably hoped it would be possible to do so. Whatever the regulations are, they will always favor the government and not necessarily the crypto economy.

The problem is that they will always use money laundering and financing of terrorism as an excuse to collect as much personal information as possible. Some exchanges have already been instructed to ask their users silly questions that go way beyond what they use an exchange for. The more regulated this space becomes, the more of this nonsense we can expect.

I was aware of delays up to a few days, but delays of more than two weeks is completely and utterly retarded. What are usually the fees that apply to sending money through WU?

How much more quicker and convenient can moving money be than to do it through Lightning? It's not ready for mass use, but at current stage it's usable enough for a fair number of users in need of instant and near free transactions. Another option is that if you don't mind using a custodial Lightning client, you can start receiving Bitcoin through Lightning by just installing an app.

Tether is planning to start issuing USDT on Lightning. This will trigger a wave of innovation and applications built on top of the Lightning layer.

Right. I haven't cashed out a single satoshi from my cold wallets back to my bank account in the last couple of years. All I have done (and still do) is utilize my speculation stack to ride bull and bear markets to end up with more Bitcoin.

I love to buy in when people sell it like crazy. It reminds me of what Warren Buffett once said;

The same applies to the Bitcoin market. This is a long term game. Most people are here solely for short term gains, but they are crushed hard and hand over their coins to those who value them more at a tasty discount. Like you and me.

It's impossible to tell who these addresses belong to, but it wouldn't surprise me if the coins are moved to another address for the sake of liquidating BCash, BSV, BTG, etc.

Don't forget that a lot of people during the split thought it would be a safe bet to hold the forks just in case they take over Bitcoin, but after such a long period of time and the poor performance of these scams they gained enough confidence to unload them.

If the coins are being moved to be sold then I only welcome that. The more of these old hands unload their coins the more distributed the coins become, and the higher the base value of these coins becomes. People who bought their coins under $100 don't really care if it's $9000 they sell it or $14,000. It's a massive profit either way.

Gut feelings, they can't be right all the time.  

Short term speaking I'm kinda bearish and expect a decline towards the lower $8000 area and perhaps a wick below it, but that would only offer a great buying opportunity if so. I'm confident that we'll get to see a peak of over $100,000 during the next longer term bull run, but as always, where will it land once we top out and start correcting? It certainly won't be pretty.

My target is +$100,000 before the end of the block halving that will cut the rewards to 3.125BTC per block. I rather remain a bit conservative with my predictions and be surprised by how much more we have gone up.

It's something that a lot of shitcoin exchanges like Hitbtc have been doing as well, and that for quite a while now. As if that wasn't bad enough, they ask you for high res scans of for example a utility bill or passport, but then keep rejecting everything you submit over and over again until you are so tired of this bs, that you leave and swallow your loss.

I'm fairly sure that thousands of people in the last couple of years have abandoned their accounts with pretty decent money stuck in them. Hitbtc has probably made millions this way.

Gut feelings or potentially an important sell the news event. More than that there isn't.

I find it quite funny how people on social media after a pump from the bottom or a dump from the peak, always pretend to have sold the perfect peak or bought the perfect bottom. Most people who do end up buying or selling do that well before the actual bottom or peak is in. The same applies to all the technical analysis bobos that pop up pretending to have predicted everything. 

The only way to increase the chances of buying the bottom or selling the peak is to buy/sell fractions per time. If you do that long enough you'll eventially be very close to a perfect entry/exit point.

I honestly don't even know how many addresses I own with coins in them. I decided long ago that it's better to spread them out instead of holding everything in just one or two addresses. I have also funded some physical coins in the last 12 months, which helps inflate these statistics as well. Similarly, more people get wiser and choose to spread out their holdings.

Coinbase not that long ago did that too, which means that without any new people entering the world of crypto, tens of thousands of addresses have been created with at least a whole coin as balance. News outlets will sell you the story as there being more users entering crypto, but that's largely bs.

Binance's .com platform still allows you to freely withdraw funds worth 2BTC per day. It's their Binance Jersey (fiat) platform that requires people to walk themselves through AML/KYC verification.

I do have to point out that any exchange that still allows people to withdraw funds without AML/KYC, could stop offering you that privilege tomorrow if it wanted, and your funds will be stuck inside until you submit your personal information and whatnot. In other words, the risk is there that these exchanges will turn into the next Bittrex and Poloniex.

It's important to make a rational decision before you sign up to an exchange just for the sake of not having to deal with AML/KYC; do you really want X or Y exchange to have a copy of your ID or passport in case you are locked out and forced to do provide it to them? If not, then definitely skip it.

You mean not every pump is the result of real demand?

I don't consider pumps to be manipulation at all (assuming real money is being used to drive the price up), regardless of what the purpose is. Also, most pumps or dumps that people consider to be manipulation, are the result of long/short squeezes. The lack of liquidity makes it look bad, but it's perfectly normal if you look at how thinly traded this market is.

Manipulation is more like banks saying they think Bitcoin is a fraud but then buy the dip behind the scenes, which JPMorgan has actually done.

I like it. Trump has +62 million followers on Twiter. If you also include the potentially hundreds of millions of people around the world that heard about it due to the mainstream media covering it, then it gets even better. No matter how much money you spend on advertising, you won't be able to generate as much exposure as Trump did with that one Tweet.

I'm looking forward to his next Tweet and the media attention that it will generate. If the president of the most powerful country in the world keeps talking about that Bitcoin thingy, it might actually be worthwhile for no-coiners to start looking into it. One thing is sure, even if people still don't like Bitcoin, the name is something they will never forget.