You should move this to the speculations thread, here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=57.0 because most of the responses will be pure speculation. You have to see this in the bigger context to understand what happened. China, one of the biggest users of bitcoins had a bit of a wake up call from their government. The Bitcoin exchanges had a visit from the government, when their government realized that citizens might be using bitcoin for capital flight.

They had to protect their fiat currency, so they decided to scare people away from Bitcoin, by initiating a visit to the place where most transactions in Bitcoin are done. The people panicked and they started to sell their bitcoins, in fear that these exchanges might be closed or that their coins might be confiscated. < Just one more reason why we need decentralized exchanges >

This will hopefully go away without hiccups, if these government officials find everything in order. If they are not in order, then people would have to find other ways to deal in bitcoins directly.

I hope you are not going to do this article in English, because you clearly have a huge problem with it. < Do not want to sound like a typical Grammar Nazi, sorry > Let's start with this, " What is the title of your article? "  I have a difficult time understanding what you want to write about? It sounds like you are gathering stories on how people started out with Bitcoin and how they involved their friends? Give us some more detailed questions, then we might just give you better answers. ^smile^

I like to move coins between the the different Alt coins and Monero and ETH are my to favorite coins, but I always end up going to Bitcoin. I somehow think that Bitcoin is the glue that fits everything together. This year I am going to keep my eye on LiteCoin, because they are going to be the test bed for SegWit & LN ... right? If this is successful, then LiteCoin might just surpass Bitcoin in popularity, because it will be faster and it will also scale to accommodate for mainstream adoption. ^smile^

This is not an entirely bad report on what is happening in China. The Main focus is that the " Chinese authorities have taken note of the move toward bitcoin, and they are trying to throw cold water on the coin in order to tamp down capital outflows and help the yuan. " So they shine the light on Bitcoin exchanges to scare people, in the hope that less capital will flow out of the country. This will not stop Bitcoin or it's users from finding ways to buy/sell and trade bitcoins.

If this was done before Mt Gox happened, then irregularities would have been detected in advance and we might not have had the Mt Gox incident. The regulated exchanges must function as "safe" area for people to trade bitcoins and if they fail in doing this, we will suffer the same fate as we did with the aftermath of Mt Gox. The government have a duty to protect the consumer from questionable practices or services.  

I would not hesitate in saying that I think this downward spiral has come to an end for now. The price will go back to $800 or more soon, but things in China are still on the knife edge, because we do not know what the Chinese government will pull out of the exchange bag. If they mess with these exchanges too much the price will drop more, but if they only had a routine visit to scare them, we might see the price go up to $1000 or more.

This just shows you how much influence China has on the price. They have said lately that if China cough, the rest of the world gets the flue and this seems to be accurate when it comes to Bitcoin. A lot of the bitcoins are mined there, so it is the origin of most of our coins in circulation. I think things will go back to normal soon, and our new normal, will be a price above $900 per bitcoin. ^smile^

Why would a terrorist use a currency like Bitcoin that can be traced to the source with the correct procedures? Most services will willingly give information to governments when terrorism were involved in the transactions, and if they resist, the courts would deal with the matter. < A Subpoena will force them to hand over the information >

These terrorist must be the dumbest people on the planet, to use a technology that can be traced. You can give someone $10 to buy a knife and to stab 20 people in a public place, why would you use Bitcoin to fund that? You send him or her on a holiday, with a expensive watch <Rolex> and when he gets here, he sells the watch at a local Pawn shop or on the street and he has funding to do whatever he or she likes.

This is just another method being used to scare people and to protect Fiat reserve currencies. They know this is bullshit, but they still blame Bitcoin for everthing that they cannot stop.

I doubt if Bitcoin could even cover the transaction volume of a small country like Zimbabwe at this stage, so scaling Bitcoin to become the global reserve currency will be a challenge. We will have to accept temporary solutions like the Lightning Network to accomodate for larger scaling options.

Simply increasing the block size, will not scale enough to become a global reserve currency. ^hmmmmm^

Governments will rather opt for private Blockchains with better scaling solutions than using a public Blockchain where they have no control. ^hmmmmm^

I bumped into Bitcoin several times, before I had a serious look at it. I think I saw it for the first time in a local newspaper, when someone talked about a guy buying pizza with what they called, Virtual Money. At the time, I did not take too much notice, so I ignored it.

During my research for something else, I bumped into it again and I stuck my head down the Rabbit hole. Since then, I have not turned back to the fake Fiat world. ^smile^

This is the reason why we should actively engage with counter marketting strategies to nullify the negative effects that are being posted in the Fiat dominated media. Most of these articles are backed by Fiat shills being paid to spread FUD about Bitcoin.

Just look what happens when the price goes up. You see more trolls on Reddit spreading misinformation and they even dare to come to this forum. We de-bunk most of their junk, but when mainstream media are used, we have almost no way to de-bunk their articles, so we post counter arguments in other less popular media, that are not seen by the general public.

I cannot do without Preev.com for my daily price update and even for multi currency conversion. This is definately a tool you have to add, because it is my Swizz Army knife for Bitcoin. I also prefer to use Blockchain.info over other block explorers, because the interface is more user-friendly and responsive. ^smile^

You know what makes Bitcoin the best? The Network of people using it and accepting it as a payment option. How many merchants do you know of that accepts CookieCoin or TrumpCoin or one of these obscure Pump n Dump coins? The network effect takes years to build, and Bitcoin has done that leg work.

The bigger the network, the stronger the demand for the coin. ^smile^

Yea, where is this function? I have a household of 5 people and we share 1 router. So we only use 1 account for everyone, which is impractical. We can sit in front of the television with our tablet and notebooks and connect via the same Wifi connection and play with the multiplier. It will also increase our chances in the lottery and to win with the Free rolls. Please give some more information, I do not mind paying some extra fee, if the whole family can share in the fun.  ^smile^

I can even sign up the secretaries at work, where we go via one router too for internet access. The 1 x IP limitation blocked new membership in my opinion, but I can see why it was done.

I was in the same situation about more than a year ago. The price was going down and everyone was panicking. I decided to take the chance and I bought at $490. I recently sold those coins for $1100 even though I had to wait for more than a year. You will regret selling at a loss, if the price goes back to those levels again. We do not have a crystal ball, but we have seen what happens in the past and in most cases the price goes up to, or even higher than the past.

Hold on for a while, and see what happens. Short term volatility just scare off the people who do not see the bigger picture. ^smile^

Since this question was posted the technology has changed or services added to improve it. There has been new 3rd party services added < Bitcoin mixers, like the one in my signature > So going back to old threads are not necessarily a bad thing, if constructive updates could be posted to that thread. If someone use the search function on this forum, to find more information on the topic, then they will get updated information. So this is the positive side to this. ^smile^

I doubt if the OP is still around, but there might be several other people asking the same question.

For me the security should be the biggest concern. If we rush into bigger blocks and this pose a threat to the security, then trust will be influenced and we will lose both options. Satoshi made provision for scaling as needed in small increments and in my opinion this is not done lately or rather delayed to pave the way for SegWit or LN. The main thing to determine is, if this scaling is necessary and how much scaling needs to be done. Take away all the unnecessary additions to the code and do what needs to be done.

You will get much faster consensus, if smaller scaling was done. ^hmmmmm^

Yes, and for that reason we did not take them into account when we determined the price in the Western countries. Preev.com for instance use data retrieved from Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTC-E and LocalBitcoins as a default option. How many people, other than the Chinese actually trade on these Chinese exchanges? Roger Ver? I would not be too worried about this, because we have a relative huge variety of other sources to determine the price accurately. ^smile^

I am curious to know, what will happen when other exchanges take the same route as China and scrap all trading fees on their exchanges. ^Wooooooo^ 

Bitcoin : A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. <Quoted from the Bitcoin White paper> Did I miss any of this, or are Bitcoin still a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash? The only thing that has changed, is the fact that 3rd party services are more commonly used and not directly as the white paper stipulated.

So we did lose the plot, when we have to work through other financial institutions to make transactions with Bitcoin. These tx's are still relatively cheap, but once you add the fees charged by these services, it becomes expensive.

This Chinese nonsense will blow over and people will start buying bitcoins again soon. I predict that the inauguration of Donald Trump might cause some buzz in the financial markets, but this will also blow over. We should prepare ourselves for a huge correction, where the price will go up to $1000+ again or even higher. Once this happens the price will stay above $900 as a average for a while, because it's previous average was between $800 to $850 where it stagnated for most of 2016. Get ready to rumble! ^smile^ 

I had the same problem when I started out, and in those days banks were more hostile towards Bitcoin. The solution was to email the exchange where you wanted to register with, and ask them which banks they deal with. If they allowed the exchange's business, then they will not have problems with the users signed up at that exchange.

In the end, I had to open a separate bank account at another bank, but it was actually a good move. If I gambled with my main bank account, I would have run the risk of having my bank account closed/blocked. So it turned out much better than I thought.

I would suggest opening a new account at a Bitcoin-friendly bank for Bitcoin stuff only. If anything happens < policy changes > then your main account is protected. ^smile^

After you have read this, you would see how impossible this would be : https://www.weusecoins.com/amazing-math-bitcoin-private-keys/

If I can quote something, it would be this : " Bitcoin’s private keys are made of numbers (called quindecillions) that are so large, they literally choke the best computers."

See the picture at the top, about the sand. ^smile^ It is basically impossible, if you comprehend that.