I understand where you are going, but although banning campaigns could solve the problem regarding spam, because the only reason people spam and farm/sell accounts, is due to the profit that comes from campaigns. But there is nothing wrong in using part of the forum for advertising, and I think completely removing that feature would actually harm the forum and even the crypto ecosystem.

There are some good projects being advertised here, and I actually invested in some of them after I got to know them through this forum. That is a good thing, and there is no need for drastic measures.

I think that if there is a way to allow "adds" on this forum, and at the same time allow users to have good discussions without having to navigate through tons of spam, we should try it. I think mods are doing a good job here. We already have the serious discussion thread, where adds are "banned", so no reason to make it as a default "set up" for the hole forum.

As I said in this thread, I came to the forum to participate in a betting competition. How "off topic" can that be? The only relation to bitcoin was that the prizes were paid in bitcoin. I then started using sigs to try to make some bucks, that are quite important for me, but I've also learned a lot about bitcoin and crypto. So it could be said that I came for the "wrong reasons", but it ended up opening a lot of doors to me, in terms of acquiring crypto knowledge. I think that everything can be achieved in this forum, and things are getting better, and the merit system is a step in the right direction.

Although I didn't read the article, because you forgot to post the link, I would say that is probably a fud article or at least an attempt to keep people uninformed (at least if it's a recent one). Fees can get a lot lower of course, but it's just stupid to complain about the fees right now, because they are very low right now, specially if we compare them to where they were a few months back. We now have 7681 Unconfirmed Transactions (by the time of this post), so the pool is practically empty, meaning that fees should be low.

With segwit adoption, we will get even better, so complaining about fees doesn't make any sense right now.

High guys, just finished reading your posts, and I still need to analyze some threads, but didn't quite got the time. I gave merit to a few posts, even though I will not add those threads the list in this thread (2nd and 3rd post of this thread). I enjoyed reading the posts, and will probably participate in the discussion, as soon as I finish reading the thread, if I still have anything to to say about it, but I will not "pin" those threads here.

I will add athanz88 threads here, because they are very high quality, and I enjoyed seeing the stats. Interested to see how they change as people get used to the new system. It would probably be nice if he kept a history, instead of just updating them, so we could see that evolution.

I will also add mrelich thread here. The list was useful to me, and it could be to other users as well. As I said I enjoy trading, and privacy coins are usually good projects, so it's a nice list for me to look at, and try to find more information about those projects.

I will also pin one of the threads of snowblack and Schultz88, because I really like trading, and although those threads don't seem very active now, it's worth trying, because I was searching for something like that. The thread about indicators is a bit spammy, so I don't know if I will keep it. The idea is good, because indicators are important in trading, but most users posting there are not really explaining anything, so I don't know if that will work.

I deleted a few posts, nothing wrong with them, and I even gave merit to some of them, but it was not what I was looking for, and they are to circumstantial, so I won't leave them here are well, otherwise this thread will be hard to follow.

Thanks for participating, I will keep waiting for more.

Thanks a lot for these articles. I hadn't seen them yet, and they surely look quite positive. They say that because of this, Venezuela is now the first country to recognize crypto-coins as a legal coin, but I actually thought Japan already did it, since they recognize bitcoin as legal tender. I guess those are different things.

Anyway thank you for the links as usual, they have been quite helpful and informative. I will link them to the OP.

I actually have two I would like to share. One is just a confirmation that Coinbase is finally going to integrate segwit, but now it seems that is definetely coming, since they say they are done with the tests, and it should happen in the next weeks. I also enjoyed reading that they will be committed to integrate LN as well, as soon as it's possible, because in a few months back, I heard that they wouldn't be able to do it, because of licenses.
Here is the link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbases-gdax-exchange-introduces-full-segwit-support

The next one, is just a follow through. We saw recently that the Arizona state was possibly going to accept crypto as a form to pay taxes, and now Arizona state is doing the same as well. In the article they say that maybe this is not a good thing, in terms of taxes itself, but I do think it's a good think in terms of recognizing BTC as a payment method, and that is important.

Here is the link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-georgia-next-state-in-line-to-accept-crypto-for-taxes-licenses

I enjoy trading, but I'm not an expert since I actually only started last year. I do read a lot, and I don't really enjoy indicators like fib levels. I prefer to use just price analysis, because those things are "written in stone", and you can't really make different interpretations on them. As for fib levels, and other indicators like that, if you put 4 analysts in a room, they will probably tell you different things.

For me bitcoin is probably on a changing trend, and it seems to be entering a bull trend again, but the price charts haven't confirmed it yet, so I will keep waiting for that. We seem to be building a support line on the $9500 mark, which is good, because the last line on support we had was at $7800. This will make trading easier, because I can now move my stop loss up. We need to see a break of $11200 in order to test the resistance at $13k. Hopefully, that will happen, and $11200 will be our new support level, and the bulls will have proven that they are back in control.

I completely agree with you, and that's why it's so hard for anyone to open a casino. Truth be told, casinos should win in the long run, but they can of course lose money in the short term. They are the exact opposite of players, that can only be profitable in a casino if they get lucky on a session, but will eventually lose it all, if they keep playing.

This of course means that casinos need to have a very large bank, to keep them in business for the long term. If they don't have a large amount of funds, in order to keep offering their games to players, that might go bankrupt in the short run, until the house edge gets time to do it's magic for them.

In response to the question in the topic of this thread, I would say that I am in bitcoin for both things. I see the potencial of the tech, and I hope it works well, and from that point of view I really don't care about the price. I prefer to make an international transaction using bitcoin, and I would also prefer to make online payments with bitcoin over other services, as soon as it becomes available. I would like to keep a big part of my economies stored in bitcoin instead of keeping them on a bank. For all of those things to be possible I will need a low volatility, at least similar to gold, and I will need fast transaction and low fees. For that to happen bitcoin needs to evolve, and I will gladly hold my coins and wait for that.

On the other site, I'm also trying to make money with it, because right now bitcoin, and crypto in general, offer great trading opportunities, and there is not point in letting that slip away.

As for the quote I made from your post, I would say that it prevents me from enjoying what you are promoting. If a project is only concerned about making money, without any strong fundamentals to support it, then on best case scenario it's a bubble, and it will end badly. I don't invest in those projects.

I think that Japanese would disagree with you, and the same thing goes for a lot of other countries. Regulation still has a long way to go, and yes full adoption didn't happen in any country, but bitcoin is welcome in a lot of countries, where you can even pay your taxes with it, or receive part of your salary in bitcoin.

The adoption rate is of course slow, but that is perfectly acceptable if you consider that the real boom in terms of awareness happen during 2017. We now have to wait on technological and regulation developments so that a bigger adoption might happen. But things are getting done, and I do believe that when it happens it will be a huge boom, just like it was in 2017. Things take time to develop, but once they hit a "ready state" they explode.

I think your example is correct, and yes margin trading can give huge profits in crypto because it's so volatile, but like you said it yourself, you can also lose as much, or even more than what you have, if the price drops to much. Normally they liquidate your account, but sometimes if the drop is to big you might lose more than you have.

I think margin trading is to risky overall, but it's even more dangerous in crypto. I like to trade but I wouldn't do margin trade in crypto.

Of course not. Those guys just like to put on a show, and they are quite good at it. Crypto is a very speculative market, and most people don't use their head when they invest, so they want to be reassured by people with a high profile like McAfee, and they just bet blindly on their projections. Since a lot of people do that, it actually works in some times.

With this I'm not saying I don't believe in bitcoin, because I do. It could perfectly reach those values, but there is no reason to say that. Bitcoin needs to evolve, and even with good development it still needs good adoption, and for that people need to accept it and understand it. I think this will be the hardest part to be honest.

Any gambling "strategy" can look fine in the short run if you are lucky enough, but as you continue to gamble you will see that it wont work and you will lose money. Don't forget that all those so called strategies don't change your odds of winning in casinos, so you will always be against the house edge, and no matter what you do you are bound to lose. The best strategy in gambling is to go all in, or close to that, on one bet and try to see if you were lucky. This way you just took the most advantage of your luck. Gambling only gives your profit in the short run, so you need to try to maximize the profit you get from that lucky shot.

Why do you say that at some point that is bound to happen? You should have no problem with corrupted hard drives. As long as you have your private keys, you can lose your hard drive for all I know, and you will be able to install a wallet on a new drive and recover your coins there. They are not tied to any drive, they are "written" in the network, so they are always yours, as long as you can "prove" that. If you lose your key, then there is a problem of course, but why would that happen? People know bitcoin is valuable, so they will be careful with their pk.

As for people dying, that will of course be a problem. With fiat, the money is inherited or goes to the state, but that can't happen with BTC, so you will lose them, if your pk "dies" with you.

I guess it all depends on the use the network will have. Right now we have low fees again, because there are no spam attacks going, and most users don't really do anything with their coins. The fees problem was greatly caused by exchanges like coinbase and gemini, but they seem to be finally correcting the problem by adoptiing segwit and batching their transactions. So for the time being, I think we will have no problems with fees.
In the long run, and if BTC starts getting the support from merchants again, and people start using it, then of course it wont be enough, but that was never the point. Segwit is suppose to help in that matter, but it's "true" purpose was to solve the malleability problem, so that LN would work properly (don't know the exact technical details, but I do know it's related).

I think those are good news because Robinhood is a very large platform so it will attract a lot of traders to crypto world. It will probably put a big fight to the current crypto exchanges, because as far as I know, Gdax is the only crypto exchange that also offer zero fees, and it's only available for "makers", and not "takers". Although it's easy to trade with no fees there, specially if you do swing trades, the ability to completely trade with no fees is much more appealing. To bad they only have a mobile service but it's still good.

As for how it will affect the price I don't know. The news are "old" now, so it won't have any impact on the price right now. It could if their current customers start buying crypto to trade, but it should have a small impact, because traders keep buying and selling, so we everything will stay the same.

First of all, there are no bullet proof solutions, and although hardware wallets are safer they are not invincible, as we recently hear about a vulnerability with the ledger wallet, that is supposed to be one of the safest wallets, on pair with trezor. Not so long ago we also heard about the vulnerability with electrum, that is also one of the most respectable desktop wallets. You only mentioned bitcoin, but there are reports of problems with wallets for other coins as well.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is that you can't believe that using wallet x or y is good enough to feel safe because it's not. Whatever wallet you use you must always keep an eye on official updates. If you use a desktop wallet you must also keep your computer safe with a complete internet security solution, including malware of course, that a lot of people still ignore.

A really good rule though, is to keep you coins on a cold wallet (meaning a wallet with no internet access).

Why do you say this? I actually have an account there with a small amount, that I use for occasional trading (mostly swing trading), and I never had any problems. Only chased out a few times, but at least for now everything went smoothly. Have you heard anything, or did anything happened to you? I heard they had issues with the kyc process, and some documents were leaked once, but besides that I never heard anything else.

Well I must say I agree with you, at least after directbet decided to close doors. Before that I actually prefer betting there, since it was much eaiser and their promotions were awesome. There betting championship was the best promo that was ever done in crypto betting, at least from my perspective.
As for nitrogen they sure are missing live betting. Good luck to your tennis bets. I really enjoy betting in tennis and football, so I guess I will keep an eye on your thread.

Are you sure your internet provider is not regularly changing your IP address? That is quite normal behavior even with optic fiber lines, and you probably won't even notice that. I do get that warning a lot as well, but I think everything is fine, and like you said is more of an hassle than anything else. I don't really think anyone is trying to hack your account, but maybe you should look into it.

Don't get me wrong, but I think that your view is way to focused on price and speculation and you should really focus on a fundamental view. If you consider bitcoin development potencial, and current adoption level, it's obvious that the price will rise if bitcoin succeeds in it's goals. It's "simple" mathematics and offer/demand principles. Bitcoin fundamentals alone, justify the investment, and if people invest the price will rise.

Of course that speculation will always come into play, and that is what makes the price crash and move forward in cycles. Some people just panic sell for no reason, others understand that's how the markets work, and sell to be able to buy at a lower price, thus maximizing their investment. There are of course those that don't want to risk trading, since it's hard, and still believe in the bitcoin fundamentals and consider it a good investment, so they will just hold.

The educated investors that also know how to trade don't really need crashes for the price to rise, but they do like them because they can use the dips to maximize their investment. The educated investors that don't like to trade, don't really care about the crashes and will just patiently hold their coins until they can use them. The other guys, those panic sellers and fomo buyers, are just here to feed the others until they educate themselves.

I still haven't went to the website, but I will do it for sure, but since you are talking about regulation I must say that I'm not really worried about the scenario you presented. There is nothing wrong with multiple cryptocurrencies showing up every day, and yes it's not possible to regulate all of them, but it's possible to insert them in certain classes or categories. It's also easy to create some sort of requirements to be able to create and present a new ICO, and this alone would eliminate a lot of scams from the crypto space.

Even if this doesn't happen, crypto will eventually self regulate, and people will get more picky on where they will invest in the future.