Governments may be slow with catching up on developments within the crypto world, but they aren't stupid. They are well aware of how many clones we already have pretending to be a better version of Bitcoin. It's common sense that they will wipe the floor with everything related to crypto at once and be done with it for good in such a scenario.

We're already at a point where the issuance of stablecoins by corporations is nearly at a point of becoming threatened. I'm really glad Bitcoin has always been that speculative investment thingy in their point of view. The less of a threat you seem, the more comfortable they are to let it grow further as digital Gold.

The idea perhaps, but the token itself is more widely adopted than ever before.

People are stupid, they know Tether is most likely not fully backed, yet don't care but still use it to move fiat from one exchange to another. People will feel the pain when their Tethers will become worthless, that's when they will regret selling one of the most precious assets in the world for something shittier than the real dollar.

Most people don't need super high liquidity. Exchanges such as Binance support USDC pairs that generate enough volumes for the far majority of the traders. You can't prevent people from doing stupid things, but at least using USDC instead of Tether is less stupid.

It's China, so there is no point in getting excited. I can't remember how China ever contributed to something of positive nature during their glory days. It was always drama related.

Chinese people interested in Bitcoin have found their ways to still buy it, so it's not that we need anything from them. Let China just hold off and be hostile towards anything they consider a potential threat. Bitcoin has grown immensely without the China as we know it back in the days. No China means way less drama. Good riddance!

It's a South Korean exchange, which I by default wouldn't really trust due to how other South Korean exchanges have treated their foreign users.

The positive thing however is that this exchange seperates itself from the rest of the South Korean exchanges were random shitcoins generate 10-100x the volume of their Bitcoin pairs. Probit's Bitcoin pairs generate the most volume which you should expect from an exchange. https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/probit-exchange/

They have a decent volume but an awful lot ot shitcoins listed. I think the best thing to do here is to just try out the exchange with a very low amount to see how it works and how friendly it is towards a foreign user. If you can trade and withdraw without problems you could choose to increase the amounts over time. Better safe than sorry.

If they pre-generated the txid they shouldn't forward it to the user but actually leave the withdrawal status at pending or something.

I have never seen a service that I use forward me a txid that hasn't been broadcasted to the network. Makes little sense in my book. It only causes unnecessary confusion.

It's definitely a shady practice in this case. The user is waiting for two weeks now with a "non" broadcasted txid reeks of scam. I hope I'm wrong and OP will be getting his money, but I don't have much faith in a good outcome unfortunately.

Altcoins are better than Bitcoin only in the way that they go up more short term speaking, which allows people to use them as leveraged bet to increase their Bitcoin holdings. I have yet to find an altcoin that is actually being used for something other than speculation and gambling related dapps. It's mostly just a shitshow overall. Big promises but none of these promises are being followed up by a working product as originally intended.

Bitcoin has an incredibly strong network effect, the brand awareness behind it, the security, the progress in terms of second layers such as Lightning, etc. Altcoins have already lost the battle in terms of fast and cheap transactions. Lightning keeps growing and keeps enjoying more merchant adoption on a daily basis.

In the end, altcoins don't even have to deliver a product. Them being a speculative object is more than enough for people to buy into them. A lot of shitcoins with zero actual utility are worth hundreds of millions of even billions in some cases. Speculation is their killer "application".

Sweaty palms and armpits, you got to love these nocoiners trying to come up with all sorts of justifications to make sure their economy won't take a hit.

Bitcoin isn't and will never become a 'swiss bank account'. They have proven to be unreliable and subject to seizure by governments thinking it's well justified to steal people's money. Bitcoin might be transparent, but it's impossible to order X or Y central party to freeze our cold storage balances like they often order banks to do when they don't like certain people or their behavior.

Libra is similar to what XRP is today, but then even more centralized. You will have your private keys, and you will be able to store your funds offline. PayPal does not offer you that in any shape or form. That's where Libra and financial institutions such as PayPal differ on a fundamental level.

As far as being linked to Bitcoin goes, that will happen through crypto exchanges where they already offer support for USDC, USDT, PAX, etc. Libra will be the next one to enter the list of stablecoins. It will help prop up Bitcoin's price and make sure capital stays within the system just like how capital in the aforementioned stablecoins stays within the system.

That means you are anti freedom? If you find it okay that the US government stops Facebook from executing their Libra project, you will find it similarly okay that they will stop native crypto projects from building products and services. I'm not a fan of Facebook, but Libra is quite an ingenious project with the potential to serve billions of people with little to no effort.

It will complement Bitcoin too, so what's the problem? Don't be a fan of a bunch of people you never met in real life to decide what can and can't be done. Facebook should be allowed to pull it off.

Are you referring to whales not being able to cash out as they please? They surely can. The spot market has been dwarfed by the OTC market in the last couple of years. Bitcoin doesn't suffer from a lack of OTC demand, more so the lack of supply. The insane on-chain value transfers suggest how vigorous the OTC market is.

I find it increasingly interesting how people think that we'll ever reach a point at which wealth distribution is something that can/will improve. It will never happen. Smart money will always be able to multiply and be ahead of inflation and whatnot, while dumb money will continue to complain about how unfair everything is. If they spent as much time working on improving their financial situation as they did complaining, they might have actually improved.

If it works similarly to how for example the stablecoins we have here work, it's actually quite an improvement over the services offered by financial institutions such as PayPal.

Don't forget that PayPal is a safe haven for scammers with how their bias always leans towards the buyer. I'm certain Libra in working condition would greatly exceed the workings of PayPal & Co. PayPal is shit all the way through. It costs me like $4 to send a sub $50 sum of money to someone in another country. Libra will demolish this house of cards. I welcome it.

Also, Libra is an amazing tool if it's paired against Bitcoin because that means a new stream of liquidity finding its way to Bitcoin.

Noobs will fail every test. It's impossible for them to withstand the brutal nature of this market when they 1) have invested their life savings, and 2) they have no clue about how Bitcoin works under the hood. Every $1-$2000 dip makes them question themselves so much that it drives them nuts to a degree where the sell button is just one click away.

Noobs trading stocks are similar. In the last couple of decades nothing changed when it comes to their behavior during corrections, so why would anything change in a market that's even more volatile and brutal? No amount of tips and tricks is enough to educate these poor fellas. They should stay far away from any type of market.

Technical analysis does work, but people should understand that it offers no certainties. It's all a probability game in the end.

During extreme waves of panic selling or fomo buying it's indeed very difficult to know where we will peak/bottom out, but the price mostly ends up reversing at a very important level that you can prepare yourself for. I personally am a Fibonacci fan and it showed its importance twice so far.

The main reason why people think technical analysis is bs is because of how self proclaimed gurus or experts pop up totally not understanding what they are talking about. Unfortunately, these clowns are what we read the most about so it's not that surprising to see people dislike technical analysis.

Yes. I actually love it when the price tanks like this this. If people are actually hardcore Bitcoiners, they would love it too because their silly fiat currencies for once provide some utility in the way that you can get more coins for them. $100,000 will be nothing but a temporary hurdle just like the $20,000 level is right now.

Let the price tank, find a new floor, and from there enjoy the next leg up. Hodling Bitcoin hasn't ever been this easy with so much progress. Allocating a part of your income to Bitcoin has become a whole lot more attractive now the price is going the other way.

It really sucks that the police and potentially even the judges are so underpaid that these criminals can easily triple/quadruple their salary just for an easy ride out.

I'm certain he will lay low for a while and then set up another scam because it clearly is rewarding enough to repeat. With people continuously being stupid enough to invest in this garbage it's easy money, money these scammers would never be able to make in a legal manner even if their entire families worked for 100 years straight.

My apologies. You are right.

I managed to gain access to the site through a US proxy because my region is blocked for some reason. So what happens here is that you top up the Fold app through Lightning, then for example buy a Starbucks voucher, and use these to actually pay for coffee over at Starbucks.

That's quite a disappointment on one side because there are no direct Lightning payments, but also good on the other side because these vouchers offer some sort of anonymity because the merchant doesn't know who paid for it, just that items are paid with a voucher.

Building up a higher price floor is extremely bullish long term speaking. The short term action might not be from the general point of view.

People just need to discard the few hours that we've been hovering over the $13,000 level. Current price action might be an early indicator that the bull market is over, but there is nothing that you can do about it other than to adjust to the changed market dynamics. The trend is your friend until it no longer is, and the friendship is weakening day by day. The bounce from sub $10,000 to just over $11,000 was a poor show.

We need a bit more price action, but it seems that we are forming a large decending triangle.

You got to love this market. One week ago we were all bullish and now it's going the other way.

Gravity is doing its work. It just isn't healthy to go up the way we did if we don't build up support zones.

Even if we end up touching $6000-$8000 that's still great considering the fact that we put in a higher low. Going from the $3000 bottom to building a new price floor above $6000 is actually very bullish. It might not feel like that for most people looking at how the price went down hard from $13,800 to these levels, but this stimulates investors to cash out profits out of fear.

There just isn't a way around it, the weekly scale looks bearish. Adjust to the changed market dynamics or risk more disappointment.

Yup. It's a great way for governments to know what you have been doing with your coins in the past. People not knowing how sensitive their transaction history is will pay the price for it one day. I'm sure they initially won't go after the smaller fishes, but when you add up the smaller amounts it might start to become quite lucrative for governments to start knocking on their door.

I will always pay my taxes in fiat and hope people will do so too. It might look like it's a great form of adoption that governments allow you to use Bitcoin through a payment gateway, but don't shoot yourself in the foot. It's a trap.

That's exactly what I said lol. You are mixing things up.

There is no option for the Lightning payments to show up on their balance sheet as Lightning payments, so they are being thrown in the same category as giftcard or store credit purchases.