Yeah its interesting that all these banks are investing big money in blockchain.
Most of them are pretty quiet about what they are doing with this technology, so its hard to say if they are trying to build a technology for their own use,
or studying the technology to find the holes in it.
Either way its scary, because it would be nothing for a bank or invest a couple billion dollars and totally shift the direction of any coin, even Bitcoin.

Being a human rights lawyer in China is a very dangerous job.
Many are put in prisons, beaten and tortured for months at a time.
Others simply disappear, never to be heard from again.
The government does not like people speaking out against them, and since these lawyers are well-educated, and have decent jobs, the government views them as a big threat.
Much respect to them and please god protect them.

All cloud mining sites are a scam.
If you want to give away free bitcoins, feel free to send them to me:
1QBFfxcpBSvzvtTFwu2uRV71Y3ENSV5oG4

I could really use some extra money. Thanks and god bless.  

You might be able to sell some at $1000 and rebuy after a drop,
but it would depend on how quickly it went up.
If it was a slow, steady increase over a couple years, I don't think the price would go back down.
If some event made it suddenly jump a couple hundred dollars like it did just after the halving in July,
you might be safe to sell and re-buy.

Yeah, that is some shady shit.
They let you bet an amount, accept the bet, knowing that its breaking the rules, so they can take your money.

I would definitely avoid this site.
If they are pulling things like this, there is no telling what else is going on behind the scenes.
It's poor management, rules, and user interface at best. At worst its total fraud.

I would probably spend a couple coins on drugs and gambling, honestly lol.
The rest I would save, invest in a couple altcoins and a little bit of precious metals.

I might donate a little bit to some charity, if I knew it was legitimate.
The bad thing is most charities is that the administration takes most of the money.
They have CEOs making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and barely any of the donations go to the people its actually meant for.
"Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of the Susan G. Komen foundation (Breast Cancer charity ), received a 64 percent raise for a total pay package of $684,000..."
ROFL nice "charity" fuckers. The only one getting charity is these peoples families, not the cancer patients.
/rant

Stable price is good!
Sure you aren't going to get rich overnight, but I'm pretty sure those days are over anyways.

A steady price is good for long term investment, since you can probably make a little increase over time, and not have to worry about price bottoming out.

Still using Electrum since it was recommended to me when I first started.
Good interface and the app for my phone is decent, even if it runs a little slow on my old phone.

If I ever get a decent amount of bitcoin, I will definitely invest in some kind of cold storage wallet.
Not sure if I would use a Trezor or some other kind of electronic hardware wallet, or just print on paper for cold storage. 
I actually like the Cryptosteel wallet they advertise on the Trezor site. I think you could use this to store just the passphrase to a Electrum account, but not quite as secure as moving everything to cold storage 100%.

I had a similar thing happen on a poker site.
They let me open an account, add a credit card, and deposit money.
Then, about 24 hours later, they locked my account and said i needed to verify I was the owner of the credit card.
Took a few hours but finally got account unlocked.

Its a little annoying to begin using your account then have it locked. Sites should make you verify right away, not let you use the credit card etc and then later lock the account lol....

Paypal is a reputable company.
But they are a huge company, and you have to agree to their terms if you want to use their service.
They are going to do everything by the book, so they may freeze accounts or seize assets if they think they have a reason to.
I had some situations with Paypal years ago (close to ten years ago now) and by calling and talking to the customer service and working with them,
I was able to get my account restored.

All fiat currencies are used for illegal activities.
With USD being one of the most popular currencies in the world, of course it will be used for illegal things.

Personally, I don't think you made a mistake at all.
If you want to build this PC, and needed the money, go ahead and do it!
You only live once in this life. Build your computer, and enjoy the time you have with it!
Even if bitcoin doubled, how much would you lose? A couple hundred dollars?
Your time and enjoyment are worth more than that IMO.  
If you are worried about Bitcoin going up, save some money, and buy some more coin.

I would still mine to one of the pools like Kano.
You can get technical advice from them on this forum, which is worth a ton, IMO.
They also have lower fees and in general you are going to make the same, or more.
There are some threads here where people have done the math showing you actually make more money in the long run from these pools.

I think the fact that some darknet markets have begun accepting Monero means the price will eventually go up.
If it would become 1:1 with Bitcoin is really hard to say.
(But it would be awesome since I would make a bit of profit LOL)

I think the days of getting rich with Bitcoin are over.
Unless you already have enough money to invest and sell when the price increases slightly,
you are probably buying as a long term investment.
(Which is fine, since the price seems pretty stable lately.)
Unless some big change happens, I think the price will slowly increase a small amount.

It does bring up an interesting point.

Banks and the people who really control the money we use are definitely watching bitcoin and other currencies like it.
Just because they haven't made a move yet (that we can see) doesn't mean they aren't watching, and waiting.
Any large institution could totally take over any coin they wanted to. A few hundred million or a billion dollars is nothing to a large bank.
That would be more than enough to take any coin in a direction they wanted.

I made a Bitcoin deposit, made a bet on a UFC fight
Won, and was able to successfully withdraw my winnings.

Deposit and withdraw were processed and confirmed quickly, and the site ran well.
Seems pretty professional as far as the sports betting is concerned.

I've seen some people complain about the poker and blackjack, but my experience with the sportsbetting was good,
even if it was for a small amount- around $50 deposited/ bet.

Are certain coins mining better on certain manufacturers drivers?
I see a lot of people in the Monero threads talking about using AMD cards.
Or is it just that certain specific cards are performing well at that price point?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Z6qWRugCY

If you are doing long term investing, and can afford to sit on your investment, I would buy some of both.
If you can buy low, wait a bit and sell for a quick profit, Bitcoin is obviously the way to go, because its so easy to move.
But you can do the same with gold trading, so...

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?