'This time it's different'.

The closer it gets to no withdrawal the more likely its passing is. I didn't detect much real excitement with previous deadlines. I suppose most people felt that it would be another deferral.

It would be ironic if a financial regulatory authority stoked a bubble all on its own, and then popped it with a last minute refusal. Maybe we can take them to court.

It is fair in theory, but the practice is just too tempting for the creators to get one over on investors. I think their track record says enough about how good an idea they are.

But it's only three and a bit years away. That's really not very long at all. Its downturn lasted around half as long as that. To get there every aspect from the market, exchanges, awareness, utility, education, technical capacity has to take a big step up from where it is now.

I expect a longer wait for serious potential gains, but I think the conditions to foster them will either exist or not exist by then.

If you choose the right alt then it's in the bag of course, but that's also like saying if your grandma had balls she'd be your grandpa.

People like this deal in trillions. You're not going to find them making 0.1 BTC trades on Yobit and there really aren't very many people in the world to satisfy the buying needs of any major player.

Considering they can press a button and magic up a few billion for free it would be a bit of fun for them but they've got more important things to do with their time.

And unless it's done in some type of mutually agreed manner with other central banks, all they're going to do is end up having paid free billions for strings of numbers no one else is interested in at that level.

Everyone from a toothless goat herder in Pakistan to the sleekest Washington operator knows that gold has value. You can't say the same for BTC at present.

That's somewhere around my cut off date too, but not in terms of gains. I don't believe 2020 is enough time for the gains some people are dreaming of. I do think we'll have a much clearer idea of what Bitcoin's fate will be by then.

If there isn't any scaling and even more centralisation then I'll be walking away. If it can't evolve then something else will.

None of those prices are high enough to induce certifiable boredom. A $10,000 price is a $160 billion or so market cap. That's still not that big and it leaves copious room for growth.  

If it can break the 150-1500 price level for good then I believe the only way will ever be up in the long run. There are multiple billions more people who've never had a sniff of BTC.

That will never, ever, ever happen. Too many clueless and greedy people. If Bitcoin and friends really takes off then you ain't seen nothing yet. there's a never ending supply of the stupid, lazy and greedy.

Isn't everyone?

2-5 mil might the end game. Most people tapping away here will be long dead by then. Within 20 years I'll be keeping my prostate in a glass by the bed. People are into this type of thing because of what they believe it can do for them. Most will not care about their descendants' mad gainz.

I'd be very happy to put up with a crash if it meant some people were reimbursed.

And it's quite possible it'll attract some major OTC attention. Where else on planet Earth could you guarantee that quantity of coins and a bunch of sellers who are probably royally sick of it all? This hedge fund might be the start of much institutional interest.

I will believe a giant spike when I see it.

Approval is one thing. Once that's in the bag then you need to find people who actually want to put money in. It's a cool vehicle but does nothing else to increase Bitcoin's perceived desirability. Just because you can ETF it doesn't mean it's going to change many minds in the short term.

At present they're just buying IOU's so it makes sense that they won't be inclined to pay what you do on functioning exchanges. CNY is a precious commodity on there because you can get it out.

The longer it's drawn out, the more they can erode that figure with their own fees. Bankruptcy is a long and agonising process at the best of times. Somewhere as messy and opaque as Gox would be doubly so.

And what the hell happened to all the fiat? I've never seen a mention of that anywhere.

Strange circumstances if it did occur. I suppose China's self immolation probably is a positive development for everyone else ultimately. Now let's get rid of the mining cartels too.

Gambling, exchanges, dark markets. Those are really the only cast iron crypto success stories. I wouldn't go anywhere near retail myself. Most people don't want to part with their BTC and with the stuff that most people would buy, such as electronic, there's no way you can achieve enough of a discount to entice new users.

I know quite a few problem drinkers, people who could never go a day without booze. It's genuinely disgusting to witness and they're deeply pathetic people.

Most people have a normal relationship with alcohol but they're also very good at deceiving themselves as to what normal is. All of these middle aged women who put away a bottle of wine a night 'because it's only wine' might find they've inserted a time bomb into their bodies when it all adds up.

And I don't drink no more. My main problem with drinking when I did was that I didn't do enough of it. 

That sounds like some setting is seriously wrong in there.

Here are Mycelium fees for a 1 input tx right now.

Normal - 24c

Priority - 56c

Low - 15c

Economic - 17c.



And that's precisely the hubristic attitude that might be the cause of Bitcoin's fading away.

Why? Do you have a mountain of inputs every time? The last time I checked my normal fee with Mycelium was about 25c which is still rather a lot.

We'll see a test of how badly people want to use Bitcoin fairly soon. I'm willing to bet that most will walk away rather than choose to subsidise a completely artificial and preventable situation.

I knew hedge funds were primed to take risks, but this seems stunningly out there to me. I presume it's peanuts to them but still seems like a bonkers roll of the dice.

Are they absolutely certain about being paid out in BTC? If I was a Gox victim the last thing I'd do is allow myself to be preyed upon again.

Weird. I wonder who they are and what inspired them to pile in at such a rate, if it's in any way a real stat. That's the type of figure you'd expect at the tail end of a bubble.

I can't see it ever happening under any circumstances. There's no way they'd start participating in a market that staggeringly warped. Gold evolved and distributed naturally over thousands of years.

If Kiribati decided to get in early and scoop everything up, I can't quite imagine the Federal Reserve buying them out to the tune of a few trillion.