I don't think that scams are the main deterrent. I'd say lack of knowledge and volatility might be. Scams are everywhere. You can get scammed on ebay, somebody can hack your social media or lock your files with ransomware. Bitcoin has nothing to do with it and it's secure by itself.

What I'd change is fees. We need lightning network to become big. We need some ways to make transactions a bit cheaper and faster. They aren't a big problem yet but if we want to move forward we'll need some solutions.

We used to be in a bull market this years which was confirmed when bitcoin broke it's 2019 high. When we also broke the all time high we entered the FOMO grounds. Uncharted territories.

It's going to be fun to watch how this develops and if bitcoin will once again explode into 5x gains. This is going to require a lot of fiat money but is by all means doable.

We'll see each other at 50 thousand dollars next year

The simplest explanation is that in 2017 the market was full of fresh speculators. People were putting in their savings to make some money on the bull market.

Now there's less new people so less people are looking it up in google but people who are coming in are quality investors. Companies, stock market traders, brokers and such.

You don't need a lot of google searches to have a bull market

I stopped using bittrex when they demanded numerous selfies (my left and right profile, front facing, holding an ID). Is this a movie audition or something?

No bank demands such ridiculous verification. Are they trying to create a 3d image of our heads?

They said they won't allow me to withdraw whatever I had on their stupid exchange if I won't give them what they demand, so that's extortion and theft in my opinion. Choke on it bastards!

Congratulations to all hodlers! Patience is a virtue

I really thought the end of the year will be boring because people would rather think of spending, christmas gifts and stuff. We are at 20470 and climbing!

Of course it's a common practice among fake product manufacturers to put a very similar but different logo on the merchandise.
This  way they can't get sued or forced to stop selling and some clients will get fooled and buy fakes thinking it's the real thing.

We had bitcoin gold, diamond, bitcoin PoS, bitcoin god, even Roger Ver the bitcoin jesus

It's possible for a country to adopt bitcoin during political turmoil.

Like if you had a country ruled by a government that many people are opposing, a divided country where the government is fighting to stay in power. In such scenario the rebels could choose to use a different currency that is not controlled by the ones they're fighting.

This is only one of many possibilities.

Are you sure about it having no effect? In October the price was $350-400 and in December it's staying close to $600. That's a 30% gain in a month. Show me stocks with similar effects.

You said that BTC halvings were causing the price to go up but if you look at the charts the pumps weren't immediate. Sometimes it took months for Bitcoin to rally and right after the halving we even had small dumps. There's no rule that a coin that halves or goes through an upgrade has to pump. These events can make investors feel unsure of the future of the coin. Software updates don't always make things better.

It reached a new high on many exchanges like on Bitstamp the ATH was 19575 and now it's 19918. We were never at full 20 thounsand and it's a round number so we can say that Bitcoin was unable to break that barrier in 2017 and it can't do it now.

For me it doesn't matter because we have confirmed a serious bullish trend by forming a new high, even if this high is not even 1% higher from the previous one. It's there and it's there for all to see. Especially for those naysayers like Peter Schiff.

What is a small or a large hodler. If I have 1 BTC am I a small or a large hodler. What if I had 5? 10? For 1 person 100 thousand is going to be a small fortune, for another pocket money.

In my case it would be very tempting because just 200 thousand dollars would allow me to realize all my current dreams. On the other hand I'm not in need of money now. If I got it all at once I'd quickly spend it and realized 10 years later that I did not really need those things and if I held my coins would be worth more.

I choose no. I prefer to take my chances especially that I'm getting some coins every week I spend here. Agreeing not to be involved in bitcoin would end that.

What do you mean by "defend"? Like physically? Take the fight to the streets, protest against our governments if they try to ban it?

My way of protecting it is providing arguments. I'm willing to take on every critic out there and debate with them. I'm also defending it by hodling. Any other ways how we can do it?

What about time frames? If you look at some coins and how they did since 2018, you'll see that many never pumped by 10%. They had their small 5% pumps and 6% dumps that over the course of months made them lose value.

A new investor may find that he held a coin, there was no 10% pump and the coin is now worth 20% less than a year before. He can sell at a loss or hold a bag forever like people who bought all those new PoS coins last year.

You shouldn't let it discourage you. This is a bit like gambling.

Sometimes you hit a good project that becomes a valuable and popular coin like those who got into Tron, sometimes you'll invest in a scam project that succeeds for no apparent reason, like HEX, and sometimes you'll work for a coin that never gets listed anywhere and proves to be a waste of time.

You can't win every single time, that's what I can tell you.

Every newbie can be successful in a bull run but usually those who just buy and hold for a while make more money than those who make many trades every day.

It's a huge mistake made by new traders. They make a lot of transactions with each of them costing them some money in fees. Then they sum it up and think they're doing good because in the end they have more money than they started with. At the same time people who bought and held made 2 times more without wasting time buying and selling.

The volatility is going down because the number of users is going up. Isn't it obvious?

It's easy to make 100 people panic or get hyped at the same time. It takes more time and effort to do the same to a million people. Even harder to do to 10 million.

Odds help you when you don't know the teams/players or don't have time to go through previous matches.

When all you want to do is bet on something you're about to watch odds will help you decide if the bet is worth your time. If it's close to 50:50 you know there's nothing strange going on. When it's like 80:20 there might be something you've missed like one of the participants had a bad streak or is in a bad form this season.

If you gamble a lot you may disregard the odds but the less you do the more important they become. That's my opinion.

You can download a page and edit the code so that instead of 0, it shows 10 bitcoins but it's only a visual thing. The site he has on his computer does not connect to the PD server to take real data from there. You can edit what you see on your browser.


It's an old trick scammers from India used years ago. They'd call you and ask you to open your bank account on shared desktop. Then they'd edit the browser code of your last transaction so that it would show as if you got some money from them. It works only as long as you don't refresh the page. Old people would think they really got some money and the scammers would ask them to buy a subscription from them or get them a gift card and those people would do it thinking they got 1000 dollars from the scammer so they can safely send them $500 and still have profit.


He has 1 million and can make more because he knows a "trick" but he'll ask you for $100 or something for a pdf file explaining how he did it

Collapse meaning crash? That's fair.

Collapse meaning go to 0 and get destroyed? Of course not.

Tether is a real threat because it's fake money that can be made out of air and this fake money is being used to purchase coins that present real market value and even exchange to fiat money. You're turning something real into a promise made by a company and an exchange that backs it.

They were testing this since 2018. It's old news.

I remember that they were conducting research by removing all places where only cash was accepted like old styles of parking meters, subway ticket machines, car washes. All those old coin terminals were changed to card readers which increased the use of electronic payments. It's their first step into a cashless society.

Is it good? I don't think so. It gives the government more control.

The impact of millennials is definitely very big, probably the biggest. They're in their 30s and 40s now, so they are the ones buying.

You can't expect people in their 20s who are usually on student loans to impact the price of Bitcoin. They will spread the word but it's their parents who now have to buy and take care of their own retirement and maybe the future life of their children.

At the same time, people in their 60s and 70s are usually not interested in cryptocurrencies just as they aren't usually interested in smartphones and social media.