I wouldn't really expect newbies to be knowledgeable about address formats. Heck, lots of people here who are barely newbies anymore don't even know what segwit addresses are, judging by some of the applications for segwit-required campaigns.

Either way, for all newbies know, Bitcoin could just be short for Bitcoin Gold, a la Dollars to US Dollars. They should certainly have exercised due diligence, but I would blame the fraudster a thousand times before I put any blame on the victims. This is not their fault.

Seriously though, should newbies learn all about forks before getting involved in the market too? This is just unfortunate, as it raises the technical knowledge barrier of entry even higher.

This is the answer you're looking for. It won't be illegal for anything -- their central bank just wants all banks to cut ties with crypto-related customers. You can still use your bank account for crypto related transactions without any legal repercussions, for example. Your bank will simply stop providing you service if you do. You won't go to jail for any legitimate activity.

It also has to be noted that there's a hearing scheduled for July 20th which discusses the royal bank circular. If the Supreme Court rules it to be unconstitutional, banks won't have a basis to close your account for getting involved with crypto anymore.

Have you opened that link yourself? Here is what it says:


That means you do need to charge ETH into your wallet. There aren't really any alternatives because you can't transfer tokens without paying gas.

Some more details would be helpful. Where are you from? What kind of discussions do you primarily want to participate in? Do you want to participate in chats of specific altcoins?

Personally, I think you should stick to respective coins' official channels. Most Telegram groups seem to be of the pump and dump nature and doesn't really contain anything of substance and you can never trust anyone. You can at least find support and news from official channels.

So what would you follow then? There are no current legislations in the United States as far as ICOs, specifically, go. There are only legislation about securities themselves, and the SEC decides if something falls into that category. That means their statements and/or opinions are somewhat binding in this case because they themselves decide whether you need to follow the regulations or not.

I'm confused, because I just found a more recent statement from an SEC representative that not all ICOs are securities:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/bitcoin-and-ethereum-are-not-securities-but-some-cryptocurrencies-may-be-sec-official-says.html

I imagine this must be frustrating for the few teams out there who are planning to launch a legitimate ICO lol. I mean, if you're going to regulate it anyway, you may as well regulate it in such a way that compliance is as easy and clear-cut as possible.

This is the funny thing though. Most people who put money in the December rush likely wanted to earn easy bucks by riding the wave. Lots of them have probably already cut their losses and sold low (I'm assuming that panic selling was a huge factor in the massive slide). I can't imagine casual users being very enthusiastic about their investment dropping around 30% of what it once was lol.

Still, you're not wrong. Those who are still HODLing on, you don't lose any money until you sell at a loss. No one really has any idea when Bitcoin will reach such heights again, but if Bitcoin's development proceeds as it should, I feel like it's an inevitability. Wait until you break even at least!

Not the guy you replied to, but I thought that I would point out that it doesn't look like his "3tx/sec" has a "k", so you might have misread because of the spacing or lack thereof. So yeah, he meant 3 transactions per second lol.


As for the article itself, wow that's long. I would have loved to see a discussion about crypto's learning curve and user experience in the practicality section though, because that seems to be a pretty big factor among self-declared non-techies. I personally think it's really easy, but that it should be tackled when discussing crypto's practicality vs. other options. Some people may find setting up a proper wallet be more daunting than simply filling out paper work to their banks, for example.

Overall I can kind of sense that you're a bit biased towards crypto, but it's an informative write up nonetheless. Good work!

There are way too many factors to accurately estimate such a figure. It has to be noted that even a small slump can cause panic traders to sell, so it might not even take that much to begin with for as long as enough people go with the flow. Another factor is the actual amount of circulating coins; lots of them are lost forever, and lots of them are in cold storages, so we have no idea how much Bitcoins are actually on the market, making market cap even less reliable of a metric. Manipulators won't come out in the open either, so we won't get to hear their side of the story.

IMO the best place to begin is with the Mt. Gox trustee. People found out that he unloaded $400 million worth of Bitcoins, and they were so quick to say (some even had numbers IIRC) that that sale caused the price slide then. It turned out he had nothing to do with it, but it may be reasonable to believe that such an amount could drop Bitcoin's price by a couple of thousands by itself.

Still, I'd say most of the manipulation going on at the moment has more to do with questionable buy and sell orders rather than a whale or two dropping or gobbling up an absurd amount of coins.

Lmao. This story kind of puts into perspective how much larger in scale manipulation in traditional markets are. Tether and its bullshit kind of pales in comparison, along with the allegations of exchanges with fake volume. Detractors can't point towards market manipulation as a downside to the crypto market if it happens everywhere.

I know that $65 million is a massive amount, but is essentially a slap on the wrist considering the magnitude of manipulation. It's still something compared to crypto manipulators generally roaming free though.

I agree with your assessment, unfortunately. Bitcoin came into popularity as an asset with explosive gains in value, so the general public views it as such. Think about it: Bitcoin is a currency (or should be, at least) and is meant to be spent, but it's more associated with HODLing and Lambos than decentralization and payment systems.

I think the bottom line is that people don't find any real utility in Bitcoin in its current iteration. It definitely has niche cases like cross-border money transfers where it's hard to top, but that's too obscure a use-case for most people to actively start using it. Few people also see little use for decentralization, because most of the population who can take risks are not under a failing economy. While the current financial systems do have a lot of flaws, most seem to be rather satisfied with them.

But yeah, if Bitcoin technology advances far enough that it's just as easy, if not as easy, as swiping a credit card, people will start taking its utility seriously. That's my two satoshis on the matter at least.

The crypto market is already completely overrun with so many coins that it's going to be nearly impossible for even a decent project to stand out. If you choose to focus on cryptocurrency development, you basically have two choices: you either create a revolutionary crypto that takes the market by storm (or work for a team that did), or you work for a failing project and go broke.

Blockchain technology, on the other hand, seems to still have plenty of untapped potential, along with a lot of future prospective work. I would personally go with blockchain technology all the way, though there's really nothing stopping you from learning about both.

You can only increase the transaction fee on transactions you sent out yourself. The only way you can possibly influence an incoming transaction is by using Bitcoin acceleration services like this.

That being said, it's only really rough until you get the hang of it. It doesn't seem like you were provided a proper Bitcoin Transaction ID in this case so your concern was justified. You should typically be able to see and track everything, including the fee the sender paid, etc. The best way to learn is by trying things out yourself, but you could always ask around here if you need any questions answered

Most ICOs are scams, and even legitimate projects have a low chance of success^[1]. The odds are stacked heavily against you, so I would personally discourage you from participating at all. It's true, however, that the upsides are pretty promising, so if you really want to go for it, make sure you do your due diligence: read the white paper, Google the team members, scrutinize their claims, etc. Good luck!

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/news/80-icos-are-scams-report/

You're essentially just trading Bitcoin so that should be fine. Crypto activities as a whole was unaffected as far as I know.

Either way, I think there was a crackdown a few months ago, and they mainly went for merchants which accept Bitcoin. You, as a buyer, shouldn't get into too much trouble for offering to buy things for Bitcoin unless you do it blatantly. Merchants would bear most of the responsibility as they're not allowed to accept in the first place.

There is no de facto VAT charge on Bitcoin purchases in the US either.  It ultimately depends on your jurisdiction though. Here is a resource I've read in the past:

https://payment21.com/blog/how-vat-value-added-tax-bitcoin-handled-different-countries

It covers plenty of countries and cites its references. You're probably better off doing extensive research for your specific jurisdiction though.

Well, those who moan about floors likely worry about losses, and those who moan about highs are probably just looking for the best opportunity to cash in. I don't think we'll ever really eliminate topics like this, and I don't think there's anything wrong with them. These are pretty common in forex discussions as well, and they're far more stable.

I agree that we should all be contributing in our own little ways, but at the same time everyone is free to worry about prices as much as they want.

That does make a lot of sense, though I still wouldn't compare the USD and crypto in this context. If this is true, China is better off allowing exchanges and regulating them tightly to minimize capital flight, which was apparently their problem in the first place. Who knows though, they may be in the process of doing just that.

But yeah, Bitcoin does bring money in, so I'd be quite surprised if they killed it off. I personally would prefer it if mining were more distributed across the world though. Having 70% of the hashpower behind the Great Firewall gives the Chinese government more influence than it should have.

It doesn't necessarily require approval. It just needs to not be banned, and even then everyone who wants to use it still can. It's really a matter of adoption.

The goal, in my eyes, is for Bitcoin to be accepted as a currency worldwide. Mass adoption is required for that, and mass adoption would be far easier to attain if Bitcoin were completely legal. Not having regulations at all is also nice, but that also means a ban could come at any time, so the general public would be more wary than if it were legal. The mainstream would also be likelier to accept it if their respective countries do the same.

Bans can't really stop Bitcoin, but they can stop adoption, which is probably just as bad. It's simply much better if everyone who wants to get involved can do so without any legal repercussions.

So basically, they found that Tether was used to manipulate Bitcoin prices? What a shocker! _/s

But yeah, this sucks. I know Tether's market cap is completely dwarfed by Bitcoin and the entire crypto market as a whole, but I feel like its collapse will still send everything spiraling down. I also feel like that collapse is imminent. We'll see though. I'd rather ride this out.