I agree with you, and I also view bitcoin as the payment method of the future. But truth be told, I can't really blame people for just holding to their bitcoin. We can't neglect that bitcoin can rise in value over time. It will definitely happen if we have global adoption, so it's easy to just hold the coin waiting to see your economies increase. We don't have to many options to spend the coin right now, but even with the possibility of holding bitcoin just for value, I'm sure I will spend it as well, as soon as more option become available.

That's a really low amount so you can't really do much with it. Using it for trade is not an option, and as of right now, since we don't have to many merchants using it, I don't think there is any reason to spend it. If I were you, I would just keep those coins in a desktop wallet and leave it there. If you can keep investing some more. Since the fees are low again, it's affordable to buy small amounts on an exchange and send it to a wallet.

Don't forget that although the blockchain is open for everyone to see, and correctly is possible to do what you are suggesting, the truth is that you can only do that if you can link one particular entity to all the addresses he uses. That is of course not easy to do, specially if the person in cause is careful.
It is possible to do though, and that's why bitcoin is not really a problem for money laundry or criminal activities. If their links are tracked, then the FBI etc would have access to all their transactions.

Right now the market is doing some healthy consolidation above the $10k mark which is good. The previous resistance level, that was around $10200 (if you look at the daily time frame), has been beaten and is now acting as support level. This is the ideal scenario for the bulls in my opinion, and we are doing great. Bitcoin is doing a small pull back right now, but it looks like good consolidation to me.

If we keep the bullish scenario we will either trade sideways between $10200 and $11600, creating a good support level for the attempt to break the $11600 level. We will probably face some resistance because of the $12k psychological level, but as soon as we beat that, we will then quickly test the $13k and keep trying to push to $14k.

I have a partial stop loss in the $10200 level, but I will not exit my trade entirely, because we could still form a higher low on the daily, and then move back up again. My complete stop loss remains at $8300.

I'm curious about America's cardroom. Do they have tables where you play in bitcoin, or do they just allow you to deposit with bitcoin but then you chips get converted to fiat? I've also heard that you need to verify your identity in order to make a withdrawal. I don't really mind the time needed to withdraw, since I was used to that with fiat already, but not knowing what bitcoin rate you will get is quite bad. Can't we just withdraw to a bitcoin address? This way we would have no problem with withdrawals.

I don't think China is against cryptocurrencies, and I also think that the rumors about them creating their own cryptocurrency are not just rumors. There is one big difference between the cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and a contry issued crypto. One is decentralized and hard to control, and the other is perfectly controlled by the government. In fact a country issued crypto, is much more easy to control than fiat itself, so I really think China will go ahead with their own coin, and many other countries will do it as well.

Bitcoin allows money to move out of China, and the Chinese government never liked that.

Porn is a big industry, and just like gambling tied to bitcoin in the beginning, it will be perfectly normal that porn will attempt to do the same now. The relation wont just be with bitcoin. In fact I think it will be much easier to relate porn with ethereum (with the creation of ICOs), and with coins that offer more privacy than bitcoin (like monero). New projects are created in the ethereum network, to allow users to create content and don't be "robbed" by the middle man. This looks like a great setup for porn webcams for example.

I must say that news will always beat technical analysis, but when we are in periods where nothing big is happening (from a fundamental perspective, or even from a "fake news" perspective), then I would say that technical analysis is incredibly useful. I use the basics right now, and I focus on price analysis. Are inside bars forming? Are they forming out of a descending pattern or an up trend? Is there volume spikes associated when those inside bars are breaking bullish or bearish? What do the rsi levels tell us? Are we oversold, or overbought? Do we have a macd cross confirming our bullish or bearish entry?

I try to combine a lot of these indicators, since you can't get reliable information from just a single indicator. And all of them have different meanings or importance on different times frames.

Although I would say that privacy should be a major concern among internet users, I'm forced to believe that the majority of users simply don't care. If you just look at the normal behavior of a Facebook user, that posts in a lot of information that should be private, and they do it in a public manner, then I would say that they don't really care much about how Facebook stores their data. Most of them don't even know how facebook does that, and they don't believe that once you say something in the internet, it will stay there forever, even if you delete it form the platform you used to post it.

That is something that should be of great concern to everyone, because it might not mean much now, but imagine if some dictator manages to form a government in a big country. They might trace back everything you said years ago, and make you pay for it. This is an extreme example, but everything we say can be used against us in the future, and that's why we should protect our privacy.

I must start by saying that I don't really like or fully trust any exchange right now, either decentralized or centralized exchanges. There are to many hacks and issues for my taste in most exchanges, even at the big ones. For instance I like trading on Gdax, because they charge no fees if you are a market maker, and that is very good, because if you trade a lot, it does add up in the long run. I like scalping the market, so that means a lot to me. Although coinbase had never been hacked, they face some issues from time to time, like the recent credit card charge back problem. Other times they just make poor decisions, like delaying the implementation of segwit, and listing bcash the way they did, that probably allowed some inside trading.

Even with these things, I still make most of my trades with them, because of the lack of fees. There are other good exchanges as well, like binance, or good old poloniex that I sometimes use because of their lending feature.

As for decentralized exchanges, I'm only using etherdelta right now, even though they lag, and now they are "frozen" because of API issues.

Well I understand that, but just costing around $531 seems to little since the average right now is at $3k, or something somewhere near that. I know Venezuela is in a huge crisis, and that the government is corrupt, but can you imagine how much money they would made if they invested in crypto mining? It just seems unreasonable that mining there just costs $500, when a bitcoin is priced at $10k. The profit would be huge, and I don't see big investments in BTC mining there.

Why do you say that even with the lightning network people will be holding their coins instead of using them?
Although we already have some lightning network nodes working on the main net, because we have some "techy" users that are very excited with it's development and can't wait to try it out, I'm sure we all agree that the LN is still in alpha phase to say the least. I do hope we will see it released during this year, but we are still away from it because it's very hard to use right now (and some developers even ask you not to do it right now, at least not on the main net of course).

So you can't say that even with LN, people will not use their coins. I know I will use them, if I see merchants adopting it. If bitcoin gets safe enough I definitely prefer to use it as a payment method, instead of a credit card. I'm not saying I would entirely switch fiat for bitcoin, but I would definitely hold both, and use both as I see fit.

As far as taxes and regulation goes, I'm not against regulation and I think it will help adoption. I do think bitcoin should be taxed as a currency and not as property, but time will tell how things will turn out. I do think we must pay taxes over our bitcoin gains. It's a normal thing to do since we live in a society. If governments are not corrupt, taxes are a good and necessary thing, and I see no problem with them.

I still have a lot of faith in crypto, and I think it has good chances of turning out fine. If governments do a bad job in regulating it, we can still use it as peoples money, just like citizens in Venezuela are doing. I do hope it doesn't have to come to that, and I don't think it will, since most developed countries are not like Venezuela.

If you don't do well in forex I don't think you will do well in crypto as well. The crypto markets can be a lot more manipulated by whales than the forex market in my opinion. Simply because crypto has less liquidity, so it's easier to block the price, or attempt to move it in some direction.
I don't really agree that technical analysis don't work in these markets, because that's what I try to do when I trade them. The signals and indicators I follow give me clues and I try to act accordingly to minimize my losses and maximize my profits. I don't win much because my stakes are low, but I do have decent percentages on my trades, so I'm doing fine. I will keep increasing my bankroll this way, and then I will decide if I will try to do it for real with larger amounts.

I think amishmanish nailed most the problems very well. At least I completely agree with what he said. I will just highlight one big general problem in my opinion. We lack knowledge and true understanding about crypto, in both technological and ideological aspects. The market is completely ruled by speculation right now, and that gives it the bublish behavior everyone talks about, and generates insecurance in the world.

If people don't feel secure about it, it will only attract investors that want some fast profit and don't mind taking risks. That is of course a very low percentage of people around the world, and we will never get real adoption if crypto doesn't appeal to those that don't enjoy taking risks with their economies. Finally lack of knowledge is of course easily exploited by scammers around the world.

We have of course a lot of technical issues, but those were already mentioned by amishmanish, but I don't think these would be problems, because if investors were aware of what is happening with bitcoin and crypto, they would simply be patient because they would know development is on the way, that could easily solve all those problems. So for me, lack of knowledge is the main issue in crytpo world.

Are you sure about the $26,000 to mine one bitcoin in South Korea? I heard the average cost to mine bitcoin around the world is about $3k. Of course it depends on electricity costs, but looking at that image $3000 looks like a fair estimate about the average cost to mine one bitcoin. The high and low values you've mentioned really look strange though. $530 in Venezuela and $26,000 in South Korea look like big outliers to me, but maybe your information is correct.

I know Venezuelans have turned to bitcoin because of the inflation in their country, but being able to mine them at those prices would make them very rich, so those values are still very strange to me.

To be honest I'm quite tired of these speculation articles and comments. I wish people could start talking about bitcoin development and it's roadmap, and what innovations we could expect for this year. We could also see people talking about the potential changes bitcoin could introduce in finance and commerce, but usually, all we see are these so called strategists talking about bitcoin price.

Not against talking about price, since I actually like to trade the coin, but it would be nice to see people talking about bitcoin itself, or at least try to justify their price predictions based on bitcoin fundamentals (either development, adoption or regulation). We don't want more hype, and people buying or selling crypto based on fomo or fud. Bitcoin will never be taken seriously if people keep focusing the attention on bitcoin price.

Right now I'm mainly watching the 4h time frame. Bitcoin had to beat $9k and $9.5k, which it did, and now need to force it's way through the psychological $10k mark in order to get back to $12k. I do believe that on the best scenario it will face big resistance at $12k, so if we get there, I will probably take some partial profits on my positions.

I also expect us to take some time to test and break the $10k level. We will probably form a higher low right now, to create some support levels, before we try to pass the $10k resistance. So I'm perfectly fine with a pull back from where we stand. Everything bellow the current level and above $8.3k is a higher low to me, so I will only exit my position to cash if BTC breaks down the $8.3k resistance.

What are you talking about? Unless I click the wrong link, or the OP changed it, then the strategies he mentions are not for casinos. That is a sports betting page, and the strategies are for sports betting. If those were for casino, then I would agree with you, because we can't beat the house edge in the long run, so no point in trying to do that. But when it comes to sports betting, then careful game analysis and good betting strategies and bankroll management could give you great profits, depending on how good you are.

Really good link, and as a sports bet enthusiast I will definitely keep reading those articles.
On a side note, the site could have a better design though.

I don't really think this is the case right now. Although we will of course continue to see big volatility, specially if we compare crypto to other markets, I do think we will not see any drastic increase, or decrease in prices like we saw last year. Unless of course, there are news behind those moves. Bitcoin already hit awareness, and people that wanted to invest in it, already did so. The only exception are institutional investors, but those will only arrive in masses when we have ETFs.

Retail investors will only arrive in masses again, when we have the lightning network working, and we see bitcoin getting support in places like amazon, or shops all over the world. The same thing goes, if we hit bad news that could generate fud. Until any of those things happens, bitcoin price should remain stable in my opinion (close to stock markets). Only being more volatile, because it also has less liquidity.

I actually agree with you, and although I already saw news of business being closed and it's owners arrested because they were accepting crypto (can search for the article if you want), you are right when you say that this only occurs in very "strict" and tyrannical governments. But although I do believe that in the US and Europe, crytpo could survive without regulation, I'm not sure if we really want that.

I do believe that if regulation is done properly, then this will help adoption. Right now the major dips bitcoin faced were because of regulation such as bans, and sometimes just based on fear of bans. These are examples of bad regulation, but if countries manage to show their support for crypto, like Japan is doing (and they are doing that with regulation), then investors will have no reasons to be afraid of strict measures, and will be more likely to invest.

Also, I do think that even more liberal countries would become more strict about crypto, if they get into a situation where they see they are losing a lot of money from taxes. So if regulation gets done in a good manner, I think we will all win as a society.