Liquidity isn't even the main thing here. Bitcoin for example has slow confirmation times (slow in relation to most other coins) which significantly reduces people's user experience when it comes to trading.

As long as atomic swaps haven't been made mainstream ready, there is no way I can see dexes offer much usability. Instant trades is what people demand, and centralized exchanges provide that, dexes don't (yet).

I as semi old Bitcoiner don't even think about using dexes, let alone average joes. I doubt they even understand the difference between the two. All they care about is profiteering from the instability of the crypto market.

Good projects and Yobit don't go together very well, so stop looking for them. Yobit is a dump exchange--if every other exchange you wanted to be listed on rejected you, there is always Yobit that you can access after payment.

Also, is there really a point in 'studying' projects? None of them has been easy to access at its initial sale stage, where after the actual listing on the exchange the prices keep tanking hard like there is no tomorrow.

People's plan with IEOs is only getting into the initial sale stage and to dump directly when the pairs go live for trading. No one in his right mind would actually consider holding this rubbish for the long term. It's a guaranteed way to lose money.

People haven't ever lost a penny hodling Bitcoin for the very long term (obviously assuming they don't sell at a loss). It may take a while to see paper losses turn in paper profits, but Bitcoin always has rewarded hodlers.

What you are saying is 'bet on several horses instead of one', but what horses to pick from the over 2000 available ones? Bitcoin provides solidity, while the majority of the altcoins tend to lose value over time.

Pick the coins with a very strong network effect. In my case the obvious nr1 is Bitcoin, where after that I also hodl Ethereum. Everything else is such a gamble because it's largely trash. Not at all worth it in my opinion.

Too lazy to explain what platform you are referring to? BitMEX? CBOE? CME? Deribit? All of them combined?

This crash has nothing to do with manipulation or the situation Tether is going through. It was all related to the overly bullish sentiment and the correction that was looming for a while now. In other words, the technicals.

The $6000 mark is too much of an obstacle to poke into right away. All that would happen is trigger a massive dump, which some large pockets weren't keen on and cashed out profits before the actual test.

Turns out I indeed did the right thing. I'm holding my short open because I expect the price to plummet further. I'm not sure how realistic sub $4000 levels are, but if that's going to happen anyway I won't complain.

As for the fomo buyers, people don't know what risk management is. They jump in and out with everything they got, and more often than not with ridiculous leverage multipliers. Gamblers eventually pay the price, always.

True that. I always found it quite an interesting development seeing how Binance, a centralized money making machine, is building something that potentially could disrupt its own exchange.

No way they will allow that to happen, but most noobs are noobs for a reason--they take everything for granted without doing research themselves, especially when it comes from CZ with how popular he has become.

Soon we'll have a shitload of dexes that aren't dexes at all due to how Asian exchanges copy everything they think will have success. Instead of helping crypto in general they are ruining everything.

As far as I can understand from all the articles that I have read, the funds aren't lost but seized by the authorities of different countries. The positive aspect here is that the funds aren't lost.

It's very interesting to see how Tether updated its reserve policy recently, where with the current developments it's clear why they did that. Tether's loan (the debt) to Bitfinex is considered valid backing according to their terms.

It means that if every owner of USDT wants to cash out right now, it's not possible. No one is going to agree to owning Bitfinex's debt. If Bitfinex implodes tomorrow, they can't pay back the loan. Bye bye backing.

I'm actually not convinced of that. By the time people figure out their data has been sold to other parties, it's already too late. People are more likely to stick with Samsung in that case.

Facebook has done enough to justify a mega outflow of users, yet it hasn't even suffered in a serious manner. Most people don't seem to care about their private information enough to switch to other ecosystems.

Open source sounds cool, but do you really think the average joes care about that? All they do is randomly install clients just because they look good. Some times they install a legit client, and some times a scam client.

Do people here actually verify their clients before installing them? Verify signatures, browse through the code base looking for harmful lines of code, etc....

I haven't seen that many indicators that actually point at more economic growth. Sure, there is always a constant flow of organic growth, but with how we're still in a bear market, the growth is very likely not that significant at all.

I rather wait 6 more months to see how everything looks at that point, because a short term spike in transactions and outputs can be exactly that, a short term spike. News outlets always try to make a mosquito look like an elephant.

Bitmain offers cloud mining contracts too, and if the largest miner in the world can't provide profitability at this point in time, chances are that no one else will, so yeah, it makes no sense to put a penny in this nonsense.

The thing is that people get hyped up by flashy ads on social media and scammy sites and think it's legit. With how greedy people are they will consider pumping money in cloud mining dreaming about a passive income stream.

All the idiots shilling these sites because they get paid and blindly assume it's legit, don't realize that the site is slowly giving them back small chunks of their own money. After so many years cloud mining is still a problem.

Pure hodlers, as you put it, they absolutely care about the price, because the fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin allow them to increase their holdings. It's almost a waste of an opportunity if you don't utilize Bitcoin's fluctuations.

Most hodlers (me included) have two different stacks of coins--the largest stack is obviously the one people hodl, where the smaller stack is one people allow themselves to speculate with.

To add, I have seen people consider themselves 'true' hodlers and pretend that they don't care about the price, but during the 2018 correction most of these 'hodlers' were the loudest bull run preachers....

I agree that there is a very large number of people who can't outperform inflation, but there is also a large number of people who just blindly/wrongly assume that there isn't a way to outperform inflation. It's a very wrong attitude.

I am an average person myself in terms of overall wealth, but that doesn't mean I have to accept that the rich always enjoys an easy ride. What they can do, I can too. Not having millions to invest is a lame excuse.

With some effort and a certain degree of risk you can easily outperform inflation too. Bitcoin for example has yielded such an insane return throughout the last couple of years, that you have undone centuries worth of inflation.

Binance surely offers the freedom people are looking for, but that's how all exchanges started initially, where later on they couldn't fight against the urgent need to comply with the regulations in every country they operate in.

I have seen it myself how exchanges lowered their withdrawal limit from 2BTC to 1BTC, to 0.5BTC, to 0.1BTC, and the last step is that you no longer have the ability to withdraw your funds unless you verify yourself.

It's only a matter of time for Binance and Kucoin to do the same. Make sure you don't get trapped in with your funds, so keep an eye out for the aforementioned withdrawal limit adjustments. It sucks hard all this KYC nonsense....

I prefer to avoid exchanges without a trackrecord of solidity. Coinbase is such an exchange, Bitstamp and Kraken. These are the main exchanges I would recommend people around me to use.

Below these exchanges you have Binance, and below Binance there isn't anything else for me to recommend. The gap between Binance and everything below it is similar to the distance between earth and mars.

I would say that Binance being soft on KYC makes it the most popular exchange, but I honestly don't know how much longer they can keep this up with regulators slowly but surely waking up.

Asia has been hit harder with their all time high almost touching $24k back in 2017. The price crashed with +$20k in such a short period of time, which shows how high the demand was back then, and how low at the very bottom.

Those who bought the bottom yes, which I am sure not many people have done with how they were expecting a sub $3000 visit and kept waiting for that moment to actually start buying.

Some people still expect the price to dip below the $3000 mark, and even below $1000 which is a waste of time. If you're so sure that the price will go that low, why not short the market right now and put your money where your mouth is?  

I think it all comes down to how countries don't want to be presented with a no, therefore don't ask for their gold reserves to be moved back. It's more a precautionary principle in an attempt to not escalate the situation.

Holding gold on x country's behalf also stimulates economical activity between the countries, because you better treat the entity that holds your gold for you well enough in every possible way.

Bitcoin is really unique in that aspect. Instead of a fort knox type of basis that costs you tens of millions (if not more) every year to protect, you can simply store the same amount of value in a hardware or paper wallet.

Why is it difficult to change? There are enough investors who wait for the confirmation they need to actually enter the market, and that confirmation may not even come this year.

Investors use the trend in their advantage and are mostly satisfied enough with 50-100% returns. People here look down on these gains, but that's more related to greed and being overly bullish on this space in general.

Most people here were too heavily invested and biased to acknowledge the bearish trend that was confirmed last year. They kept betting against it hoping for a bull run and ended paying the price for it.

That would be quite a healthy move, especially if it bounces off the ~$4300 mark and set another higher low, plus it will tempt people who bought below these prices to sell before their profits turn in paper losses.

The price has gone up a lot in a market that's still bearish if you ignore the short term euphoria. Seriously, what happened to justify a price increase like this? No fundamental difference, no ETF, no Bakkt, no institutions, etc.

For me the bear market hasn't ended until we have a monthly close above last year's main support. Being conservative helped me a lot last year, and I'll continue being that even with how short term bullish things look right now.

Every single fiat currency has already started the process of failing, and that decades ago. Most countries also have to deal with a massive national debt they won't ever be able to pay off, regardless of how much money they print.

What worries me about countries with large Bitcoin holdings is that it gives them more incentive than ever before to steer development in a certain direction or even attempt to reverse transactions they don't approve.

We haven't yet seen the true nature of governments and I think it's only a matter of time before we do. The longer they stay out of this space the healthier Bitcoin's ecosystem is.

So childish. Last year stocks insanely outperformed Bitcoin, why don't they point that out? Oh wait, that invalidates this nonsense and that means they can't post another article.

Another thing is that Bitcoin is still severely down from its all time high, which doesn't apply to most stocks. The euphoria we're going through right now indicates that people need to be reminded of how brutal this market can be.

Bitcoin has never gone up like this in a bear market without a correction afterwards. If you don't believe me, look at the charts to believe it. I went short yesterday because it's not looking healthy and sustainable anymore.