I agree with loss prevention, but I do not agree with solid restrictions and bans of certain activities newbies jump into and fall for. One who may want to play with some crypto-derivatives may be banned, but they will likely jump at one point into something similar and still lose their money. If they don't do their own research before jumping into the crypto boat, why would they DTOR for another kind of investment?

There are some activities out there that result in way larger losses annually than the sales of crypto-derivatives, and one of them has been mentioned above by @mk4: gambling. I am not an addicted gambler anymore, so the following statement is not something that results in me "willing only the rules that are favorable to me": the UK Ministers were/are considering imposing gambling limits which is something I do not agree with either. If I can purchase a real estate property worth $500k that could very easily have its value go down through a crisis by at least 50% which results in an at least $250k loss for me, why should I not be allowed to assess my own risks and use my money the way I want? It's my money, my life, my risk.

After all, I am here right now because I want freedom - not restrictions or bans. Should a forest be banned from the public because there are dangerous animals inside that may hurt a human?

If we are following the "it's fine for the government to be overprotective" idea, then we may also have food, water, shopping, driving, working limits as well in order to reduce various losses, including environmental damage. Perhaps, if we all flushed our toilets less often it would be better for the environment - or if we were all only allowed to drive for 12h a day. But how would a world like that look like?

If Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, then Gold is one as well. But, it is not.

A lot of people mistake inflation for Ponzi schemes, and that makes no sense. It does not fit the definition of any kind of fraud, scam or illicit project. BTC is the free, open-source economy that does not have the restrictions and flaws our current monetary system has, as it tries to fix them. That's just it.

There's no point in providing any proof, because all you have to do is learn how it works really.. and the worst part is, you have invested in something you seem not to have any idea about. Study BTC and find out when the "best time to exit" is.

It honestly looks like this is only the genesis of a Nanny State. Overprotective governments is something we shouldn't allow to develop.

I can literally go over the internet, look almost anything up and meet so many hundreds, hell - maybe even thousands of scammy ads and products nobody cares about taking off the web. The crypto underground markets are nothing compared to non-crypto ones.. Why is it that they always make it look like cryptocurrencies create all sorts of problems possible humanity's never confronted before?

It's not necessarily that you're using it, it's that newbies are fooled into thinking Bitcoin Cash is actually the real project out of the two - hence, it's not advisable to post their website as a source of information because newbies may purchase the wrong coin and mess up. I guess any other websites sharing the same information are fine.

Except one is a problem of the nature while the other is a problem of human greed. With or without the Internet access, Bitcoin full adoption will just never be a reality. At least not for this generation. We cannot fully adopt a decentralized currency in a centralized economy and governance.

Third parties were exactly what Bitcoin was supposed to eliminate. Third party SMS wallet providers are really just unnecessary - if we're about to go the third-party way, we don't need Bitcoin anymore then I guess.

I do not think Bitcoin will ever be a good candidate for fiat replacement. It will either become a store of value or some rebel's currency - although I believe the rebel one will be XMR. The most important thing is that we now have a currency that does not have any central power, is transparent, is theoretically foolproof and functions just flawlessly. Until we figure out how or if we can transfer all of this from the digital world to the real one as well, Bitcoin fulfills its purpose right here through its existence.

Hah, si eu care citisem pe forum ici-colo ca unii se tem de faptul ca intr-o zi monedele "patate" vor fi mult mai slab cotate decat cele "virgine". Ia te uita ca la noi e cu curu'-n sus .. ca de obicei.

Well, you got it right. Newbies usually have way higher expectations than they should, ending up with a situation where they mess up. You should know this is a decentralized market and anyone could do anything to support or be against Bitcoin whenever and however they want. We have blockchain analysis companies, which are basically against freedom, and we have p2p markets that help with the growth. It's an economical land of freedom, if you will.

Well, that is not our fault. Some countries will accept Bitcoin's presence more than others - but that is the situation with almost anything: alcohol, drugs, precious metals.. different regulations and governance means different rules. If you still want to sustain your support for the said thing (in this case, Bitcoin), you either express yourself one way or another or you ignore the rules and go solo.

There are many ways you could still purchase and sell Bitcoin almost whenever you want through p2p. But again - it's decentralized. Binance could decide at any given time to close their service, yet that does not make Bitcoin better or worse in any way. To be honest, in case of a governmental Bitcoin ban, I would honestly take into account hodling my Bitcoins for a long time and then moving to another country that supports it once I consider I have enough for the move to be worth it.

That's exactly the fun part: while exchanges close and some governments try to push against BTC, the market actually grows at a very steady pace, Bitcoin becomes harder to mine, more investors equals less Bitcoin available for each, more years makes the market more mature and so on. If you think about it, there are many ways Bitcoin could appreciate in the future. You just have to see it.

Well, these kind of news surely have an impact over the markets. Glad to see one more influential guy joining the Bitcoin community. I'd have to guess a quite hign number of people are against banks but just don't know that Bitcoin is their perfect solution yet. As always, we're growing steadily - slowly, but the healthy way.

I haven't heard much about them lately tbh, but it doesn't look like it's a struggling trend either. DeFi will continue with lots of scams exactly like other trends have continued, although older DeFi projects will probably just fall until the projects die away. It's a shame that we have these hypes around spreading bad names about cryptocurrencies and unfortunately lots of people have lost significant parts of their investments through them, but it is what it is..

I'd rather believe the only reason the US government started supporting crypto is that they found a way to trace and identify citizens using them in order to monitor the legality of their holdings. If blockchain analysis wasn't a thing, they would've pushed back other cryptos as well - but it actually becomes an advantage for them. Some people get into BTC wrongfully believing they're going off the grid, and that's a perfect catch for authorities.

So the linked forum post talks about Bitcoin as if it's some service always making its customers mess up. It's not Bitcoin's fault if payment processors or exchanges charge higher fees, mishandle coins or scam you. Bitcoin was meant to be trustless and if you're putting a relationship of trust between you and Bitcoin, it's not the coin's fault for you messing up.

Exchanges or most other services will probably never teach their customers about Bitcoin, because that is not the reason they exist. It's true - there are a lot of Bitcoin users who don't know much about blockchain and BTC yet they trade it - but an exchange exists for one reason: to earn a profit. If you entered Binance or Bisq and had a tutorial before being allowed to trade, I'm sure chances of you quitting their website would increase substantially. Most people here nowadays are only interested in earning money. That is both good and bad - a double edged sword - but it's not due to anyone's fault imo besides themselves for not educating themselves beforehand.

About one day ago, ECB has published a new blog post by Fabio Panetta, entitled "We must prepare to issue a digital euro". To some, it may be surprising; to me, it isn't. The world is preparing for the replacement for cash. Although the blog post explicitly says that a "digital euro would complement cash, not replace it", I think it's just a matter of time before it does get to replace it as well.

Cashless society is starting to approach us at a quite faster pace than we might've imagined - especially with the occurring events of 2020 - and I have my own opinion about it that some users around here may already know. But rather than arguing and debating my point of view as I usually do, today I want to read sincere opinions from more users around here as I'm really interested to know what the community thinks about it.

I think it's safe to say that we have reached the moment where there's no more going back. Digitalization is the future 100%, no matter what domain we're talking about. Therefore, I personally think it's important to hear what the Bitcoin community has to say about digital finance slowly steering into our reality.

My questions for you are (feel free to answer only some of them if you wish):
1. Which would you prefer to have as a payment choice: Cash, digital Euro or both?
2. If cashless society is the future, how do you think this will affect our personal lives?
3. How could privacy still remain a right of ours if, at one point, digital Euro becomes the only option we have?
4. While digital EUR surely does allow authorities to better fight criminal activity, it does also allow them to actively monitor your financial life. As decentralized privacy-focused currencies are never going to be a bank's choice, we will likely have to sacrifice one of the two. Which would you sacrifice, if you had the choice?
5. How do you think Bitcoin will be affected? Will there be more demand for it? Will there be harsh restrictions?

Blog post: https://finanz.dk/we-must-be-prepared-to-issue-a-digital-euro/ (the original post should be found here, but I can't access the link as ECB does not like Tor).

Oh, come on. Facial recognition will not make people avoid SM scams. If Twitter users were fooled so many times by non-verified fake Twitter replica accounts, then I doubt they will not fall for non-facially recognized future posts.

Facial recognition is more dangerous than it sounds. You're verifying biometrical information on a server. I hardly believe there are no ways this could be wrongfully used through breaches and exploits - identity theft would pose an even higher risk. From both a security and a privacy standpoint, pushing facial recognition like this means you would not have any more credibility unless you verify yourself either - so you're basically forced to do so, if you want someone to trust you.

Those who've been fooled by all those obvious Twitter and YT scams have learned their lesson and new Bitcoin users will pop up falling for future scams as well. It's a cycle we can't put an end to, unfortunately - and we have to accept that. While I obviously agree with ideas that may help with scam detections, let's just not push for even more privacy intruding features under the name of lowering the amount of scams.

Personal opinion: the less privacy and anonymity we will have in the future, the more Monero will matter. Considering the way we're moving towards a cashless society where banks will literally know where every single penny goes from your wallet, I think a lot of people will start feeling at least partially threatened and seek ways to avoid being under the government's control.

While it might've been considered a conspiracy only few years ago, we really are moving at least partially towards an Orwellian world where anything new you want to buy has microphones, cameras (vacuum robots, TVs, smartphones, watches etc), anything you do is digitally recorded and you are considered a suspect for wanting to have privacy. It's here, sitting right in front of us and if people still see it as a big stupid conspiracy, they're just blind.

At one point, both Monero and Bitcoin but especially the former will be coins of the "rebels" who'll look to hide from creepy and omnipresent digital tracing and control. I personally think it's an amazing investment at today's price.

Well, while the supply will theoretically be fixed at 21M coins, there are a lot of them that have already been lost and a few people are losing their coins every day. I think it's quite realistic that, within a century, at least half of the Bitcoin supply in circulation will be gone.

Holding BTC is a very risky action itself. Rather than lending or leverage trading my Bitcoins and transforming it into an even larger risk than I assume through hodling, I prefer to simplify my actions, lower my risks and still benefit from it.

Over years of trading Bitcoin, I have found that the more you're rushing the profits, the higher your chances of screwing up are. Hodling is risky anyway - you could literally have a 50% portfolio value drop over a day of trading if the circumstances allow such dumps to take place. I did feel tempted every now and then to lend my BTC or do leverage trading, but I know that whenever I was tempted to do something to rush a profit intake, I ended up losing more than I could've afforded.

I do not think just random addresses are taken and placed into dust attacks. It may be an attempt to trace you, so I wouldn't take it as an "almost harmless" attack - but not something you should be necessarily panicked about either. I do have some addresses that have been dust-attacked before, but fortunately nothing's happened so far.

If you send it to someone else's wallet, it's your fault and you are likely screwed unless the receiver decides he does not want to hold your coins and gives them back to the address they came from. The copy-paste thing mostly happens either due to clipboard viruses or simply due to the tx maker not paying attention. Always triple-check addresses before you push the Send button. Bitcoin's decentralized and its txs are irreversible and non-refundable, so you're on your own..!

The main issue with Bitcoin and decentralized exchanges is how slow coins get confirmed. You can't move the same amount of Bitcoin to another cryptocurrency and back in a matter of minutes, or maybe even seconds if you need to. Centralized exchanges offer you this advantage. That's mainly why I think that DEXs won't be the trader's choice before we get to fix this, if we ever get to do so..

Not only that, but as a little reflection to the thread about Trump getting COVID and Bitcoin crashing together with stocks, the more institutional investors we'd have, the more similar to stocks Bitcoin becomes.

We currently do not have a great decentralized plaform for daytrading so a lot of people still need centralized exchanges to do their job. But the main idea is that the least we can do is avoid having platforms that give us only virtual Bitcoins, which are even worse than centralized exchanges.

Criminals are known to be less intelligent than non-criminals. In order to obtain crypto through your crimes, you have to work with other parties using cryptocurrencies as well. That means, you either get paid, pay or steal cryptocurrencies one way or another.

Cybercrimes do require a slightly higher level or knowledge, or a lot of luck (here I'm talking about thefts like exchange hacks). But the majority of general crimes are not related to the digital world - most of them probably do not even have any idea how BTC or XMR works.. most of them probably do not even have much general education or are school/highschool dropouts.

We don't even need studies or any kind of proof to know that BTC isn't a criminal's choice of currency. It's just logics.