Hi there mate! I hail from the Philippines too. I don't think there are that much bitcoin businesses going on here, only exchanges and some service providers, but I do think that the bitcoin scene here in our country is rapidly moving. In any case, are you a part of a Facebook group related to bitcoin? I want to meet up some bitcoiners and enthusiasts here in our country, especially in Manila.

Yes, safe, but the consequence is you'll need to wait for longer times before you see your transaction confirmed, which is annoying and irritating. In order to get your transaction confirmed faster, you need to set a higher fee than the usual. I don't like that.

Hmm the transaction peak seemed to point out that there might be some testing still going on, though we cannot differentiate thoroughly what is made legitimately or what is made as a part of the testing. There are still 10000+ unconfirmed transactions as of this moment, still a 14MB transaction queue.

EDIT: 11000+ unconfirmed transactions as of this moment.

I did a transaction on the 9th of July with only 0.0001 btc and my transaction went through and was confirmed within a span of 30 minutes. Has there been any stress testing occurring in the blockchain as of this moment?

It was a bit of a long read--reading your two articles--but I enjoyed it, though the long paragraphs are somewhat a bit off for me. I'm not a professional writer but I love reading articles, and one thing a reader likes to read on an article is its straightforwardness yet witty content. Yours is a bit long, especially the paragraphs, but maybe you can improve that. Good luck on your writing mate!

Hmm last time I remember Roger Ver ordered a coffee in Starbucks with the help of bitcoin. Bitcoin CAN be used to buy almost anything that fiat money can buy provided that there will be merchants ready to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. Take note that bitcoin is also divisible, so even if bitcoin reach a ludicrous amount, say $10,000 a piece, you can still divide it and get a $100 out of it to pay for your coffee or meal or almost anything.

Nodes are necessarily needed in the network because they validate a block and a transaction fully. After a certain validation of a tx or a block, it will then relay the information to another node and repeat the same process all over again until the whole network is informed of the certain tx or block. It helps the network secure by running a full node. Why? Because you contribute on validating transactions and blocks by just running the bitcoin-core on your machine.

The centralized blockchain is what the banks are really missing. The decentralization of the Bitcoin network is what makes it secure and almost invulnerable to attacks (though a 51% attack could prove me wrong). Miners from all over the world keep it secure from different attacks while in a centralized blockchain, a single attack could probably crumble the tech into ruins.

Banks wanted to gain full control (as always) but didn't even care to bother about the effects of it in their own business model. What traditional banks care about is their profit; nothing more, nothing less. If the public sees what bitcoin has to offer, then they will find a better alternative for banks, and of course, that is bitcoin.

Getting bitcoins to the hands of the general public requires comprehensive and true information dissemination. Well if the public isn't fully informed of what bitcoin can do and what does it really offer/how to use it, I don't think people will accept it as their main currency. Also take into consideration that though the world is now laden with technology and stuff, still there are a vast number of people who don't have access to it. If bitcoin can expand the media it can work through (like SMS which requires lower costs than having internet access, but I don't know if that's possible) then maybe poverty-stricken countries and people can join in the revolution and use bitcoin as well.

But unfortunately we cannot dictate mining companies to reduce their farms because it's their business. As long as the companies have the efficient and fast equipment to hash, they will mine and mine even if the mining scene turn out to be a centralized scene. Switch to a different method, maybe? PoW sure secures the network, but it prevents decentralization to happen.

Well it is very evident that even with this stress testing, the network couldn't handle loads of transactions. And this stress testing is also becoming way overboard: tx with little to no fees are not confirming sooner. I wonder how the network and devs would come up with a solution to handle such problems.

Lol just noticed the same thing. Over 26k tx unconfirmed until now. Where is the low fees? Isn't this already a move to force users to pay a high fee in order for their transaction to get settled? This is bullshit.

True. The rich will only be richer, and the poor will only be poorer. Bitcoin isn't here to save the day, it is here to start the innovations and wake up the people on what the current state of their society really is. Well, if bitcoins is better distributed, I see no problem there. However, there are entities out there who are owning more than 100k bitcoins, an amount that could significantly control the whole bitcoin economy.

This is persistently happening in my case for some weeks now, and I just get used to it. I can load other pages perfectly fine; I can even watch 1080p videos without buffering but whenever I try to refresh bitcointalk.org, it just take ages for it to load, sometimes displaying "The Webpage cannot be displayed" screen. Tried 4 different browsers, but the problem still persists.

There isn't a definite number needed, provided that a cryptocurrency is divisible, it would probably suit the needs of the people. Buying an egg for 0,00000000000000000000000000000001 and writing all the zeros is a hard task to do, so basically you would want to assign names as denominations go and extend from the first decimal place like millibitcoins, centibicoins, microbitcoins and so on.

If you are bullish long term, go and buy at the dips. I sense that this year up to the next halving will turn out great and bountiful for us bitcoiners. Currently, I'm holding for long-term. Bitcoin has a lot of potential, and I'm sure many people are noticing it now other than us bitcoiners alone.

Thanks for sharing this one. A good read and a good view provided with some definite explanation with a definite chart.
I think a storm is really coming. It's all bubbles all the way to the next halving of July 2016.

That's why some other entity want to destroy it, simply because it is slowly changing the norms of the society. It serves as an eye-opener to what is really happening in our society, especially within the governments and banks. These two entities want full control over you and your assets, and bitcoin contradicts that, that's why the governments and banks wanted to destroy bitcoin.

At least bitcoin became a part of the innovation in the financial scene. If bitcoin didn't set the example and lead the way, do you think different financial institutions would bother to lower their fees and improve their services to people? I think not.

They aren't worthless, Hero Members in this forum are just used to the forum that's why you see them recommending services to themselves. Also, if you sell a hero member account, that is a potential 0.5 btc. And signature campaigns also offer higher rates to hero members compared to lower ranks.

But keep in mind that a member's rank in this forum doesn't define his/her trustworthiness; it only describes how long has he/she been here in this forum.