Absolutely. The thing however is that the mass that consists of sheeps considers fiat to be the only legal form of money, while Bitcoin is still that unknown and shady currency that criminals prefer to use.

We know that things are different, but the way mainstream media outlets are pushing the Bitcoin criminal currency narrative, the mass will continue to think like that. Eventually it will change, but eventually is still far away.

Some people even blame Bitcoin for their losses in illegal casinos, while if they use illegal fiat casinos they blame themselves for losing. It's so retarded how people think, but we have to endure this for a few more years.

I rather follow Tom Lee's predictions than Brian Kelly's predictions. People shouldn't forget that he and the rest of the clowns over at CNBC hardcore shilled Bcash at the very beginning.

They stopped shilling it the moment they realized it couldn't harm Bitcoin and then actually referred to it as Bcash. After that they were shilling XRP, and now it's waiting for what coin is next on their list.

No one but a few skeptics ever doubted about Bitcoin reaching its previous all time highs, we don't need that clown to repeat this. CNBC and Bloomberg aren't better than CoinIdol in my opinion.

You got to appreciate some bearish action from time to time. The longer people remain bearish while the price keeps going up, the harder they will end up fomo buying out of frustration.

I find it funny how people make it appear that they are so confident that the price will tank below the $1000 mark, that while being so "sure", they aren't shorting the market. If I was sure we would moon, I would open a leveraged long right now.

That being said, let's not get too excited already because we're not out of the woods yet. I'll stay conservative till we confidently break $6000 and stay above it. That for me would be reason to open a leveraged long.

It's not all that bad. People for once need to understand how markets work. You can't expect the price to keep going up without a serious level of profit taking happening on the way up.

Investors had all the time to accumulate coins well under the $4000 mark, and they are cashing out some of their profits, and I can't blame them with how overbought the market was when it peaked just over $5400.

Is it still a good time to sell? If you're well in the green then it doesn't hurt, but there seems to be a decent bit of support around the $5000 mark, so it's a bit tricky in my opinion.

I don't think that's what banks are looking for considering how cross border fees are such an important profit stream for them. Why would they attempt to change anything about this?

If they ever plan to actually utilize the blockchain technology, we will not find out about it because that will allow them to justify the high fees, and people will keep dreaming about the day the fees become lower.

It could even be that the largest banks already utilize the blockchain technology. They privatize the efficiency gains to cut on intermediary fees between banks, while people themselves still pay high legacy fees.

Everything is potentially traceable to the person with enough effort put into it, also through the off-chain databases you are referring to. People make mistakes all the time and pay the price for it.

Mixing services are centralized entities that might not actually delete their logs at all, even if they state to do so and they are reputable and people haven't (yet) had a problem with any of them.

Bitcoin is one of the worst tools to launder money with, and it gets worse the more advanced authorities become. Cash is and will remain the absolute leader as currency for those who have other intentions.

Nothing is as anonymous and decentralized as cash.

People coming up with these predictions don't realize how difficult it will be to maintain such prices. Bitcoin reaching whatever high level has never really been a problem, maintaining them is.

With how this market is growing larger and larger, the bear markets eventually will no longer be cycles of 2 or so years, but cycles of maybe up to a decade. The larger a market grows, the more difficult it becomes to move.

Gold is exactly like that. Its economic mass works against it, and it's only a matter of time before Bitcoin ends up in the same boat, especially with cash settled derivative volumes being 50-100× higher than the spot volumes.

It's weird because we don't know what's really going on aside from OPs brief 'explanation'. Not saying OP is, but people tend to be overly aggressive with their communication when they go through these problems.

Another thing people tend to do is to send a lot of emails and open a lot of support tickets, which usually leads to a cool down period because of how most support systems flag it as spam, and this only works against people.

Instead of quickly getting a problem solved, you're making it unnecessarily more difficult for yourself. This applies to every service.

I find news aggregators quite flashy with how cluttered the pages usually are. Everything is in your face at the same time, which after a while becomes pretty annoying and makes people go back to the actual sites of news outlets again.

Sure, you can customize your main page to have it show whatever you want, but still, these news aggregators haven't ever enjoyed much popularity, and there has to be a reason for that.

I bookmarked some decent news outlets and it actually works fine. As long as you don't take them too seriously, reading through the 'best' sites becomes less annoying, because there is still worthy content if you search for it.

It's not suspicious at all. In all cases, markets don't go down endlessly, unless it's an obvious scam or a failing company stock, which Bitcoin obviously isn't. It's a healthy upwards movement we made, but for now that's really all it is.

Time will tell whether or not we're going to push forward even further, but the increase we have seen lately is a mixture of improved technicals and of course a mild form of fomo because people don't want to be left behind.

The thing that people discard right now due to their euphoric mindset is that crypto can easily go down as fast as it went up. If this is just a temporary increase, a lot of people will get rekt in the process. Perfect last shakeout scenario I say.

Addresses are quite a useful tool for exposing scammers, especially with how most noobie scammers don't know that even when you generate a new address, it can still be linked to the previously used addresses.

There are various sites already where scams are being pointed out, but none yet dedicated to addresses. Sure, some explorers allow comments and whatnot, but it could be utilized in a much better way with some effort.

There is no such a thing as 'bear analysts'. If you think logically, every unbiased analyst follows the trend and assumes things will be like that until the market signals a trend reversal, which we don't have yet.

Admittedly, some analysts are extremely bearish, but that's their opinion at the end of the day. I am actually more interested in reading through realistic 'bearish' analysis rather than 'Bitcoin to the moon' fanboy analysis.

Purely based on the statistics, those who people refer to as bears, trolls, fudsters, have all been more right than those who kept believing in a miraculous recovery to whatever level above the $10k mark.

It's good to see how the volumes are picking up, but it's not indicative of a trend reversal at all, and as long as that isn't the case, I'll prefer to remain conservative and be open minded enough to acknowledge the possibility of another crash.

Only OTC desks know how much actual demand there is from institutional entities, so it would be a very welcome bit of information would they ever publicly share it. It doesn't have to be specific names, but more the global numbers.

Accumulation never ends. If you think about it, accumulation is nothing more than a continuous process of buy low and sell higher. It's just so that bear markets offer more advantageous entry points for any investor.

Whales are an interesting subject for news outlets to report about, which admittedly is something people like to read about, but it's so exaggerated by news outlets that it's almost too embarrassing to read through some of these articles.

Overall, whales have been getting rekt just as hard as people here did when we crashed from $6000 to $3000 last year. The buy support they offered just wasn't enough to withstand the enormous selling pressure from ICOs and whatnot.

Sorry, but people like you are the ones who usually end up getting rekt with expectations like that. Even if we actually bottomed out, there is no way we will mark a new all time high with this many resistance levels to deal with.

We haven't even tested the $6000 mark yet, which will prove to be the most difficult resistance to break through, and I am not exaggerating here. Solid support becomes solid resistance once broken....

Your "trust" is only based on the price. If you actually cared about Bitcoin's fundamentals, trust wouldn't be a thing you need to bring up at all. It has always been the most solid en secure network in the crypto world.

It is silly, but they know playing Bitcoin's environmental danger card helps them winning some votes because this is something that also plays an important role politically outside China.

The good thing however is that more and more people start to ignore everything around Bitcoin and its energy consumption, because they are educated enough to poke through this political circus show.

People also know that China's industry is one of the main environmental disasters in the world, so all China does is make itself look like a hypocrite that is only out to block that what it doesn't like.

The block halving is one of the most fundamental happenings within Bitcoin because its global rate of inflation will then drop well under that of gold, which makes Bitcoin even more attractive to investors.

The only thing people seem to disregard is the fact that we're at a crucial point in Bitcoin's history where more liquidity also translates into less crazy bull runs. It's no longer the few billion market coin that goes 50-100x at once.

In order for Bitcoin to reach a $1 trillion market cap we "only" need to reach $56k per coin with its current total number of circulating coins, which isn't all that unrealistic if you think about it.

Gold's current market cap is $8 trillion, so we're coming closer and closer. By the time Bitcoin breaks that $1 trillion mark we might be in for a massive capital shift from gold to Bitcoin because it's way better and scarcer.

I doubt it's going to have much of an impact at all. LN will cause the hop fees to decline because of the competitive nature of the fee market. If you charge too much in fees, you'll be ignored so you have to offer super low fees.

If we look at the main chain fees, there is a very limited amount of block space available with a continuously increasing demand. In other words, people and services will up bid their fees to get that 1-3 block confirmation priority.

Big block miners shouldn't complain about anything with how high the fees are, and deep down I am sure they actually like it. Their only incentive is to make money, and that's exactly what they are doing with Bitcoin.

Investors analyze the risks involved in whatever they plan to invest in, and based on that they allocate whatever amount of their portfolio to it. I think that's the only thing that matters fundamentally.

Another thing I think matters is how emotionally connected to a specific coin or stock you are. People tend to hold on to whatever they invested in for too long which leads to disappointment afterwards because of the declining prices.

I had that somewhat with Bitcoin last year, but I then remind myself of what Bitcoin stands for, which works as stimulating factor that makes me realize that Bitcoin isn't just an ordinary investment tool.

In terms of cross border payments that may be true, but locally I can send and receive money instantly at no cost with a service people from different banks can transact with each other.

It started out as a tipping service, but after the max amounts have been lifted significantly people can now send and receive thousands per transaction. It's centralized but incredibly convenient, which is something that crypto doesn't offer.

The best part is that it works every single day, so you're not tied to business days anymore. Banks are catching up fast, people shouldn't underestimate them or think that Bitcoin will wipe them out.