bitcoin is indeed just an alternative to fiat currencies, but for some reason people still think it will replace the dollar and become the main currency of the world. bitcoin at this point is nothing more than a tiny dot compared to what the market cap of the dollar, euro, and even gold is. people should stop with dreaming about unrealistic things and put their focus on real things.

even if you hold your coins in your wallet they can get stolen. if your pc is infected with a virus, then your coins can get stolen easily. in order to prevent that, you must use a very strong passhprase and you could also choose to encrypt your wallet files for even more protection. if you do that and keep your pc clean and up to date, then your coins will be more than safe.

those who lose faith in bitcoin just because the price goes down are not real bitcoiners. i consider these people to sensation hunters. they are only interested in seeing the price go up and up while they mostly don't know anything about how markets work. these people are also the kind of people that complain when the price doesn't go up much. they get bored and sell or they dive into an altcoin. a real bitcoiner keeps its faith and trust no matter how "low" or high the price is.

do you seriously think bitcoin is used more for bad things than the us dollar? you must be kidding, right? nothing in the world can come even close to the harm done by the us dollar.... bitcoin is of course also being used for illegal stuff, but in comparison to the us dollar, bitcoin doesn't even come close to 0,01% of the total harm done by by the us dollar. that fiat currency is being used to fund entire wars. but as always, the media picks always bitcoin out of everything. it clearly has influenced you.

it indeed sucks that they only ship to people in the usa. but like me, when you have family living there i use their address to let them ship the gold to. and my family then send it to me in europe. i have once bought a 5 gram gold bar from them and will buy another 5 gram gold bar in the coming months, but now will do the payment in bitcoin.

it's quite funny to see that throughout the years people became more and more resistant to good news as the price doesn't move anymore due to that good news. but when it comes to bad news for example, people still shit their pants and start panic selling like there is no tomorrow. seems like there is nothing changed in that aspect. they sell for nothing as most of the bad news is nothing more than fud to bring the price down. and it still works.....

i know exactly what my expenses are. and i also know (more or less) how much i will spend on food and stuff. and a certain part of my salary goes directly to my savings account. as soon as my salary posts in my bank account i know (nearly) exactly how much free money i have to do some nice things with. and from that free money i use around $100 to buy some bitcoins with to store in my cold wallet. i have always been good with my money. i never had a debit card and will never signup for one. it's pure nonsense. people use it to spend money they don't have.

never say never when it comes to bitcoin. it's quite unlikely to happen, but it's still possible. did anyone expect the price to go sub $200 again after reaching an ath of around $1200? don't think so. but it still happened. bitcoin surprised all of us when it went below $200 in 2015 which no one thought was possible anymore. even at this point i am literally prepared for anything.

that's unrealistic and will probably never happen. i am already happy if we manage to see the price reach a few $k at some point in the future. in order to do that we need a lot new money coming into bitcoin and we need to see the demand increase significantly. if that doesn't happen, we can forget seeing a price of a few $k. every person who's thinking the bitcoin price will reach $200k needs a reality check. let's first get to $1000 again, and after that we'll start talking again.

i still think there is a possibility of going below $400 again. my guess is that we'll see the price stay below $450 in this month. as soon as we see the price go near the $450 price level there will be a good dump taking the price down to $420 again. we've seen this happen before already. i think it will repeat.

there are enough people that are waiting for such a price to happen. and many of them spread fud in order to get the price to go down. but whatever they do, it's not working. at some point the community will become imune for these fud spreaders. other than that, we don't have to worry about the price going down that low unless a major exchange gets hacked and a lot coins are stolen.

a lot people here think bitcoin has a great future, but that doesn't mean people will "never" sell any of their coins. most of the people are here to make profits. and to actually make any profit, you must sell. otherwise there is no real profit made. same as when you buy bitcoin for let's say $600 per coin, and the price goes down to $500, that doesn't mean you lost any money. you only lose money when you sell.

it all depend on the type of investor it is. if you plan to hold your coins for the long term, then you can buy at this price easily. if you're only interested in short term profits, then i would say it's an okay moment to buy as the price has no clear up or downwards movement.

people will use bitcoin whether the price is low or high. it's a currency and an investment tool in one. just look at the early days when bitcoin was only worth around $1 per coin. there is no real difference with how the market and the people were using bitcoin back then and today. the only difference is that the price right now is much higher than when it was worth a few bucks.

lending here in this forum is quite a risky thing to do since people will come up with altcoins as collateral. altcoins easily show fluctuations of 20-50% in some cases. yes, you can sell the collateral if you notice the value of the altcoin goes down, but you'll end up wasting your time for nothing since you'll get your initial amount back. btcjam is full of scammers. not a good idea to start there for new people.

of course they are supporting blockstream. i don't expect anything else from them. they know everything will be sorted out, so they don't have anything to worry about. there is too much fud at the moment. the majority of this fud is aimed against bitcoin. and look, bitcoin is holding pretty strong.

not sure who you friends are, but don't believe what they say. $3000 in juli is a big joke. we might be happy if we see the price reach $600-$700 before or after the halving this year.

litecoin was pumped heavily by a chinese group. and you probably already know what happened after the litecoin price reached $8 back then. it got dumped down really hard and made the price go back to where it was before the block halving pump started. i hope it will not happen with bitcoin as that would be really sad. this just shows that heavy pumps/peaks don't last.

it may seem like so, but the price isn't really rising. it's just moving within the well known $380-$450 price levels. i consider the price to be rising as soon as we go over the $450 price level. everything below that is no real growth for this year.

it's just a matter of time before the block size will get a bump to 2mb. but then again, i don't expect much impact on the price beside a short term peak once the block size is increased. after that all will be back to normal and probably another block size debate might come to life as the fudders will do everything to derail bitcoin.