Can they? Yes, but success isn't guaranteed. Having 51% of the hashrate doesn't automatically mean they can succeed with an attack.

Will they? I seriously doubt it. A successful attack will ruin Bitcoin, and an unsuccessful one will ruin them. Neither scenario would put them in any good situation, unless these huge miners purposefully wanted to bring Bitcoin down.


I'd say it's less about strength and vision, and more about how it will be advantageous for no one for Bitcoin to plummet. The system does work incredibly well though if viewed in that light.

The short answer is that you could, but you could also just as easily lose money. You should just stay away. A member has posted his experience about them here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2876163

It's pretty in-depth and I would recommend reading everything so you know how it works.

You can stake a Bitcoin address with zero Bitcoins in it. Anything other than that isn't honored here as far as I know, since it's a Bitcoin forum.

So yeah, all you need to do is download a Bitcoin client like Electrum, create a wallet and keep the seeds safe, and follow the instructions within the tutorial. Again, it doesn't matter if the address doesn't have anything in it, for as long as you can prove that you own it via a signed message.

This just proves that Bitcoin isn't as well suited for illicit activities as it once was, now that government agencies understand it well enough to be able to employ chain analysis.

I'm not saying it can't be used for illegal activities anymore, but it's probably time for governments to acknowledge that the connection between Bitcoin and crime has decreased significantly. It's just tiring hearing it being brought up over and over.

Well I can't argue with that. It exploded for its investment potential; its rising price was its claim to household name fame. It's only natural, then, that once the price surge is over, so would the hype. That being said, so what? It rose to fame for the wrong reason anyway, so I don't mind that it's over. It's not a bad thing in the least, because what's important is that people at least know that it exists.

The next step would then be creating a viable mainstream currency out of it and have people realize it's not just an investment. A number has already used it, and people already know about it, so that hype has already served its purpose in the big picture by lowering the barrier of entry in a way.

Well that's not always the case. Bitcoin spiked to $5k around September last year, and never actually looked back if you ignore what happened with the massive China ban hysteria. $8k is pretty low compared to what we've already once maintained, and much more so compared with what we've already reached, so I do hope we don't go lower anymore.

That being said, I'm not the least bit convinced that we're out of the bear market, though I would love to be proven wrong.

Well strictly speaking, the trend at the moment is upwards, but that's the thing about Bitcoin: that's about as far as you can go with trends. It has been doing relatively well lately, but that could reverse at any time, and the bottom could be even lower than what you'd have thought. If someone tells you Bitcoin is about to get into the $12k territory because of the recent upward trend, I can guarantee you that they're simply guessing.

Not necessarily. You could liquidate it slowly using peer-to-peer options, whether in your country or out of it. It's going to be a pain to liquidate whether it's legal or not, because you'll be alerting authorities if you move that much money at once, so slow liquidation would be advisable anyway.

If you plan to keep on making money with crypto though, it would probably be best to move, as you said. Belarus would be a great option, as someone else has suggested.

I'm sure Bitcoin can shatter its $19k peak, but it's looking like it will take time for that to happen. And once it does, there are no guarantees that Bitcoin can keep doing the same thing. It's going to reach its apex at some point. Heck, it might already have, if adoption and technology doesn't improve.

It's far better to draw people in with technology and utility rather than price in my opinion, as those are far more stable and predictable.

Fees have been incredibly low for a while now. Paying 1 sat/byte for transactions has been pretty commonplace. The current recommended fee is at 4 sats/byte according to https://coinb.in/#fees.

If you haven't noticed the difference, you're probably using an online exchange/wallet that doesn't give much freedom in choosing fees.

Segwit probably had something to do with it, but most people I see seem to believe it has more to do with the fact that the (alleged) spam attack on the network has stopped.

I'm pretty sure you won't have to worry about that. No one takes any of them seriously, with the exception of Bitcoin Cash. I'm actually surprised they still have value at this point. I suppose there are still some people interested in them because they were given away for free. That makes them good for pump and dump schemes.


Those are soft forks though. Since we're talking about altcoins that forked from Bitcoin, "fork" in this context, refers to a hard-fork.

I appreciate the effort, but I don't think many people are aware of what PGP is or what it's for. It's far more likely for them to follow step-by-step instructions on how to verify software/anything else that probably starts with importing the keys they will need anyway (which is dangerous if not scrutinized, I guess, so maybe something like this is necessary).

Those who are informed likely won't need a guide on which keys they need, but I suppose the compilation could be useful. At the very least, you should probably point out who each of them are and why people may want to import their keys. Just my two satoshis on the matter

Are you sure you didn't make a typo? How Electrum works is that you have to write your seed somewhere, and you need to type them all over again to initialize your wallet. This means that if you still have your original copy, it has worked before, and is therefore correct. It would probably be safe to assume, then, that there are no technical issues at all, and the problem is on your end.

It's very possible you're simply misreading or mistyping a word or two. (Example: the correct word is sea, but you typed it as see or wrote it such that it looks like see, etc.)

Well corporations that handle sizable amounts of data typically back up everything regularly as part of a standard operating procedure. If a hack steals everything and erases everything to the point of zero recovery, then the hacked company is either completely and utterly incompetent, or the "hack" was internal. I would find the latter scenario infinitely more likely in this case. Regulators are going to be way up in their ass either way.

That being said, I don't think it's going to be a problem of proving how much belonged to you as much as them paying out the said amount.

Would governments be satisfied with this though? The crypto community can self-regulate all they want, but there's no way to bind every user to this agreement. The community can only do so much to penalize offenders too, so it may be ineffective on that end. I find it really hard to visualize. Nothing's stopping government regulations from overriding everything, too. In the end, maybe "decentralized" and "regulation" simply don't mix.

It's probably not needed now, as you said, but as things stand, Bitcoin can't handle mainstream demand for transactions. Something is needed to address this, preferably  sooner rather than later, so the world can start taking Bitcoin seriously as an alternative payment option.

The Lightning Network is simply one of those somethings. I personally think it has a long way to go because it's just too complex as it currently stands, which is bad for regular joe adoption. It has to be noted that it's still in the very early stages though, so it could still very well live up to its potential as the solution to Bitcoin's scalability problems in the near future.

I would define Bitcoin haters as people who only see its bad side. Bitcoin fans is a little more broad, as while there will be people who keep an open mind about both the good and bad of it, there will always be fanatics that will only acknowledge the good.

I wouldn't put FUDsters among the Bitcoin hater category to be honest. Those that actually exert a lot of effort in disparaging Bitcoin are likely pushing an agenda. It's easy to write off politicans as haters, but they may be trying to advance their political career by appealing to the masses' opinions. It's easy to write off Bitcoin Cash trolls as haters, but they only really hate on Bitcoin because they want it replaced by Bitcoin Cash. On the other side of the spectrum are people like McAfee, who stands to gain a lot if Bitcoin rises, so I would also be hesitant to say he's a fan.

It looks simple, but it's not just black and white to me.

Well that's kind of like what happened with Mt. Gox, if you look at things a certain way. They were required to pay back everyone who lost money years after the fact, in USD terms, not Bitcoin. That's probably similar to what will happen to Coinbase should it find itself in the same situation. As for proving how much, the courts will probably see to it that all data prior to the shutdown is kept and used for crediting the proper amount of money.

But yeah, it's a shitty situation to find yourself in. This is why you never use online wallets/exchanges to store a sizable amount of money. Keep it in a personal desktop/hardware wallet and you won't have to worry about any provider going out of business.

Exchanges still operate because banks were apparently given 3 months for the crackdown. If nothing is done by then, exchanges will lose their access to banking services, which, believe it or not, is not a small thing. Indian exchanges are rightfully very concerned, and are planning on fighting the crackdown:

https://www.coindesk.com/indias-exchanges-want-challenge-central-banks-crypto-crackdown/

Peer to peer trading should be safe, but I don't know how exchanges will operate without access to bank accounts and payment channels. I do hope they come to a favorable resolution.

I can see why some might find that ironic, but I personally don't. To me, it's like saying you love the freedom that comes with the internet, but hate that people abuse this by spreading fake news to influence elections, engaging in illegal activities, etc. A technology is only as good as its application.

What banks want to do with blockchain technology can't really be compared to how it has been applied to Bitcoin and crypto in general, so it makes sense that they view them as discrete entities. Bitcoin is a threat to them, while blockchain technology could help their efficiency and bottom line. It's pretty clear why they're taking the position that they currently have.