it was not exactly in the middle of it. the Gox thing you have in mind came a bit after that. but irregardless of that, what i posted here is just an example of many other similar circumstances. this is not the only 2 but the 2013 thing with China ban was the easiest one i could find off the top of my mind which was also very similar to this day.

what websites such as coinmarketcap.com report is what they get directly from the exchanges. and these exchange can report anything they like. nobody is stopping them and nobody is watching them, so they report higher volumes. by doing that they simply stay on top of the tables that lists exchanges. => free advertisement.

it is also the fact that those Korean exchanges have 0 fees and that always increases the volume a lot.

here is a fun website to watch things live: http://fiatleak.com/

nobody is going to tell you they are millionaires because of bitcoin, why should they? who have you seen to be willingly and stupidly reveal their finances online for the whole world and certain 3 letter agencies to see?! nobody that's who!

confirmation shows the "depth" of your transaction.
when you have 1 confirmation it means your transaction is inside the last block.
when you have 3 confirmation it means your transaction was included in 3 blocks ago or 3 blocks deep.

this "depth" also shows how likely double spending is.

for example this is the first bitcoin transaction ever:
https://blockchain.info/tx/f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16
it was included in block 170 and it has 484450 confirmation by the time i am typing this and the last block found was 484619 which means that tx is 484450 blocks deep. (there are 484450 between block 170 and block 484619 including block 170) mathematically: 484619 -170 + 1 = 484450

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

this is not the first time that the news, um i mean the lie about China banning bitcoin comes out. because in fact China has never banned bitcoin!

on 5 December 2013 China prohibited their banks from investing in bitcoin, the FUD said China banned bitcoin and all the things you are seeing today.

the price took a dive about 33% in the first hour and in about 4 days bitcoin lost half its value (-50% drop) before it started recovering as the FUD cleared up.



in case above pic didn't show up: https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zig2-hourzczsg2013-12-04zeg2013-12-09ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zp

now in 2017 we have had the same thing. first the ICO thing which didn't even have anything to do with bitcoin, and then this new FUD about China banning bitcoin again!

this time however, bitcoin barely dropped 5% in the initial hours and the total drop was about 10%



in case above pic didn't show up: https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg5zig2-hourzczsg2017-09-07zeg2017-09-11ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zp

is the market getting more mature that the FUD is less effective now?

let me translate:

gpg: i checked the signature versus the public key that you gave me which belonged to "Thomas...." and the signature checks out
gpg: but this public key (6694 D8D....) is what you gave me right now, i didn't have it in my database before. and it is not in the list of "your" trusted public keys.



if you want to get rid of that "warning" you just have to add it to your list. not sure the details of it but you basically create your own key and sign everything that you add and tell "GnuPG" that you trust these keys so that warning never shows up for those keys.
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/147447/gpg-why-is-my-trusted-key-not-certified-with-a-trusted-signature
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/6841/ways-to-sign-gpg-public-key-so-it-is-trusted

actually there have been a lot of good news lately but it seems like the bitcoin community likes listening to Chinese news FUD more than anything else.
The Switzerland has always been bitcoin friendly so it is not a surprise to me what they did. the other good news of this week was the Russians talking about bitcoin and how they are working on legalizing it.

it is not people, it is the wallet clients and their broken fee estimations most of the time.
right now that the memory pool is empty (<3000 tx) you can pay small fees and if the mining pools don't reject your transaction it will be mined. (some mining pools like F2Pool for example have set a minimum fee/B that they will reject lower than that).

checking the latest block it is filled with 1 satoshi/byte transactions:
https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000000513221a373529b99c1982999abcfc189f446e0a8896e03?show_adv=true

LOL, 4 blocks in 5 min or nearly 1 block every 1 minute. you got ultra lucky.

it is actually coming to bitcoin. there is this project called RootStock that has started a while ago and it is supposed to bring smart contracts to bitcoin as a sidechain.
read more here: www.rsk.co

not really. it is just a hype of this year. like something else was last year and last year. it will fade away.
and so far "smart contracts platforms" are just being used for lots of ICOs each day and all of them that i have seen are completely useless!

one thing you need to know is that news sites are exaggerating a lot and they are mostly click-baits instead of legit journalism. in other words saying "bitcoin will soon be $1,000,....,000" is as dumb as saying "bitcoin will die soon".
the thing is, when bitcoin is on the rise, everyone looks for articles calling the top and everyone becomes experts and calls a different top of huge numbers.
the next week when the correction starts, everyone looks for articles calling the bottom and again everyone becomes experts and calls idiotically small numbers.

the fact that i see is that during all this time bitcoin supply is still the same limited amount while its demand is constantly rising. as the media coverage increases the demand also goes up. and that leads to higher and higher prices.
with advances that bitcoin makes, such as its scaling (that happened last month) or Lightning Network,... the adoption will grow even more and with it the price rise.

here are the things that will happen when you click the link:
1. OP gets paid a couple of satoshi because you clicked his shortened link
2. you get a binary file to download
3. the creator of that binary will get rich as soon as you install his malware and it steals "your" bitcoins

the question is, is a couple of satoshis for OP worth spreading malware and ruining your reputation?

for the millionth time it is because altcoins are being created as fast as you blink and market cap for cryptocurrency market is equal to number of coins multiplied by their price and these altcoins create an alarming rate of coins! there are even some with hundreds of billion coins!
you just upload your coin and market cap increases by millions of dollars easily! and that is why this "record" of yours is completely meaningless.

it is such a broad question! which part of trading don't you understand?

trading is when you buy something at some price then you sell it to someone else at a higher price. then from the difference you make profit.
it can be buying winter cloths now and selling them in 4 months when winter is here at higher price and make profit.
it can be buying stocks on the market and when the company grew bigger, sell your stocks for higher price
or it can be buying currencies against each other (bitcoin versus USD) and when they go up in price sell for profit.

for the last 2 you sign up on an exchange or use a broker. in bitcoin people always use an exchange.

these are the questions that have been asked ever since 1989[1] when the first ransomware attack took place (hint: bitcoin was created in 2008). there are a lot of different ways of securing yourself against these types of attacks. as in prevention. you can do a google search and find many good articles about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware#History

well, bitcoin is money and like any other form of currency it will inevitably be used for many different things some of which are illegal.
the media loves these types of things so they put them under magnifying glass but in the end since it is a small part of bitcoin's usage, it won't matter.

here is my understanding of the situation:
Chinese government has never planned on banning bitcoin. specially not now that bitcoin is adopted worldwide. what they have always worried about like any other government in the world are the illegal activities that are being performed in disguise of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) related services.
things such as money laundering using bitcoin exchanges or ICOs. scamming people using ICOs. and when these things become bigger and take more victims, the government has to do something. so they banned ICOs for now. and as for bitcoin they have always worked with exchanges to regulate them to prevent all the illegal activities and this has nothing to do with "ban".

i believe the gpg is looking for a file with a .sig or .asc type for the signature and you are giving it a .txt file containing the same thing.
try renaming the file and remove the .txt from the end:

then check with gpg

---

p.s. with a closer look your .asc file content does not look correct either.
https://download.electrum.org/2.9.2/electrum-2.9.2.dmg.asc

maybe it is because you are using a false wallet electrium!
the real wallet that everyone else is using and is trusted is called electrum!

and if you want to be safe, then look into what "Cold Storage" means. anything that is online (connected to internet) is not safe at all.

yes, our cryptocurrency system is very very weak. last month this day bitcoin price was $3400 and today it is $4200. yes very weak this is. and the month before it price was $2200 and now $4200. yes very ultra weak.
it is not as if the recent dip was ~8%. no it was weak.

exactly. people always are confused about this "anonymity" but it is there. bitcoin is not anonymous but it can be and the privacy that comes with it is very useful. you don't need to sign up, verify, give your identifications, ... you just make the payment.
and it is global. you no longer have the issue of wondering if you can use your credit card in some place or the other and you will never have the security issues coming with usage of a credit card.

it is true only because you forgot about the history.

in about 95% of this past 2 years period that you checked, the Chinese exchanges had 0 fees (hence huge volume), were unregulated (hence reporting fake volume and also did a lot of shady things). these simply means the numbers you see are not 100% valid and also even if they are, they should not be compared with others.

an exchange with 0.2% fee can never have the same volume as an exchange with 0% fee.
reason is simple. with 0 fees you buy at 20300CNY and sell at 20301 CNY and still make profit
with 0.2% fee if you buy at 20300 CNY you need to sell at least at 20361 CNY to make any profit

if you compare the data from these past months belonging to Chinese exchanges with their last year volume you can see what i mean. you see the drastic drop in the volume.