There are some ways to narrow down the list of people who own the largest wallets and there are certainly some wallets that have already been identified, and a few even labelled by their own users. Notably some large sites and exchangers' so-called cold wallets are known.

Keeping your address private is just that. Privacy. Your wallet being visible doesn't actually decrease your security. Otherwise the transparency of the blockchain would be a flaw.

So, don't pity the guys in this list. You can try and hack their wallets all you want.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

Precisely. I think there has been an overreaction sometimes whenever a government issues even the most innocuous statements that simply distances itself from Bitcoin and advises citizens of that.

Given that so many people fall prey to scams and the inability of the state to protect them as laws are inadequte and always lagging behind technology, these measures are simply preventative, not restrictive.

As a lot of people have already explained, Tether (USDT) is the simplest way to immediately convert your Bitcoin to take advantage of highs (and then to buy back Bitcoin when it's lower) but this isn't the same as converting to fiat at all. My own personal preference to realise actual fiat value is through a secure p2p exchange, Localbitcoins online exchange using bank payment fits the bill for me. You sell Bitcoins to a trusted trader placed into escrow which you only release when the cash hits your account. It's not entirely foolproof as the buyer can always revoke the bank payment but that would put them through a lot of trouble. I've never had a single hitch for almost 50 sells now.

Another similar P2P exchange is Bisqui, kinda works exactly the same way, but am a new user with a handful of sells there, so can't vouch for it as much!

Good calls on under 2.5, @StephenCurry and apt assessment @Patatas, for the first game of the week.

Another 3-0 prediction down the drain and if i had to be perfectly honest, other than the Matip effort, I don't think Liverpool came very close on their other shots on goal. Plenty of misses (literally missed headers from Salah anyway) to keep me fuming in my seat. Mourinho played his tactics and got what he came for. A point from Anfield with a clean sheet, minimal yellow cards and no injuries, would be a huge victory in his eyes.

Feel so deflated now to be honest. This really feels like a defeat.

To answer your original question simply: yes, you got it right. That's GDAX way of putting it. It can differ across platforms. I'm more familiar with "stop loss" and "take profit" (abbreviated as SL and TP) but that's just a forex convention.

These are actually all called Stop Orders, where you set a stop price that is above or below current market values. When the coin reaches this stop price you set, your Stop Order essentially fills on the market. But as the others put, this is seldom the exact price you specify.

Sounds like the journalist ran out of ideas after getting to 3 reasons. Seriously? FOMO?

Even if we forgive that, Amazon.com is the least plausible reason in that list. Don't forget that in the past, Bitcoin has already had major retailers accept Bitcoin payments but these clearly do not have an impact on price, at least not beyond the extreme short term. Of course, as I mentioned in some other post on "acceptance at over 40 million merchants" via Coinbase and Wirex, this is also a different form of adoption through third-party settlement processors. If Amazon actually did accept Bitcoin (as in you pay to their wallet directly and not through something like Coinbase), that would be unique news in itself - but still of no impact on price.

I think you make some assumptions that could lead you to misunderstand Bitcoin in its entirety. It wouldn't be right to compare freelancing to Bitcoin. One is a type of career or profession, the other is a P2P digital currency, among other things.

I'm a freelancer, and I earn in Bitcoin. You mentioned a few activities: mining, gambling, investing. Of these, only mining is directly related to earning Bitcoin, in the sense of Bitcoin mining. Gambling and investing are not Bitcoin specific (and gambling is highly arguable as an actual income generating activity).

There we go! Another believer in the Anfield spirit! I've got Liverpool on at 3-0, but only if they get an early goal. Yes, I know we're hugely rated to lose by the bookies, but something's got to give after the series of draws and all those shots on goal with no returns. No Mane, no problem. Coutinho will mess up the back four, and we've got Firminho and Salah to run their flanks ragged. Lukaku's got a taste for goal but I have a feeling out keeper's going to up his game for this one.

Mou says it's just another game, but he wants and needs this win badly to dispel any sort of talk that Utd haven't played a strong attacking team yet.

My only hope is Atkinson doesn't ruin the game in the first minute, like he did last time he refereed this match...

Damn, a straight set victory as expected but Gasquet spoiled this bet with a particularly obstinate first, starting with that unreturnable first serve. Think the Frenchie lost his nerve when he made a wrong challenge at 5-5... Fedex went on to win but at 12 points, I knew this bet had been lost.

This is probably the end of his breeze so far though, as he will be coming up against del Potro in the semis. Still tipping Roger to win this trophy, I always felt he had at least a couple more titles to win, especially on his crazy form this year.

note to self: stick to football

Welcome back to EPL everyone, don't forget to enter predictions! As can be expected, some of our favourite players are nursing injuries from their WC qualifiers. I don't really understand what happens in these games that break even beasts like Sadio Mane, and just before meeting our arch rivals too! Six weeks without Mane, I'm really gutted =(

Anyway, I've decided to KEEP my 3-0 Liverpool prediction, so if that happens, I'll be happy to only get 40 points this week.

@ciccio I think we voted to keep it to Top 3, as specified in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2076240.msg20745851#msg20745851

Of course, the pot is worth something closer to £1,000 now!

@tokeweed Yeah let's spice it up next season with plenty of side bets!

Glad that you saw it worked out. Unfortunately, using most online services or exchanges like Poloniex means that you have to give up control over your own funds. As achow explains, the balances you see on your accounts are just database entries on their servers updated as you deposit to and withdraw from their wallets.

I use some of these exchanges, when I want to use my Bitcoins to buy other alts - in reality, I am sending them my bitcoins, and when I perform a trade on their exchange, I am credited with the corresponding amount of altcoins. I only regain control of those alts when I request a withdrawal and they send me those alts to a wallet I control. So... yes, when we used these centralised exchanges, we are sending them our funds for the promise of that they will be returned to us when we make withdrawals.

Currently, there is a way to remain fully in control of your funds while still exchanging, through so-called decentralised exchanges. These are platforms where users offer trades to and accept trades from each other, P2P exchanging/trading. The only issues now are that they are only a few of them with a small userbase, therefore, fewer trades with fewer alts and with less volume, as well as a slightly more complex method of completing trades. You can check out two that I am using now:
1. https://wavesplatform.com/
2. https://xcpdex.com/

There are a few more in development which I hope will give us the same access and volume as Poloniex, Bittrex and others. It will be a long wait, though.

Not sure how CoinJar works, but pretty sure it's just an online hosted wallet and that's always going to be a problem especially when you need your payments done asap. After this experience, I suggest you try to move over to your own wallet where you control your funds fully. That way, you perform transactions immediately (providing your tx is broadcast properly) and you control how soon it gets confirmed. Try an easy SPV like Electrum, I promise you'll learn to love its simplicity.

Best thing to do now is to check the address you spent to (the Poloniex address) and look for it on the blockchain. If there's any incoming transaction, it will show up, even if unconfirmed. If there's none, then you're stuck waiting til Monday. Nothing anyone here can do here if there's no tx id.

Looks like you caught a bad time to transact, networks getting a bit crowded again due to the flurry of trades trying to catch up to the ATH wave before it inevitably corrects. User above has already submitted to via so I won't also submit. Gotta say that Via hasn't been finding blocks as often as before though, not since Bitcoin Cash anyway. Still, they might move a bit more hashrate over to BTC, given the very tempting prices above $5,500.

They're still your best hope for confirmation... https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ estimates your fee to take between 5-Infinity time to confirm. In fact, 111 per byte is estimated to take 1.5 days...

First time I've heard a name put against this strategy, am of course not surprised at all it exists, since it's pretty sound against several assumptions that must hold true for your basket of coins:

1. They are relatively stable in terms of long-term value. Yes, it's extremely difficult to say what this is now but for me, I'd look back at 12-months lows and if I'm confident it cannot go below that in the next 12, that's stable enough for crypto.
2. Age. Yes, even Bitcoin has barely made it past 5 years and the lot straggling behind have perhaps 2 or 3 years at best, even less on major volume history.

Since I don't have a fixed income, my only buys are in Bitcoin (and that's really just because I receive it as income) but I try to stagger my sells across the same value-cost average. Within a fixed period of 2-3 weeks, if I feel it is already high enough I sell, or wait out but never past my fixed period. This way I have historically made between 10-15% more in 2017 each sell (ie, getting paid $10 and able to sell for about $11). However, the time between receiving payment and selling is actually 1-2 months. If Bitcoin were to be in a downward trend, I'd lose on the same strategy, but perhaps would mitigate losses.

I wouldn't say especially Bitcoin... if anything Bitcoin is the most-accepted of major (or minor) cryptocurrencies. But yes, I've always felt that accepting crypto through yet another payment processor isn't quite the same as accepting Bitcoin as a currency. For me, this is precisely what Coinbase is, a 3rd party payment settlement for merchants who actually still only accept fiat. You pay with Bitcoin to Coinbase who then settle your payment with the Coinbase merchant in fiat.

Still, this is a first step towards recognition, and this is something that Dash will need more if it hopes to scale the heights of Bitcoin.

You've sold a huge amount of coins by anyone's reckoning, so I'm going to assume you had a lot more where that came from. Regardless, don't regret it. You've done well already and there's a lot to say about "realised profit", which is where you were at when you sold.

Of course, if you were a supposed holder, and you sold everything you had, then this probably wasn't a great move (hint, holding means waiting for the big payout, right?).

Keep some of that and enjoy it, there's a lot more regret waiting for those who just never liquidated and then watched it all go away. Bitcoin is headed for better days (yes, even better than today) but there's a lot more lows to weather. I'd just wait and buy back in at 4,500 or lower. Every ATH has been followed by an even bigger dip, such is the way of the market.

Going to be pretty difficult for a betting guy like myself (haha) to pick the four European teams left to progress into the finals at Russia. Most people will feel this will come down to the draw, and my guess is that the Italians would be first choice to go through whomever they're drawn against. Their quality will eventually see them through, at least none of their potential opponents have enough firepower to break down their defence.

Then again, that very result might be the the strategy of both Irish teams and Greece. Remember them winning the Euros on draws and penalties? Ugliest Euro ever but hey it worked out! So I would say at least one of these 3 should go through on a dogged performance.

Switzerland are the silkiest but they're just not deadly enough. I'd tip Croatia and Denmark to make the cut.

So: Italy, Croatia, Denmark and Ireland.

I'm Southeast Asian myself, and I've seen how three countries from there are particularly quick to pick up on things like Bitcoin: Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Yes, they're "crazy" about Bitcoin and were probably crazier about it a lot earlier than their neighbours were. They experienced the same with an entire slew of digital currencies since the late 1990s. Paypal, Liberty Dollar, e-gold.

Unfortunately, and I know a lot of people from this region will disagree with me, this had less to do with ideology than with the ever-present pursuit of financial freedom - from fragile economies, from poverty, from the cycle of the rat race. The people from these countries are famously entreprenuerial - you need only look at how Philippine has made domestic helpers sending money from abroad its #1 GDP. Or how Singapore, without much resources, has a strong knowledge and IT industry.

So yes, a lot of them are in this for the money. And for better or worse, they're promoting Bitcoin, supporting its use through whatever means - gambling, HYIPs (law enforcement also notes long-term syndicates cycling HYIPs since the 90s)...

There's a complex mix of the Southeast Asian setup - high IT knowledge, low education, low literacy, English as a second or third language, fixed incomes below $200 - that rightly or wrongly makes them appear the way they do even here on this forum. I fit all of those too, with only my income changing when I started working outside my country more than 15 years ago.

But if Bitcoin truly seeks to achieve mainstream adoption, this will be the demographics of its majority. More than two thirds of the world reside in Asia Pacific, where all those traits are similar.

This year was an exception, make no mistake about that. For the first time since Bitcoin was launched, it reached, nay, it seized the attentions of tens of thousands of affluent people. People with wealth, bankers and investors who may have previously heard of Bitcoin but bought into the general disdain amplified by mainstream media. But if 2016 was when the tide slowly turned, 2017 was when the waves of crypto came crashing into the consciousness of conventional money.

And so, despite setbacks that fought to stem that tide, Bitcoin was in demand. People could not get enough of it. I've met so many people now who just told me "yeah I bought a few bitcoins", since it was only a few thousand dollars for them. I still do not own 1, but I know so many who collectively are several members of Bitcoin Club.

But does this mean it has reached its peak? Surely not so that it cannot reach 100% growth next year, I think!

First thing that struck me is how his family just returned from a nine-month holiday across Asia and Australia.
Second was how he was able to put a house up for sale for 88 Bitcoins... that's half a million dollars at today's rate.

This is not a story of wild desperation or bravado, this is just a wealthy family who can afford to take this plunge. And plunge it certainly isn't. He's got a chalet and he's got a lot of contacts from his 11-year business.

Not dumping on the guy at all. Just want to put a cautionary word in that not everything is as it seems. Don't take this as a sign to go all in, guys.