These "discounts" could be profited off at any point where stablecoins go either above or under their supposed value, but a lot of traders (especially trading bots) have learned their lesson so before you get to take the profit from these price changes, you probable have thousands of bots doing it before you. So he probably even used a bot to do all of this in "minutes".

The conspiracy/negativity ideas are nonsense imo - again, this doesn't make Bitcoin seem bad in any way. It's humans doing it, not Bitcoin.. nor did BTC somehow support this.

While it's somewhat surprising to imagine there are many illegally running ATMs in Germany, it doesn't seem like much of a headache for the operator to achieve it. I could bet it would be even easier to run illegal ones here in Romania.

As an addition to what stompix just wrote above: not only do you "grant yourself permission" but you're also able to run your code from start to end, meaning you don't even have to connect anything to institutions such as banks in order to process your txs - making them even harder to be noticed. All you need is the virtual currency (BTC) and some place for cash deposits.

I'm quite sure the network is now just way too large for such bugs to pop up again and never be discovered. We have enough companies and individuals analyzing so much data and keeping a constant track over a lot of BTC related information.

What if there is a technology to generate the entire list of private keys in a reasonable time with a regular PC, but nobody knows about it?

You could think of probably millions of hypothetical scenarios like these, but how realistic are they? If someone gets to make use of 1000x more capacity than a mining farm could do with a simple PC.. it's just unrealistic - and give that guy a damn prize because it'd be insane!

We could go on all day long with hypothetical cases. One realistic potential danger is Quantum computing - AFAIK, Bitcoin still wouldn't be very resistant to it if tomorrow you had quantum computers pop up as customer-end products.

However, if someone found a way to double-spend without RBF and other similar methods (as in spending the same amount twice, basically adding illegitimate BTC to the network) or similar bugs, they'd most likely be almost immediately found and fixed. Welcome to the beauty of open-source and decentralization.

My best guess is, a lower denomination comes packed with a lower fee as well - as in, you could pay fractions of satoshis per byte (and I think that already could be done without further changes to BTC's structure). If BTC gets to an insane price range such as millions, I doubt the network will still "fight" over the range of sats/byte we currently have as we speak. The more BTC'll be priced, the less sats people will pay for txs - and I think that's quite logical. It'd make no sense to pay hundreds/thousands of bucks per tx, even if we're talking about millions.

Well, go on and try it yourself. You'd find out the "89% profit in minutes" isn't as easy as it sounds.

Wonder why the guy shared this unbelievable strategy instead of using it to his own advantage? It's because if the guy really did make 89% profit in a matter of minutes, he probably was only lucky enough to do so and then failed to repeat the same steps. What happens if you borrow 405k USDC and never get to make the remaining 42k? How do you get to pay the borrowed money back?

Yeah, I'm trying to stay as far away from banks as possible although I'm non-Indian and there's no sign of crypto ban in Europe. Banks always acted as saviors and "your best friend" but have always been the exact opposite. Mixing centralized systems with an overpowered institution and cryptocurrencies could turn into a big mess at any given time. The fact that a bank has the right to decide at any point to freeze someone's account because "the activity is against their interest" although the said activity is in no way illegal is a big pile of BS.

Will probably have the same painful death ICOs had. One thing you maybe could keep an eye on is the very few first DeFi coins, but be careful about investing in them as well. Usually, it's the first few coins that get the hype started. The upcoming ones are crapcoins sitting there just to try taking advantage of it. But to be honest, I think it's already very late to join the hype.

ICOs showed us what "revolution" really means. If there's any coin or technology to revolutionize the markets and crypto domain, it'll show its true potential in a matter of years like Bitcoin did. Can't say this is going to be a long-lasting thing, it's too early and the hype is already overpowered imo.

I'd say it's so volatile due to the number of people that are still in doubt whether BTC is a safe haven asset or not. If everyone used and looked at it the same way, things would have probably been different right now. And then, add the FOMO created every 4 years with the halvings. It cannot be very stable if we have some numbers changing every almost half a decade - price will always be influenced. Otherwise, a stable price for 8 years straight would result in miners giving up.

I wonder if most would still answer "no" if USA's government suddenly offered them a few good million bucks for the information. Knowing the world as it is, there'd be so many that would sacrifice his privacy to their own advantage. I would personally not do it no matter what offering I'd possibly get. As long as I want my privacy to remain at the level I want it to be, I'd have to be such a douche to destroy another person's life for whatever I'd get in exchange, be it fame, bucks or anything else.

There are so many people out there ignorantly sharing their personal life online caring 0% about it that I'm quite sure there are lots of members who'd say they would reveal it tho.

If I were you, I'd take the investment option in DeFis off the list of choices. Once something in crypto goes towards general hype and then into an incredible pump, it's time to say goodbye imo. Right now it's most likely all about the timing before they all start dropping and before you know it, FOMO suddenly turns into FUD.

Just take preventive measures and do not jump into a bowl of hype where you're already late. Whoever hopes the DeFi hype won't turn out into the same usual massive dump, best of luck to you. But I honestly believe chances are small that these coins will be able to sustain the current pumps.

Most altcoins are either Bitcoin clones under other names or forks from other alts that have copied BTC as well. But if you're asking whether there's a fake Bitcoin out there as in if you can receive a Bitcoin on the mainnet that doesn't exist, no - your answer is somewhere in the first pages of Satoshi's Whitepaper. That could only happen if you get fooled by someone trying to double spend using RBF (Replace-By-Fee) - yet that still doesn't count as "fake". Remember: use mainnet and only consider your received/sent txs complete once you get at least 1 confirmation.

Market cap doesn't really mean anything when it comes to coins that matter tbh. You have BCH, BSV, XRP and Tether sitting in the top - do they make for good investments? I wouldn't say so.

Relying on this basic information such as supply in circulation, market cap or volume isn't going to help much at all. All it does is it creates a potentially false perspective of the coin. I'd rather look for some answers, such as... is the coin centralized? Does the team behind the coin have a significant premine they're holding onto? Is there a real progress or just a fake roadmap to bait fools?

But again, these are things you ask yourself only when you already know what's up with these alts. Hence, best option to go for is BTC or, if you don't want it, then better not invest in anything before you know at least the basic stuff about crypto.

This is exactly why Bitcoin should be the only option for newbies. As a newbie, even if you wanted to research a coin properly, besides googling it and reading fairy tales on their whitepaper there's not much else you can do. You could contact their Telegram channels, sure, but what exactly could a newbie ask to put the team members into some kind of difficulty?

Stick to the King. You may throw a swear or two at me months later if BTC drops a bit while some shitcoin pumps 300%, but trust me - you don't want to buy something you have no idea about and turn a grand into a buck. While Bitcoin also has a chance to drop at any time, once it drops, everything else drops as well - including your shitcoin.

I'm wondering how many people actually learned their lesson and stopped getting into alts while they're pumping hard compared to few years ago. If anything, the only choice I'm currently considering is selling 'em.

For very large market cap coins, I'd rather think whales only help them get past resistance lines to go bullish. Once a coin goes past it, it's all about a "wait & sell" game. The same whales you're happy about for pushing prices up are the ones many (most) will cry about when the market gets dumped months later.

Pretty risky times imo.

Oh come on, don't be silly. Imagine how many fiat thefts and frauds happen every day - do they ever make fiat seem bad? They don't. If there's anything to blame, it's the guys who've hacked.

People took their bait a decade ago when Windows ransomeware requesting USD and impersonating FBI was a thing. If someone decides whether Bitcoin is good or not based solely on events of cybercrimes, that's just a silly way of thinking from start to end tbh.

I don't think anyone is scared of BTC at the moment, honestly. We've reached the point where we're losing ground in front of authorities. The ball is now in their hands and they play well enough to turn BTC for most people into the best surveillance tool.

Less transparent coins like Monero exist. While I haven't really heard much of thefts or crimes done using it, it's slowly getting pushed back while BTC gets "adopted". Wonder why.

I mostly use my Hardware Wallet, but I also have a bunch of pre-printed paper wallets that I use every now and then. Would be quite skeptical to start printing new ones though - mine are many years old. It's hard to get accustomed to older wallets when I have a HW sitting around.

If I had no hardware wallet, I'd definitely use paper wallets more often. They're an amazing cold storage if you follow all security measures properly and get to print a safe one. Had all ny funds on them a while ago and no penny ever disappeared.

The problem isn't necessarily age but the fact that they are more likely to push back tech related stuff (especially when it comes to tech a government cannot control) than younger people. Even if you explain only the advantages of Bitcoin to an older guy, chances are he'll reject it due to skepticism and probably come up with the old and typical "Gold is still better, it's palpable not virtual" argument.

So I definitely do agree that younger people shouldn't be sitting just on the advisors position but also as Congressmen. Younger minds sitting on a higher position could surely influence older Congressmen in a positive way by opening up their minds - and it's a much higher chance of having tech stuff properly regulated than having just grandpas on there as you say.

A constant thirst of power & money. I always take all this stuff with a large grain of salt rather than be excited about it. It scares me when I see larger crypto-related compabies trying to get into all domains. Like, Binance's CZ doesn't bother me at all for now running exchanges, crypto price listing websites and even hardware wallets under his company but it does become a huge privacy issue if he ever decides to cooperate with governments or turn everything into something similar to what Facebook and Google are today.

I wish I was optimistic whenever I saw these kind of news, but I just can't. This is the nature of humanity - once you get the taste of money, you'll only want more.

While it's sad to see scams around, I'm sometimes surprisef to see how some people react so negatively towards these kind of news as if BTC is to be blamed. To be honest, I'd rather have them sell the coins than consider them "lost" and have them sell a decade later. The more time passes, the more these coins are going to probably be worth.. hence, the more of a psychological effect it'll have over weaker hands and people who think scams only happen in BTC.

Discipline. It's one of the (if not the) most important things you have to have under control in order to avoid large financial damage. It doesn't help to know as much as possible about the sports you are about to bet on if you are going for insane bet odds and can't help but go all in every time. Same goes not only for sports betting, but for pretty much any other kind of gambling. By having discipline, you can take losses much easier and going bankrupt is a significantly lower probability.