That thread, along with a scam avoidance guide, would do great as a sticky imo.

I mostly don't even bother doing anything for Google anymore. I honestly sometimes really wish they'd get flooded by cyberthieves just so that a larger number of people finally decide to abolish it.

Most (if not all) scams are actually successful due to the BTC owner's fault. It doesn't really make sense to blame a decentralized system for not protecting you from a deal that seemed too good to be true and an obvious scam in the first place. It's also much harder to get away with a BTC scam than it is to get away with a cash theft. There's a very significant difference between the amount of illicit activity of the two, and Bitcoin is in advantage.  All scams really prove is there's always going to be people that don't play by the rules, in any medium.

As far as I know, Tether has even the ability to seize your funds if they consider it's reasonable to do so. An USDT collapse is actually a higher chance than a bank collapse imo - and banks do collapse every now and then.

The stablecoin still stands in the market because who the hell wouldn't sustain their own coin and print as many gazillions of USD out of literally thin air? I personally wouldn't put my trust in it at all. If you are basing your trust in USDT solely from the fact that it's been out here and used for many years, I think it's a quite silly hope for something that doesn't even have proper fiat backing proof.

It's not really a guarantee. Demand could always decrease even without a crypto ban. Once digital fiat comes up, I expect a little disruption in the Bitcoin usage anyway - before people wake up and find out digital fiat only means total financial surveillance by the banks & the state.

"HODLing long enough" isn't an effective strategy if you're making plans for the following 4-5 years with the false ensurance that price will go up after the next halving and the opposite happens. $20k to $3k was a thing, so was $1.2k to $170. A lot of people cannot handle the emotional rollercoaster of harsh price dumps.

I think we need a sticky thread on this board to inform newcomers about false and malicious ads. There are too many out there for all to be spotted - there were a few "how to avoid phishing websites" threads popping up here every now and then and I guess a thread to cover most, if not all, ways to avoid them is much better and more helpful than 1 thread for each false site/app.

This will happen way before a satoshi could touch $1. Even if it was worth a penny (and it's getting closer and closer to that point), it'd still be too much imo. Fungibility should be a thing even if BTC touches an insane price point, and one of the most interesting aspects about BTC is that you can precisely pay a very, very small fraction of a penny if you need to.

If $1 will be equal to a satoshi, at that point it'd just crash BTC's price as you'd have to pay more bucks for the fees than you'd send/receive - and nobody's interested in doing that. If price keeps increasing the same way it did after the past few halvings, by 2024-2028 this should already become an issue.

I'd rather use smaller fractions of satoshis instead. I think the limited supply of BTC now became a very powerful psychological thing and having the supply suddenly turn into billions of BTC might do more bad than good, considering supply is one of the reasons some people are here.

Smaller fractions of satoshis is about the same thing as having more supply, without having to think "oh, now we have more BTC!". If Bitcoin ever gets to $100k or more, I personally believe this will become a problem not just for miners, but for everyone else.

Those who'll rush in for the bucks will not be stopped by a £100 gambling limit anyway. They'll seek other ways to get rich out of nothing and fall in the said trap instead, so it's going to have the same (or a possibly even worse) outcome. Some people spend a lot of money on alcohol - should we impose a spending limit per month? Doesn't make sense. We should take care of ourselves.

The problem is the way they try to take these advanced skills and use them against our own privacy. Like, it's taking a very smooth focus turn from criminals to literally everyone else.

I usually throw away all unnecessary physical information about my wallets such as paper wallets the same way I throw away unnecessary bills when paying with fiat anywhere - which basically means that, while there's a permanent record on the Blockchain of all my txs, there's no way even I can link txs from months/years ago to the real events during which I have broadcasted them.

Through this crypto tracking tool, they'd probably get to a point where addresses their tool won't have any clue about will be flagged as a "suspicious" - as in, sources of funds are unknown. What is quite creepy is that, by the effort of "improving compliance", they're doing exactly the opposite of what mixers do - does this mean crypto privacy will become an enemy of the state? The blockchain is publicly available, but in order to analyze or track cryptocurrency addresses, you have to spend quite a lot of resources the average Joe doesn't have.

Yeah, I'm sure they're looking to track just these "illegal activites" and not the ordinary people's wallets and private lives.. I can't imagine what a pain in the arse it'll be once they'll have proper control & analysis tools and start questioning people's transactions. I wish it was true and they spent all their resources to find illegal activities on the chain but I'm quite sure that won't be the case.

I would argue more about the first paragraph but I might go a bit too off topic.

My main problem with online classes is privacy related, so is switching to card payments and abandoning cash completely. But yeah, "cashless society" isn't far fetched at all now, although it did sound like a crazy thing to many before the outbreak.

Going cashless means more interest in cryptos though imo - and do you think it's a bad thing that people are investing in BTC and alts like crazy without spending them? After all, especially with the recent negative financial reports from various countries, this could mean they're starting to see cryptocurrencies as safe haven assets.

Followed XRP charts for a long time purely for speculation purposes. Worst thing is, you can't be sure the price won't be soon enough affected by various choices of Ripple. If I remember correctly, last time I saw a few bullish predictions was short before they released a large batch of XRP which pulled the price even lower. Isn't it a kinda risky investment, considering this could happen again?

At this point, having seen so many false websites and apps published on Google's platforms, it's quite obvious Google isn't willing to step their shit up. Would've at least expected a statement from them considering the amount of malicious stuff they have on their websites.

Guess it's time for us to move to F-Droid and start suggesting devs of FOSS wallets to upload their APKs on there. It's a shame that you are probably more likely to download a secure wallet from a website you may have never accessed than it is to download apps off Play Store directly.

Feels like it's getting more and more worth it to de-Google everything you have. I get it that Google wants to have a platform as "free" (as in you can publish anything) as possible, but sometimes it's better to have quality over quantity and this is one of the cases. I'd rather have less apps available for download and be sure my money sits safe inside my hot wallet.

This. Easiest & quickest proof: Bitcoin vs Monero adoption. Monero is slowly pushed back, away from the usual customer's reach. I'd have to guess you'd be more likely to be tracked down and stalked by intel agencies if you were to hold XMR than if you were to hold BTC. It wouldn't surprise me if intel agencies already have some blockchain analysis teams undergoing some hard work behind the scenes.

If Bitcoin was completely uncontrollable, they'd ban it 100%. But I guess we all made mistakes along those many years of crypto experience. One little mistake means everything uncovered and forever recorded out there and available for the state or anyone else who is interested in this data. With cash, for example, tracing it is close to impossible without very in-depth investigation - with no cameras around, using burner phones and voice changers, there's no exact history behind a banknote registered anywhere. BTC is basically a trap for whoever wants to use it the illegitimate way thinking it's the perfect criminal's currency.

While there certainly are some people dangerously addicted to gambling, I honestly think proving you can afford to lose more than £100 is a silly rule. I don't like it at all when the gov gets their hands inside my wallet and decides where each banknote should go.

Like, isn't it more logical to allow everyone to decide how much money to spend on casinos by themselves without having to "prove" anything and just let them go over the board if that's what they're willing to do? Putting a loss limit in place decreases casino revenues as well - and people will find ways to avoid the limit anyway, so it overall looks like a regulation that doesn't make sense to me..

Actually, it's exactly the opposite. It's way easier to control Bitcoin's price than anything else. They'll know how to live with Bitcoin their way, not ours. And as authorities are heavily supporting control and the flawed system, I don't see it how that could go positive at all.

I wouldn't generalize that heavily.

Would you take the insane risk to take almost $3B out of one of the top crypto exchanges in the world and run away with it? I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it even if I was quite sure I'd do it so that I wouldn't be found out later. Besides the purely insane risk of being caught for the largest BTC heist in crypto history, karma would hit me hard as well. Definitely not worth it.

A while ago, I was asked what would I do if I knew there's a certain empty house around my city that holds $1M inside: steal it or leave it? I'd in all honesty rather choose the latter. In this case, it'd be so much more elegant, appreciated and risk-free to simply ask them for a bounty - and you wouldn't live your entire life under the constant terrorizing fear of being caught.

Pay per post is a double edged sword. While it might help with the fight against spam, I can see BestChange's business perspective as well. They're willing to keep a certain number of posts per week out here so that we get to their needed exposure on the forum. Lowering the minimum treshold by 2.5x means the possibility of having 2.5x less exposure on here.

While there may be weeks in which some members struggle to get to the 25 minimum posts, I personally think that even if the lowest treshold was 10 posts/w, some members would still struggle to touch it. So while it may be more convenient for us as participants, it may not be as convenient to BestChange if they're looking for a certain level of exposure, and I believe they do especially with the latest rule updates such as the megathread limits.

Not sure about HodlHodl, but Bisq surely does allow you to use it from Bangladesh as well. If Bitcoin is considered an enemy (or is banned) in your country, there isn't much you can do besides trying to avoid your detection. Bisq works through TOR nodes as far as I know. You can look there for face-to-face transactions, or check out Mycelium wallet. They have a quite new feature that allows you to check for nearby sellers/buyers as well.

My personal prediction is around $100k, give or take $20k. The post-virus effects aren't here yet. I do feel like the governments (at least mine) are starting to kinda struggle with the financial resources though, and that's surely not going to look well in a matter of months/years. This is part of the reason my hopes are up right now for BTC price-wise. Don't expect those trillions of USD that've been printed recently not to have a strong side effect on the longer term economy.

Adoption levels.. they're on an increase apparently, but I don't like the way it's being adopted and regulated at all. But for pure speculation purposes, I'd be bullish on BTC considering the adoption as well. Banks will most likely soon enough start pushing for BTC integration as well, which for the average person is amazing news. I mean, besides those recent hacks (for which BTC isn't even to blame), do we have bad news at all? If your answer is no as well, then so far it looks like the future is quite bright.