During the past 6-7 days, the exchange rates have jumped from $0.0005 per coin to around $0.0018 per coin, which represents a ROI of 260%. I am not sure whether this momentum can be sustained or not. The volumes remain stable.

Is there one? I don't think so. I am fed up with all this. Perhaps BU is the only viable option now which can be implemented? But I am also not in favor of giving up to the blackmail by a certain section of the miners.

At least you were lucky that it got confirmed in the end. I am seeing posts by newbies here, complaining about the transactions never getting confirmed. It is a very delicate issue. For example, someone purchased stuff for Bitcoin. The transaction got dropped, and the coins went back to the sender. If the sender is not honest, then he is going to keep the coins with him.

More number of miners would not have any effect in the confirmation speed. We need to immediately implement either of the two proposals (Bitcoin Unlimited and SegWit). There is no other option.

I never keep my coins in a single wallet. They are distributed across a number of online and offline wallets. Fees was not one of my biggest considerations. Safety was my first priority, along with anonymity.

Paper money will exist in the near future. Look at the most technologically advanced countries (Singapore, Japan.etc). The usage of paper money is almost the same as that in the developing nations.

ROFL. You are perhaps correct... except the fact that we are perhaps a decade away from all this happening. Only a very few shops and online retailers accept BTC. The number is slowly increasing, but it is going to take some time.

I would go for Bitcoin Unlimited hardfork as a last resort. Forget about the Segregated Witness (SegWit). It will never be able to achieve the 95% confirmation needed for its implementation. But BU would give miners even more power, something which I really don't want.

I don't deny the fact that the increasing backlog of unconfirmed transactions have been extremely frustrating. But we should also remember that the other crypto-coins also have their own disadvantages. Perhaps we should fight while remaining loyal to Bitcoin, rather than shifting our loyalties to some scam coin.

BTC99.2 worth of transaction fee and transactions amounting to 125 MB are currently stuck now. This backlog is going to take at least a full week to get cleared. I am losing hope now.

I won't be surprised if it reaches 2,000 Sat/byte by the end of this month. It is impossible to reach a consensus on Segwit due to the stupid 95% rule. So the block size remains constant, and the backlog is increasing beyond tolerable limits.

LOL.... For Bitcoin to be counterfeited, there should be some mechanism in place which permits the double spending of coins. As of now, no one has invented any such mechanism.

Check this:

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Ripple is getting so close. The Bitcoin market cap is stable at $29 billion, while Ripple is more than half of that amount at $14.5 billion. And most importantly, the share of BTC in the total crypto market cap has gone below 50%.

Some of the altcoins have given as much as 20x profit during the last 60 days time period. Let's wait patiently. I hope that TOR will give us great profits. As of now, I am not converting any of my TOR coins to BTC.

The transaction fee needed for immediate confirmation has been going up for the past few months. Taking in to account the exchange rate spike, the fee in USD terms have gone up by almost 10 times during the last 12 months.

Rather than advertising Bitcoin as a currency, we should advertise Bitcoin-based ventures such as the payment solutions (BitPay, Coinbase.etc), exchanges (Bitstamp, Kraken.etc) and market places (Bitify.etc).

Anyone can use Bitcoin. You only need an internet connection, and a device such as smartphone or computer. And cash can't be used across the globe. For example, if you possess a few banknotes of the Myanmar Kyat, I really doubt whether you will be able to purchase anything using it in Pakistan or Oman.

They can use Bitcoins in space, but how the transactions are going to get confirmed? For example, if they are some 50 million kilometers away, sending a radio signal to the earth will take almost 6 years.

So after the good news from Japan, we are having another one from Australia? This is great. I hope that very soon the other developed nations (especially the European Union and the United States) are going to follow them.

Nothing is for free. I agree that there will be a problem with the micro-payments, if the fee remains in the $0.50 - $1.00 range. But look at the other options such as PayPal and Western Union. They are charging even higher fees.