Wall street isn't one entity. I'm sure that there is a wide variety of institutions owning a decent number of Bitcoin, but it's all relative with how it very likely doesn't even account for 1% of their risk allocation.

If they up that to 5% in the coming few years it would be a major step forward, but then again, there are enough people here who don't see that as a step forward. We'll see where this goes, but they are here whether people like it or not.

I'm however sure that we'll be seeing a whole lot more cash settled instruments in the coming years, and this will obviously make sure that there is less spot demand. For investors there is no difference, they just look for exposure.

It's either fake, or super inflated because they calculate their volumes based on the leveraged trades. In other words, you should deduct 90% of the volumes there based on how these platforms on average use 10x leverage.

The same applies to BitMEX and the rest of the exchanges offering the same services. If you see them push volumes of $1 billion, it's just $100 million in actual volume. Currently the ratios might be even worse with the bear market.

Less volatility means higher leverage counts to make your trades worthwhile. That being said, the site seems to have a pretty decent Alexa ranking, so unless they're faking that, it's actually doing quite well.

News outlets need an infinite source of content, and the speculative nature of this market offers exactly that. Price up, they have something to write about, price down, same, stagnant price, same.

And then we have the what seems to be endless supply of rehashed ETF articles.... Each time you think it's over, you see another article pop up stating the exact same as the 50 previous articles in the last couple of months.

Overall, the more people hope for a bull run to start any time soon, the more I think that we're not done bottoming out. It could be that we need one more horror sell-off that will get rid of the most persistent "hodlers".

Long term speaking Bitcoin is a solid option. I know that, and you do, but the no coiners who people here blindly assume will massively buy into Bitcoin don't look at things like that--they see a coin that keeps losing value.

People need to see the price go up first to understand how much of a fool they were for not buying their coins at sub $4000 levels. The fact that we're hovering below $4000 for months will hurt them even more thinking about it.

They will not. If anything, they will avoid Bitcoin with how the price has gone down for over a year, and we're not due for any significant upwards movement. Bitcoin hasn't proven to be a reliable store of value lately.

Sure, you can say that it all comes down to when you enter, but people don't look at the past, they look at what's happening right now, and each month that goes on they feel better not having bought Bitcoin.

If the bear market keeps dragging on for another year, they'll be even more happy that they didn't buy. People really form an opinion on Bitcoin based on what the price is doing. Low price is bad Bitcoin. High price is good Bitcoin.

It can't be prevented when greed is the main driver here. Legitimate projects continue to struggle because they can't make senseless claims that scam projects can to attract insane amounts of funds.

In the same way, these scam projects have large balances to make themselves pop up everywhere on social media, while the legitimate projects rely on 'mouth to mouth' social media marketing coming from actual users....

It's an unfair world we live in, but as long as greed remains the main driver here, scam projects will continue to pump harder and thus net you more profit during the next bull wave.

What else is there to do for people only knowing to buy low and sell high? There isn't much to do other than to wait for better times. Buying altcoins doesn't help either because they randomly pump. Try to guess which one pumps next....

Some however are starting to figure out how BitMEX works and try their luck there betting on up or down swings with insane leverage counts. It's sad to see how people force themselves to "make profit", but it's their fault entirely.

Some times it's better to stay away from the market and focus on other things....

I don't see how any of the con artists Roger is linked to or works with will do anything to tank the price of BTC. They are mining it with most of their hashrate, and a BTC drop means that BCH drops even harder.

I'm more inclined to say that there have been a few large players that might have been triggered to unload because of how the hashwar was gaining a lot of momentum on social media.

If you add that there were a lot of stops positioned below the $6000 mark, you'll understand that it doesn't take much to trigger a massive sell-off. The volumes perfectly reflected the panic that was going through the market.

Bitcoin needs volatility in order to make a significant move, because stability or longer term consolidation come with low volumes, and this usually means that it's more likely to go down further.

The 'stable' price you're referring to was between $6000-$7000, and eventually we broke out and saw the price tank with 50%. I hope we don't face a similar scenario would the volumes and the rate of volatility drop significantly.

The crypto market thrives on crazy price movements, and when there isn't much of that to entertain retail and professional traders, they get bored. More activity means more volumes and more likely a move up.

If there is one thing you shouldn't be doing in an overall crypto bear market, then it's buying altcoins. Altcoins tank harder than Bitcoin and for that reason will lead to more harm than good in terms of your portfolio value.

Regarding altcoins with potential, it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. Ethereum and Litecoin aren't shitcoins, but they still tanked well over 90% in quite a short period of time.

The thing with crypto bull or bear markets is that fundamentals don't matter in the short to mid term, because people just buy or sell because they see it pump or dump hard. In other words, greed and fear rules....

Mind explaining why you think this market is manipulated? It's so easy for people to consider large price movements to be manipulation, but non of them are able to explain how they know it's manipulation.

Another thing is that as long as people benefit from a specific large movements (2017 bull run is the perfect example) they don't care, but as soon as the price goes the other way, it's suddenly a problem....

People fail to understand how this market works--speculators sell that what's going down, and buy that what's going up. It's pretty simple if you think about it, but still not many seem to understand.

It seems that Coinbase has lost its mind. I don't see the added benefit of allowing people to withdraw to PayPal like this. But then again, they have been doing more questionable things so far.

I seriously hope that Binance will surpass them in the coming years. Coinbase is the main player in the US market, but with time Binance will work its way up even in the US, and then it's no longer the main fiat hotspot.

Cashapp is working on going against Coinbase as well according to Jack Dorsey, so we'll see where it goes from here. Coinbase is just a crap coin pump scheme for the digital currency group....

Fintech experts.... I don't think that any of these "experts" have any credibility left to even talk about the price, especially with how they back in 2017 and even 2018 failed with every one of their predictions.

Generally, if you keep guessing you'll be right eventually, but not in this case. Tom Lee should stop accepting item requests from outlets such as CNBC and focus solely on the legacy market....

An ETF will be approved eventually, I think so too, but in the most trashy possible form, namely, a cash settled ETF that's meant to combat the demand for spot Bitcoin. People are way better off without this garbage.

I read somewhere that you (with a deeper technical understanding) could lift this limit already, but I'm not sure how feasible it is right now, especially with how there is no demand yet for high value transactions.

I do wonder though, do you think there will be a time where you can have 1000BTC channels just like you have 0.168BTC channels without tweaking and coding right now?

If so, that would allow Bitcoin to even compete with Ripple when it comes to cross border transactions. Instant and close to free transactions (or entirely free within a banking network itself), sounds like a killer feature.

Normal price based on what? If we look at the hashrate and the current price range, it seems pretty 'normal' to me. Not extremely under or overvalued, which is the exact type of price activity you would expect in current cycle.

If I have to guess, you consider the speculative bubble prices to be normal, but they aren't. Without another craze it will be hard to go back up to the levels a lot people entered the market at.

I do however think that a lot of these people panic sold their coins at various levels above or just under the psychologically important $10k mark. They did better than some of those who kept hodling in terms of value preservation.

It depends on how you look at the market. If the bottom is already in, we bottomed out faster than the previous bear market, because the lowest point of the current bear market was set last year.

Time will tell who's right and who isn't, but there are just as many reasons to be bearish as bullish where we are right now. People act like we have to visit low $1k levels before we can bottom out, but it's just speculation.

The same applies to people thinking we have to see capitulation kick in before we can think about going back up again. There is no shortage of TA cowboys talking big with barely anything at stake....

Manipulation isn't that big of a deal as long as it happens within a range we won't be noticing while conducting our day to day transactions. Gold is just as easily being manipulated still, but the range within this happens is very tight.

Eventually you'll see brokers offer 300x leverage counts making sure that even the most insignificant looking fluctuation pays off big time. Manipulation gets smarter and less obvious the larger an asset's market becomes.

I'm sure that there is enough room for Bitcoin to break the $100k mark and to stay above it for years, hopefully decades. It all depends on how we're going to use it, and whether or it will be seen as a safe haven just like gold.

It's an unregulated exchange, what do people expect? It's out to make money, not to hand it over to people for free. Tone Vays isn't actually trading, he just waits for people to use his ref link as passive income source.

If you have that many refs, you're costing the exchange too much money. I'm not trying to justify anything, because it's unethical in every possible way, but as I said, it's an unregulated exchange.

I'm sure that if Tone actually used BitMEX for trading purposes, his account wouldn't be touched. You have to play the game right. He only withdraws from BitMEX and after a while they don't like that anymore....

Dumb question, really, because you directly assume that someone using a mixer is doing shady business.

Coinbase's policies are very harsh when it comes to gambling, so it might very well be that OP wanted to bet somewhere, but needed to send his coins to a mixer and from there straight to whatever online gambling site.

People also use mixers to get rid of exchange taint or for other privacy reasons. I do that too, and I'm happy that we have these services providing the features we need to add an additional layer of much needed privacy.

I think that in order to actually have people fomo in like what we have seen take place in 2017, there needs to be something that makes sure the price continues to increase month after month.

In 2017 it was really like $3000 is the top, I'll wait. Then $4000, $5000, $6000, and so forth. Eventually even the most conservative investors will fomo in. I do think that we'll be going through a similar phase again.

It's just a matter of time before the ICO market booms again and all the regulations that people think help reducing ICO scams will turn out to not help at all. Greed rules everything.

The only downside is another 2018/2019 crash....