Nope. Every business is free to accept Bitcoin either 'physically' or through a payment gateway (latter option is more likely). Accepting Bitcoin through a payment gateway also allows you to ignore the volatility.

Having your own crypto currency doesn't say much. Accepting Bitcoin and potentially other crypto currencies will make sure that your business will attract a new group of users, especially in case of Amazon.

I'm sure that there are tens of thousands of crypto enthusiasts eagerly waiting for Amazon to hop on board, and they will all rush to buy goods. Imagine how much volume they would generate during a bull run....

No. If you think logically, it makes no sense to have them ship your goods if you're not KYC verified. If they did ship, there wouldn't be a point to ask people to walk themselves through the KYC requirements....

It's ridiculous that you have to verify yourself for mining gear, but this is something we'll be seeing a whole lot more I'm afraid. I read an article where bulk GPU purchases may require some form of identification as well.

Supply and demand is the name of the game. People are too naive and ignorant within crypto. Coinmarketcap is banking on fools because they value the volumes exchanges are generating.

Coinmarketcap has a 443 global Alexa rank, which shows how popular that site still is, and that despite all the people complaining. It's the mass that likes this site versus a minority of unhappy crypto kiddos....

I like that one. People are so easily triggered by how they think this or that site should improve, yet don't put any effort into solving something they see as a problem themselves....

How can anyone be surprised about this? It's what people expected to happen initially, then ignored it because the convenience it offered was too good to ignore, and now we're back where we started....

If you play within a field of highly regulated exchanges, you can and should expect this to happen. Centralization on top of more centralization, dohh. I'm sure that we'll see it happen with USDC this year as well.

This might very well be the reason these more reputable stablecoins haven't been used that often for actual on-exchange trades. It's more an off-exchange value instrument.

I think the main reason for people to be bullish is the price that's going up, and similarly, the main reason for people to be bearish is the price that's going down. People go by the flow of the market.

I doubt that most people at this stage have the balls to put their money where their mouth is, which is understandable. Everything they did so far has resulted in nothing but losses--people are afraid to be active now.

I recommend people to stay away from short term trading and focus only on dollar cost averaging on the way down. The price could literally pump or dump from here. It's like tossing a coin--you're either right or wrong.

That's what you get when amateurs who never dealt with large amounts of funds suddenly run a multi million dollar business. It's too tempting for certain people to take a run with people's funds.

This is exactly why I believe that large scale traders and institutions don't want to deal with crypto currency exchanges, but rather wait for other institutions to set up trading desks, and I can't even blame them.

Every year we're seeing how multiple exchanges go down and the operators take a run with people's funds, or that the operators claim to have suffered from a hack, while it was an insider job....

I think it's only a matter of years at most to see him get arrested. I don't believe anything of what these con artists are trying to pull off here. It's so easy to live unnoticed in certain countries, especially with false documents.

With that amount of money as 'reward', I'm sure that there is enough incentive and will to stay under the radar for a long period of time. It's a well executed plan with enough time put into thinking through every possible scenario.

It wouldn't even surprise me if he ends up sending funds back home one way or another. Eventually he'll make a mistake and the authorities will whoop his bum....

It depends on what you refer to as being use, because people have shown that the only type of use they care about is speculation, and for that reason we'll see similar events continue to hold enough importance within the market.

Use needs stability, and the funny thing is that when we had stability, people complained that the market became too boring, and that yet again confirms that most people only care about speculation.

I'm of believe that it will take 5-10 years before the speculative aspect starts to lose against usage as currency or utility platforms in case of Ethereum and EOS. People aren't ready for it, and they don't need it either.

It's very likely just the mainstream media as always is overhyping what's happening over there. Bitcoin is accepted by more than 300k merchants, yet there has been nothing that actually indicates spending demand.

The same goes up for Bcash with how they also count a similar number in merchant acceptance, yet Litecoin with orders of magnitudes less merchant adoption has more on-chain transaction volume.

The funniest thing is that exchanges are starting to halt operations in Japan with how unworkable the legal situation is there. If there was a lot user demand, services as Binance would register themselves, but they left, which says enough.

I can see why it's a difficult time for people hoping to see the market finally recover, but you have to understand and accept that the market isn't moving to favor your positions, especially during a bear market.

Most people only know how to buy in and wait for the price to go up. It worked extremely well back in 2017 and even in the beginning of 2018 for certain altcoins, but the market has obviously changed.

I do regret not having opened a short above $6000 just as a form of insurance would the price tank, and it did. I'm not going to short the current market with how I don't know what the price will do from where we are right now.

At least, I know what to do the next time....

The only thing I can think of is that people assume that the price will come down again since traders with shorts are forced to buy up the price, and the rest of the market will use it as an opportunity to secure profits.

On the other hand, you are at risk of seeing the price pump well beyond what you believed would be a great entry point for your short, especially when it's the exchange itself trying to get rid of people's positions.

BitMEX is known to trade against their users, so there is all the incentive they need to liquidate unprofitable positions to protect themselves. I'm quite sure that every exchange has a similar form of internal market making bot running.

I look at what's useful for me, and so should others look at Bitcoin. People are quick to categorize everything they see and read about, while that's nothing more than an indication of ignorance.

If we purely go by the well known categories average joes believe Bitcoin fits in, then I'm sure that criminal money is right there at the very top. It was way worse years ago, but it's still something people think is a valid assumption.

The second most commonly known category is investments. Money is something most people don't even take into consideration because they don't know better than crypto being an investment tool.

It may sound harsh, but it's entirely your fault that crypto is your only source of income. If others feel the same, then it shows how people are wasting their time waiting for improvement.

Sitting down waiting for the market to go back up is such a bad attitude. Why don't you look for ways to generate income in a completely different way? Crypto won't run away, whenever it goes up you still benefit.

Do something to improve your situation instead of complaining about the market. This bear market could drag on for the rest of the current year. Start looking around you for other income sources.

One would think so, but still, quite a significant number of people continue to look for shitty exchanges while Binance by far is the best available option. It's retarded if you think about it, but it's the reality here.

I think that people like the idea of buying unknown coins the larger exchanges haven't listed yet. In most cases when these coins end up being listed, they pump hard and that may very well be what people are after. Greed it is.

People will only realize that it's foolish to use these exchanges when they go down with all of their funds. Unfortunately, losing funds is the only way people come to sense....

People need to go wrong before they realize what the real value is of the money they own, especially in cases where people out of nothing became quite wealthy. It goes wrong way more often than it goes right.

Crypto gains are the easiest gains one can make, regardless of the risk people expose themselves to, especially during a bull run. In the current bear market people start to think back about what they had in 2017.

All the stupid things they did with their money backfired hard. I think it's safe to say that most of the members here went through this with crypto. The real gain here is the knowledge that you can have work for you now.

One must be an idiot to make the same mistake again....

If you want to see real volumes, then pay attention to what's happening on BitFlyer. BitFlyer in Japan is what Coinbase is in the US, one of the most regulated exchanges within the country they operate in.

https://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=JPY&span=24h

As of writing, BitFlyer generated just over 2200BTC in trading volume in the last 24 hours. That's not something you would expect from a country that many look at as the crypto capital. Quite a disappointment.

Volumes coming from other exchanges should be taken with a truckload of salt.

Fundamentals don't matter right now. It could very well be that we're going much lower than current levels, and that while Bitcoin itself hasn't ever looked this good. Traders just pay attention to the here and now.

And who knows, even if we do have bottomed out, the next bull run could very easily run out of fuel well before it reaches the $20k mark. What happened in 2017 wasn't just a regular bubble, but one that was driven by ICOs.

People needed Bitcoin or Ethereum to buy their ICOs, and that demand is completely gone right now, and I'm not sure if we'll ever get it back with how much stricter regulations around ICOs have become.

If everyone was that smart, people wouldn't be losing their entire balance in a matter of seconds in some cases. Platforms such as BitMEX bank on people's stupidity, because they don't know that they enter a whole new level of trading.

I still see people complain about hacks and BitMEX being a scam because their position is wiped out and they lost all their money as result. For some reason people believe that they are guaranteed to make profits....

It could be all the "experts" on social media making it look like they profit continuously. Bitcoin fund manager does the same. This con artist deletes videos where he was wrong, so noobs only see the videos where he was right and made profit.

Diversifying is meaningless here. The only thing you need from an investor's perspective is Bitcoin and a top tier altcoin to accelerate your gains. Investing in shitcoins isn't something I recommend anyone here to do.

I hold both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that's more than enough. Not going to put any liquidity in trash that shouldn't exist in the first place. The fewer people invest in shitcoins the less appealing they look to get rich quick rookies.

I'm sure that whenever you see the price increase with 50% you can't prevent yourself from cashing out. These mad gains are only possible when you ignore the market and later on see that prices exploded....

If your faith is based on fundamentals, then sure, but most people "believe" in crypto while they don't understand why these things have value in the first place. Strong believe during rallies, no believe during bear markets.

Bear markets seperate those who are here for the fundamentals from those who only want to profit from crypto. I like that. These noobs are completely lost during bear markets. They can only profit when things go up like they did in 2017.

Everyone is an expert on the way up with how difficult it is to lose money when coins continue to pump for months straight. It's easy to "believe" in something when it goes up, and that applies to most people here.