I remember that it was just a few days ago that some major mainstream news outlet (Forbes, I believe?) that reportedly stated that we're closer to an ETF approval than ever. And look how that prediction aged, not very well, aye?

People seem to think that this was something out of the ordinary, but it really isn't.

The truth is, the markets have stopped caring for ETF approvals altogether and there is only ripples of what the splash ETF news once made within the market. It really doesn't matter whether or not one actually gets approved, because people now realise that theshe ETFs are made to benefit institutional investors more than anyone else anyhow.

I don't really understand the extent of the hype around this project.

I think that it is obviously justified for there to be some interest due to the fact that Telegram is such a big company and very influential in the cryptosphere, but nothing suggests to me that the ICO that they are proposing has anything special attached to it that would inspire particular investor confidence.

Seems like people are just rushing to invest just because of the company name without looking at the long term potential of the token. Sort of like BitTorrent, if you ask me.

Surprisingly, I'd actually agree with this statement.

As Machiavellian as it sounds, what a lot of good projects struggle with is their PR and the presentation of their project, which eventually leads to no community interest and an eventual decline in total market engagement with their coin.

A successful project MUST have a good marketing team to back up an already good product, and you'll see that being the case with EOS, TRON, etc. But don't forget that a solid WP, roadmap, and team are all prerequisites.

And John McAfee predicted that BTC will go to $500k or $1M (I forgot which figure, but you get the point) by 2020. So what is really the point of looking at random articles that claim to be experts in speculatory investing?

I'm bullish on LTC. There is no questioning that, because I think that it's still one of the most practically used coins despite its decline in status. Besides, its low transaction fees should still be attractive to actual users that demand the coin.

But these predictions are absurd. BTC doesn't seem to be entering a full on bull market until at least next year, so what reason would there be for LTC to all of a sudden have these types of 10x, 20x growth in market cap?

Well said. I'd say that avoid any bounty campaigns that have anything else other than doing the task that you're supposed to be doing, whether that is the twitter campaign, signature campaign, or translations.

If they are looking to ask you to do anything on top of your duties, don't do it.

This includes app downloads, asking for additional verification in terms of KYC (ironic, since the majority of the projects I see aren't even registered entities themselves), and providing your personal information in general. It's highly predatory and could lead to a loss on your end more than just your time, if their intents were malicious.

I don't think that your argument stands at all.

Looking around the forum, the vast majority of ICOs that are being advertised are completely nameless projects that have no new innovation with them, or downright garbage if you pardon my French. They are not the major ICOs that we saw in the bull run a few years back in Antshares, EOS, etc. that raised millions in funding.

I think the main thing is that the bear market brought a lot of sense back into ICO investors. There should be no reason why ICOs should be that popular, and the only reason why it was that good at raising funds is due to hype. The hype has died down, and people see that there is a lack of good projects in general, so they are refraining from investing.

Is this surprising at all? We've long knew that governments around the world would start looking at trying to stop BTC from growing sooner or later, and it turned out that they had their eyes on that goal a lot sooner than people expected.

Of course, it's just not enforceable no matter what kind of bans they try to impose on BTC, because it is ultimately decentralised. Regulations and restrictions can only go as far as regulated exchanges and businesses go, and not to the actual blockchain ledger itself.


The difference between BTC and Libra is decentralisation, which makes Libra easily prosecuted by governments, which will likely to happen. That's why I'm pessimistic on Libra's chances.

And I'm pretty sure that MA20/MA50 has been broken due to this wave of pumps.

Retrospectively, was it really worth it to wait out a day or two to wait for the pump before opening a position in SC? I doubt it. I think that the signs that SC has bottomed at around 20 sats was strong enough for me to have jumped on buying up some of it and diversifying my portfolio with it.

Especially with the recent Kraken listing, I wouldn't doubt that it would generate a lot more hype when trading actually starts. Though I do expect that FOMO to taper off a day or two into Kraken's listing, it's still a profit opportunity nonetheless.

This does feel like some sort of sick throwback to the 2008 GFC, doesn't it?

Banks investing in high risk high return assets for the sake of giving off the appearance of profitability, while ending up with toxic assets on their balance sheets which they grossly over-report in terms of their mark-to-model values... Sound familiar yet? Hmm... I wonder what could go wrong.

People seem to feel like bank insolvency would no longer be an issue after the strengthening of regulations after the GFC, but it is still very possible and even likely in some countries. And yes, you're right in pointing out how mainstream media seem to put no emphasis on this news while grilling BTC for absolutely no reason.

Interesting. I don't know if you meant for the gradient of BTC dominance's decrease to be to scale, but that does seem like a steep decline.

I highly doubt that it'll drop below 50% even in the worst case scenario this time round, because of how many institutional players there are within the market who don't have the risk appetite for cryptos other than BTC which has proven to be the most stable in the long run.

This is the main difference from the last bull market to this time round - the introduction of institutional investors. The reason why BTC dominance was so low was because retail investors are more prone to FOMO, and seeking quick profits, without restraints in terms of risk.

Seems like that XVG has fallen again to the ground from a correction.

ETH and BTC are doing very well today. If this uptrend continues, we could see a market wide recovery in a few weeks that would drag the entire altcoin market up with it. However, there is still some downside risk that should be accounted for.

Personally, I don't see much point in investing in XVG because it's supposed to be a privacy coin, and there are plenty of better privacy coins out there with more practicality like XMR. I'd only trade XVG for its short term volatile movements, which I don't think is ready to happen yet given the somewhat bearish sentiment still.

Correlation doesn't equal causation.

I don't think that Bakkt's launch had anything to do with the recent downturn in crypto markets. I just don't see how a futures market launching, which has pretty much less interest now than probably even Bitmex or Deribit would have such a vastly negative effect on prices.

Like others say, I echo their sentiment in regards to Bakkt probably regretting the hell out of their decision to launch now. Their projections probably showed that BTC will continue to be in an uptrend, but they just coincidentally got it damn wrong.

Do you really want to keep your assets long term in something that is only stable in the short term, but will imminently depreciate over the long run? That is the very nature of fiat.

Or would you rather put it in something like BTC which may be volatile in the short run, but has a capped market supply that will ever be available which means that it would be a much better long term store of value?

I know that I'd personally go with the second option. No matter what you do though, please don't keep any sum of money in USDT, TUSD or other stablecoins for more than a few months. You never know whether or not they are running a fractional reserve.

My personal philosphy is to always treat ICOs as scams in the beginning.

Essentially, the mindset here is to assume guilty until proven innocent. It's the only way that you can safely invest in an ICO these days, because there are simply so many out there that have completely no substance to them and are just solely there to reap investor funds and then exit with little to no development later.

Always look at their fundamentals no matter what absurd claims they have in regards to the potential returns of the coin, because that's what drives long term growth.

Looks good. I think that you have entered the market at the right time where there is a lack of new quality dice sites with faucets, which is what people primarily look for when they sign up to such sites.

I'm just wondering though, would you guys ever consider taking investments into the bankroll?

Obviously this probably isn't the best idea to start now, because your site is still relatively new and people will likely have a lack of trust for any investment feature, but in the future, it could help you raise your max bets and reap commissions from investor profits as well. I'd suggest you guys look into it.

For sure. And it's not just newbie traders either - I see a ton of experienced traders with pretty decent trading records with over 500+ or even 1000+ trades recorded in some instances offering 5-10% (or even 30% just once) premiums on bank transfer funds and Paypal funds.

Just keep in mind the fact that high ranking LBC accounts can be bought and sold, just like bitcointalk accounts, and they can be hacked as well. So don't blindly trust someone's rep or at least decide whether or not they're trustworthy solely on it.

Personally, I've came across another scam which is very subtle just not long ago. The buyer tried to deposit an empty cheque into my bank, which showed up in my balance, but wasn't in my "available balance". Extremely subtle if you don't look for the signs of it. In general, be ultra careful whenever you're selling BTC, since that's the irreversible side most of the time.

What LTC's halving did was create FOMO more than anything else. Speculators jumped at the opportunity to create some hype.

Just like BTC, while the halving does have some tangible effects on the scarcity of BTC, that is really negligible when you compare the psychological effects that a big event like the halving has over traders who are really just looking for that spark to start panic buying.

I'm still long on LTC in general, though. Prices have corrected quite a bit from its 0.01+ BTC highs due to the halving hype, and with LTC still being one of the best coins for actual practical transactions with segwit, LN and whatnot, it should be a matter of time before it retests .01 BTC/LTC.

I'd have to give the in app experience to coinbase on this one. They have the most mature app out of all of them, with the most user friendly (or at least aesthetically pleasing) GUI in my opinion.

However, that in no way means that their service is any good. If you just look around the forum briefly you'll find a ton of complaints in regards to coinbase, especially in terms of their customer support which has been historically been unresponsive. Despite Brian Armstrong's promises, this has never really been fixed since coinbase's inception. Their fees are also high due to them accepting CC for purchasing BTC. So I strongly do not recommend you use Coinbase, no matter how good their UI looks, until their fix their fundamental problems.

I think that your best pick is Binance. Like hamdi said I don't see a reason in using an app exclusively for an exchange, you're already going to be limited from the get-go on functionality. As to your KYC problems, why not just submit KYC through the web page and sign into the app once you're verified?

That's not how most or all of the cryptocurrencies on the market work by.

Think of fees as the reward for miners for doing a task in order to verify the legitimacy of your transaction and getting it confirmed, to ensure that there is no double spending going on or anything fishy like that. The amount of work or opportunity cost for them does not vary in terms of the monetary size of the transaction, but rather the actual "size" of the transaction that takes up the blockchain.

Thus, it makes no sense to have percentage fees in any crypto.

If you're looking for percentage fees, go with a fiat processor but I don't see how that's better. There are a ton of cryptos that have low transaction fees, like DOGE, LTC, XRP, just to name a few.

There are various hot wallets that an exchange has under their ownership.

Your withdrawal is most likely processed from one of them, which could just happen to be someone else's deposit address for all that anyone knows because the exchange wants to save on transaction costs as much as possible. To correct jackg, not all deposits are directly sent to the cold storage in most cases.

Unless you make an extremely large withdrawal, it's unlikely that your coins will be directly sent from their cold storage wallet.

To address the other part of your question, I've never personally had my own deposit sent back to me as a withdrawal before, but theoretically, it could happen.