Coinbene's volumes are super fake for sure. The way their volume bars are so consistently high doesn't make sense at all. During times where every well established exchange doesn't generate much volume, Coinbene continues to generate a lot, and that's very suspicious.

OKEx is a known volume cheater, just like its partner in crime Huobi. These Asian exchanges are still forming a problem today after all the years, and this is why the SEC isn't keen on granting Bitcoin an ETF.

If you look back, people were wondering why the price didn't do anything despite the volumes increasing, well, it's all fake. Bitstamp is my benchmark exchange, and their volumes didn't increase which made me feel uncomfortable looking at how Bitcoin suddenly generated $10 billion in volume every single day.

The main reason for Segwit adoption to be so slow and somewhat disappointing, is solely the result of how cheap the fees currently are.

Services seem to be ok with how the situation is right now, which means that upgrading to Segwit is very low on their priority list, especially with how batching transactions seems to be the more popular route to follow. I welcome any attempt to utilize block space more efficiently, so batching transactions is a positive development too.

We need weeks, or months worth of high levels of network congestion to make services realize why Segwit is such an important upgrade. We're all humans in the end, an we all need to be reminded why things matter by going through situations highlighting the weaker points.

Most of these so called experts follow the improved fundamentals, link it to what happened in 2017 and based on that assume that the price should be higher, or at least just as high as the 2017 peak. Tom Lee is the perfect example of how someone who totally rekt himself by making stupid predictions and market analysis.

Following the trend is super important. I get it that people preferred to wait in 2018 before selling, just to see whether or not it bounces back up, but there were so many signals that pointed at a bear market, that you should have sold somewhere above the $10,000 level. I personally didn't take any profits between $6000-$7000 but that's because I had too much faith in the strong support around $6000, which is my fault.

People seem to dislike TA, but it has been a solid guide so far. I should have taken it more serious sooner.

It's like saying bank robbers are still robbing banks despite the weaker local fiat currency....... 

I find it quite interesting how these articles are so freely claiming that this hacker group is responsible for so many thefts, yet even authorities aren't able to actually link hacks to them. I read an article a few days ago where North Korea was said to hold like $800 million in stolen crypto. It's all just words, no actual evidence backing up their claims.

News outlets are digging very deep for content other than the price going up or down. 

Give it some time. An exchange that lost most of its funds can remain operational as long as people aren't withdrawing more than what the exchange itself has left in its reserves.

On the other hand, Asian exchange land is very tough where competitors try to trash each other by hack attempts and bad social media press. I prefer to wait and see when people complain about withdrawals not being processed. If we see these messages make it to social media, it's safe to say that Coinbene hasn't much left to cover withdrawals.

Banks will always find a way to remain relevant in the crypto space. People here tend to be so overly bullish on everything related to crypto thinking banks and governments will vanish from earth, but that's wishful thinking.

Interest on crypto balances, insurance on crypto balances, insurance on crypto payments, etc. If banks end up offering these features, they will become wildly popular because of how people are. Coinbase and Xapo hold hundreds of millions to billions in Bitcoin because people think these entities can do a better job securing their coins. Some people just want to geographically store their coins in the safest possible way instead of holding everything themselves.

It's easy to hold a few thousand worth of Bitcoin yourself, but once it concerns millions, people suddenly look around for these centralized entities to hedge their risk.

The only thing I have respect for related to XRP is Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse. He 'sold' his centralized database as a blockchain and made tens of thousands of investors believe it has a serious shot at competing with Swift, and that banks will use xRapid, which they will not.

XRP has a shelf life, just like everything else that's centralized. It's only a matter of time before banks fork the crap out of it and do it all themselves. Seriously, why pay Ripple to do something you can do yourself for free? It's just a matter of logical thinking.

In the meantime, people keep dreaming of the xRapid switch flip........ 

The banking system is the main layer that will always be slow and expensive. They can scale it to provide everyone cheap and instant money transfers, but what's left of their profits if they do so?

They will offer layer two or three type of services where people can get the benefits up to a certain degree, but still depend on the main layer representing the foundation of the banking system. If you think about it, it's very similar to Bitcoin on and off chain, where the main difference is that Bitcoin can't scale endlessly on-chain, while banks can scale the main layer, but don't want to in order to not lose a massive chunk of their profits.

I think purely the speculation and people's assumptions that the block halving will lift the price will make them buy in, especially if the price is trending up for a month or two straight. People buy into that what goes up, and whatever the reason is the price is going up, people link it to the most obviously available event, which again comes down to the block halving.

Bitmain recently stated that it plans to deploy 200,000 miners, which is something they wouldn't consider if they believed the price would stay more or less around the $4000'ish level. It's obviously not a guarantee that the price will explode, but at least these entities put their money where their mouth is with the insane risks they expose themselves to.

The more the better! I don't see how people can dislike getting free dividends. BCash was uper generous, so was BTG for a short period of time. I haven't claimed any fork after BTG yet, but I might if the next bull run sky rockets the value of these silly scam coins. More BTC flowing into the pockets of strong holders. 

The market cap thingy will fade at one point with the growing pressure on sites like CMC to use other metrics. CMC already asked the community on Twitter what metrics people want to see incorporated for a better overall dominance picture, which is quite a nice move considering that this basically means that even CMC acknowledges that market caps are super flawed as metric.

Just another shitcoin exchange doing what dozens others have done already, which is either steal people's funds or get hacked.

I by default ignore sites and services with odd domain names. Seriously, what exchange uses dragon in its domain? It just screams 'don't use me' yet people still use it.

Looking at its poor Alexa ranking, it doesn't seem to be a wildly popular exchange, so whatever the losses are, they very likely are very small in the grand scheme of things.

Whether it concerns hacked exchanges or coins that got 51% attacked, people don't seem to care anymore. They'll keep using this shit till they end up completely broke.

It's pretty standard within the legacy banking system for years now, but it's slowly but surely finding its way to crypto land as well.

I once made a physical cash deposit through an ATM and got a letter in the mail a couple of days later where they asked me how many more times I plan to deposit cash, what the source is, if I can provide all the evidence they need in case they ask for it, and how much money I currently have stored in other bank accounts.

I politely answered everything with very basic answers such as; not sure/yes/differs, etc. It seems to have worked because I haven't had new requests for more information afterwards.

There is no such a thing as fake signal groups as long as they don't promise you any sort of returns.

What we see happen is that a lot of signal groups are being operated by the same person(s) but just under a different name. If one group turns shit due to poor results, they can easily drop it and keep using the more profitable ones to keep squeezing money out of people's pockets, where the added benefit is that people shill these groups automatically by bragging about their gains.

People are better off flipping a coin themselves. You either win or lose. Fair 50% odds.

I think the main problem here is the hype behind Bakkt, which they themselves contribute to by throwing around with potential launch dates. It makes zero sense to say 'we'll launch somewhere in April' when you know that the CFTC doesn't prioritize Bakkt, especially when Bakkt keeps adding new things to their proposal that require even more review time.

If the CFTC takes its time, this approval could even be pushed to somewhere in 2020, which wouldn't be that bad to be honest. It might be that Bakkt actually prefers to not launch right now due to the bear market. Launching in a market that's trending up is so much better for their platform, and the block halving might help fueling the bullish sentiment they are looking for.

Just think about it, who's going to bother with Bakkt or anything related to crypto in a bear market?

Sweet. The longer these hillbillies keep trashing Bitcoin, the longer we can get more Bitcoin for our fiat currencies, before they lose even more value.

I don't see any problems in merchants using third party payment gateways to allow people to spend their coins. It's of course better to have them hold their coins themselves, but we're not at that stage yet so it's super convenient for me to actually spend my coins through whatever payment gateway.

Another thing that people seem to overlook is the fact that in some countries (the US is the largest one), there are disadvantages to directly accept Bitcoin payments due to how taxation works there. Having a payment gateway do it for you is much cheaper and much more hassle free.

Without payment gateways the utility for Bitcoin as currency will be drastically reduced.

I see no innovation or exciting stuff happening here.

These are the sort of features that have to be built on Lightning for super fast and cheap payments. Building on the main-chain is completely unnecessary when it comes to low value transactions, which is what WhatsApp and similar apps stimulate.

The number of main-chain transactions I send have fallen to a yearly low since I manage to get quite some things done with Lightning, and with the growing adoption in that field there is less incentive for me to switch to the main-chain unless I have to use BitPay's gateway or send out higher value transactions.

Bitrefill is an excellent Lightning merchant and so far my favorite.

Yawn.

It seems to be a hype for businesses to release their own whatever card with slightly different terms and benefits than what the traditional players within this field offer. I'm not impressed at all, and I am sure that after a while, people will stop talking about this.

Apple is a 'luxury' brand with overpriced/hyped products people have started to shift away from.

Governments can adopt every piece of technology they want to provide a better overall experience, but what they don't do is stop the endless money printing, and this is where Bitcoin will always be an amazing alternative. If it isn't an alternative as currency, then it is as store of value as digital Gold.

In the end, I do not see value in one global currency. I like the fact that I can choose to use different currencies depending on the situation. Locally, fiat is super convenient and enjoys 100% adoption. Bitcoin is more a value transfer tool and an internet currency, which is very important too, but we have to admit that Bitcoin very likely won't ever have a globally accepted fixed unit value.

I can walk into any store and spend €1000 and get €1000 worth of goods. If Bitcoin tanks with 5% on the way to the store, you either have to add more Bitcoin to get your €1000 worth of goods, or you have to use fiat. If you think about it, for most people it makes more sense to skip Bitcoin and use fiat directly.

That could work if we're dealing with investors having an eye on the very long term, but most miners aren't like that because their bills come back every month. You could try to hold your coins for like a month or six, but there will be a breaking point where you stop holding them and start selling to cover your operation costs.

Bitcoin has been going down for over a year, and if you look at the price development, miners were better off unloading their coins before we broke $6000 than holding them, and while the odds of another severe correction is on the lower side, you can't take it for granted and have to sell to make sure that you can stay operational for at least a couple of more months would a correction take place.

Are we talking about the same crypto market? The way I see it is that last year people were overly bullish, and they got punished for that. Right now we're experiencing the opposite of that, so we have to give it some time to see if they once again get punished, but in the other direction now due to how overly bearish they are.

We haven't had a serious breakout lately, which is what spices things up and helps us put things into perspective better.