That's the safest possible side to be on.

Overall, there shouldn't be any reaction at all if we discard the possibility of having a whale or two cause a short lasting green candle to trap people thinking that we're up for a massive increase.

More importantly, we first need to see them go live first, because without regulatory approval there is no Bakkt. People assume it will be approved eventually, but I'm not that confident in a positive outcome here.

Another delay, one that's not based on the government shutdown, will be the one that indicates that there is little to no incentive for the CFTC to approve it, regardless of their recent funding round.

There has been a spike in BTC volume in Venezuela, but it's still too insignificant to take seriously. It could also be caused by local market makers exploiting the premiums, so it would then be speculative volume.

I wonder if there are actual examples of usage as currency within any of the shaky countries we keep reading about. If we had to believe news outlets countries as Venezuela became crypto hotspots, but that's not the case at all.

I'm sure that most of the alternative currency use within these shaky countries is related to the US Dollar rather than whatever crypto currency. It makes a way better currency than anything else for them.

I think it's more so that these ATMs are popping up strategically in places where there is a lot of activity during the day. Criminal use is something you can't avoid, and I don't see any point in focusing on that.

Criminals are better way off continuing using their cash for illegal transactions than doing it with Bitcoin, which significantly increases the risk of getting arrested one way or another.

They can spend their cash everywhere, in both legal and illegal manners. Bitcoin is nothing but a burden to their daily activities, especially if we're yet again going through a massive crash, which isn't that unlikely.

BitPay has the banking side working in its advantage, and that's a very important aspect for any kind of business or site. Another thing is that BitPay pops up almost everywhere as first search result, which helps too.

Overall, I don't even think there is much incentive from altcoiners to actually use it as money, so there isn't much to lose in this case. It sounds very maximalist, but it's the hard reality.

Let's see how long it will take before Wikipedia is done with this political nonsense involving BitPay and stops accepting crypto entirely. It's more of a hassle if you think logically, especially when people mail Wikipedia instead of BitPay for support.

They were better off allocating resources to have their trading engine become faster rather than make some insignificant UI changes. It's probably one of their shareholders pushing it through.

I really wonder how they will operate during the next bull wave, because what they put their users through in 2017 and even a part of 2018 was just ridiculous. Totally not something you expect an exchange this large to struggle with.

Another thing is that most of the trading activity is automated, so there isn't much that will bother traders if the UI looks old and not that attractive. Fast trading engines is all that matters....

What did you expect, money to flow right into your pocket? Trading, regardless of it being done manually or in an automated manner through bots, is still based on probabilities.

I have seen people hype up bots continuously as if they allow you to generate passive income, which is potentially true theoretically, but what you can't control is how much it profits, and within what time frame it profits.

It might very well be that bots lose one or two weeks in a row, but make up for it after a month or so. I sincerely hope that people one day realize that free money doesn't exist--everything involves risks.

It will happen eventually, we just don't know when. At some point the sellers will run out of coins and the market regains its strength to finally make higher local highs instead of continuous lower lows.

The price never went up endlessly, and it never went down endlessly. Some don't believe that we bottomed with how markets in general aren't this generous when it comes allowing you to buy in this low, but it's still speculation.

I prefer to go against the mass, and when they get overly concerned about the market, that's mostly a good moment to counter. People believing in lower lows have likely dumped a large part of their bag already.

It could be that one final dump will be needed to shake out these people completely, but that seems a bit far fetched in my opinion....

I have read an article covering this subject, and it makes sense with how bad the sentiment has been for over a year. People are sick and tired of ending up holding a bag that loses value almost every month.

People kept buying the wrong dip even though they believed it was the right one to buy into because of how much the price went down already, and they are too afraid to touch Bitcoin right now.

It really looks like people only utilize small amounts of their available fiat to buy the market down, while the big money is kept aside for the moment people start to believe that the market has finally bottomed out.

I find that a very difficult question to answer. I sincerely hope that the bottom is in, but I'm not taking anything that happens in the short term lightly, because the short term doesn't reflect fundamentals.

The only thing that matters for me is that long term speaking, we're set, and that's what I am focusing on. If we happen to make even lower lows, then so be it, the market has already been turned into a mess.

I rather see a brutal bottom now we're potentially at the deepest point of the bear market than having the market bottom out at a far later point, because that will piss off people even more.

I haven't ever used a dark net market, but couldn't it be that vendors have the freedom to choose whatever currency they accept as payment option? If that's the case, then it might be that they prefer Bitcoin over XMR.

If the vendors you buy from prefer Bitcoin as payment, then people don't have much of a choice but to use Bitcoin. If it was something the market itself decided, then they are way better off using solely XMR or other privacy coins.

At the end of the day, Bitcoin has the biggest network effect, brand recognition, acceptance, and so forth. That apparently is reason enough for people to keep using Bitcoin and sellers to keep accepting it.

I don't think that most of those who try to use crypto as ransom payment option or for whatever other illegal activity, know that the far majority of crypto currencies don't offer any form of actual anonymity.

It's an easy way for authorities to whoop their booties, which is quite funny, because it's usually the authorities having a hard time catching up on technological advancements.

I guess it's the media being largely responsible for making it look like Bitcoin is a safe haven tool for criminals. They are better off looking into GrinCoin and have that be a real world test to see how anonymous that coin really is.

Common sense would help too, because everything that goes up a lot in a relatively short period of time, will come down just as hard--we're basically going through a reverse bull market where people couldn't guess the top.

People right now continuously fail to call the bottom, so it could be a very good thing to wait before entering the market if you're too afraid to even dollar cost average the market down.

I can't blame people for being cautious even though we consider current levels to be great entry points. Most people tend to buy only when prices are going up, so they'll enter the market at a later point anyway.

The more coins and tokens there are, the more demand there is for Bitcoin. People buy Bitcoin and send it straight to whatever altcoin exchange. Coinbase and Binance are the perfect examples.

Coinbase functions as fiat entry point. Most of what is bought there in Bitcoin ends up being sent to Binance for trading purposes. Binance's cold wallets count over 200k of BTC, and these are only their known wallets.

At the end of the day, even speculative use is use and an important utility. Without altcoins and tokens there would be so much available coin supply, that we would be hovering around the $1000 mark by now.

I'm sure that most people aren't in the mood to research an article that has been posted in full already, so you can't blame people for not seeing how you are the author of these articles. Maybe a good idea to point it out in OP?

As for the profits part, most people are afraid of the current market and the sentiment that doesn't seem to improve, and rightfully so. I'm not trading either, just accumulating and lowering my entry points the lower we go.

It's easy for people to look at charts and see how prices went up or down and imagine how they could have profited from these moves, but when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, it suddenly stops.

That's how a lot of people think about gold, and gold has been around for thousands of years. It's something that doesn't have much of a real utility other than jewelry and industrial use, doesn't produce anything, and is a game of speculators.

It still has a $7 trillion market cap. People are easy to trash assets or things in general they don't need or understand. Bitcoin is exactly like that. Eventually they will take back their words and buy into it one way or another.

People need to be proven wrong time on time again, each cycle. At the end of the day, the use of Bitcoin could admittedly show more signs of strength, but we can't discard how important speculative bull cycles are for this market.

That what people see as something that made Bitcoin fail as currency, makes sure crypto as a whole remains relevant.

Could be that they do it to distract the Chinese government with how anything related to crypto exchanges is a very sensitive subject, especially with how you don't want to test the government there.

My opinion is that zb.com and zb.cn are the exact same entity, just target a different market. Huobi.com also owns huobi.cn and I'm sure that there are more exchanges following the same path.


I think that's the best way to avoid getting yourself trapped in what could turn out to be a guaranteed way to lose money. Binance is ready to serve people, and their volumes are pretty solid and less likely to be fake.

Pulling 4000 Bitcoin investors? In other words, ordering investors to shift focus to an asset with more short term potential, and there is some momentum going for gold so it doesn't really surprise me.

It however does mean that whenever an ETF gets approved, there is an instant flow of demand for that product with how there is a lot of money to be made with such a bullish addition to an illiquid market.

Nothing at this point indicates a trend reversal, so it's going to be a lot of sideways action, or more downward action. If I'm not mistaken, we're currently going through the longest ever bear market (assuming the bottom isn't in yet).

The reason that crypto still is a small market comes from how large firms haven't done anything to push crypto towards mainstream adoption. If true, Samsung will be doing an exceptional job securing a first mover advantage.

Another thing is that Samsung Pay can't compete with other payment services, regardless of what they are doing, so crypto might help them gain more market share on that front as well.

In other words, it's a win win for Samsung since there isn't much to lose. It's either do nothing and lose market share, or be innovative and potentially make yourself relevant again. Easy option if you think about it....

I do appreciate the fact that they are doing the best they can to further legitimize their exchange, but it won't be doing anything for the SEC in terms of making it more likely to have them finally approve an ETF.

It would help if their exchange generated more volume, but that's more a matter of time than anything else. I can see there being enough demand in the pipeline with how unregulated exchanges will be driven in a tight corner more and more.

I wonder when Coinbase will follow considering how much of a big deal it is in terms of gaining more legitimacy within the US, especially as crypto related platform.

You think? I don't see how any bad news will affect the market, because it's going down anyway. People blame it on bad news, because that's what they do, but the news isn't behind the declining prices.

I'm sure that you remember how people first blamed South Korea for the price to go down, then social media ad bans, anti ICO regulations, bans, and so forth. It's literally news for the masses, the most useless news there is.

If we're due for one last dump to shake out noobs and get rich quick crypto funds, then it will happen out of nothing, when no one expects it, because that's how you make sure that they will hate Bitcoin and crypto and dump.