Only an extreme minority of the average joes ends up banking on a bull run, while those who already have a bunch of wealth continue to wisely play this market and sell their expensive coins to dreamers around peak levels.

In other words, bull runs make sure the gap between the rich and the poor becomes larger and larger, and this just as easily applies to what happens in traditional markets. It's something that will never change I'm afraid.

I like how Warren Buffett refers to the stock market: The stock market is a device for transferring money from the patient to the impatient.

That quote perfectly describes the overall state within the crypto market, because that's exactly how things are here.

That's assuming the CFTC approves both Bakkt and Nasdaq's futures platforms, which I am not that confident about. I also don't like how Bakkt sells itself and teases with launch dates they can't back up without approval.

I'm glad that the speculation around this ETF has come to an end, because it was clear after the first delay that it wouldn't pass, which makes it even more pathetic how Bitwise thinks it will succeed with its ETF where Vaneck lacked....

I guess it all comes down to how many shitcoins they have listed that the more established ones don't have, and the fact that unknown--smaller exchanges tend to be very loose when it comes to KYC/AML requirements.

Overall, most of the people using these exchanges don't have much of a clue what risks they expose themselves to. For them every exchange is on the same level and they assume that their funds are safe because they are professionals.

These exchanges continue to pop up, which is a clear indication that there is enough demand to serve. There is no shortage of get rich quick noobs and ignorant newbies not knowing how things work here....

People really have no clue, and there is some form of a believe that the next time will be different, while that's obviously not the case at all--if things look too good to be true, they mostly are.

If you also add that people totally not familiar with what's normal and what isn't join the space on a daily basis, you'll understand that there is a constantly flow of potential victims these con artists aim to bank on.

People still fall for blatant email phising scams where they click on a link, fill in their personal details and send their bank card to whatever unknown address. It's retarded if you think about it, but it still happens today.

Long and short applies to everything that's tradable....

Overall, it really that different? From what I have seen so far, it looks more like traders purely interested in short term gains don't care what market they trade, they just follow what the charts are indicating and trade based on that.

Another thing is that there are just as many people (percentage wise) that are losing trading forex markets as there are people losing trading crypto markets. Some forex brokers offer even higher leverage counts than BitMEX.

People refer to stocks as easy to profit from, but there is no such a thing as easy profit, regardless of the market. If it was really that easy, people wouldn't get burned as often as they have been burned in the last decades....

It's just the way they play the game, hasn't much to do with being scared. The longer they manage to obfuscate their presence in the market, the more people believe that institutions will be coming at one point.

Overall, institutions have never been very open when it comes to high potential but still very speculative investments, because one tiny spark translates into a fomo run, and we have seen that back in 2017s ICO bubble.

As for the $2400 "wall street target", that's just nonsense. Crypto is a thinly traded retail market that can explode at any random moment, so waiting for certain levels could mean missing out on a great buying opportunity....

That's the most likely outcome, and we have all the real world evidence we need to know that it can work. I'm sure that in the coming few decades we will see that continue to happen with how adoption continuously picks up.

Every previously higher block reward has a much, but really much lower USD value than the current 12.5BTC block reward is worth in USD. A 50% deduction in block reward from here is compensated with a simple 100% price increase.

$8000 BTC is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and with time we'll turn the $20,000 peak into one of our future bottoms. Just let Bitcoin be Bitcoin and it'll work out just fine, people don't need to worry.

Even that isn't offering any actual form of 'protection' or privacy. All it does it add a layer providing more privacy than when you would browse the web in the most vanilla way.

The same applies to coins focused on privacy, because let's be honest, even here you can't be guaranteed any actual form of privacy. It's again an added layer of privacy, one that people wrongly assume makes them invisible.

I still stand by it that cash money is still offering the best possible form of privacy when it comes to peer to peer transactions, and that's exactly why governments want a cashless society....

Not sure what's funnier, OP, or all the people rehashing how it isn't possible to reach a price that low.

Obviously, it won't be going that low. If we haven't done so with poor fundamentals years ago, we definitely won't be heading that low with current way stronger fundamentals. It's just a matter of common sense.

People are soo focused on the price and when the next bull run pops up, that they forget the most important aspect of this space, which are the fundamentals. Don't get triggered this easily....

People have been spoiled back in 2017 with how pretty much every coin in the market exploded over 1000%, which seems to be their new 'normal' standard now unfortunately.

Every minor leg up currently brings back the hope that a bull run is about to start, while they completely ignore the fact that we're still going through a bear market, and that we're still dealing with lower highs and lower lows.

In other words, as long as people still hope for a bull run to pop up, they are still holding their coins, and these are exactly the people you want to get rid of, because they are nothing more than selling pressure on the way up.

It's all about supply and demand. I think it's safe to say that stablecoins provide more advantages to crypto than disadvantages, and that they have proven time on time again.

People keep trashing USDT, yet it's still holding extremely strong, and it's pretty much the only token in the crypto world that actually does what it is supposed to do, which can't be said about anything else here.

If there were no stablecoins, there would be way less capital in the market, which would translate into much lower than current prices. Everyone here benefits from stablecoins, directly or indirectly.

It goes both way though, because the rich and big players you refer to can also load up on Bitcoin, long it through futures, and enjoy a ride up like they have never seen, assuming the market will go nuts on an ETF approval.

People blame the futures for where we are today, all so that the elite can short the price down. If that was the case, it would make sense to have it go back up and long the price up.

It makes way more sense to have something play out in your advantage multiple times instead of only once. It's funny how people continuously talk about manipulation, yet can't back up any of their claims with facts....

I don't think get rich quick minded people have eye for very low but safe interest rates, but specifically search for schemes paying ridiculous interest rates on a daily basis, because they somehow believe it's normal and that they deserve it....

If you also take into consideration that the lower the amounts are that people have to invest--gamble with, the higher the risks are they expose themselves to. People get what they deserve at the end of the day, let them get hurt.

If people do stupid things without losing money, they don't know that what they do is stupid. It perfectly describes the sentiment during the 2017 bull run where everything was going up and even schemes were profitable if you got in early enough.

Most people have two different fund allocations. The first and the main one is for long term investment purposes, the other smaller part is meant to be used for short term speculative purposes.

Bear markets aren't much different from bull markets with how there are enough platforms offering products allowing you to short and speculate about lower prices, but it's too much of an obstacle for some people I guess.

Platforms as BitMEX have continued to onboard new users while spot exchanges have seen a massive decline in traffic volume, which shows that people are waking up to not wait for the bear market to end, but play it instead.

If we ask random people here what the strongest points of Bitcoin are, they'll point out that the price is now low and you can make insane profits during the next bull run cycle. It's mostly all related to greed unfortunately.

That being said, it's not easy for the average person to be motivated enough in crypto as a whole when they enter at first, because it's the increasing price that made them enter crypto, and nothing else.

Bull cycles are basically this market's main way of attracting adoption. At first it's all speculative, and the smartest people will eventually turn into believers of the protocols, which is how I started as well.

It has always been difficult to predict the market, this year is definitely not different. If you look closely at the charts, we're still settling lower highs, which is something you should continue to expect this year.

In a smaller time frame it might look like we're up for a recovery, but when you zoom out, you'll see that we're still going down despite the small leg up. It's going to take a while to bottom out.

Most of what we see right now is purely algorithmic trading activity, and the whales people think are manipulating the price are just bots. In other words, it's all automated where the larger dumps are the result of triggered stops.

So you like to see the legacy economy suffer just for the purpose of boosting your insignificant crypto portfolio? Not cool. The very fact that 90% of your portfolio sits in crypto is already a bad start.

I hope for you it's in Bitcoin and not whatever random shitcoin or ICO token. Another thing is that people tend to discard the possibility of a market wide recession, where every asset including gold and crypto plummet.

I rather see Bitcoin gain back its momentum within a healthy legacy market, because we don't need it to underperform to have Bitcoin stand out. It exploded during 2017 with a very strong legacy market....

Large entities usually tend to stock up on whatever they plan to buy in, then have news outlets start with what seems to be an empty rumor, where after that the entities themselves confirm the rumors.

It's basically like how people here have been waiting for years to see institutions enter, while they very well may have entered already. By the time they say that they are going to buy Bitcoin, know that they are done buying....

We'll see where this goes, but as it is right now, the mass doesn't take anything of this serious, so there might be a sweet counter move looming where Russia pops up out of nothing.

One way or another, the main purpose of these criminals is to convert back to fiat. If you manage to partner with as many exchanges and services as possible, you gain a massive advantage over these criminals.

The goal is to make these criminals have less options to sell their coins at, and whenever they sell these coins through the OTC market, the innocent people buying them will have some explaining to do at some later point....

As for the coins coming from exchange hacks, as long as the hackers don't touch anything that's centralized, there isn't much that can be done against them, so it's pretty much a waiting game.

Ah well, be happy that the mass doesn't hop on the crypto train yet, because it's definitely not ready for that, nor do I think it will be ready in the coming 5 years. Not many people care about crypto's utility anyway.

Governments will continue to use the hostile nature of this market against the average joes, and they aren't even wrong in doing so. Did governments jump in sooner, less people would have suffered from immense losses.

This whole industry is one big casino. A lot will need to change for people to see and understand how useful it is, because let's be honest here, why would average joes care about decentralization? Speculation is way more fun.