Oh yeah. 0.15.1 got its own sticky, so shouldn't this get one too?. This is an important release, with Segwit and all. It is at the News subsection at the top, but the latest Core version is always posted there, so most people probably won't notice the change in versions.

I really hope all this upcoming Segwit adoption makes spamming the network expensive enough for haters to back down.

He isn't being sued because he allegedly controls 1.1m Bitcoins (he claims to only have around 700k though), he's being sued because of the way he supposedly acquired them. I don't like that a single entity could hold like 5% of the entire amount that could ever circulate, but nothing is inherently wrong with that. I would rather not take a position on whether or not the allegations are true.

I would probably just hold quietly, spending here and there, but I imagine there are others who might want to use them to position themselves into a trading advantage.

Overall adoption in Venezuela is probably a lot lower than what some people make it out to be, but Bitcoin is still helping out Venezuelans; just not in a way anybody ever expected. Their government has started to actively encourage crypto adoption in the hopes of stopping an imminent economic collapse. They're obviously under a lot of international sanctions, and are taking advantage of the fact that crypto is discrete from the "traditional economy" to duck them. 

It's just funny to me how people can use crypto to save themselves from their governments (which they've been doing for quite a while), and how even governments can use crypto to save themselves from other governments (which is what the Venezuelan government is trying to do now with its own crypto).

Kudos to you for saving your friend's ass! But yeah, it's easy to tell people they're stupid after the fact, but at some point, Bitconnect was very appealing (to some, at least), because it appealed to greed.

Ponzis and pyramids have existed since time immemorial for the same reason, and people just keep falling for them, despite the abundance of knowledge against scams, because they can't help but give in to the allure of quick riches. It doesn't help that some people (early entries, mostly) do actually make a lot of money from these scams; they give a taste of profit, then pull back once people start wanting more.

Woah, I've never heard about this before. I'd have thought something like this happening would make a project fall flat in its face immediately, but I guess not everyone who races to monopolize aim to pump then dump.

I'd still be quite wary though, as we know whales can cause a splash (pun intended) on the prices whenever they want.

I don't think it's even for advertising. I mean, I know companies pay the press for building hype and putting good word out, but I seriously doubt Samsung would pay for anything so poorly written and poorly thought out. It won't let you take videos and will freeze your banking apps if you're drunk? I guess I can understand the optimism about mobile mining, but that's just a different level of absurd lmao. This news piece exists for clicks, and likely nothing else.

I do hope someone develops a smartphone that specializes in crypto mining in the future though. Pretty much every new feature that's coming out is bloat; we need something new. A smartphone that can earn you money by itself hasn't been done before so...

They probably weren't. We all know service providers charge fees to end users because the world isn't a charity, and everyone gets that. What the OP is describing is that they're making money using your money, without your knowledge. You don't technically lose anything, but it could be considered shady because of the manner in which it was done.

So, are there some exchanges that have actually been caught doing these, or are these just possibilities?

If I understand correctly, you're basically saying that instead of processing orders in the order they come in, exchanges are processing them in such an order where they will make the most amount of profit, and could use delays to this end?

I guess it could be said that it's shady behavior, but you could just as easily say it's good business sense. Wouldn't it also be considered nothing in the grand scheme of things because we're only talking about manipulating (using the term very loosely here) transactions made within literally a couple of seconds within each other?

I might have totally misunderstood what you were saying, but that's my two satoshis anyway lol.

It's not that I absolutely trust in exchanges either. You never know which one will have a "hacking" incident, and whether they're legit or not. Someone's definitely stealing your money either way, and exchanges are involved one way or another.

This might be too optimistic for me, but I would say: merchants.

Should the Lightning Network be successful, Bitcoin will be the talk of the town again, and businesses will want to capitalize by riding the wave; the entire network is built upon the promise of low-fee, instantaneous payments, after all. This will spark higher adoption and will lead to Bitcoin being considered a serious mainstream payment option.

It's optimistic, and it hinges on the Lightning Network's success, but that's what I think anyway.

I was only able to find info on this in exactly one site:

https://cryptoconsulting.info/2018/news/samsung-galaxy-s9-will-be-mine-cryptocurrency/

...and nowhere else. It's probably safe to assume it's fake news, as it seems to refer to Bitcoin mining specifically, and describes other absurdly laughable features:



As others have said, it's currently technologically impossible to mine Bitcoin (profitably) with a mobile device, so it doesn't matter how powerful its processor and graphics card will be lol.

I'm not sure about the exact figures, but this is true. They have absurd requirements that makes it hard for a lot of people to opt-in. I don't think it's fair to blame just banks for this, though, as they are also acting under regulatory requirements, which just add to the red tape. I'm not saying they're not rotten, just that they receive a lot of the blame because they're the ones the end users interact with, and that there are a more factors at play.

Either way, Bitcoin does offer a solution to this problem, by allowing the people from lower classes to be able to store their money, and send and receive payments. It can't provide an alternative for other banking services like financing, but it at least puts the most fundamental services within reach, free of red tape.

They have never banned Bitcoin outright. This seems to be a common misconception. They have banned ICOs, exchanges, P2P exchanges (that served as a loophole for the initial ban), and they're currently sitting the fence on mining. Holding and trading are still fair game, but who knows how long that will last.

Either way, China is no longer the giant it once was in trading volume, and the remaining traders have already learned how to sidestep regulations. An outright ban at this point shouldn't be too crippling in the short term, FUD aside.

Wait, no. I meant Uzbekistan lol. Sorry if that was unclear, I should have snipped the quote. I'd rather not comment on Russia, but all the fence sitting around cryptocurrencies in general just makes me believe they'd rather take the China route. I'd love to be proven wrong though!

They could serve as a miner haven though, as they're one of the leading producers of electricity in the world. They're the third cheapest country to mine Bitcoin in too, apparently. I hope they can lure miners out of China's Great Firewall; I'm sure they would appreciate more stable leadership (in terms of regulations, at least).

No commercially available computer can hold a candle to ASICs when it comes to Bitcoin mining. This leads me to believe that there's no way the NSA can produce nearly enough hashpower to threaten the major miners, unless they, for some reason, invested an ungodly amount of resources to develop a supercharged ASIC and set up a farm themselves. The NSA, in all likelihood, doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin in a large capacity.

Report them to twitter so they're forced to make changes. These are getting ridiculous though. It's starting to seem to me like there are more scammers in crypto than any other industry. They must love that the transactions are irreversible.

As a side note, I would also consider McAfee's ICO investment advice to be somewhat scammish, but maybe that's just me.

Here is an article by Reuters. It's about a month old, but it's a statement from a spokesperson from the US Treasury. You can find similar results from reputable sources by Googling.


What is illegal, thanks to the sanctions, is lending money to Venezuela, and the US courts could rule that buying Venezuela's state-backed crypto is akin to lending, making it illegal. It has nothing to do with dealing with Venezuelan exchanges as far as I know.


It's not on sale on any major exchange as far as I know, but they can be purchased through their official site.

Yep, but they are the source of Bitcoins, so it could be ruled that they are the issuer.

It's not really about money laundering, it's about how securities are typically regulated. We don't know how it will translate to crypto, of course, but that's how it usually is with current securities.

Well they seem to be proposing to make sure they sell all the crypto they get within 24 hours to mitigate that risk, but anyone who's had experience with the market will say that 24 hours is plenty of time for things to go south. They'll have to invest a lot more resources into the process as well, giving employees additional training and making sure they track the exchange rates at the point of payment and sale. It's a lot of effort with little upside, which is why I don't believe this will pass, unless they use a service like Bitpay.

Also, would you want to pay your tax in crypto? You're going to be giving the government yet another way to track you and your finances. I don't think I'll be taking this option, even if I had it.

It would depend on the country itself, of course, as they deal with the issue differently, but in general:

a) Security movement is tightly regulated, so even peer-to-peer trading may be scrutinized
b) Miners may be considered as a "security issuer", so they will need to register themselves, and their sales would have to be tightly regulated
c) Selling Bitcoins may require even individuals with small amounts to have permits

Still, I imagine each case will have to be looked at individually, so the smaller players may not be affected at all, not to mention that it's likely impossible to track every single transaction. We'll see, I guess.