I believe european banks got the memo to get suspicious about money coming from exchange accounts.


Personally I haven't tried to withdraw fiat yet. My problem was with XRP's they blocked for an entire month, which are obviously worthless now, and they refuse to acknowledge the damages.
They even insulted me with a shitty 20 bucks coupon on fees. Yes, 20 bucks. I have given Bitstamp at least 6000eur in fees in 3 months I believe, and they wanna get rid of me with a 20 bucks coupon. Well, I've already stopped trading there, I went back to Kraken yesterday. I'd like to say I gave my money to Kraken yesterday, but apparently there were still no fees there until yesterday.
Kraken vs Bitstamp, broken engine vs broken support, though choice.. And yes I also use foreign exchanges, but I will eventually have to use one of these 2 to withdraw eur. And if Tether shit hits the fan, then I don't know which exchange will be the best option. I assume that Kraken's USD/EUR are real USD/EUR, otherwise Kraken wouldn't let people trade USDT/USD manually...
Really I don't know which exchange is the most trustful today.

Really?
If the BTC reached its ATH, it's thanks to China you know. They went back through the backdoor, but they definitely went back. BTC is still mainly asian (China/Korea/Japan), pretty certain.

It is certainly attacked right now, by ETH, pretty close behind. But think of it, better ETH than BCH or XRP..

Also more & more projects will go from concepts to beta to working apps, that use ETH (or NEO).
You know the coin I valued the most when I got in? Augur. Only because Augur wasn't just a concept, there were announcements of working betas. That has value, it's not blind trust anymore, there is at least something solid coming up.
And it went pretty well for Augur, even though the value of the Augur coin inside Augur itself is debatable, as Augur will apparently be powered by.. ETH again.
Anyway, some people see all ICOs as scams, and it's quite possible that most of them are. But in 2018 we will probably see the first "concrete" apps coming up, apps that have the ability to generate money & have buy-back plans, thus investments that would look more solid/less like blind trust, to classic investors.

People have put money on all kinds of crap on Kickstarter, this is no different I believe. That's what I believe the mass is eventually gonna do, put very little money on all kinds of projects, I can't imagine them going all BTC. That requires a lot of faith.

Not to resurrect an old thread, but this (undeniable) crash hasn't generated any stop loss cascade on the exchanges I monitor, quite surprisingly.

It can only mean 3 things:

1. people more clever with their stop loss, mainly using limit stop loss, or no stop loss anymore? Have you reduced your use of stop orders?

2. exchanges having improved their way of handling stop orders. Possible, but I doubt it, because that'd have required explaining how their handling works, as improving the process to reduce cascades has to have drawbacks as well

3. most likely, the fact that this crash has been more progressive (which is scarier IMHO), not really as abrupt as past ones? I've seen segments in this crash that can be defined as flash crashes, though.



Edit: I just went back to Kraken to check it (sorry to say that it's still broken btw), and if you check the BTC/EUR price on January 13, pretty interesting what happened there! Something strange also happened the same day in BTC/USD, so it might have been a bug, or a whale made a REAL mistake there.

No they're not. You need popularity for volume, but not the opposite.
Bitconnect was popular, and still is (pretty sure it will take time to be forgotten). Well were's your volume now? (& I know, quite ironically it's the one that pumped the most yesterday.. but it's still as worthless)

Also, volume means selling as much as buying. If the mass is selling to a few whales, then it's losing popularity. If a few whales are selling to the mass, or the mass to the mass, then it's popular.

But again, I don't think BTC lost popularity, I think it earned popularity, but ALTs earned even more popularity. BTC brought people to the crypto world, & thus to ALTs. Many have known about BTC for years, they just didn't know that there were other coins. Now they do, and they realize that it may be risky to put all their money in the same BTC basket.

Haha I went back to Kraken yesterday, thinking that all the shit was fixed now. And it had free fees apparently. Kraken now working? (well, not in FireFox where it crashes, but still)

..hahaha of course today it's error galore again.. What was I thinking..

No you don't.

Bitfinex isn't a small exchange, all pairs exist in ETH now. Bittrex & Kraken have many ETH pairs.

Also I would be worried if the value of BTC was significantly based on that fact that it's bought to buy ALTs.
So far, when ALTs were going down, money was going back to BTC. Quite a problem if it goes to ETH instead.



Where were you when the BCH flippening was happening? The first one was really scary, there was a direct pipe between BTC & BCH, and if a megadump hadn't happened (thanks for that) when the BCH had reached 0.5 BTC... that crap may be at the top right now.
So keep that in mind, people are there mainly for money, they aren't loyal in any way.
Top second crypto is a generic one that looks like a good challenger. Top third isn't even decentralized. Top fourth is a scam. There isn't any logic at the top, it's all speculation.

Just remember this: Myspace.

Myspace was bought for 600 millions in 2005. At that time, Zuckerberg proposed to sell Facebook to the group for 75 millions, they refused.
..only 3 years later, Facebook took over in popularity, and 3 years later again, Myspace was sold for 35 millions.

I'm pretty sure that Bitcoin will never lose its core followers, those who brought its price from a few cents to I'd say, 1000usd, which is already amazing. But the rest of the world, the mass you need for adoption, they aren't BTC worshippers, keep that in mind.


Facebook could as well be taken over, especially with young people following quickly changing trends.
(I'm a long time Skype user, always been using Skype and I always will. But what is "everyone" using these days? Whatsapp? Viber? Or has this already changed?)
An iPhone is still the trendy phone, but with the many Android phones equally good, for how long?


Bitcoin will never be forgotten & that's for sure, but it's uncertain whether it will keep its dominance, which went from 90% to 33% in a year.
I hope for my wallet that it will, but I'd be worried about autosuggestion that BTC is the clear winner, "500k in 2 years", etc.

Well it's a fact that many ALTs have been way way more profitable than BTC during the last months. But that's normal, that's pumping of new coins, and nothing to do with popularity.

However, consider why ETH is the one growing at the expense of BTC, you can see ETH pairs for every coin on Bitfinex now. You know what that means, that perhaps ALT values will start to depend less on BTC now.

BTC earned in popularity, but lost a lot in dominance. It actually brought attention to ALTs, that are now challenging it.

One might say that it's the whole crypto world that got all attention, BTC got some more attention, but ALTs got even more attention.

Wise investors may not let BTC die for now, but let's be honest, it's those same investors that are pushing the price down now, to buy low from weak hands.
But you NEED those new people for BTC to live. You need that larger mass (with less individual money), those will decide.

If you only count on "investors" who have trust in BTC, then the price will get back to what it was 6 months ago, before the boom (which was already an incredible value).
Keep in mind that for that mass who only wanna make money & doesn't give a shit about BTC, BTC doesn't look like the magical investment it was 4 months ago. Many ALTs have pumped 10x since then, while the BTC stagnated then dropped. What's your plan to restore confidence?

Ok, and once you've scared people away, you know, that massive amount of new people who just got in, why are you so sure that they will come back to make your BTC rise again?
..or are you counting on whales to do that? Whales don't do that, they profit, they don't lose. If this market has been sucked dry, they will move to something else.

For BTC to reach the price you're hoping for, you need new people. So don't think "idiots are gonna be scared away, I will get rich buying BTC at 1k". Without those same idiots, your BTC will stay at 1k. And I'm pretty sure that if it does get back to 1k, it's gonna stay there for a couple of years before it goes for another ride.
..or it will be forgotten. Because BTC has no real use other than being an investment, and potentially a money system. If it ends up being THE one, then it'll be massive. But people decide of that, you can't predict which currencies they are gonna choose. Just like gold, it has no real reason to have that value. Litecoin or whatever could end up being the chosen one, you don't know.

I would rather bet on crypto that have a use, or ICOs. There, if you make enough research, you can get an opinion on what is solid, what is likely to get used. And then the only (but still big) risk you take is a competitor taking over the one you have picked.
Well it's the .com happening again. Not every coin will go back to nothing, some will pass through the bubble pop, it's a matter of picking them wisely. But Bitcoin? The only value of Bitcoin is its fame, and the fact that it's the grandfather of them all, the one that tells the value of all others. But things go fast these days, perhaps by picking Bitcoin you picked MySpace, and perhaps the Facebook is already there in the top 10, or it hasn't been created yet.
It has been challenged several times. While BCash is a too obvious scam, ETH is a more logical choice. I can well imagine a flippening to ETH, I wouldn't find that absurd. Even though ETH might be MySpace & NEO Facebook, who knows..
But by picking BTC you pick a form of gold in its infancy. If you picked right, it's gonna be big. If not, another one is gonna be big, and BTC will be forgotten. But the technology, come on.. It's great that it was the first, and it will be forever be in history books, but that has nothing to do with its value. It's not a currency, no crypto is ATM, and no crypto will be until stability (& that takes years). That's why BTC doesn't even need a lightning network right now (other than to fight BCash, but it looks like BCash has already digged its own grave), because one would be stupid to use it as a currency. To pay a pizza with a coin that is likely to be worth 10x as much in a near future, that doesn't make sense. Right now it's gold, and if you believe that people are attracted by this amazing technology of a decentralized coin, well you're wrong. People are there for money, and purely for that. Or XRP's wouldn't have reached the top.

Personally, I value the concept of decentralized crypto, I really do. But I think it may be any. BTC+lightning network? Why not. I think it's important to separate the (gold-like) value which the BTC has, and the quick payment system, the lightning network, even though I'm pretty sure people will eventually use a Paypal-like system, for the simple reason that people, those who don't fraud/don't hide their money that is, want insurance, want their money to have their name on it, and someone to speak to in case of problem. That doesn't need to be a bank, it can be a Paypal-like frontend, taking fees in-between.
But really it can be any coin, I don't see what technical advantage the BTC has, it may be too rooted in your mind that BTC will be the chosen one, that it will reach 500k, etc. But again, remember MySpace. I didn't have a MySpace, I don't have a Facebook, I don't give a shit about those things, but it's the perfect example of something big that gets replaced pretty quickly & then gets forgotten.

I'm also a programmer, and if I was to be asked to create the ideal crypto system, I would naturally go for a system like IOTA's. It has been said many times that its code is poor and that it has serious flaws, that may well be true and I haven't checked the details. But I'm just saying, if I was to base my choice of technology, on full scalability, I'd go for a system like IOTA's, where it's people making transactions who also verify transactions, not miners. And I'm pretty sure it's how the chosen coin will work - but perhaps not initially, because, again, I don't think that the technology matters. People don't care about the technology, they don't know what goes behind a bank transfer, they don't need nor want to know, their trust is entirely based on other people's trust. The trust in Bitcoin could have gone exponentially, last month. But it didn't. It's still at the top, but newcomers have no realized that there were plenty of other coins. The trust seems to have spread to a few top coins now. You may see ETH getting at the top next month, and ETH-based pairs for every ALT in every exchange. Or maybe not, who knows? It's entirely a game of prediction, but a prediction of where people's trust will go, whether it's directed by technology (I doubt it), profit-making (obviously), guru-following (certainly), or straight manipulation (seems to have worked for BCash..).

And I'm not dissing BTC, it's still the biggest part in my portfolio. And it's the coin that will forever be in history books, that's for sure. I've just realized that the predicted mass adoption of crypto (I don't have much doubts about that) might not mean mass adoption of BTC. That required heavy word of mouth, and it has just happened, but it has happened so well that people are now aware that BTC isn't alone. BTC dominance is at its lowest. The top lists some technically good coins as well as some scams, proving that the world does not care. It's all about trust, you can't predict anything.

That is exactly what's scary.

1. how much time does it take for them to prove they have the fiat? 2 months?? why would that be??
2. & thus, when will the case close? And how can you imagine the market going forward again before everything has been cleared up?


Plus, this is happening at the same time as there are suspicions around Bitstamp's solvability, with so many people having withdraw & deposit problems. And Bitstamp too prefers to keep its mouth shut. I don't even see how Bitstamp would NOT have the fiat that people brought in (they have no leverage, no margin), other than by heavy fraud.





First, how do you know this, that the amount of traded BTC with Tether is small? We're not even talking about what's traded right now, but what has been traded months ago when it was much cheaper. And then combine this with leverage & margin.

Second, aren't you contradicting yourself? "amass a lot of BTC if it goes cheap". Are you saying that it is NOT cheap at the moment? Well, that's a pretty good reason to SELL (what I just did, partially). Sell, & buy cheaper later.
It's not about whether the BTC will rise again, but about whether it will go lower. And it going lower has nothing to do with its "real" value (which is very subjective anyway), but about today's perception.
So I'd say if the Tether case takes too long to clear up, it's gonna dip deeper. And then it will depend on whether Tether is legit or not.

But the scariest for me is that this Tether case should normally result in crypto RISING. I mean, if no one wanna hold Tethers, they just buy stuff. So crypto dipping even more can only mean one thing: money getting out of exchanges, into bank accounts, that's much worse. And that also means that if Tether is bs, it may be discovered the hard way pretty soon.

Also consider what is a weak hand. Strong hands don't have more solid minds, they're just those who bought so cheap that they just can't lose anymore.
I bought a lot of mine around 5keur. Do you know how I felt when it later dipped from 16keur to 12k? I didn't give a shit! It was still way higher than I had hoped. But 8k (10k usd) was my limit. It touching 8k once, that's ok, it's gonna get back up. Twice.. doubt.. Third time, I sell, enough to get my initial investment back.
And that's why I think it's gonna dip pretty quickly now: it's now gonna make investors of 3 months ago, which were much less, become weak hands too. It's not unrealistic to imagine it going back to 5keur or even 3k pretty quickly.

It's very likely that it's gonna be (much) higher than now at the end of the year. But by not selling before a possible massive dip, you'll be missing a lot of potential BTC's.
Those you call morons may end up gathering more BTC's than you, if the market dips even more. If it doesn't, then you win by holding. But let's not pretend that what will happen next week is so predictable. You're not selling, well if next week it has dipped a lot, you are the moron.
What you can FUD is risk taking. You're holding because you don't wanna take risks, the risk of the BTC rising again right after you've sold. Well, it's all about risk.. You didn't take the risk to sell, perhaps you could have doubled your BTCs. It's only FUD when you sell without a plan to buy back. Judging by how short past crashes have been, that's most likely what they are, not FUD, but risk taking.





Btw, anyone knows if Kraken is too exclusively based on Tethers? It doesn't look like it, since it has its own Tether/USD market. I mean if Kraken's USD was actually USDT, it wouldn't let you trade USDs for USDT, I guess.





This isn't the usual abrupt crash in crypto, though. You know when it dips 50% and goes back up the next day. This is slow (well, for crypto) and the trend seems to get clearer. As you wrote, we just got a "most recent bottom". Perhaps next week that bottom will be $8500, and you will still think "no need to panic until it goes below that". I find this downtrend more scary than a quick dip, because you have the time to get used to it.

It's still in extended support until 2020, and it doesn't matter, I prefer Win7.

I have Win10 on a tablet and I don't like it.

Still not a reason not to support win7, though. Depending on where you look at, Win7/Win10 installed base is 40/40%, 20/40% or 40/20%...
So even in the worst case it'd be unacceptable (even though I doubt it's the reason it didn't work here) for an app to require Win10 today.

Ah I see.
Well from what I see it's possible (& the Ledger app does allow signing in segwit), but not standardized yet. Well, makes sense then.

For what it's worth, I just tried participating in the airdrop for BTC owners.

What a pile of crap....
1. tried installing the wallet twice on my Windows 7. All I get is an app window that stays blank.
So the wallet does not work, there is ZERO system requirement on the website. Besides, installer is pretty lengthy & installs a big lot of crap, for an app that is (most likely, guessing by what it installs) a browser in a window, running javascript crap. As a programmer I wouldn't trust that.

2. gave a chance to the phone app, even though I normally don't trust my phone for anything serious. Had to type in my lengthy BTC address, because of course the chat won't read QR codes (what was I expecting?) only to be replied that signing messages wouldn't work with segwit addresses.

Bah....
I mean I don't care for the airdrop, from what I read you'd get 0.1GB for every 16 BTC, that's not even worth the tx fees.
But you guys trust this? Poor coding, & anti-segwit?

(not saying the coin won't do well, it doesn't need to be good or even working for that)

For what it's worth, they have returned mine, and it took exactly a month, so you'll probably get yours back very soon.

Safe to say that I too won't settle for just that, if I was selling them now I'd still be at a nearly 4000eur loss. Plus I can prove I had started to sell them (the ones that weren't locked) above 2eur.
So I've asked them to buy them from me at a fair price (I'm not even asking their 2.76 ATH but somewhere in the middle, like 2.4, since I sell in stair steps). We'll see.

I'd think that Bitstamp would PREFER to be regulated, but can't because this is no normal trading.
They would porbably like to not be required to have a lot of fiat reserve & get away with it legally. But the reserve requirement for normal trading is probably low & wouldn't be suitable for crypto where the whole market could crash -90% overnight.
That's right, I think it's more of Bitstamp's interest to be regulated, than the user's interest. A bit like you put cancerogenous stuff in your food, you can get away saying "but the european union allows it".


Out of the exchanges that I use, it's on Bitstamp that I prefer to keep most of my fiat (which sucks a bit when it comes to arbitrage), I find it safer as Bitstamp is *supposed* to have real money, whereas others use coupons such as tethers. But I really hope that they do.



I've sold part of my coins that weren't blocked at a price, it still went upwards with no abrupt dump, I had all the time to sell the rest. Of course it's a loss for me, it's not perceived.
It's not "I could have bought & sold this using my fiat", I did start to progressively sell what I had, the rest I couldn't sell because it's blocked.

You know who else was blocking people's money? BITCONNECT. And those were at least promizing interests upon release.
Here it's "but don't worry, it has been a month but you will eventually get your coins back".

You will pay more than that *if* the BCH ever gets the success of BTC.

But just inform yourself, instead of trusting Roger's lies. Go to any historical chart of BTC transaction prices, according to volume. Check today's BCH transaction volume & price. Now find where in history BTC had the same volume as BCH, and check which price it had. Yes, it was CHEAPER.

BCH avg volume for january: 40k. Avg fee: 0.3 usd.

When did BTC have a volume of 40k? January 2013. And what was the avg fee at that time? 0.01 usd!
Until Jan 2017, the BTC's avg fee was lower than today's BCH fee. And yet until that time it had 250k avg transactions/day.


So if you love the BCH, you should do your best to keep it unpopular, because the day it will be popular, you're gonna pay more than for BTC for transactions. Blocks being just twice larger won't change much to that. You -really- thought that increasing blocks by just 2 was the magical key to make BCH tx fees 100x cheaper?

It's stupid to "buy" stuff using BTC or BCH, anyway. Why buy a pizza today for the price of 10 pizzas next year? If you pay in fiat, next year it'll still be more or less the same price, so use fiat. And if you tell me "but.. just buy more BCH after you've paid".. then just pay for your pizza in fiat in the first place, and you won't have to buy more BCH.. using fiat, and pay twice instead of once.
And if you just wanna pay your pizzas in BCH for the only reason that you're hiding money from your country, just use paper money.. no one knows you have it, and it won't leave any trace.
"Merchants" aren't gonna accept crypto seriously, anyway. Not until one is stable enough, and they're far far from it. Merchants have to pay their bills, and for their goods. They don't pay that in crypto, they pay that in stable fiat. They don't want to lose their business because of a -80% crash. The only that did accept BTC so far did it for publicity, and most likely converted to fiat immediately. I'm quite sure they used services that did just that, anyway. And they never saw the color of any BTC, they got fiat straight from that service.
You've paid for your pizza in BCH 2 weeks ago, and now the shop has to pay its bills using your BCH that's now worth what, half of that. He'd better have a big enough margin to compensate!

BCH goes down along with BTC, so it's dependent to the BTC, just like all ALTs.

And lightning network is being worked on for quite some time, and this is the reason those assholes are pimping BCH with lies, lightning network will make less money for miners. This is the only reason BCH exists, it doesn't have segwit, thus won't have lightning network, thus ensures more money for miners.