Fortunately exchanges aren't the only way of buying Bitcoin, and it's not 100% relevant to people's privacy.

Most people who put large amounts of money into exchanges are professionals who have money in other things as well and aren't afraid of giving out personal details as they don't participate in illegal activity.

If people in China want to buy Bitcoin, they can just go elsewhere, like LocalBitcoins, or any other sites or forms of exchange which are not restricted (and even if it's illegal, there will always be a way - Bitcoin hardly has a reputation for 100% legal usage).

Exactly, it's clear that the BU system is not prepared or tested enough for use on a currency with a market cap as high as $20bn, we're trusting a group which is not trustworthy with something as huge and valuable as Bitcoin and that scared me when within a couple of months of potential adoption we're seeing major bugs being unveiled.

It's a lot harder for Bitcoin's value to go up now though.  We might see Bitcoin at pretty much an ATH but this is still strange behaviour and should not be seen as normal. 

I agree that Bitcoin's price won't go down all the way to 0 or even close to that but we need to take care and watch from the sidelines.  Now that the price is as high as $1000 per coin, the market cap has to rise by an amazing amount for Bitcoin's value to do so and that's a key factor to take into account.

As soon as Bitcoin is looking up, the traders will start flocking to Bitcoin again.  Many people who buy altcoins, especially the flawed but well marketed ones like DASH, are quite naive newbies who don't realise that Bitcoin will continue to be the strongest cryptocurrency for a long time, and if they want to change it they need to contribute to sides which argue about where to take its open source code.  I think that after the scaling solutions are dealt with and the fear of BU is past us, I do agree, Bitcoin is on its way to the top.

Exactly, it's the new era of Internet currency but that doesn't mean currency altogether.

I think there will always be an appeal to physical money due to its obvious convenience and the separation from banks.  Bitcoin will be a huge player in future money, but only online.  Although to be honest, I do think that government regulated money isn't completely dead and will continue to function well enough irrespective of Bitcoin's performance.  I don't believe all of the people who claim that Bitcoin is going to entirely take over currency, especially when it's not scalable even with the best available solutions.

The price isn't particularly dropping too much, I'm quite surprised about how stable it is considering the very real possibility of a HF happening soon (not that I necessarily think this is a bad thing but the split would leave a lot of fear and uncertainty with some Bitcoiners about where it's going to go).

You wouldn't.  That's why online wallets are pretty scary.  You know that if they ever collapse, you'll lose your Bitcoin.

To be fair, this is very unlikely to happen with Blockchain as they are quite a trusted wallet and have serious security measures.

True.  This moon thing doesn't really make sense, because Bitcoin is at a very high price right now to what you would expect it to be.  Bitcoin isn't suddenly going to have its price fly up to the stars forever, there needs to be a genuine grounding for it, and it'll go planet by planet.  Next stop, Mars, will be around $3-4k.

I'm optimistic, but grounded.  Bitcoin has potential but it's not ready yet because it's not scalable.  I also think that there are a lot of cons with a deflationary investment e.g. all the hoarding which is resulting in a decreasing circulation of the currency.

exchange
ɪksˈtʃeɪndʒ,ɛksˈtʃeɪndʒ
noun
1.
an act of giving one thing and receiving another (especially of the same kind) in return.
2.
the changing of money to its equivalent in the currency of another country.

By the first definition and arguably by the second it is definitely an exchange.  This pedantic argument over a word is not going to change Bitcoin and I see this is as an attempt to discredit its legitimacy.

I agree, I think that Bitcoin's adoption by 2020 will not result in it magically being a mainstream currency and my view is that arguments for Bitcoin becoming worth a million dollars or something are nothing more than weak hyperbole and a facade of optimism.

The usage couldn't be more than half because less than half of people have regular access to the Internet.  The people who will have good enough Internet will be much fewer than that, and beyond that a lot of people with stable currencies will not automatically turn to Bitcoin if they are in countries with stable enough currencies that they feel are better for spending in their everyday life.

Well frankly if they don't have access to Internet, there's not very much point in trying because exchanging their coins would be extremely hard.  I definitely appreciate these coins' use for poorer people who need some help, but these coins are rooted in the Internet and you can't think of solutions to not having what the coins are based on.

So far no altcoins have proven that they are genuine, original or good enough so that they will stick around and continue to grow for 20 years.  It's very unlikely that any altcoin, which will most likely be more of a trend than anything else to be frank, will rise in value, stay relevant or even get close to Bitcoin.  The only coin which I would trust to stay stable enough for as long as that is Bitcoin.

It's impossible to take website credibility out of this.  You need to get cloud mining out of your head.

When people say that nearly all cloud mining services are scams, they're not joking.  The reason for that is because cloud mining is not profitable.  It's a bad investment, you will not make any ROI for at least 2-3 years and the chances are that you'll never make any profit at all as in four years the block size reward halving will happen.  Therefore the only legit cloud mining service is HashNest and maybe 2-3 more, all of which are terrible investments.  All of the others are Ponzi schemes.  DON'T DO IT.

If you're looking for something easy, I recommend the Blockchain wallet, but no online wallet is ideal and anyone could steal your Bitcoin if there's a security compromise in their system.

Otherwise, you could try a hardware wallet like Trezor, or a more secure than online wallet like Electrum which is sort of a mixed wallet.

So you're claiming that someone earned 1616 BTC (over a million dollars) of other people's money which they essentially donated to you through your Ponzi scheme which we just found out about today?  Why would anyone believe this?

Right.  I think that Bitcoin is becoming more stable and more people are seeing it as a genuine investment.  This is a serious thing and the drop was not very significant, which is amazing news and I think that the price will continue to go up in the future.

I don't know, the number of merchants accepting Bitcoin hasn't really gone up recently, even Fiverr had to pull out because of how inconvenient Bitcoin transactions are right now.

But we'll see what happens - the future is still looking up for Bitcoin.

True.  Unfortunately I think this makes it quite unlikely that there will be a Bitcoin ETF in the foreseeable future since the reasons they cited were mostly about the fundamental nature of Bitcoin rather than its current situation or its volatility (which could change).

1.  No.  It won't, it'll still be pretty hard, probably less profitable in fact because far more transactions would be in each block as I recall.  It would still be a strong enough business for the major companies though.

2.  Yes.  Much, much, much faster, which is the point for both SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited - pretty much the only point.

3.  I can't really answer this.  Transactions will be faster, there won't be unlimited Bitcoins - mining rewards will stay the same as far as I know and the max will always be 21 million to be reached in 2040.

4.  It will go higher because Bitcoin can become commonly adopted as transactions are more convenient.