I also use it exclusively for my transactions and have never run into problems. I only ever use it to see how much people are paying for their transactions though, and have never once followed their recommended fee. I always assumed that that was just for people who absolutely needed to confirm their transactions by the next block, which is why it's as absurd as it is. The hourFee figure in their API seems to provide a much more reasonable estimate at 10 sats/byte, but it's still quite high for the current volume, and could actually be enough to confirm a transaction by the next block.

For what it's worth, I've never seen their graph look like that, but I don't rule out the possibility that they may be trying to inflate fees.


Will probably use this from now on, thanks!

I completely agree, but we can't ignore the importance of low fees either. This is an excerpt from Satoshi's white paper:


I know this sentence talks more about the trusted third parties required for the current financial systems to work, but I feel like Satoshi wanted to address the flaws bolded as well. In this case, Bitcoin needs to have low enough transaction fees to at least be viable for "small casual transactions." Bitcoin is currently in line with this vision, with fees currently being as low as they are, and with the Lightning Network to address high fees associated with network congestion.

1. There are many floating around the internet. Just make sure you check their legitimacy first. For Bitcoin specifically, I'd recommend Electrum, which you can use as an offline wallet by following these instructions: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html

2. Yes. It's much harder to take coins out of them after all. You normally have to go through a number of hoops, so the same goes for any potential hacker.

3. Wallets can typically only hold coins they're designed for. If you want to hold different types of coins in a single wallet, you likely have to use an online one.

Well I'd say helping the scammers by giving them the forked coins is a hefty matter. You really should move your coins before claiming, but it's best to wait for wallets that you can be sure are legitimate. Try waiting for community feedback first. Don't give scammers more incentive to scam.

Well there are some theories behind it that aims to explain the behavior. The most popular one seems to be that It's a big deal to a lot of people, and those who hold crypto are converting to fiat to prepare for it. It especially made sense back when China had one of the largest trading volumes, and it still somewhat does now because other countries like South Korea (which is a huge market) also celebrate it. It's kind of like how people were predicting Bitcoin would go down before Christmas because everyone's going to be out spending.

I'm certainly not ruling out your self-fulfilling prophecy theory though, as it does make sense. There might be people who are thinking that the market will inevitably crash because of the trend, so they decide to sell high waiting to buy low, making the prophecy go full circle.

Well Japan has done it, so we know for a fact that it's certainly possible. It's true that it could make a huge mess though, and it does seem like Japan is an outlier in this issue.

But hey, if Bitcoin reaches global adoption, and the people decide they only want to spend in Bitcoin, I don't think governments will have much of a choice. Either they give in to pressure, or businesses, and in turn the economy, suffers. I know I'm speculating and that this is something that could only happen way into the future, but it's possible.

This. Its reputation as being revolutionary is in part due to its nature of being ridiculously easy to set up thanks to non-intervention from governments. Any startup can run their own and easily get funding from people all over the world, and it has been relentlessly exploited. Those days seem to be ending though, so we might see less and less of them, with a large majority of those which remain being legit. It's still a new way of doing something for sure, but it's not inherently different.

It definitely is. Even the most recent Electrum vulnerability, which is one of the most popular desktop wallets out there, didn't result in any confirmed losses. Hardware wallets are safer for sure, but for as long as you can keep your computer clean and protected, a desktop wallet should be secure enough (for average users anyway).

That being said, if you're running a desktop wallet, I'd recommend a Linux distro. Windows is targeted much more often thanks to its market share, so you're much less likely to run into anything dangerous randomly if you're using Linux.


You can opt for an open source one, so you could check the code yourself to make sure it's not doing anything shady.

There's a trend that Bitcoin crashes a few weeks before Chinese New Year, which may be one of the reasons why January is traditionally considered a bearish month. It still seems to hold true this year, despite the extremely low Chinese Bitcoin trading volume, which is weird.

No one really knows what to expect, but if we follow the trend of the past years, February typically performs much better than January, with the rebound starting to occur around the time Chinese New Year drops.

Correlation =/= causation though, so this might have nothing to do with Chinese New Year at all. Trends only go on until they stop, too.

Oh, so they're basically just handing out instructions? Here they are, for users who don't want to bother clicking:


I thought they'd be penalizing the masterminds, but I guess that wouldn't be very easy to prove. Another one to watch out for are social media pump and dump groups. It should be obvious in the name itself that they cannot be trusted, but people who just want a quick profit are likely to get burned if they get involved.

Bolded part also provides insight as to why crypto in general is starting to get in the crosshairs of ad companies.

I agree that everything has downsides, but hardware wallets are still far and away your best choice if you want to keep your coins secure. There hasn't ever been any vulnerability to any hardware wallet yet that lets people steal remotely from them. That means if you keep your hardware wallet physically safe, it's essentially hacker-proof.

As for Electrum, but it has to be noted that there are no confirmed cases of losses due to the vulnerability -- either because it was patched too quickly, or because any password protected wallet was still somewhat protected anyway.

All in all, I'd say hacking, specifically, is much more of a problem for exchanges, but not the regular users who know how to protect themselves.

You mean the Indian PM accepted the adoption of the blockchain technology -- not Bitcoin itself, which is just one of its many possible applications. It looks like a lot of the replies are confused about this fact too.


So like Indonesia, basically? It's going to hurt Bitcoin's future as a currency, but I suppose we're a long way off from that anyway so there's plenty of time for them to reconsider their stance. It's much better than a ban, at least.

It doesn't look like there are any mysterious circumstances regarding his death, and if his family doesn't suspect foul play, then I don't think it's respectful for me to start spouting conspiracy theories. Either way, it doesn't look like the coroner's office has a report on his death yet.


Given the furious pace at which South Korea has been taking action against crypto, him being stressed is no surprise at all to me. There must be a lot of pressure coming from all sides.

That's a rather extreme view if you ask me. The realist in me says that the biggest reason is that they won't be able to make money off of us anymore, and that their influence over us will plummet. I guess I understand the overall libertarian sentiment though.

I was also curious about your links so I tried to dig around:


This one seems to have been misinterpreted. Here is an explanation as to where the misunderstanding came from, and what the bill is truly about:

https://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cashillegal.asp


This one I'd really rather not trust because it tells you to visit this link:


...and is basically a marketing article.

Still, bottom line is that banks are afraid, and they currently face a future in which they have to choose over adapting or dying.

No, there shouldn't be any direct correlation between implementing KYC procedures and scamming. They may simply be required by the regulatory bodies of their home country.

That being said, you're definitely in greater danger if you disclose your identity, because you have no idea what they'll do with it. Make sure you do proper research before you start giving out your info.

Bolded for emphasis. Nothing concrete has been said or decided yet, so it's just FUD until then. They have been very contradictory, as others have mentioned. If you want to listen to someone, listen to Putin. All he's saying is that regulations are required.

Anytime a country decides to ban Bitcoin, you can pretty much just assume that it's bad. Russia isn't a very big market according to trading volumes, but any country with a sizable population has huge potential, and losing it would be a big blow to adoption in the long run.

Well there's no way you can accidentally type that out, so it's most likely from an ad or a deliberate phishing attempt. Some people may be too lazy in typing out the full address, so they search for the exchange in Google and go for the first result, which could be a sponsored ad. Deliberate phishing attempts come from emails or messages that look like they legitimately come from the site, asking you to click a seemingly legit link to drop your guard.

The best way to not get duped into these is to type the addresses out yourself, and maybe bookmark them if you're absolutely sure your computer is clean.

Oh wow. I thought the craze was over after Bitcoin's mid-December love affair, but I guess it's fresh enough again now that it has actually started to rebound. That being said, their marketing team gets a 10/10 from me. I'm not the least bit interested about their product because I'm not a fan of juice, but I'd join the promo if I could lol. I hope this translates into better sales for them so more companies could jump on the bandwagon.

Umm what? I just checked myself and the top 100 in terms of change are pretty much all in the top 100 in terms of market cap. Not only that, only the top 63 actually registered any growth at all. Everything else is in negatives. I know this isn't conclusive of anything at all because it only covers 24 hours, but it does not bode well for your case.

Another thing I'd like to note is that pump and dump groups like using coins with small market caps for their bullshit because they tend to be easy to manipulate, so growth can be a non-factor of success in some cases.

I don't think it's about trusting news more than data, it's about news being a huge factor, which most data charts cannot predict. For example, Bitcoin was bullish right before news went out that China suddenly banned ICOs and exchanges, after which it plummeted. No chart analysis prediction could have predicted that. I understand the sentiment towards news outlets being untrustworthy though.


This is true, but it can also reverse any time given the volatile market and fickle demand. Chart analysts can only correct themselves after the fact.