Okay would like advice on this. Could i get say a cheap sim card from the us.. say lycamobile for 1 dollar online. Then i activate my lycamobile sim on my iphone in the US to receive that sms number? But would i need a plan for it or not? I only need to do it for account verification. You need a plan for SIM service. You should be able to do that as long as you get the correct SIM card type and the correct voice+text plan. However, I've heard nothing but bad things about Lycamobile. They have an F rating with the Better Business Bureau. You might consider buying a prepaid burner phone for a one-time verification. But after this, would i still need this same phone number to log in everytime? Or could i use google authy or authy from later on and i no longer need the same sms number i used to activate it? I'm pretty sure it's only for identity verification. After that, you can -- and should -- use a TOTP app for logins. Because im out of the US most of the time, so the us number lycamobile won't work outside the US. Because with coinbase, i know a google voice number sms there are no issues. But gemini does not accept a voice over ip number. So how do you guys use gemini outside the US then?
Lycamobile does have plans with international roaming. I have no experience with that, though. I rarely leave the states. |
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Who wanted less volatility? Not me. Then again, I guess I'm not a merchant with fiat-denominated overheads. I think the volatility is one of the things that attracted me to Bitcoin, as someone who loves studying markets. Anyway, I think of this stable period more like the "eye of the storm" than anything else. Volatility isn't gone. It's just hibernating.  |
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Here's a better source for the story. It's from a few days ago. He isn't saying anything new -- just that fiat/cryptocurrency conversion is the point at which criminals are most vulnerable. I'm pretty sure we all knew that. I'm more interested to know what they plan to do when people eventually stop converting to fiat.  |
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When you look at the 'top' coins it's pretty stunning really. Clones, jokes, non entities, stuff that's fundamentally bust. Yet there it is right up there still. I really thought that aspect would be further along by now.
Same here. I was shocked to see how far altcoins were bought up during the peak of the bull run. It made me as Bitcoiner look like an idiot with how I was talking about how bad of an investment they are. The market as a whole looks a bit more healthy right now, especially when it comes to altcoin valuations. Wait until the next bullrun. Altcoins aren't going anywhere. Once the Bitcoin market turns around, money will flow back into alts. Over the years, I've come to realize the interplay between Bitcoin and altcoin markets mirrors "Risk-On Risk-Off" activity. When Bitcoin is bullish -- and so investors stop fleeing to dollars -- altcoins become a "low risk" environment again. I don't see how anyone can look at what's out there and objectively think it's totally awesome. Bitcoin itself is more impressive than ever. It's also looking increasingly singular compared to everything else.
How hard are you looking? I see a lot of bitcoiners repeating this opinion, but I could never be bothered to research the top 20 coins, let alone altcoins in general. |
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As per Jani Ziedins, a cryptoanalyst at Cracked Market, the incapability of BTC to shatter the $6,800 impediment shows that there is a fall in demand for crypto.
That's a pretty weak analysis. Price has been totally flat -- that implies an equilibrium between supply and demand. If demand is dropping, then so is available supply. You could just as easily say, "the incapability of BTC to shatter the $6,400 impediment shows that there is a fall in supply for crypto." This is just a low-volume market lull. When I see altcoin charts looking like this, it's more often bullish than bearish. There's no telling when price will finally break out, though. |
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Ah, the Tether debacle continues. It's funny to see Bitfinex hooking up with the world's most infamous "legitimate" money launderer.
Hopefully the rumors are true. I've seen several complaints lately about missing bank wires -- I heard rumors that Bitfinex and Noble had severed ties because of Noble's ongoing operational issues.
Either way, it's a ticking time bomb. There's quite a lot of value held in Tether, and banking problems for mysterious Hong Kong and BVI-registered holding companies trying to move around hundreds of millions of dollars without any licenses -- that should be no surprise. I recall that last year's bull run really started in earnest after Bitfinex's Wells Fargo problems last year. At first, a huge premium developed between Bitfinex, USDT and the rest of the market. But after a while, the rest of the market started chasing and stopped caring that nobody could cash out of Bitfinex.
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People say that ICOs are bad for the same reason, since the ICO companies dump their fundraised coins on the market. But that only considers the distribution side, after the ICO is done. As d5000 points out, ICOs actually create buying pressure too, since the ICO investors need to purchase BTC/ETH before they can invest. I believe that was the market dynamic underlying Ethereum's massive rise in price last year -- so many ICOs were raising funds in ETH. ICO is harmful because most ICOs are only quick rich scheme for the developer. Most of them don't deliver their promise, they don't continue their project after receiving the ICO money.
True, but that's the nature of startup investment. Most startups fail for whatever reason. It's a high risk, high reward investment environment. |
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I have worked myself out in past years searching for how to make money on the internet, I've bought e-books, registered on website that requires you to pay some amount of money before you can start using their platform. But all these turn out to be a total waste of time and resources, because all the money made from these platforms I was never able to withdraw them, because PayPal will never accept my country. Everyday I pray for miracle to happen that will make PayPal to accept my country. But paypal never did! And I never gave up.
Not until the birth of Blockchain/Crypto! PayPal is scared of Crypto, it CEO and all other financial institutions both offline and online will try every means to label Crypto a scam and illegal, But the fact is that, Crypto is here to stay, Crypto is a game changer, it an eye opener, I can do whatever I want to do online now with help of blockchain without thinking twice!
Cross-border transactions without intermediaries -- a beautiful example of how powerful Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are! I'm glad to hear you've found a better way. Paypal and other remittance services charge exorbitant fees for cross-border transfers, if they'll serve you at all. Well I must say not everyone accept cryptocurrency as a medium of transaction so you can't say that your problems are solved cryptocurrency is still in it developing stages and still has to grow to be fully able to meet everyone needs.
Yes, but there is an active P2P market for BTC in Nigeria. There are also at least a handful of local exchanges according to Google. If he can get paid in BTC, he can sell them there for his local currency. If he gets paid in altcoins, he can exchange to bitcoins very easily online. |
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i get that some people want to keep money on a exchange in maybe USD OR EURO so they can buy whatever coin they want fast [...]
There is no need to use an exchange. Many of them have ridiculously high fees (mostly withdrawals) and force their users to pass through KYC verification. I would rather use Changelly or some other third party service which offers quick exchange between different cryptocurrencies. Even TREZOR started supporting these kind of services natively in their web wallet interface. What if you want to buy BTC with fiat money? What if you need to sell for fiat to pay bills or rent, or just need to hedge against a bear market by holding cash? Changelly and other altcoin exchanges won't help you there. Holding USDT or other "stablecoins" exposes you to 3rd party risk like any exchange does. The P2P market where I live is not very liquid, and KYC is getting more prevalent there as well -- at least with LocalBitcoins traders. Exchanges are a necessary evil, for now at least. |
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Im a daytrader and im sending a lot of bitcoin around on a daily basis from coinbase pro.
As you can imagine in the world of trading any assets, time is money and speed is key.
Im always sending to and from segwit wallets but the transaction time is still way to slow sometimes.
Most of my transactions are sent from coinbase pro to another segwit wallet , and as far as i know coinbase pro does not let you set the fee manually so i cant speed up the transaction this way unfortunately.
I was wondering if anybody know any tips and tricks on how to speed up transactions from coinbase pro? Ive read about "transaction accelerators" but ive never tried it, anybody with good experience from using a service like this? Or any other method for speeding up transactions from coinbase pro or other wallets where you can not set the fee manually? Tips and tricks? Not really. The paid accelerators are pretty expensive. And since Coinbase batches transactions -- they include lots of different customer withdrawals in each transaction -- it would be very expensive to use a paid service due to the size. You can try free accelerators like ViaBTC, but they may not accept such large transactions, and they may not speed things up any more than if you did nothing. We should probably be glad that Coinbase handles withdrawals this way. They used to not batch transactions, and they also used to overestimate fees a lot, which drove up fees across the network. Thanks for the answers and your time! Just to clarify, when you say expensive, what are we talking here? 5-15 dollars per transaction would not be a problem for me since the volume i move around is pretty big, any good paid transaction accelerator out there? I seem to only be able to find the free ones. Now that fees are so much lower than last year, I think a couple of the services shut down. BTC.com still operates a paid service. In late December, the fee was around $70 per transaction, and confirmation was only guaranteed within 12 hours to qualify for a refund. To boot, I know they only accepted Alipay and BCH for payments. I'm not sure if that's changed. ViaBTC still advertises a paid service at the link quoted above, but it seems like you need to register and log in to use it. The other paid services I'm aware of either disappeared or were borderline scams anyway. |
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I still can't agree that bots are as innocent and innocuous as you make them appear to be. They may be in other areas where speculation is not so engulfing and encompassing (but even in these areas HFT trading is made into a main villain for severe price swings), however, with crypto, algorithmic trading kills all human which is still left there, and as there's not much anyway, such automatic trading may be killing the market after all as there is not much else beyond speculation
You realize that trading algorithms are run by humans, right? Humans need to constantly tweak bot parameters to adjust them to market conditions. That's why I never bothered with bots and do everything manually. Running bots is not just a "set it and forget it" endeavor, and they aren't always profitable. Speculation is virtually the only thing that matters for price. How is algo trading any different than manual trading in this respect? We're all speculators here. How does algorithmic trading "kill all human traders?" Losing traders are always trying to blame their losses on someone else. If it's not the "manipulative whales" it's the "manipulative HFT algos."  |
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Im a daytrader and im sending a lot of bitcoin around on a daily basis from coinbase pro.
As you can imagine in the world of trading any assets, time is money and speed is key.
Im always sending to and from segwit wallets but the transaction time is still way to slow sometimes.
Most of my transactions are sent from coinbase pro to another segwit wallet , and as far as i know coinbase pro does not let you set the fee manually so i cant speed up the transaction this way unfortunately.
I was wondering if anybody know any tips and tricks on how to speed up transactions from coinbase pro? Ive read about "transaction accelerators" but ive never tried it, anybody with good experience from using a service like this? Or any other method for speeding up transactions from coinbase pro or other wallets where you can not set the fee manually? Tips and tricks? Not really. The paid accelerators are pretty expensive. And since Coinbase batches transactions -- they include lots of different customer withdrawals in each transaction -- it would be very expensive to use a paid service due to the size. You can try free accelerators like ViaBTC, but they may not accept such large transactions, and they may not speed things up any more than if you did nothing. We should probably be glad that Coinbase handles withdrawals this way. They used to not batch transactions, and they also used to overestimate fees a lot, which drove up fees across the network. |
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Algorithmic trading has become increasingly prevalent, but is it really "dominating" the market? Bots might affect the spread and cause slight aberrations, but I still believe organic market forces are overwhelmingly the driving factor for price.
It may be the bear market that made the 'organic market forces' less relevant at this point in time, but is there anything organic about current market? All I see is very predictable and calculated algorithmic moves within safe ranges where bots have far too much respect for TA, which is unseen. The unpredictability is out of the market to a larger extent, and that's the direct result of lacking market activity from Freddy and Timmy that usually turn this market into a complete (very much unpredictable) roller coaster. If Freddy and Timmy have left the market, that tells us something about the underlying market forces. It means less supply from losing investors and also less demand from mainstream investors looking to get rich quick. Markets stay range-bound most of the time -- it's equilibrium. Why would you assume it's not organic? The existence of bots doesn't imply anything "inorganic" or manipulative either. I think of bots as liquidity providers, just like any manual traders. A range-bound market is the natural state of things until either supply or demand pushes the market into a new trend. People say markets only trend 20% of the time, which sounds about right. The rest of the time, there is no overwhelming factor to push price outside of these "safe ranges." |
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There is no such thing as "Bitcoin Maximalism".
People who use that expression are usually just looking for a sorry excuse why their beloved Altcoin fails.
So-called "Bitcoin Maximalists" are usually simply conservative in that they prefer a decentralized, stable, well-developed blockchain as the basis for a digital currency over some random, premined or ICOed copycat with feature-bloat.
That's a false dichotomy that reflects the attitude of typical "maximalists." These kinds of broad generalizations are completely useless and they just appear vitriolic and often envious. To me, maximalists are constantly fighting the market. They want so badly for altcoins to die but it will never happen. The vitriol from maximalists is always strongest when altcoins are in a bull market and the gains are far surpassing Bitcoin. That's no surprise -- as you point out, altcoiners are the same way with their derision of maximalists when altcoins are in a death spiral. This is what happens when speculative technology meets native currency: Greed. Over the years, I've seen countless bitcoiners complain about how much higher the price BTC should be -- if it weren't for those dastardly altcoins stealing the show! It just makes them so angry that there is demand for all these scammy altcoins! You say that Bitcoin is (or will be) the only "decentralized, stable, well-developed blockchain" and altcoins are limited to "random, premined or ICOed copycat with feature-bloat." On what basis could you prove that? Perhaps you could establish standards for "decentralized, stable, well-developed" and then provide a rundown of the 2000 or so altcoins in existence explaining why each and every one can't fit those definitions? It's fair enough to criticize a specific altcoin's design flaws -- I've done my share of that. But it looks clueless when you write off every altcoin project in existence (including those that haven't been invented yet) with one fell swoop. That's what people like Saifedean Ammous and Giacomo Zucco do. It's quite ignorant. This sort of dogmatic approach really supports the attitude that Bitcoin is a cult, too. Most altcoins may be garbage, but this position where maximalists completely write off all non-Bitcoin development -- with little more as evidence than one-off opinions -- is uncompelling to say the least. They should stop being so bitter and accept how markets work. Bitcoin can't possibly implement every worthy change or feature -- not within this century anyway -- and why would we want it to? That's what altcoins are for. There's also nothing fundamentally wrong with ICOs. They are actually a good thing. Bitcoiners get so upset about government regulation, but then they deride ICOs even though they make fundraising, investment and securities trading more accessible! Do they realize that ICOs leverage the underlying blockchain to allow investors and traders to avoid regulated markets? |
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The article is clearly looking to exaggerate what's going on for sensation purposes, but it's definitely true that bots are dominating the crypto market, and that more than ever before. Algorithmic trading has become increasingly prevalent, but is it really "dominating" the market? Bots might affect the spread and cause slight aberrations, but I still believe organic market forces are overwhelmingly the driving factor for price. I've always thought the effects of spoofing were overstated. But it's impossible to know just how effective it is (if at all) given that markets are composed of endless variables. Everyone knows about manipulations taking place in the market and it's a part of the game to not be fooled by them. From my point of view, forbidding such practices by law is not effective, apart from being in discord with the idea of free market. I like the words by Kjetil Eilersten, developer of Quatloo Trader. If everyone manipulates, no one manipulates, he said. That's how you deal with problems in the free market, you engage in combat instead of asking the government to outlaw your opponents.
Indeed, it's part of the game. I appreciate the wild west attitude. Spoofing happens everyday across world markets anyway. This is from earlier this year: CFTC Files Eight Anti-Spoofing Enforcement Actions against Three Banks (Deutsche Bank, HSBC & UBS) & Six Individuals |
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https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181003005283/en/This is an area I've always been really intrigued by. As we all know the first job of an insurer is not to pay out and as far as I know no one who claimed to have their crypto insured ever managed to make a successful claim. The prime example I can think of it when a Bitpay employee clicked on the wrong email and gave away a million dollars' worth. When they tried to claim off their insurance they were rightly laughed at. Not just an employee but the CEO, Stephen Pair. Talk about embarrassing. So how do you think a policy like this would arranged? I would presume insurers know very little about the ins and outs of crypto and how it's secured. Would Gemini have walked them through the whole process or would the insurers not really give a shit and issue a policy expecting to wriggle out of it? I can't imagine it would be undersigned without rigorous due diligence. Aon is ranked as the #2 largest insurance broker in the world. They didn't get there by piling loads of money into litigation to wriggle out of claims. They must view the policy as profitable. Some day there'll be a giant insurance claim and we'll find out whether any of this stuff is worth a dime. My suspicion is that it ain't.
I'm sure it'll make for an interesting high-stakes court case. I imagine Gemini has competent legal counsel. It may not be a slam dunk for the insurance consortium when push comes to shove. |
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A much better technology would definitely drove me away from Bitcoin. I mean there's no point holding on to previous tech when it has been outperformed by the latest one. Just like how fiat and other digital payment would be outperformed by Bitcoin in a few years.
that probably wouldn't happen in our lifetime since bitcoin is the new technology that was created to replace the old one and also because bitcoin is also advancing, it didn't stop at 9 years ago. You got a crystal ball or something? Bitcoin does have its drawbacks after all. Decentralization is inefficient and costly for users, and POW mining consumes a lot of power. What if technology emerges that solves third party trust without some / all of those downsides? A lot of people are definitely working on it. I know the technology doesn't exist today, but it would be silly to write off that possibility. |
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Bakkt seems ready to take off with a positive acceptance from Big companies. Bakkt aim to bring institutional money to crypto world.
Will this be the gateway to bitcoin adoption and possible Bitcoin ETF approval or this will only make bitcoin more scarier for regular joe to invest and hard to adopt?
One thing it will bring is leverage financialization, which isn't necessarily a good thing. Here's what one Wall Street veteran says could happen to the Bitcoin market once bitcoin-deliverable derivatives like Bakkt are launched: “As cryptocurrency markets develop further, here’s what I’ll be on the lookout for: financial institutions beginning to create claims against cryptocurrencies that are not fully backed by the underlying coins (which could take the form of margin loans, coin lending / rehypothecation, coin-settled futures contracts, or ETFs that don’t 100% track the underlying coins at any given moment). None of these are happening in the market yet, though.
“So far, regulators have only allowed bitcoin derivatives in cash-settled form among major derivatives counterparties. While cash-settled derivatives can affect the price of the underlying asset, the magnitude of the impact is lower than the impact if derivatives were settled in an underlying that is “hard to borrow” or “special” (using securities lending parlance). Bitcoin is especially “hard to borrow” so a requirement to deliver the underlying bitcoins into derivatives contracts would amplify bitcoin’s price fluctuations.
“Eventually it’s likely regulators will approve bitcoin-settled derivatives among major derivatives counterparties. At that point, banks will be looking to borrow the underlying bitcoin—and that’s when the custodial arrangements made by institutional investors will start to matter. Will custodians make their custodied coins available for borrowing in “coin lending markets” as they do with securities lending today? Or will they deem the cybersecurity risks of lending coins (which entails revealing private keys) too high relative to the extra return available for coin lending? And will institutional investors even allow coin lending by their custodians? Regardless, when bitcoin-settled derivatives appear on the scene, it’s very likely that cryptocurrencies will be “hard to borrow” for quite some time because HODLers (long-term holders) own most coins and rarely use custodians.” (emphasis added)
Why does this matter? Bitcoin has algorithmically-enforced scarcity, and that’s a big part of what gives it value. If Wall Street begins to create claims to bitcoin out of thin air, unbacked by actual bitcoin, then Wall Street will succeed in offsetting that scarcity to some degree.
The same pattern happened in commodities markets, such as gold and silver. It also happened in credit derivatives, which, before the 2008 financial crisis, had grown to 10x the size of the underlying corporate bond market and had become the proverbial “tail that wagged the dog” by driving the price of the underlying corporate bonds.
If a large degree of leverage-based financialization ever happens to bitcoin, the community that secures the Bitcoin network with its processing power may move on to a different currency. Unfortunately, the news on this front is already not good, as traders confirmed that daily liquidity for synthetic versions of bitcoin is already approximately $15 billion, which is 3x bitcoin's daily spot liquidity of approximately $5 billion. Leverage-based financialization of bitcoin to date has happened mostly outside of the US—a good example of this is Hong Kong-based exchange OKEx’s confirmation today that one of its customers had major losses on a leveraged $400 million futures position, causing it to claw back $9 million from its customers to cover the exchange’s loss. In other words, it's not necessarily the gateway to Bitcoin adoption. But it might be the gateway to Bitcoin financialization. |
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Well I obviously came to the wrong forum , I thought I'd get some help here.
You won't get much help with mining questions in Beginners & Help. It's geared towards total newbies and has mostly been taken over by bounty hunters. You're better off asking your questions somewhere in the Mining subforum, like Mining Support. Good luck... |
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Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not but I don't pay for power. So my electrical costs will be $0. That's great, as long as you're aware of the wattage required and have a properly wired space. For example, you'd probably have big problems in an apartment with owner-paid utilities. Each Antminer S9 consumes around 1350 watts. Whoever is paying for power will notice a huge spike in power consumption. Other SHA-256 coins like Bcash are an option too. |
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