The developments so far have happened despite of the authorities rather than because of it.

That can work as long as it remains relatively under the radar. If it steps up to the world stage then that's when they need to pull their finger out. Let's see if they do.

I'm sure there are users who post more often than that in the gambling section for their own gratification.

Anyone who fakes it to make it will rapidly get found out and given the boot. I can't see myself ever going for a gambling campaign simply because I have less than nothing to say on the subject. More power to those who can.

Indeed. I think the figure he named was 10 days in a year or something for Bitcoin. Those days are almost entirely responsible for the yearly gain and if you miss them then you'll finish up in the red.

The risk with alts is the time you enter and the time you leave. I get the feeling people arriving now, or in the recent past will feel like geniuses and continue feeling that way as it shits itself to pieces again in year or two leaving them back where they started or worse.

I watched all of the Libra hearing in Congress or wherever it was. There was a clear awareness from plenty of lawmakers that they risked chucking away their edge and sending the whole space elsewhere. Whether others will be willing to loosen up a little, or just show some common sense, is another matter.

Sounds unfortunate no matter who he is.

Beyond that I find any type of 'thought leader' irritating in the extreme. If I come across one attempting to tell me how to live or what to think I immediately try to insert the device they're talking to me through down the nearest toilet after being stomped all over first.

I don't need some unsmiling weirdo to tell me men in a dress demanding to have their balls shaved in beauty parlours is a fucking joke. And anyone who makes a living from their opinions inevitably moulds and embellishes them to what the audience they attract wants to hear so eventually makes themselves an irrelevance.

I have little doubt that if you timed it right you'll finish up with much to vastly more if you dipped your phallus into alts but good luck getting the timing and choices right with that.

Don't get it.

It's not as if there's hundreds of people coming and going on a daily basis. It's probably a few worker bees locked in a warehouse trying not to go deaf. There's no stock deliveries. It looks like no one goes home at night and there probably aren't very many people there in total anyway.

Nah. The named countries are certainly much better at refining and packaging technologies and exploiting their potential. They don't best America and other Western countries in the initial invention stakes. And Chinese inventiveness peaked several thousand years ago. These days they just nick stuff.

As for 'blockchain', I'd be interested to know how much of an effect the language barrier has had, but I struggle to point to any significant technical development introduced by non Westerners. America hosts some of the biggest exchanges, has the most sophisticated financial instruments for crypto like GBTC and CME etc and probably has the most crypto owners. Despite that they may well throw it all away with onerous demands. It's something they should be conscious of.

So your gist is that you want to do fully legitimate transactions on the darknet? Such as buying your weekly groceries? I thought you meant legitimate in the sense of dodgy site least likely to rape you.

Erm, why?

No one's ever going to bother setting up a market on there for any reason other than avoiding the law. I've had a fiddle with Tor and it was so slow I nearly passed away. If 0.1% of customers will consider a crypto transaction on the open internet maybe 0.00000000001% would try the darknet alternative.

No, I meant it'll go into other areas of investment. It will land in the bank and then go somewhere else where it won't be eaten alive by inflation.

Any particular reason to avoid them? Cash is pretty much impossible these days for large amounts unless you want to end up like Pablo Escobar with rotting houses built with bricks of cash.

I would definitely prefer to avoid banks but only because of the risk of money getting frozen, but the chances of that are higher with exchanges.

Any money that enters my bank will go straight into Ostrich farms. Guaranteed riches.

A year since a post on there. Not even some tats or a flash of minge can tempt people to let go of their BTC.

This does not bode well for future birth rates.

I want a sizeable chunk out and it's going to stay out. Somewhere around half will do. That's not for the sake of riches, there may not be all that much, more for stability and the ability to focus on other things without having to pay so much attention. I want to be interested, not compelled.

These cycles are just too boring now. It's not stressful or disappointing but I'm sick of being tied to the same old waves of hysteria followed by years of dullness. The idea of doing it all again all in beyond this move upwards, if there is to be one, feels like more than I'm willing to endure.

Very, very little will go into any form of bank.

Bitcoin has turned me into a grade one dosser. I was one already but now it has well and truly upped the ante to the extent that there's no going back now.

Thanks for that.

Just bought more.

I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

There's nothing wrong with saying aspects of BlockstreamBorgLizardAxaCoreSegShitcoin go against what you initially signed up for and believe in.

What I am amazed at is how few who believe that are capable of stating that the alternative projects that shout this the loudest are clearly pieces of shit that drown many of the principles that it does still work hard to respect in a fountain of shitty shit.

Why is it so painful to acknowledge?

All there needs to be is a quiet and competent chain that does what it says on the tin. If you get rid of the lawsuits, lies, screaming, gaming, endless hard forks and 51% attacks there might actually be some people who are swayed by it.

Hmm. Sounds a bit Litecoin ish but sadly it doesn't have Bitcoin glued to it.

Well, unlike almost everything in cryptoland they no doubt do make substantial amounts of profit. You'd have to be nuts to go for it but less nuts than people who poured millions into projects with a plagarised one page white paper and a one line website.

They're all trustworthy until they're not.

Maybe the oldest and biggest still going is Hydra, a Russian one. They're the cheeky chappies who recently proposed an ICO.

https://www.coindesk.com/russias-largest-darknet-market-is-hawking-an-ico-to-fund-global-expansion

r/darkmarkets used to be the place to keep abreast of them but that was shut down. This looks like the closest equivalent but a bit more general - https://www.reddit.com/r/darknet/

This too - https://www.darknetstats.com

I put no thought into my guess whatsoever. I have no idea what the price will be and don't really care very much either. I fully expect to be badly wrong.

Jesus.

Sounds terrifying.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5135747.0