The most prominent issue that is currently hindering bitcoin adoption is still the fact that not a lot of people are educated about bitcoin at all. You may think that bitcoin would be well known right now after the bull markets of 2013 & 2017 in the general public, but that is far from the truth. People may know that bitcoin is a currency, but they have no idea why it's needed at all from an economic point of view, and if they don't know that, then why would they bother adopting at all? A lack of education is definitely something of an issue.

Also, there are a lot of countries that discourage people from investing in crypto by putting out regulations that basically make it extremely hard for anyone to enter the crypto market.

But the fact that there are so little people that are actually adopters of BTC only mean that the potential of BTC to rise in the future when more adopters rush in is extremely big.

Bitcoin isn't really an investment scheme as some people make it sound like. However, the primary economic reason why investing in bitcoin makes sense is the fact that its supply is limited and hard coded, and cannot be manipulated.

This means that bitcoin as an asset or currency will store its value over the long term, unlike fiat currency which can the monetary supply of can be freely manipulated by a central entity. That is the biggest attraction of bitcoin to me, as a currency and store of value.

Of course you bring up a good point as well, the fact that there are so little adopters right now that have actually bought into BTC, compared to the world population. I believe that adoption is going to continue to grow consistently, and demand for bitcoin over the long term should rise quite steadily as well. So not only can Bitcoin store its value over the long run, it also has a high likelihood of increasing in value.

I think that it's extremely likely that people are just making a big fuss out of this for nothing, there is no evidence that these coins are actually dumped. All that is shown is that the coins have been moved, and nothing else.

But traders and media like to overreact to these sort of happenings, and make it seem like that BTC is imminently going to go down as a result of this, which is probably not the case.

In fact, this dump could be completely just because of the fact that resistance at $10k was too strong, and BTC actually tested that level multiple times with no avail. In that case, anyone can see that a correction was going to come, but it was only a matter of time.

This guy has been accused of multiple scams in the past, you should have checked his trust ratings before you dealt with him at all. If you actually did some research, you would have realized that everyone who dealt with him essentially got scammed.

All of his threads are either self moderated, or locked, or perhaps both. But all of them also offer too good to be true rates on gift cards, even if he delivers them to you they were never going to be legitimately obtained.

Avoid sending first to anyone on this forum, always use escrow unless someone has a good amount of reputation. You can't say that the forum is bad just because you were not careful.

That's some hope for the OP to get his money back then, if you eventually got your funds back. But 2 months seems like a hell of a long time to wait for a simple withdrawal to be credited to your address, or just to receive something back from support. Good thing that you left that exchange.


Yes, although I agree with the fact that almost all exchanges last year had problems on with their support unable to handle as many requests as they received on a regular basis, it's not an excuse for such poor performance.

Liqui should at least disable sign ups or trading for the time being until they expand their customer service team. Customers have the right to resolve their problems in a respectable time limit, and Liqui isn't cutting it right now.

It's just a normal correction.

I couldn't find anything major in the news as a reason that would have affected bitcoin prices on a large scale, or at least as large of a scale as we have seen. Prices have simply corrected as a result of $10k being too strong for the upward momentum to break through.

Prices could move sideways from this point on for some time, but that in itself only gives investors more opportunity to buy in at lower levels in my opinion. Nothing to panic about, there isn't even that big of a dump.

Of course there is always a possibility that within an exchange there are immoral actors that are abusing their powers, however I don't think that you have sufficient proof that it's something that was done by the inside. Even if it was, you simply can't accuse them of doing something wrong when you don't have the proof.

If the hacker actually had access to your email, then it would make sense since he could have simply deleted all of your emails. The chances of someone hacking you compared to yobit targeting you individually are probably much higher, even though they are very shady.

Change all your passwords straightaway, including your email. And yes, stop using yobit. Yobit is one of the worst exchanges that have ever existed.

Finally, a definitive list of exchanges with their respective withdrawal fees for each of the major crypto. Well done OP. I remember that there was another one on the forum somewhere else, but that was outdated pretty quickly and only included BTC withdrawal fees.

You may want to add Yobit. Although it's one of the worst exchanges that have ever existed, I think that this list should still include as many exchanges as it can. All the withdrawal fees can be viewed easily on their site.

Hopefully this can be updated regularly with community contributions, since exchange withdrawal fees are currently being asked around as a question a lot.

Yeah, these phishing links have definitely very widespread right now. It's not just one or two users that are spreading these links. The format seems to be the same within each of these, so you can definitely be on the lookout for them.

Just use your common sense, anyone that don't know sending you a PM itself should be alarming, and any links included should be dealt with carefully.

Most of the people who are spreading these links are actually hacked accounts themselves, and are spreading these links without any knowledge of it, so I'm not sure why he actually gave you his BTC address as if you were going to actually send any money to him


It's a link which on the surface is a legitimate link to a bitcointalk topic, but when you click on it the hyperlink redirects you to a phishing site (most likely myrippleaddress).

Right.

But yeah, I agree. If there is such hidden clause that is completely vague with no definitions of when this clause will ever be applicable, and the fact that your account balance can be frozen at any given time just based on baseless assumptions without proof, and as a result you having to go through a sophisticated verification process, even if you are already verified, then holding big amounts of coins on there is dumb.

Whether or not this is a newly added clause, hopefully traders, specifically traders with large volume realize that there is this risk involved in storing large amounts on LBC, and LBC has demonstrated that they are tightening the rules, which further increase risks of a suspended/frozen account.

Surprise, surprise.

In what way is bitcoin immoral? Is being an alternative currency to fiat immoral? If that's the case, then is gold immoral? At least do some research before you speak. As OP said, baby brains as a comparison to bitcoin is just absolutely ridiculous. The government accepts bitcoin, there are regulations surrounding it, and it's growing. Baby brain dealing is something of another kind.

And how exactly are people who push bitcoin as a currency and as an idea for decentralization a disgrace?

Yes, bitcoin can be speculative. But that's not all it is. There's a difference between bitcoin's price fluctuation, and bitcoin itself, and it's definitely not immoral.

Sorry to hear that you got scammed, OP.

But this was a known scammer with a negative reputation from the beginning. A simple check of his reputation would have revealed exactly that. The thread was also locked and self moderated to prevent anyone from commenting negatively, another obvious sign that this is a scammer. Never deal with gift card sellers, without reputation, period. Let alone people who lock and self moderate their sales threads.

Not to mention that all of his "vouches" are delivered through his alts, who are conveniently, also tagged for scamming.

Next time, please do be more careful. This was very obviously a scam. The chances of you retrieving the funds are tiny.

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Absolutely, that is very, very disturbing.

This means regardless of if you are unverified or verified, there is still the possibility that localbitcoins will ask you to provide proof for the fund sources, and that is a complete nightmare to have to go through as a AML measure. Just look at the amount of people currently getting their funds held up by HitBTC right at this moment, being asked for every detail of their source of funds.

I don't know if this clause was always there, or was only recently added. But the fact that the ID verification measures are tightening suggests that it could soon become much worse than what it is right now. Because this clause basically says that we can hold your funds, as well as you ban you from trading.

All very interesting points.

However, 3, 4, 7, and 10 can all actually be viewed as advantages for bitcoin.

The fact that bitcoin is decentralized, and is irreversible, is huge. Also, nobody can confiscate your bitcoins like the US government did with gold back in the early 20th century, because of the fact that there is no physical form, yet your funds can be stored trustlessly on an address.

Of course, I'm not saying that bitcoin doesn't have disadvantages, but I believe that it's got so much to offer in advantages compared to disadvantages when compared to the traditional fiat currencies. Just for one, bitcoin is a long term store of value, fiat is obviously not.

I mean, they are definitely different, but they also have their similarities.

I think that OP is simply trying to point out the similarities and trying to demonstrate that BTC can already be considered to be a valid, legitimate, and somewhat mature investment (at least compared to the rest of the crypto sector) and asset, comparable to blue chip stocks. Even if they are different in how profits are generated or their values stem from.

At the end of the day, I do think that bitcoin is going to continue to thrive in the long term. It's going to continue to be the leader of the entire crypto sector, and even though it doesn't generate any dividends per se, its property of being decentralized and a store of value for the long term will definitely win over investment in the long run.

I've saw a huge wave of Liqui complaints last year, and their support seemed to stop responding entirely to support tickets. It's annoying as hell to deal with, because they're the ones at fault and nobody is trying to assist you in getting your funds, which are rightfully yours, back.

That's why a lot of people have stopped using Liqui after the period of support absolutely ignoring all messages, and withdrawals being stuck for ages.

I think I saw before that at least one person got his issue sorted out eventually, after a long wait (can't remember who, though). But since the only people who can help you is Liqui themselves, it doesn't really matter. It's going to be a waiting game.

Definitely Binance right now, their support is probably above average right now, and there's a lot of people using them and jumping ship from other exchanges due to the fact that they are one of the better exchanges out there. As magneto said, it's just a nice balance for sure.

Binance's BTC and altcoin withdrawal fees consistently rank among the cheapest available, as well.

You can't really say that an exchange is best just because a certain crypto's withdrawal fees are the best available though, because not only do withdrawal fees differ within an exchange depending on the crypto you are withdrawing, you're not considering the security of your funds at all.

Check out this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3690816.0, it's got a nice table.

I agree with 1Referee, most exchanges customer experience have definitely gone noticeably downhill from the last year. Although I definitely agree with the fact that the flood of new users definitely made the situation worse, most of the times, the exchanges could have, and should have handled customer support better.

I wouldn't say that HitBTC is the worst exchange, at least yet, because Yobit has most consistently performed the worst from experience, and has never taken any steps to better their service. But they are definitely still one of the worst exchanges to use, especially if you have a high trading volume.

Recently, they seem to be bombarding users with suspensions and asking for unnecessarily high amounts of KYC documents that other exchanges don't need. I don't know if it's just them trying to delay things, or an actual regulation. But either way, it's a very tedious process. Their absolutely trash support doesn't help either, they'll give you vague instructions, or sometimes take days to get back to you.

Thanks for the heads up.

These scam attempts have really gone very elaborately, trying to take advantage of people who don't have much experience dealing with crypto. Previously, it was just a phishing email that supposedly was sent from myetherwallet, but now, it's getting much more sophisticated.

Always be careful when clicking open URLs from emails, particularly if the person who sent it to you has a questionable identity. Furthermore, just never expose your private keys to any third parties, period. Bounty campaigns/wallets/exchanges, whatever. None of them have the right nor the need for your private keys, in order to claim a promised reward.

I've heard before with people saying that they are asked to provide a huge load of personal information, as well as where their funds are sourced by HitBTC, just to get their funds unfrozen, and their accounts unsuspended.

HitBTC has a pretty bad track record, and account suspensions are definitely not anything new to HitBTC administration.

Have you contacted their support to ask for the reason why you are suspended yet? It takes them some time to reply, but make sure you keep following up with tickets if they don't resolve previous ones. You deserve your money back, and $50k is no amount to joke about.

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