I do think right now is a good time to buy Bitcoin because "Buy the dip!", but I personally wouldn't touch my other investments for it, especially if I've already earmarked them as retirement funds. It's always a good idea to keep a diverse portfolio and as a conservative investor, a large portion of that should be on the safer side, which crypto isn't.

That's pretty incredible. That must have taken a lot of dedication. Glad to see it paid off for the programmer. I must also say, this piece of news is a very welcome breath of fresh air among all the negativity surrounding crypto lately.

What isn't clear to me is, was the Bitcoin in the puzzle worth $50,000 in 2015, or is it worth $50,000 right now? $50k amounts to around 6 Bitcoins at the moment, and with Bitcoin being at $350ish in early 2015, that would only be worth around $2,100 then which IMO is a little low for such an elaborate puzzle. The puzzle HODL'd though and generated massive profits lmao.

Who? Do you have a link? He was pretty close. We entered December at around $7,500 if I'm not mistaken. That doesn't mean I'm sold on his predictions though. The meteoric rise from December was too good to be true, and Bitcoin simply crashed back to earth.

I wouldn't be surprised if we went as low as $5,000 at this point. It doesn't bother me either. The entire market is bloodied, so it's not like Bitcoin is the problem, unlike how things were when the network was clogged. This is just the cryptocurrency market doing what it does. Wild swings go both ways.

Each country has different laws, so I don't know what you can't understand there. Some are closed off to the idea, some simply don't want to go through the regulatory trouble, etc.


If you have an offshore account, I don't see why not. The legal implications would depend on what law is in place, but I seriously doubt you could get in trouble for dealings that technically happened abroad. That being said, it should be pretty hard for governments to find out you're trading Bitcoin if you don't go through an exchange, which will be illegal anyway if a ban is in place. If people can get away with illegal torrenting, it won't be much of a problem to get away with peer-to-peer trading.

Because they believe the price will bounce back. That's pretty much the entire rationale behind the buying the dip mantra. No one's kidding themselves, and not everyone is in it for the Lambo lol.

Because people want easy money, and these con-artists come with this promise. They don't know any better, and there really isn't a clearer explanation than that.

The stock market has "gurus" like this as well, so it's not like it's a new concept. They're just getting a lot more exposure because of crypto's sudden explosion. There's also another guy you missed, who I read about on reddit earlier:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7v7fgl/we_need_to_talk_about_tai_lopez/

It comes with free, legit classes as a bonus! The best way to deal with these con-men is to spread awareness, and we may as well start now.

Banks keep records too, but the problem with that is that the records are only as permanent as the bank in question wishes. That's centralization for you.

The advantage you speak of falls under Bitcoin's decentralization IMO, which is probably why people barely talk about it specifically. Still, I guess Bitcoin does have a niche in that area where every single transaction is logged no matter how small. It's pretty hard to keep track of how much money you spend on candy bars unless you record each purchase, but Bitcoin does that for you.

Wow. I've been wondering how these work. It's nice to get insight from someone who's actually participated in one. The idea behind it is simple enough, and very much believable enough for the average person to think it might actually work. Halfway through reading your post, I was thinking, "Hey, this doesn't sound so bad." I wouldn't have gambled away a large amount, but thanks for preventing that loss anyway lol.

It's crazy how easily the market can be manipulated though. It makes you realize that even Bitcoin could be used for such a thing with a big enough group.

If we're talking about mining Bitcoin, nope. They're not going to have nearly enough power to churn out a profit vs your electrical costs. You may want to look at other alts, though I have no idea which one you should go for.

You could take one to use as an air-gapped desktop wallet if you don't already have a hardware wallet. You may also want to run a full node. Seems like a waste to dispose of all of them.

Uh, the linked page doesn't have anything to do with what you're talking about lol. It's basically talking about the Lightning Network and how it could make microtransactions viable again. Nothing about Bitcoin's classification about money or asset.

Either way, these debates don't really matter, and you are free to think what you want to think. Governments are going to rule it one way, and it's very likely you can't do anything about it. It has value either way, and you can trade it however you want at the end of the day.

I would argue that it's much more of a threat now simply because of how much more there are in the market. Fake money is always a threat, but one billion fake USD circulating the market is much more of a problem than one million fake USD. If the nightmare scenario is true, then it has already done its damage at this point by inflating the entire market with non-existent money and it's just going to get worse as time goes on.

I don't know man. I mean, I did see the pattern you observed, but I honestly would not expect the trend to go on for three whole weeks. That's an eternity in Bitcoinland. Three weeks ago, we were at around 13k USD. We've had two or three massive price swings since then, and for the worse at that. I suppose they could just stop at any point, but they could be at a deeper hole than they were initially by then. Trading isn't for everyone.

If someone is upset about their losses and isn't patient enough to wait to at least break even (if that even happens lol), they should just cut their losses and move on. Bitcoin was never a guaranteed money maker, and no strategy will change that.

Well, most of them seem to be already in with the idea. It also seems like making sure to emphasize it's not legal tender is all the rage these days. It's a pretty smart move because that way, you don't undermine your own currency, and you still get to earn from it. It sucks for those who truly believe in the technology and ideology though. But yeah, either way, it does look like crypto is here for good.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting how Bitcoin is more vulnerable to real life thieves than cash in a bank. Then again, while there are advantages to taking care of your own money, it comes with its own set of complications. It makes you realize that bank withdrawal limits really is a security feature lol.

Either way, I think this issue is somewhat overblown. It really seems to have happened a handful of times, but that's really nothing but a tiny drop in the bucket, much like how there are cases of credit card fraud, but people still use it anyway. I'm all for awareness, but letting people know how much you have is, and always has been, a horrible idea. It kinda sucks that things like this have to happen before people start to realize.

This is true, but it's interesting how the technology being somewhat behind could also work in favor of Bitcoin. Check out this story:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42582343

I'm working under the assumption that limited infrastructure is one of the reasons why transferring funds across borders is expensive, but Bitcoin seems to solve that problems for at least a couple of people. Bitcoin fees are smaller, and the people won't even have to go through all that banking red tape as a bonus.

Bitcoin can certainly disrupt how the banking system currently operates, but I wouldn't go as far as to say Bitcoin will be the death of it. Bitcoin still has a lot of problems ahead of it, like scaling, volatility, etc.

They don't seem to be dropping it completely. It just won't be the default and only option anymore. There are no immediate plans for eBay to cut ties with Paypal that I know of.

People seem to be confused about this story and rightfully so. It's very much non-news. It's basically just saying that it's possible for eBay to pick up cryptocurrency as a payment option because it's currently looking for alternatives.

I would personally welcome this, but I'm not holding my breath. It's not like they mentioned looking over at crypto. It's much more likely for them to opt into more traditional options.

That depends. How much gain would you consider enough? How much risk would you consider enough? Enough, in this context, is completely subjective.

It goes without saying that the less money you put in, the less it will grow. It doesn't really matter how many coins you buy either. If you put in $1 in Bitcoin for a few satoshis and $1 in some shitcoin for like 100,000 pieces, if either grows 100%, you still have $2 in investments.

Just because a coin costs a few cents each doesn't mean they're bound to grow explosively either; you have to consider its market cap and probable ceiling. Ripple may cost less than a dollar right now, but it's unlikely to grow to $10, because that would put its market cap at twice that of Bitcoin's. It's a very crude way of looking at things, but it works for me.

Possibly. I mean, I've seen users reporting shady activity here on Meta and getting merited for it. I have no idea if they used the report function before posting though.

I personally think it's a good idea, but it seems like we don't really have enough moderators to check out all the reports (I often see people complain that their reports get ignored), and this is going to create a massive influx of reports that will almost certainly contain a lot of inaccuracy. We probably need more moderators before pushing through with something like this.

Under what context? Bitcoin transactions are immutable. That means no one can stop one address from sending funds to another address and vice versa.

Exchanges work kinda differently though. Your receiving address could have different funds from your "account", so I suppose they could ban it by making it so that funds sent from a certain address will not be credited to your account, though I've never heard of that happening ever.

I've never heard of exchanges banning transfers to certain addresses either, but since they're the one broadcasting your transactions for you, it's also possible.

Bitcoin is a work in progress. While I agree that it's currently outdated, things are being done on that front to address that. The next upgrade comes in the form of the Lightning Network, which aims to be just as fast, if not even faster, than the current available options.


You can send 5 sats/byte transactions again, so I don't know what you're talking about. Blame your exchange if this is the case with you.


If you pay a substantial fee (which is much lower at the moment), I can guarantee you your transaction will be confirmed in one or two blocks. Bitcoin is either slow or expensive, but rarely both.


This could be true, but if we're using price as the basis, it doesn't hold water at the moment, and everything else is doing equally bad.