My understanding of what preferred stocks are are similar to yours. As far as I know they are quite similar to bonds, given that investors will have assets liquidated for them first over normal stocks if Kraken does go bankrupt, from a legal standpoint.

I don't really understand then the notion of democratising access to their equity, given that this isn't really common stock. Perhaps there is a twist on their instrument that would make it similar to owning equity in their company, but who knows.

At this stage I think there shouldn't be any concerns as to their state financially, but their motives for raising these funds should be questioned.

I doubt that anyone would be interested in considering a second opinion.

Why have you only decided to remove the malware from your site after a scam accusation is launched against you? If you have the capability of verify and remove the malware, why did you not do so when your "third party" developers handed over the finished website? Are you that unprofessional as to not audit anything that's put on your site by a third party?

And this is assuming that you aren't lying, which is debatable.

It's your responsibility as a web admin to ensure that your site is safe and malware free, you can't push that onus onto the consumers and expect them to give you a second chance.

I've been through the other major bear market between 2014-2016, like lots of others here.

Though my advice to you is probably going to be somewhat different. I'd say that unless you're a day trader by profession, there is really no point in trying to take advantage of intraday movements especially when you don't even have time to monitor the markets actively, nor have the knowledge of short term trends and charts (I'd say even I don't) to say comfortably that you're going to profit overall off your trades.

I always default back to analysing fundamentals and market sentiment, as opposed to concerning myself with short term stuff that just moves arbitrarily half the time. For example this upcoming bull market is likely going to be driven by institutional adoption which will spark further demand, and we're already seeing the start of it given that market sentiment is no longer as bearish as it was.

It doesn't mean that you don't sell and buy when the opportunities arise, and it's not purely 'hodling' per se, but I believe that focusing on bigger cycles will yield you more results in the long run, if you don't know what you're doing with intraday trading.

Firstly, let me preface by saying something that I've said for a long time - Tom Lee is one of the most unreliable analysts in the mainstream media. I honestly feel like that sometimes, his predictions are completely arbitrary and backed by no tangible proof.

However, I'd probably agree with the sentiment reflected through the poll this time.

It should be apparent to anyone right now that a recovery is underway due to the shift in market sentiment from bearish to bullish over the last few months, but I certainly don't think that overall, there is anywhere as much buzz and fear of missing out in the market yet to say that the people calling for further collapses down to sub $1k levels will all of a sudden shift their stance completely. If the $10k psychological barrier can be breached then expect a huge increase in bullish sentiment.

If we're talking about the weak hands that sold at the bottom of the bear market though, I think they're already FOMOing, since they've demonstrated that their sentiments can be manipulated very easily.

Even though duckdice doesn't have the cleanest reputation, I highly doubt that if there weren't any wrongdoings or breaches of the ToS on your side that they would scam you out of such a trivial amount.

I'd definitely give some more time to respond before jumping to conclusions because you simply cannot expect customer support to be instant all the time, especially in a ticket system. You could be waiting even a couple of days.

What is interesting to me though isn't so much the pending review withdrawal, but why you were blocked by chat. Did you manage to ask them about that issue as well?

Interesting move. I've used both services and they pretty much offer the same thing. Both try to incentivise people to do off chain transactions with their respective platforms as to reduce fees, though Xapo's focus probably is more so on the microtransaction part of the equation.

Buwaytress raises an interesting point about the coins in custody at Xapo. It could be possible that Coinbase now wants to monopolise the custodial market and they feel like that this is a stepping stone.

But if anything, it's really getting rid of competition as opposed to integrating their services together, if this deal does somehow get finalised. It will also be interesting from a Xapo account holder's point of view if the transfer does occur, what the procedures will be and how much friction will be caused. But at the end of the day - they're in *advanced talks*, nothing is confirmed.

Why would you withdraw fiat to your credit card? That's my question.

You'll find a lot more exchanges that are willing to deal with wire transfers than a direct deposit into your credit card, and there is pretty much no difference in the two. Once you get the funds in your bank, simply transfer it over to your credit card account to pay it off, and that process doesn't take long at all.

If you have a linked debit card to your bank account, you don't even need to do any in between steps. Once the wired funds hits your account, you spend it right away. Don't limit yourself to options that offer withdrawals to a card when a transfer essentially does the same thing.

BTW, I'd strongly recommend against using CEX.io for the reason that they have a track record of being quite bad with dealing with anything related to fiat.

Exactly. That coupled with the fact that gift cards were always a high risk payment method probably prompted the change. Besides, AFAIK there's a lot more deals for selling/buying gift cards on LBC's main competitor Paxful (especially for anonymous deals) than LBC themselves.

Though, does anyone know if this is just a removal of a category of payments on Localbitcoins, or an outright ban on trading GCs?

If it's just removing the gift card category, then people are technically still able to trade gift cards under categories like "other online payments", or locally, through the platform. If it's an outright ban, how do they plan on enforcing it?

I don't really understand your sentiment in regards to BTC potentially dipping down to $4k.

The market sentiment has shifted to the bullish side of the spectrum, and though it is likely that a temporary dip will come sooner or later after this rally, there is no reason to assume that the previous bottom will be retested even if the $8k resistance proves to be too much, if you simply look at the change in expectations of investors from the bear market to now.

Personally, I believe that $8k will be established as support as a matter of time. We've been trading above that level for some time now and given the fear of missing out, it shouldn't be resistance for too long. The general trajectory for the long term in this current cycle is still bullish and that's all that matters.

I agree with the timing. 2021 seems to be the most likely bull market peak given all the historical data we've got, because halving will have a significant impact on the scarcity of new coins, as well as a psychological impact on traders.

I'm not fully comfortable yet with predicting a price for the peak, however, because of the magnitude of the last bull market as well as the fact that this time round, prices will most likely be less prone to sudden big movements given the larger market cap.

Right now all we can be sure of is really the fact that a bull market is coming, and that we've definitely seen the bottom of the bear market already and it's extremely unlikely we'll see prices dip back to even $5-6k at this point. I'd still be accumulating since it's only been a few weeks of bullishness thus far, and there is a long way to go.

You're right. A lot of investors into these products are misinformed by people on social media and Youtube that suggest this as some sort of passive income scheme, which misleads them into investing while thinking that there is a somewhat guaranteed profit to be made.

But, the cloud mining industry is just extremely shady as a whole, and you simply cannot place all the blame on the investors.

You simply don't know whether or not they are mining at full capacity of what they claim. 'Fractional reserve' mining is probably something that is very widespread around the industry. Not to mention all the scandals involving hashflare terminating lifetime contracts, and upping the minimum withdrawal rates, etc. These aren't detailed in the contract per se, and is just shady behaviour from individual companies.

What I see with HitBTC is extremely shady. And that's reflected through their forum rep as well.

In the past they have done extremely similar stuff with asking for KYC when people try to withdraw, and going to lengths of even asking for proof of funds even though these requirements were never mentioned when you deposit. Only when you go and try to withdraw do you find out that these are all needed.


They will most likely again cite their ToS, which likely includes sections that states if they have suspicion over what your account is used for, they are entitled to ask for KYC info. But I do believe that a lot of these are unwarranted and completely unbased, which definitely raises the question of whether they are doing this for the sake of keeping customer funds.

The rollback approach is clearly not something that should be pursued, and apparently even CZ has agreed that after consulting a bunch of people.

I think that the main thing that attracted people to Binance wasn't the fact that their funds are more secure in there or anything, but the fact that they had the most liquidity for any exchange that allowed semi-anonymous accounts to be registered. People simply don't want to go through the hassle of having to verify themselves on exchanges.

But this again shows that things can go south even with an exchange with a good track record, so as Chris! said, make sure that you take coins off exchanges and onto a bitcoin address that you actually control whenever possible.

Have they already publicly stated the method by which they'll be filling in this loss, btw?

The comments are fake for sure. No one is getting a single cent paid out to them from that site. It's good that you recognised this and actually asked on the forum before proceeding to invest, because buying Youtube comments is extremely cheap and can be used to mislead people into thinking that something is actually legit. Similar to buying fake reviews, if you will.

The community has seen so many of these HYIP scams and this is just another incarnation of the same scheme.

Use your common sense. If big financial institutions with millions in capital can't do it, why can they?

I've only dealt with Neteller and Skrill once or twice and it ended up with my account getting limited eventually with not even that much of a transaction volume. So it does speak a lot about how privacy unfriendly they are.

I never had to pay a fee in order to use their service or to start my first transaction though, probably because I'm not in an asian country.

But the thing is that Bet365 is their own entity and they have the power to make their own decisions to accept whatever payment processors they deem fit. There is simply nothing you can do as the consumer to change that, apart from perhaps writing support letters to pressure them. It might also come from a security/regulatory standpoint as to why BTC and Perfectmoney isn't accepted. Perfectmoney is definitely not the most legit payment processor out there, in fact, it's extremely shady.

I still think that there is quite a bit of resistance at the $6k level, which is the reason why we've essentially hung around this $5.5-5.9k zone for so long now.

Furthermore, I'm also expecting a short term adjustment to again come at any time in the short run, because we've simply posted consecutive gains for so long.

But I think the bullish trend is now established and it's clear that a bull market is emerging in Q3 and Q4 at the latest, if not already here. I still think right now dollar cost averaging is a good strategy to go for in terms of accumulation, before any major pumps happen that trigger mass fomo.

Their site is extremely poorly made (just look at their logo), yet they claim to have their own product line. That itself should have been a huge warning sign.

There has been a huge influx of fraudulent mining rig manufacturers/sellers in the past 1-2 years, popping up under different domain names. But almost always they'll have a mediocre site design and no proof that they actually have stock on hand. And since you are forced into sending first through the site, you can't use escrow.

If they're asking you to order more rigs in order to receive previous ones, don't believe them. It's obvious what they are doing, and although it's very unlikely that you'll get any funds back, you don't want to send them more funds and hope that they will somehow turn legitimate.

Of course it can be implemented in the bitcoin blockchain through a fork, if there ever comes to a time where the fungibility of bitcoin is under threat. Perhaps due to exchanges potentially blocking certain inputs or tainted coins in the future.

But I doubt that it'll happen any time soon, because there simply isn't really a reason at the moment to do that.

Plus, for niche users that are privacy centric they are most likely just going to use the existing privacy coins until the demand for such a feature for bitcoin arises. BTC is already irreversible, and pseudo-anonymous, which for its purposes right now is sufficient.

There are probably more debit cards available and Wirex is definitely not the only one, but you're right on the issue.

The problem isn't a lack of bitcoin debit card providers per se, though. There is a lack of anonymous debit cards that could previously be used without any verification, and now, every single provider requires you to provide at least basic ID before you are able to use their services.

There isn't really nothing that could be done though, because this stems from a) the tightening of regulations which increase barriers for entry for prospective providers and b) the tightening of policies from corporations like Wavecrest in the past that has limited certain services from being able to be provided. You just got to make do with what you've got, or simply convert your BTC into fiat every now and then.

I honestly don't think that this statistic says much about the level of adoption by high net worth individuals at all. I'd be surprised if actual adoption figures are that high for these people on a global basis.

The fact that they conducted this survey means that they most likely have some sort of affiliation with crypto investment packages or services already, which increases the propensity that one of their clients is actively investing in a cryptocurrency. That in itself might skew the data.

Also, speculation =/= adoption. A lot of these people are probably opportunistic and don't recognise the underlying merits of bitcoin that make it valuable, but instead just want to ride the short term markets. They might only invest in derivatives and never set up a bitcoin wallet, for instance.

But the thing that we do know for sure is that adoption is going to be on the rise, potentially accelerated by the next bull market as well.