I'm not a fan of stablecoins either, but despite the hate going towards them, especially USDT, they are doing their job exceptionally well. In fact, these tokens are one of the few tokens/coins with an actual utility.

USDT generates more volume than the tokens it has in circulation, and that on a daily basis. If that isn't a damn good utility in action, then I don't know what is. The fud wasn't enough to have its value tank further.

Bitfinex recently added a USDT/USD pair. I never expected them to list that pair, but they finally did it, and it will help them buy up sub $1 tokens and avoid paying $1 to people for coins they bought a few % lower.

Electricity is an important factor, but what people tend to overlook is how high the expenses of the larger farms are when it comes to their employees, the ground and properties they rent, etc.

Even if you're a smaller miner with a relatively higher electricity rate, you can still have it work in your favor with how you don't have much external expenses to focus on, especially if you don't mind mining at a loss.

The larger farms have to cough up the same amount worth of expenses on a monthly basis, and with the price tanking, you have to sell more coins to pay the bills. A 15% lower difficulty adjustment isn't doing much here.

Could be, but in the same way, Q4 has *nearly* always been a bullish time frame for Bitcoin, yet it turned out to be one of the worst time frames of the last years. Nothing makes sense when the market is messed up like it is right now.

It does the opposite of what we believe it will do. Most of the TA guys based on seasonality expected the price to break out of its triangle to the north, but south it went. It won't surprise me if people will be fooled yet again.

Either way, it's always good to have fiat aside during a bear market, because there simply isn't a way to know where the market will bottom out. I rather work with the market and buy it down than to go long and expect a massive leg up.

Crypto has proven to do the impossible, so we can't rule out any price levels from this point, but we have to be realistic enough to understand that once prices move up or down people turn either super bullish or super bearish.

Overall, rallies usually tank back to where they started if it isn't based on fundamental growth. Before the $10,000 mark was reached last year we had a failed rally to $5000 which bottomed around $3000 which is the price it started rallying from.

Doesn't it look like coincidence that last year during the all time high the CME platform went live, and that now we're nearing the bottom we might again see the launch of another legacy Bitcoin futures platform?

People are alert. They only allocate a small portion of their balance to slowly buy at various levels in an attempt to get their buying price down to the lowest possible average. That's the smartest way to deal with a downtrend.

As long as that happens, there simply isn't a way to effectively cut through the firm selling pressure. I have set some buy orders just above the $3000 mark just in case it turns out to be a very brief visit.

Bottoms usually aren't available to buy into longer than a few seconds with so much algorithmic activity in the market. I will be buying some Ethereum as well and have my buy orders ready below the $100 mark.

I doubt we'll see it any time soon, because most of what's happening in this space is based on what's happening during bull phases, because that's what makes people interested, and that's what pays the bills.

If no one is interested in your tech, and the shallow interest that's here is declining rapidly during the current bear market on top of it, you'll end up on the wrong side of the road.

It's going to be interesting how the ecosystem handles itself if the bear market goes on for another year, or longer, because it will bleed much harder than what we have seen already. I'm not pessimistic, just realistic.

Initially, sure, but the whole point is that we don't know how advanced chainalysis is when it comes to linking taint.

They are very likely test using a wide variety of mixers, all to look for miniscule details allowing them to know how to recognize funds coming from a mixer. If they know that, they could force an exchange to put these funds on hold.

I of course hope they aren't far developed in that aspect, but won't rule it out either. They probably will safe their best tools for whales and ignore smaller fishes, because they don't gain anything by exposing their capabilities.

Not sure what made you think so, but developments of this nature take a lot of time, in some cases even years. 1ML.com is a site allowing you to see the adoption taking place, it has shown some impressive growth lately.

Summarized: we need LN more than ever, and Bitcoin as it is right now isn't average joe ready. Why would they use a form of money that requires so much hassle prior to the moment they actually spend it?

That also applies to other crypto currencies, if it isn't the confirmation times and fees being an obstacle, the volatility itself will be. Money is meant to be something you spend without thinking. Crypto isn't that.

People did that to themselves by expecting the price to bounce through last year's high again. Admittedly, much of this is fueled by retarded perma bulls such as Tom Lee, but you are still supposed to do your own research.

If you take words from whatever self claimed expert for granted, then you are asking for problems, because these experts base their predictions on what happened last year, which is no longer relevant to what happens this year.

People complaining don't care about the current levels, they want to see the price pump through $20,000 sooner rather than later, because that's very close to their break-even point.

They are too stupid to realize that buying at current levels significantly lowers their overall buying price, which means that they could break even close to $10,000 instead of $20,000 which will likely take years to break.

By the time we're even remotely close to have mined the last couple of Satoshis, we're dealing with different (far more cost efficient) hardware and mining farms owning their own power plants.

In the long run, we might even see Bitcoin turn into a POS coin in the worst case scenario. Possibilities are wide open and no one right now knows what the exact outcome at that point will be.

If you're forced to act, you'll do everything needed to make sure your incentives are well protected. I'm glad we don't have to think about it much right now, because we have other things to focus on.

People have been made thinking about how important the dominance in market cap is, while it's not important at all. Is Ethereum less functional or less popular now it has been surpassed by XRP? Nope.

All the XRP fanboys were celebrating that it went above Ethereum, but for what? Did they win anything by that? They are so dumb, that they don't even understand that XRP has surpassed Ethereum more than once.

By the time Ethereum starts pumping again, it will greatly outperform XRP, which is usually underperforming when the rest of the market goes up. Years ago no one even cared about market caps, and now it's "law".

Recovery is quite a relative term. Recovery to what, insanely overpriced levels? Current prices are a fantastic entry point, but we're going to go up in a slower but more sustainable way.

If we happen to break through the $10k mark then it could be seen as a new all time high. It won't hold directly because every round level will trigger traders to secure profits, but eventually we're above $10k again, and for good.

People who continue to dollar cost average their entry points will eventually come close to catching the bottom, and that's exactly what I am doing. This doesn't require any TA or other nonsense. Everyone can do it.

I'm sure that most of the people here are so stressed out about the bear market and their paper losses, and will continue to be during the next cycles, that they lost and will continue to lose a couple of years worth of their life.

In all fairness, most of the price growth that Bitcoin is going through is well beyond what it is actually worth, so no doubt the price will continue to follow what it has been doing since the very beginning.

The past is all we have, and as time goes by, it turns out that the past is the best indicator of what will be happening in the future. It doesn't have to be a 1:1 movement, the fact that the movements rhyme tells me enough.

I think most of the services accepting Bitcoin really expected it to significantly increase their revenue. Bitcoin continues to go up, made people very wealthy, and merchants probably thought to share in people's happiness.

They completely ignored how we have people holding Bitcoin not willing to spend their coins, because every purchase likely results in disappointment weeks or months later, because the price keeps going up.

The speculative nature of this market works against Bitcoin's currency aspect. It's not Bitcoin's fault, but people do blame it on Bitcoin because it was said to be a currency when they joined the industry. People don't realize how toxic they are themselves.

I already noticed how some of these influencer parasites have started to remove content. I like how we're seeing regulators do what people expect them to do. It's pretty late, but better late than never.

Maybe that this will help giving honest projects a fair shot to actually build up something useful, where they now are being ignored because of all the scams promising people the moon.

Only seeing the SEC do this is already a clear signal that promoters of these scams should watch every step very carefully. They were the main reason BitConnect managed to grow out so large and make a lot people lose everything.

It's his initial experience, so he hasn't yet encountered any of that what you are referring to. It very likely happens on every derivative platform since they all have similar incentives.

BitMEX is by far the largest platform, so when something happens over there, you'll definitely get to know something happened, which isn't always the case with other (much smaller) platforms.

The danger of these platforms is that people easily overestimate themselves after a few profitable trades with smaller amounts. Just like in gambling, if people win and gain confidence, they usually up their amount and rekt themselves.

It's definitely a good thing that you mention how important it is to use the stop loss feature, because beginners tend to overlook the importance of that and wipe our their entire position in the process.

I think it's safe to say that those who support XRP are orders of magnitude worse than the group you are referring to. It's mind boggling how upset people get if you even dare to point them at XRPs shortcomings.

It has gone so far, that crypto "influencers" on social media carefully choose their words and think it through twice before actually saying something about XRP. Not sure how they got so involved, but it's interesting nonetheless.

They keep pointing at banks coming in and the utility, yet no one of them actually used it for anything, neither do they know if banks are actually planning to use it in the future.....

If you bought the $5500 dip and the price would have gone back over $6000 directly people would congratulate you. Now the price has gone down well below that level, they make fun of those who bought that dip.

Isn't it the same as what happened last year? People right now literally make fun of those who bought the top, while back then it could have pumped over $50,000 without much problems.

The way the price kept going up continuously last year makes going from $20,000 to $50,000 a piece of cake. People didn't only held their coins firmly, but they bought more to book more profits while the price keeps increasing.

I honestly haven't ever seen a legit crypto related investment allowing the average person here to generate passive income. All currently available options are either outright scams, or simply not viable.

Investments in crypto should always be seen as an active investment, even when it concerns trading bots. I see people hype up trading bots allowing them to earn like 1-5% per day guaranteed, but that's utter nonsense.

People should focus on other (non crypto) income streams, because the fear that's going through the market during corrections is a clear indication that people have put their everything into crypto.

Those who are calm and not bothered by the current bear market don't depend on crypto to do well. It makes you sleep a whole lot better knowing that whatever happens, you're still doing great and your wealth isn't in danger.

Diversification is useful if you own a little bit of something that isn't the same as what you already own. If your portfolio consists of EUR, USD, JPY, that's not diversification, but a bag full of similar promises doomed to fail.

I'm not sure how long it will take for governments to load up on Bitcoin, but it will happen eventually, especially when they acknowledge how flawed their own system is. Them loading up on gold happens for a reason.

You don't load up on gold if you are confident in your own system and that what's playing outside of it. Russia and China have been the largest hoarders of gold in the last couple of years, is that a surprise? Definitely not for me.