Its fascinating that crypto is finding a lot of following in a country like Vietnam. Most of us only ever hear about Vietnam in relation to the Vietnam War and its fascinating history as a part of Indo-China. It had a huge independence movement but somehow lost the momentum to communism and the war.

Lately, it has also suffered a lot of crypto scams. A lot of small investors were scammed by people who knew enough to run a crypto scam. This is such a sad state of affairs for developing countries. People in West build things and share it together to profit from it. Those in the developing countries who are lucky enough and knowledgeable enough to understand these new technologies, often choose to scam the masses for their personal gains.

Hopefully these intiatives are positive and not meant to scam people again. Do share the activities and what good come out of the conference.

Umm. I had just been making a post about the Chinese man somewhere. Here it is where people are talking about the new ranking taken out by china with ETH at number 1 and Bitcoin at number 13.

It does not make sense but China still does these things. It is because China is like this shrewd, self-preserving businessman who does everything with a long term plan. They are experts at making it sound like they are doing it earnestly. But they always have a plan. How would you say has Trump's "tough businessman" approach led to Chinese agreement. Trump basically threatened a trade war, something nobody else would do. The idea is so illogical that the chinese must have been caught off-guard.
They couldn't have prepared for such an orthodox, protectionist measure. It does seem to have worked for the time being. But seriously, This one combined with the new ranking post, I think my conspiracy theory does hold weight.

It has been a long time ambition of China to replace USD as a reserve currency with Renmibi. If it turns out to be bitcoin, I think they'll take that deal too.

If you go by PM Modi's rhetoric of using AI and Blockchain technology, we can be hopeful that all isn't lost yet. The problem is that things move at a breakneck speed in this field. The Indian ICO scene was just beginning to pick up with some serious ventures from Indians.

Just then, RBI served this body blow by choosing to be a complete ass and close gates on a technology that is being hailed as holding a lot of potential all overt the world. All they care about is the old talking points of black money and terrorist funding. I would love to see what data RBI brings to courts to show that bitcoin was indeed being used for terrorist funding etc.

In the dying hours, an ICO called Union Coin was being announced and then they trailed off all of a sudden. The spectre of jobless youth and low paying private company jobs in companies run by Ambanis and Adanis looms higher as BJP continues to consolidate its right-wing economics. It may just be for the benefit of these blockchain companies that they had to migrate at this time.

This is going to a bitter pill to swallow for everyone as KYC/ AML requirements keep increasing. The problem with unbanked people isn't just documentation but also low literacy levels and lack of basic infrastructure. You can't expect that kind of unbanked person to be able to use bitcoin safely anyways.

I find all this talk about "banking the unbanked" pretty much fluff. The people who will get onto bitcoin will have the necessary resources to own a cellphone and have access to a good enough network. Anybody who fulfills that requirement will surely have a basic identity document. If we talk about those who don't have them, or have to jump through too many hassles for it, for example an illegal immigrant trying to make some money. In these cases, I bet they'll already be following some underground means to manage their money. They can make the jump to crypto through such "underground" providers.

KYC/ AML requirements are necessary for governments to be able to take a reasonable view. Once you have acquired bitcoin, there are plenty of ways to maintain your privacy and anonymity. If you choose to use it for trading and earn an extra income, there shouldn't be a problem in paying the taxes.

I am not a Trump fan. The view that we get from the liberal media is mostly him being a person with a foul mouth, no respect for women and being a demagogue. This though seems to be a win for him.
Why would China agree to unilaterally reduce the trade deficit. The trade deficit means the Americans are buying more form them. The Chinese would continue to get a lot of USD if the deficit is maintained. Their agreeing to reducing the deficit means they don't care about the extra USD (Foreign reserves) anymore..

That can mean only one thing. The Chinese are bullish on Bitcoin. They have the miners, they have the users and now they don't want any more USD. What else could it possibly mean??!!
Wild assumptions aside, I think Chinese can not be trusted to be doing this only for sane business. If sane business was their only aim, they wouldn't have been investing billions in research and reverse-engineering American equipment to reach the same level as the USA in terms of stealth planes, warships etc. Chinese have been known to be the back-stabbers who will wait out and be all nice and warm till the moment they decide to takeover. They can truly be precise and ruthless in this.

After shitcoin and ICOs. looks like the time is now ripe for shitsites. These will be filled with ticker ads and contain all kind of unsubstantiated news about the latest ICO and the latest coin.
Another typical objective is to blow news out of proportion like the recent "Steve Wozniak dumps facebook and says Ethereum is just like Apple". A Forbes "contributor" picks up the story and then these shitsites go mad. The shit overflows into Bitcointalk where you start seeing crazy threads about a dozen-time hacked, centralized token over taking bitcoin.

Think of China as not a country but as One Man. A single guy with the ability to take decisions that are most beneficial for itself in the long run. The communist form of government makes it possible for them to say and do things that would otherwise be hotly debated in a democratic country and can lead to other parties taking the benefit.

That is why they can get away with assigning second rank to STEEM and have VERGE on that list. People who are going to get influenced by this will do the things that most newbies do. Buy the shitcoins that the chinese man wants to pump and sell their BTC that the chinese man wants to buy. The Chinese have been doing this like clockwork for a pretty long time now.

Those who fall for this will see the prices rise on this news and then the inevitable dump will come from the Chinese man as he buys into more BTC. If this is going to have any short term effect, that'll be pumping up these other alts and drop in BTC. The idiots will FOMO and buy Alts while Hodlers will buy the minor BTC dip.

If you think that the Chinese are going to not try and have a majority hold on BTC, a cryptocurrency that has potential to challenge the USD and that is supporting a hardware manufacturing industry, well then, you don't understand the Chinese man very well.

Bitcoin is the robust medium of exchange and store of value that ETH can never become. This has been shown by the various hacks it has undergone. Note that most bitcoin hacks have been on exchanges or due to losing private keys. There hasn't been a case of bitcoin's code being exploited.

Ethereum on the other hand has had quite a few screw ups where the code was exploited. Notably The DAO hack which prompted the centralized controllers of ETH to actually do a hard fork and breakup from the past. This shows that ETH is a centrally controlled coin and for all it's benefits, the billionaire investors wouldn't like to hold their money on something that another organization can change.

The next reason that ETH cannot have the same value is the ICO craze. The scam devs of ICOs are increasing the demand for ETH by asking for it in the smart-contracts. The raised ETH is supposed to be of two uses:
1. For Cash requirement by selling on exchanges
2. Using as Gas for running the Dapps on the network.

Several of these devs are deploying their own networks so they won't use it for the second purpose. The only remaining purpose is to be used for fulfilling cash requirement. That is why you are seeing concerted shilling from media and trolls. The devs who need to cash out will sell it on exchanges causing a crash of prices. Those who FOMO now into ETH will learn their lessons the hard way.

There has been an uptick of foolish newbies coming to Bitcointalk for shilling ETH. The foolhardiness of ICO investors is clearly visible. ETH has suffered more hacks and screw-ups than you can possibly know. It's buggy smart contracts has resulted in millions of dollars being frozen or stolen.

Such a bug and hack prone token will never be trusted by the largest investors for exchange of millions in value. It is riding on the ICO craze of newbies while bitcoin is sideways for the time being. Wait for BTC to regain momentum and it'll be clobbering time.

You can't help but marvel at the unprofessional, shitty coverage these websites are doing these days in the name of crytpo news. This is an old news. Here's the article at cointelegraph dated a month ago.

Seriously with so much shit floating around, how is one supposed to decide what is right and what is fake news. And again, Amazon getting a patent on it's ability to "track" crypto transactions is nothing to celebrate yet like people are suggesting here in their one liners. It depends on what the regulators will say on this.

Amazon maybe pushing this so they can convince the regulators about the KYC requirements in buying and selling goods on their e-commerce platform. It is a double-edged sword though. If the "tracker" works well enough to break all privacy (which i doubt it will), then it'll be a problem for bitcoin users. New challenges then.

Just people buying and selling at the exchanges causes the fluctations. Everytime a positive news comes in, new entrants flock to buy in. Intra-day traders are involved in a big way as they play with large amounts.
The major drops are caused by new about regulations, exchange hacks etc. Bitcoin continues to move sideways afterwards. Once enough time has passed and everybody is sure that nothing is wrong, they start FOMOing again and it rises back, inevitably, every time.

This is the bitcoin boom and gloom cycle. Just hodl tight and keep trying to earn whatever Satoshi you can.

The person saying this has jumped from JPMorgan to start her own Blockchain startup named Clovyr. If she is confident enough to make the jump then this is a pretty good sign on what she thinks about the future prospects of blockchain adoption.

Infact, some of the earliest individuals who invested into bitcoin and Ethereum at the right time, after it came out of the underground, were investment bankers and traders. They have been in on this for longer than the general public realizes. The problem is whether they are going to do a pump and dump on us now.. or actually going to switch to actively selling and trading bitcoin.

The way the economy around bitcoin will develop is that people will use it to buy services and goods. The majority of trade is in services. Even if you look at the forum itself and the bug bounties offered, you can see that the scope to earn bitcoin depends on providing IT services.

I think the clarifications submitted to Supreme Court by exchanges will include these arguments. India is one of the backend offices of the world in terms of services. So who better to become the next workers in line in the crypto economy. If we turn out to be smart enough, maybe Indians could even be amongst the innovators. This will be one aspect in which I see bitcoin can contribute by becoming a source of freelancing jobs for the score of jobless engineers graduating out of our institutions.

India won't be a trustworthy place to buy bitmain equipment. If you are looking to travel to buy, you should just go to China. RBI has already raised a hue and cry about it and it is very difficult to get custom clearance for anything mining related these days.
There are no legit, established vendors here in India who can sell you bitmain equipment.

It is really hard to predict what's gonna happen. A lot will depend on how expensive of a lawyer the exchanges can hire. The arguments from the government side can be very simplistic and straight forward.
For those in support of bitcoin, making it sound like it is about privacy, decentralization and Freedom of choice and not about Money laundering will be pretty hard. That too when most of the evidence will point to the fact that most of the "mota asamis" in Tier-1, Tier-2 cities were able to divert their cash into buying bitcoin.

It is going to be an interesting battle of wits. A lot depends on the presiding judges too. How progressive they are going to be on this issue and whether there will be any political compulsions involved.

The Prime Minister seems to be pretty pro-blockchain and pro-cryptocurrency. Would that have any bearing on Misraji? What other political angles can come into this? There is the "terrorist, money-laundering, black money, 15 lacs" issues.

Media, particularly television media channels cross all limits of stupidity. You really have to wonder whether these people are plain stupid or they actually have an agenda. Why the hell does Roger Ver get so much screen time? Can't they find a better "expert" or "ambassador" than someone who is known to lose his shit on online debates and brag about "I am a self made millionaire".

That just shows their intentions with bitcoin. They just don't want to have a mature conversation about the privacy, decentralization and economic aspects of bitcoin. They are happy in portraying it as some kind of fringe libertarian thing. Hardly a matter of surprise but this is definite proof for those who doubt media's complicity in moulding public opinion according to the instructions from political masters.

If they really wanted to look, there is more than enough information available to make this an informed discussion rather than make it a circus of people looking for get-rich quick schemes. Well, I sure hope we get to judge them like your last sentence suggest. And the misleading ones have to pay for this somehow.

Never heard of cryptotab. Though congratulations in discovering the forum and making an account. It has not been possible to mine using CPUs for several years now. It is usual for new people to hear about bitcoin and crypto and start clicking all sort of stupid links and install malware infected utilities.

First understand that this is a Jungle. Filled with riches for those who know the right tools to use but treacherous and dangerous for those who don't have a way. There are scammers, spammers everywhere. Earning BTC depends on two things:

1. Your capacity to invest.
2. Your capacity to learn.

While judging the first one, that is, your capacity to invest, you have to ask yourself what is the amount of money you are willing to lose completely and not fret about it.
The second question is the most important. You need to learn about Bitcoin and save yourself from the misinformation and FUD out there. Check out youtube videos by Andreas Antanopoulos about bitcoin and search google for Jameson Lopp's bitcoin resources. I am not posting the link so you can do the work yourself.

Understand the basics of installing a wallet and securing your private key and your mnemonic seed. Learn to keep your PC and browser malware free. There are cases where people lost there money after typing their mnemonic seed which was transmitted to a hacker by keyloggers. Understand that Bitcoin gives you the power to be your own bank. You need to learn the capacity you need for this.

Once you are sure that you know enough, the next part that come is earning. As already mentioned by hugeblack, there is the services section where you can offer your talent in exchange for bitcoin. Then there is signature campaigns on the forum itself. You will need patience and knowledge for this. On the forum, your reputation and knowledge is everything. If your intent is sincere, it shows. There isn't the kind of professionalism and respect that would have existed here a few years back, but still, there are people who are working to keep this place functioning and do notice when promising, young padawans come in.

Learn, interact, know people. Build your network and decide what you can offer to the community. You will soon be well on your way to earning some Satoshis.

As much as we would like these centralized, private blockchains to crash and burn, the threat posed by them shouldn't be underestimated. People who came to know about bitcoin before the 2016-17 explosion did care about the decentralized aspects of crypto. Those who came in after the mid-2017 explosion hardly care for the difference between a pre-mined, centralized token like Ripple and Bitcoin.

Imagine the excitement and sheep mentality of these people once established companies like facebook start offering these private blockchain cryptos. Media would be fawning over it like anything. The one possibility is that maybe the governments and banking institutions themselves would view this as a bigger threat. (Major technological corporations jumping into the game of creating and controlling money supply).

It is amazing how people are still falling for this shit. The third world bounty-hunters are understandable. We'll pounce at anything that promises money. But where are the investors coming from in the first place??
The recipe is too easy now. A website, a whitepaper, some uniques sounding shit taken from Sci-Fi RPG's, A bounty manager on bitcointalk, Lots of shitposters with fake twitter and FB followers and then a token sale with a false ticker on the website ("67.8% sold, HURRY!!").
Even if 1 out of 100 people watching it FOMO with a fraction of ETH or BTC, especially those that got theirs cheap, It's a solid win for the scammers.

Talking of which, Does anybody know any of these projects that started in around November-December and is doing alright in terms of value creation?? I see the DeepOnion scam still going pretty strong. Those who followed them know that those guys have truly been the masters of camouflage and deceit..LOL.

Right. Decentralizing everything has become the latest fad it seems.  The good thing though is that decentralization approach gives the competition a unique vector to eat into the market share of existing behemoths like Facebook and Twitter. Many attempts by Google and others have failed. If a truly decentralized and useful alternative does come up, we can be sure that people will gradually realize the importance of having their data not being stored in silos.

It is not in world's and society's long term interest for two companies to have such indisputable, iron clad monopoly on the whole of social media and our online lives, for whatever it is worth. There are a lot of ways this information can be and has been used for manipulation. Decentralization approach does give a way out for the developers and companies willing to invest in it. Who knows, maybe Facebook itself will do it.