That's what baffles me as well. But who can verify that these transactions actually took place? Probably nobody. Everything is going to remain "reportedly" until the investor himself actually clarifies in public, which probably will never happen.

The thing is that bitcoin itself did not contribute to these losses. The market movements did. The market cycles did. And he should have judged that more precisely than what he did.

I personally back in 2017 started to unload as soon as it became clear fear of missing out was what was driving the macro crypto bull market, while buying back bit by bit when prices regressed down below 5 figures. I'm surprised at the decision by a guy who's been through so many bubbles to not recognise the bubble but instead, try enter at the peak.

Very interesting piece.


This was what was the most striking in my opinion.

I can't really envision such a dual system to be used because of how inconvenient it would be, which is part of the reason why countries are currently pushing for cashlessness and gradually phasing out cash, so that the 0% interest rate floor is essentially wiped out. But without negative interest rates, the central bank can still perform quantitative easing regardless.

I don't know if this kind of artificially stimulated consumption can be sustainable in the long run, when you go into the negative territory. It'll be interesting when cash gets completely phased out what happens in countries with interest rates significantly below 0% (for retail, not interbank), though that might not be reality for a long time yet.

It's a pure speculative game.

There isn't even a blockchain on which the coins can be transacted on, which makes it even worse since there is always a risk with Yobit being capable of manipulate balances if they wanted to (essentially making it centralised).

Is it any different to a lot of present day initial offerings given that their underlying ideas are completely worthless? Probably not. But this is taking it to a new level, where the exchange itself is hosting rounds of speculative bubbles and can theoretically intervene and do insider trading whenever they want.

I personally wouldn't take part, especially with large sums of money given that they could screw you over and there'd be no public records or ledger to refer to (since there is no blockchain or actual token on that blockchain), and the manipulation. But you could see it somewhat as gambling I guess with low sums.

It's sort of the old narrative of the gold bug versus people who blindly believe in fiat.

The situation is somewhat similar when it comes to bitcoin. There are certain people that are going to be permabulls no matter what happens, and I think that is completely irresponsible given their complete lack of acknowledgement for obvious market trends and cycles.

But then there are also people who discredit bitcoin based off solely a bear market, or a crash - which is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum here.

The important concept to understand is that price =/= value/utility of the bitcoin network. A crash in value of bitcoin due to swinging market sentiments doesn't mean that all of a sudden, the utility of bitcoin drops significantly.

Well said here.

I was always surprised at the level of trust that countries give each other in terms of holding reserves. It makes much more sense for a government or central bank to hold the assets within their own borders, so that if things do somehow go awry, or in the worst case scenario, some sort of fractional reserve starts to happen, you would go relatively unaffected.

Though of course, the cost of building storage facilities for these assets is not always feasible, which raises the interesting notion of bitcoin as a reserve asset - you just need to secure the private key, and there can be multisig be used without any physical setups. Quick and easy, yet trustless.

Firstly, we don't know what the BMI actually consists of. I believe that it's supposed to measure market sentiment, but there is absolutely no publicly available data to show that this index is actually accurate in performing that function.

As a result, you have this situation where an analyst is trying to analyse the market based on an index that is created by him, with no public credibility, and an uncertain track record. Also, as others have mentioned, Tom Lee has shown a blatant disregard for market conditions in the past in his analysis and is somewhat of a mainstream, sensationalist speculator more than anything else.

I'm not saying that his prediction wouldn't pan out, because I think that it's likely a bull market will emerge within this current decade. But the process he goes through to come to his predictions is questionable at best.

It is necessary to a certain degree. Beyond that degree certain regulations become draconian, and the potential benefits of actually stopping money laundering or terrorism funding becomes minuscule compared to the restrictions imposed on regular, everyday bitcoin users.

We all know however that the general direction that regulatory authorities are trying to pursue is going to be tightening regulations in the future, so it wouldn't come as a surprise if some or even the majority of the suggestions in this report actually materialises.

I think they raise an interesting point in authorising certain exchanges to freeze balances. This again shows that it's probably best to store bitcoin in only trustless wallets going forward, as exchanges can not only freeze your funds on their own will, but may be propelled to do so by their governments.

Interesting read for sure, though unclear how it'll affect the p2p economy. Seems like the focus here is on centralised exchanges mostly.

I don't see this as defamation whatsoever. He's expressing his own opinion.

There is simply not enough evidence to suggest that he is the creator of bitcoin anyways. You're right about people being potentially misled into thinking that Craig Wright is in fact Satoshi, given his media presence.

I think that it's important for everybody to realise bitcoin is not something that depends on the founder of it to run, like a corporation. It is decentralised for this exact reason, there is absolutely no need to know the identity of satoshi, and if there never comes undoubtable proof that someone is indeed satoshi, people shouldn't even care this much.

Even though Yobit itself should be labelled as an extremely suspicious entity, this scam probably isn't attributed to them.

The promoter of this so called 'Investbox' seems to not be a part of the Yobit team at all. If you look at the domain name of the email, you'll find that it's got nothing to do with yobit.net, but rather a newly registered domain in an attempt to imitate the Yobit domain. The Telegram account that posted this is probably malicious as well.

It's quite a common occurrence right now for impersonators to take advantage of the lack of Yobit support, and get people to send money to them thinking that they're communicating with Yobit's actual support personnel. You can obviously tell in this case with the absurd amounts of returns they are offering (even by Yobit's own standards).

I completely agree with BitHodler here.

Whenever I hear about bitcoin outperforming stocks or another asset class, I cringe. Why? Because bitcoin is volatile and at one point or another, it is going to outperform certain asset classes in the short run.

Does this say anything about adoption levels, or the level of usage that is actually what matters? Absolutely not. All it says about bitcoin is that it's currently trending up in the short term, which happens absolutely all the time.

If this kind of comparison is seen as valid, then you'd also have to accept the opposite as true - when bitcoin underperforms real estate or stocks, does that mean it's inferior somehow as a currency? Absolutely not.

It's a known pyramid scheme that has been around for years.

There has been a lot of versions of the same scheme. I remember that MMM global was quite widespread and led to a lot of spam accounts being created even on this forum in order to gain their bonuses.

It's unclear who is running these new sites, it might not even be created by Mavrodi at this point with MMM corporation. Just remember that there is absolutely nothing legitimate about this type of so called "help" society or whatnot. The tokens you get for "helping" someone else is simply a stake in the entire ponzi.

To be clear, are you looking for exchange recommendations or wallet recommendations?

I would certainly not be using any exchange, even if they are licensed or regulated as a hosted wallet to keep my coins, and even if it's just for the medium term. Given the uncertainty of KYC/AML rules worldwide, they can easily hold your funds or suspend your account on the slightest suspicion of absolutely nothing. It's simply not worth the risk to not use a trustless wallet.

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If you're looking to trade, and it seems like that you're willing to provide KYC given the fact that you're considering Kraken, then there are plenty of options. Binance is a big one, though it's mainly crypto to crypto but you don't necessarily need the KYC. I personally have used Kraken without issues in the past, though I've not used them for a while now. Depending on where you're situated, I've heard good things about Gemini also.

As to your question regarding day trading, I don't think it's up to others to decide your risk appetite and your investing strategy. Do what you're comfortable with.

I'd say that this is actually a much more probable scenario compared to somehow displacing the fiat money supply.

Bitcoin's current role is very similar in terms of how it is a store of value able to operate independently of a government, have intrinsically a capped supply that can't be manipulated, but much more robust in its transaction facilitation, way more portable and fungible (given that you'd have to verify the purity and weight every time you transact with gold), and just generally more usable as a medium of exchange in the modern era as well as being a store of value. That's why I think bitcoin can essentially attract gold investors in the future seeking these needs, when they understand the things BTC offers.

Of course, I'm not saying that in the future bitcoin can't necessarily replace some of the functionality of fiat in certain areas, or that it is impossible, especially those who are hit hard with economic crises, but this is simply less likely to happen.

They're taking advantage of the fact that yobit support has such a bad reputation. That's why they're hear in the first place. If yobit had a robust and functional support system then we wouldn't even be here talking about this site.

But yes, it's clearly a scam, I don't think that it's necessary to even confirm with the mods on yobit in order to see it.

From what I know, Yobicodes are irreversible, so treat it as so. A legit customer support representative has absolutely no business with dealing with money, or asking for investments, so that should be a huge alarm bell going off as soon as you see that email. And as you said, the domain name on which the email is hosted on also isn't owned by Yobit. Whenever you see an email in your inbox that is addressed to you by an exchange - make sure you verify the person sending it to you is the actual exchange.

I'd be interested in knowing how they obtained your email, though. Do they have a list of yobit users somehow, or just a database taken from some other scam crypto site?

I don't think that there is necessarily a clear winner in either case. Both have their upsides and downsides.

Of course with P2P, you might have cheaper access to credit if you are in countries that have a volatile currency and high interest rates, and also due to the fact that the middleman is cut out. But, there are still significant problems in terms of verifying the legitimacy of someone who comes from the other side of the globe if you're doing the loan on no collateral, or dealing with the risk of the platform pulling an exit scam if we're talking about a collateralised loan. If we're dealing through a smart contract, then the collateral can only be tokens supported by that platform, and not anything outside, which kind of limits the possibilities of a lot of loans that may not have a token as collateral per se.

From a borrower's standpoint, I think that they'll obviously go with the cheapest and most accessible option to them, which may actually not be P2P in countries where credit is more readily available and/or the borrower has a good credit rating. The whole concept is interesting though, and I don't think that it's something people should dismiss.

Try to avoid any credit card/debit card transactions, because these have the most spread and fees when you're transacting. If you have funds in your bank account, the best rates you're going to get is going to come from either cash deposit or bank transfer as a form of payment, not a card payment.

The specific exchange you want to use will depend on the country you're from, and what you need in terms of your volume, demand for convenience/best rates, etc. But regulated, licensed exchanges generally are much more liquid, and will give you the best rates regardless of your country. The only downside is that you need to provide KYC, which can be a very tiresome process to go through. These include exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase Pro, etc.

If you aren't comfortable with providing KYC, I suggest going with p2p exchanges like LBC or Paxful if you want convenience and decent rates. You're protected at all times by escrow, and there is a variety of payment methods.

The quote makes it seem like that bitcoin acceptance needs legislation in order to actually work, while in reality, businesses are able to transact with and facilitate bitcoin transaction anywhere (as long as BTC itself is not banned in that jurisdiction), regardless of whether there is formal legislation saying that it's legal to do so.

After all, transactions don't have to be carried out in a legal tender currency if both parties agree to an alternative form of exchange. That's a common misconception of most people about BTC transactions, carried out in real life.

I'd agree with the rest of it, though. It's clear that bitcoin is still making its entry into the mainstream and it'll probably be a while until it actually happens, but given the institutional adoption that we've seen from especially investment banks, I think it'll only be a matter of time before retail adoption picks up greatly, as well as acceptance levels.

You never want to have anyone else but yourself have custody over the coins, especially over such a long period of time. The counter party risks would be simply too high. So I'd rule out the exchange/custodial option altogether.

In terms of physical bitcoins, it could be possible, but you'd need to be extremely careful with which physical bitcoin provider you go with since it's not perfectly trustless even with tamper evident seals.

I'd agree with squatter though, using nlocktime seems to be the best option and probably the most trustless as well, given that you are always in control of your funds through your private keys and you can terminate the transaction whenever you want. Though, the downside would be that you'd have to keep the coins intact in order for it to actually work, and you don't have a lot of flexibility with whatever you put into that transaction with the time lock without voiding the transaction, like investing in assets and stuff like that. Perhaps you don't even need to, but it does depend on your objectives.

I don't see the reasoning in why the market needs to necessarily operate through OTC orders.

The institutions or the investors with high capital will do whatever that is best for themselves. If they decide that they want to conduct a private trade without moving the market too much in the short run, then they will do it over the counter potentially.

But I don't think that there is any tangible benefits that would arise through incentivising or promoting the use of OTC orders necessarily. If there isn't any utility in OTC trades for a certain purpose then traders would simply avoid it, it's not up to the market to control. If traders do decide to go the over the counter route on a large transaction then it could prevent flash crashes and have a more stable short term BTC price, but if their objective is to move the market, there is nothing we can do to stop them from doing it.

I really don't know where they got the impression of this from.

You can easily sell off bitcoins completely legally on regulated platforms and exchanges, whether it is a centralised exchange in one's country, or on a p2p or OTC basis. There are no laws saying that in itself is money laundering, nor should there be. I've US friends that have does this on a regular basis. Otherwise, why are there exchanges that ask for your KYC?

The claims put forth by this post/article is clearly exaggerated and poorly researched. They make it seem like bitcoin is some illiquid underworld token, when in fact it's a complete myth and you'll find it's much more liquid and carry less spreads from a retail standpoint than even foreign currencies.

You should be only concerned if you're running an unlicensed exchange or money remittance service with bitcoin, or dealing with large sums of p2p transactions when you're the advertiser; not if you're just a normal user looking to cash out, or accumulate BTC.