I just realized that all this time i have been using my exchange wallet address and if something happened i had no way of signing anything to prove anything, LOL. so here i am:

-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
I am talkbitcoin from bitcointalk and confirm to have this address in May 2017
-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNATURE-----
1CkGnAMSeUGdLGxhgjaygiZWnRko6CEs7Q
IOXqs0j2mY1udngDCoDQu3bmEmuUHI66DCUR295jZtKUAQ8shcGfTrEJRPVSbrdgL9mn+aY4Cc898TlwaroOj2M=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNATURE-----

1. seems like you and i have a different definition of "in development". i call something "in development" (i think the correct proposition is under) that is not yet released. otherwise it would be like saying Windows 7 is in development!

2. i don't like your "real world usages" since these are crypto-currencies show me where i can spend them as a currency. anything else is not usage in my opinion.

3. it wasn't few months ago, it was 2008-2009 until today and in the future that media and banks bash bitcoin and by extension cryptocurrencies.
and for adoption we need people being willing to spend bitcoin, the user friendly wallets and softwares are already created.

well unfortunately there aren't that many trusted sources that we can use, most people are giving biased opinion based on what coins they are bagholding themselves and want the project to succeed.
that leaves only yourself and the knowledge you have. you can search for the developers history to see how many failed or successful projects (if any) he had in the past.
you can also go through the code, the white paper and the roadmap they release and see how much they are living up to the promises.
these should give you a general idea.

can you give some examples. and tell us why it took several "years" to develop these coins? i understand that developing a real coin that is supposed to be good doesn't happen overnight and it takes time but i can not see why it would take several years! that is much longer than needed.

things you say are our wishes. i just hope this is not like other thousand coins which said the same thing and ended up being empty promises!

i disagree. it takes time, specially for an altcoin. people all around the world are not going to wake up one morning saying "I've got to get me some altcoin".
bitcoin, which is the biggest one, has been around for 8 years and it is not yet reached mass adoption. bitcoin has made the way for adoption smooth but it still will take time and that altcoin needs to be so damn good to be adopted for "real world usage".

* looking forward to your examples

i don't know what the other one is but i know that Amazon is still not accepting bitcoin payment. please provide links if they do, i would love to go there and start a spending frenzy. and also remember buying Amazon gift cards with bitcoin from someone else and spending that in Amazon doesn't count.


usually when some service removes a payment option it has two main reasons: lack of customer interest and also to limit the number of options to a small number (it is not good to have a lot of options, best is 3 to 5).

the "taint" you see on blockchain.info is not what you think it is. read the answer that FlamingFingers gave you.
and when you are buying bitcoin from an exchange service like Kraken and withdraw it to your personal bitcoin address, the coins will come from Kraken's wallet and usually if you search the address that sent you those coins in walletexplorer you'll see kraken as a result. that service is good but not complete, it is mostly there to show their capability of blockchain analysis and as a free advertisement for their paid work.

i agree that SegWit and lightning network and then by a very small amount, addition to coinbase are good news for litecoin but a pump to $100 is not easy for this big coin. last time it took a whole lot of Chinese to pump it to $50ish price and that didn't even last. and all of these "improvements" aren't going to magically make litecoin that is barely used a better coin.

also the second place will always belong to ethereum because it has so much bigger manipulators who won't even let the price come down and it has a lot of coins available and is creating a lot more hence increasing the supply and as a result making a fake big marketcap which will keep it on top.

BTW this is wrong board!

if you can do fiat trading and no problem with the verification and withdrawal and deposit fees of fiat then make sure to do that. because in the end $1 will always be $1 but there is nothing guaranteeing 1USDT be equal to 1 USD, and i mean literary nothing. the site is saying that explicitly that it won't be the same value!

with that said, right now price of tether is lower than USD, last time i checked it was $0.92. and this means in case bitfinex comes back to normal this price will jump back up to $1 (meaning a big profit). now you decide if you are willing to take that risk.

i say there is 3 major reasons for this:
1. obviously bitfinex is not the place to trade bitcoin these days so users are going towards alternative places.
2. bitstamp which is nearly equally big as bitfinex, has low prices than other exchanges and people prefer a higher price, or better say a price that is equal to other exchanges than a place than has lower price than all other exchanges.
3. there is always new people coming in! and gemeni is a decent enough platform. the adoption process, even if it means more traders, is an ongoing process.

haha, USDT is a good example of how all of us makes assumption that are clearly wrong. as the comment above this said USDT has never supposed to have aqual price with USD, it is the assumption that we made because we have always seen price at $1.
this is also another good reason for us to start reading more details about what we invest our money in.

there is nothing wrong, it has always been manipulation and pump and dump and it is still an ongoing situation, the pumpers have come back to altcoin scene once again to take a lot of money this year and then leave it as the market newbies lose their money and go into depression.

Dash: didn't even have a rise, it is more like a little bump, i would wait until there is a real rise at least about 15% then call it rise!

ETH: this is obviously a rise, unlike DASH. and that is a pump. the question should be "when it is going to end for me to get out" instead of "why"

XRP: i have no explanation for this rise to be honest!

Monero: is a come back from the bottom. mostly because of the steep drop and price reached the bottom. and besides it didn't have any real pump. it was a small rise. so XMR has a pump due.

DOGE: same as XRP, i have no freaking answer apart from PUMP. who even buys these two lol

well you can't just close down the market! there are two possibilities only:
1) either you are insolvent, which means closing down now means panic and people taking out what they already have in there
2) or you are solvent! which means you can't close it down, you are still making money from trades and people are still taking high risks and trusting you.

GOX was so freaking big that if it was around today, bitfinex with all its bigness would have been like a kid playing with pennies in front of GOX.

STOP right there!

have you forgotten what bitcoin price was a couple of months ago, or have you forgotten how price was rising?
we have not!
price was on a very good upward trend, the trend that you are scare of right now, and it was headed towards $1300 before all the FUD about BU and splitting bitcoin into two and the use of word "fork" started.
then the manipulation started and long story short the previous upward trend was postponed to now.

right now we are on the same trend. testing the waters above $1300 and staying there for now and then headed for $1900-$2000 until the end of this year.

there may be another bump on the road when bitfinex fate is sealed, or another fluctuation in hashrates happen, but in the end we will come back on the same trend up.

i think the better question to ask would be who "doesn't" want these bitcoin scaling wars to end? debate is a good thing in my opinion, it comes from difference of opinions and it will lead to everyone trying to better their "solution" (hopefully).
but when debate is turned into war that is the problem.
and meanwhile certain groups of people are benefiting. the most obvious one that we can see comments in this topic too, are the altcoin pumpers who have used this opportunity to spread more FUD about bitcoin and pump their coins.

blockchain is simply a chain of blocks, and blocks are simply raw data. a blockchain is putting this data in a specific structure and then chaining them together, one after another with some additional mechanisms to prevent any tampering with any of the previous data.

now why would these companies want to use this technology?

with that said, this is being used. in fact a lot of financial institutes are looking into this. there even have been talk of non-financial aspects such as a hospital storing patient information on a blockchain.
so there are works being done on this tech, and some of them we know and some we don't.

i tend to try and predict the future based on the past. and based on that, i'll say it is not possible. because that is a $200 rise you are talking about and not to mention that we have recently gone up about $100 from $1200ish to $1300 and there are a lot of shit going on despite all the good news.

price may continue up towards $1400 and see a correction first and then some fluctuation then testing $1500 but that will take at least 2 more months.

also again based on the past our target should be $1850-$2000 till the end of the year and your 30 day $200 rise ruins everything.

now i feel like an old fart...

it is not going to happen this time either! nothing has changed with ETF, bitcoin, SEC, and those who have to accept or deny it. and besides i thought we were past the whole news hype of ETF!
and even if it was approved, again it wouldn't matter! those people who know better will continue investing in bitcoin and some fools who like centralized stuff will go to ETF thing

that is the altcoin market for you. full of scams and always new ways of scamming the gullible masses who start using cryptocurrency (bitcoin) and are desperately are looking for ways of making more of it.

so finally the Russian Finance Ministry gave up on their nonsense about wanting to ban bitcoin and threatening jail time!
it is funny how all this time one of the biggest bitcoin conferences about bitcoin and blockchain was held in Moscow.

from http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/12/bitcoin-price-rises-japan-russia-regulation.html

i hope this doesn't lead to restrictive regulatory laws.

dude, that is the worst suggestion you could give to anyone! not to mention that OP is looking for a wallet to store 4BTC which is about $5000
you are practically showing him the way to increase the chances of him losing that money!

a web wallet which you are calling "online purse" does not become as safe as a cold storage, not even as safe as a desktop wallet even if you enable 2FA on it. the website can still have so many bugs and your browser can leak so many things that can easily lead to getting hacked.