You are absolutely right. The justification being given is that last time the ATH level was not achieved in many of the exchanges. While in one or two exchanges it breached the $20,000 level, the prices in other exchanges remained much lower than that. Also, the peak prices could not be sustained for long. Within a few months, Bitcoin was trading at four-digit prices.

Obviously when the economy shrinks by 20% or 25% in less than a year, you can expect a sharp jump in unemployment. And it is not easy for them to suddenly look for online jobs. The number of jobs available online has remained the same. It hasn't increased proportionately with the number of people who are searching for such jobs. The competition has increased and as a result only the most skilled individuals can get such jobs nowadays.

I don't think so. The "sleeping" tokens are not having any value right now because they are completely useless. The promoters are no longer interested in the development and those who invested in these tokens are stuck with them. Back in 2017, the ICO craze was at its peak and it helped some of the shitcoins to get in to the bull mode. But that is not going to repeat in 2021.

If that is the case, then cryptocurrency users should be really happy. Visa may have started their work earlier, but it was PayPal which finished it first. So obviously the credit should go to them. I have no idea when Visa will consider integrating Bitcoin to their platform. But it looks as if it may not happen this year. Anyway, 2021 is going to be a big year for cryptocurrency. 

TOR is as risky as any of the private VPNs out there. How can you be sure that the entry node is not compromised in TOR? A number of dark market users were arrested during the previous years, after using compromised entry/exit nodes in TOR. On top of that TOR is really slow. If you want to do only the basic cryptocurrency transactions, then it should be OK. But for getting email confirmations and all, it can get frustrating.

Australia needs younger players in the squad. During the last 3-4 years hardly any new player have found a permanent spot in the playing XI. Apart from Marnus Labuschagne, all the other batsmen are above 30 years of age. And among the bowlers, only Pat Cummins and Adam Zampa can be considered as "youngsters" and even they are in their late 20s.

The breakout may eventually occur, but it is going to take some time. I would even say that there is a good chance that the 20K level won't be breached this month. One thing that surprises me is that we are yet to witness any large scale profit booking. When the prices increase from 10K to 20K in a span of 3-4 weeks, it is only natural to expect a lot of profit booking. But it seems like the investors are holding on, expecting higher profits.

Teams such as South Africa and Pakistan have seen a deterioration in their standards during the last decade or so. These teams are no longer competitive against the big three teams. In other words, the gap between the big three and the rest is increasing. And for South Africa, there are additional issues to take care of. Players continue to migrate to other countries in search of better salaries and fair treatment. The latest in the list is Devon Conway, who made his debut for New Zealand this week.

In many of the countries, Bitcoin is already regulated. For example, take the case of South Korea, Japan, Germany.etc. Even in many of the states within the United States, it is regulated (don't forget the Bitlicense of New York). But the level of regulation varies from country to country. In Japan and Germany, the government don't want to intrude too much. If you pay your taxes on time, then you are fine. But there are certain jurisdictions, where you need to provide all the details, such as the wallet ids and transaction logs.

I don't agree with the argument that currencies should be backed up by a tangible asset. How many of the fiat currencies can claim this? Gone are the days when the fiat currencies used to be backed up by gold. It resulted in massive deflation and that was the reason the governments around the world decided to remove it. So currencies which are not backed up should be OK. 

Within the next few years, cricket will resemble more like football and club (franchise) cricket will be the first priority for the players, as well as for the boards. Already we are witnessing the trend of players resigning from the international cricket, so that they could concentrate more on the franchise leagues. And this will have a negative impact on the smaller boards.

Why should that matter to the vast majority of the Bitcoin users? Less than 1% may have tried their luck with mining Bitcoins. So at least for people like me, it doesn't matter whether the premine is 88%, 98% or even 100%. We are fine with such high premine levels. The miners can whine as much as they want, but the algorithm is not going to change. They needs to be satisfied with whatever reward they are getting right now.

I had clarified about this in one of my previous posts. PayPal has announced that full services will be available to its cryptocurrency users from mid-2021 onwards. Until then, the Bitcoin services will be in testing phase with limited functionality. Once they launch their full services, you will be able to move Bitcoin to other wallets from the PayPal wallet, and make payments in BTC. That said, I don't think that PayPal will provide you the private keys, even after they launch the full services. It is going to be similar to the case with various cryptocurrency exchanges where you hold coins in exchange wallets.

Obviously PayPal was the first mainstream payment processor to break the glass ceiling, by integrating Bitcoin to their platform. This has given confidence to the other payment processor such as Visa and Master, to do the same with their platforms. This is excellent news for the adoption and acceptance of cryptocurrency. In the next 2-3 years, I won't be surprised if the user base jumps by 5x or 10x. 

IMO, the biggest threat will come from Bitcoin itself. Imagine what will happen, if the user base increases by 5x or 10x in a relatively short period of time. Even now the Blockchain is struggling to process the transactions without much delay. What will happen, once the number of users and thereby the number of transactions increase by 5x? The Mempool size will increase without any limit and users will be forced to pay huge amounts as transaction fee.

Cryptocurrency is a digital asset and that means that it is vulnerable to competition. If it was a physical asset such as gold, then we could debate a scenario where it may continue to be used for thousands of years. But that is not the case. In the future, there will be a lot of technological challenges directed towards cryptocurrency. If we are unable to take on those challenges, then the continued existence of cryptocurrency will be under threat. 

Purchases and acquisitions are not that rare in the mainstream market. I guess the same will occur with the cryptocurrency market, as it matures. I am not saying that Binance would agree to an acquisition as soon as PayPal makes an offer. Most probably, they would reject the proposal. But there are dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges out there, such as Houbi, LAToken, Kraken, BitMEX and VinDAX. Some of them would be willing to consider the proposal by PayPal, if the amount is right.

For how long cryptocurrency has been in existence? Bitcoin was created in 2008 and the alts are of even more recent origin. At this point, it is not possible to predict for how long they are going to last. However, similar to the other technological products, cryptocurrency also have an expiry date. When some better technology appears in the horizon, cryptocurrency will become obsolete. 

Coronavirus is a type of flu-virus. Similar to what we have seen with MERS and SARS, once the pandemic is contained, it is very unlikely to reappear again. But other types of flu-virus can start their human-to-human transmission at any point in the future. Vaccines will work against any one strain of this virus. It will not prevent the other strains from causing similar pandemics. For now, we need to adjust with this reality.

LOL.. when I purchased my coins (2.4 BTC in January 2017), the exchange rate was $900 per coin. I was lucky to make my investment then. Within less than 12 months, the exchange rates increased by 20x. Then there was a prolonged correction, but I held on to my coins. Almost 4 years have passed since I made my first investment. For me, getting 20x returns in just four years is difficult to fathom. Previously I had invested in stocks and bullion. But none of them gave me this sort of returns.