That's the way it goes. ICE has to deal with shareholders to even signal that they are interested in pumping capital in whatever project, which is why it's more favorable to risk investor capital than your own when it comes to new adventures, which is what Bakkt is. Considering that most of the shareholders of ICE very likely are narrow minded legacy players, they won't agree to anything of this nature.

On top of that, it's also an interesting way to measure the sentiment in a market, which has been pretty bad all year in crypto, so the amount they managed to raise is pretty solid, especially if you take into consideration that they don't have a working product yet.

Whenever Bakkt gets an approval to go live, we'll be flooded with entities doing the same and battle for their cut of the pie. At one point you don't even have to use an exchange anymore. You'll just buy whatever amount of Bitcoin you want through your banking portal. There is too much money to be made for banks to ignore it. It also helps adding legitimacy to the space.

If you look at Gold without a bias in favor or against it, the far majority of it is collecting dust in big ass vaults. You can't use it as money on a local level, because it's just doesn't make sense for anyone to accept it. The argument from Gold bugs that you can exchange your Gold for dollars and then spend it is weak, very weak, because what's left of the money utility that Gold enjoys? The only form money here is the dollar.

Bitcoin is easy and cheap to move, is extremely divisible, is transparent, easy to securely store without anyone noticing, and you can build decentralized applications on top of it to have its money utility shine even more. I'm not in the camp of having Bitcoin replace Gold (won't even happen in my opinion), but I'm certain that it will take away large chunks of market share from Gold in the forthcoming years.

It's just a matter of time before even governments won't be rushing anymore to unload their bags of stolen coins, because it ended bad for them.

Coinbase has no interest in BTC, they just want to compete with Binance to become the next go-to shitcoin exchange for noobs with little to no capital. One noob on its own doesn't do much, but when there are millions of noobs buying and selling at the same time, there suddenly is an interesting market to enter.

The very fact that Binance blew up to what it is today comes from Coinbase severely lacking to bind customers. People mostly use them as fiat entry/exit point or a wallet (which is beyond retarded because it isn't a wallet).

I really hope that Coinbase will be overtaken by another party at some point, and preferably by one that looks into fundamentals rather than profit making opportunities.

John is long over anything related to AV solutions. He keeps trashing them hard. They don't work, and they are an entry point for governments to sniff through your files without you knowing.

It's not all that long ago where various governments have stopped using Kaspersky AV out of fear for the Russian government.

In the end, people are stupid. If you don't chase quick gains and free money that doesn't exist, you won't have to deal with any of this. Using common sense is more effective than all the AV solutions combined. People intentionally install crap and in some cases intentionally ignore AV warnings, so there is nothing that you can do to stop this. Expect it to grow the deeper we dig into mainstream adoption.

These dudes are the 'gurus' in their own market field, but have been degraded to rookies here in crypto. Charts don't lie, which is what these guys are well aware of, but still failed to pay one single second of attention to Bitcoin's past to see what the heck is going on with the market. This once again proves that the so called experts here are no different from a rookie trying to gamble his savings or borrowed money. In both cases they gambled and lost.

The real winners are those who sold the hype and buy back right now. You have more coins than before you sold, plus a massive gain in fiat. Not bad.

I see way more value in a streamlined growth process in terms of having Bitcoin's fundamentals improve, because speculative demand relies on cycles, while the use aspect has a continuous level of demand to it that should keep people's interest in Bitcoin high enough. Bakkt looks good on paper, the $180 million funding round looks good too, but the only thing they need is regulatory approval to go live, and they don't have that yet.

Regulators aren't fools. They know the importance of these events, especially when it comes to the potential effect on the market of the underlying asset, which will make them think twice before letting them go through. Bakkt has mass appeal, which can't be underestimated, and regulators don't.

In the US even the most common events subject you to taxation. Whether it is you using your Bitcoins to cash out to fiat, convert to another crypto, use your Bitcoins to buy whatever goods, etc. It's all taxable unfortunately. There have been a few stories where certain individuals literally rekkt themselves just by not knowing how taxation in their country works.

In that case they were better off not declaring anything to begin with. It's horrible that even when you try to do the 'good' thing you are punished for that, but it is what it is I guess. In order to be sure, and prevent situations where you put yourself into deep troubles with the IRS, contact someone on a professional level to explain you how things work. Better safe than sorry.

With LBTC it will be more of a question than ever before, because you can simply choose to hide the value of your transfers. The only thing that you are left with is a public transaction, but the amount is only known between the parties transacting.

This might even be something that will be adapted by large institutions in the same way they use Ripple's solutions to move value from point A to B. Institutions don't want speculation to boil up about who or what moved 50,000BTC, which is what LBTC offers.

The more hacks we see pop up, the more incentive large parties will have to jump into the OTC market. Another thing is that the liquidity on exchanges is still piss poor. Cashing out through the spot market for a whale means dragging the market down with 5-10% while the dump itself isn't even that big in terms of volume. It's just the lack of liquidity turning relatively small $$ dumps into giant red candles.

I'm sure that Coinbase, as money hungry that it is, will find a way to allow users to gain the benefits of it, all to not have them withdraw their funds. If Coinbase even gets to keep like 2'ish % of the rewards and whatnot, it's an extra revenue stream they otherwise wouldn't have. It's all in their favor to have people not withdraw their funds.

I'm however not sure how they will deal with voting rights, but that's probably not what most of the people storing their coins there are worried about as long as they are rewarded accordingly.

It's not correct to credit him for that. Sure, he may have contributed left and right, but the mega bull run started years before Trump managed to put the US to shame by becoming president. If it doesn't cost anything to borrow money, and there is more of it pretty much year after year, it won't require you to be a genius market guru to know where a lot of that capital is flowing into.

On the other hand, people are happy as long as the stock market goes up which means that no one has much to complain about, but when it starts correcting people suddenly act like it's fake, manipulated, etc. The same applies to what happened last year with crypto. No one complained on the way up and everyone had a good time, and now hell broke loose.

That's a good way to prevent identity fraud for sure, but I was actually referring to exchanges working with two levels of verification. The first level only requires data in form of name, surname, date of birth, address info, and a telephone number. This is where a lot people cheat by abusing someone else's information to walk themselves through that verification process.

If the exchange wants your ID and documents to confirm if your account really belongs to you, then you are busted.

Binance has been the place to be for most people, which is more than understandable. I really do my best to find complaints in terms of frozen accounts and balances, but they rarely pop up, and that despite their insanely large user base. Definitely respect for that.

I find it even more funny when these no-coiners try to play the current prices down as something that's 'normal' to happen when it's bubbling up.  

You know that when people revert to such silly arguments that they are burning, and burning hard. The currency they tried to trash talk for years keeps going up, and there is no way to stop it. Peter Schiff started his trash talk against Bitcoin back when it was $100 and is still throwing around with nonsense arguments today, which is crazy.

If history has proven one thing, then it's the fact that he should keep his mouth shut. I'm certain that even when Bitcoin reaches $100,000 he will still call it a fraud and that it will drop to $0. Every year it doesn't drop to $0 the likeliness of it to happen decreases significantly. He should know that with his economics background.

If the market will be going to react sharply on an approval of Bakkt, know that it could also backfire. It's time for people to stop focusing on events without any sort of certainty. Firstly, you don't know whether or not it will be approved. Secondly, even with an approval, the impact on the market or the demand for this product could turn out to be very low.

By focusing on these events people create certain expectations that in most cases are too high to meet, and we all know what happens when disappointment kicks in, we'll see the price go down. Seriously, focus on actual progress in terms of Bitcoin development, that's what will will be having 100%, and eventually it will reflect in the price.

Lightning is the killer application. People do instant betting, tipping, paying for goods and services, that's real world use and it creates demand.

So you think it's good for people to play Russian roulette with their funds on shit exchanges? Every single exchange you listed has a shady history, and still is acting more than shady today. On top of that, every listed exchange (one more than the other) is also known to freeze funds at whatever random moment in time, forcing people to provide documents and whatnot.

To add; if you basic verify yourself on exchanges with false information (false address, name, etc) and the exchange in question is going to subject you to the full ID verification process, you are toasted. Explain them why you put wrong' address and name data that doesn't match with your actual documents. Kiss your funds goodbye.

Nothing. Bitcoin isn't a POS coin and right now there is no way to force through your will by abusing the power that holding such large number of coins do.

It could potentially be abused in case the developers suddenly want people to vote with their coins to approve or reject certain proposals, but that with a high probability will never happen. On top of that, Coinbase has its 'majestic' reputation at stake; one wrong move with people's funds and they may regret it for ever.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Ethereum switches to POS though, because Coinbase's Eth holdings are just as dizzying as their Bitcoin holdings. Perhaps that people will be incentivized to take care of starage themselves.

I would say so. The whole thing that makes average joes think Bitcoin has "failed" is because it doesn't work exactly like their own fiat currencies. People take it way too literally, which is bad because that makes them discard the whole idea of Bitcoin. They expect something that's still in its very early years to do what the US dollar does, which is just insane.

That's also the very reason idiots like Peter Schiff start talking crap about Bitcoin, because it isn't a currency. Gold is a fantastic currency because you can spend it everywhere, which is quite funny. If you ask these dudes how you can spend Gold everywhere, they literally tell you to convert it to USD, then spend that in whatever store. Isn't that just demonstrating how useless Gold is as money? 

At least you can directly use Bitcoin (the actual asset itself) in stores and online to settle payments.

Bitmain has a proven track record for selling hardware, while shitty sites popping up like mushrooms after a day of rain have not.

It also doesn't help that broken English newbie accounts pop up saying that that they have bought from that site without problems, yet think it's trustworthy. 

I think that OP is either paranoid, or just want to act like a relevant troll.

Bitcoin is working, stronger than ever, more valuable than ever (obviously ignoring hype peaks), and will continue to rush forward and there is nothing stopping it. In the end, most people just want to see the value go up, and that's exactly what has been happening in its first decade and will continue to happen.

Who's more of an entity to pay attention to, someone who's right more often than he's wrong, or those who are wrong time on time again when it concerns Bitcoin failing, being worth $0, will crash to $100, etc?

It's a plant that makes people feel happy, and a plant that makes people get rid of (physical or mental) pain in a very non stressing manner. It's much better than any other chemically manipulated drug people pump into their body that slowly but surely destroys them from within.

Criminality in whatever form is just a non argument. Whether you legalize it or not, it's always there.

People are indoctrinated to think that certain things in life aren't legal or shouldn't be allowed. Think for yourself instead of following a government that wants to keep you in check in every possible way.

It depends on where you live basically. I personally can invest in pretty much any stock/derivative market through my bank account. I think that's what makes an ETF very interesting on paper, because you don't have to wire money to an exchange anymore, and every joe with a decent sum of money can buy a share instantly. No silly verification process, no waiting times, no unsafe environment, etc.

In terms of the fees, sure they are higher than average depending on what asset you buy into, and they even charge a very small percentage annually over your total portfolio balance, but people don't see it as much of a proble. They have been buying into stocks and whatnot for years.

The only competitor in the game are services like Robinhood where people can trade for free, but you don't actually own anything there. For some people it might not matter and they are just interested in free trading, and others want to own the stocks in their portfolio giving them access to dividends, voting rights, etc.