Most of the best ones are those who "only" lost over 50% while the real losers had to shut down entirely, that's how poor of a performer these shitty funds are. Funds lead by fools believing that bull runs last endlessly.

The funniest thing is that most of those who run these funds have some level of legacy market understanding, and even that understanding wasn't enough to prevent them from making the biggest mistake of their careers. Losers. Everyone is an expert/guru/pro as long as every coin in the industry goes up in value, but we have and we still are seeing the smart ones seperate themselves from the 99% of the stupid ones.

Common sense is what's lacking in this space.

In an ideal world people wouldn't mess around with shitcoins, but we're not living in an ideal world. On top of that, exchanges are incentivized to promote them, which automatically makes people more interested in them, because they want to buy the next Bitcoin or Etherem.

By the time Bitcoin goes up, altcoins go up harder and people know that. We're seeing already that people slowly but surely position themselves in altcoins to ride the market up. It's just the way it is. I stopped caring about it, and so should others do. If they want to gamble on altcoins, so be it, let them burn through their money.

Another point is that most of the average joes have a bias towards diversification, so there you have another reason why people won't get rid of altcoins.

People who buy into the current market don't look at the past, they just buy an asset because it's going up. During last year's bull run people couldn't be stopped from buying +$15,000 coins, and now people aren't interested anymore. They hold a bag full of expensive coins not knowing what the future will bring. Regardless of how much info you feed them about past cycles, they won't calm down until the price is above the point they bought at.

Average joes pay attention to that what plays out as the truth, and thus far the skeptics are more right than the overly bullish baboons constantly trying hype up something that goes down. If I tell you the price will crash, and it keeps doing so for months straight, while others keep saying that the price will go up but doesn't, who are you going to listen to the next time?

Perma bulls with their silly EOY predictions have been nothing but a pest this year.

Unfortunately, that's the case already to a small (but constantly growing) degree. There where you have a problem popping up, some entity will use that problem in its advantage to develop a whole new set of products, where these products being insured is a very important one. It completely takes out the risk for the buyer, whoever that may be, and that's what the non crypto enthusiasts are looking for in the end.

Financial institutions are champions in creating new products, and I'm sure one of the mega banks will pop up and feast on a whole new group of investors looking to buy into Bitcoin's exposure. Let's be honest, most of them don't need a new form of money, they just want to be part of the new thing that keeps going up. If there is demand for centralized products, the supply will be there as well.

It's not as hard as it may seem to benefit from a bear market. All you have to do as average trader/investor is to open a short, and have it do its work in the months, or even years it's slowly going down. The only thing you have to carefully look at is the leverage multiplier you use. Too high could work against you in case the market pumps beyond what you thought was the top.

2x leverage as long term short works perfectly fine since it allows you to catch up a move in the other direction without any problems. People's problem is that they use 10x or even 25x in some cases, which either means they are gambling and hope to score big very fast, or have a stop loss set just a few % in the other direction. I prefer to let the market do its thing because it's impossible to time correctly.

There is always that unpredictable range you have to take into consideration.

It's not the same risk as holding USD on whatever exchange, it's worse than that, and you just pointed the second reason why it's worse than simply having USD on an exchange. The first risk is the exchange itself going down (could be Binance, Bittrex, etc), and the second risk is that your USDT could potentially become worthless overnight. I wouldn't sleep well in any case.

I have to admit though, despite all the shit that USDT went through, it still works, has by far the most exposure throughout the market, and regained it's dollar peg.

I don't think there is much to pump here, even when Bakkt is allowed to launch. It's just a matter of logical thinking that it takes time for them to build up and gain more use, which could be a process taking years. Sure, there might be a small pump, but if it isn't backed by anything, it will come down just as easily.

People shouldn't underestimate the $6000 level. What was once a strong support range, is now a brick wall we have to break through, and it won't be easy at all, and it might take several attempts. We're not only dealing with people who bought at current levels and look to cash out at such levels, but those who missed out on selling at $6000 will probably still do so when it gets back up there.

Be happy with the price, that's the most important tip, because it can always go lower.

Some months ago you were labelled a fud spreader for saying that the price would drop below $6000, and a mega troll bear if you thought it would drop below the $5000 level. It just shows what sort of people we are dealing with here. People buy hoping that the price rockets up in one straight line. Correction? What's that? Bear market? Does that even exist?

People who are legit into this for the tech refrain from making silly predictions that most of the times is adjusted lower because it was too unrealistic. I like Tim Draper, he sticks to his predictions and doesn't back off one single moment. Regardless of who you are, you can't even tempt him to make a new prediction, which just proves that he's not interested in the short term market.

Tim has seen the best and the worst of the market. He's balls deep into it with his money. No cheap talk here.

There is so much nonsense everywhere, it's unbelievable how easily some people take whatever these articles say for granted. People were legit looking for a way to buy Bitcoin in US dollars over here and sell them in Iran, while they completely disregard that the volumes there are so crazy thin, that a 1-2BTC dump would crash the price with 50 or so %.

Venezuela, Zimbabwe and a few others have been pointed at to be a crypto capital as well, but aside from a few local initiatives, there is nothing that makes these people use or even consider crypto as alternative. It's sad to see news outlets looking to score over the back of their drama, but hey, business is business for them, they don't give a shit.

Eventually they might be hopping over to Bitcoin, but right now it's nothing more than a bunch of hopes and dreams.

It not that there are tons of Ether bagholders. Most of the people who bought in near the top bought Ether just as a way to pay for the tokens, which explains the insane run it had back then. It were solely the ICO's responsible for that, which explains why there is so much dumping, it was basically free money for the ICO's.

Only a very small percentage was kept by people just to pay for gass because everything you do there requires a fee in Ether. Based on the ICO they invested in, and when they cashed out, they either did horribly well or horribly bad.

Ethereum without ICO demand is a platform doomed to fail.

What do you mean with 'store the majority in my desktop wallet'? It is always recommended to not have anything on your PC, regardless of what desktop client you are using. Your private keys/seeds should be stored offline, preferably in form of a paper wallet. I'm personally not keen on hardware wallets, but it might provide a decent form of security as well.

Coinbase is using Segwit, which is cool, but most of them still use legacy format addresses which is a shame. Blockchain stated to roll out support for Segwit earlier this year, but it's clear they are ignoring every user regardless of what their input is. Not surprising at all with Roger and Jihan having a say in how they operate their business.

How is trading a good tip? If you don't know how to trade, which applies to most people looking for ways to 'make' money, trading will do more harm than good. It will be more gambling since people buy whatever coin at X price and hope to sell it at Y price. Instead of making money, which is what they look to do, they'll lose it and precious time in the process.

Unfortunately, that's indeed how it is. I saw it go backwards rapidly and everyone looking to earn a buck here and there are really putting all their time into it. It all comes down to skill set in terms of making yourself look interesting enough to be hired for whatever task. Free time is no longer enough here, there are too many people with that over here.

Not healthy or not attractive? I think the main point for people is the latter.

People here have always something to complain about, and so does the mainstream media. If Bitcoin is volatile, it can't be a currency, and if there is stability (which is perfect for a currency), it's yet again not good enough. It's safe to say that those who are continuously complaining are here just for the profits, because I have never been bothered by either volatility or stability.

And what makes a market not healthy if it doesn't fluctuate? I think stability on its own is pretty neat, because it's stimulating real world usage to pick up and thus have coins circulate instead of being dumped directly for fiat. On top of that, most traders don't even need much volatility to trade with. Traders have been dealing with assets that fluctuate way less than Bitcoin in its most stable periods, and they still book the gains they look for.

Leverage is the name of the game. People think 100x leverage on Bitmex is wild, but certain legacy brokers offer 300x leverage counts.

Never heard of Coinexchange, but I know for a fact that Poloniex is extremely strict in terms of verification, and very trigger happy when it comes to freezing accounts. Bittrex has been an exact copy of Poloniex in the last 12 or so months in terms of behavior, so don't expect to find a good alternative there.

What I'm quite surprised about is how people have no problems finding the worst possible shitcoin exchanges that are like a month or so old, but ignore the largest altcoin exchange Binance with the best possible track record and the highest volumes in the industry. Just sign up there and trade, pfff.

If history is repeating, 2019 will be similar to 2015.

People focus on the all time high to get broken through, but they fail to understand that for those who buy right now it doesn't matter if it breaks through its previous high or not. From current levels to $10,000 is a more than solid return already, and I'm sure that most non long term minded investors will be more than happy with such returns.

Breaking all time highs is just a thing for bag holders desperately waiting to break even. If you're smart and buy at current levels you don't have to wait for $20,000 to break even, you'll be in the profits around $10,000'ish levels. Common sense. That's all you need.

As horrible as it is for those who lost funds in the process, these things need to happen in order to have people wake up and realize that they are a walking target, regardless of what client/software/mobile/desktop they use. I'm glad that I am extremely paranoid by nature, so I always ignore pop ups from whatever piece of software that I have installed.

If there is an update ready, I'll head to the main site, scan the file, sign keys (where possible) and then upgrade.

I love Bitcoin, but it requires so much extra attention and care in terms of security, that I perfectly understand why certain parties aren't digging in yet. This isn't the banking system where you can claim that your funds have been stolen and the odds of being refunded are pretty high. In this case lost is lost.

They aren't the first, but the first in terms of having a massive potential reach. You can't possibly ignore the effects of that, regardless of how insignificant people here consider Bakkt to be, because on paper it looks pretty solid, especially if the recent articles about more interest are true. On top of that, they might not like the idea of futures anymore after what happened last year.

We'll see what the outcome will be next year, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if they don't get an approval next year.

That has been said the moment we started correcting last year. Dip below $10,000 would shake off tons of noobs. Then it was $8000, $7000, $6000, $5000, etc. The main point is that there are always people with coins of which you don't want them to hold any, regardless of the price.

I think that $3000'ish levels are relatively easy to provide buy support for, regardless of how many noobs still hold bags full of coins priced at +$10,000 each. If we happen to dip below that level I'll do everything I can to scoop up as many coins as possible. People during these times are overly pessimistic, which works against them rather than for them. I'll happily go against the general sentiment now, which I should have done above $6000 as well, grrr.

I honestly am not that confident in an approval for Bakkt. It wouldn't surprise me if the CFTC wants to see the market and the sentiment improve before they even think about an approval. It's not the Winklevoss twins asking for approval, we're talking about ICE, one of the top dog wall street institutions. If they are facing delay after delay, it really seems that there isn't much to look forward to, at least, not any time soon.

With less events to look forward to, there are only fundamentals left that you can fall back on, and that's actually a good thing. We need people to appreciate what Bitcoin stands for, not what its price is during/after X or Y event.

Good news is that Bitcoin's fundamentals are solid as a rock, so it will eventually translate into a higher price organically. Perhaps not a bull run what most of you guys hope for, but growth is still growth, and you know that Bitcoin's growth always exceeds that of the regular markets.

Too bad most people here think money grows on trees. It's so easy to set up a site, offer cloud mining contracts (where you in reality aren't mining at all), promise people 200% annually, and you will at least trap in a couple of dozen noobs. It might not sound like much, but when your initial investment in terms of time and money to set up the site doesn't exceed $100-$200, but people's deposits are worth thousands, you have booked a 10x return without much effort.

If you have a longer time horizon, you offer less rewards, but pay out people during the initial phase to have noobs shill your platform because they "earn" money, you will have even more success. On average, these platforms don't make it past the 12 months, which we have seen with Bitconnect as well.

The best investment is Bitcoin itself, or even other cryptos directly, but people always chase the wrong investments.