What do you mean? Lightning Network on Bitcoin is opt-in, you can still use on-chain transactions as before. The Bitcoin protocol itself doesn't change.

Not sure how Lightning Network will apply to MimbleWimble though, as I haven't fully wrapped my head around MimbleWimble itself yet. Also it appears to be still in a very early phase of implementation.

Interesting find. Not that I would read much into it, but a similar seasonal pattern could be seen a couple of decades ago in traditional stock markets during december -- as fond managers were bringing their books in order while closing their yearly accounts and selling speculative assets for more conservative investments.

Of course this pattern only lasted as long as no one was aware of it. Once word got out people started trading accordingly and the pattern was no more. Given how young the crypto market is you might be onto a similar phenomena that no one (publicly) noticed so far.

The good thing is you will now be proven right no matter what happens next year: If the pattern persists you are right because you were able to call it. If it doesn't, it's because people noticed your thread and are now trading accordingly.

Nah... I mean it's possible, of course, but I have to concur with TheQuin that USD 10,000,- is going to be a tough support to shatter. Even after that I think the lowest we can go would be USD 6,000,-.

I don't dare making any upside predictions though. The last year of Bitcoin has been beyond any of my expectations given the timeframe.



Correlation does not imply causation.

Still, I too think that exchanges are one of the major bottlenecks right now. Hard to get fresh liquidity into the market if exchanges take half an eternity for verification. Might be for the better in the long run though, as anyone who's rushing into Bitcoin right now has probably not put much thought into it. So anyone who's waiting to get verified right now has some time to ponder on whether they really want to enter the market.

I think another factor are alts though. It seems like a lot of new speculators flock towards alts right now, hoping to invest in the next Bitcoin. That probably won't end well.

When the king falls, the alts follow. I'm still skeptic about whether the current BTC drop was caused by South Korea, but it's interesting to see yet another example of how alts only thrive when Bitcoin is stable.



So is South Korea now shutting down exchanges or what? After initially threatening with a ban, then revoking said statement, we're now back at threatening with a ban again? Or is this is simply the same old rehashed news story? Not that I care much but damn is this situation confusing. I guess these kinds of plays will continue until we run out of countries banning Bitcoin.

A bit early to call the bottom, isn't it? I too am fairly confident that the USD 11,000 - 10,000 levels will hold, but I don't think we're in the clear yet. Bitcoin's movements have been too twitchy for the past few weeks. The market needs to stabilize first before we can move onward.

What about peer-to-peer trading using social channels? Is that still a thing in China or was this only an intermediate solution by the Chinese crypto community?



The way I understand it decentralized exchanges only enable you to trade tokens of the respective blockchain that they are based on, or am I mistaken? Because this unfortunately significantly narrows down the selection of tradeable assets.

I love seeing how much work is being done on decentralized exchanges, but as long as these constraints apply their utility is rather limited.

Anonymous in theory, but I guess it remains to be seen how this looks in practice.

Anonymity in LN works in that only you and your counterparty are aware of how funds are being moved, with external observers seeing only the opening and the closing (on-chain) state. LN nodes along the way only know their in- and outgoing transactions, without being aware of the start and end point of the channel. So from a technical point of view, privacy is ensured.

However other kinds of attacks are thinkable, such as correlating opening / closing states with information that could be gathered by controlling multiple nodes across the network. Question being how feasible such an attack would be.

Either way, privacy is definitely improved when using LN. Not sure how it will compare to privacy focused coins though, although admittedly even with privacy focused coins there's still little known about how secure in terms of privacy they really are.

Oh he's definitely right. Any attempt at regulating cryptocurrencies on a local level is doomed to fail in the long run. Loose regulation, sure, but heavy regulation will require international accord.

And seeing how nations are not even remotely able to fix international tax loop holes I don't see this happening any time soon. There's no way the global economy will find a consent on how to regulate cyptocurrencies "the right way". So governments will have to find the sweet spot between regulating cryptocurrencies in a way that helps creating a solid legal foundation, while not acting so heavy handed that it simply drives people, companies and thus tax money into countries that are more liberal in their regulation.

Beautiful, ain't it.

If you call that a crash you're in for a treat. It's true that China shut down exchanges, but that was already 4-5 months ago and only affected Bitcoin in the short term. What you are seeing right now is a market consolidation after BTC went crazy due to breaking USD 10,000,-. Things might get worse from here, but it's not the end of the world.

Welcome to crypto.

Get yourself a hardware wallet, either a Trezor or Ledger Nano S. Both are as secure as it can get and easier to use than other options such as paper wallets or using an airgapped (= offline) device for cold storage. Buy the hardware wallet directly from the manufacturer (via trezor.io or ledgerwallet.com respectively) and avoid eBay offers like a plague.

Electrum does not store your private keys on a 3rd party server, it merely uses a 3rd party server to access the blockchain so that you don't have to download the whole thing. Electrum is just as secure (or insecure) as the Bitcoin Core (= Bitcoin Qt) wallet. Both wallets are insecure in that every device that is connected to the internet may fall to malware sooner or later, which is why hardware wallets, paper wallets or airgapped devices are recommended.

Seriously? The market grows astronomically for more than a year and it's accepted as normal. The market stops growing -- it's not even dropping at that point -- and all of a sudden things smell fishy? O.o

Markets are cyclical, they don't just grow indefinitely without setbacks. Booms and busts. It's how markets behave.

Try to understand Bitcoin and its ecosystem first, before even thinking about putting money in it. Trust no one who has special tips for you.

If, and only if you feel like got the hang of Bitcoin, maybe then consider researching alts and eventually putting money in them. If Bitcoin is risky, alts are risk on top of risk, regardless of what you may hear from other people. Alts can turn out more profitable than Bitcoin if you're lucky, but they can just as easily turn into dust. Don't buy into the latest hype. Thread carefully.

If Bitcoin is still around in 120 years, society will most likely use it as store of value, assuming economics haven't changed in a way that makes the need for inflation a thing of the past. Bitcoin will continue to be tradable as long as people are willing to pay for it and consequently pay the miners that will live off transaction fees.



Assuming Bitcoin prices reach a plateau and stop growing in any meaningful way, difficulty is likely to drop as the focus shifts from block rewards to transaction fees. Not accounting for improvements in mining hardware, of course. Point being, short of external subsidies there will always be an equilibrium of difficulty and mining profitability, making it by definition always profitable for some.

Only if Bitcoin were to become one of many federated intergalactic blockchains. The current block interval is unfortunately way too short to extend Bitcoin beyond our future moon base. Even to Mars the latency would be too high. I guess the revolution of our future Mars colonies will get started due to Bitcoin's mining centralization on Earth and Luna?

Lightning Network aims to be used by both consumers and businesses. The premise being that bi-directional payment channels can be used to create a network of nodes -- ie. the lightning network -- which enables every connected participant to transact with everyone else. That is, regardless of whether they have a direct channel running or are connected indirectly via a route across the lightning network.

Check out some of the testnet lightning wallets and applications for a first glimpse:

1) HTLC.me web wallet ( https://htlc.me/ )
2) Eclair testnet android wallet ( Google Play Store )
3) Lightning Desktop App ( https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app/releases )
4) yalls.org for spending testnet microtransactions ( https://yalls.org/ )

It's still rough around the edges though.

Given the current state of the mempool it is very well possible that OP paid too low a fee for a timely confirmation, but enough of a fee for ViaBTC to accept it. According to their website as little as 10 sat/B is enough for them to accept a transaction, so it's worth a shot. The tricky part is timing your submission right and getting one of the free slots.

You're welcome. Don't mistake Bitcoin the technology with the companies that utilize it, as that's a common error of thought when one first comes in touch with cryptocurrencies. If you want to avoid getting Lehman'd simply don't buy financial derivates based on Bitcoin. No need to invest in certificates if you can just buy the real thing.

Bitcoin had it's own little version of the Lehman brothers when MtGox turned out to run on fractional reserves in 2013 and consequently folded. Lesson learned: Keep your coins in your own wallet and spare yourself from counterparty risk. After all this independence from third parties is exactly the value proposition of Bitcoin.

Try ViaBTC's transaction accelerator:

https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/


They offer free acceleration for 100 transactions every hour, so if you submit your transaction at eg. 9 PM sharp you have a chance to get your transaction included in the next block that gets mined by ViaBTC. If you're too late, just try again at the next full hour.

This article you are referring to seems to be a little dated, as nowadays you're better off just buying Bitcoin on exchanges such as Bitstamp or Kraken. P2P trades are nowadays mostly done using Bitcoin.de or LocalBitcoins, which take care of escrow for you.

Note that trading Bitcoin is something different from sending a Bitcoin transaction. Sending a Bitcoin transaction is just that, a transaction as described in the posts above. Trading involves you exchanging bitcoins for goods or services or other currencies, such as USD or EUR. How the goods, services and other currencies are provided depends on the trade or trading platform (eg. it could be a wire transfer, it could be handing over cash). The bitcoins themselves however will still be send over the blockchain. You will know that you succesfully received your bitcoins when your wallet shows an incoming transaction with at least 1 confirmation. Recommendation being 6 confirmations, however 1 confirmation should suffice for normal everyday transactions.

In other words: Sending a Bitcoin transaction is like handing over cash. Trading bitcoin is like you handing over cash and receiving a piece of gum (or the other way round). The blockchain only takes care of handing over the cash. The tricky part is making sure that the gum is actually received. This has nothing to do with Bitcoin and that's were exchanges come into play.

Greed is a bit of a strong word here, but the main incentive is definitely going to be a savings in transaction fees. After all cheap transactions -- in terms of blocksize space and consequently transaction fees -- is why LN is being implemented in the first place.

Still, ease of use for the average consumer and ease of integration for companies will also play a major factor. It's the main factor that worries me about the future speed of LN adaption. There's only one way to find out though.