It's not to artificially keep the price down, but strictly because of how much more convenient it is to buy Gold derivatives rather than the actual asset itself. If you think logically, don't have governments more incentive than anyone else to keep the Gold price up high due to their insane physical and paper Gold reserves?

In the end, most people and investors aren't looking for anything other than the exposure it offers as safe haven during times of economical uncertainties. I don't think that Bitcoin is much different from Gold in that aspect, especially in the very long term where Bitcoin's spot volumes will be a joke compared to its derivate volumes.

I'm not sure how accurate it is today, but I read an article a couple of months ago that the ratio between spot and derivate volumes for Gold is approaching a ratio of 1:80. Crazy, right?

Cash will always remain convenient as long as there is no solid form of fungibility in either digital fiat payments (which won't ever happen) or crypto currencies. Sure, there is XMR and a couple of other coins active in that field, but they aren't being used to conduct day-to-day payments, so it's rather pointless.

Bitcoin's fungibility is going to get a massive boost with Schnorr and Lightning, and I think that's exactly what people are looking for. They don't want a shitcoin that no one cares about doing X, they want a well known crypto as Bitcoin to be multifunctional and do X Y Z because of its global acceptance. It will take some time, but we'll be there eventually.

As long as nothing beats cash's current main utility as a fungible form of money, people will keep using it.

I'm actually more impressed by the sharp fall from over $6000 to $3200 than this silly increase. Imagine how many sellers went all out and dumped their coins in the process. It's probably what this market badly needed with how many people were dreaming about $50,000 before the end of the year.

I like to see a steady/healthy growth from here and not be sucked into nonsense short squeezes. People can hype up short squeezes as much as they want, but it's a fake pump that in most cases ends where it started. We need the price to increase based on demand and confidence that the bottom is in. More confidence means more money that will enter the market instead of smaller bits and pieces due to people dollar cost averaging.

Short term speaking, higher bottoms is what I aim for.

It's expected to see this take place. By the time every large social media platform has its own coin or token, there is nothing left but to incorporate Bitcoin to differentiate themselves with. I think it's perfectly fine to see this take a year or two to develop into a competitive market, because that gives Bitcoin more time to scale and see Lightning become more of an aggressive competitor.

It only requires one large social media platform to kick things off and the rest follows to not fall behind.

I have seen people continuously repeat that they want to see the $3000 level tested in order to know what to do or think, but just as what we have seen before the $6000 level was broken, when too many people expect something to happen (above $6000 it was a bull run and currently a test of $3000) it's very likely not going to happen.

I kept sticking to the seasonality that favors Bitcoin more often than not in the last quarter of the year, but it seems that dumb money is a better indicator to follow. They go left, I'll go right.

Short answer. No.

Bitcoin is superior to Gold in almost every way, so there isn't anything people can say to prove otherwise. The only thing however is that most of the traditional farts will very likely continue to ignore all our arguments as to why Bitcoin is so much better. Even when they start to realize that you are right, they will probably never admit it.

In the end, it's not even our problem that they are too close minded and stubborn to admit the usefulness of Bitcoin, because it's their loss if they don't adapt. Bitcoin is less than a decade of age, yet it's covering 1% of all the Gold in the world in terms of market cap. I'm pretty certain that within 10 years we should be able to see Bitcoin climb up to 25% at minimum.

From criminal money to an x trillion dollar asset, not bad.

I'm not cheering because of how shit this market looks now, but because of how people who shouldn't be here are being shaken out. It also stimulates people to focus on the technical side of Bitcoin now the market isn't pumping, which is another benefit of a bear market. People come to sense now, which in my opinion is very important because it results in appreciation for what Bitcoin fundamentally stands for instead of its parabolic increases.

The main difference is that back in the 2014/2015 bear market the fundamentals were negligible because of how there wasn't much to focus on. That's different now. We're seeing actual progress which we could only dream of back then. I'm happy.

It may not be hackable from Blockchain's side, but it certain IS hackable from your side. On top of that, the Blockchain wallet is redundant. There are much better mobile wallet clients out there, and an added benefit of these clients is that they also support Segwit, which Blockchain doesn't and probably never will due to toxic politics games.

I'm personally using the Electrum mobile wallet client, and while its UI may not be as sleek as the one from Blockchain, it works perfectly and supports every address format. Blockchain's lack of Segwit support means that you can't send funds to a native Segwit address starting with bc1. In other words, they are censoring your payments to a certain degree. Not good.

Shame on Roger & Co. They put their soul into getting BCash accepted at so many stores, yet Litecoin enjoys much more on-chain transaction activity with close to no merchant adoption. If you after a year of hardcore shilling and trashing still haven't been able to get more people to use your shitcoin, you are probably not going to see much growth in use ever. Fail.

Too bad exchanges only care about making money, because I would delist this garbage in an instant. Toxic entities shouldn't be granted a stage.

I think the 'world' (i.e. the people) need to calm down and not expect the price to moon before the end of the week so they can sell. If your only incentive to be here is to swing trade your way through the ups and downs, you'll never appreciate Bitcoin for what it is and won't ever contribute to anything of positive nature.

The sole reason ETF's have been blown up lately is because people want to sell the news. They don't care about what happens afterwards. It's just another sell the news event.

Back to the basics we have to go. Exchanging goods. We're in the process of shifting from people buying Bitcoin, to people earning it in whatever form or shape. If you're earning it as an income form, you are more likely going to spend it rather than to keep it for speculative purposes. I think that's a great shift to focus on in the forthcoming years.

Exactly. It makes no sense at all, because it would only stimulate more people to "lose" their funds and claim a refund. On top of that, TradeOgre isn't even financially capable of refunding people with how little (probably closer to zero) profit they make. It costs more to dedicate time to continue development and money to hosting than you get out of it as operator.

What's wrong with using an exchange as Binance? It may not have every shitcoin listed on TradeOgre, but at least you know that Binance is here to stay. With TradeOgre you'll eventually wake up with the news that they have taken everything offline and you won't ever see or hear anything back from them.

We're more or less equal to each other in this market unless you are a market mover. No one is going to provide you any sort of help or guidance on what to think or do during the current market. People are champion in claiming to have predicted this or that event or price level, but they conveniently not tell you how often they have been wrong before that. If you keep making predictions, eventually one or two will hit the target. It's luck.

I want to see people put their money where their mouth is, and as long as that isn't the case, they are talking shit just to boost their social media following.

How difficult is it to tell the outside world that you simply don't know what the price will do? 

Lightning is going to be a massive selling feature which payment processors will be differentiating themselves with in the forthcoming months/years. If you aren't accepting Lightning payments, you're old news and very likely going to lose customers because people want to use that's what the cheapest and coolest piece of tech.

It's only a matter of time before large exchanges starts entering the Lightning field. Coinbase allows merchants to accept Bitcoin too, so that would make a great combination to start with.

Here is a video on youtube where someone in Switzerland bought a sandwich and coffee with Lightning, and the process was as expected, instant and very convenient. Real world use that is.

Ah well, at least they're participating in something that has the potential to change the world and their personal situation significantly. The best thing of Bitcoin is that as time goes by, most people who are serious about this stuff organically become almost anti state, which is a good thing. Bitcoin makes people interested in economics and from there understand how retarded the current system is.

The predators you're referring to can feast on people once, perhaps twice, but those who are genuinely interested in Bitcoin will become firm hodlers.

As for the noobie herd chasing hopes and dreams, they'll remain sucking on the wrong end of the money stick. They can't be helped by anyone. Let them buy your coins at peak levels, and have them sell these coins back to you at much lower levels. Great deal, right?  

The dump from $6000 to $5000 (i.e. breaking yearly support) happened before Bakkt delayed their futures launch. I don't even consider the 'hash war' nonsense to be a contributing factor, but at least it's more of a potential stimulator for traders to dump than Bakkt moving its launch date. On top of that, no one even paid much attention to Bakkt above $6000 and now suddenly it's a big deal? 

The most common reasons people thought the price to drop this year;

South Korea ban.
China ban.
India ban.
Governments cracking down on ICO's.
Social media ad bans.
ETF rejections and delays.
Goldman Sachs postponing trading desk plans nonsense.
Bakkt delay.

By that logic, it surprises me that we're still hovering well above $3000 instead of being close to $100. 

I have seen extensive use of the term capitulation on social media and in articles, but I honestly haven't seen much capitulation at all. Sure, a few startups have fired staff, stopped working on projects, miners shutting down, but this isn't capitulation, or at least, not in full force.

I find the mood swings of people in this market to be hilarious; just a few days $1500 was just a matter of time, and now you see them throw around with +$5000 figures. I get it that people are happy to see some green after so much red, but realize, the green that we see is nothing more than a tiny drop in a bear-size bucket.

People were 'sick and tired' of $6000 like two months ago, and now they can only dream of having that level back.

I am not taking any increase seriously until we break $6000 and continue to hover above that level with good support on the lower side if it's about to fall back down. As long as that doesn't happen, I don't rule out a sub $3000 visit. On top of that, I don't mind scooping up some sub $3000 coins if we happen to fall that low. The market has turned into one pile of rubbish already, so it can't get much worse than this.

Altcoins lol, they still look like there is plenty of bust room in them. It's crazy that XRP has kept up this well during what happened this year, but then again, they didn't had to suffer from the ICO circus sale that affected mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It's mind boggling how people don't care about the potential dangers around USDT, and that while most of them do acknowledge that it could just as easily be an unbacked stable coin. Seriously, if you think there is potentially a chance that the tokens you hold might become worthless at any point if the news comes out that they aren't backed, how can you still cash out to USDT and wait for the price to have found a bottom?

I rather see the fiat value of my coins tank but have them safely stored offline than holding a shitty token that could become worthless overnight. If people are so desperate to 'protect' their fiat value during corrections and bear markets, at least use a stable coin with a reliable entity such as Coinbase/Circle backing it, and not a crook as Bitfinex.

I don't like it either, but the thing is that you don't have to subject yourself to this system if you don't want to. Bitcoin provides the perfect tools to allow you to hedge the risks coming from a system that's only meant to work against you instead of for you. It's not that it's something entirely new, it happened for decades now and people are looking but not taking any action.

It's like they expect the next time to be different/better, but that's entirely false. It's a system working to serve a small layer of the economy, and there is no incentive from the elite to change anything about it, so it's pointless waiting. If you don't utilize Bitcoin you're begging to be sucked into this shit for plenty of more years to come.

I'm not sure how Bitmex manipulates the market aside from trying to stirr up traders to become more active, or to perform 'maintenance' during odd time frames. Bitmex fetches its prices from Bitstamp, Coinbase Pro and Kraken. In other words, price discovery happens at these exchanges and not Bitmex itself.

That could happen, but considering the oversight on Coinbase, and their intentions to remain the most trusted and compliant exchange, I don't see them personally attempt to command traders what to do with their funds. I'm 100x more worried about a hack or an insider job from a rogue employee, or the government itself ordering to freeze funds of certain entities using Coinbase.

Having over 600,000BTC makes you wonder if anyone would ever notice if 10,000-20,000BTC are missing if Coinbase decides to not report a hack or theft, especially with how it's highly unlikley that everyone will withdraw their coins all at once.