Exactly. There are probably thousands of exchanges that are fabricating data, washing trading etc. to make themselves look better on paper than they really are.

And when an exchange is smaller and not as popular as the big ones, it actually makes detecting fake volumes a lot easier. Because if no one knows it and uses it, then where is the volume coming from? Just use your common sense here.

People shouldn't be using relatively new, unproven, and unlicensed exchanges that have just popped out of a google search. Nor should trade volume be the sole indicator of whether or not an exchange is trustworthy.

You're absolutely right, and it's great that you're bringing this topic up because I think it's definitely been underdiscussed.

Not only are there exchanges that ask you for KYC information only when you withdraw, there are also sportsbooks, casinos, and hosted wallets that do the same thing. A remember that a recent case is with Changenow.io, with them asking for identification on a customer that actually had quite a large transaction with them even though they used to advertise themselves as anonymous.

None of them will ever ask you to offer verification documents before you want to get funds out of their platform.

IMHO, these sites are completely untrustworthy and unprofessional, and should be avoided even if you are willing to provide them. It seems like a blatant excuse to hold funds in the name of KYC. A lot of the times, they aren't even legally obligated to do this, even though they argue this way.

If you want to implement KYC, do so before any deposits can be made. Don't do it after.

What you are talking about is really what happens in the much longer term.

Demand for bitcoin fluctuates in the short run quite wildly, due to factors such as market sentiment, what's in the news, and just speculation. Even though the supply side of the equation remains stable due to the fact that bitcoin's supply is hard coded into the network and can't be manipulated by any central entity (wihich is exactly what makes bitcoin valuable in the first place), the demand side is by no means stable.

You may also say that bitcoin adoption is pretty much unchanged in the short term, and adoption is probably the best measure for demand. Well yes, but again, in the long term. In the short term, the markets are highly irrational. Panic dumps in this bear market that comes out of nothing is common. And it's not just bitcoin, it's pretty much any free trading market.

You're right. In the present, speculation is still the main use of bitcoin, and banking services are obviously being practically used on a daily basis around the world.

Another problem that is preventing bitcoin from being practically used for large scale commercial payments is probably simply the lack of awareness of what bitcoin is all about, what its underlying principle is, etc. There is also the concern with regulations surrounding the use of bitcoin, which creates a grey area in many countries.

However, I do think that in the future, when adoption picks up (especially use by merchants), there more awareness of decentralised cryptos, and regulation matures (hopefully); more companies and institutions will use bitcoins to gain the advantages that I stated above, replacing some functions of banks. Even if regulations aren't in favour of this in the future, individual use is still possible.

I wouldn't go back to using coinbase simply because they've expanded their no fee paypal withdrawals to European users, even if I lived in the permitted regions.

There are simply too many cons that outweigh the pros of using Coinbase. I recall their customer support being absolutely horrendous during 2017. A lot of people had issues with coinbase, and never received an on time response from them despite promises from Brian Armstrong himself to work on that field. Instead, they invested their time and energy into developing new features, as opposed to maintaining and satisfying their existing customer base.

Also, you're running the risk of getting your account suspended, or funds held/frozen. Coinbase has a track record of doing so with any suspected accounts, with or without proof. Add that to the fact that coinbase's rates and fees mean that the actual rate you get is most likely not going to be good at all.

While fee-free paypal withdrawals can't hurt, I think everyone knows the reputation of paypal as a payment processor especially within the crypto field. Most likely only a low percentage of crypto users use Paypal actively.

I wouldn't say that anything about the bitcoin network or infrastructure itself has changed.

What has changed over the past few years has really been the services that are being offered around bitcoin, the regulations that are surrounding bitcoin in certain countries, as well as bitcoin's role within the economy.

I'd say that right now, bitcoin is still highly speculative. Use of bitcoin as a currency, especially for virtual items, have definitely increased over the past years, but not to the point where it's the major use. Increasingly, bitcoin is seen as a store of value as well as a means to settle large transactions globally.

That pretty much sums up the developments over the past few years. Adoption has been growing at a rapid pace, which is the most important in my opinion.

It's not only just the fact that they charge absurd rates for activities that can really be pretty much all done for free with third party payment processors, or decentralised cryptocurrencies (including services such as international transfers, maintenance fees, etc.). Banks as centralised entities mean that your funds are never in full control of yours.

For example, bank funds can easily be frozen, certain transactions can be blocked selectively by banks, because they have full control over the payment infrustructure. That affects the fungibility of the currency that is held within any traditional, centralised banks, not to mention the fact that they run on fractional reserve.

This is the exact opposite of the decentralised system which bitcoin runs on. With such high fees, inconvenient transfer clearing times (epecially internationally), and a lack of support for people who have only got savings on a small scale, it wouldn't be a surprise for a lot of the underbanked and the unbanked to start utilising bitcoin as both a medium of payment and store of value increasingly in the future.

I see banks integrating more and more with blockchain technology in the future and potentially even starting to offer crypto based financial services. They wouldn't be completely replaced by decentralised cryptos any time soon, but I do think that bitcoin can serve as a viable alternative that will see increased adoption.

With the market sentiment remaining extremely bearish, not all dumps have to be rational.

While people may be inclined to pairing every single market movement to a single piece of news, it's rarely what actually happens. Markets doesn't always act rationally. If it does, prices wouldn't move based on bull/bear cycles, but rather follow the long term averages.

It's not rare to see at all unexplained short term corrections, which could be a result of an early investor dumping their position, or simply because traders and investors panic dumping as a result of natural market movements due to the current fear and uncertainty within the bitcoin market.

It's honestly quite useless in terms of investing in the long run to pinpoint these events with other events. Bitcoin's decentralisation makes it extremely volatile, and this reflects within these short term price swings. It will get better in the future as more adopters enter the market, though.

Tokenisation wouldn't mean much, in my opinion.

It's virtually the same as stocks being digitally traded, except there may be advantages in terms of using a blockchain to facilitate transactions, such as the immutability of the transactions. It's not perfectly trustless either, unlikely the real decentralised currencies. Coingecko breaks it down perfectly.

The only real advantage that I can see is if the tokenised shares can be traded on a decentralised platform, which could open up a global marketplace of trading shares without having to physically open an account overseas. That would be tremendously useful for global security traders, in my opinion. But even then, it would lead to a lot of compliance and regulatory considerations which means that it's probably going to be considered by a select few companies with special circumstances.

A lot of people tend to argue either that since bitcoin doesn't have a central issuing authority that backs its value, it can't be used as "money". Others say that bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Both of these arguments are wrong, in my opinion.

Just because a central entity issues a currency doesn't mean that it's valuable. Fiat isn't intrinsically valuable despite what people tell you about how it is backed by the government. There is no promise to pay anything, or redeem the currency that they issue for any tangible goods.

Bitcoin is divisible, can act as a medium of payment, more fungible than fiat, and is a store of value due to the fact that its supply is decentralised. Its intrinsic value comes from its ability to be used on the bitcoin network to send and receive transactions.

To me, it's a far better form of money than fiat, and even gold/silver due to its enhanced portability and convenience. Just as you said, as long as there are adopters willing to use it (which there are plenty), bitcoin can be used as money.

I'd definitely get out of stocks as well as real estate at this stage. If the P/L is still positive, I'd definitely get out of my position.

The growth over the past few years with the US stock markets is definitely unsustainable in the long run, and these low interest rates aren't going to hang around forever. The same with the housing market, a lot of countries are currently seeing round two of the housing bubble, and prices are already stagnating in certain countries.

To be honest, decentralised assets that are independent from the fiat system that fuels a lot of the growth within these fields are the way to go within a financial crisis like the potentially upcoming one. Bitcoin should comfortably outperform asset classes such as shares and real estate, and potentially even cash and precious metals even in a recession, since it has no ties to the traditional economy.

People have flocked to gold as a safe haven post-2008, but I think bitcoin will be seen as a legitimate store of value and an alternative, more convenient means of storing wealth this time round.

That's the thing with monitoring exchanges' or the so called "whales" addresses. Everything is speculative and there is no evidence of insolvency or something bad happening simply based on the fact that large amount of funds have been moved. A lot of the times things can be made to look worse than what is actually the case.


That's exactly what I did as well.

Same with poloniex, the situation was quite similar. Both exchanges were pretty much at the top of their game before they removed the option of a legacy account altogether and forced verification onto every single user. Their customer support at one stage was pretty bad as well, leading to a lot of complaints against Bittrex which I remember that existed on bitcointalk.

TBH, there are a lot of exchanges with more volume, liquidity, have more professional customer service and offer pseudo-anonymous accounts to users at this point in time. Unless you are absolutely used to using them, or have to use one of their features, looking into new exchanges to diversify to wouldn't be a bad idea (you honestly should do this regardless of what exchange you are on, though, to spread the risk of exit scamming exchanges).

It is indeed boring, but I've expected this to happen. You're absolutely right on the analysts being absolute jokes though.

Unlike people who predicted bitcoin to completely reverse in terms of market sentiment as well as the overall price trajectory in 2019, I thought and still hold the belief that it is highly unlikely any recovery of major scale would happen this year, especially during the first half of the year. This is because I do not see any major events occuring this year that would drive prices up, and previous bear markets have lasted longer than the time it took from the ATH in 2017 to right now.

Sideways movement is expected this year. Even though people are hyping up ETFs still (have died down in recent days though), it is highly unlikely that an approval is in sight any time soon. And despite institutional interest, because the market sentiment is so bearish, it barely matters as investors are all emotional.

If you're a long term investor, or using bitcoin simply as a hedge against inflation, fiat, or diversifying your portfolio with an independent currency, then you shouldn't be worried whatsoever. I'd say you only need to worry if you are trading on leverage, or can only hold your position for a short period of time.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is an obvious HYIP which is synonymous with ponzi at this point.

The fact that they are offering you investment plans which range from 5% daily for 35 days to 7% for 25 days gives their entire scheme away. No legitimate business would be able to generate this much profit on investments this consistently, while guaranteeing the rate of return.

Just use your common sense here - there is no underlying business model that would support their claims, and assuming their investment program was legit and the profits can actually be realised (which it definitely cannot), why would this company ever offer it to the public instead of reinvesting every cent of their funds back into this venture?

Your problems with logging in could be as a result of them pulling an exit scam. But it doesn't really matter because it would be a miracle for you to get your money back even if you were able to log in. In future, avoid all HYIPs like this, all of them exist to make the owners money, not you.

We all know that the actual rate of expansion of bitcoin's currency supply is slower than what thereotically should happen, due to coins that are being lost.

I simply don't see a good enough system that could be used economically in order to quantify exactly how much inflation is actually occuring within the bitcoin supply, nor is there much of a reason to do so. The Google trends idea is interesting, but I don't think it is accurate since bull markets generally generate better google trends results, and more searches doesn't necessarily equal more newbies, which in turn, doesn't always equal more quantity of bitcoins lost.

At the end of the day, what matters is that the supply can't be manipulated by a central entity. That is the most important property of bitcoin in my opinion. Losing BTC and the bitcoin supply curve not always being perfectly lined up isn't much of an issue.

There are two types of cloud mining services out there. Either the company is a scam, or the investment packages that they offer are completely unprofitable.

By investing in Bitdeer, you're not only taking on the risk that they won't actually pay out, even if they do, you will only be profitable for a short while before your contract gets terminated because of the fact that the profits you are making from your contract is less than the maintenance fees you pay.

There is a reason why companies offer these cloud mining plans in the first place. It's because they know that they can make a profit out of the maintenance fees, which means that you're most likely not going to make anything (unless bitcoin prices go up big time, and even then, it's much better to just hold BTC).

It's a good thing that you're willing to keep away from these types of companies now. There are a ton of misled newbies that are still investing in them and losing money, despite the tons of evidence out there that these services shouldn't even logically exist based on their historical profits.

I've used them before, and the transactions went through without issues. That was some time ago though, and there was no dispute.

I wouldn't say that they are a scam simply because they still haven't processed your refund yet, but it is very unprofessional and goes against their promises if they advertise their platform as protecting both the buyers and sellers, but do not actually do anything within the specified timeframe if anything does go wrong with the transaction and a dispute is launched.

The fact that they are unresponsive on their support is also unacceptable. They are getting paid fees on the purchase for a reason.

For now, I'd continue to send them support tickets on a daily basis to keep reminding them that this case is still active even if they don't respond. But in the future, I'd definitely only use them as a last resort if forum ecrows are not available. Forum escrows on bitcointalk are much more active, and more communicative. Perhaps they are still undecided on the case given that the product was provided to you (but it obviously doesn't work) and the seller didn't flat out scam you, but it still doesn't warrant them being unresponsive.

I still uphold the belief that a short term bear market won't affect the long term future of bitcoin.

Firstly, 2019 is most likely going to see some bullish sentiment being injected back within the market. Especially in the latter part of the year, since the bear market has pretty much gone on for long enough (looking at historical bear market durations and percentage losses) for this to be close to the bottom right now. Secondly, we've seen this type of bear market which wipes out the majority of the market cap of BTC before, and it hasn't affected how institutions and individuals adopt bitcoin.

I wouldn't expect a bull market to emerge out of 2019, but I do think that adoption will continue to pick up as people get more comfortable with cashlessness. More institutions will likely be launching their bitcoin products or whatnot in 2019 compared to 2018 as well, given the fact that prices will be more stable most likely. That's my take on the matter.

There is every possibility that prices are going down lower from this point. Short term sentiment simply is unpredictable and a lot of the times, very irrational. However, I disagree with his predictions.


I think that bitcoin crashing under $1k is next to impossible, and that $2-3k as a bottom, even though is possible, will be extremely unlikely given the fact that there are tons of institutional investors that would be willing to buy up the cheap coins at that price point.

Also, I really don't get how he just puts out completely random and arbitrary numbers in terms of the probabilities of which prices go below a certain point, without backing it up with any form of legitimate analysis. That in my opinion is a sign that his opinion shouldn't be blindly trusted in, although that should be the case with any self proclaimed expert on speculation.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I believe that bitcoin will hit levels below $3.2k again, because of the bearish sentiment that is still within the market.

Usually, a sell target is one that is close to the expected peak of a rally, not one that is lower than your entry price. It's absurd to think that this type of trading will be profitable, let alone a sustainable investing strategy in the long run.

It's essentially adopting the mindset of panic dumpers, which very rarely make profits.

What should be done during this bear market if you do have the liquidity to spare would be to accumulate BTC on a regular basis which ensures that your entry price is low, while the rest of the market is panicking. Mark Dow closing his short may not necessarily be anything fundamentally tangible, but it does send a signal to the rest of the market what rational investors should be doing.