I think it is important to realize that countries are not existing in a vacuum, but are
competing with each other. Therefore the really big countries cant´t really ban Bitcoin,
because their competitors would then be able to profit from promoting Bitcoin in their
own countries. E.g. if the US would ban Bitcoin, Russia and China would probably
immediately embrace it.

This isn´t even taking into account the fact that a ban of a decentralized currency
like Bitcoin is not enforceable. Even after the government of Morocco banned Bitcoin, people
can still use it and just have to switch to P2P trading or exchanges that still serve
customers from Morocco.

Many people are not asking for the complete removal of a tax system, but rather disagree
with the high level of taxation in their respective country. I´d have no problem with paying
a fixed 10 % tax on all my income, but I do have a problem with paying 40 % or more
(especially, because the actual tax burden is even higher due to taxation via inflation
and consumption taxes).

The problem with focusing on electing a more responsible government is an inherent problem
of democracies. The easiest way to get people to vote for you is to promise to increase government
spending and government handouts. This leads to a bidding war between politicians and
ruins the state finances in the long-term every single time.

Besides, most countries have a huge electorate that is living directly off government transfers and
is therefore heavily incentivized to vote for irresponsible candidates that will not
consolidate the finances of the state.

Today is the second day of the Epsom Derby (one of the most prestigious horse
races in England) and yet I can´t see any horse racing odds.

I really think that these horse races would attract more betting volume
than some of the stuff that is actually available at BetKing (e.g. Australian
cricket).

I think ETFs would be a great addition, because they would allow people to allocate parts
of their retirement accounts to a product that is based on Bitcoin and backed by Bitcoin. Right now
doing this is practically impossible in most countries, because these retirement accounts can only
be invested in certain asset classes.
A Bitcoin ETF would be a gateway to include Bitcoin in your retirement portfolio in an indirect way. Besides, it would
obviously fuel a new wave of media interest and good publicity for Bitcoin.

We all witnessed the hype around the BTC futures and I´d argue that the hype around
Bitcoin ETFs would be even bigger.

I think they are just trying to generate more revenue
from small retail clients.

Big clients, who use Gemini´s Block Trading feature (minimum order
of 10 BTC or 100 ETH), still have a better fee schedule:
0.50 % Taker Fee
0.00 % Maker Fee

Maybe they are just focusing on bigger clients now, because most
newbies are starting out at Coinbase instead of Gemini anyway.

I basically agree with most of your viewpoints except for this claim.

Of course an increase in the adoption of SegWit is a great development, but I really think that the current
level of transaction fees is mainly caused by a loss of interest in Bitcoin (at least for now, many people will
be back).

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin

If you take a look at this chart, it looks awfully familiar to the price chart.

If the interest in Bitcoin goes up due to a catalyst, transaction activity will
multiply and fees will rise. Probably the situation won´t be as bad as it
was at the end of 2017 due to SegWit + batched transactions, but I still think
that the current level of transaction fees is unsustainable in the long-term.

Otherwise, a great post and I´m really looking forward to many other good posts in this thread.

I got promoted to Sr. Member and have already updated my signature to the new signature code.

I´m aware that currently no Sr. Member slot is available, but it would be great if you could
reserve a slot for me.

Thank you.

Yes, I saw that article when it was initially published.
However, there are already a few other custodial solutions that are more accessible than Xapo.

E.g. even Coinbase offers custodial accounts:
https://custody.coinbase.com/

Of course it is still not really geared towards retail customers, but it seems to have lower
requirements than the Xapo custodial solution that was mentioned in the Bloomberg article.

Another problem is the fact that some of the bounty campaign managers do not even filter or monitor
the participants of their campaigns at all. There are various campaigns that are full of multi-accounts and spam bots that definitely
do not generate any conversions and still get paid by the manager. As botany pointed out there is no financial
incentive to perform a due diligence or run conversion tracking, because they are only paying in imaginary tokens
that they can create out of thin air. Maybe this problem wouldn´t exist if they would pay for their marketing efforts
in Bitcoin or even fiat money.

Otherwise, I completely agree with your post and seriously question the basic marketing capabilities of
the people in these teams.

This is a smart plan. But what do you do when your site investment is actually decreasing
day after day when the players are getting lucky? Even though an investment in a site bankroll
is usually +EV (=has a positive expectation), you can still have a long losing streak as an investor.

If I recall it correctly, the total profit of the dice site Bustadice was negative for nearly 5 months, because a few
whales won big and it took a long time until the investors recovered their losses.

You can check the stats for yourself at:
https://yolodice.com/#stats/game

At the time of writing:
~ 1057 LTC profit
~ 575 ETH profit

However, these stats are misleading, because a huge chunk
of these profits has been paid in out various competitions at YOLOdice.

Great thread @gentlemand !


They are already illegal in some countries.
However, I wonder if ICOs would still have the same appeal to gullible newbies when
they would be more regulated. One of the reasons that ICOs did so well in 2017 was the fact
that everyone could easily jump on board by buying a few BTC or ETH at Coinbase.
In the beginning most ICOs didn´t even require KYC or whitelisting and didn´t exclude people
from heavily populated countries like the US.

If ICOs become too regulated, it will become difficult to invest for most people, which will once again
favor venture capitalists, who have no problem with KYC or high minimum investments.

E.g. BitMEX that has been running its own for-profit trading subsidiary on its own platform...

Regarding realr0ach, most of you are getting to worked up over his posts.
Just grab a cold beverage of your choice and print out your own realr0ach Bingo card and follow
the thread

On secound thought you are right. I somehow assumed that spoofing would also influence long-term price.


In order to stay on-topic:
What could be another catalyst for a new bull-run? Of course there are possibilities like the approval
of a Bitcoin ETF (seems unlikely for now) or the upcoming block reward halving (is still more than 2 years
away) or the Lightning Network. Nevertheless, it still looks like a classic blow-off top, which could
be the indication of yet another prolonged bear market.

Don´t worry, just give the DOJ and the CTFC some more time.

This article was published a few days ago:
https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/bitfinex-tether-investigation/




The Tether situation is probably not over yet if you ask me. I just think
that these investigations take time, especially when so many jurisdictions
and so many different entities (from Panamanian firms, to a Puerto Rican bank, to
a Hong Kong exchange and even US government agencies) are involved.

Theoretically I would agree with the bolded part of the quote, but in practice
Bitcoin will be fine.

Let´s imagine the (likely) scenario in August 2024:
1. The Bitcoin block reward is only 3.125 BTC / block at this time (oh, no, adversarial mining is a real danger now!!)
2. BTC is trading for 120000 $ / BTC.
3. This means that the block reward is actually higher in terms of fiat money than it is now (375k $ / block vs. ~94k $ / block now)

Even though the block reward may be lower measured in BTC it will be much higher in $. And miners obviously
have to pay their electricity, their staff and their hardware in fiat money (unless Bitmain is still
accepting only BCH for their miners    ).

The doomsday scenario where the block reward halvings make adversarial mining more attractive are therefore
not really realistic. Besides, my estimate didn´t even take into account the revenue for miners that is generated by
transaction fees, which will likely be higher than it is now.

They recently removed this requirement and lowered the minimum account
deposit to 1000 $.

https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/243


The 10000 $ minimum for new accounts was a temporary measure and I suspect
that they could see after some time that this requirement deterred too many retail customers.

Is it also possible to sell BTC/LTC/... at the General Bytes ATMs?
I couldn´t find any information on the homepage regarding this.

Or are only cryptocurrency purchases possible using these ATMs?

You are aware of the fact that many Bitcoin mining operations are based in Iceland or Canada and
run exclusively on renewable energy? More advanced operations even use cold air for cooling.
It doesn´t really get more environment-friendly than that.

Of course there are also miners, who consume energy from more questionable sources, but to say that
the huge electricity consumption is a problem on its own is dishonest. Besides, people constantly
push the narrative that Bitcoin mining is bad for the environment and yet no one has ever made the same
claim about the fiat money system, which arguably consumes even more energy.

It is also possible that a crash of the real economy would damage the prices of all cryptocurrencies.
When people are laid off or are in desperate need of money for other reasons they will start to liquidate
more speculative investments like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency holdings.

It is hard to withdraw money from a retirement account, but it is easy to sell off a few coins when
you really need the money.