Their sovereign currencies are heading towards failure and their economies are already in turmoil. But I'm not convinced that this necessarily means critical mass for BTC. I have a friend in Argentina and although he's been using BTC for years, he said there has been an exaggeration regarding the level of Bitcoin adoption in Argentina.

I'm guessing that "hyperbitcoinization" is real, but it sounds like people are expecting it to happen in the next few years. I doubt it. First, I think we need to contend with state-level attacks on Bitcoin and likely brutal market manipulation/suppression by Wall Street. Governments seem to be heading towards state-issued "cryptocurrencies" as well, which will confuse potential investors.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Despite Bitfinex adding a small Polish bank to its arsenal, Tether has made no announcements regarding redemption of Tether. If people could redeem at 1:1 easily, I don't think the USDT/USD rate would fluctuate as much as it does.

The market is very illiquid (thin order books), creating trade opportunities. It also gets pushed around by 1) demand for altcoins not offered on Kraken and 2) Bitfinex/Tether FUD. For instance, we have a 15% range on the daily chart:



This is my general take: During altcoin pumps, the USDT price spikes above $1 as traders use USDT to disperse to different altcoin exchanges. Historically, anything in the $1.03-1.07 range is a good short. It tends to hold ~ $1. That spike down to $.90 was due to the Tether hack. I wouldn't entirely discount further opportunities with all the FUD floating around.


It can go higher, as explained above. At the height of altcoin season earlier this year (May-June), it was holding above $1 for weeks at a time. One thing about buying "discounted" USDT: If it dumps heavily, just make sure you know why before you buy.

For example, if Bitfinex or Tether is facing trouble with law enforcement or regulators, I probably wouldn't want to be holding USDT. I don't like to trade it myself. It's one of those get in/get out kind of assets to me.

Sorry to hear that. It's unfortunate, but also inevitable that some governments will try to ban cryptocurrencies.

I wouldn't panic yet. I doubt the government is doing sophisticated packet analysis on your web traffic to detect Bitcoin network activity, and if they were, you can use VPN/TOR. You can continue to mine. You can probably still open an account at lots of brokers/exchanges. Some will prohibit Indonesians based on the ban, but you can use VPN/TOR for those that don't enforce KYC (Bitfinex, Bitmex, Wex, Binance, etc).

The main issue is liquidating BTC to Rupiah to cover electricity costs. Withdrawing fiat money from exchanges requires KYC, so you might need to start trading P2P for withdrawals into your bank account (or Skrill, Neteller, Payza, Paypal, etc). There's a Currency exchange subforum for that, or you can check out Localbitcoins.

It can't be done at this point. Coinomi doesn't support Segwit (or multisig) addresses, and I haven't heard any updates about it since they launched BTG support. Freewallet has BTG support but can't even sweep private keys at all.


The problem is that Bitcoin Gold's official site and wallet are dodgy. A couple weeks back, they were serving unknown malware to anyone who downloaded their official wallet. This went on for almost two days. Personally, I'm not comfortable downloading their core wallet. Anyone who downloads it should do it in a VM or on a throwaway PC. And make sure you only import private keys after you've moved the BTC.

They don't pay the fees on their signature campaign payouts. And a lot of e.g. Filipinos just use their Coins.ph account (web wallet/exchange) to receive coins. If they want to transfer to other Coins.ph users, it's free. Otherwise, they might just want to dump their BTC on the exchange. In that case, no transaction fees, just standard trading commissions.

Google says the median salary in the Philippines is ~$7,660 per year (2014). With one Hero account, at the current BTC valuation, one could earn double the median salary. I'm sure some have multiple accounts, given the state of the forum....

That's been the promise of Potcoin and all the other cannabis-related cryptocurrencies over the years. I still don't think we are at the point where it's feasible at scale, but we're getting there. I'm curious whether Bitpay is working with any marijuana dispensaries. I haven't seen any dispensaries accepting Bitcoin. With legalization at the state level in California taking effect next year, maybe Bitpay is a possibility.

As an industry-wide move (business-to-business), it simply won't be possible until more of the economy starts "getting off the grid" and moving their balance sheets partially or entirely into cryptocurrencies. I don't see that happening for several years.

Regardless of anything else, brick-and-mortar businesses can't depend on commodity speculation (and a never-ending bull market). They'll need to hedge (and also account for the 3rd party risk of doing so). In time, I think a more decentralized stable/pegged crypto will emerge. I'm not sure how it'll work, but people smarter than me are trying to figure it out. That will be a game changer for businesses who have significant overheads in fiat.

Indian customs are not clearing Bitcoin mining hardware shipped from Bitmain, based on publicly unknown government directives. Shipments were being rejected at the border, so Bitmain has stopped shipping to India entirely. Refunds are being issued. Bitmain retweeted this, which I interpret as confirmation that these reports are true.


Do you have any sources to back this up? My understanding is that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are in limbo with regard to Indian laws and regulations. Just today, India's Finance Minister said that the government does not recognize BTC as legal tender. Apparently, regulations are forthcoming.

Last month, the Supreme Court apparently pressed the government to respond to calls to regulate BTC:


The Finance Minister reiterated that the country does not have regulations governing cryptocurrencies. That is not "legalization" but rather a grey market where regulation is unclear, and where other general Indian laws and regulations (re: taxation, commerce, AML/KYC) apply.

The mechanism at play is not interest, but rather a decentralized form of dividend. Traditional dividends are issued as fiat cash; this obviously isn't possible in a decentralized manner. So in the tradition of open source culture, "dividends" are "issued" as software forks. And since Bitcoin natively issues tokens within its software, so do its forks. It truly is magic internet money created out of thin air.

But just as that "value" was created out of thin air, it's likely built on hype and unrealistic expectations, unlike Bitcoin's strong fundamental foundation. Bgold and Bcash are worth talking about as dividends because of the asymmetry of market information. Long term, these dividends won't pay off nearly as much as today. In time, the market will begin to understand that Bitcoin's value is derived from its network reach and user base in the context of limited supply -- not its "brand" or "instant, cheap payments."

I'd say it really is different this time. Bitcoin is going mainstream. It's almost scary how Reuters and CNBC are putting out positive pieces on Bitcoin almost everyday. Forbes today: Want To Own Bitcoin? Here's How To Buy, Invest In And Store It. Unreal!

It's funny -- I had friends ask me about it in late 2013, near the top. I'm glad I told them to wait, and later told them it was time to start buying in 2015. Phew! I haven't had anyone IRL ask me about Bitcoin recently. That said, my crypto Twitter account is getting loads of new followers, Coinbase seems to be endlessly adding new customers, CME futures just got approved, and the mainstream attention just won't quit. I'm guessing this rally still has some legs left on it.

I think that anyone who understands markets will agree with the bolded statement. I like to think of Bitcoin "bubbles" like Gartner hype cycles. Bubbles are expected to pop and never recover, whereas hype cycles recover in due course.

We are undoubtedly in a hype cycle that will come crashing down. But even Shiller -- hilarious name by the way -- seems to stray from the traditional definition of a "bubble" when he says "it won’t go to zero, it just will come down." As a bitcoiner since 2013, I don't think I'm alone when I say that I want the price to come down. I'd even welcome another 2-year bear market if it means I have more time to accumulate cheaper coins!

I've always been partial to the argument that Bitcoin is a Veblen good, and I think that relates well to Shiller's points about the housing market. What he's saying holds a lot of truth from a market psychology and economic cycle perspective. But what I'm really curious about is what his downside target for BTC is.

The market will only become more volatile (in both directions) as this rally continues. The levels of hype, emotion and fear of loss among traders/investors are extremely high right now. The general rule is "the trend is your friend." The dumps will be bought until the parabolic fan is broken. Once the log trend breaks, look out below! For now, probabilities align with continuation onto new all-time highs.


I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. There was a widespread expectation that $10,000 would be a major profit-taking level. I tend to be contrarian on widespread expectations. As I thought, we went significantly past the target to $11,500 before a correction occurred. Because of the bearish expectations at $10,000, many bears shorted or sold their BTC. The high volume wick at the top was these people buying back. After this high volume exchange, there was no one left to buy (short term).

The market was ripe for correction. But it looks to me like the dip got bought. I'm not expecting new lows at this point. But if we do, I'm in agreement with John Bollinger: $7,500 is the target.

Does not compute. Gold, oil, stocks -- these are not legal tender either. But capital gains taxes apply to trading them, at least in the US. In fact, legal tender tends to be stable in price, so it doesn't make sense to tax its gains. Governments want tax revenue, which is why they are going after bitcoiners now (see the IRS/Coinbase decision).


It's hard to escape the tax man if you ever want to cash out to fiat. I don't think many countries (if any) tax transactions themselves, although any trade to another currency/commodity will trigger capital gains taxes.

I hear that, but there’s something to be said for trading the volatility along the way. I’ve explained my long term bullish position to my friends. But I’m also a trader, not just a long term investor. If BTC hits $20k-25k in a blow off top, I’ll be selling into it to buy back cheaper. Parabolic advances don’t last forever.


Thanks. Still hoping someone can weigh in on this. The IRS is clearly watching Bitcoin closely. They submitted a revised request for a court order for Coinbase customer information. The court just approved it and ordered Coinbase to comply. Anyone who transacted more than $20,000 in one year during 2013-2015 on Coinbase is now having their info handed to the IRS.

With BTC at $10k, all investors now need to pay attention. Long term holding isn’t the concern here so much as interfacing with exchanges who have the IRS nosing around.

They have different names at different exchanges. I was credited “YOB2X” at Yobit 1:1 for each BTC I held there. This was right before the expected fork. The fork never happened, but now YOB2X trades like any other coin. It survives because of market confusion and manipulation. It’s still trading at 0.016 BTC as we speak because the supply is so low (limited to Yobit’s total BTC exposure), so it’s easy to push around.

In fact, that’s why I think BCH and BTG can sustain these prices. Most people just hodl or ignore the forks entirely, lowering the circulating supply. The hoarding nature of cryptocurrency investors essentially props up the market cap of BTC forks. This dynamic could change in a bear market, though. That remains to be seen.

No, that's not what it is. If they try again, it won't be at Block Height 494784. That's important in this case.

I believe that most of the B2X futures contracts are based on Bitfinex's model. Specifically, the Segwit2x coin split contracts do not give you delivery rights on any fork in the future besides Segwit2x. They define Segwit2x very clearly:



So B2X delivery is based on the btc1 repository (Garzik and company), which was scheduled to occur at Block Height 494784. As it turns out, there was an existential flaw in the btc1 consensus code caused by an off-by-one error which caused btc1 nodes to freeze permanently at Block Height 494782:


So B2X futures are in a perpetually stuck state. We all know there will never be delivery. The implementation was broken and no rational miners would mine it at this point.

But it's theoretically possible that the btc1 code could be fixed. Then the fork could occur based on a blockchain snapshot at block 494783. At that point, exchanges could convert BT2 (or equivalent) to B2X. I think that's technically why B2X tokens are still traded...

Hmm, you've piqued my interest. Here's my application:

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Bitfinex and Poloniex are the most liquid and reliable markets. If you want to lend at the spread or slightly better, you can usually find liquidity fairly quickly. I don't use Liqui.io personally, but I do know that they offer margin lending with interest similar to Bitfinex and Poloniex.

Bitmex doesn't have the same sort of P2P lending. You can definitely earn interest income there, but it's a lot more complex. I suggest reading in detail how their perpetual swaps work before "lending" there. Here is a snippet from a blog they published last year:


There's a tutorial on how their swaps work in the blog I linked. Good luck.

By their terms, they aren't backed by anything. I'm guessing that legally, this is the only way they feel they can survive. If USDT is linked to an underlying currency (USD), that makes it a derivative. That requires licensing, since Tether was/is serving US residents (among other jurisdictions that probably require formal registration for derivative instruments).

I'm not going to vouch for Tether, but my guess is that they actually have the USD backing the circulating supply. I don't think that Friedman LLP would have put their reputation on the line without some assurance of that. I'm guessing they are "banking like criminals" as Bitfinex's CFO once called it. The money is sitting in bank accounts where the bank doesn't know what it's for. And Tether/Bitfinex has no realistic way to get people their money.


Bitfinex recently reopened USD and EUR deposits/withdrawals. However, the bank has a very small balance sheet, so I'm skeptical that it's sustainable. Also, the problem is not necessarily insolvency. It's easy to park money in bank accounts around the world. It's increasingly hard for an unregulated/unlicensed exchange to freely wire $$ with increasing volumes.

I actually think that Bitfinex's reliance on Taiwanese banks is what triggered Taiwan's AML reforms this year.

As a US resident, I can confirm that my Basic Verification is still active. I signed up in September. However, the withdrawal limit was lowered from 3 BTC to 0.4 BTC when I logged in today. I'm not sure when that change occurred, as I've been too paranoid to fund my Bittrex account given all the account locking. I'm really not comfortable handing my documents over to this 3rd party "Jumio." If Equifax can't even secure my info, I don't think "Jumio" can.

Also, when I logged in, I was immediately directed to the "Enhanced Verification" page. It was not mandated, and my daily withdrawal limit still says 0.4 BTC. But it doesn't give me a good feeling.

I think I'll stick with Poloniex, HitBTC, Cryptopia and Yobit for now.

BitCore has many parameters similar to Bitcoin. 21 Million coin supply, 10 min block time, same halving interval. The distribution is also different from Bitsend. The airdop is based on stake (compounding interest), and there are also BTX airdropped to BTC holders.

Bitsend is a Masternode coin, which is the primary distinction. This changes the economic model, although both BSD and BTX incentivize people to hold coins rather than sell them for short term profit. 210,000,000 BSD and 180-second block time -- very fast.

Clearly more energy has been put into BitCore lately with the recent BTC airdrop and addition to HitBTC. The pendulum will swing back. Working product, competent developers, not over-hyped. Both of these coins have bright futures. Take the lack of hype as an opportunity.