The contrast between the market and the protocol is huge. The market which is where the speculative tourists hang out, makes it seem like Bitcoin's end is near, where speculative tourists sell in the process, while the true believers of the protocol see fundamental growth, which stimulates them to buy up even more coins while the price is screaming BUY NOW!

Money is the most powerful utility there is, because it enjoys an infinite amount of potential demand with the world population growing continuously.

I'm in for a daring prediction; before the end of 2019 at least 10,000BTC has been locked in LN channels.

It's definitely an ego fight, but for the ABC camp there is so much at stake, that they can't do anything other than continue to waste money protecting their own chain. Let's be honest, the only reason BCH has value is because it's backed by Bitmain and Roger. In this case I would say 25% ego and 75% protection of economical incentives.

It all comes down to when the nChain and CoinGeek losers finally start to give up this nonsense battle. BCHSV isn't worth anything. It doesn't have any sort of network effect, economical adoption potential, has a horrible reputation, etc. In this case I would say it's 100% ego. CSW is the typical guy thinking like; If I go down, I'll take you down with me.

Jihan once accused CSW to be a blockstream spy, but it starts to look like he's a central bank spy more than anything. Where the heck did this asshole come from lol.

Bakkt before the selling started; Who cares? It won't do shit.

Bakkt during the panic selling; Once it launches, the market will recover again because it allows money to enter the market.

Bakkt after their announcement to postone their futures market; This is manipulation, there is no other way.

Seriously? The market tanked because whoever it was, that entity triggered stop loss orders by peeing on the yearly support level. What happens after yearly support breaks? Full panic.

It doesn't have to be all that bad, because I am sure that ~$3000 is where bots will start to pool up so much buy support, that it very well may turn out to be the bottom. If you look at the charts of last year august/september, that's the level where the price found a bottom after a pretty harsh selloff tanking the price from $5000 to $3000.

The positive side of this selloff is that it grants investors certain taxation advantages, which somewhat makes me think that we won't be seeing any noteworthy increase this year.

I no longer plan to spend anything on black friday sales, but solely use my fiat to buy myself some more coins. Bitcoin at these levels offers more bang for your bucks.

Reading a different article covering the same subject, but with more information, it states that the fees per transaction are 7% which is pretty steep. I get it that the availability of easy to access fiat entry points is the first step towards mainstream adoption, but will people really bite here? BATM's in most cases are offering way lower fees.

I assume that from the 7% in fees around 2-3% goes straight to the tobacco retailers, so it's not really a matter of greed, but more so an overpriced product.

I am sure there are plenty of whales actively trading the market, but we don't see them be a whale because they are trying to cover that as much as they can. On top of that, whales are competing with other whales, so it's not that they have any sort of ability to instantly pump or dump the market to whatever levels they think the price should be at. I think the term manipulation is a bit overexaggerated.

The main problem is the lack of liquidity. When stop loss orders get triggered because of people's panic selling, and there is no liquidity to offer any sort of resistance, the price dumps hard. We have seen that with how the price went down $1500 in just 24 hours.

Only crypto currencies accepted as payment option, yeah right, sounds like a reputable business. Not.

Even if it was a completely legit business, it makes no sense to purchase mining equipment. The price has gone down a lot, which means there is plenty of hashrate waiting on the side to enter as soon as the price starts to go up again. In other words, you'll keep mining at a loss no matter what happens.

If you planned to spend your Bitcoins, don't do it, holding them is better at current levels. If you planned to convert fiat to Bitcoin to purchase mining equipment, purchase Bitcoin instead, which is a way better investment.

I noticed that too recently. It seems that they are planning to become more of an all round platform rather than just a site for Bitcoin, but that's not an excuse to blank out the Bitcoin part.

If you visit; https://www.blockchain.com/ you'll see that they point out Ethereum explorer in full, but refer to Bitcoin's explorer as explorer, nothing more.

If you visit; https://www.blockchain.com/explorer you'll see that they point out Bitcoin explorer in full.

It surprises me that they haven't launched a BCash explorer yet. 

I assume you are referring to the services in this industry? Compliant exchanges are annoying their users with all sorts of verification requirements already, so I don't see much that can be improved or added there.

In the end, it doesn't matter how secure of well regulated this industry is, if individuals are out to conduct illegal transactions, launder money, they will be able to do so without any problems. It happens in the regular market (which is heavily over-regulated) and will continue to happen here as well. People need to grow a thicker skin and stop investing in outright scam projects. Regulations aren't the problem nor the solution, people themselves are.

It's easy to talk down on ATM's for being too expensive to use, but there is a company behind it with operational costs, it's not a charity running strictly to break even.

In the end, ATM's need more usage and more competition to offer lower fees, and both aspects aren't present in today's world. I'm sure it will come one day, but I'm also sure that legacy banks will end up taking over the ATM space by upgrading their own ATM's to allow everyone to obtain Bitcoin at any time of the day.

Banks have the required licenses already, have enough ATM's running throughout the country, and thus the fees will be extremely low.

It's better for you to go through this selling because it will make you only stronger in the long run. It's all about learning from what's happening right now, because if you try to avoid looking at the market, and I understand how tempting it is right now, you will react in the exact same way during the next correction. In other words, don't walk away from it, but face it as it comes.

Crazy contrast there is between last year's November and today. From extreme happiness to pure desperation for most people right now.

Poor Tom Lee, he probably wish he would have sticked to his legacy market observations, which more often than not are pretty accurate.

He entered the market during the boom, and yeah, when crypto prices seem to go up endlessly it's hard to be wrong. I hope he takes the time to adjust his opinion based on the current situation, and not endlessly stick to his own logic that doesn't apply to crypto in any way right now.

There is no bad intent from his side, it's just that he's making a fool out of himself, which is pretty sad to see considering that this only works against him.

I have been telling people immediately after Bitfinex's "hack" that they should stop using that exchange, did anyone care? Nope. Even long term Bitcoiners still wire tens of thousands of dollars to Bitfinex and complain afterwards why it's not coming through when cashing out, or why they suddenly ask for 3% withdrawal fees. It's ridiculous.

People keep saying that banks are shit and they are out to work against crypto, but exchanges as Bitfinex are 100 times worse. They are the pest we'll continue dealing with for many more years to come. Poloniex is quite a joke as well, not sure how Circle was given regulatory approval to take them over with Tether on board. Doesn't it stink somehow?

I doubt it's true, but if it turns out to be true, it's actually great news.

The more people get rid of their sub $2000 coins, the stronger the market will become eventually, because we're in the process of creating a new price foundation we can build on in the future. It also stimulates healthy coin distribution, because instead of hundreds of investors holding one or more Bitcoins, these coins may end up flowing in the pockets of thousands of smaller investors.

An article meant to fuel more sales is actually quite a bullish signal if you read through their bla bla.

I don't think that we're at a stage yet where investors care about usage, because there wasn't all that much usage last year during the bull run and there still isn't right now.

I actually wish investors invested based on utility and usage, because if that was the case, utter trash coins wouldn't be worth billions and ICO's wouldn't manage to collect hundreds of millions during the peak of the hype. The fact that EOS raised $4 billion worth of Ether, and then blatantly cashed out $1 billion of that to fiat "to invest in companies building on EOS", you know that something is fundamentally wrong.

It's always easy to blame manipulation, but the main selling source is actual panic from average joes. If it's manipulation, they just have to complement the selling on levels people think the price is safe, but I doubt that's happening. Why spend money dumping the market down while average joes are doing it for you, and for free?

It makes a nice story though, if it was actual manipulation from institutions; dumping the price down so Bakkt can shove their coin backed futures contracts in people's throats. The story would be complete with an ETF approval. 

$4000 touched so it's going to be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Almost no sellers and volumes? Not sure what you are looking at, but it's probably not the crypto market. There is plenty of both right now.

Those who fomo'ed in last year are likely those who are driving the market down right now, because it's legit panic selling that we are seeing now, and not so much artificial selling pressure. Average joes aren't much on their own, but when they pool their efforts together they'll move every market without any problems.

Bitcoin isn't the one that should be blamed for people's greed, because the price in no shape or form reflects the utility of Bitcoin, just people's greed.

It actually surprises me that you bring this up, because when I look at the date you registered your account, you (in case you are still the same account owner) very likely have seen the market tank below $200 back in early 2015. Back then people said it's game over as well, and here we are. It's just another cycle we are going through.

$20,000 versus the various correction scenarios.

80% = $4000
85% = $3000 (my guess based on technical ball analysis)
90% = $2000

We're getting there.

Blockchain = overhyped buzzword making people not understand that well configured database systems can work just as efficiently.

Blockchain is a money cow, it's used as a smart marketing tool to raise capital startups and regular businesses otherwise wouldn't be able to raise. Ripple has been providing smart database solutions to financial institutions for a while now, and they can run their own token within that environment to move value from point A to point B.

Ripple CEO even said that blockchains aren't even useful or a better alternative, and when you know that this is factually correct, what more evidence is needed to show that corporate use of a blockchain is nothing more than hot air? They don't even want immutability.

The real innovation of the blockchain kicks in when you talk about decentralized (immutable) ledgers.

Not really. It's all a learning experience, even for me. I thought the market would hold a bit stronger due to the increased adoption and better fundamentals, but it seems that these aspects didn't add any sort of strength to this market. Definitely something to keep in mind when we are correcting after the next bull run.

The positive side is that money is much more likely to enter the market again due to these lower levels, which probably wouldn't happen if it kept hovering around $6000 for a couple of more months. This could potentially boost the demand for Bakkt, because it's easier to double from $4000 to $8000 than from $6000 to $12,000, especially during a bear market.