Alfacashier from memory is probably not a scam, and changelly even though it's extremely shady and has withheld some funds of customers previously, definitely isn't owned by the same people that deveoped ChangeBTC.bit for sure.

Whoever advertising the site is trying to lure you into using their site, promising a profit on two completely unrelated sites. Of course, when you deposit, you won't receive anything back.

Classic confidence trick and unfortunately, I doubt you'll find any success in trying to track down who exactly stole your coins. In the future, make sure you are careful with these exchangers. Always research before you deposit money and make sure you ask around if you're unsure.

That's the problem with supporting stablecoins in most cases - their value is only guaranteed by a central entity which defeats the whole purpose of having support for a crypto in a first place.

And that central entity is able to say which coins they consider to be legitimate and can be redeemed and which are not. So that seriously affects the fungibility of it all. Coinbase could likely be an alternative path for cashing out these coins, if support is confirmed.

Anyhow, I wouldn't use coinbase with or without the stablecoin element to it. Their customer support has been terrible and my personal experience with them has been subpar, not to mention the fact that they suspend accounts quite easily if you deal with casino sites, etc.

I think that you're asking the wrong question here.

I think it's quite unlikely that any one of the tech giants will be able to be replaced in terms of market capitalisation on the leaders chart any time soon. Even though crypto mining companies may be large in size, their operations are honestly still quite minuscule compared to these companies.

But there is a real possibility that the market cap of bitcoin itself is going to eclipse one of these company's market capitalisation very soon. I don't know if that's an accurate measure of success, but I do think that it's possible and will probably happen at one stage.

The last big bull markets have all established all time highs, so I definitely would not be surprised if the next bull market would be able to have similar returns figures as well. After all, the bitcoin market is quite cyclical in nature.

As you mentioned, there is also the possibility now that institutional investors would be able to influence growth even further and make this coming bull market a lot more crazy.

But personally, I wouldn't expect prices to rise to 6 figures that easily. It's much easier to go from 4 figures to 5, but way harder to get from 5 figures to 6, from a psychological standpoint and because of the limited amount of investments that can come in. But given that the next bull market could potentially coincide with the halving in 2020, it could be possible. I'd like to be more conservative in my speculative predictions, I guess.

Probably both.

Their site itself is shady enough to be a scam. Their whereabouts and physical location as well as their actual company information is pretty much nonexistent, they've got a reputation of having one of the cworst customer supports consistently, as well as constant issues with deposits and withdrawals that I have experienced myself.

Their investbox could for sure be a ponzi based off the unsustainable returns they are offering, but people are still investing in it. Not to mention the potential for insider trading that "yobit pump" can bring.

I'm not sure why people still use them to be honest. They have been long proven to be untrustworthy, and yet users still continue to use them with no due diligence, until they are scammed.

I mean, they may for sure pass this bill somehow. Not surprising with the climate in which cryptos are already currently existing in India right now.

But the thing is, they don't have any enforceability.

They could try take down the holding of unregulated crypto assets, and since they're not actively regulating any one that I know of, pretty much all decentralised cryptocurrencies are going to be under this umbrella. But how will they ever persecute people for holding these assets? It's simply not feasible, they could take away the exchanges but P2P trading will still be present. They're much better off regulating the scene instead of trying to ban everything.

Obviously, such a high profile approval will change a lot of the industry.

But I think that the benefits are all going to be more institutionally focused than on a bitcoin's user's level. An average bitcoin user is definitely unlikely to be affected by ETFs, if they are ever approved.

Sure, there may be a short term buzz in the market due to a potential approval, but that would be pretty much it in terms of impacts in my opinion. In the long run, investing in bitcoin itself is a much wiser thing to do than investing in a fund.

Also, I fail to see how ETFs will change the intrinsic security of bitcoin and other cryptos for the better like the article claims? Perhaps it makes the process of safekeeping easier for institutional investors, but that's pretty much it.

Exactly. I wouldn't have any doubt in my mind that big corporations have been dealing with laundered money on an institutional scale way more than what bitcoin or other cryptos are used for it.

Yet, you see that bitcoin is apparently scrutinised in many countries because of "AML concerns", and the press paints a bad picture regarding the association of bitcoin with these illegal activities.

The fact is that bitcoin itself is completely legitimate, there is nothing illegal about a cryptocurrency that is decentralised. What people use it for is a completely different matter, and can't just be attributed to bitcoin itself. It's like saying fiat currency needs to scrutinised because people are using it for laundering money as well, makes no sense.

Haha. Unfortunately, no. 

username: magneto

I can withdraw any winnings, without having to deposit anything, right?

Isn't it ironic that Venezuela has their same crypto, and nobody is talking about it within the crypto community even though the government is pushing hard for it? It just shows how completely useless the Petro is, in my opinion.

But yes, bitcoin can really be used by every day Venezuelans to be as a store of value to hedge themselves against the invisible tax of inflation.

The fact that they don't have access to foreign currencies cheaply and easily mean that Venezuelans need to seek alternatives, and bitcoin is one of the easiest to use and widely available, and can be traded online. I would wonder if some Venezuelans start using bitcoin as a means of payment as well as a store of value in a parallel economy in the future as well, it's very possible given the convenience of bitcoin.

It could. And bitcoin is already doing it, as it exists without any borders or sovereign 'issuer'.

But I think what you're trying to explore here is something like a centrally issued, one world currency, like the Phoenix which is mentioned by the economist article many many years ago. In that case, yes, it could happen with blockchain as well, but it wouldn't really pose any benefits in my opinion.

If a crypto is not decentralised then there is really no point in using it instead of any other form of electronic banking with fiat. There could be benefits for the authority in terms of ease of management and control over the entire currency supply, as well as tracking, but these benefits are limited to them. I'd much rather use bitcoin and other decentralised cryptocurrencies which are already quite globally accepted.

I think that the growing trend is that countries will try to incorporate crypto into their fiat currency more and more, in the form of national cryptos. Just like what Venezuela has done, and India and others are looking at doing.

To me, I don't think that it's very likely at all that fiat currencies will ever replaced by decentralised cryptos because the government would simply never be willing to give up their control. Centralised cryptos could potentially be issued though in lieu of paper based fiat currencies in the future.

However, there will be a place for decentralised crypto in my opinion and an extremely big one. The most likely thing to happen in the future is the coexistence of decentralised cryptos and fiat, with many merchants that would accept both currencies.

It's extremely shady, and I would have long labelled them as a scam altogether.

The problem is that this kind of pumping by the exact same people who are operating the exchange means the possibility for them to do insider trading and buy into coins in order to make a profit before anyone knows what the coin is they are pumping. And of course, this is pretty much the purest form of mainpulation you can see.

I personally think that they were already a scam based on all the reviews they've got in the past, as well as their ponzi like investbox feature. This only solidifies this.

I personally don't think that this is anything different from fiat currencies that are already being used right now.

The reason is simple, the control of the money supply is still up to the central bank or government which is issuing the token on the blockchain or whatnot, it's in no way decentralised.

Sure, blockchain could be utilised, but the ultimate goal of using crypto in the first place is not just to use blockchain technology, but to have a decentralised form of payment which a government backed crypto does not offer. I guess it is an upgrade from paper money in terms of convenience, but nothing other than that.

The notion of value is completely subjective.

If other parties within my immediate area are able to accept this as a form of payment, then sure, given that the authority who issues it isn't just some random guy with a printer but actually has enforceability in making the currency legal tender or at least, accepted.

However, if it's just paper money issued by another entity without any backing, then I definitely would not use it to store wealth. I'd much rather stick to my decentralised assets for that.

Well, given the cycles that occur within finances, it wouldn't be surprising if one came our way especially when the stock market enters a phase of a bear market given the decade long growth that we've observed.

Honestly, it's all just a matter of time. Crises will happen eventually, and so will periods of economic growth.

That's why I always hold some hedges against a financial collapse, in the form of precious metals as well as BTC, and some cash investments. Investing responsibly in these defensive assets could really pay off in rainy days, which will come as a matter of time. Especially hyperinflation, where  the entire value of fiat is wiped out, that's when bitcoin and other decentralised assets will shine.

Not just U.S. stocks either, there have been crashes internationally across the board with pretty much every global share index having falls in one way or another.

I was actually quite intrigued at the fact that bitcoin also fell because I always thought that bitcoin would be relatively unaffected or even be inversely affected by a stock market crash like this. Perhaps it was emotions playing with traders who both owned bitcoin and stocks, leading to them panic dumping. Who knows. It wasn't that big of a dump anyhow.

Anyways, we'll see whether this turns into real bear market within stocks, or was just a short term correction. But these tech stocks from what I've heard are overbought as hell.

I would suggest that you lock this thread using controls on the bottom left corner.

You're not going to get the loan. You did make a pretty dumb decision as to investing in an obvious scam (bitcoin doubler, come on), and we get that's tough.

But the thing is here is that you simply do not have the valid collateral to get this loan. Your bitcointalk account is not valid collateral because it's not worth anything near the amount you're asking for, and you simply have no reputation to ask for a no collateral loan. No lender here is going to be willing to take on that risk, unfortunately.

I think that this has been hyped way too much, and there is a very high chance that the initial writer's vision might not even have been a decentralised, global currency, but a centralised one which is issued by some form of world central bank.

So it might not even be as relevant as some people are trying to make it, imo.

It's interesting though to ponder whether or not bitcoin fulfills the role of a global currency, which I think it does perfectly. There is still a general lack of acceptance in terms of physical merchants for bitcoins as a means of payment, though, which should improve in the future.