That's mostly what happens with smaller coins. In case of Bitcoin this year, we haven't seen that form of manipulation with how whales don't have to do anything to get the price to tank. The bear market does all the dirty work.

Another thing is that whales aren't placing seriously large sell orders anymore at current levels. They are too afraid that a larger whale instantly buys up that entire sell wall with how high the demand for spot coins is.

It's nearly impossible to buy thousands of coins without significantly affecting the market nowadays. If a few thousand BTC sell wall pops up you can be sure that it'll be bought up with how much of an opportunity it is.

I have only seen very large buy orders (especially at Bitfinex) but no one dares to put up a significant amount of Bitcoin for sale.

People need to understand that you can easily do both hodling and short term trading at the same time. I'm not really a trader myself, but when I was, I allocated 10% of my total holdings to short term trading.

It allowed me to benefit from how volatile this market is, and for a short period of time it was profitable as well, but that changed completely during this bear market. I don't feel very comfortable trading this market, so I don't.

It's important to not underestimate how this market changed this year and how previous indicators that made sense back then don't make any sense right now. I would say that for the time being hodling is the only option.

You shouldn't forget that we in 2017 went up from below $800 all the way to the $19,500 mark (Asia even $25,000). Regardless of how much adoption we gained due to that bull run, the market right now is extremely thin.

Don't you think about where the price would be at today without all this useless ETF speculation? It increases people's hopes for another leg up and makes them hodl on to their coins for a longer while.

I'm quite certain that without looming ETFs the $6000 support base level would have been broken already, and not just marginally. There is plenty of speculative air that might still look for a way out this or next year.

I know quite some Turkish people and they have shown very little interest in crypto, despite the fact that it has gained a significant amount of media hype in the last couple of weeks.

From what they told me, they hold the majority of their wealth in EUR and use it to buy up the Liras from their family in Turkey, all to reduce the pressure on them with how the Lira keeps losing value due to the bad situation.

Converting Lira to whatever currency or asset as Turkish citizen within Turkey is heavily frowned upon. The only way for them to do so without being called an enemy of the state, is to have their family buy up their Liras.

Pretty sad situation.

That's a pretty safe assumption. If Bitcoin isn't in the mood to pump, which it may not be for a very long period of time if the 2014/2015 bear market is our main indicator, then altcoins will continue to bleed hard.

People praise altcoins for how fast they can increase, but they discard the fact that they also tank just as quickly. Bitcoin down 10% mostly translates into a +20% altcoin decline, which is killing it for miners needing every penny.

I have seen several people state that it might be a good time to start shorting these companies, and it actually is a good point with how Nvidia and AMD stocks started rallying when crypto mining started to take off.

It's not as bad as it looks. People can still use these payment apps to conduct regular fiat transactions, and as long as this doesn't form a problem, peer to peer trading will be able to grow effortlessly in China, which it did anyway.

It was to be expected though. China has been clear with how it's trying to combat everything related to crypto currencies. It's a sad event for people's freedom, but good thing is that peer to peer trading will gain more importance.

They can't endlessly keep flagging regular fiat transactions because the platform thinks it's related to crypo. People will move away if WeChat or AliPay start to annoy people by freezing funds and whatnot. There's too much at stake for them.

That was then. With everything that happened I don't think even the CFTC would approve an ETF it was a matter within their portfolio. I even think they somewhat regret having allowed Bitcoin futures to be listed.

It was a pretty bad situation that involved prior manipulation and a gigantic sell the news effect. I seriously believe the $20,000 mark was an institutional driven high and not a retail one.

The amount of money that needed to flow in to just eat through the dumps goes beyond anything retailers can even account for. As long as the SEC does its job in "protecting" investors we don't have to go through it again.

That's because day trading is somewhat similar to gambling. In most cases traders don't even care what coin they day trade as long as it is volatile. It's too stressing and not really worth the time in my opinion.

It's not for nothing that the amount of bots has been increasing throughout the years. Instead of people wasting their time staring at tickers all day, they have their bot doing all the work for them.

The thing with trading in general is that most people don't feel comfortable doing so during a bear market, especially with how manipulation through derivative platforms as BitMEX is another factor to closely monitor.

I have taken enough distance from trading just because of that. It makes no sense for me to expose myself to these risks. Being a hodler is way easier and pretty much risk free.

Bitmain is probably the most hated entity within this industry, but yet they are still growing and generate more sales than ever before. I don't think any form of boycott will inflict damage on their business.

I think that that people and businesses buying hardware from Bitmain will just cope with the KYC requirements since their potential mining rewards have more priority than their personal information.

Another thing is that verification is a one time event. After their initial verification process they won't be bothered with more verification requests. In other words, people's "sin" will no longer follow them everywhere.

People can always scale down to an amount of which they don't mind losing in case their investment blanks out. People's problem is their greed and high expectations, which works against them, especially in a bear market.

If everyone actually invested what they could afford to lose, they wouldn't be so stressed out and also wouldn't hope for a miraculous bull run to eat through their virtual losses. It really is people's fault.

People have even taken out loans to buy crypto, which is mind bogglingly stupid. It just shows how desperate people must have been to finally make the money they otherwise wouldn't be able to make in their entire lives.

I have read a few stories about these people and they really considered crypto to be a life changing opportunity. The sad reality is that it did actually change their lives, but not in the way they hoped it would.

Agreed, but everything related to crypto progresses much faster than anything we've seen before, which is a good thing in my opinion. I do believe that the coming few years will be where we can book the most growth in price terms.

Last year's bull run was a welcome wake-up call to have this entire ecosystem finally scale upwards in order to not have people go through the same dramatic situation as what happened last year. It was horrible.

I'm glad that we're not going through frequent adoption booms with how Bitcoin just can't handle any more network stressing. Everything literally depends on LN to be usable and safe enough before the next boom.

Everything with fundamental value goes up throughout the years, even when it comes to stocks. That's how Warren Buffett has managed to build up an insane amount of wealth by investing conservatively.

People don't often think about it, but Bitcoin will at some point become so large, that it won't be able to flip as easily as it does right now. It might even end up becoming a slow mover just like what gold is right now.

I think by the time it reaches that stage, we'll really get to see how capable Bitcoin is to function as currency. Its main obstacle isn't scalability, but volatility. If that's no longer an issue, we might be getting somewhere.

LN development is picking up nicely and I hope that we'll be able to get some clients to play with this year. Currently there is Eclair Wallet, but it doesn't work most of the times, which is pretty frustrating.

Most people here have been disregarding the technology aspect of Bitcoin for ages, so that's nothing new here. They can't miss out on something they don't care about. It's maybe not what you like to read, but it's true.

The only thing people nowadays care about are stupid ETFs and bull runs. The SEC became the most important entity in the last few months which is ridiculous. We never needed them to increase and still don't do so right now.

The sooner people acknowledge that bear markets are normal, the sooner we can start focusing on that what really matters, which is utility. If we don't use Bitcoin, what utility is there left other than storing value? Think about that.

It's somewhat of a joke the way you put it, but we're definitely heading towards a state where everything we do gets taxed one way or another, especially when it concerns crypto currencies.

Bitmain is an easy target for authorities due to their size and dominant position within this industry. In a way they have grown far into the altcoin market as well, which is a plus for authorities since it's considered a win win situation.

By subjecting one entity to KYC they cover a massive part of this industry. That's what centralization does when there's no proper competition to challenge Bitmain. I hope it will change in the next few years.

I don't think traders need any insider information to make them aware of the fact that the SEC will be wiping the floor with all the ETFs. It's known to people with common sense that nothing good will come from the SECs decision.

Currently we've entered a new level of a game called dump before other whales dump in the runup to the SECs decision, and that's what happened. I'm not a trader myself, but I could have made a buck or two with that in mind.

The goal is to have the market remain neutral during ETF decisions and I'm pretty confident we're working towards that now. The last dump was pretty mild and a good indicator that ETF speculation won't be exploitable for ever.

You mean that it still would be rejected, right? In that case I do agree. I think that it's very likely that they want to see the legacy key players have a strong position in this industry before even considering an approval.

It's all about the monopoly of the main institutions they care about, and they have all the incentive to protect them where needed. It doesn't really come as a surprise though, because that's how this system is supposed to work.

I'm glad that Bitcoin's price will be allowed to grow 'naturally' instead of artificially because of an ETF. Bitcoin itself isn't even ready for another bull run because we all know how bad the situation was last year.

2019 a lot later you say? It might take like 10 years before we even see an ETF pop up with how the SEC just doesn't want to cooperate with get rich quick noobs only rooting for an approval to sell the top.

People really need to get their motives for being here sorted out, because this just isn't healthy. I don't think we can blame the SEC for anything they reject because I would do the same thing in current circumstances.

Brian Kelly has always been an overly optimistic person with everything the CNBC comes up with, so I would take anything he states with a grain of salt. The only positive thing about him is that he's not anti crypto.

Not sure which decentralized exchange you have used and what exactly you traded there, but fees from crypto to crypto trades are pretty low mostly and relatively easy to conduct in case the trade confirms quickly.

I know that fiat to crypto trades do come with pretty high fees, but this directly is against decentralization since you're using a centralized (mostly expensive) payment service to complete the trade.

I don't think we'll ever be able to trade fiat to crypto in a truly decentralized manner. The only viable alternative is USDT, but you still need to cash out through Tether in order to end up with fiat, which not many people want to do.

It's quite a sensitive subject. On one side I'm like I'll keep everything with me, which is indeed quite selfish but that's the world we live in today. The other side is less selfish and at least wants me try to help my own family where I can.

I really need to think it through properly because at this point in my life there is so much that can change still (I'm near 30), that everything that happens in the next few years might and will likely change my opinion.

My initial opinion is that I'm definitely open to set up a seperate cold wallet that my own family (with my approval) will be able to access. The rest of my holdings will remain with me and it actually feels good enough like this.

I'm not Santa Claus. I don't want anyone to feel like they have my wealth as target to nurse their own greed. I want to stimulate and help where I can, not make myself become a target for my own family.

I certainly hope so, but I'm afraid that common sense doesn't really apply to most of the traders here. It was clear a long time already that ETFs wouldn't be accepted by the SEC, but the market still reacts to it.

Bitcoin's speculative nature fuels these events to continue to happen because that's what traders can use to either move the market up or down. Just look at how much hype there is around these ETFs, it's ridiculous.

Just before the SEC postponed its Vaneck ETF decision people were talking about how the first gold backed ETF pumped its price significantly, and they blatantly assume that the exact same thing will happen to Bitcoin, which is crazy.

Even with an approval you don't know whether or not there is any significant demand for it.