If possible, use alternatives to Bitcoin.  Ethereum, Litecoin or Ripple are all significantly faster and cheaper. 

I don't want to sound like Kwuckduck, but it's rising too much, too fast. $4800 looks great, $5000 and $8000 prognosis is wonderful.
But sooner or later a correction has to come. And it will hurt. I don't know if this is going to happen before the SegWit2x schedule or later (next year?)... with some luck it will be as short as the pre-SegWit turmoil.

The name at that time was a joke. The whole coin was. And it's success was a fad.
How can you claim the coin was successful when ow is dead buried and the coins are one by one finding their way to doggie heaven.

And the coin had no "concept". What concept was behind it?

Where did you read golos paid for the steemit license?

I started buying Bitcoin back in October 2011 catching the end of the bear market. The first part of 2012 was a great time to buy take delivery and hold as Pirate built his massive short position. The best way to squeeze a short is to take delivery.

Bitcoin has always had a long history of volatility and is currently on a big upswing. For much of January, the cryptocurrency sat at under $1,000. Now, a single bitcoin is worth more than $4,610.

This volatility may be great for bitcoin investors, but the growth has hindered bitcoin’s effectiveness as a currency, as people are reluctant to spend or transact during a surge. For many, at the moment, bitcoin is largely a hedging tool or an investment.

For companies that take bitcoin as a form of payment, however, the volatility poses another challenge: dealing with accepting a currency that may change in value significantly on a daily basis. Businesses are used to dealing with fluctuating currencies, but nothing like the 385% increases that bitcoin has seen over the past few months.

In 2014 Overstock (OSTK) was the first major retailer to accept bitcoin, becoming the first billion-dollar business to take the leap. The company’s strategy was to pocket 10% of a sale in bitcoin and convert the rest into U.S. dollars. To facilitate transactions, Overstock used Coinbase’s exchange to convert digital currency in real-time.

But during the surge this year, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne changed the online retailer’s policy in two major ways.
Overstock’s new policy: keep half

“What we do now is 50% gets turned into U.S. dollars and 50% gets held as bitcoin,” Byrne told Yahoo Finance. “So we’re accumulating that bitcoin.”

In the first week of August, Overstock announced it would be accepting nearly all major cryptocurrencies by partnering with ShapeShift, another exchange. However, alternate cryptocurrencies that the company will retain on its books will be converted into bitcoin.

Beyond holding, Byrne said the company doesn’t use any swaps or forwards or any other fancy financial instruments to hedge Overstock’s bitcoin investments.

How long ago did you make a Bitcoin payment yourself?

People are complaining that they have to wait hours before they get a single confirmation on the blockchain. I don't think it goes quite well with your claim of a "cheaper, faster and more reliable" way of transferring value across the world. Indeed, you can add more fees, and your transaction will likely get confirmed faster, but please don't say that Bitcoin is a reliable way payment since this is in no way guaranteed (let's remain real here). Right now it turned into an outright shitty way of payment. A few days ago I sent a few litecoins from my personal wallet with the fee set to the lowest possible amount. The transaction got confirmed faster that I switched from the wallet back to the browser to see this very transaction

Earlier this year, Chinese digital currency exchanges temporarily halted customer withdrawals to upgrade their AML controls at the behest of financial regulators. The halt, which lasted for months, caused a temporary chill in the local bitcoin market, causing China to forfeit its position as the world’s largest bitcoin market. Now, Chinese regulators have signaled that they intend to stage a similar crackdown on initial coin offerings, the latest blockchain-related investing craze. 

According to CoinDesk, draft legislation meant to curb so-called "illegal fundraising" includes a provision that targets ICOs.

Here’s more from CoinDesk (translation theirs).

    "If the department overseeing illegal fundraising activities found a fundraising without proper permission, or a fundraising that violates the relevant provisions of the State, and if one of the following circumstances is found, the department shall launch an administrative investigation. Other relevant departments shall cooperate with the investigation.

    …

    (2) to raise funds in the name of issuing or transferring equity, raising funds, selling insurance, or engaging in asset management activities, virtual currency, leasing, credit cooperation and mutual funds..."

According to CoinDesk, the draft would require the government to establish an interdepartmental committee to combat illegal fundraising. It also clarified that participants of illegal fundraising would be responsible for their own losses. The release of the draft legislation follows widespread outrage directed at cryptocurrency-related scams. Last month, several college graduates in Tianjin, China were found dead after being imprisoned and assaulted by members of a pyramid-selling organization.

A forum account tied to the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e has offered new details on how it plans to revive the services weeks after it was taken offline following a crackdown by US authorities.

In a new update, a representative for the long-running and infamous bitcoin exchange outlined how the relaunch would happen over a several week-period, occurring in three stages.

During the first part, user information will be transferred to an as-yet-unnamed company "in full compliance with the European directives on personal data and in compliance with European legislation in this field", according to the post. This is expected to be completed by September 15.

After that, an unnamed financial investment firm – referenced in past posts as a key part of the revival plan – will move to restructure the exchange's digital assets, as well as begin an accounting of the transferred user data. In the last stage, the investment firm will "audit and register personal data in accordance with AML laws and KYC identification procedures."

The representative went on to write (in a translated statement):

    "In parallel with the legal issue of restructuring, users will be given the opportunity to check the integrity of the digital balance in the user's account, and users will be able to make changes in the security of the account. For chat and support, chat will be available. For these purposes, the service will be launched on the old domain (btc-e.nz). You will be able to log in and check your balance before recounting."

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is launching missiles over Japan. China is trying to write its own navigation rules in South China Sea. Washington is in disarray. Global debt continues to pile up. And central banks continue to hold interest rates at near zero levels.

Global uncertainty is rising. Yet, gold isn’t rallying.

Bitcoin, the new ‘gold,’ is.

Once, gold was the hedge against uncertainty, the asset where investors could park their cash in times of political and economic turmoil. Now Bitcoin is taking its place, as evidenced by the performance of the two assets in recent months.

Bitcoin's supply and demand does not depend on whether a country is at war at another. Of course you could argue that people will start using bitcoin because it's a global currency, when the economy of the countries at war completely collapse, but i doubt it's going to impact the price that much anyways.

Vice versa, why would anyone want to dump their coins just because a country's at war with another one? They are much better off just holding it...

Hold it ! Its next to bitcoin, it will hit the top maybe not now but surely in the nearly future.

litecoin is the only coin apart from bitcoin that i have been holding for a long time. i actually believe in its future and i speculate a lot more rise for it. $40 was the new bottom for this coin and it has started rising up.

after activation of SegWit on bitcoin, now we are looking forward for its Lightning Network and as soon as it starts up on both chains and becomes more popular you can see the famous Atomic Swap which allows you to easily swap these two coins for each other.
that is considered a great news and can be the start of LTC rally.

Is Poloniex still a good trading site ? Recently i engaged in investing my money in poloniex and since the price drops i didn't sell my tradings yet and i was shocked when i found out that my tradings were already withdrawn from my account without notifying me on my on email. Any thoughts guy ? I need help