Binance is the most capable exchange in this space, with probably the best and most responsive support department available. No other exchange can match that, they just don't have the financial resources to do so. And the exchanges who do have the financial resources, don't invest it there where it should be invested, because their shareholders prefer better profit margins over better support.

Binance's main problem isn't other exchanges, but the legal side of things. They don't care about anything till governments start to knock on their door to tell them what the fuck they are doing without the required licenses and registrations.

That's the most difficult aspect, because most of the transactions happening are related to speculation against fiat, which means that most people are always on the wrong side of the fence legally. It sucks that we live in a world where this sort of extortion still happens, but it only motivates people more to stay away from centralized platforms. Everything negative can and likely will turn into something positive later on.

It wouldn't even surprise me if governments eventually will tax crypto to crypto transactions similarly to how they tax crypto to fiat transactions. If they notice that people use that as a way to avoid taxation, they'll cut through your options to still squeeze money out of your pockets. I strongly believe that we haven't seen the worst when it comes to taxation.

As governments catch up with how everything here works, they'll be more determined than ever before to make it work in their favor.

Bakkt has significantly more chances to come through with regulatory approval since they fall under the sight of the CFTC. Considering that the CFTC has let the futures markets go live last year, I'm sure they'll let Bakkt do its thing as well.

The only positive aspect of Bakkt is that futures are physically backed by the underlying asset, and not a gambling related instrument that's being offered by the CME & CBOE.

I really hope that whenever Bakkt goes live in full, they keep in mind that starting in a bear market isn't going to generate much demand for their product. It's not because it has failed, but simply because of how most of the demand is being generated during bull cycles with how speculative this market is. We'll see what happens. I'm not expecting anything, so there is nothing that can disappoint me in that regard.

And then what? Have governments ruin Bitcoin? No thank you.

Another thing is that most fiat isn't printed, but brought to live by simply changing a few data metrics in the central bank's system. People use money printing just as a term referring to money creation, not to actually printing physical money. Either way, let them consume as much energy as they feel is necessary, who cares?

People use fiat because it's useful, and the same applies to Bitcoin. There are more pressing matters in the world to focus on.

What market makers look for is consensus, but then in terms of what the general market believes to be a support level. We didn't have that at any level above $7000 while market makers may have been trying to settle a floor somewhere, but there are too many sellers. Don't forget that the higher the price is, the less support your liquidity is able to provide.

$10 million in liquidity may seem like it is a lot, but it's peanuts. Around $15,000 your $10 million only stops ~670BTC, which whales obviously have no problems dumping through. As per this example you can imagine how difficult it is to artificially stabilize the price without the consensus of the market. On top of that, spot exchanges have very poor liquidity because of the lack of trust.

Who's going to wire hundreds of millions to an exchange? Deep pockets go straight to the source (miners) for large orders, or have an exchange as ItBit function as deal maker.

There are two sides to this market, the spot market, and the OTC market.

Retailers are the most active on the spot market, which nicely explains why the far majority of the current trading consists of algorithmic activity, because retailers have taken a long nap. Institutions and other deep pockets are entering and trading on the OTC market, which isn't measured in any form or shape, aside from what we can see in terms of value being transferred on-chain.

Bitcoin is steadily hovering around $4 billion per day in on-chain value transfers, which is pretty solid in times where the spot market is reaching low after low when it comes to their volumes.

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/

I agree that it is a form of centralization, but not one that's harming anyone here.

The only advantage of more implementations is that when a certain implementation for whatever reason crashes (could be due to a bug), the others will keep the network up and running.

The downside is that we are dealing with different parties all thinking to be the better cut of the pie, which is very damaging because as we have seen with plenty of different coins, it results in internal warefare where unhappy parties fork off at some point. Bitcoin in its current form has never been this pure now we no longer have to deal with BCash ideology.

Speaking of BCash, they are going through internal warfare as we speak which as many here expect, will very likely result in the bitter party to fork off.

It all depends on how a blockchain is being utilized.

Most governments and corporate bobos exploring the possibilities of a blockchain are only out to set up a private blockchain network that isn't even remotely close to what Bitcoin's blockchain looks like. There won't be more transparency for you, and I doubt that you'll get to notice anything at all.

Governments never had the incentive to speed up their work flow, because it is meant to be slow and very unreliable. Even when they can help you with whatever you are asking for in a matter of hours, they will throw in a delay of at least a couple of business days, that's how they work. Banks in a way work just like that. They will privatize perfomance gains and lower operational cost, bastards. 

"wrong" type of investors or not, they bring liquidity to the table, which in most cases stays within the Bitcoin ecosystem with how dumb money always loses in the long run.

Quote from Warren Buffett;
That perfectly applies to the crypto market and what I said above.

Volatility is a characteristic advantage of Bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't a stock backed by a company that could choose to rain dividends in an attempt to attract capital. The more smart money there is in the market, the lower the volatility will become, and the more usable Bitcoin is as currency. It takes times to get rid of the fluctuations as we know them now. How much time no one knows, but we're on the right track at least.

It's impossible to stabilize the price around $20,000 with how everyone with common sense sells at these levels. If a whale tried to stabilize the price around $20,000 he would only provide liquidity to those looking to cash out, which is the same as burning your money. No one with sense does that.

~$6000 and anything slightly above that is globally accepted to be the main support, at least for now, and people for that reason aren't willing to sell near these levels. What happens is that without whales actually providing much support to the price around current levels, it manages to organically maintain its position, which is why we keep coming back to sub $7000 levels.

Everything above $7000 means sell sell sell, everything around current levels means remain conservative and sit on your coins, or accumulate.

Coinbase technically has ditched its index fund, but it has another product (Bundle it is called) with the same characteristics, but less of a legal hassle, and also with a $25 entry point instead of $250,000, lol. Another benefit is that you can dump individual coins that you no longer want in your Bundle, which is quite neat to be honest, because not everyone is interested in certain altcoins.

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The SEC wants a US based exchange to rule the market in terms of volumes and market making, it's that simple. As long as that isn't the case, there is no point in dreaming about a Bitcoin backed ETF. I can't even blame the SEC for not granting VanEck their ETF, because this market is a damn mess with how unregulated Asian exchanges dominate this whole space.

Like it or not, fiat has value as long as we accept it as form of payment, regardless of how much of a slave we are to our governments.

I accept it as form of payment, and so do billions of others. Do you think even 1% of the billions of people using fiat think of it as if they are using a currency that's forced upon them by their government? They use it because it's convenient, enjoys near 100% acceptance, allows them to enjoy buyers protection, etc.

Most people here gladly accept Bitcoin if you want to buy stuff from them, which means that Bitcoin enjoys just as much value as fiat, and maybe even more in some fields.

What more effort are you referring to? They are already on the brink of *potentially* turning into a shitcoin platform. They are also working on a banking license that may be granted to them next year. It seems to me that Coinbase is doing the right thing in order to please its shareholders. More can't we expect from them.

They should and they are. If your core business model is to have people buy and sell coins (which applies to Coinbase), they will obviously suffer badly during bear markets. Nearly the whole industry suffers this year, and it will only become worse if the market remains as stagnant as it currently is.

What's the point of waiting for them to answer? If you think logically, the answer is clear already.

I'm not saying it's a scam by default or whatever (believe it or not, some services start up with good intentions), but the operators are more than likely running an illegal service without licenses/registrations within the jurisdictions they operate in. That's reason enough to not share with the outside world who they are and where they are located.

That's also why exchanges as Yobit and Hitbtc aren't sharing any information of that sort. Using an exchange like this is Russian roulette at its best.

OP is quite funny.

What the mass considers to be a bad year for Bitcoin is usually the best possible year for smart money to dollar cost average into the market. People have no clue about what's going on in the OTC market where massive accumulation is taking place, they only focus on the spot market and think it's doing bad because nothing is happening over there.

By the time the mass finally acknowledges that the price has gone to the moon, it's time to sell again. It ain't easy chasing the wrong signals.

Segwit might not be the main reason the fees have been going down, but we learn to work more efficiently due to network cluttering.

The reasons you pointed out are all the result of a better understanding of how important it is to work more efficiently. It also proves that we can book way more progress with the current block limit than most people even think is possible.

Increasing the block size isn't a solution but an open door to allow more centralization to take place, and it also shortens Bitcoin's life span in the long run. I'm sure that if we had 2-3MB blocks right now, people would throw data in it just because there is enough space. That's not how we should let Bitcoin be *abused*.

How long have you been here?

It's always easy talking afterwards, but if fundamentally nothing really has changed in the last years, why should it not do what it has been doing since its very first exchange listing? The retail side of it will always be a major contributor to bull and bear runs, and as long as they contribute to most of the activity in this space, the market will keep bouncing up and down like crazy.

Another aspect heavily contributing to Bitcoin tanking hard during bear markets, is that altcoin markets don't provide sufficient liquidity to their traders to cash out. What happens is that they cash out to Bitcoin and dump their coins on Bitcoin's fiat markets. We have to swallow dumps from two sides of an industry and that won't change any time soon.

If the best traders in the world admit that there is not a proper way to work around your emotions while trading, do you seriously think people here have a better shot? Most people here are either investing with borrowed money or heavily over invested with their life savings. It's a combination no one can deal with, regardless of how 'experienced' you are.

Bots have taken over every tradable market, and crypto is definitely not an exception. If you can't do it yourself without emotions (which is close to impossible), let a bot do it for you. It acts and thinks 1000x faster than you as human, and it allows you to have time for other (more important) things in life. It's much better for your health as well, because trading brings in a strong dose of stress with it, and it really fucks up your sleeping cycle.

Crypto is a 24/7/365 market. It's not the stock market where you can rest.

Educated guesses based on "research" and TA are still guesses; you are either right or wrong.

The thing with trading is that most of these chart folks always have an excuse to fall back on. If they guess right it's their wonderful analysis that made them a good bit of profits, and when they are wrong it's suddenly an 'unexpected' event having made sure that their analysis didn't match. The funniest part is that you can't even blame them for their excuses because markets as speculative as the crypto market can change in an instant.

Common sense is what matters here, and it tells me that people should refrain from messing with current market for short term gains, but solely accumulate for the next leg up.

For me the most important aspect is how banks try to dictate the way I use my money.

I had to ditch the bank I was a client of for over 20 years, all because they found it necessary to force me to stop sending and receiving money to and from Bitstamp. They literally told me that if I don't stop transacting with a crypto related party, that they immediately would end the relationship with me as client.

I don't expose myself to any form of debt, so it was only a matter of digitally transferring all the money from bank A to bank B, which took just a business day. My current bank works like a charm and hasn't done anything to annoy me, so there isn't much (yet) negative to say about it. I just hope it stays like this.

The other aspect, which is less pressing, but still important, is how it takes up to 14 business days to move money from one country to another. I'm not really a fan of Brad Garlinghouse (Ripple CEO), but he's right in the way that it is much faster to fly the money over to whatever country in physical form. It's an absolute disgrace for the banking system that it is still like that today.