There is always profit to be made in a bear market. People need to be a bit more open minded and explore all possible platforms to see what features they offer. BitMEX for example gained a ton of popularity this year.

It's no longer coincidence since people are actually searching for ways to short Bitcoin, and those who did actually went short on Bitcoin are scooping up some decent profits on the way down.

The only thing that I don't recommend is using leverage. People tend to underestimate how dangerous leverage is, especially when you go over 5x. The higher the leverage the sooner you lose all your funds on BitMEX.

Abra itself states 8% so that's correct. I don't think anyone is crazy enough, unless extremely desperate, to use their service. It's straight extortion and I strongly believe the main layer (Visa) to be responsible for that.

What I however don't understand is that when you look at Abra's site, they state that the fee is honest and they only charge a small fee. How on earth is 8% small and a honest fee? 8% of $20,000 translates into a $1600 fee.

It almost looks surreal.......

LocalBitcoins has lost a significant amount of popularity due to the legal requirements, which is sad to see. If we discard the hype traffic of last year during the peak, and look the metrics, the net loss is 50%.

It was to be expected though. LocalBitcoins has been operating successfully for quite some time in a relatively free manner. It was just a matter of time before authorities would step in.

Hasn't there been a decentralized or less restrictive alternative that popped up to benefit from the gap left behind by LocalBitcoins? Usually these things happen quickly after a major competitor is losing market share.

It will be interesting to see what the next bull run will look like, especially because of how likely it is that institutional investors will be fomo'ing with the retail market. It could turn out to be the biggest bull run we have ever seen.

We could potentially see another bull run this year with an ETF approval, and somehow I'm sure that it's not a matter of will an ETF ever get approved, but a matter of will it happen this or next year.

And that's just the first ETF. Eventually there is room for dozens of them, all competing with each other for volume. Bitcoin's spot market will become less relevant just like how that is with gold and other assets.

BitMEX for example already accounts for like 25-50% of Bitcoin's trading volume.

Yep. There is enough historical evidence that certain things just can't be stopped, and especially not when it comes to P2P applications. Bitcoin is like an open book that contains permanent loggs.

It will help the government link your activities back to you, even if it's like 5-10 years later, and that's what they like. They know where you buy Bitcoin and when you spend it, they just need to prove that what you did was illegal.

Eventually the entire centralized ecosystem will be filtered by authorities and we can't do much other than to watch our steps. Right now we're ahead of that, but we don't have much time left to use dex's and free ourselves.

Every movement of the market results in a different article stating the very obvious, but totally contradicting what they thought would happen previously. It's an empty put that contains nothing of value in the short term.

I however get it that they have to produce content consistently, because if they don't do it, others will. In the end it's all about supply and demand. We don't consider these articles valuable, but noobs clearly do.

If there was no demand for these articles they wouldn't waste any time on them, it's that simple. Next article will highlight the bulls that are gaining an upper hand in the market, and then it's time again for bears to take over.

Being a noob isn't easy. First they buy the peak and then they are being told to buy the dip, which they might have done, but it's still way on the higher side. Most noobs right now have nothing but their coins and hope left.

On the other hand, buying dips even for the most knowledgeable users here isn't easy since you don't know whether or not the dip you buy is the bottom. $17,000 was a dip, $15,000, $12,000, $10,000, and so forth.

Which dip is the one that people should have bought in? A lot people here didn't believe the price would fall back down this low. By the time the price is low enough most people have already exhausted their financial resources.

I remember a case where a couple of exchanges have done this, where prior to them delisting coins they were dumped down significantly. In other words, someone knew more than the rest of the market.

Can anyone confirm or deny if that happened with HitBTC as well in recent times? Or even just before they did actually announce it? This ecosystem is one big mess without the much needed regulations.

All these allegations are enough reason to avoid these shitholes altogether, but nope, get rich quick noobs think otherwise.

You make it seem like generating profits through trading is a piece of cake, but it definitely isn't, not even for the experienced traders. And there is no such a thing as profits on a daily basis, that's just false.

If even the most badass wall street traders aren't able to profit every day, how on earth are people trading crypto supposed to profit on a daily basis? Don't believe anyone telling you they do, it's just not true.

The crypto market is one big casino where get rich quick noobs try to outperform each other, but the market movers there are the only entities actually making profits. Everyone else is just tossing a coin and either win or lose.

It's quite funny actually, everything that Facebook had to endure this year was said to cost them at least 10-20% of its market cap, but the only thing that happened was that it became way stronger than ever before.

It's currently hovering around its all time high levels, and for all the institutions and other parties that shorted Facebook, they can pay the difference including leverage to the platform they settled their bets on.

Facebook owns the perfect formula and is extremely powerful. I do believe that from all the tech stocks, Facebook and Google are the ones with the best possible outlooks, and they could technically help crypto as well.

They are trying to connect more and more people in remote areas to the internet with satellites and balloons, which instantly increases crypto's potential as well. Great developments to look forward to.

Long term speaking, property prices won't ever be able to catch up with crypto in general. The amount of growth that crypto has gone through already is enough to keep property increases behind for hundreds of years.

If you also look at how much potential this market still has, then you can safely add another couple of hundred years that property increases won't be able to catch up on crypto.

I can see investments in properties become a viable option at the moment crypto in its entirety has developed itself to such extent, that you can't expect it to increase with another 500-1000% easily.

It could be the staff, but then again, it's very unlikely if it was someone doing its thing through social media. In most cases staff running the social media department don't have any access to user accounts.

The only thing they can do from there is provide basic level information support, which more often than not is useless drivel for those in need of support. Did you share any precious account details with them?

Are you using the same email with the same password for multiple sites and services? It could be that there was a database hack somewhere and they now have your details. Just in case change all your passwords.

In other words, you have massively bought at current levels? I don't see why anyone with even a remote believe in Bitcoin to reach the $250,000 mark wouldn't invest at least a large chunk of his fiat net worth in Bitcoin.

Tim Draper is a good guy, some times a bit annoyingly positive, but there is absolutely no harm to spot when you see him explain what Bitcoin is and what he think it is capable of in the coming years.

At least he is and remains pretty consistent with his predictions, where the Fundstrat boys constantly try to ride the latest flow of the market and based on that adjust their opinion and outlook. They are more shine hunters.

If you dig deep enough there surely will be a way to avoid paying taxes, but the question is how many people are willing to dig that deep, and how many people find it worthwhile to keep looking for alternative routes?

Not everyone thinks like you Carlton Banks. In most cases people choose the easiest and least bumpy road to walk on, and that's paying due taxes. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's the reality when it comes to the mass.

Let's say I am a whale with 1000BTC and I'm looking to cash out half of that without nuking a large part of it by paying tax. What jurisdictions are there where crypto capital gains tax isn't obligatory?

Everything related to this market is speculative, so there is no way to get around it. The only thing we're doing is guessing till we're right or wrong, and then we start all over. It's a never ending cycle.

The only way to lower your exposure to all this short term speculation is to buy for the long term and just ignore everything. You can still read what's going on, but just not actively participate in the speculation itself.

I miss the real OGs that were throwing around with extremely bearish predictions and unsalted opinions, all to mentally wreck people here. Kwukduck is (was) the perma bear but he hasn't shown any signs of activity.

No one lost anything if coins aren't sold.

I frequently read back old threads to sniff the sentiment back then, and the noobs who bought near $1000 in 2013 that people were making fun of at that point, have done exceptionally well if the kept their coins.

It required you to only wait 4 years to see the price reach nearly $20,000 last year. If people do the exact same thing right now and hodl through, they will be able to sell waaay higher somewhere in 2020 or maybe even sooner.

Tell me, where in the world can you experience such returns in only 4 years? If you invest in anything not related to crypto and you earn 5-10% annually, you have done exceptionally well. People here are too spoiled.

It would be pretty big news if that was actually the case. May I know what country you are from?

As far as I know there has been one bank in Argentina that performed a cross border trade, but it used an external party to get the job done. I don't really consider that to be the same as the bank itself doing it.

The only reason I can think of for that bank to not perform cross border trades themselves, is that the legal framework isn't allowing them to do so since financial institutions are tied to strict regulations.

I like how Japan has a pretty low ranking in the list. If we look at all the noobs echoing each other, they seem to think that Japan is a tax paradise, but it's more like a monster in reality.

55% in the highest category is straight theft. You do all the effort, expose yourself to the risks tied to this hostile market, and you are not even allowed to keep the major part of your profits, how fair is that. 

I however do like their harsher requirements when it comes to exchanges. It's the only country thus far actively trying to up the overall foundation of the exchanges, all to prevent false hacks and whatnot.

It's going to be way harder to perform scummy practices with the authorities ready to whoop your ass.

That's like playing Russian roulette with your capital. If at any time you legitimately try to spend capital that has never been declared, you have some explaining to do about how you got it and why you didn't declare it.

If you haven't used your coins in any way, and that for years, you could say that you miraculously gained back access to your private keys, but you'll be subject to tax from that point.

In all cases you will end up paying tax, unless you just want to get high on your massive on paper wealth that you won't ever be able to spend or use in a legal way. Things aren't easy for people fitting in that category.

If you are easily shifted from opinion based on a pretty simple increase or decrease, and it seems that more people are like that, then it clearly points out how easy it is to trick people thinking something is good or bad.

The market is exactly the same as how it was some days ago, nothing really changed, and there hasn't been any development justifying a positive change giving the market the confidence that it needs to go up.

Bitcoin didn't and doesn't look good or bad, it's pretty natural if you ask me. The only right thing to do is to dollar cost average and just wait for actual bullish developments to deal with the down trend conveniently.