there is nothing wrong with comparing bitcoin with other payment methods. in fact I would say that it is a good idea to do that kind of comparison because bitcoin is also a payment system and a currency so it has to be compared with other similar ones in its own category so that it can improve. and also this kind of comparison helps people see the differences and benefits and disadvantages all at the same time and make a better decision in their choice.

the problem is when people start comparing bitcoin with things that don't even fall under the same category as bitcoin. for example comparing bitcoin with gold since gold is a commodity and bitcoin is a currency they should not be compared. or comparison of bitcoin with tokens like ethereum, since bitcoin is a currency and ETH is a token they should not be compared.
the other problem is when you compare bitcoin with something else and only focus on one aspect instead of combination of them. for example comparing TPS of bitcoin with Visa while ignoring the decentralization versus centralization.

exchanges and generally any centralized place have always been tracking how you spend bitcoin and what you do with it. that is not a new thing not to mention that each of these services have clear Terms of Services which you agree with when you start using them so you can't really complain when they did what they promised you to do!

in fact that is why bitcoin exists, so that when you dump your fiat for bitcoin you no longer have to answer to anybody about how you choose to use your own money!

"callback" is a very bad choice of words since as you can see people are already confusing it with "chargeback" which is impossible with bitcoin. you should have used the term "Payment Notification" instead.

and for that it will come down to your needs. if it is a big business processing lots of transactions per day then you must run a full node on your own and the setup which is not even expensive does not matter since you are already processing a lot of transactions and need that kind of setup. and with a full node you get the "notifications" when you receive a payment, and you can have a lot of other functionalities by using the JSON-RPC commands of the full node and write the simplest code on top of it.

if it is a small business then pruned nodes or SPV wallets which will still give you the notification you need. and if you need more functionality you still can either code it yourself (paying a small fee to someone to do it on top of already open source clients) or open up an issue with the developers and ask the feature to be added. as it was mentioned Electrum already does this. when you subscribe to a server (listen on an open port) you will receive each time a transaction is received in any of your addresses with its transaction id, full bytes of it, the amount, the number of confirmation,....

there is always also the option of using third party payment processors which will add centralization and fees but it is something many merchants use specially if they dislike the volatility.

that is not what that page is saying because it doesn't matter whether they have upgraded their system to support SegWit or not, they can receive coins without it because it is not their concern what transaction type is sending them coins.
what involves them is when you are entering a bech32 address (bc1q...) in their platform while withdrawing. since they have not upgraded their platform it won't recognize this new address encoding.

based on the evidence at the time, $10k was not a bad place to buy. it was 50% under the ATH and also the dumps had significantly reduced. not to mention the ridiculously strong buy support at $10k which took millions of dollars of dumps to break it when the time for it came.
not to mention that market being unpredictable, you sometimes need to take risks like that. if you are a trader then you simply accept your mistakes, sell at $9k and buy back lower making even more profit!

I think you may need to take a look at the charts. price drop began at the end of 2013 (December=$1100) and bottom (lowest price) was reached by the start of 2015 (January=$150) which means the actual bear market lasted a year. from then to mid 2015 (=320)was the accumulation and by July we already were at the beginning of a bull market when price reached its first 100% rise and traders took their gigantic profit out. by the end of 2015 price was already in $500 range.

in other words 2.5 years after the December 2013 bubble price is already in $770 range which is over 400% rise from the bottom of the bear market. so I don't really get how you concluded that "bear market" last time lasted 2.5 years" since you are off by 1.5 years!!!

McAfee and that particular tweet that is being quoted here belong to 2017 so I am surprised why he is being brought up again in speculation board specially since he has never made a single speculation about bitcoin price ever. all he has done was throwing random big numbers with ridiculous vulgar claims involving his penis.


people like McAfee who have no logical reason or speculation to back their claims are always making vague statements like this. it is about creating confusion and looking like an expert and be correct more than actually be correct and have a point.

maybe in another 10 years that bitcoin became a lot bigger than it is today and was adopted more to reach a stable state then we can think about doing something like that but until then as long as bitcoin has a very small market and a highly volatile price, it can not be used as a "backing currency for national currencies" because it will ruin the economy of that country if price is about to go 500% up in a year and 85% down in the next.

additionally, bitcoin is not yet capable of handling large number of transactions even with lightning network added since the on-chain capacity is not enough for that kind of huge adoption that you are suggesting.

I think they need to "tighten" the cryptocurrency related regulations instead of "relaxing" more because it currently looks so relaxed to me. they need to focus mainly on prevention of scams in exchanges and among all these ICOs. there already are dozens of countries that have started banning ICOs and preventing them from robbing people in broad daylight and South Korea being one of the countries with high volume in ICOs has to start banning them too.

the 1 in a million thing has been a very old saying and it is with the max amount meaning if you own 21 bitcoin then you are only 1 in a million. I started a topic about it in 2017 here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790863.0 which I stopped updating because the price got too high that being that "1" became exponentially harder and saying 1 in 21 million or 17 million doesn't have that nice ring to it in my opinion.

you will never really learn much about trading by asking questions like this!
you really need to start trading yourself and gain experience to be able to become successful. first start by learning the basics of trading and possibly take a look at technical analysis. then start with a very small amount of money like 10 bucks and trade with that much in this market to gain some experience and lose some money. then analyze your mistakes and next time try not to repeat them. keep it up and your success will grow.

of course everyone wishes to get the best offer possible when they are buying anything specially as an investment but as in investor you don't have that luxury all the time. for example imagine you were putting something like 5% of your paycheck every month into bitcoin. when you get paid you can't just sit around waiting for a dip to occur to buy bitcoin with it, you just buy it because waiting around can mean a rise or not change at all too.

there are only two viable strategies for those accumulating bitcoin in my opinion.
- you either consider yourself a trader which means you have to be buying the dips and each time you see a good opportunity like the correction after we hit $5500.
- or you are just dumping your fiat every time you have some extra laying around and turning it into valuable bitcoin. in which case it really doesn't matter when you buy specially since that strategy is a long term one and whether you buy at $5000 or $5500 doesn't make much difference when price goes up in long run as it doesn't matter if you bought at $220 or $240 back in 2015 now that price is 25 times more!!!

because people who buy/use bitcoin have either one (or both) of the following 2 purposes:
1. an investment. in which case they don't mind the high fees _that much_ and they want "bitcoin" not an altcoin not to mention that the altcoins don't have near enough potential as bitcoin has. and you have to be mostly a trader to be able to benefit from altcoin pump and dumps.
2. for spending purposes. in which case places don't accept Doge so converting to Doge won't help them at all! imagine you want to buy a game from a shop that accepts bitcoin, how in the world are you going to pay with an altcoin that they do not accept?!!

of course it is unlikely to see the 2017 rise this year but not because there is a 4 year cycle! it is because bitcoin is not a pump and dump coin that can go up and down at will. it is a rather big market that enters different trends like any other market but over all it is rising. and that "trend switch" takes time. and you can't expect the price to suddenly make a U-turn and start shooting up. that is why it feels and looks like 2015 because that time was also a reversal where the drops ended and the rises started again.

is that the real account belonging to the real CSW? you know since the username says @ProfFaustust!
and please don't call this scammer "satoshi" even sarcastically

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similar to any other useless fork coin, BSV is also a failed experiment attempt that has been doomed to fail the day it forked off. these things only stay alive with pump and dumps their exclusion from exchanges means their only source of life is now dwindling...

so far the media has mostly gone with the trend. meaning when price is rising they join the hype and soon enough all you see is ridiculously high price predictions like $50k, $100k,.. within unreasonably short time just because price is close to $20k! then when the drops begin all this changes in a blinking of an eye and before you know it the $50ks and $100ks turn into $2000s and $1000s predictions

considering the size of this rise from the bottom, we are already nearly $2000 or >60% up and that is a significant increase. and although I still say bitcoin is under valued by another $1500  but we can't ignore the pull that day traders have in this market where they are preventing the rise from continuing as they cash out their short term profit and slow down reaching $6k+.

one of the main reasons why I (and many others) chose bitcoin was because it allows us to have full control over our money and it doesn't let anybody else touch it. your idea is taking that away and I would never follow that bitcoin.

it was JGarzik's fork if I am not mistaken where he started the fork after the SegWit2x failed. and it was obviously an altcoin that nobody paid any attention to and died in its early days.

as I said this design works well with other types of bets like sports bet because not that much changes that can drastically affect the result of a match. but when it comes to price speculation the timing matters so in this particular case a deadline for making bets would be best. for example for 2020 thing you can limit participation to end of 2018 so there is a whole year time between the end of the participation deadline and the end of the actual price deadline.

also it would be great if smaller time frames were also added alongside this 2 year deal. with a bet that is for the price in a month from now this current design makes more sense.

but I still can't help but feel it is kind of unfair.
let's say I predict $50,000 price today that price is $5,000. but as we get to November 2020 price reaches $100,000 so even if I have the biggest weight I am never going to win since those who make the best in the final month will definitely win it since they are closest to the event and can make the best prediction.
this can work with sports bet,... but it won't work for price bets.