Indeed, a few years ago, I think this news would have been much more crippling to the price. A 20% move considering the FUD (and the technical case for a price correction) is really not unreasonable, all considered.

I agree that uncertainty around the supposed ban is keeping the market down. And I think the market has already fallen considerably on the news, pricing it in to some extent. I hope the PBOC comes out with an announcement that clarifies the situation. Maybe this has all been blown out of proportion.... that's another possibility.

This time, it's westerners, not the Chinese, who are dumping. The west reacted to today's FUD much more strongly -- I wonder why? Is Jamie Dimon really that effective?!

I'm still preparing to back the truck up, but I'm a bit more cautious about my bullishness than I was yesterday. On one hand, bears can't seem to break down past $4,000. On the other hand, the FUD is never-ending and maybe this sideways will end with a crash.

Either way, I'm holding.

I'm looking at the charts and seeing quite the opposite. I am seeing loads of FUD combined with incredibly bearish sentiment. And all the while, bears simply can't push the price down. Rejected over and over. Accumulation.

We are setting up for another strong leg up. It might be the blow off top that the bears were hoping for. I suspect the current consolidation is garnering lots of short positions which will be squeezed at the top. Then we can finally have a real correction. $6000s-$7000s IMO.

There's been talk about decentralized CoinJoin for years, but in practice (like most decentralized market solutions), there is not much liquidity to adequately mix coins. But there are real world examples of CoinJoin being used (see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin). Blockchain.info used to have a Shared Send feature (not as private as CoinJoin, because the outputs don't have the same value) but they unfortunately removed it a year or two ago.

I'm not aware of much effort to organize CoinJoins in Ethereum. I haven't even heard of a reputable mixer. There was a service called WeiMixer being advertised on the forum (centralized mixer), but I think it's a scam.

Start using a Segwit wallet. Block weight is 4x larger once you do. GreenAddress and Trezor have both released their Segwit wallets. I saw Jameson Lopp posting about BitGo clearing a lot of transactions and helping to create a couple 1.3 MB blocks by using Segwit, so I think BitGo might be ready, too. People are paying 1-3 satoshis/byte with Segwit transactions and getting confirmed without problems.

The main reason that a merchant may use their service is if they do not have the technical knowledge to secure their wallet environment and properly implement an exchange rate for cryptocurrencies. They allow you to accept a bunch of different coins without securing all the wallets on your dedicated servers. That's attractive, since downloading and properly maintaining various wallets in a secure environment is one of the main deterrents to accepting smaller altcoins (e.g. because of malware concerns).

There are escrow services (even right here on this forum) if that's what you want. Basically what happened here is that you sent a payment directly to the scammer. Coinpayments doesn't actually control the keys here.

These fake volumes stopped when the Chinese government audited the exchanges in Q1 of this year. When you look at the charts, the change is very apparent. I'm not sure what licenses might be necessary for Chinese exchanges, but e.g. Okcoin has certainly claimed that they fully comply with local regulations. Is that not true?


The way that Tether is seemingly being printed out of thin air is worrisome, indeed. I wonder how long this can continue.

BTC-e is banned in Russia, like most Bitcoin exchanges. Russians cannot access the .com domain, which is why they used the .nz domain. In fact, BTC-e was originally hosted on a .ru domain; they changed to .com (and supposedly moved operations to Bulgaria) when the Russian government targeted them.

Insiders like Penek and several people over the years who have suggested they know the owners' identities from the launching days of the site have suggested they are Russian. (This was in the context of whether Vinnik was an owner and whether the owners ever would have set foot in Greece -- the answer to both questions is no).

Agreed, whatever can be done towards this end would be good for investment. I continue to be on the sidelines because I am very uncomfortable sending coins to Nova given all the complaints. It seems that users are having constant login (2FA!) problems, on top of the the inability for new users to register accounts. Bittrex would be ideal.

Anyway, I love the idea and I wish the community luck. I may try for some bounties.

I don't even think the news is accurate. No one can confirm the story. I reached out to a Chinese friend on WeChat and he said this is classic FUD; he's trading on OKCoin as we speak.

This is just like the "China bans Bitcoin" episodes of 2013/2014. This time around, the Chinese exchanges have less influence on the market.

I think part of the problem is that most individual users are overpaying, and drastically so. It's like a toll booth that costs 35 cents, and every car that passes through is chucking a $5 bill out the window.

One of the things that I think is much more pressing than increased capacity is adequate fee estimation in wallet software. Core is actually pretty disappointing in this respect, and is one of the worst performers on the market.

Electrum, while it is my wallet of choice, also massively overpays based on its dynamic fee algorithm. For instance, last time I made a transaction, I used the "within 25 blocks" setting. It was confirmed in the next block. If I used the "within next block" setting, I would have paid more than 10x the fees. Ridiculous!

In 2013, China largely fueled the bubble alongside MT Gox. That's why the cryptic suggestions by the PBOC that Bitcoin might be banned (early 2014) was so crippling to the market.

At this point, the effect of any one country lessens every day. For example, mining centralization in China has been a big historical concern. Today, we see a Tokyo-listed company investing $300 million to enter Bitcoin mining: https://qz.com/1071926

Decentralization is a beautiful thing.

They are issued by the exchange. They are a debt token similar to what Bitfinex did last year after the hack. As with Bitfinex, you will be allowed to trade the tokens. So those that want to dump them immediately below the face value can do so, in order to get BTC or other real money out.

Otherwise, the tokens will supposedly be redeemed for their face value in the future. The timeline they put on repayment? 1-2 years, according to one of their forum posts.

Yeah I saw Adam Back tweeting about that earlier. TREZOR, too! Really great news. I expect to see Segwit transactions on the network steadily increase, especially because people are incentivized (by fees) to do so.

Any word on when Electrum will release their Segwit wallet? That's what I use mainly. Looking forward to saving some fees as well.

I think this has less to do with controlling blockchain technology, and more to do with cracking down on scams. Supposedly, the PBOC was looking into 60-odd ICOs before dropping this bomb on the industry. I think we all have to admit: while there is some legitimate innovation and potential behind some ICOs, and while they are a great avenue for crowdfunding... there are a lot of scams and snake oil out there.

Regulation was inevitable. I think this will end up being like "China banned Bitcoin" in 2014.

I don't think ICOs were Ethereum's main selling point at all. It is supposed to be a decentralized world computer (dapps, etc). It's supposed to do a hell of a lot more than issue simple tokens which act as substitutes for stock options.

At the same time, there's no doubt that the ETH bubble was pumped by investors buying into ICOs. Further, that much of ETH is "locked up" thereafter helped to dry up the supply. So it's possible that ETH could see considerable correction.

At the same time, BTC and the overall crypto market still look bullish to me. I suspect ETH will follow if I'm right about that.

That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that.

But just to clarify... there's email confirmation for any withdrawals. Did they manage to somehow change the email address associated with your account? Or did you forget to change your email password when you saw the unusual login?

Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, but it seems like even if you didn't have 2FA, you'd need to have both your account and your email compromised. That leads me to ask: were you using the same password for both services?

Yeah, it's unlikely. I would have liked to stay around for the new site, especially since they suggest that you will get > 55% if you stay. But as a US citizen, and with the FAQ they published, it just doesn't seem safe. Since I don't know the terms for withdrawals and verification (and I know I can't verify), the risks outweighed the potential benefits for me. And that's before you consider the whole FBI indictment matter....

At least having gotten out now, I can hedge my holdings as I see fit, instead of continuing to wait through all the volatility.

I would think that ICO organizers would add terms prohibiting participation from Chinese residents, similar to language we already see towards US residents. I'm curious about what happens with ICOs that have already happened. There is talk of repatriation of funds (at least according to Google translate). Does that mean that ICO organizers need to liquidate funds to pay back Chinese investors?

It's almost reminiscent of the PBOC banning Bitcoin. So I guess they'll have to ban ICOs another dozen or so times, too.

This wasn't expected from me. I figured it was all up in the air. I was surprised at the very hands-off approach that the SEC took ("maybe some tokens are securities, but we're not doing anything right now") and I thought maybe a similar approach would be taken by other governments. I guess not.