I don't buy it. It's just another orchestrated way to spark the market to generate volumes again.

If you look at the volumes just before the price shot up, we were about to hit another low in terms of global crypto volumes this year, and suddenly the good old Tether fud nonsense was pulled out of the magical hat, and it worked. The market has gone nuts and the volumes are back with some level of volatility as well.

Exchanges as Bitmex and Bitfinex thrive on volatility and that's what they value the most. The exaggerated reaction of the market once again points out crypto has a long way to go in order to become a mature asset class.

I'm afraid that this is just the beginning of what will turn out to be a stablecoin hype.

It's the perfect way for unregulated garbage exchanges to remain relevant with how they don't have to mess with actual fiat pairs, and when you don't mess with fiat, it means that regulators are less likely to whoop your ass. In that regard, it won't surprise me at all when more of these USDT exchanges will adapt to it and list as many of them as possible.

Instead of eliminating single points of failure, we keep adding them to this ecosystem and it's going to hurt badly at one day. People will only realize how fundamentally flawed stablecoins are when they implode in their face.

It also grants governments an extra opportunity to hurt the crypto ecosystem by simply seizing the actual fiat reserves backing the stablecoins. Governments have proven to seize assets backing legal instruments they consider to be a problem, and it will happen again. It's foolish to not expect it to happen again.

I don't share your optimistic view on stablecoins. The only thing they do is keep adding single points of failure to an ecosystem that was meant to combat corporate influences.

People might not care because they are here to book short term gains only, but I do care about this ecosystem, and I want to see it succeed in every possible way, with the main goal being that we finally no longer depend on fiat currencies only.

How do you know that corporate entities don't print unbacked stablecoins out of thin air and buy up as much circulating crypto supply as possible?

What most articles don't tell you is that the miners aren't just one entity, but a group of hundreds or thousands of smaller miners from all over the world. So while the pool itself might be Chinese, the majority of its network allocation doesn't necessarily have to be.

Plenty of mining happens in Scandinavian countries, in various parts of the US, Canada, Russia, South America, Europe, etc. If Pools get hit with sanctions, you'll see the miners within the pool simply connect to another one. It's more decentralized than it actually looks, but news outlets aren't in the mood to explain that to their rookie followers.

The annoying aspect of reading translated Chinese articles is that we can't fact check the source unless we have a native Chinese buddy to ask for assistance.

2018 is a waste for the dumb, but a precious gift for the smart using it to accumulate as many coins as possible.

Crypto bear markets never last endlessly, and as always, previous all time highs become bottoms in the forthcoming years. The charts are your source of truth if you don't believe what I say.

People's problem is that they come here for speculative purposes only, and when you don't actually use Bitcoin, you're wasting your time waiting for the price to go up.

This bear market allows Bitcoin and LN to mature without having a bull run exposing how crippled the network can become. I really appreciate the low fees as daily user. I'm certain Ethereum developers are equally as happy that their network is operating smoothly in current days. Bitcoin isn't ready to go through another bull run like we had last year, people need to accept that.

Regulations have nothing to do with the current market. Back in the days we have had a bear market very similar to the one we're going through right now, and regulations weren't even a thing for the most part. That also goes up for those who think the futures are the reason the price has been tanking, they aren't because in the same way, we didn't have these futures either back then.

People need to acknowledge, and more importantly, accept that this market cycles through its phases much faster than regular markets, and that even Bitcoin has to deal with bear markets and periods of very low demand. Bitcoin isn't a moon rocket, and while it may sound odd, a lot people really think it is.

Intrinsic value...... The never ending debate people won't ever agree on with how much of a personal thingy it is.

As far as private currencies go, they will be outlawed within the next couple of years. Japan is one of the first examples of that.

You know what's weird? Poloniex has done nothing but lick asses of regulators and other legal entities, but also has done nothing to even question how potentially harming Tether could turn out to be for their operation. If I was a regulator, I would have forced Poloniex to get rid of Tether, or else not be granted approval for takeover at all.

It was their chance to replace USDT with an actual fiat pair, but they failed hard. Look at Poloniex now, what's the added benefit of that exchange? It's just a waste of resources with no possible way to regain its old full glory top tier status as exchange. $400 million disaster.

How will that be the end of Bitcoin? If the price drops, the entire ecosystem will adapt to it and move on as if it is a normal day.

Last year when Bitcoin broke through the $2000 level for the first ever time people celebrated how much of a milestone it was, and very much indicative of long term growth, and you consider $3000 to be the end of Bitcoin? Come on, lol.

That sounds like a fantastic deal. These people do nothing but expect the price to go to the moon on a daily basis, and they happen to spread toxic anti decentralization mentality as well. Less of these people is a win for this ecosystem, not a loss.

It's starting to take over rapidly, where soon every compliant exchange will no longer allow even crypto to crypto trades without verification. Bittrex is already doing it.

Hitbtc is a horrible exchange, they likely won't ever plan to become compliant to the extent of forcing every user to verify itself. It makes Hitbtc a ticking time bomb with how at any time of the day authorities can raid the crap out of them and turn them into BTC-E (now WEX) 2.0.

I don't often pay attention to lunatics such as John McAfee when it comes to price speculation, but he is 100% right on how much of a problem exchanges as Hitbtc are to this ecosystem.

Read; https://bitcoinist.com/john-mcafee-anti-corruption-hitbtc/

It may look like an extraordinary sentence, but there is a difference between stealing power from a regular power network and stealing power from a train network. In case of the latter, they calculate what potential damage could have been inflicted if trains for whatever reason stopped functioning, or if railway tracks couldn't position themselves. It potentially could have even cost many lives. In that regard, this form of reckless behavior is correctly punished.

So yes, it is a message, and I hope a very clear one.

It's going to be one heck of a job to keep the IRS out of the picture.

You need to make sure that the person who's planning to buy into your ICO is going to buy his Ethers through an OTC market. Buying any amount of coins through an exchange is a guaranteed way to blow your cover. But then again, what person is going to openly signal that he has $100,000 worth of fiat he wants to convert to Ether?

On top of that, in case he ends up buying into your ICO, he will need to cash out in the exact same way he entered. Doing the job one time without triggering the IRS is already difficult, doing it twice makes things far worse.

Wild price swings is the only way for Bitcoin to communicate and attract liquidity. If you take that away, what is there for institutions to be interested in?

It's good to state that the term institution doesn't necessarily refer to one specific legal entity. Banks absolutely crave for severe volatility their HF bots are ready to exploit, and they are present already. In that sense, the institutions are in already, but with pocket change through proxies and whatnot.

Pension funds are always the last to enter with how they generally tend to respect the rules, and I'm happy they do. They will be the cherry on top of the pie later on when the market is mature enough to be bought into. By that time they will likely buy exposure through an ETF.

What do you expect research on altcoins to yield? People don't really care and actually chase after pumps and dumps hoping to catch a pump at some point.

Don't you ask yourself why some of these so called pump groups are so massive? People absolutely love it. Shitcoins are the only way for them to dream about 10-100x returns while the more established coins won't even move a tiny bit with how they follow Bitcoin.

It's all part of the freedom people enjoy here. If they want to play Russian roulette with their funds, let them do it. They will only learn they are following the wrong path when they actually burn themselves and lose money. Mistakes in form of losses are the only way people get their sense back.

Sure, a big chunk of the Bitcoin purists don't settle for anything less than cold storage where they control their keys in full, but there has been a shift in the way that some of them prefer to distribute the storage aspect of their holdings for various reasons. Do you think that the currently $7-$8 billion in Bitcoin holdings that Xapo takes care of comes from the latter group you stated?  

Are you comfortable holding hundreds of millions in Bitcoin in your home? No matter how anti third party the purists are, hedging a part of their risk this way is actually quite a smart move.

There might be some level of demand for that service, but I doubt it comes even remotely close to what Xapo has locked up in value terms.

On the other hand, we might even say that Coinbase in its current form as crypto bank is some sort of a custody service already. The majority of the rookie users genuinely think it's a wallet service and that their coins are safe up there due to Coinbase's insurance policy.

In the end, institutions don't want a non legacy party to function as custody service, and the Bitcoin elite doesn't want to use a service Brian Armstrong is CEO of. He hasn't exactly done much to respect Bitcoin, which is the main reason this industry is as big as it is today. That nicely explains the popularity of Xapo.

It depends. Most of the funds that wealthy individuals and other legal entities invest in are lead by overly bullish fund managers who really pushed the limit by making it look like there is a lot to gain in the near term. From what I have read it doesn't look like it's actually a well thought out long term investment, but rather one that's driven by last year's speculation.

I haven't seen one fund manager actually point at how the market might not be doing anything of significant nature in the coming two or so years. It's just the usual> the price will recover before the end of the year or we'll hit $50,000 before the end of 2019 noise. I think this isn't how we should want anyone to be exposed to crypto.

More than 50% of the funds have failed this year, and the ones that are still standing are licking their wounds hoping for better times. It's maybe not the most positive news, but one that people deserve to know about.

I doubt that. Most of the elite Bitcoiners use Xapo as custody service. Coinbase has been left on the side, and that for a very long period of time.

Institutions don't want to have a non legacy party take care of billions worth of assets, so it will be up to banks to provide that service. I read that JPMorgan and a few other wall street banks are working on offering crypto custody services, so we'll see if that's more fruitful than what Coinbase has to offer.

Also, the bear market has been a major factor of failing products and significantly decreased interest in crypto as well.

It's simple if you know how the market works here, which doesn't apply to most of the people who entered last year during a market that just didn't want to stop going up.

People borrowed money, sold their car, sold grandma's jewelry, sold their dog, etc. All in the hope of becoming rich because their assumption legit was that Bitcoin would reach $50,000-$100,000 before the end of 2018. Even long term perma bulls believed that. How can you convince these people that everything will be all right while the price keeps going down?

They don't understand what Bitcoin is and for that reason don't know why it has value in the first place. Even some of the more senior members here think there is a possibility that Bitcoin could become worthless overnight. The only way for these people to calm down is to have the price increase to $20,000 next week, but that ain't happening.

I question that. Tether heavily depends on the market sentiment in order to either lose or gain value, and it has kept its value within a safe to operate zone for months straight. I'm even of believe that Tether has been on of the better hedges during the current bear market, especially with how you mostly don't have to trigger AML/KYC procedures when holding/depositing/withdrawing it. I don't like Tether, but I understand why it enjoys a wide level of demand.

It's pretty common for Tether drama to boil up again during price crashes and bear markets, because hey, people and the mainstream media have to blame something for what this market is going through.

Price up = Tether manipulation.
Price down = Tether on the brink of collapse.

What's new?

It's not. I saw a thread some months ago also about Cobinhood, and I initially thought it was a typo and they meant Robinhood, but it's an actual exchange with that odd name.

It's just another shitcoin exchange operating illegally, where they also hide themselves behind a whois protection wall, which is a clear sign that this exchange doesn't want anyone to know who they are. On top of that, their volumes are so low that it isn't even worth using them, especially not for lending purposes.

OP is better off trying to start up a lending thread on this forum in the appropriate manner if he's really serious about it, which is much safer than trusting a shitcoin exchange with any amount of coins.