Does it really matter for people whether or not they think regulations are needed? It's not that we can prevent governments from regulating the ecosystem around crypto.

I'm not bothered by any regulations with how I barely use a centralized service anymore. If needed I will quit using Bitmex as well and from there be free from anything and everything trying to decide for me what's good or bad. Bitcoin is the first convenient way to cut through the governmental and banking system allowing people to obtain the purest form of financial freedom there is.

The mass is one economical collapse away from embracing Bitcoin as such. By the time they finally realize what Bitcoin is really capable of, it has scaled enough to serve them.

Since when are brain farts of retarded assholes news worthy?

Setting up an exchange in current environment is almost a guaranteed way to lose money, especially when you know that one of the most untrustworthy individuals in the whole crypto ecosystem is backing it. Do I really have to point people at how Roger scammed hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people by tricking them into buying Bitcoin while they actually bought Btrash?

Insurance (doesn't matter what sort) is quite a gimmick to be honest. If there is one thing insurers are out to do, then it is to scoop up your money and reject as many claims as possible.

On top of that, with how much of a gray area crypto in general still is, and especially legally, insurers won't have to put much effort in finding ways to reject claims. People however read an exchange offers insurance so it has to be safe, but that's a false sense of security.

No one probably will, but just for fun, read their TOS to know the actual details of what this insurance policy is about. I'm certain that it's less interesting and less protective than most people here think it is.

Impossible to say at this point. If there is an event that justifies the price to boom, then it's definitely an approval of the Vaneck ETF. This is the first legal instrument that offers long term exposure to Bitcoin, and at the same time takes actual coin supply out of circulation. If I'm not mistaken, it could even fit into people's 401k, so it's a pretty damn big deal.

The futures last year shouldn't have moved the price one single bit with how they don't contribute to this market in any way. It's an empty product stimulating short term price betting, and that's really it. People thought it would bring in much needed institutional capital, which it obviously doesn't since it's completely cash settled. An ETF does.

I don't think we'll ever see $3000 either, but it's impossible to rule out completely. Bitcoin does exactly that what we don't expect it to do, and when it does so, we'll be as stunned as what happened last year during the bull run. If someone told you last year in January (while the price was hovering around $1000) that we would see $20,000 before the end of that year, you would say it's impossible too.

In the end, if the price drops to $3000 it will be the best ever modern time buying opportunity. I'll gladly take advantage of that.

Also, why should we make this forum great for 'profiteering'? And what exactly do you mean with that?

Banks aren't interested in crashing the market, they are interested in riding a market they can easily exploit in all possible directions. Why crash something that can make them an exorbitant amount of money year after year? Banks are used to exploit 0.5-1% fluctuations in the legacy market, while with Bitcoin they bank on fluctuations being x10-x20 of what they are used to. In other words, trading Bitcoin means way more bang for their buck.

I'm not so sure of that. In a market heavily depending on speculation it hurts more for people to see Bitcoin be as stable as it is right now. People come here for an unforgettable ride, but all they got in the last months is plenty of the same; boring stability.

It's a tough one actually. In all cases, being prepared to handle peak level volumes cost a lot money, and that while peak level volumes only remain that for like 3-5 months per 2 or so years? In other words, we can't really blame an exchange for not going all-out in terms of scalability. They rather struggle for a couple of months and enjoy low cost scalability for over a year without any problems.

As far as I'm aware of, Binance currently is ready to handle a x100 increase and they have a massive staff department. If you look at how much money they have ready to spend, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that they can afford to scale up to these levels. Other exchanges can't afford that, perhaps not even Coinbase.

That's how it should be, but I very much doubt many people here will do that with how they aren't even willing to take care of their own coin storage. People are too lazy, too ignorant, and too confident in the security of the services they use. The only way for them to acknowledge how stupid their internet etiquette is, is to lose money. There doesn't seem to be an other way.

I always make sure I have like 10-15 registered email addresses ready that I can use instantly. That way I don't have to register a new email address every time I sign up to a site or service.

Even if the difficulty doesn't catch up hard enough to eat through your profitability, the cloud miners could still choose to not pay out anything.

In the end, we're dealing with a scheme here, which means that if there isn't enough money flowing into their platform, they won't be paying, it's that simple. Their word to become profitable when the price reaches x level is worthless. It's just another attempt to trap in noobs not knowing how things work here.

Even the services that are actually mining don't pay their users with their mining rewards. People get paid with funds coming from previous investors, that's how schemes work. In other words, legit cloud miners and outright scam cloud miners are the same.

I think that we as Bitcoiners are so spoiled with what we have, that we look down on everything beneath it and assume it will fail because it's mostly shit. We have been proven wrong in the way that shit is good enough to be worth billions here. Shit increases harder than Bitcoin and for that reason it's people's choice to ride bull runs in one of the 1001 altcoins instead of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin maximalists are just as bad when it comes to trashing altcoins. I have done nothing but trashing altcoins, and that in all possible ways.

It's not necessarily a bad thing if it goes towards the south. I wouldn't mind to buy more coins at even lower levels. It's going to take an insane amount of panic and selling pressure to eat through the buy support around the $5000 level, and even if the price dips well below $5800 it will likely be a brief visit from where it bounces back up burning plenty of shorters in the process.

Seasonality favors Bitcoin in Q4 and for that reason I'm more bullish on Bitcoin right now than I have been this year. 75% chance that we'll go over $7000 this month and I have gone long days ago to back up my confidence in the market.

One thing however is sure, whether the market breaks out to the north or south, Bitmex will be the real winner. 

Why not? It's just a news outlet doing what it should be doing, which is publishing as much mainstream rubbish as they can to boost their clicks and ad revenue.

I honestly don't think there is anything right now that will be able to satify the SEC to approve an ETF. They will continue to wipe every proposal (regardless of who's backing it) off the table in an instant. I'm perfectly fine with that since we don't need an ETF to increase, just patience so that the market can bottom out and consolidate.

In the end, the SEC isn't stupid. They know what happened with the futures and the same will happen with an ETF announcement. I don't think they're willing to let a similar scenario happen again in the forthcoming years.

In general, around 90% of the people investing in crypto are facing the same difficulties. Altcoins aren't stocks. With stocks you somewhat know whether or not it's undervalued or overvalued, but with crypto you're buying into the momentum, and that's your only guide to follow. If the momentum is slowly fading, you better make sure you dump your coins as fast as possible.

That's why I don't bother with altcoins anymore. I'm just holding Bitcoin because it's one of the very few coins with fundamental solidity. I know I'm in for the long run and that corrections are an opportunity for me to buy even more. In other words, I can't lose with Bitcoin.

Most people investing in altcoins do that to generate profits they park in Bitcoin, because stacking up Bitcoin is the only thing that matters.

They don't necessarily need a blockchain to become more efficient. It boggles my mind that so much of the existing infrastructure still operates without understanding the basic advantages of database systems you can optimize exactly to how you want it to be. Perhaps that the blockchain is the trigger they needed to finally acknowledge that there is an alternative, while in reality they could have become more efficient far before blockchains even existed.

Even Ripple CEO said that databases are just as convenient, but it's the buzz around the blockchain that makes industries finally get to adapt. He knows what he's talking about because he's setting up these databases up for all sorts of corporate entities across the globe. I don't often agree with him, but he's spot on here.

It is definitely important, but there's not much to say about it other than that it's slowly picking up. Segwit adoption means an actual benefit for the user since 99.9% of all the participants within Bitcoin's ecosystem transact on-chain.

Not sure why the article doesn't contain a Segwit transaction chart, but here is one; https://transactionfee.info/charts/payments/segwit

The real battle begins when the big block camp is the only one left without having utilized Segwit. I guess they account for like 25% of the ecosystem. In other words, 70-75% network support seems to be the most realistic target before the end of 2019. Everything that we gain over 75% is a bonus in my book.

I honestly think that Bitcoin has the least to worry about, but more so other altcoins, and especially the utility platforms such as Ethereum. I do see a future where internet giants as Google will launch their own utility platform, and maybe they're working on it already.

XRP fanboys legit believe that Brad Garlinghouse has an xRapid switch which he can toggle on to generate tons of volumes and to have the price increase significantly. These idiots don't understand that it's not even possible legally to use an asset as XRP within financial institutions other than for testing purposes.

Financial institutions work with their own token within the infrastructure provided by Ripple, and XRP has practically nothing to do with it.

Mind elaborating on why you think that is? I don't see Tether be any less relevant than it was a year or so ago.

People often don't realize how supporting Tether is to this ecosystem. It's practically the only way capital is somewhat forced to stay and be re-used at a later point, all because most of the entities holding that token don't want to have anything to do with Bitfinex. It's literally capital waiting to be put in action, which is why Tether is definitely going to boost any sort of upward momentum in the forthcoming years.

The only way for this market to make Tether less relevant, is to have 'genuine' parties launch their own stablecoin, or have actual fiat pairs gain more dominance.

I don't think it really matters what governments think about crypto right now. People need to understand how taxation works within their jurisdiction and understand that it doesn't matter what you sell for a higher price; taxation is inevitable. Ignorance makes bad tax evaders, and they may (probably will) pay the price for it eventually.

Government input on crypto taxation only matters in the way that they eventually will categorize crypto currencies and tokens. Positive aspect is that Bitcoin is pretty easy to categorize for most governments (some have already done so), which can't really be said about a wide variety of tokens. I'm pretty sure that even those issuing these tokens don't know what purpose it really serves. If they don't know, how is the government supposed to know?

I don't think that's a valid reason to become bullish. Binance CEO has an exchange to operate within an industry that thrives on boom cycles in order to generate volume and attract new users. Even if the days of crypto are coming to an end he will tell you that crypto will grow 1000x in the forthcoming years.

Bitcoin at $6500 x 1000 = $6,500,000 per coin. By the time that ever happens, $1 will have $0.001 purchasing power in today's world, which translates to $65,000 per coin.

Bitcoin's x1000 times are over, heck, we may not even see x100 anymore. I don't even see Ethereum do a x100 from where it is right now. The real party starts when the crypto market falls apart and only the main currencies manage to survive, and that time will come eventually.

The market is doing what it is supposed to be doing after a massive bull run, which is bottoming out and/or consolidating, so how exactly are ETF delays an obstacle? People only bet on ETF's because they hope it will speed up the process of bottoming out, but they have to accept that the market doesn't care about you or anyone else.

After every bull run the excess of circulating coins has to be put back to sleep, and this process could potentially take years at worst. With how bear markets cause money to withdraw itself from the market, there is less demand to buy circulating supply, so why not just have peace with it and stop expecting ETF's to solve that problem?

With how stable the price has been in the last months, Bitcoin is actually a well functioning currency right now. Why not utilize Bitcoin as such?