The next scam hiding behind a whois protection wall. It's a fairly new one as well, which might explain the lack of available information on the internet.

http://whois.domaintools.com/flashyhash.com

Scammers are looking to bank on cloud mining during a bear market that's even significantly affecting the main players in the industry. Noobs.  

That was my initial plan as well, but if you think logically, that's exactly what Roger Ver wants you to do. It provides him all the 'evidence' he needs to show that statistically Bitcoin isn't being used as cash, and I'm not going to let him do that. The best is to keep using BitPay and signal merchants that we are willing to spend our coins.

Regardless of the name or purpose of the fees payment gateways deal with, it's not the problem of the buyer and thus they shouldn't be the one that's paying the bill. Bitcoin's fees have been extremely low in the last couple of months and they still charge that extra fee, which is a clear sign that it's just a way to troll Bitcoin.

Seriously, centralized crypto payment gateways are just as bad as traditional banks, maybe even worse.

I think we're at a point already where the mainstream media is just out to publish as much content as possible without caring about how rigged and meaningless surveys are, especially when you take into consideration that a survey of 1000 americans doesn't tell you shit.

In the end, the actual elite that's allocating a chunk of its net worth to Bitcoin doesn't talk about what it is doing. All the empty talk you see here comes from noobies having made $100 in profits and directly assume they are crypto kingpins. It's called dumb money and dumb money is by default a category that you should counter in every possible way.

Interesting is how those who joined in the last 12 months are completely different from the ones that joined before when it comes to their mentality. We're dealing with people who don't give a crap about decentralization. I sadly don't think there is any reason to expect the situation to improve with how XRP becomes people's favorite toy.

I definitely agree, but there is one very important factor that people don't look at, which is the BCash split.

It motivated insane amounts of hashpower to hop back and forth from chain to chain based on what at that point offered more profitability, and that caused Bitcoin's block times to become 50-75% slower than what they usually would be. I remember how my nodes at that point had well over 200,000 transactions stuck in their mempools.

There was one brief moment last year where BCash managed to obtain more hashpower than Bitcoin. Most people don't realize how serious the situation was back then due to the positive bull run momentum, but that's probably a good thing in the end.

It looks like that right now, but just one spark is enough to turn this market into bull mode.

People go with the flow of the market. Last year around the prime days of the bull run most of the people here were so full of themselves, that they genuinely thought the price would hit $30-$40,000 in 2018. It didn't. Currently the bearish sentiment has the same effect on people, but then in the opposite direction.

I don't believe we'll see significantly higher levels this year, but a breakout facing north is definitely a possibility. It could peak at $8000 or $9000 who knows, but we'll break the $7000 level in the coming weeks, and when that happens, people will gain back some confidence.

There is actually a significant difference in use case and potential impact on the market.

The futures as we know them right now are nothing more than empty products meant to provide legal exposure to those willing to bet on an increase or decrease at the end of the contract date. It's all cash settled and there is no way these products contribute to Bitcoin in any shape or form. On top of that, you can basically short an unlimited amount of Bitcoins as long as you have enough cash.

ETF's that are backed by actual coins provide legal exposure that is generally more focused on the long term, and with that we can expect coins to remain out of circulation for as long as these shares aren't liquidated back to fiat. The more demand there is for coin back ETF's, the more custodial entities need to stock up on Bitcoin to keep up with the demand. There can't be more ETF shares than there are Bitcoins in circulation.

It's quite difficult to say actually. I'm of believe (like many others) that a correction is more than due, but who are we? If we think that a correction is due, why don't we short the stock market? No one has heavy enough balls to short stocks during their prime days.

Looking back, I have been reading through forums and other sites where stock "gurus" claimed that within five months (and this was earlier this year) we would see a 10-20% correction, but we have seen nothing but the stock prices climb up to even more insane record highs. In the end, the institutions are the ones largely responsible for the upward momentum, and they are the only ones to end it.

It could be that the social media stock selloffs is the first sign of a looming global correction, but it could also be that large institutions are getting their money out of social media stocks and dump it in stocks targeting a different industry.

It depends. Futures by definition are quite short term focused with how they are all tied to an expiry date, which isn't the case when it comes to coin backed ETF's. An ETF share conveniently allows you to bypass the volatile nature of this market that may or may not work against you at the time your future contracts expire. I'm not really keen on financial products that come as 'you win or you lose', especially when it comes to something so speculative of nature as Bitcoin.

In the end, the demand for these products is all that matters. For every institution there is a product it favors over the other, so we'll see which one becomes the dominant force, but my personal thought is that the ETF's will be it.

People (mainly noobs) these days look for exchanges with soft to no verification policies, and exchanges that continue to list utter shitcoins. Hitbtc checks all noob-requirement boxes, and for that reason it managed to grow out to where it is right now. I think it's safe to say that 7 out of 10 exchanges are straight garbage and operating illegally due them not having the required licenses and registrations.

In the end, can we really blame some of these exchanges for being absolute scam holes? It's people's fault to use these exchanges with how much information there is available to read into before signing up. The noobs using these exchanges make sure they they act as the demand needed by these exchanges to exist. Without noob demand there won't be any scam exchange. It's that simple.

People really need to start looking at themselves and acknowledge how they are the reason exchanges as Yobit and Hitbtc are still a thing today.

Doesn't that apply to all sorts of different economical activities on this forum?

I can ask for a loan in Bitcoin and offer 'dirty' altcoins as collateral from where I simply default, which is basically similar to a trade for the one looking to get rid of his tainted coins. What happens with these coins? They get converted to Bitcoin. I can use 'dirty' (most sellers are willing to accept XMR as well) coins to buy a loaded physical Bitcoin, which is also similar to a trade. What happens with these coins? They get converted to Bitcoin.

In the end, it's up to the trusted forum member or seller to look at everything on a case per case basis, and from there decide to do business with a person or not.

If people get their bank accounts emptied it's all digital as well, so there isn't much different in this specific case. What's different is that banks (as long as the fiat isn't physically withdrawn) have the ability to reverse all transactions without losing anything. When exchanges lose funds it's lost for ever with how irreversible crypto transactions are.

Exchanges should get rid of hot wallets and manually start processing withdrawals one or two times a day, which might not be what noobs want as they prefer everything to happen instantly, but what else is there to do? Bitmex does it already and not many people seem to complain about it, so let's make it an industry standard. The only risk left is insider theft, but that's impossible to combat when using a centralized platform, so I'm really looking forward to the end of hot wallets.

You do realize that Cryptopia is just as shit as an exchange as Yobit? It wasn't all that long ago where scam accusations against them were piling up because they selectively were scaming people. Another thing is that they may have been (perhaps even still are) insolvent with how they weren't processing withdrawals for weeks in some cases.

---

It's getting increasingly harder for people to use an exchange with how verification is a must on all the competent platforms.

Alternative option for people facing similar difficulties is to ask trusted forum members (for a small reward) if they are willing to do the conversion for you on the exchange they are verified/registered at. I'm quite sure that there are enough people here willing to help out in that regard.

Counter question; how can a currency be private when it is issued by any sort of legal (central) entity? Their main priority is that they control every aspect of the network they operate, and that means being able to block/seize/censor money flows at will, or just because they don't like you. People really need to drop the idea that money has to be issued by a legal entity in order to be money or to have value at all.

With crypto everyone can issue its own money at will, and while I am not necessarily a fan of this due to all the garbage coins circulating right now, it's part of freedom and we should embrace that.

It might help to some degree initially, but the bad actors will always find a way to work around these measures. I have yet to find any law or measure forced through by whatever government or large internet company to be successful for longer than a couple of months. Google failed hard with its crypto ad ban with how little of an effect it really had.

To this day I keep reporting the same scam ads I see, but they remain online without anything even happening. It's almost like they don't care because it's generating income. If you report scam apps within their app store, they are mostly gone within 24 hours, which just shows how a financial bias makes them less willing to get rid of scam ads but apps they don't make any money from are gone quickly.

Perhaps a sign that revenue through deceiving and scam ads accounts for a significant part of their revenue? Wouldn't even surprise me.

I would even like to say that Ethereum would be far better off without Vitalik being the main pillar that most of the economical forces there look up to.

He's a smart kid, knows what he's talking about, but there is too much power centered within him that he either doesn't see as a problem, or completely discard because he simply doesn't care. I really have the impression that Ethereum isn't following what's good for itself, but what Vitalik thinks is good for Ethereum. That's exactly why I am glad Satoshi isn't part of Bitcoin anymore.

We don't know what Vitalik did or will do with his coins. We only know what we read, and what we read isn't always what actually happened or will happen.

I have no doubt about the presence of certain wall street banks in this space as we speak, and they may have been here for years already.

Since when do wall street banks care about regulatory approvals to bank on emerging markets or other aspects of a market? Throughout the last decades they have done nothing but breaking the rules, where in some cases they just pay whatever the fine is as result of that. They don't care. It's 5x profit 1x fine, and they keep repeating that till they implode (whenever that may be).

If you take into consideration how unregulated this market still is, and how much profitability there is to feast on, banks are complete nutters to not invest and trade through proxies. By the time the media reports that banks are slowly entering the crypto space, know that they are on board already and that the increase is caused by dumb money buying the news.

Hacks aren't really an issue. If we can reduce hacks of any sort by 90% just by using decentralized exchanges, then it's already a huge gain that we booked.

The good thing about more competition within the decentralized exchange space is that it motivates the different entities to speed up development and even come up with features other platforms don't offer, all to differentiate themselves from the rest. We're going through very exciting times that might change the way we think and transact with each other even further.

We largely don't need centralized entities, they need us, the people. Let them respect the people again by treating them with respect and not as a number that has no importance after you're an existing customer.

It may be a bit hyped up, but there is definitely a core of truth in how it will affect the price.

In this market everything happens in advance of the event, which means that when let's say the block halving kicks in today, the price won't move one single bit, because it did already in the runup to the event (could be 6-12 months before the actual halving).

Another factor is that with how we might see some coin backed products before the halving, combined with the increasing demand for OTC trades, all sorts of entities right now relying on miners to provide them coins will have to buy them on the spot market to fill up their reserves. That's why I expect a pretty firm and long lasting uptrend in 2019 which will likely be the last ever time we see sub $10,000 levels.

Since when are these marginal price movements news worthy? Clearly a sign of how boring the market has become if people start to care about it.

He's talking about a normal recovery, not a reset back to insanely overbought peak levels as we have seen them last year.

I'm actually happy that we're going through a bear market as we speak, because the newbies who entered last year need to be teached a firm lesson in how markets works. Stop living inside a get rich quick bubble, Bitcoin isn't going to make you rich, just wealthier throughout the forthcoming years, and that's if you have the balls to keep holding.

It may be the bear market that made the 'organic market forces' less relevant at this point in time, but is there anything organic about current market?

All I see is very predictable and calculated algorithmic moves within safe ranges where bots have far too much respect for TA, which is unseen. The unpredictability is out of the market to a larger extent, and that's the direct result of lacking market activity from Freddy and Timmy that usually turn this market into a complete (very much unpredictable) roller coaster.

I'm glad to have platforms as Bitmex allowing you to settle contracts with BTC and directly pay out in BTC as well, what more can you wish for during these times with how easy to exploit the market is? I'm long, expecting a boost to above $7000 this month and from there it will likely move up even higher with how October historically has always been one of the best months to go long, and that's exactly what motivated me to go big this time.