It's more ignorance rather than a choice.

If people know they can easily install one of the plenty mobile wallet clients granting them access to their private keys without hassle, they will in most cases. If they also know how fundamentally flawed exchanges and crypto banks are (which Coinbase is), it will stimulate them even more to take care of their own funds.

The same applies to all the friggin baboons using Binance as wallet. It's no fucking wallet at all, neither a crypto bank. It's an unregulated platform you don't know of whether or not it will still be operational the next day because of regulators losing their patience. People will cry themselves to bed once things go wrong, and then there is no one left for them to complain to. It's their own fault.

People trade on Yobit because it's one of the very few exchanges with fairly decent volumes (not sure how much of these volumes are fake, probably a lot) that keeps listing utter shitcoins, and one of the very few that still doesn't want to implement any sort of verification policies. In other words, the noobs trading there have not much of an option other than to stick with Yobit.

I think, or more precisely said, I know for sure that Yobit will eventually implode out of nothing. It's either going to run off by itself, or be shut down by authorities to become the next BTC-E/WEX that will soon yet again implode. Don't play Russian roulette with your money.

It doesn't really go against the anonymity principles of crypto, because let's be honest, how much 'anonymity' was there before Shapeshift changed its policies? It was still a centralized service of which who knows how many data it stored and maybe even shared with governments.

I'm really glad that authorities have started forcing services to verify their users, because this greatly contributes towards faster development of decentralized platforms. If that didn't happen, we in 2025 would probably still hope for decentralized platforms to emerge, while right now we're building up the first important layers of what will become a (near) completely decentralized economy. In the crypto world bad things mostly become good things, which definitely is the case here.

It depends on the usage though, and what exactly you mean with countries having the most amount of Bitcoins. If countries start controlling large numbers of coins, they have all the incentive they need in order to at least attempt to steer development in their preferred direction, which isn't really that much of a good outlook.

As far as the usage goes, we really need Bitcoin to function as currency, because the store of value aspect will stagnate eventually just like what happened with Gold. You can't endlessly keep banking on something that doesn't provide any real world utility. Bitcoin is the one that picks up where Gold stopped being what people thought it is/was, a currency.

The most important aspect to focus on is how Bitcoin will scale towards mass use, because as long as that isn't the case, there isn't much other than hopes and dreams to think about.

Demand isn't the only reason the price shot up so hard last year. One of the factors that people overlook is that there was little to no serious selling pressure, because those who bought their coins way before were aiming at much higher levels, and they got rewarded for their patience on the way up. I'm sure the correction was the trigger most people needed to finally start cashing out their profits, which explains why the price went down hard directly after the peak was in.

Take out 50% of current selling pressure and the market will organically increase without problems, and if you have a bull run on top of it, you'll see the price go up like it did last year.

2017 was a perfect year in each and every way.

No well stacked trader will ever say a single word in a troll box. You know what they do with troll boxes? Mute/hide them.

If exchanges start requiring people to have a balance of at least $100,000 before they can access the troll box, you'll see that 99.9% of the usual participants are wiped out in an instant. Trading is done to make money, not to converse with utter noobs representing the very bottom of the crypto space. All the idiots solely using troll boxes to chit chat are a major contributing factor why some exchanges struggle with server load during strong price movements.

Troll boxes are a waste of precious resources.

The article is clearly looking to exaggerate what's going on for sensation purposes, but it's definitely true that bots are dominating the crypto market, and that more than ever before.

What interests me the most is whether or not the operators of these bots are granted crucial insider data from the exchange, allowing them to front run people's orders and perhaps even know about large deposits and withdrawals. In an industry this unregulated and gray it would really surprise me if this isn't happening.

And then we have another tier of insider manipulation, which comes from exchanges operating bots themselves. BitMex has an internal market making desk running that trades to profit, and why wouldn't other exchanges abuse their position to do the same?

Coinbase is the pillar of everything I dislike about the banking system, because Coinbase is nothing more than a crypto bank, and once they are granted a banking license, they are a bank for real. These centralized services are a plague to everything Bitcoin was meant to combat, and what are people doing? They allow Coinbase to hold over $20 billion worth of crypto assets. 

Xapo holds like $10 billion worth of Bitcoin alone, which is crazy if you think about it. I think it's probably safe to say that 50% of all the Bitcoins in circulation are held by a centralized party.

If this continues even crypto will become a banksters paradise, and it may already be that behind the scenes. The market has been flooded with algorithmic trading activity.

Are they really shaken out? In most cases they only adjust their positions to lower levels without harming too much of their previous positions. When markets are as thin as they are here, the collateral damage is pretty much negligible.

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The thing with premiums is that during a market that's very calm and lacking volatility, don't stand a chance to maintain themselves because the volumes aren't there. People think the bear market just affects the price, but it goes much further than that, the entire ecosystem has to deal with the negative consequences, and that while this ecosystem largely thrives on hype and upwards momentum.

Good thing is that bear markets in crypto don't last years, and I'm pretty certain that the bottom is in already, or about to kick in before the end of Q1 2019.

In an ideal world, we definitely would be heading towards that direction, but the real world however isn't that good looking at all. The further we dig into the multiple layers of mainstream adoption, the worse the people will get that we have to deal with at that point.

I seriously have never dealt with people being worse than the ones who entered the crypto space in 2017/2018, and this is just the beginning. I was wondering back in the days when I entered why the OG Bitcoiners were calling those who entered in 2013 parasites, but it makes sense now. It's a cycle that will never end, where every year is going to be worse than the previous one. People want mainstream adoption, well, here it is.

It all depends on how and where you apply the blockchain as 'technology'.

If we're purely focusing on corporate solutions to enhance efficiency and profitability, you only need a database structure to get the job done. There isn't any sort of advantage a blockchain grants you over a database. Everyone thinks the blockchain is it because of the hype around it, but when you discard all the hype, there isn't much of value left.

Blockchains are useful when it comes to decentralized incentives such as Bitcoin, because you at all times rely on the chain to remain immutable. If you don't need an immutable chain, there is no need for a blockchain, period.

That's straight bullshit.

HashFlare tries to trick people into thinking that if Bitcoin reaches a higher level that their payouts will be positive again, but that's completely false. If the price increases up to the $10,000 level, the difficulty will increase significantly as well, which basically means that people will still NOT be able to generate ANY income. Newbies on social media might fall for that nonsense, but you have to try harder if you don't want to get trashed here.

Probably a sign that they don't care as long as they can ride Bitcoin's name and fame to dump these watches. It makes me wonder though, they must be thinking that this space is full of insanely wealthy Bitcoin holders all looking to spend their freshly obtained wealth on stupid goodies no one even need. They don't realize that all the lambo bullshit consists of rented cars only.

The rich holders of back in the days all appreciate their privacy and rather buy these watches once it ends up on a secondary marketplace.

How can one in these times not have enough 'experience' with phising mails? It's not just related to crypto. It has been happening for over a decade where criminals are trying to empty people's bank accounts, and when you fall for it these days, you are just an idiot. It may sound hard, but what other way is there to make things clear? Soft talk doesn't help, we have over a decade of evidence to point that out.

People need to have their safe internet world bubble popped before they finally realize that they are a target in almost every corner of the internet, especially when it concerns people holding irreversible value assets such as crypto currencies.

Vitalik's title on Twitter; Vitalik Non-giver of Ether. It has zero effect with how scammers can copy the exact same title, lol. There were more high level crypto coiners that used to do the same, but they realized it had no effect at all and removed the title for that reason, now it's waiting for Vitalik to do the same.

The thing with Bitfinex is that we depend on what we read on the internet and what Bitfinex decides to publish. It may very well be that Bitfinex is on the edge of being raided at one point in the future, and once we find out about it, just like what happened with BTC-E, it's too late to act.

If people are smart they withdraw their funds from Bitfinex and use an exchange doing its best to comply where possible, or just stick to local services. Seriously, the "hack" back in the days should have been reason enough to ditch Bitfinex, and today we're back at square one with them on top of the market.

If you also add that Bitfinex likely used (freshly printed?) Tether to get rid of its "hack" debt, you know that it stinks even more.

What do you expect him to do? He's only there to make sure the name and the fame of the crypto world nests itself in Malta, and he did a pretty good job in making that happen.

If crypto will start booming outside everything that represents speculation, then we can expect Malta to be one of the very first to become the next Silicon Valley. In other words, they are trying to obtain that important first mover advantage that no country will ever be able to take away from them in the future. No wonder they are betting big on crypto and blockchain. It's an industry that potentially can turn Malta in a super power.

I like it, bring on that bearish sentiment. If there is one thing being able to speed up recovery, it's people fearing for lower levels which may lead to them dumping their coins right into stronger hand pockets. All the bullish bull run nonsense of the last months has done more harm than good, and people still think $20,000 is a realistic target before the end of the year, lol.

I wish you good luck waiting. Tether will only gain more power as time goes by, especially with how versatile it is. Another thing you completely discard is that there is so much Tether waiting on the side line to enter, that it will be put to work right at the moment prices start to plummet. 

If you are so confident of yourself, I wish you good luck shorting the market (if you dare).

Well, there isn't much else than the history that you can look into, and in some cases the past is actually a decent indicator with how we are more or less dealing with similar cycles year after year.

The thing with people looking at the previous bear market is that they ignore that MtGox was a major contributor to how low we have fallen at that point, and think we're heading towards the same correction percentage wise. Back then the market was legit a complete mess, while right now we have booked more progress in one single year than all the previous years combined, and there is much more to come.

I don't think we'll ever see the price below $5000 again. If it does, I'll go fucking nuts and buy as many coins as I can.

Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised about it anymore. Poloniex has been caught lying to their users on several fronts, and they will continue doing that with how they have turned into a complete sissy, especially once became clear Circle was an interested party to buy that exchange.

Poloniex is at a point it does no longer seem to care about how many complaints are stacking up against them. They don't have much to lose anymore considering that their exchange has been bleeding for quite a long period of time. From the top dog they once were as exchange (they were nr1 for a while), to an exchange occasionally generating less volume than Yobit. Now that's a pretty shitty achievement.

They are impossible to seize once claimed by whatever entity, but by rolling back the chain, you technically can make sure X entity has no longer the control over a specific .bit domain. It is however very unlikely that someone is able to roll the chain back with how Namecoin is being merge mined mostly, which means that it accounts for an immense amount of hashpower thanks to Bitcoin.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/namecoin-hashrate.html
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html

It's very niche still, and something most average joes don't give a shit about. People want to access websites in an instant, and not by first visiting a proxy site to open .bit domains, or even to install software. No chance. It will only become a viable option when the whole internet has turned into one centralized shithole.