Yeah, to me it's definitely an unfair thing for the central bank to do.

It is essentially using its power to wipe out any competitiveness that bitcoin has over its subsidiary banks, which is obviously in my opinion not ethical. It is also discriminating against all crypto exchanges in that regard, again, something that is probably not ethical either. Legally I don't know, but it certainly constitutes as discrimination against some form of business.

Not sure about whether or not this will end up as anything positive for the exchanges, as they probably have very little chance at winning any cases. But it's definitely good for themselves and for the bitcoin community there.

Firstly, it is obviously good that is lifting that ban. However, the effects of the ban if it did happen were probably exaggerated a lot. Most ads that are running on their platform are fraudulent crypto ads anyways, and only a small proportion are legitimate companies trying to advertise themselves.

It's a quick turn from that ban to all of a sudden allowing it again, though, considering the amount of companies that followed FB's ad ban.

As with the coinbase rumours, I don't think that it's likely at all. Even the person which the article quotes stated that "I wouldn't be surprised if FB acquires Coinbase". There is no solid evidence for this yet, and obviously it's way too early to say anything.

It's possible but unlikely looking at this point.

There is still no upward momentum right now and I think that a major bullish breakout at the moment is quite unlikely. It is much more likely that we'll correct down below $6k for the time being and attempt to find a floor at those levels.

There could potentially be some short term bull run, but at the end of the day, market sentiment is still extremely bearish right now. The $6.7k support from the last major dump is already broken, and I believe that it's only a matter of time before BTC goes $6k or under again (in fact, we already dipped below that momentarily).

They seem to be moving towards the idea of a hosted wallet more and more instead of having you control your own private keys with all of this built in exchange crap. I honestly don't even want to see that. If I want to exchange my money, I'll do so with an external exchange just as easily, like Shapeshift.

It's a good feature to have, but it's unnecessary.

All the while they have promised Segwit as you said last year, and still haven't rolled it out to this day. Plus the fact that there is often confusion as to how to operate the wallet due to bugs and stuff, I wouldn't use them. But it doesn't really make them less trustworthy, I just wouldn't use them.

I really doubt that you want to use Virwox. Virwox are for people who are initially just starting to use bitcoin and do not want to go through all the hassle of identification, which from reading the thread, you are comfortable with carrying out.

xcoins can probably be used, but again, rates are extremely bad. Stick to using bitpanda if you already use it, because that is honestly the best hassle-free option that you currently have. And exchanges that require ID usually have better rates anyways.

I suggest you take a look at this option, though: https://localbitcoins.com/instant-bitcoins/?action=buy&country_code=US&amount=&currency=USD&place_country=US&online_provider=PAYPAL&find-offers=Search (this contains all the listings on LBC for buying with USD paypal). Rates are alright, definitely better than virwox or xcoins.

The thing is that sooner or later, people will realise that most of the crypto on the market are just there to suck money into their schemes, and some are even completely centralised and do not have a decentralised network at all.

These alternative cryptos are obviously no different to what Venezuela is pitching right now, the Petro.

I agree that gold and silver will continue to be good store of values and be highly regarded as an asset to store wealth, but bitcoin is definitely a viable option as well. It's just that people right now are looking at crypto as a whole as some sort of money making scheme, which is part of the reason why there are so many useless cryptos out in the market. I'm a firm believer that bitcoin will be seen as the one of if not the only useful crypto that is out there.

It's very practical. Especially if you're looking to pay someone overseas, it is the most convenient form of payment that you are able to find. In that regard, bitcoin really serves well as a medium of exchange globally, which is something that fiat does not have.

You can pretty much buy anything you need with bitcoin, without having to convert it back into fiat at this point. There are obviously also services where you are able to buy anything you want that accepts credit cards using bitcoin.

Just keep in mind though that merchant adoption is nowhere nearing its peak at the moment, there is still a long way to go before we can see individual merchants accept bitcoin directly. Right now, this is done mainly through the use of payment processors such as Bitpay which in the future we may see less of as adoption grows.

Bitcoin is merely a form of payment. If someone receives income in the form of bitcoin, obviously that would still constitute as some sort of income tax. Most countries should just take the bitcoin income amount, and translate that figure to fiat and tax it at the same rates.

CGT in my opinion should only be charged if you're actively trading on the markets and using bitcoin as a speculative tool.

GST is just completely illogical. Australia actually did this back in the days, and essentially it meant that bitcoin were sold as goods and were sold at a markup, meaning that Australian exchanges had absolutely no appeal. These tax rules are still in the making for a lot of countries and we should see further clarification for them as adoption grows.

I actually don't think that we'll see a new all time high in 2019.

It doesn't seem likely that a bull market would be able to emerge out of the waters by mid-2019, which is what you're predicting here. The last major BTC bear market took much longer than just a single year to consolidate and reach a new all time high.

Yes, institutional investors are in right now, and markets are more mature, but I just don't think that we'll see much bullish activity in 2019 at all. It's just not enough time for consolidation, imo. We haven't even found the bottom of this bear market yet.

It's much more likely that we'll see some signs of recovery in mid to late 2019, but there won't be anything close to 2017's heated markets. 2020 is an interesting year to watch though, due to the halving that may bring back some bullish sentiments.

You're right. This is a completely unsustainable thing, when you have global debt levels many times that of even the actual GDP of the world. And this just shows how fragile the fiat currencies actually are, when they are backed by a system that is based on the debt.

If you want to preserve your wealth, putting your money into centralised fiat currencies is never a good idea.

I completely agree with 1Referee. Because I don't believe that this debt based system is sustainable, and I believe that fiat will always go back to its intrinsic value which is zero since a central entity is able to push more into circulation at any time, I've put a lot of my wealth into BTC as a hedge.

Aren't we already in a bear market, though? You're saying that 6 months is not enough time to consider this to be a bear market, but I think it is enough time. There is no prospect of seeing a recovery or a sudden shift in the market sentiment any time soon, I don't think.

If Tether is running fractional reserve (which is possible), then sooner or later it'll implode as BillyBobZorton said, and lose its value on the open market and implode.

I don't get why because of Tether, bitcoin can't have a bear market. By your logic, the crash from $20k to $6k should have never happened because Tether dollars were being printed all the time to keep prices high? Perhaps I just don't understand what your point is.

You could try timing that buy perfectly. More likely than not though, you're going to see that you'll try buying in at lower rates thinking that this is not the final correction coming in BTC's way, and miss out on the true bottom and potentially have to buy on the way up.

That risk is something that I personally don't like taking. Which is why I'm holding onto my position because of the fact that prices can't go much lower than it already is (there will be a ton of buying pressure at $3-4k most likely), and also, if I do sell now, I gain pretty much nothing.

Never go with the crowd sentiment. The popular sentiment right now is panic selling, which means that prices are overly dumped and undervalued. If BTC goes lower than it already is, I'd actually be prepared to buy instead of sell.

Unfortunately, this is how bad yobit's reputation is on the forum.

If you search up 'yobit scam' on the forum, you'll be rewarded with probably a few thousand threads that all complain about one thing or another that has gone wrong with yobit. That's why we tell people not to use them.

Surprisingly, this person actually got his problems resolved somehow: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4448488.0, and I think you've already seen that thread. It's a waiting game. I'd consider your funds lost for now, at least. Don't expect too much from them, and just avoid these shady exchanges in the future.

Why do you think that there will be a bull rally for July/August? That's what I don't get.

I agree with you on the fact that we may be seeing a lower bottom soon, though. I honestly don't think it's due to any seasonal changes if it does happen, but rather, it's due to the fact that $6.7k support was already broken and doesn't seem likely that it'll hold up for a prolonged period of time.

I'm still quite bearish right now, and I think that there is still room for BTC to move downwards. But I do think that if prices crash under $6k which I think it will partly due to panic sellers, it's a good time to start accumulating.

247exchange was a trusted site.

I think they came back with a new design and are trying to relaunch their site at the moment, which as others have already noticed, means that you can't actually conduct any real exchange transactions on their site right now.

But yes, they were trustworthy, and a lot of people used them. Although, they always required KYC from memory.

You might want to use localbitcoins.com or paxful.com for now to sell your coins, unless you want to wait till July for 247exchange to relaunch (i doubt it). There is pretty much a buyer for every single payment processor.

Well, the response that was given on the reddit thread didn't actually solve the issue. It seemed more like an automated response than anything else.

But yeah, I'm also curious as to why this guy would entrust an exchange to a 7 figure sum. For me at least, that is absurd. I wouldn't even store $10k with most trustworthy exchange out there, because there is a possibility of so many things going wrong (whether account getting frozen, them asking for more identification/source of funds, etc.). It's just not worth the risk.

My personal attitude towards exchanges is that don't store anything over $1k on them. Because once you deposit, the money isn't yours anymore. It's an IOU owed to you by the exchange, while they have complete control over your funds. Especially coinbase, which has terrible support.

Good that you learned your lesson.

You actually got lucky because a lot of users are still waiting for yobit to resolve their issues, even though the start of their issue was way before yours. As nwo99 is also curious about, did support respond to you saying that your issue was resolved, or did they just solve it without responding?

It's just not worth the risk to use yobit anymore. There are plenty of better exchanges, especially for a major coin like ETC. You never know what could go wrong with yobit, and when it does go wrong, you get no help whatsoever from the support.

A lot of the problems that you have raised are perfectly answered by 1Referee. Of course, it doesn't mean that bitcoin is something perfect. Nothing is. However, I think it's probably the best global currency and certainly the most promising cryptocurrency available to us at the moment.

I don't actually think that bitcoin replacing fiat altogether is going to be likely in the future.

But I do think that bitcoin can have a sustainable future serving alongside fiat currencies as an alternative, with more adoption by merchants in the future. It'll also be able to serve a nice niche of users whose main goal is to preserve wealth with BTC, which bitcoin is good at since its supply is decentralised.

I don't really see a reason to not stay in the market, right now.

If you are selling now (especially if your entrance point was high, like near the ATH level high), then you're essentially incurring unnecessary losses. You're not even going to get that much back in return, considering that the price now is only 30% of what the peak price of BTC is.

I would not only stay with my existing long term positions on bitcoin, but also accumulate some cheap coins if my finances allow for it. People are currently irrationally bearish, which is a good indication of when to buy. The next bull market will probably come some time after the next halving. These bear and bull markets are only a part of the price cycle as I've said, and there is absolutely no reason to panic. History has repeated itself many times (look at the bull/bear cycles before 2017).

This is not the reason why bitcoin has been on a steep decline since last year.

The reason is that markets were overheated last year, there were a lot of irrational people buying into bitcoin thinking that they would be able to turn a quick profit from it. But obviously, when markets are overheated like that, a correction would come eventually, which was what happened, and led to this bear market.

This has always been expected. After a phase of extremely bullish gains, it's expected that you'll be looking at a period of bearishness. We've seen this before in 2014-2015. It's not because of the regulations imposed on banks by RBI, that's not even news.