This is what regulations are supposed to be for.

And I'm all for regulation in the field of exchanges, because there are certainly a lot of these fraudulent exchanges out there that are extremely damaging to newbies who want to get started with bitcoin but gets scammed by one of them.

Instead of imposing overly strict regulations on the customer, monitor the exchanges themselves and see if there is any wrongdoing. Have a complaints board to handle complaints of fraudulent exchanges as well. The Ukrainians have done a good job with this here, they actually took initiative to legally prosecute these scammers, who absolutely deserve to be.

Did you pay? I hope not.

BTW, just checked out his other thread and wanted to get the screenshot posted here before it gets deleted by the OP of that thread since it's self-moderated by him: https://ibb.co/fiqeS8

This guy clearly checks out as a scammer to me. He's using whatsapp which is one of the most popular communication methods used by scammers, and he also gets extremely defensive when the subject of escrow is brought up. Don't ever deal without escrow for such high amounts on this forum, the other user is most likely trying to scam you if he's not willing to accept escrow.

Indeed, I don't think that Bithumb hack is the true cause of this dip at all.

In fact, if you remember the events that followed the Bithumb hack, there was pretty much no panic within the market at all. The prices corrected $200 downwards, but soon after, it came back to the original level between $6500-7000.

The main thing is still that market sentiment is bearish, and that we're currently in this bear market after the correction from the peak of the run up. It's as simple as that. It's not caused by any one event per se, but it's just a natural part of the price cycle.

I'd actually say that bitcoin fulfill the function of money better than all fiat currencies in this world.

The reason is that I believe anything, to be considered money, must be a stable store of value in the long run. Fiat currencies have never retained its value, mostly because of the fact that there is a central institution that has control over its supply.

Bitcoin on the other hand is decentralised, just like gold. But it's much better than gold in the aspect of convenience and ease of transactions, which people certainly don't give enough credit to it for. Bitcoin is also much more fungible than fiat, since 1 btc is guaranteed to be equal to the next due to the anonymity. Banks may flag certain accounts, leading to the dollars stored in these accounts not be able to be sent to other accounts (we've seen this with at least one bank denying bitcoin exchange withdrawals)

It's bad indeed. Anything over 10% in terms of inflation is bad and pretty much leads to a somewhat dysfunctional fiat currency.

Just think of how much bitcoin is able to do though for Turkish citizens who may have no confidence in the fiat currency of their country, and even bank deposits will most likely not be able to outpace the rate of inflation.

This is not the only country experiencing rapid fiat depreciation either. There are plenty others currently (Venezuela for example) and in the past.

Bitcoin as an independent asset to the fiat system can be really useful as a place to store wealth in these situations.

There are no guarantes as to where the bottom is, and I definitely tend to lean in favour of BTC prices correcting further in the near future before it is able to start its recovery phase. But this phase isn't right now, imo.

Now, BTC may well cross $7500 some time soon. However, even if this happens, it will not be something that is going to result in a significant amount of reversal in the market sentiment, which is the real issue that is here atm.

I think that we'll probably stay bearish for this year. Prices will dip and consolidate without much movement upwards.

Don't even worry about the coin listing on Etherdelta, bluetrade, tradesatoshi etc. because that's definitely not going to happen. But just look at what they're selling you first. There is no clear clarification as what the "High Reward Platform" truly is.

All I can really see is that it's literally an Ethereum token that anyone can create that they're selling off as something great:


Just look at this as well:


don't even dream of a listing, because it's as obvious a scam as they come. Probably invested 1 hour of their time designing the entire site also

I believe that it's going to be a good time to invest in bitcoin for cheap.

At the moment, a lot of people aren't even interested in bitcoin anymore due to the fact that its prices have basically plummeted from the all time high. Instead of panic selling like the rest of the crowd, I think it's a good time to start dollar cost averaging your buys and getting in at cheaper prices. There is virtually no benefit to panic selling - you're not going to get much in return anyways.

But there is a lot of advantages to buying right now, as we know the price is nearing the bottom, if not already at the bottom. I do expect the bear market to continue for at least a few more months until Q4, though, which means that only accumulate now if you're comfortable with holding for the long run. Don't expect any short term profits.

It depends on how much maintenance fee is charged and what is their fee structure. Over time as your profits decrease, maintenance fee will become the major factor when it comes to cloud mining as to determining the profitability of your contract.

In your case, your contract is probably going to get terminated under a year due to the fact that your maintenance fees are more than your profits.

Regarding the move out of china:


You could have refunded your entire contract, but I think that now that their miners are back online, it's not really an option anymore.

You should have read more reviews before you invested such a large amount of money, honestly. There were already accusations of bitcoin.com underpaying compared to other pools(https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7rf1mz/bitcoincom_wants_to_take_advantage_of_its_cloud/).

With the centralised structure that all cloud mining companies are set up, you don't have a chance accusing them as scammers or even requesting a refund, because they control everything. They have control over how much you earn, without needing to provide you proof that they're actually earning this much money, and they have control over your funds. No point investing in any of them.

I do think that a lot of these sportsbooks don't make it clear that people need to pass KYC before they can withdraw, which results in a lot of people having these issues when they do try to withdraw. If they require KYC, then they should make it clear when you deposit that you are expected to complete KYC, or better yet, conduct KYC before you're allowed to deposit.

It's shady how they selectively "verify" those who win big amounts, and hold onto their funds for long preiods of time knowing that they would most likely not be comfortable with providing ID.

Also, I don't know why they are asking you KYC for a second time. Once should be enough. I wouldn't trust Sportsbet.io personally, tbh, because of these policies that they have.

You don't really need to look further than the fact that they are offering cloud mining contracts and trying to present it in a way that is somehow more profitable than traditional cloud mining (which it is not). There business model is to literally fund for more miners:


Apart from that, I don't see any proof that they are partners with Kingston, Cisco, Nicehash etc.

Their team also is most likely completely fabricated, and as you said, links don't work at all. Not a good place to invest your money. Probably a scam.

Probably a good move. They're not a purely informational site so the domain that they used has always been pretty unconventional. IIRC I actually typed in blockchain.com a few times by accident in the past, and I was not able to access the features which is offered by blockchain.info since they are regarded as two different sites.

Now that they have consolidated domains, it's going to be a much more convenient process. People won't get the domains mixed up anymore.

However, I doubt that it's going to have that much of a profound impact other than it looks better and it's more convenient to access and won't get mixed up. The quality of the service itself is still the most important aspect.

It's hard to say, but I think there will probably be at least half a year of consolidating before bitcoin can reach its true bottom within the bear market and start to recover from it. Even though the $6k level seems to be the floor right now, I don't think that it's going to stay there.

If you're talking about the short term, however, I think that we might have a small bull run that takes us up to $7k+ potentially before a correction, due to the fact that $6k is holding up well as support.

But that's definitely not going to be longlasting by any means, imo. We're not gonig to see the major recovery until the near the end of the year or the start of next year based on what we saw in previous bear markets like 2014.

Why? Because bitcoin is currently in a bear market, it's as simple as that.

There is constant bearish sentiment across the market. Prices has not really seen any momentum upwards as most of the time it's just in a freefall. The bear market will only come to an end after it finds a bottom and starts its recovery, which I don't think is happening at the moment. There has simply not been enough time for consolidation to consider the bear market over by any means, which is why i think there is a high likelihood that prices are going further down.

Plus, another reason is that $10k resistance was demonstrated to be too strong to breach atm for BTC.

Obviously getting people certified would be the best option. However, even then there is a risk of people charging back and as a result, you lose out on a lot of your profits. Though you also have to consider the fact that not a lot of people would be even interested in using your site if you require verification, since they can just use other exchanges instead.

I'd suggest having a small purchase limit on unverified accounts (say $50 per week), and a larger limit on those who are verified. I don't think that store hours would help.

You still got to understand though that these are only reducing the risk, they are not eliminating the risk of chargeback. If possible, I suggest staying away from dealing with CC/paypal when selling BTC altogether.

Bitcoin will serve a purpose in the world for the decades to come.

Even if the massive adoption never comes, I think that it will at least serve as a niche asset for those who want to store their wealth privately and within a decentralised system, just like people are doing with gold at the moment.

Even if bitcoin doesn't get used in every day life, it won't die. I think that a lot of people will continue to use it as a store of value, as a global means of transaction, as a hedge against fiat inflation, etc. Besides, as a decentralised network, BTC can only be considered to be "dead" if no one uses it. If anyone uses it, bitcoin will continue to exist as a network and will hold value.

Yes, bitcoin is not backed by a government. But that doesn't mean that there is no value. I think that the comparison can be drawn between gold and bitcoin quite easily, in regards to how their value is derived - both decentralised, both limited supply, and has trust of a lot of people. Bitcoin can at the very least, take over gold's role and make it better. But with some luck, we may see bitcoin emerge as the whole internet's standard of payment due to its global nature.

Hasn't bitcoin entered a bear market ages ago? Why are you only starting to realise now?

Bitcoin has only temporarily made a recovery a month ago or so, where it failed to breach the $10k resistance. Other than that, prices have been in decline since the end of 2017. Not sure why you're saying sell now.

In fact, I think that selling now would be a terrible decision to make, but most of the market will continue to do so feeding into the panic. I see this as an excellent buying opportunity for those who want to take advantage of the lower prices. sub-$6k is way too low for selling to work as a profitable thing to do. Even if prices do go down further, it's not going to be by much, nor is it going to be easy to time the exact floor.

Cash robberies are definitely an issue, and a cashless alternative would definitely mean that less of these actual physical robberies will take place. Bitcoin could be a solution to that, as you can even just memorise your wallet recovery phrase (not recommended) and not have any physical devices when you travel around to carry your BTC.

however, this is not the only thing that bitcoin offers that can benefit many people, and 'save lives'.

The fact that bitcoin is a global currency and a decentralised store of value means that people that are living in countries such as Venezuela can now save up, and transact with something that is actually recognised as a form of payment internationally. There are no barriers for entry either. Compared to fiat currencies in hyperinflation mode, this is nifinitely better and can help a lot of unbanked, underbanked people and merchants.

Could you please link to the source where it says that 80% of coins are dumped from long term holders? Because it's very contradictory. If an investor is a long term holder, then they would definitely not be panic dumping just because of a bear market.

If you mean "bull market" by dream run, then yes, bitcoin's bull market was long over.

We're currently in a stage of consolidation and overall pessimism in the market. I believe that prices are going to bottom at $4-5k, potentially less. The recovery won't happen any time soon, but I think that it will get under way by next year. Don't panic sell in these circumstances.

It depends on what country you are residing in.

In my country, basically both CGT and any income generated through mining crypto are taxed at the same rates under the tax brackets as income tax. It could be different in other countries, especially if they consider bitcoin to be a good instead of a currency or asset. 28% isn't really that bad, tbh, if it's just a flat rate.

Anyhow, you should check with the relevant tax agencies and seek professional advice. Every country is different on this matter.