It's unlikely, but it depends wholly on what the regulations are in place for these. Also, it depends a lot on the card issuers, and what their attitude towards bitcoin debit cards are (such as Wavecrest).

Obviously, we've seen that a lot of and in fact probably most of the bitcoin debit cards have been wiped out.

I believe that we're in future going to see a lot more new ones. However, both old and new cards will have especially tough AML and KYC requirements. There won't be any anonymous ones in the future, most likely.

Sneaky indeed. However, if one uses their common sense then it's quite obvious that nobody sane would ever post an address that is full of tokens into a public environment, without knowing that they would be able to profit from it and recoup all of their starting balances.

A similar scam is done on the XCP network, where an amount of counterparty tokens are in an address, and there is no btc to pay the mining fees. But if you send the BTC, it'll get instantly withdrawn.

It's a cunning scam for sure, and it can definitely affect some newbies who have no experience with cryptos in general.

Thanks for educating the community about this, OP.

There must have been some kind of buying pressure that has gone long on their positions while it seemed like prices were going to crash down due to this news. Based on this, there may be a possibility of a temporary rally which may take bitcoin prices up to $7k+ before corrections downwards.

But the main thing that I took away from the fact that the hack didn't really result in anything tangible in terms of price movements is that markets have simply matured a lot. No longer is it dominated by one exchange that everyone uses, but there is a variety, and if one has a problem, it's unlikely to affect the entire btc market much.

This is cause for more optimism in the next bull market, as institutional investors are already starting to invest in bitcoin directly or indirectly (through purchasing existing exchanges or building their own).

I mean, Tom Lee is a chronic bitcoin bull. No matter what stage we are in, he doesn't really analyse anything at all but instead just spits out his usually bull garbage for publicity's sake, because he knows that everyone will be jumping to cover him.

This is why that I rarely care about what Tom Lee have to say. It's very predictable and they are rarely right - and if they know that they're wrong they'll just move their predictions around.

I still don't think that his new prediction is going to become reality, though. It's still far too bullish from my personal view. It's unlikely that the extent of the recovery will take BTC up to $20k+ even in 2019, which is the year I expect a market wide recovery to happen. Just take a look at how it took 3 years or so for bitcoin to reach back to its former ATH from 2013.

Most businesses that are starting will be perfectly fine. However, as they get bigger and bigger, they start becoming more and more prone to problems as their customer base grows bigger and they try to roll out new features without solving old ones. They may also become fraudulent or whatnot, just as Coinbase is alleged to do.

I don't know if regulation in this case is a driving cause of this, simply because coinbase themselves made the decision initially to suspend accounts/not credit for forks, etc.

But why would you trust your BTC to a third party anyways? Bitcoin is supposed to be trustless, and doing so completely ruins the benefits of BTC. Get yourself a desktop wallet where you yourself hold the private keys.

Generally, these are pretty good fees for BTC withdrawals.

0.0001 BTC is definitely under the average that is currently in most exchanges, in my opinion. Binance charges 0.0005 BTC per withdrawal (https://www.binance.com/fees.html) and that is pretty much what most exchanges are doing right now with their BTC fee structure. The only other exchanges that I am aware of that offers lower BTC withdrawal fees are Bit-z, and Localbitcoins (it only charges around 0.00005 BTC per withdrawal, however, there is around a 0.00015 BTC deposit fee).

However, you shouldn't only take withdrawal fee as the only characteristic you judge an exchange by. Of course, if you are only trading small amounts and you need to move funds across exchanges often, then it'll be a factor. But i believe that the support and general trustworthiness of an exchange is far more important.

There's no explanation that comes with that decision.

However, it's not really that surprising considering the fact that Bitmex also bans a lot of other countries from accessing it, including the US. This decision was probably made from a regulatory point of view, where they don't want to face legal pressures by offering their services in a particular city that has these regulations.

It could potentially be the new regulations from Canada: https://news.coinsquare.com/government/regulation-for-crypto-businesses/. But why would it only apply to Quebec? I don't know honestly. Just get your money out if you're in that city.

Is it really worth it to use OKex, when they have allegations that they are faking volume since they were initially called OKCoin? I think that the fact that there are allegations alone is enough for individuals to not use them, imo.

All of the things that are mentioned in that article and other accusations of fake volume are all still speculation. We don't know exactly what's going on.

But as I said, why take the risk? If they are faking volumes then it essentially means that they can't get customers otherwise, and that's definitely not good if it's true (even though it's unconfirmed) Just use another exchange, unless a particular coin is only listed on their site.

This isn't really specific enough. If you're just looking for convenience then I think that p2p trading is still going to be your go to thing. However, with the new regulations, you should always be prepared to verify yourself.

Localbitcoins, paxful are all fine with that. They deal with not only a wide range of cryptos but also fiat currencies. But the rates are unlikely to be good compared to major exchanges.

I would suggest using binance if you want to trade with crypto only and not fiat. You can choose to not get verified, and still get some withdrawal limits which is good. Their fees are industry standard.

Prices didn't really go up. It sort of just stayed put.

I think it's a positive sign that the markets have not responded as strongly to exchange hacks as they have before, as it is a sign of a market that is maturing, and the variety of exchanges that is now available to choose from.

However, does it really mean that bitcoin has definitely bottomed? I think not.

While there is a possibility that $6k is the absolute bottom for this bear market, and the recovery will start soon, I feel like that BTC is probably going to head down further before consolidating. But for now, we'll hang around this $6k-7k zone and the market will move predominantly sideways.

For me, selling now would be one of the stupidest decisions that anyone can make within this market.

$6k seems like strong support at the moment, and markets aren't really moving down at all despite the bearish sentiment. I believe that we may see levels lower than $6k during this year, but it's evident that we're extremely close to the bottom even if we are not at the bottom currently.

Panic selling now would mean that you probably won't even get that much back in the best scenario possible since BTC is unlikely to crash under $5k imo, but you will probably not be able to time the absolute trough right and potentially have to buy on the way up instead. Not worth it.

This is an extremely important thing to understand about fiat currencies - none whatsoever has held their value through history. Not a single one. Fiat currency should not be considered to be money because of the fact that it does not store value efficiently.

This is why bitcoin is such an important thing.

It offers people an alternative way to store their wealth, in something decentralised that will hold its value in the long run. Call it a hedge against fiat currency, if you like. Fiat currency has no intrinsic value, and can be added to circulation whenever the central bank/gov wants to. Bitcoin on the other hand is completely decentralised in its supply.

Well, if you mean whether bitcoin's bull market was over, it was over a long time ago.

After bitcoin peaked at $20k, the price increases were just too big to be sustained for long periods of time. And people panic sold all the way to $6k or so, before the prices started to bounce around and recovered somewhat.

Long term wise, i'm still extremely bullish on what bitcoin can deliver. But right now, we're definitely in a bear market that will most likely resemble a lot of what the bear market after 2013 brought.

It's also confirmed that they are using at least one (or probably more that hasn't been found yet) team members. So yeah, I would definitely be confident in calling this a complete and utter scam now.

These ICOs usually will pose as legitimate investment businesses, but they rarely have any real business model, which is why they try to make the returns seem out of this world. Their strategy of making it seem like they have many big companies as their partner reminds me of another likely scam, arbitao, who uses the same strategy.

In this case, it's obvious from the get go that their returns are completely ponzi-like. Even big investment banks can't generate anything close to 30% p.a. consistently, let alone a random ICO that pops up and claims that it can do it on a monthly basis.

A lot of people apparently can't actually withdraw because of the fact that their minimum withdrawals are not hit yet. For those who have this issue, have you tried contacting support to withdraw your funds manually?

If I were an investor, I would definitely withdraw what I can when I still can atm. HF is an extremely shady entity, with a history of manipulating the contracts of the investors. There is absolutely no way in hell that I would trust them.

They've confirmed this publicly, i think. Again, confirms most of our warnings from the start that cloud mining is unprofitable and extremely risky. However, are people's balances actually getting deducted? I thought that there would be no maintenance fees charged, since they stopped mining altogether.


Not really. A lot of people have been directed there by youtubers that claim it's profitable.

This is very weird.

They're asking you for screenshots on completely unrelated exchanges. I would understand if they asked you for the source of your funding, which seems to be the standard AML procedure now. However, there is really no useful information that can be gained from screenshots on Binance and Kraken. You might want to contact them and ask them what's the issue that prompted them to ask for these info. I haven't seen a similar case to yours, and there are many complaints regarding Cex.io here.

Also, fiat withdrawals are indeed a problem because apparently they use a third party service provider for all of their fiat transactions. So you have a chance at getting the withdrawal through, but there is also a huge risk you have to wait for weeks on end for your withdrawal. Thus, it's probably best to only deal with crypto withdrawals on their site. I would suggest you contact cex.io on this forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=148073, regarding both the reason to why the verification info was requested again, and also regarding the current fiat withdrawal statuses.

It has got some resemblance. However, the Mt Gox hack which cut the bull market of 2013 short was much more negative for the market because of the fact that Mt Gox was virtually the only major exchange that is operational at the time. And also, the market was just a lot less mature.

I expect that the prices will drop to a similar percentage (around 20-25%) in relation to the peak price this year compared to the 2014 correction, which means that we probably will see the $6k floor being broken and a bottom established at lower levels.

Similar to how the bear market ended 2 years ago, I also believe that we'll see some bullishness come back into the market in 2020 due to the halving.

Note that these are very approximate figures and the real figures may be a bit off, but these are cycles within BTC price that are apparent to me.

I think that we are yet to see the most adoption happening with bitcoin. Bitcoin has by no means peaked in popularity or adoption over the long term, in my opinion, unlike some users who think otherwise.

The fact that a lot of new financial institutions are now involved in bitcoin trading, or integrating bitcoin into their services is only a taste of what to come. We don't see bitcoin being integrated into day to day commerce or banking either at the moment, which I think will start happening as adoption increases. There are no signs of adoption slowing down, and as adoption grows, demand for BTC grows.

Also, toss in the fact that we're literally near the bottom of a bear market, all means that BTC is still undervalued if looked at in a long term perspective.

I definitely think so.

If crypto investments are regulated to the point that the average Joe isn't able to invest in a project without having to go through extensive background checks, extensive AML checks etc., and that is able to discourage him from investing, then it's certainly a negative. But it depends on how strict and what the regulation is, honestly.

ICOs are able to be invested in by everyone, and that is unlike IPOs which are only accessible to a select few big names.

However, can you really change the fact that the government wants to regulate crypto, and its related investments? I think it's hard.

If people bother to do research, then basically all ICOs will have some shady element or another.

One of the most common tactics used by scammers are that they use a completely fabricated group of people, represented by nothing but stock images, as their so called "team" in order to make themselves seem legit.

And invariably, they do so because their scam would not seem legit at all to investors if real names were used. Most of these scams are probably run by one person, or a few accomplices, and there is no team to speak of whatsoever. Or, they just don't want their real identities leaking out once they exit scam. Thank you OP for exposing them, they deserve nothing less.