What does it even mean to be a bounty checker? Could you describe a little bit what steps your job takes and why should anyone hire you?

I agree. It is partly our job to educate them, and probably this is not that hard a job as well. Because I think that the new generations are naturally drawn to the crypto space. Look at them, they are surrounded by computers, laptops, and mobile phones all the time. So digital money will appeal to them in a natural way. The media (and older generations along with them) may resists for some time, but they will have no choice but to jump on the wagon too.

I think the process has started and there is no turning back. Slowly but surely, more and more people will realize the importance of decentralized money.

People are just not educated enough, but this will change, for sure. Let me ask you, until 10 years ago, who was teaching the new generations about one of the most important question in their lives, which is: "What is Money"?

Nobody. Exactly. And they were just taking money (and how it works) for granted. But, now, it seems to me as if we are collectively awaking to the new reality of better, decentralized, sound money.

I would say avoid KYC, even if the ICO project is totally legit and trustworthy. You never know if all of the team members are trustworthy too. Also, you never know how they are going to store your data. How strong is their security against hacks or theft? Even if everything else is fine, their website could be hacked, their computers could be hacked and your data stolen. IMO, not worth taking the risks, even if the bounty reward is high.

It is hard to tell because, as far as I can see, the linked image doesn't really show the label and ticks on the y-axis.  So we don't know what the largest histograms represent, they could represent 100 BTC or 0.01 BTC.

In any case, it is hard to talk about volume in the crypto world. A good deal of it is artificially inflated.

Edit. After magnification, I can see that the y scale goes to 10. So I assume the top of the y axis is 10 BTC. Now the next question is what coin we are talking about? And what the x-axis represents, minutes, hours, days?

As far as flight tickets are concerned, I found AirBaltic, a Latvian carrier, accepting bitcoin payments:

Source: https://www.airbaltic.com/en/payment-options

I haven't flown with them, so I don't know how it works. I also don't know what Basic tickets means in this respect.

Also check this link:

http://ca.destinia.com/m/bitcoins

Destinia is a Spanish travel agency that accepts Bitcoin. It seems you can book flights and hotels with them. On their website you can even change the default currency from USD or EUR to mBTC (the upper menu).

No need for another post of this type. There are already many, like for example these:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4593038
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2244227
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3356527

Also, a great collection of crypto related terms can be found here:

https://www.cryptowisser.com/cryptocurrency-glossary/

I'm not sure if the steps you propose here would work in practice. Even if they would, it's all too complicated for my taste.

I would rather look for some alternative method of sending cash that has no chargeback possibility. And do these intermediate steps, like selfie, ID, letter of authorization really prevent chargebacks?

Also, there is no escrow in this scheme, so it looks to me that the seller is not protected after sending the funds to the buyer.

This quote from the linked article is indicative of what happened:


It seems like a badly written code. These smart contract codes have so many attack vectors that the coding has to be top notch or else you are giving away money.

There are so many things, so many projects going on in parallel with the Ethereum blockchain, it's amazing... casper, sharding, plasma, ETH supply cap,...

But everything is still to come, experimental, and nothing seems to be in the production phase. Like in the case of sharding:


And, it's like that, month after month. So, it makes me wonder, if they know what they are doing?

The only advantage I can think of with an open source crypto exchange code is the potential community, if there is one. The community can help address bugs and increase security.
This is also a potential disadvantage. With an open source code, a potential attacker could go through the code, find and exploit bugs that haven't been addressed in time.
So, even though open source is generally a great thing to have, with crypto exchange code, I would be careful because the devs may not be good enough or the community not strong enough.
I'm not saying that's the case here as I don't know RubyKube.

Sure it works. Why wouldn't it work? Just because we are currently in a bear market? Not a reason good enough. For example, bear market offers the possibility to invest and get more coins than what you would be able to do when the market trend is in an upward trend.

If you are a trader, you can make money in bear market and you can make money in bull market. You can even make money when the market has no clear trend.

Technical analysis works most of the time in any market. Not always, you can get burned, even if you are an experienced trader. But overall, it works.  

You probably mean the new web wallet is live. Because when I click on the link it the webpage asks for a user login. So I suppose it's a web wallet. A desktop wallet would be something you can download, right?

Thanks. I also think we are currently on the plateau of productivity. I checked just a couple of days ago and was pleasantly surprised to learn how far the developers had advanced in developing the lightning network. Once the LN goes live (probably at the end of next year), we might witness a new wave of enthusiasm and wider adoption of bitcoin.


I think we will come to the point when bitcoin will be used as a currency increasingly more. Bitcoin first had to become a store-of-value, because there is no currency without first being a store-of-value. Now that bitcoin has proven itself to be a store of value (somewhere I heard that currently, on average, Bitcoin has more daily transactions than Gold), it's time to be a medium of exchange. I believe the LN will be a game changer in this respect. 

I don't use this indicator, but from what I can tell, clever traders use Bollinger bands usually when the market doesn't have a clear trend and the price goes sideways. Whatever you use it for, don't use it alone - it can deliver fake signals, so use it in combination with other indicators. For traders that use Bollinger bands a good person to follow is John Bollinger (@bbands) on twitter.

Judging from the language on the home page (google translate detects it as Russian), it seems to me that this exchange could be relevant to Russia only, if any. Hardly any info on your "about us" and "contact" page, so why would anyone want to deal with you? The question of trust remains as the most important question for anyone who would potentially use your website.

I've come across an interesting medium post by Vijay Boyapati I'd like to share.

The post touches upon many aspects of Bitcoin, but what I think is especially interesting is the question of Bitcoin monetization and Gartner hype cycles.

The entire article is great, but in the following I will present some points related to the section called The shape of monetization.

What is a Gartner hype cycle?

Gartner hype cycle is an S-curve that represents the typical phases of adoption of any new technology.


Source: Ref. [1]

1^st phase: Burst of enthusiasm of early adopters. Price rises to ATH when speculators also enter the picture. Eventually, the supply of newcomers and speculators is exhausted which leads to a fall.

2^nd phase: After the initial enthusiasm, there is a rapid drop and the price reaches a minimum.

3^rd phase: A period of slow growth after public derision and prolonged disillusionment in the possibilities of the new technology.

4^th phase: Price consolidates to a plateau of productivity. During the fourth stage, people in charge of the technology continue to work and improve away from the media spotlight.

After these 4 phases, the previous hype cycle is over. Again, new people start to join, and the base of adopters grows steadily. New hype cycle is initiated with higher public base and new adopters.

Example of Gartner hype cycle

The author gives an example of this cycle by quoting the price of Gold, from the 1970s to 2000s. This is a typical example of the process of monetization driven by social dynamics.


Source: Ref. [1]

The Four Hype Cycles of Bitcoin (and the Fifth to Come)

According to the author, Bitcoin has already gone through 4 Gartner hype cycles.

1. 0-1 USD: This cycle was driven by cypherpunks and tech savvy people
2. 1-30 USD: This cycle was driven by enthusiast and early entrepreneurs
3. 250-1100 USD: This hype cycle was driven by early retail investors and some institutional investors
4. 1100-19600 USD??: This is the ongoing phase driven by early majority of investors
5. ??: The author expects another major Gartner cycle still to come. This one will be driven by national states that would accept Bitcoin as currency reserve.

Some additional interesting lines from the article:

• The duration of the current (forth) cycle cannot be predicted, the plateau may be reached at bitcoin price of $50,000.
• If bitcoin were to have equal market capitalization as gold, it would be worth $380,000.
• When bitcoin reaches the market capitalization of gold, it will have the same volatility as gold. Several times beyond the marketcap of gold, the volatility of bitcoin will be so small that it will become a medium of exchange in addition to a store of value (which is now).
• In each hype cycle, the volatility is lower in the plateau phase, while it is higher in the peak and crash phase.
• Each successive hype cycle brings lower volatility.
• The fifth upcoming Gartner hype cycle would bring the national states which would accumulate bitcoin as foreign currency reserve. One trillion dollars marketcap is needed before the nation states can start to look at bitcoin as a foreign reserve currency.

What do you think? I have no background in economy to be able to tell if some of these points have any merit, but the case presented looks very strong to me.

The most speculative seems to be the fifth hype cycle where national states start to acquire BTC. Does this make sense to you?

In conclusion, check out the entire article. There are many more Bitcoin related aspects discussed in it.

---

Ref [1]: https://medium.com/@vijayboyapati/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1

OK. They have decided to pay. And now what?  Who is to say that the hackers will restore the hacked files after receiving the ransom money??


This statement may or may not be true. Can you custom make encryption/decryption schemes? In any case, this entire situation goes to show how vital it is for anyone who runs a computer network of this type to have a reliable backup system in place.

So these DARs are going to be similar to ETFs. Same story, different package. The point is, you as an investor, don't want to be dealing with creating and saving your private keys. You want someone else to do that for you. Is it good or bad news for the Bitcoin ecosystem? Honestly I don't know. On the pros side, it may help pump new money in. But I tend to think it is not so good, as we get these weird financial constructions, where someone else keeps your bitcoins, not you in reality. Will these custodians be transparent and to what degree? Will they enable landing or other financial instruments on top of these DARs? Will it affect the underlying Bitcoin system, will it introduce a sort of inflation... a lot of unknowns...

As already indicated, the answer is hidden in your question. By having 51 percent of mining power. Yes, that's enough to take over the entire public ledger, to rewrite transaction history, double spend etc... No access to source code needed.

If your coin is new and your network doesn't have enough hash power, this kind of attack can pose a real danger. But then again, if your coin is new, probably nobody would be interested in performing 51% attack.