I think it's more so that there is nothing left to gain from publishing these news articles. In most cases news outlets weigh every subject and matter to see whether or not it is potentially able to attract x amount hits and traffic. Purely based on myself, I have seen a couple of these articles pop up, but not worthy enough for me to click on them since it's very likely more rehashing of existing information.

In the end, it's next to impossible to actually prove how much money has been laundered. I just hope for the sake of his rights (whatever it's worth) that authorities won't just make up a number rounded up exorbitantly higher for the heck of it. Being a 'criminal' is one thing, being a 'criminal' that uses crypto currencies as base will instantly get you in a position that's way worse.

It wasn't just the US government that saved Goldman Sachs from imploding, but also Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway with a $5 billion emergency loan.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press-releases/archived/2008/berkshire-hathaway-invest.html

Interesting is the fact that while it's usually the bank charging ridiculous amounts of interest, it was Warren Buffett that got the bank to cough it all up. Years later, the loan has been paid back in full with interest, Goldman Sachs is yet again the old Wall Street bully. I'm pretty certain that this whole situation will repeat itself somewhere in the forthcoming years.

If that isn't enough, Warren Buffett also made like $12 billion in profit on Bank of America. People can say about him all they want, but he's a damn genius in this field.

Am I the only one expecting Roger to pop up out of nowhere with a bunch of Bitcoin white paper sheets in his hands?

In all seriousness, I am a hardcore Bitcoiner myself, but some of these people are too extreme for me. I would love to visit that camp just to sniff the sentiment and the general way of thinking, but I think I wouldn't be very comfortable there for a longer period of time.

I would love to see some local initiatives here making it easy for the average person to know what Bitcoin is and what it stands for, but it's difficult to publicly do so because that immediately signals that you hold Bitcoin and that can turn you into a potential target. There are plenty of hyenas waiting for their moment to strike. 

Bitcoin is the new kid on the block, so it has to be the one that's catching all the trash talk from bitter and skeptical human beings.

I have had numerous discussions to convince people around me that money (whether it's Bitcoin or fiat or Gold) is only a tool and for that reason should never be blamed. Instead, blame abusers, and for instance, governments are the worst ever abusers of money where they use it to fund wars and whatnot. It's a counter argument that's strong enough to convince even some of the most brainwashed average joes.

Another thing is that crime is a very subjective term that's different for each person. Most average joes consider buying and selling weed to be a crime. They consider smoking weed to be a crime. They consider tax evasion to be a crime. I don't consider any of these to be a crime at all. If we take that into account, the actual criminal use (the heavy shit that's bad for real) is negligible. People need to grow a thicker skin and not instantly label others as criminal.

Millionaires aren't really in a rush to invest in Bitcoin, and honestly speaking, I think they are just keeping an eye on Bitcoin to see whether or not it will be able to overcome previous all time highs. If it manages to bounce back up to $20,000 they might have enough confidence/believe that Bitcoin isn't going away and still invest.

It won't make much of a difference for them whether they buy a minimum of 1BTC at $7000 today or 1BTC for $20,000 later on. Most millionaires look for solidity, and if Bitcoin can bounce back up, I'm pretty sure that it will initiate a tremendous fomo rally amongst the elite.

I rather see normal folks hurry up to get their hands on smaller chunks of a whole coins so there is at least some level of 'fair' coin distribution preparation going on.

Bitcoin is probably the last ever opportunity for normal folks to build up wealth in a convenient manner, and they are throwing it to waste.  

Firstly, even if it concerns a pair of dirty socks, you'll be subjected to taxation. Considering that Bitcoin ranks higher than a pair of dirty socks, you legally in no shape or form can avoid taxation. Another thing is that people believe just because their government hasn't regulated or legalized Bitcoin, that they don't have to pay tax, which is wrong. There is no way to get around it so don't count yourself lucky.

Secondly, the state doesn't lose anything if people don't pay tax over their crypto holdings and profits. If you don't hold Bitcoin or don't trade it in a profitable manner, the state wouldn't get anything from you in the first place, so what difference does it make that you don't pay any taxes if you do hold or profitably trade Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is power to the people. Why people still put that power to waste is what boggles my mind.

I think the main revolution is that crypto currencies and other platforms use immutable ledgers to remain decentralized, everything else is largely hype.

Startups mostly go for blockchains because it allows them to jump on the blockchain hype bandwagon, which significantly increases their chances to raise large sums of capital (mostly way more than they actually need). In reality, databases work just as efficiently, but it sounds boring and no one seems to be interested in it.

If your project or startup isn't about running an immutable ledger, you don't need a blockchain, it's that simple. I obviously do understand why everyone is going for a blockchain, I would do that too, but the hype literally masks how empty the whole blockchain industry really is.

Isn't the same applying to Bitcoin? Currency versus not a currency because it can't scale on-chain?

I dislike everything about Ethereum, but we can't ignore the fact that they have the majority of the capital and developers in the altcoin field on board. Ethereum was quite oversold recently, and the way it jumped back above $200 on extremely strong volumes is once again pointing out how much confidence there is in Ethereum.

EOS (especially when it finally starts working) & Co will definitely accumulate market share over Ethereum, but the question is whether or not it's enough to overtake it. It may very well be that just like Bitcoin, Ethereum's first mover advantage could make it survive at all cost. Also, I rather have Ethereum occupy the second spot in market cap ranking than corporate garbage like XRP and BCash.

Newbies should stick to reading and soaking up all sorts of useful information, not messing around with trading.

In case newbies do get into trading, they should only stick to spot trading and stay as far away from margin trading as possible. If the price goes down with spot trading, you only lose virtual value, while with margin trading you'll lose your socks, your pants, and even your dentures. In other words, you'll lose everything.

With BitMex gaining more popularity, the number of newbie complaints is growing as well. The most common one is that BitMex scammed them because their entire position is gone/busted. They don't realize that the higher your leverage multiplier is, the sooner you'll lose, and without a stop loss you'll lose everything. It's mind boggling how people underestimate margin trading. 

I highly doubt that actual new money will flow in just because of an ETF approval.

The money that might initiate a pump is money that has been floating through this ecosystem for a longer while already. And then we also have capital shifts from coin to coin that keeps this market active. The only way for actual fresh capital to enter this market is to have another bull run attract more retailers, or that institutions go ham on a coin backed ETF.

Both a bull run and an ETF approval are events with next to no short term viability to them, and with the bear market lasting longer, we should be happy that the $6000 level has been supported firmly. It's more likely to see money exit this ecosystem rather than entering.

It's not about the community. The community is rotten to its core, so you should be happy that it isn't any sort of guide or leading factor.

It may sound harsh, but people like you who are here just to be brave and hope for the best aren't helping this ecosystem at all. Instead of spreading technical knowledge, you are spreading speculative nonsense that gets in the head of other newbies. If you understand Bitcoin's fundamentals, you automatically will stop worrying about ups and downs of the price.

In case people really can't handle the stress of investing in Bitcoin, then you shouldn't have invested in the first place.

They indeed happen in both directions, but I recommend you to closely follow the correlation with platforms as BitMex and Bitfinex to see how all these resets aren't happening naturally, but are planned and leveraged. It all happens within the trend and there is no reason to cause a breakout. It's just a way to maximize profits while the market is going down anyway, that's it.

I'm talking about current market and not the older days. There is no point in denying that without the mass affecting the market, it has become pretty predictable, and that's exactly what the "manipulators" I referred to are exploiting. If you lose in current market, you're not doing well as whale.

Right now we're in the process of working towards another lower high, which will end up peaking somewhere around $6800-$6900 (don't think it will exceed $7000). The same calculated resets will yet again occur and be leveraged to the maximum, keep an eye out.

It's getting a bit tiresome seeing these articles pop up.

Imagine one day banks and governments conducting large cross border transactions with Bitcoin and all of a sudden it's global news that a 'mysterious' whale has conducted a large transaction. It's not helping to have them come on board like this. You can't even fart without CCN and thousands of sherlock holmes geeks sharing with the outside world that it happened.

I honestly don't care who or what is moving these values. It's none of our business.

IF these coins are being dumped, be happy that we're getting rid of yet another old hand being able to implode this market at any time of the day. It only makes the market stronger in the long run.

I think the 'manipulators' are less frightening than some of you might think. It's probably safe to say that the spot market has become nothing more than a tool to boost their leveraged trades on platforms such as BitMex. Back in the days it was more like them accumulating plenty of coins, pump the market, then dump at others. Right now it's more like them solely resetting the spot market to levels within a safe range.

There doesn't seem to be much desire for them to tank the market to insanely lower levels for maximum profits (at least for now). If they are in for a wild ride, they'll just increase their leverage multipliers and reset the spot market to levels at which their gains are satisfying enough. As long there is enough respect for $5800 people should not worry.

Exchanges globally should put some effort into finding out who and what is contributing to these obvious price resets. As long as that doesn't happen, whales will continue to have free game.

Huh? I think you're mixing up a few things.

Margin trading doesn't depend on any sort of market condition, you just need the market to be active, the degree of activity doesn't really matter since you can increase or decrease your leverage multiplier as you wish.

On platforms as BitMex you can leverage your trades up to 100x, but most people don't go over 10x since anything over x10 holds too much risk. If the market seems to be stuck within a very tight (small) range, you can choose to go with a higher leverage multiplier to boost your potential profits. In the same way, with larger swings you can choose to be a little bit more conservative and go with a lower leverage multiplier to hedge the risk of having your position busted.

Bitcoin more valuable than Gold? Let's have a look at their market caps;

Bitcoin $112 billion.
Gold $7.35 trillion.

The reason that Gold is difficult to move, comes from the fact that it has one of the most liquid markets in the world. You can literally dump a few billion worth of Gold on the market without leaving a dent. Now try that with Bitcoin. If you dump a few billion worth of Bitcoin on the market, you'll cripple the entire crypto industry.

I prefer Bitcoin over Gold in each and every way, but there is no doubt about the fact that Bitcoin's market is nothing more than a joke compared to what Gold represents today.

Seasonality might be a thing, but if we look at what happened after the 2013 bull run, 2014 was a year without anything other than a continuous lower high down trend, and this seems to apply to 2018 as well. The year isn't over, and there might be a short lasting bullish upwards movement, but I don't think it will be strong enough to break several previous local highs.

It's better to just accept that we'll enter 2019 well under the $10,000 level. Historically the first few months of each year have always been the worst, so I expect some serious down movement there as well. It might even be where we end up setting the 'ultimate' bottom, which would then follow according to the ultimate bottom of January 2015 where the price tanked well under $200 but quickly went up from there.

My advice; remain neutral and don't expect anything from the market this year.

The most simple form of research is to look up the whois information of a specific exchange. If the exchange in question is hiding its whois information, which applies to bitplace, people should refrain from using them. It's mind boggling how people ignore such a simple but yet very effective way to get rid of at least 90% of the scams.

It only takes like 30 seconds of your time to look up whois information, but it saves you so much drama and money in the end.

It's hard to come even close to what Bitcoin stands for in terms of decentralization. Everything that we see launch today is either a project ran by a bunch of geeks who haven't had a shower in a while, or some corporate bobos thinking they re-invented this whole industry. In all cases there is a public face behind the project that subject itselfs to all sorts of central single points of failure.

If you try to dump the source code of a certain project in the wild public and then vanish in the hope it will get the same treatment as Bitcoin back in the days, you'll come back a couple of years later to see that no one even bothered to pick it up. It's next to impossible to even form a remote competitor in that regard.

The crypto industry is more diverse than it has ever been, but the incentives are different now. Decentralization is no longer the priority, scalability is, which means that projects don't even bother to act as a decentralized incentive anymore. They just want the economical numbers on their side.

While you are happy with more regulations, others are seeing it as yet another step towards total control of the crypto ecosystem by government bodies. The worst thing is that people swallow it as if they are slaves of their government, which is crazy. This behavior in the last decades has lead to a government that more than ever wants to control every one of us.

Regulations to a certain degree combat scammers, but the price we pay for having less scammers isn't worth it. If people for once just refrain from investing in schemes and other roots of that sort, the number of scammers will reduce organically without the government even playing a role in this process.

It's called news flow control. News outlets publish articles during times they think it may affect the market sentiment, even if the news they publish isn't exactly news anymore.

It's not a surprise that now Ethereum has recovered a bit some form of good ICO news pops up attempting to boost people's confidence. These are the same news outlets that trashed Ethereum during the last few weeks on the way down.