I searched for every possible related company on the internet, but none of them charge these figures, so I am actually interested in hearing from OP what company it is that he had contact with.

It might also have been a company thinking that they could bank on another potentially multi million dollar ICO, and for that reason could justify asking these prices, but instead of thousands they haven't got anything.

I wouldn't be too worried about a bad ending. I however hate it when companies try to conduct unfair business where they adjust their prices based on the client they hope to do business with.

Technically speaking, only Ethereum managed to differentiate itself from the massive crowd of altcoins. There are a few other coins doing relatively well, but none of them hit a market as hard as Ethereum.

If we look at the old-school altcoins, they all have ended pretty bad in terms of their value. Only Litecoin managed to keep holding up its ratio against Bitcoin. I am fairly sure that current altcoins and tokens will end exactly like that.

There just isn't any need for that many coins. They don't contribute to anything other than allowing pump and dump schemes to use them occasionally as get rich quick tool, and that's the hard reality.

It was worth over $3 billion at the time it was reported, but I don't believe any of this and think it's just another anti crypto campaign to unleash fear. Governments aren't shy of these practices.

The central bank of Poland once financed an anti crypto campaign on social media, and this might be the next thing from that region. I don't doubt they seized a certain amount of Bitcoin, but this is just insane.

It doesn't even sound convincing. I'm not sure if any business or organization performed blockchain analysis in an attempt to locate these wallets, but I would definitely be interested to see the results.

The number of coins it concerns as a whole is too significant to not be a somewhat easy to locate target.

Their statements and actions have always been very contradicting, but this is somewhat different, so there is a little more hope from my side that it at least is a step in the right direction.

I never expect Russia or basically any other country to legally classify Bitcoin as currency. Russia clearly state that it's prohibited by law to use anything other than the Ruble to conduct transactions, so we know their standpoint.

I just hope that the uncertainties there will end for everything related to crypto. Clear regulations are needed to allow businesses to freely develop themselves, but that's currently not possible.

It has been going on for years now, and technically we haven't moved forward at all. This is the perfect opportunity for them to prove that they are actually planning to work out things differently this time.

This forum is business oriented. It won't do anything overly aggressive towards altcoins, because it's a very important traffic generator. At the of the day, scams aren't moderated, so they do enjoy a certain extent of freedom.

The main factor is that we shouldn't really put the focus on altcoins, but just focus on that what actually contributes to growth and development. Altcoins will even be what they are without this forum.

At some point the far majority of the altcoins will no longer be able to operate with how exchanges are becoming stricter, and that directly goes up for regulations as well. There will be a time where only a dozen of coins are left.

You can't expect from such a new industry to be perfect right away. It's all about supply and demand. Is there demand for these scam coins? Yes, so they will keep popping up until that demand is no longer there.

Don't believe that. It's nothing more than an excuse to punish Bitcoin because of how much of a threat they consider it to be. Governments are very desperate, and we keep noticing that with how they try to slow its growth.

For the first time in decades governments have to worry about something that potentially can disrupt their system, and it feels really good. We can choose to no longer be their slave, and that wasn't possible before Bitcoin.

This change will eventually force governments to show more respect and appreciation for what we can offer. It's no longer what you as citizen can do for the government, but what can the government do for its citizens.

At the end of the day the government is there to serve the people, and not vice versa. It has become a total monster.

How can you understand governments prohibiting the use of Bitcoin? It's all done to severely limit people's freedom, which directly also means that they on purposely don't allow their economy to develop, which is pathetic.

If you take all that in consideration, then it's clear that the system there is only functioning to feed the elite at cost of their country, and you understand that? I definitely can't and never will understand that.

We all strive for a better world, and that better world won't ever emerge with how governments on purposely prevent their economy from growing. People don't have to deal with this nonsense anymore thanks to Bitcoin.

We actually can. It's called speculation for a reason. If predictions don't play out how people were thinking it would, they will adjust it so they have a better shot at being right the next time.

It's however a different story if we talk about how much value these predictions hold, which is pretty much zero. This is actually what makes even the best traders in this market lose out ~ there is just no way to predict it.

Plain gamblers are lucky and bank on certain opportunities one day, while chart analysis guys completely miss the boat, and then a week later the same situation repeats, but then vice versa.

I'm glad that I am in for the long term and don't have to go through all that.

No one forces you to keep waiting, so if you are done with that, liquidate your holdings and you are free my man. I haven't seen that many well thinking people be worried about the market actually.

The only ones who complain are noobs and get rich quick clowns. If you think logically, there is no other thing to do than to have patience. There is no asset with more growth potential and volatility than what crypto has to offer.

People usually wait an entire year with stocks and bonds to be rewarded with just 2-3%, and people here dare to complain about how slow or boring the current crypto market is. Respect the market you invest in.

That's actually quite surprising. If you haven't been somewhat notified about these type of questions, I can understand that people will struggle with them, even if they have heard of it in the media or whatever.

I'm sure that a lot people here on this forum don't even know the very basics of Bitcoin, so how can we expect that from complete strangers? A lot of the average joes are only hyped about the potential returns.

They have no idea what the underlying technology is and how it functions in basic terms. Making money is their only incentive right now, and I seriously hope that it will change eventually. We nearly all started like that, right?

I'm not yet sure to what extent, but I have always believed that the current large crypto holders will eventually become part of the wealthy elite. We already have quite some crypto billionaires already.

Think about Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Vitalik Butterin, Coinbase CEO, Binance CEO, Mark Karpeles (obviously through theft), Winklevoss twins, Ripple gang, and the list goes on. It's an interesting group of people for sure.

I'm sure there are even some publicly unknown crypto billionaires in the background. I'm happy that we have pushed it this far. I remember the days as yesterday where Bitcoin's market cap was less than $1 billion.

You are totally right, but the majority of the people tie increases and decreases to Bitcoin's overall health. As long as it goes up, Bitcoin is doing fine, but it not, they believe it's losing popularity and will be replaced.

It's not for nothing that a lot of these rookies keep paying attention to CoinMarketCap and Bitcoin's dominance versus the rest. They don't know that it doesn't mean anything that altcoins catched up on Bitcoin there.

It's just the numbers they look at and that's enough for them to think that Bitcoin is going backwards. They have no idea how total coin supplies of altcoins and tokens mess up everything badly in that aspect.

Not only that, but there isn't really a reason for them to do so. Bitcoin isn't a threat but will turn out to function as solid cross-border tool allowing them to conduct all types of transactions in a safe and impossible to alter manner.

Bitcoin's advantage is that it is open of nature, and its ecosystem is easy to control. In the end I think the conspiracy theories are quite exaggerated and we'll see a more overall friendly Bitcoin regulatory framework.

People keep blaming Bitcoin for not being anonymous and whatnot, but this is actually one of the main reasons it won't be facing harsh restrictions in the coming years. In other words, it's what makes Bitcoin only stronger.

In the same way people should be happy that Bitcoin isn't being used much as a currency. It makes sure governments don't feel threatened by Bitcoin, and that also leads to less hostility in the end.

Rule nr1, if you have to ask others where to invest your money in, please don't invest.

I am not going to recommend anything since everything we come up with is new and unknown to you, and more importantly, it will be a gamble for you. That's not how you should invest your money.

There is no way to gain 3-5% per month without exposing yourself to unnecessary risks. Take some distance from your capital and only invest your time in getting to know how everything works, and what viable options are.

It's pointless to force yourself to invest when you don't even know what to do. People having done so anyway are all regretting it since there is no fun or whatever in losing money you worked hard for.

Well, as long as you stick to the main altcoins and avoid tokens and all other rubbish, these exchanges work fine if you ignore occasional issues here and there, which basically every exchange nowadays is subject to.

It also comes down to Hitbtc. It's as always tokens causing the most problems, and they are the reason the popularity of these exchanges has grown significantly throughout the years.

The sooner people stop using and trading tokens (most tokens don't add anything other than speculation anyway) the less problems people will experience. There is a reason major Bitcoin exchanges never list this rubbish.

I can understand that people feel like that, but if a similar scenario unfolds, then use it as the best possible opportunity you'll ever get to buy as many coins as possible.

The thing is that there aren't that many coins left to buy for the general public, and in case the market happens to decrease significantly (which I don't think will happen), large pockets will buy up even more coins.

Direct result is that with less coins in circulation, the market is far easier to increase. See it as a shakeout of weak hands before the next rally comes up. People shouldn't sell any of their coins.

Selling coins is like rewarding large players for their manipulation attempts. Instead, use it to buy more coins as I said, which is exactly what I'm doing.

Consensus? You mean the Coindesk consensus event? If so, then I wouldn't expect anything to happen anymore since it's over already. People's expectations were high as always, but it didn't yield anything as we see.

Everything they covered there was quite interesting and positive overall, but it wasn't anything capable of giving the market the boost that it needs, or more precisely said, that people think the market needs.

There is too much hype around every event, and time on time again we see the market do the opposite of what people expect to happen. I'm sure it's not just me noticing this, and there definitely are people turning this into money.

It's pointless to tell people that they shouldn't trade. In every up or downward trend there is a decent bit of money to be made. It's not even sure whether or not the price will go down towards the $7400 mark.

I would love to scoop up some coins around that level, but we have to remain realistic and accept that literally anything can happen right now. We might just as well go slightly up again from this point, no one here knows.

Currently we're back at levels we were hovering over one month ago, so from the large green candle that popped up last month we remained fairly stable and I don't see anything pointing at a major change.

It's more a cycle that I see develop here.

I like how the speculation section here perfectly mirrors the sentiment on social media platforms. Everyone is saying that they will hodl through this 'bear market', but when the price slips further, coins will be sold instantly.

Hodlers (and I mean actual hodlers) don't bother opening threads or sharing their concerns, they just allocate time and resources to more rewarding opportunities in the meantime.

If you are in for the long term, what's the point of looking at how the market is jumping up and down? If you take advantage of the volatility with trading it's different, but aside from that there isn't anything you can do with it.

It wasn't all that long ago where I read an article about how the traditional financial system consumes way more energy than Bitcoin and all other coins combined. Should we point at how bad that is?

With how the world is changing more and more, the energy consumed by the financial system will keep increasing as well. Imagine how much of a reduce in energy consumption blockchain usage will lead to.

At some point when financial institutions and governments use Bitcoin's network for cross-border trades and transactions, they will drop all this useless energy consumption drama.

No usage means Bitcoin's energy consumption is a problem. Usage means we don't talk about it anymore. That's how governments work.