I actually always thought that Bittrex already got rid of the legacy accounts.

At least for me, I was unable to trade months ago because they forced you into submitting basic verification in order to trade. For me, basic verification didn't even work and thus they required photo ID to be submitted.

I already quit using Bittrex at that time. I don't know why for you you're still able to trade anonymously.

But Bittrex honestly has lost its attractions after it showed that its support can be extremely unresponsive, and after Binance came along, it just got worse. Especially with the fiat integrations, I feel like KYC will just be a lot stricter. Account verification without ID may not even be able to be carried out in the future on Bittrex as a result.

I think that the biggest differentiating factor between bitcoin and other "fads" is that bitcoin actually has a lot of backing from adopters that came before the pumps of 2017. As you mentioned, most people jumped onto bitcoin as a speculative investment in the middle of 2017 looking to make profits.

And most of these people inevitably closed their positions as the market plumetted. The earlier adopters that know what they were doing expected the bull market to end sooner or later, and as a result, did not panic buy or sell.

It's clear to me that bitcoin is going mainstream over the long run, but these periods where the market sentiment is bullish/bearish will always happen, and prices will act accordingly. In a bull makret, it'll always mean irrational investors trying to buy in at an unreasonable price looking to make a profit. But if you actually understand what bitcoin is for - you realise that it's something for the long run instead of making profits in the short run.

The problem of volatility is there, however, it's nowhere near what people are trying to sell it as.

It's obvious to me that you actually want bitcoin to be "volatile", in the sense that it is independent of fiat and not tied to it in any way, in the long run. Only by doing that will you be able to consider bitcoin a long term store of value, due to its decentralisation and independence. Plus, prices actually grow at a steady rate over the long run and isn't that volatile if you zoom out.

In the short term, prices can fluctuate drastically. However I don't see this deterring a lot of people from using bitcoin. If one's seriously concerned about losing money by using bitcoin as a currency (which is unlikely anyways), then simply convert bitcoin to fiat when you receive it. It's that simple. You're still able to take advantage of the benefits that bitcoin brings through globalised transactions.

Every single thing that has the potential to really go mainstream and make a change will face criticism and skepticism at the beginning. Just like the article that you quoted in your OP. People really thought that the internet was just a fad and will pass.

What I see from bitcoin right now is that it's still very early on its its adoption phase. We are no where near mass adoption currently, but in the long run I can only see the adoption curve going up drastically.

Even if restrictive regulations are in place, I really don't doubt bitcoin's ability to co-exist if not being integrated into day-to-day commercial activities, and that includes banks and all corporations. It takes time, though.

Great, informative post.

Hacking isn't really as prevalent today, or as damaging as phishing does to crypto exchange users, due to the sheer amount of phishing scams out there in every shape or form possible trying to get your money.

The most common scam that I see people falling for is probably the good ol' google ads phishing site, which is also mentioned in your OP. Part of the problem is that google doesn't check the legitimacy of the URL before listing it on their ad platform. That's why you should always remember the official URL of your exchange, and try to type it in every time, or even bookmark it, instead of searching for it on google. Even if you do search for it, don't click on any ads.

Also, another phishing scam would be impersonators in twitter comments posing as exchange management giving away coins. They'll use a similar name in their profile as the official exchange twitter account. These are quite obvious, but some people still fall for it - just be aware.

It's your money on an exchange, you should take an active effort to protect it.

You're not finding any, because lending simply does not work as a charity.

Even if you go to a bank for a loan, they will ask you for paperwork. Let alone in the bitcoin community where scams are so commonplace that people have grown to be extremely cautious in even lending money to people without backing.

You can't have both no collateral and anonymity at one time. In fact, if you are out to obtain a loan from this forum, you need to have collateral. Even if you are willing to sacrifice your anonymity.

I couldn't really find any major exchanges that are located in Georgia. There would be no point then in trying to sign up for an international exchange, because the convenience factor is gone and you're probably not going to get as good rates for SWIFT transfers anyways.

From researching, you have really 3 options.

1. Buying/selling your bitcoins on a p2p trading platform such as paxful/localbitcoins to local traders. I would recommend this, it's the most convenient and you will never have any issues with it.

2. Finding a physical bitcoin ATM within Georgia. Possible travel time issues and also rates migth not be as good.

3. Buying/Selling your coins for international payment methods, such as paypal USD on the forum. Make sure you use escrow.

Bitcoins simply cannot be secured through 2fa... The most risk that you're taking in this scenario would simply be the fact that they may scam you, which should be your primary concern. What they advertise as their main selling point of 2fa simply does not mitigate this risk in any way.

I wouldn't use them. They may be legit, but they are too new of a site for me to personally trust with any sum of money.

They pretty much copied their business model from LBC from a rough glance. I would stick to use localbitcoins and paxful, or using the currency exchange board of this forum by trading with trusted partners, along with a trusted escrow.

Sometimes I really wonder whether or not I should relocate, considering that the cost of living here in my country and city is pretty much one of the most expensive places you can live in currently. While other countries are certainly on the other end of the spectrum with dirt cheap living costs.

A big part of this is probably caused by the fact that the income that you would get at less expensive countries, if you were living, would be much less than in an expensive country, due to the isolation of the labour force from international markets.

If you can somehow obtain an online job that pays in bitcoin, which is a borderless currency that doesn't have country restrictions, you could really take advantage theoretically by going to a country where the cost of living is lower. Practically how this works out is debatable, but it's just an idea.

I believe that a lot of people get misinformed about this. They look at pyramid marketing schemes that utilises bitcoin's technology and network and automatically assume that it is somehow affiliated with bitcoin itself - it's complete and utter nonsense.

This myth has been debunked thousands of times. I suggest you read up on this article: https://decentralize.today/bitcoin-is-the-total-opposite-of-a-ponzi-scheme-heres-why-4d795f0ed

Bitcoin is completely decentralised, it does not promise a rate of return, it is not operated by some shady admin.

I don't know how you can call it a ponzi scheme, or a financial pyramid. And I think most here would agree with me.

I always thought that SJ's escrow were free... Perhaps he changed that a while back?

Anyways, I still don't know if there is a miscommunication somewhere that may have caused the delay (something like the buyer not sending him the message to release directly), and I would like to hear his side of the case before jumping to conclusions.

But if he was as unresponsive as you claim, then that's definitely unprofessional. But everyone's human after all, you can't expect fast replies in all circumstances. However, charging a fee usually means that you're obliged to deliver much faster service.

Well, this is going to become a trend in the future.

Banks are going to be forced to integrate bitcoin into their services, because the old SWIFT transfers are simply taking way too long (come on, up to 3 days for an international transfer in the 21st century?) and the conversion fees involved between two currencies mean that the customer is rarely satisfied with the remittance service that they receive. This bank in Argentina has obviously recognised that, and taken advantage early.

Right now, they're still using bitcoin in order to facilitate fiat transactions more efficiently. Don't be surprised if in the future, they offer crypto banking services directly with investments or transactions being denominated in BTC directly.

Not really. Even if bitcoin was able to gain some momentum this month, I doubt that any rally would be a long-lasting one under these bearish market conditions. I simply don't think that this bear market would be able to conclude within this month.

But as you said, if we see $8k or higher within the start of the month it's probably going to signal for a pump, albeit a small one.

I wouldn't say that it's a crucial day for end of the bear market, or anything like that. There is simply no evidence to suggest that we're going to welcome a bull market this soon, in my opinion.

Weird. When I used virwox, they allowed me to use my paypal balance without any issues. Are you sure that you just don't know how to select to pay with your credit card?

From memory, you do need to have a linked bank account in order to use their services, because they require your account to be verified to buy bitcoin from them. Are you sure that your paypal account is currently verified?

If you can't get it to work, then try contacting support. I don't think anyone here has enough experience dealing with Virwox apart from 1-2 times to answer your questions.

It's probably one of the contributing factors, but it's most likely not the main thing. I actually kind of like the new design in contrast to the old design, mainly because the theme is a bit darker.

Bittrex volumes have been tanking because they are simply not the only option out there for newbies looking for an exchange anymore. In fact, small volume traders can't even trade now without submitting verification, which is a pain in the arse. That's also why you see exchanges like Binance emerge due to their policy that allows for anonymous accounts to be kept.

Also, I think that their support wasn't very responsive last year, along with lots of issues probably due to the high volumes and that caused people to leave the platform. Overall I feel like Bittrex users have just been moving to other exchanges, because no longer is bittrex something that you need to use.

Yep, it's quite obvious that both NeedsMoreJPEG and hidden2209 are both just pumping out pre-written, nonsensical replies and quoting each other. Their purpose is definitely to bump up certain ICO ANN threads considering that's where they exclusively post and I dont' think that they are involved in any signature campaigns.

Whether it's a broken bot, or whatever, we don't know. But it doesn't really matter either way, we know they are an offender of the forum rules and they should be banned.


Is it really as a result of theymos's changes, though? As far as I can tell, this person has been double posting before theymos sent out that message.

Archived version of these post histories:

http://archive.is/luRMn
http://archive.is/aLwA5

This kind of layout of post has been used for phishing for a long time now, and it should be an automatic alarm bell going off your head whenever you receive a post where someone you never talked to says some nonsense and points you towards a link.

These people are definitely out to phish for your account details for whatever reason. In fact, the person who sent you the link is probably a compromised account from the same scam. But nonetheless he should be tagged until he regains sole control to his account.

You did the right thing, and actually did check on the link before you did anything with it. Usually these links will redirect you to a page where it says you've been logged off and prompt you to re-login. Obviously, you should report the PM to an admin if possible.

I think that's pretty unlikely.

Right now even though the markets are somewhat stabilising at the $7k+ level with $7k has support, I still don't think that it's enough to suggest that we'll all of a sudden reverse the trend from bearish to bullish.

Don't forget that we're still in a market with sentiments that are extremely bearish. I feel like that this bear market will probably last until end of this year/start of the next year. Sure, there may be a small rally here and there this month, but that will most likely be met with a correction soon enough. The real recovery won't happen until a few months later I believe.

It's honestly nothing new... It's become quite a commonplace scam on twitter. Check out the yobit twitter page and the binance twitter page, if you like. These two IIRC were always filled with scams like these.

The scam is honestly extremely predictable - a fake twitter account is created with a similar name to an established business, this account goes to comment on many posts made by the official account with a link promising huge returns, and the comment is bumped up using fake likes and comments.

Just use your common sense. I can tell you for sure that no exchanges will ever host such a grand giveaway due to the costs involved, and if they do, it will not involve you sending them money, through an external unrelated site.

I'll tell you this.

Most cloud mining sites are ponzis, or just scams that aren't even interested in paying the first few investors to seem legit. There is only a select few with the actual backing from mining rig manufacturers, or that have a proven physical address where the rigs are maintained, that can be considered to be remotely legit.

All investment bots on telegram are simply not to be trusted. It's that simple. No legitimate business would ever host their investments on telegram. It just means that they're not even bothered to design a site. So no, all of the so called telegram cloud mining bots are nothing but cons run by scumbags.