It's not his last resort. It's his only option.

Poloniex is forcing verification on legacy accounts so it's not like it's something that can be avoided. To continue to use poloniex or access your account balances, you need to submit valid ID. An address in the state of New York is unable to be automatically accepted by the verification system, which is why OP needs to contact support.

Since it was against the terms and conditions to begin with to have an account even though you reside in New York, I don't see any other resolution than to close OP's account, and recover the account balance. That would actually be a positive resolution since at least OP gets his money back.

Keeping the sectors in your portfolio equal every year, by selling off the overpriced investments, and by buying more of the undervalued ones can be a good decision to make. The major issue though, is that what if you buy at a really inopportune time?

For example, if you buy gold into your portfolio when it's clearly in a bubble, no matter how well you manage your portfolio, that's likely going to end up a loss for you unless you decide to hold for the long term.

Also, it's sort of misleading as you can still lose money with this combination - it merely reduces the risks. It doesn't eliminate them altogether, that's something that you need to know before investing in anything, or building your portfolio.

Exactly. And even if you need a web wallet, coinbase can be an unreliable and pretty bad service to use. It is known to have frozen people's accounts in the past even if they only use it as a wallet, as soon as it detects some kind of involvement with gambling sites. It's better to use a trustless wallet like Electrum if you don't want to buy/sell.

If you do want to buy/sell on coinbase, they really do take their time with verifying bank accounts. OP seems to have that issue as well.

What I don't understand is their support, it's notorious ever since the trading volume on their platform spiked due to the run up last year. Instead of addressing this issue fully, they have moved onto expanding their services, instead of fixing it. If that's the case, then there is virtually no advantages to using coinbase in my opinion.

It's a pretty interesting read.

I think that bitcoin can actually be compared to older forms of money, which are more proven store of values. For instance, gold or silver. These have no central authority issuing them, and there were physical limits as to how much of them can be mined. This is why they are able to store their value over the long run.

Fiat currency doesn't have that property, it is controlled by a central entity, and can lose value over the long term or even become completely worthless.

I feel like bitcoin is simply the next stage in the evolution of money, it's a more convenient, divisible, transportable form of gold, with a completely transparent supply. It's the best we've got currently.

I'm sorry that you had to go through this dreadful experience. It's really a pain in the arse when you have a problem with the operation of the site, and they just flat out ignore all of your requests. But hey, that's yobit in a nutshell. I think you knew the risks when you were depositing money into yobit, and unfortunately, that risk did not pay off.

Even if they do respond to your ticket, it's impossible for them to refund your EOS withdrawal because technically, you agreed with the terms and the amount of fee you would be paying when you submitted the withdrawal.

However, you should keep creating new tickets if they are flat out ignoring your old ones about your ZCash withdrawal - you deserve to get it. But there is really no easy way to get them responsive, unfortunately. Otherwise, they wouldn't have as bad a reputation as they do.

I mean, by using Bitstamp and egtting verified there, you are handing over a bunch of really sensitive and personal information. Both inside and outside of the verification requirements set by the EU regulators. If they have rising suspicions about your account, then they will report you.

Are they actively reporting you to the EU tax offices? I'd say probably, but we're unsure of that.

Overall, I'd say that consider whatever action you do or information you provide to Bitstamp or any other regulated exchange transparent to the regulators or the government. No way will they withhold information from the government for you due to privacy concerns, if the government demands for it.

Each time when bitcoin experiences a bull market, at the end there will always be a huge correction that brings prices down. That in the current scenario is what happened in January to February - a panic dump, that caused prices to plummet.

Right now what the market is doing is consolidating. We actually may go to lower prices, but I don't think we'll see prices go down by much more. After we consolidate near the bottom, the recovery should happen sooner or later.

Cycles take time, they are not something that happens overnight.

But history seems to tell us that each time bitcoin has recovered from a bear market, it has come back and set another all time high. Since institutional investors have only just started to become interested in BTC, I think the bull market this time, when it comes, will probably yield another all time high price, regardless of how much exactly it goes to.

You always have to be careful when new cloud mining sites pop up, without any sort of backing, and start to claim that they are a part of a previous organisation that was already mining but now decided to open up to public investments. It's literally one of the most used back stories to a scam.

Also, they claim that they have 5 datacentres in 4 countries - completely BS, along with the 100% customer satisfaction rate that they claim.

The site design is very generic, built from a template, and pretty much exactly what a scam site would look like. Do stay away from these.

It's important to note that the RBI is the one that put up the restrictions regarding regulated banks not being able to trade with essentially any crypto exchanges, or businesses that accept crypto. That is not a "bitcoin ban". The RBI has no power to prosecute individuals or businesses for using bitcoin. But they do have the power to unlicense banks if they don't comply.

You won't get taxed for keeping bitcoin, but there are rumours currently circulating about India trying to implement a 18% VAT on bitcoin.

Essentially, they are regarding bitcoin as a good. And that may result in worse tax rates for traders, in the long run. But this isn't yet in place.

There are no signs currently that Binance is actually going to move from Hong Kong to Malta yet. Even though they were essentially removed from the Japanese markets, they are still able to operate currently from Hong Kong to reach the rest of the world.

However, if there were talks about favourable legislation and regulation towards them in Malta, then it could happen.

The only problem would be that even if Malta offered them good conditions for running their business, it's very unlikely that the rest of the world's governents, where most of their customer base is located, would all of a sudden follow suit altogether. It really depends on whether Hong Kong actually starts limiting crypto in the future, which there is no signs of currently.

India doesn't actually have a ban on crypto. Its central bank is has simply said that any banks that is regulated by them (pretty much every major bank) is now unable to facilitate crypto-related transactions. So it's not an outright ban, but will still have a pretty profound impact.

To me, it doesn't make any sense to tax bitcoin as a good at such high rates. It discourages anyone from trading on regulated exchanges, which pretty much means that it would fail the agenda of trying to reap tax revenue off taxing crypto.

It doesn't make much logical sense to do it, but they still may make it happen. I personally don't see the restrictions on regulated banks by RBI lifting any time soon, though.

Bitcoin did have dramatic fall from $20k to $6k. There were actually some small pumps along the way, but no major trend changes since resistance at $10k is just too great.

I don't think that we're showing signs of recovery right now, or at least just yet.

It's very likely that we're going to be in an overall sluggish market for at least a few more months. Of course, we are going to consolidate before the recovery happens. And I don't think that the current level of $7k-8k per BTC is necessarily the lowest point we're going to hit within this bear market, before the recovery comes underway.

So I'm going to say, to the best of my knowledge and even though I'm a long term bitcoin bull, prices are going to continue to move sideways or potentially a bit downwards for at least until December this year.

These scams are actually pretty obvious and easy to spot. The only people that are going to fall for these are probably mostly going to be newbies without much experience. Anyone spamming links around the forum about an investment opportunity should automatically be regarded as a scammer, period.

They apparently also have an app that you can download to track your investments, which is most likely unsafe as it is a direct download link. Please refrain from downloading that app.

As soon as you see investment "plans", you know that it's a scam. No way a legitimate business can guarantee you returns.


Good to hear. I don't even think you need to think about it. It's that obvious.

I doubt that it'll become a "threat", per se.

If you are talking about the fact that bitcoin adopters are going to continue to increase at a pretty fast pace, and its market capitalisation will likely exceed those of a few fiat currencies of smaller countries, then yeah, I think that's definitely going to happen in the near future.

However, even if that happens, is that really a "threat" to GBP or USD? Probably not. Bitcoin can exist alongside these fiat currencies as a popular alternative, and governments will try to regulate bitcoin to the highest extent possible. Although, fiat can definitely lose a lot of value in a short amount of time and eventually cause people to seek alternative store of values, which is something like what we're seeing in Venezuela currently.

Bitcoin is merely a global currency.

It's not something that is directly in conflict of the current economic model. If people actually started to use bitcoin on a wide scale, and governments allow that, then they would be able to collect taxes much the same way that they are doing right now.

I doubt that bitcoin would ever completely replaced fiat like in your scenario, though. More likely, bitcoin is simply going to serve as an alternative alongside the existing fiat infrastructure for those who want to protect their wealth in a decentralised asset.

There was simply no momentum to push bitcoin above $10k. There is also a pretty big resistance at $11k from historical data that we have. So I don't think that we're going to be seeing the levels that you're predicting any time soon.

I believe that there is still some time to go before we find the true bottom.

$6k may seem like support right now, but there is every chance that we're falling through that and consolidating at lower levels. That being said, I doubt that it's going to be anything less than $4k. But the current ceiling at $10k seems to be extremely strong and a bullish breakout in the short term is therefore very unlikely.

Prices are moving down right now obviously. However, there are absolutely no reason to panic. I don't think that anyone could have logically expected bitcoin to be back within a bull market this soon. Usually, the next bull market comes 2-3 years after the prior one, and we have not consolidated enough to be within the timeframe of that imho.

A fall from $10k to $7k is actually not that bad at all, considering that it is expected.

There is virtually no point in panic selling at this point and every reason to buy (if you have the means) and hold onto your investments. That's my personal take in this bear market.

There are two main reasons for this, in my opinion.

First of all, bitcoin adoption has been growing, and thus the volume has been growing as well. No longer can someone buy thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin and all of a sudden the markets are filled with bullish sentiments, because of the new adoption. And vice versa, in bearish scenarios. That ultimately cuts down on the volatility of bitcoin compared to a few years prior.

Secondly, we're currently in the consolidation stages of the bear market, which means that prices are usually moving in zones, and sometimes will dip. You don't see a lot of drastic movements in the consolidation stage, though, which is why volatility seems to be completely gone on some days.

I don't think that this is anything new. New York has been listed as a restricted state since last year: https://poloniex.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/1000252758. So you shouldn't be able to verify your account.

I would personally suggest contacting support about this issue. Ask them if they are able to allow you to withdraw after going through the verification process, so that you can get your money and abandon the account.

That is your only chance. In the ToS, it clearly states that by using their service you are not a resident of the restricted states. However, they should still be able to give you your balance back.

"Professional" and "trusted" are literally the last two words that you can associate with this service (even though it is advertised on the front page).

I'm telling you this, any time you see the word "doubler", move away. No matter ho professional or aesthetic their site looks, there is no chance in the world that they are a legitimate business. Likewise for sites advertising "investment plans".

You have to understand that they probably won't even bother paying early investors due to the fact that a lot of people are already on high alert about these sites, which means that anything you put in will be lost.