You need to avoid centralized exchanges, you need to use mixing and maintain your anonymity to the highest levels, because any party that you deal with in your country could be an undercover police officer.


Vote for politicians that promise to decriminalize Bitcoin, support such politicians on social media, etc. This is the most realistic thing that you can do.

If all it takes to stop Bitcoin is to trade Bitcoin derivatives on traditional platforms, then Bitcoin isn't as resilient, or like some people say "antifragile", as some people though. But I don't believe that neither the Wall Street traders are going to manipulate it any more than the current crypto players are doing so, or that this would cause some irreparable harm. All the additional liquidity can offset the new manipulation, if there will be such thing, so it could be a net positive for Bitcoin markets.

It's a good thing that ICO came before IEO, because we don't need more trust in shitcoin projects, we need less trust - they are all scams anyway. But IEO before ICO wouldn't make a difference, we'd still have ICO hype, and it would have been marketed as a decentralized approach, just like DeFi is being marketed now. And after DeFi and IEO there will be some new way to scam clueless people, because it's essentially the same - selling worthless digital tokens with a promise that someone will use them one day.

This isn't a new narrative, this has been thrown against Bitcoin ever since some illegal content was discovered embedded in some blocks. And later Craig Wright become big on "Bitcoin is used by criminals".

I don't see this FUD being any more widespread these days than any other FUD, lately with Bitcoin getting close to the ATH, all sorts of FUD topics have started to emerge again, and the moderators of this forum are doing pretty poor job at removing it, so trolls are free to spam a few topics every day.

Maybe some bears really want to buy cheaper coins, or maybe nocoiners and shitcoiners are really mad about Bitcoin's price, either way people should be skeptical towards any sensational negative claims, especially if they come from clearly sockpuppet accounts.

I don't see any big point in lamination - you either use some metal medium to make your wallet practically indestructible, or you just use a piece of paper and regularly refresh it let's say once or twice per year. In any case, you should have multiple copies of your wallet in separate places, so no single incident can lock you out of your coins.

Trying to sell before the bubble is about to pop is nearly impossible, what you should aim for is to sell at any price higher than the next bottom. Anyone who entered the last rally below $3k and sold at any later point of the rally could have increased their BTC holdings by buying the $3k dip.

The more BTC you sell, and the closer to the top you sell, the more BTC you can buy back later. So, continuous selling is a good strategy for this. For now it's better to wait and see how this bubble will develop, because there's a chance that the bottom of the next bear market will be above $20k, so now is still too early to sell.

If you look for quick and cheap transactions, you should use Visa or Mastercard. They're just as centralized as XRP, but at least they are well-regulated and have good reputation and are the leaders of payment industry, while XRP can exit scam at any day, or just simply fail because no one wants to use it - after all, there's still no signs of anyone actually wanting to adopt it. It has many of the downsides of decentralized cryptocurrencies and none of their benefits.

No asset can rise infinitely, including Bitcoin. How is the argument that fiat is doomed because of inflation, so Bitcoin will go to the moon is any different from the same argument that goldbugs make about gold? Yet gold didn't show any insane performance, even in this year when a lot of USD was printed.

Bitcoin was always a global asset, because it never was a local asset - the day Satoshi mined the genesis block, Bitcoin was available to all people in all countries in the world. Sometimes when people say "global asset" they mean "a widely popular asset", and Bitcoin seems to be on a steady track to achieving this status, especially with all the attention from institutional investors it got in the last few months.


It's still way too early to proclaim that Bitcoin replaced gold as an investment. There's still a lot of people, even among investors, who are barely aware of Bitcoin.

If it was an official report by PayPal, we could believe that, but a third-party survey is bound to have some huge methodological errors, like it often happens in crypto.


So, 17% of people with strong investment background used PayPal's Bitcoin trading - that's what this survey means. Pretty useless fact, as it tells us nothing about the global picture.


If some millions of people suddenly got into Bitcoin, it would have been noticeable on things like Google trends or twitter activity, but we've seen no such things lately.

For any practical purpose, the sides should agree beforehand on which exchange or index to use for tracking the price - there's no other way around it. If it's a casual discussion about ATH, then a few percents of difference between exchanges can be ignored.

I think this particular bet is almost decided, because the chance that the price will establish a new ATH on all exchanges in this year or the next one is extremely high. But without an established agreement on where to track the price, this bet can't be cleanly resolved until overwhelming majority of exchanges show a new ATH.

No one ever said anything about banning self-hosted wallets, all we have is a rumor that the US regulators will require centralized entities to do some sort of KYC before processing withdrawals to a self-hosted wallet. First, this is just a rumor, there has been no official commentary about it, so it's already one less reason to worry about. Second, it might be technically impossible to implement it, so even if some regulators want to make such requirement, they won't be able to pass it. Trump's administration will be gone soon, so with each day there's less and less chances it will actually happen.

The whole term "digital gold", when it's not used to talk about actual gold shares, was coined by Bitcoiners (no pun inteded), so it's not a surprise that it's very subjective and was made to fit Bitcoin's description. Which means that this title is not very useful. It even makes it pointless to argue if Bitcoin is digital gold or not, because there's no other thing that claims the title of "digital gold".

Bitcoin with its hundreds of billions $$ in marketcap is way bigger than some twitter goldbug celebrity, so instead you should maybe ask - does Bitcoin help Peter Schiff have more followers? Maybe it does, because it gives him something to talk about. It's pretty pointless to talk if a single person, a small company or a small country can influence Bitcoin, because while technically they can, it's so small that it just can be ignored.

I always held the same view - if global players decided to fight Bitcoin, it would be in a very bad spot. All exchanges would close, so the price would crash hard, and liquidity would be reduced to a fraction of pre-ban levels. Same with adoption - Bitcoin would be pushed exclusively to darknet markets. Very few people would want to deal with currency/asset that can land them in jail. So, the fact that Bitcoin's network can't be destroyed does not mean that governments can't harm Bitcoin.

zasad@ asked for an interview some time ago, hope it's not too late 

1. When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?

I was looking for some online work, and google search led me to the Services board on this forum, after that I started checking other boards and quickly became interested in Bitcoin. This happened in 2016, and prior to that I already had 2 interactions with crypto, but sadly they didn't develop into a deeper interest. I claimed 0.005 BTC ($96 today!) from a faucet back in 2012, and later in 2014 I used those coins to buy some DOGE, that I left on exchange which later pulled an exit scam.

2. When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?

Shortly after I joined this forum, I bought a small amount of BTC, because in early 2016 the rally was already starting, so it seemed like a good investment.

3. How did you get on the forum?

Read answer 1.

4.1. What prevents mass adoption of cryptocurrencies?

The fact that to average joe, cryptos aren't really a revolution. It's just digital payments, that were available for a long time, the fact that it's done without middlemen doesn't mean much to them - people usually don't view central authorities as inherently wrong.

4.2. How do you think mass advertising of gambling projects has a positive effect on the development of the forum or harms the community?

I think its neutral.

4.3. How do you consider whether 2-3 years of experience in cryptocurrency is enough to successfully invest or does an investor need to receive special education?

You don't need experience or special education to make a good investment choice, you just need to learn some basics of cryptography and computer science. With that, you'll see that 99.999% if crypto is worthless.

5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns?  Do they harm the forum?

Merit system helped to keep shitposting in check, but low-paying, especially ICO, signature campaigns caused a lot of harm in the past. These days I see much less worthless spam.

6. The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?

Can't think of a single topic, but the Beginners & Help board has some really good guides. o_e_l_e_o, LoyceV, mocacinno, DdmrDdmr, pooya87 quickly come to mind, but this forum has a lot of helpful users.

7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?

Live post preview as you write a post, upvotes/downvotes for posts, native quote and merit notifications.

8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?

I trade with tiny amounts purely as a hobby.

9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?

I invested 0.01 BTC in XRP in 2017, and a few months later it grew to 0.110 BTC. I sold it back to BTC and shortly stopped messing with alts after that. My biggest loss is buying some XMR at 0.016 BTC, failing to sell at its ATH of 0.033 BTC. I sold half of it at a loss, and hodl the rest still, hoping for a bullish XMR market.

10. What do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?

Seems like it's a scam ecosystem, just like ICO was. I don't see a world where DeFi poses a real competition to the traditional finance.

11. Is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?

Well, I don't have any enemies here or outside of this forum, so it's more of a precaution, I guess.

12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?

Princeton's "Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology". Really great book for beginners.

13. Advise 3 cryptocurrencies/tokens for investment in the next 1-2 years?

Bitcoin and nothing more.

14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?

$24,000

IEO wasn't free of scams either, and I'd say it wasn't much of improvement over ICO. Maybe it forced scammers to not be so blatant, but they still created useless tokens without any real intentions of developing the platform, and people still bought them, because they drank the "good project" kool-aid.

I believe altcoins will forever be a scammers paradise, because you can completely anonymously create and asset, sell it to other people anonymously through other coins like Bitcoin or Ethereum, and now even do it on decentralized platform that can't be regulated or taken down. This is just a scammers dream - so little chances to get caught, so little effort for creating a scam. The only reason why bitcoinnect or onecoin people got caught is because they did it on such scale that it attracted a ton of attention from law enforcement. If they just stole a few millions and called it a day, no one would have cared.

1. You should post on topics and boards that genuinely interest you, and this forum has a huge variety of boards to choose from. Don't force yourself to write about something you don't care about, that's how shiposts are made.

2. Before creating a new topic, use the forum's search function to check if it was created before. We really don't need a thread about quantum computers every week.

3. If your opening post is nothing more than a link, it's just a spam. You should write a short summary of your link, maybe add some excerpt from your link, and only then put the link in the end.

Overall, it sounds like you are asking how to write "quality posts" to earn merit, and that's already a wrong approach, because merit is not some social ladder to be climbed. Just use this forum like you'd use any other forum, and first and foremost, follow its rules.

Do you know a lot of stores that sell eggs or flour for gold or Bitcoin?


If you think that it's enough to qualify as digital gold, then Pokemon trading cards are also digital gold. Or World of Warcraft's currency.


People call Bitcoin digital gold, because they want to make an argument that it's a hedge against inflation. The problem is, Bitcoin is not showing any good correlation with inflation or other macroeconomic indicators, it's completely unpredictable. The main point of a hedge is to act predictably under some circumstances, and Bitcoin still can't do that.

I think it's you who are missing the point - complete ownership of money means people are free to do with them whatever they want, including selling it for fiat. Satoshi never said "don't you dare to use Bitcoin as a speculative investment vehicle", and even if he did, that wouldn't have mattered, because to the network it's irrelevant why are you sending transactions, and Bitcoin wouldn't be Bitcoin if it was different.

And from a more practical point of view, it's great if you can sell on top and buy back later, instead of missing out on some 1000% profits. When people discuss exiting Bitcoin, it doesn't mean that they will never own it again, it just means that they expect a crash.