Assuming (for the sake of argument) 50 years is accurate, we could practically stretch it all the way to +100 years with some minor adjustments.

I think the biggest problem is the ease of consuming fossil resources just because it's available right now in pretty much any quantity. It lowers the main incentive to actually dig through all this to find ways to limit use of fossil resources, but without losing productivity and thus billions in revenue and profits.

Most people in today's world live in the here and now, where every potential obstacle in the next couple of years is something they prefer to deal with by that time instead of now. This mentality is quite damaging and doesn't really make much sense to me, but then again, we're just small fishes. The main players have all the incentive to sell you dirty fossil resources in the here and now.

By the time Bitcoin's total supply touches 18 million (which will happen in the next 14'ish months), the price "only" needs to reach ~$55,555 in order to touch a $1 trillion market cap.

I'm pretty confident that we'll get it done within five years as the next crazy ass bull run will surely offer a helping hand. But as always, Bitcoin reaching x levels isn't a problem; the main obstacle always is maintaining higher price levels for a longer period of time. Bitcoin always corrects with 75% on average after every x10/20 bull run, so we'll have to see if institutional capital will help to significantly reduce these post bull run corrections.

Either way, accumulate as many coins as possible on the way down right now, and you'll be a whole lot more excited when we do hit that $1 trillion milestone.

Correct. They can officially delay it until March next year, but when a review is granted in March after the "final" rejection, the actual final (hopefully for real this time) decision could be pushed all the way to late 2019. The Winklevoss ETF review took nearly a year IIRC.

I'm pretty sure all these rejections, delays and reviews are tests to see how the market reacts to each and every ETF announcement. Otherwise what would be the benefit of all this trolling? If you up front know that none of the current ETF's will be approved, what's the point of delaying and reviewing decisions?

Perhaps they are trying to get the market to a point where it no longer gives a shit about ETF's, and then suddenly drops the bomb and approve one out of nothing in the next few years.

I'm getting a bit bored with all these "analysts" and "economists" thinking to know what happened last year after the event. Where were all these ball sacks before the bull run started? Oh wait, they were heavily speculating about Bitcoin to crash at $2000, then $3000, then $4000, and so forth. No one even mentioned the futures markets to potentially be THE bull run trigger at the time they were announced. It's always easy talking afterwards.

Also, CNBC is a trash outlet only out to shill that what the reporters there think is relevant (i.e. what coins they hold at that point). They are supposed to be unbiased under all circumstances, but they haven't done much effort to actually show that.

People wanting to get rid of fiat are keyboard warriors not understanding how everything works.

If you're so into Bitcoin, why would you even bother caring about fiat? Just keep using Bitcoin and ignore fiat where possible. Problem solved.

Fiat, regardless of how bad people think it is, does a way better job being money than crypto currencies do right now. People can keep hyping up crypto as much as they want, but they are either ignorant or just want to hardcore shill their investment. I personally think the latter is more likely since this whole space is filled with get rich quick noobs.

People should have an option to switch between currencies depending on which one is the most useful in a certain situation. In some cases that will be fiat, and in some cases Bitcoin.

It's quite funny how people think that just because coins aren't moving on-chain, they aren't being used. There are plenty of examples of how physical Bitcoins can be used as means of exchange (just like a Gold bar) without needing internet or whatever client. It's a great way to fool authorities into thinking that coins aren't moving or belong to x entity, while they have moved and changed owner plenty of times already.

I have turned like 10% of my total Bitcoin holdings into physical Bitcoins this year, and it feels great to have actual value in Bitcoin that I can use in the worst case no-internet/no-power circumstances. It's just like Gold in physical form perfect worst case scenario money. I'm confident that there are plenty of more people like me doing the exact same thing.

The same ICO advisor stated (article) that Monero will be worth $18,000 before 2023. If you throw around with such predictions you're really out to discredit yourself badly.

Don't get me wrong, I think Monero is a great coin with some potential, but I'm afraid that it will be outlawed globally within said time frame, and that will make sure way less money flows in that coin. If you can't even see that happen as 'advisor', then you're not doing your job well enough. This space is literally flooded with these hillbillies thinking to be cool.

Also, one doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that Bitcoin will blast through $100,000 with the block halving and LN accelerating the process of reaching that level.

Speak for yourself. It's obvious that the market is setting lower highs continuously, which is what markets do during bearish cycles.

People really need to accept that the current price isn't low, nor is it going to pump any time soon. The market had no chance to properly bottom out with how the ETF speculation fuels people's hope for another bull run this year, and then we have idiotic public faces throwing around with crazy high end of the year predictions. Seriously, what's wrong with everyone?

Did the crypto market ever do things the mass was expecting to happen? Never. Did the crypto market ever do things the mass was not expecting to happen? All the time.

Last year's bull run was so explosive because no one (including the most elite traders) expected it to happen. People had only one option at that point, which was to fomo in at any price. People right now have bought in already or are bagholders from last year's bull run. In other words, there is only selling pressure to eat through. Not a good environment for a bull run.

I would prefer them to reject it right away next month, but they'll likely continue their idiotic let's delay it strategy just to annoy people here.

Good thing is that the market has almost reached a state at which it will likely stop caring about these ETF's, because when things become too predictable where even the non elite traders know the trick, which they have in the last months, it will no longer work afterwards. I said it before, the upcoming SEC decision is probably the last time we'll be able to short the news before the news comes out.

It's about time the community here moves on and stops focusing on ETF's that don't stand a chance to be approved.

In more general terms, marging trading is pretty much the same as trading with borrowed money. In most cases it's done to enhance gains, but it works both ways which means that it could just as easily result in deeper losses in case the market works against you. I don't recommend any newbie to play around with this, especially not when it comes to crypto as severely volatile asset class. In other words, don't do it.

Even regular trading is a losing practice for most people, especially with how the market has a bearish bias to it right now. Dollar cost averaging is the most noob friendly investment strategy there is. Newbies should stick to buying Bitcoin and keep it offline for a longer period of time. Focus on that.

Also avoid altcoins. It's just not worth it.

While I agree that attracting people with discounts is a good thing in the short term, it's however not sustainable in the long term.

If Visa & Co see their market share shrink due to Bitcoin being the preferred option to conduct day to day transactions, they can just as easily lower their fees to a point at which Bitcoin can no longer compete based on merchant fees with how nearly every merchant uses a centralized payment gateway.

The only way for Bitcoin to win this 'fee war' is to have merchants cut out centralized payment gateways entirely, and this is something that will take plenty of years and also requires more price stability.

It's a bit misleading though. Governments are in it to have fiat become a tokenized means of exchange, and not necessarily an actual crypto currency.

In the end I do believe that every government will eventually tokenize its financial structure to at least be able to compete with actual crypto currencies such as Bitcoin. Seriously, fiat currencies have never been in such a bad position with Bitcoin being around the corner to eat through their market share on a massive scale. Governments have no choice but to follow this path.

People however shouldn't be afraid that Bitcoin will lose to any of these government issued tokens. These tokens are maybe more convenient than legacy fiat, but they are still doomed to fail due to insane amounts of value creation and unstable governments. In other words, fiat is and will always remains a ticking time bomb.

I feel you. By the time you made one person aware of the fact that cloud mining is a shithole, a dozen of newbies have blindly entered the cloud mining space.

In the end I still believe that the best way for people to learn that cloud mining (or basically any other investment scheme) is rubbish, is to have them lose money. If you are being rewarded for doing stupid things you will never learn. In order to understand that what you did was wrong, you have to get burned, and this for most people should be a sufficient wake-up call.

The only thing with cloud mining is that the process of losing money is very slow with how services can pay users for months without any problems, so in most cases it will take a month or six for people to at least acknowledge their loss.

It's perhaps good for people to know that there is another side to the increasing hashrate while the price is "low".

Most of the hashrate that has been added to the network this year comes from miners purchased during the bull run last year. I expect the hashrate to keep increasing with how there are plenty of investors still waiting for their miners (that have been purchased last year) to be delivered.

It's mind boggling how powerful Bitcoin's network is today at +50,000PH. I remember when people were celebrating that Bitcoin's network broke through 1PH for the first ever time back in 2013. What a difference.

Bitcoin doesn't need an ETF to keep growing, it's just something that people have made themselves believe which is stupid.

Bitcoin needs LN in order to lift its main utility to a whole new level, and once that has been taken care of, there is basically no limit to Bitcoin's price. Bitcoin is money in the end, and if people and merchants no longer think it's necessary to cash out to fiat, the price will go through the fucking roof organically. It will take some years to reach that point, but we can wait since we're still in the very early stage. Don't rush things. Enjoy the journey.

LN is Bitcoin's ultimate killer application, not an ETF or Bakkt.

I noticed that with CMC's exchange volumes lately. It seems that exchanges are desperately looking to artificially inflate their volumes to occupy a higher CMC rank in an attempt to attract more users.

If you look at the traffic stats of the more popular exchanges, then you'll see that in most cases CMC is the second after Google when it comes to exchange linking. In case of OKEx and Huobi, wich are the most manipulative exchanges when it comes to volumes, CMC is even the main traffic provider, which pretty much explains why they are trying to keep their volumes as high as they have it right now. In other words, CMC has more power than most people here think.

If we're looking at Bitcoin from an unbiased perspective, it's just not able to serve a large number of people at the same time. We have seen what happened last year during the bull run, and while the network was also suffering from a massive spam attack, the fees would still be like $10-$20 if we discard that attack, which is just too high.

LN is going to be a game changer for real. I can totally see a whole new economy run on top of Bitcoin with next to zero incentive for anyone to cash out to the main-chain again.

If anyone is interested to play a bit with LN, here is currently the best available mobile client in existence; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightning.walletapp

Minimum channel funding is 0.003BTC and maximum 0.167BTC, but I don't recommend anyone to fund channels with more than 0.01BTC (closer to the minimum is best). Just keep it low for testing purposes, because in the worst case you *could* lose funds.

I honestly believe that there is something going on in the background that may have forced the US to cut off Iran again, and it could very well come from Saudi Arabia. It's in their benefit to keep Iran's economy as close to the ground as possible in that region. Seriously, if Iran's economy starts blooming, the Saudi's could eventually lose their dominant position. If you also add that Iran has insane amounts of fossil resources, you know that there is plenty of potential hiding in that country.

Stronger Iran also means they'll be more capable of financially supporting Shiite forces, and thus suppressing the Sunni forces that are active in countries as Syria, Irak, Yemen, etc.

You don't even have to use CNBC as indicator to know that we're constantly setting lower highs. I don't know how many times this year I have shorted the short term peaks, but thus far every short has turned out to be profitable just by using the longer term downtrend in my advantage. The market has turned into a predictable vehicle and nothing will change that unless something groundbreaking happens and the market turns full biullish, which I don't see happen this year.

It's far more likely to see $5000 than $10,000 this year, and I'm not saying that because we're closer to the $5000 level right now. If you also take into consideration that January and February have always been the worst months of a year in Bitcoin, I'm pretty confident that we'll see the market bottom out for real in Q1 of 2019.

I actually don't recommend anyone to hold any altcoins for the absolute long term since they haven't proven to be a dominant force within their own industry field. Ethereum hasn't had any serious competition yet to test its solidity, which is why I'm looking forward to how EOS will develop itself from here. I strongly believe that EOS has the potential to overtake Ethereum in the forthcoming years, especially if they get everything working.

Another important factor is that EOS holds like 5% of all circulating Ethers which they can and likely will use to close the gap even further. If on top of that an exchange as Coinbase decides to add EOS where it will gain even more exposure, Ethereum will be pushed down even further. I however don't know how long it will take since EOS might actually be a security. Time will tell.