It depends on your motives.

In all cases, when a crypto currency you invest in fails, you end up with zero. When a property you invest in turns out to be a bad investment, you always have the property that regardless of the circumstances, allows you to live in it or have it generate passive income. It's an asset that will always hold a considerable amount of value, especially when you take into consideration that the demand from people looking to rent properties for prolonged periods of time is only increasing.

Bitcoin is the only crypto currency that I feel comfortable parking my savings in. The rest is just a gamble. Some altcoins will survive, but the majority of them will rot till no one is willing to touch them and they become worthless. Who's willing to take that gamble?

OpenBazaar definitely lacks proper marketing, especially if you take into consideration that it went live back in 2016. It's doing a fantastic job, but as with every decentralized application/platform, if the hype isn't there, it won't be able to bloom. There is next to no marketing budget for OpenBazaar with how it doesn't generate any revenue on its own. It's free to use and there are no ways to monetize ad space (which is actually a good thing).

OpenBazaar depends on everyone here to spread the good word and recommend it to any of your friends and family members.

I don't think there are that many people doing the same. In most cases the noobies in the crypto space have portfolio apps monitoring prices and whatnot. They don't need Google for anything. If people solely use Google as reference, they rely on flawed and biased information. Google shows you what they allow you to see.

Facebook allows legitimate crypto services to buy ad space if they walk themselves through the verification procedure, and I believe Google will follow at some later point.

Won't happen.

If so then that's a win for everyone valuing Bitcoin's fundamentals instead of the paper value of their Bitcoin holdings.

Honestly speaking, I don't think we can consider CME's futures to be a flop, especially when you also look at the massive margins traders have to put aside just to long or short Bitcoin. It's not BitMex where you only lose your initial sum. These futures can literally cost you millions of dollars if the market conditions turn against your position. Traders rightfully are cautious with how easy to manipulate Bitcoin is.

Funny is how people here are afraid of the futures markets, while futures traders are equally afraid of Bitcoin.

Same thought. It's probably the last easy ETF short opportunity of the year, and probably for ever. At some point people have build up enough resistance so that the market just doesn't care anymore until one of the ETF's actually gets approved, but that's unlikely to happen in the forthcoming years.

The only point of importance is that I believe we'll see a correction reasonably far (two or three ish days) before the actual decision date. We've seen it happen this week and it should be used as an indicator of the state we're in. It would be epic though if the price instead of correcting goes up badly busting our shorts one by one.

Yup. People still don't understand that the only reason altcoins have their current value, is because Bitcoin largely donated it to them. If you take away Bitcoin, the altcoin market will lose 90% of its value in an instant. Bitcoin is the backbone of crypto in its entirety and the main benchmark of how healthy this industry really is.

The strength of this industry is Bitcoin's supremacy, and the fact that it doesn't follow the basic laws of technology in the way that better tech replaces older tech.

It's going to be very interesting in the coming years to see whether or not Ethereum has reached the same level of supremacy amongst the competitors in its own field. I personally think we can definitely see EOS make a move towards Ethereum in the coming year or two.

It won't work all the time. Bitcoin was bound to go up anyway, and that directly lifts every altcoin with it in the industry.

Considering that BCash is not a price driving coin, it will only damage both BCash and the other fork coin. Especially if you take into consideration that some hashpower of BCash will flow into the fork coin for whatever period of time. Look at Litecoin and Litecoin Cash for example, there hasn't been anything of positive nature that came from that fork.

These forks only somewhat work if you use (abuse) Bitcoin's brand. Turning one shitcoin into two shitcoins is not an achievement that will be rewarded by the industry. It never has been.

Smaller coins could relatively easily change their fundamentals, but that's unlikely to happen in Bitcoin's case, especially when there is no reason to do so.

If you have been following Bitmain's (BTC & Antpool's) network share in the last months, they have done everything they could to reduce dominance of their pools, and that's the only proper way to deal with this situation. Bitmain knows better than anyone how destructive it is for them to let their pools grow endlessly. Perfect example of that is how endless growth resulted in the downfall of GHash.IO back in the days.

Bitmain needs Bitcoin, for that single reason they won't ever attempt to directly harm it.

I wonder what would happen if Gavin Andresen didn't exchange information with the CIA. It was at that exact point where Satoshi was pretty much forced to leave and never come back.

I don't trust that Gavin for a second, and all his actions and support for a con artist called Craig Wright just confirm how much of an asshole he really is. Craig Satoshi? Really? I'm glad Gavin forked off towards BCash, which is where con artists gather.

Funny thing is that now even within the BCash con camp there is some serious drama going on. I sincerely hope that a split will happen which weakens the crap out of that rubbish. It was clear already that these people even forked off wouldn't be satisfied until they own 100% of the total share and development.

Fork prediction. BCash splits -> Bitcoin Ver, Bitcoin Wright, Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Wu, Bitcoin Official, Bitcoin Dildo.

Core clients have seen quite some decent performance boosts throughout the last year or two, which makes it even less of an obstacle to use on relatively older machines.

If we assume every 1MB block is filled (which in reality isn't always the case) and the average block time is still 10 minutes, then the following applies;

144MB per day is added to the blockchain.
52.56GB per year is added to the blockchain.
525.6GB per decade is added to the blockchain

525.6GB + 180GB = ~705GB in 2028.

Ethereum's blockchain has already exceeded 1TB.

Bitcoin's blockchain size is a joke (in a good way). People will be able to run it without problem from their home computer for many more decades.

Traditional fiat billionaire Marc Lasry has actually hedged a small percentage of his net worth by allocating a certain amount of it to Bitcoin. Currently his stake in Bitcoin accounts for 1% of his total net worth, which is a very smart move. I personally would have gone for a higher amount, but since he's just looking to play it safe and he's not a Bitcoin geek, 1% is sufficient enough.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/18/marc-lasry-bitcoin-to-hit-40000-dollars-as-it-becomes-more-mainstream.html

Regarding ETF's, I'm seeing more short term value in traditional key players to set up custody solutions to have their clients also allocate a small percentage of their net worth to Bitcoin. I don't think we're very far away from that point with how Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have been signalling interest in offering crypto custody solutions. In other words, we don't really need an ETF, but it would however make things certainly more convenient for institutions.

The only downside is that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan will be holding significant number of Bitcoin if they really end up going through with it.

Seriously, Ethereum is better off without Vitalik dominating development. It's a one man show, which is against anything that makes people like crypto.

People should at all times have the freedom to use ANY fee they feel comfortable with, and that under ANY circumstances. If you start messing with people's freedom in that way, what's the point of using Ethereum? I'm at a position where I actually start to dislike his personality and the way he thinks Ethereum should be operating. It's not about him, it's about what does the ecosystem want, but he doesn't care it seems. Should we label Ethereum VitalikCoin?

I absolutely love the way Bitcoin's fee structure works. I at all times want to be able to signal that my transaction has more priority by giving miners more economical incentive to include my transaction in their block. Regardless of how stacked mempools are, it works every time and that's what matters. It's called freedom.

It's easy money. In all cases a rejection or a delay has been followed up by a correction that was more than predictable.

I'll happily short the VanEck ETF decision next month as well, and might even go with a higher leverage multiplier this time (probably 10x). I'm quite sure that the VanEck ETF delay or rejection will cause a more dramatic decrease than what we have seen this week. This week's rejected ETF's were a joke, literally, which might explain why the market didn't really react to it.

The fact that people are so triggered by an ETF just shows how much of a niche product Bitcoin still is. I'll keep supporting the SEC to keep rejecting these ETF's.

It's a form of hypocrisy. As per Hester Peirce, which is an SEC commissioner, it is far easier and less problematic for the SEC to keep rejecting and delaying ETF's, even when they don't stand a chance to be approved after the delay (regardless of the changes made to the initial proposal).

Another aspect, which is my personal opinion, is that I strongly believe the SEC is testing how this market reacts whenever they reject or delay an ETF. It's like they are solely delaying ETF's for that purpose, because let's be honest, there is no valid reason to delay an ETF when it by default doesn't stand one single chance to be approved.

Only an idiot wouldn't sell last year's top with the intention of buying more coins back at lower levels, and considering that the Winklevoss twins are no idiots, they definitely have sold some of their coins. They have been here long enough to know how this market works. I don't blame them for trying to make it look like they never sell their coins. They have to sell you a perfect image of unconditional confidence in Bitcoin regardless of its price.

Major advantage for these twins is that they can use Gemini to front run orders just to benefit themselves. Fantastic position they are in with their own exchange to exploit peaks and bottoms.

The thing with Bitcoin is that it's not just a currency. It's a way to escape from a system that has been terrorizing people for plenty of decades.

For the first ever time people have a convenient way of storing wealth outside the regular channels that are in control of financial institutions and thus governments. I support anyone to to embrace that freedom and not continue to signal slave-like willingness to abide by any rule the government comes up with.

Good thing about the African market is that a lot activity is happening locally, so for these people there are no centralized exchanges that can be used to trap them in. In the end we all have a choice. It's using centralized exchanges and accept paying due taxes, or just avoid them entirely and remain under the radar for ever conducting only peer to peer transactions. The latter is the ultimate goal.

Can people like you for once stop considering last year's peak prices to be normal? They weren't normal and current price isn't low at all.

Nothing in the world justifies Bitcoin this year to increase much further beyond current levels without any actual fundamental improvements. We're not going through an adoption boost. We're not seeing any ETF approvals. We're not seeing any fundamental improvements in the altcoin part of the market. Money is stagnant or even leaving the ecosystem due to the bear market. And so forth.

In other words, we should be more than happy with a gradual increase this year, because we're definitely not out of the lower bottom danger zone.

Nowadays with how the market is saturated with third party broker firms, even investors from Japan and China could buy into these ETF's without any problems.

On another note, which seems to be something that people completely ignore, is the fact that institutions can already buy into a coin backed fund through Coinbase's index fund.

Current fund composition;

Bitcoin 73.07%
Ethereum 18.11%
BCash 5.86%
Litecoin 2.13%
Ethereum Classic 0.83%

Minimum investment amount is $250,000 which is steep but probably set as a regulative main rule. Custody is taken care of, so nothing prevents large investors from the US to flow in.

You're not far off. If you look at the main intention of governments, which is to localize every purchaser of crypto, then miners are just as much of a target as those who buy crypto through centralized exchanges. In the end it's all about the control governments want to obtain over what they consider to be a dangerous vehicle.

I can totally see a time where if you want to buy more than three GPU's from the same reseller that you have to verify yourself. Just think about it, what's the easiest way to obtain crypto without buying it and without sacrificing your personal information? It's mining. It's somewhat of a loophole governments want to make less easy to exploit.

If people think this is bad already, then wait for what has to come in the forthcoming years.

I don't think it's related to miners but more the larger players valuing some form of elitist ranking amongst crypto currencies. If Bitcoin falls below $100 billion it will become a double digit billion coin, just like Ethereum. I think that's one of the key aspects to this.

I'm always very conservative when it comes to the mainstream media hyping up certain developments, which applies to Bakkt as well. I must however admit that it looks good on paper, but we really need to see it in action first. In the crypto space everything looks good on paper.  

Regarding ETF's, I think it's really done and over for now. The SEC keeps rejecting ETF's for the exact same reason. Currently people are hyped up about the review the SEC granted to the rejected ETF's, which is quite pathetic honestly. Every party by default has the right to ask for a review, and in 99% of the cases they'll be granted one. Reviews can take years at worst. The Winklevoss ETF review took over a year, and that while the SEC already knew it wouldn't stand a chance.