Hopes.... That's the real problem of people here. Instead of hoping for the price to go up while we're clearly not ready for an increase, people need to actually use Bitcoin. If you're here solely for speculation purposes, you'll get bored during a longer term downtrend and you'll lose confidence, which is your fault entirely. I'm neutral all the time when it comes to the market sentiment, because I'm actually using Bitcoin as money. Bull or bear markets don't change anything in that regard.

$10 BTC? Are you nuts? You won't ever see that price again unless crypto in its entirety has become completely obsolete.

I'm actually referring to .999 Gold coins/bars. I have seen how the availability of Gold locally has increased a lot, and looking at Gold's performance throughout the last years, it doesn't surprise me at all that people are looking to get rid of this precious metal. People don't only see the value of their Gold holdings decrease, but they also have to swallow a loss in purchasing power on top of that.

Not sure where you're from, but I'm from Europe and not one single store locally wanted to buy Gold 1-2% below spot value. They're just not interested. I don't even blame them with how the Gold market keeps tanking. 5-10% below spot value grants them some extra breathing space to not lose out on transactions with how consistently the price keeps going down.

Initially I thought so as well, but it's not looking like that anymore. People are genuinely dumping their altcoins because they are done with it. If Bitcoin tanks after another delay or rejection, the entire market will plummet with it. In other words, people will not convert back to altcoins. If that was their main intention, they would have done so already since everyone with common sense already knows that an ETF won't pass.

Another negative factor for altcoins and tokens (making it less likely to see an alt boost) is that Ethereum is going through a rough time. ICO's are genuinely looking to cash out, and then the biggest problem is Ethereum's crazy high inflation rate. Ether tokens are being printed like it's nothing, which slowly but surely devalues everyone's holdings (fiat 2.0). There by far isn't enough demand to buy up all these floating Ethers.

Vitalik quotes;

Ethereum is decentralized; rolling back the chain with minority agreement doesn't seem very decentralized.
Ethereum's blockchain will not exceed 1TB in the foreseeable future; it did.
Ether's circulating supply will not exceed 100 million; it did.

How long will people believe his nonsense? Selling pressure doesn't lie.

Arthur Hayes is right, it is a double digit shitcoin.

In the end it doesn't even matter who uses whatever amount of energy. It's a nonsensical discussion that leads to nothing but a bunch of hypocrites sticking their nose in things that they don't have much of a clue about. Everyone consuming energy pays for it, and the energy suppliers will adjust themselves in all sorts of ways to meet demand in an as environmental friendly way as possible.

The internet as a whole has grown into one massive energy consuming monster, and did anyone experience the negative consequences of that? No, because the extra demand for energy will be met because there is enough capacity available without needing to stress the surrounding environment and economies. I would even like to say that it forces large energy consumers to generate their own energy by using natural elements that are near impossible to exhaust.

Bitcoin's energy consumption is not a problem, neither is the one of the banking system. Home users are the real wasters.

People heavily struggle to sell their Gold for fiat at spot prices in the local market here. If you try to sell your Gold to a pawn shop or jeweler they'll mostly offer you a price that could range from 5-10% below spot price, which isn't really that convincing. Why should people buy into this? I can sell my Bitcoins over spot value at any time of the day locally, or at spot value through exchanges. I can use Bitcoin as money as well, where if you try that with Gold you'll be declared a nutter.

Buy 1BTC (or less if you can't afford it) and you'll see that every government and corporation won't be able to mock you any longer as fourth class citizen.

It's actually not about taxes. Bitcoin can already be taxed since the existing system (that has been in place for decades) covers pretty much everything. It's just people who assume that they don't have to pay taxes because Bitcoin isn't legalized or regulated. It's false.

Also, crypto in its entirety is still a niche market, so what's the government exactly losing when you don't pay due taxes? If there was no crypto there would be no extra tax income for them at all, so in all cases they should be happy that at least some (which will only increase) people pay tax over their gains and whatnot.

Bitcoin is a tool allowing you to store your wealth outside the traditional banking system where governments and corporations no longer can terrorize you. If the government controls your finances, it controls you. If the government can't control your finances, they can't do shit other than to change their attitude towards you in a positive manner, because you are the one in control now.

People keep focusing on technical analysis while there is one simple aspect mainly responsible for not settling below key support between the $5700-$5800 levels.

It's the pshycological importance of the round $100 billion market cap. Do the math 17.225 million BTC x ~$5800 = $100 billion.

I honestly don't think we've seen the worst, mainly because of the fact that all the worthless ETF speculation has given people enough hope to at least have more patience before tanking the market further. Without ETF speculation the market would probably look a whole lot different right now.

People are lazy. In most cases the average person adds lots of value to expert opinions, which explains why you see plenty of people here talk about experts predict this or that event or price, while in reality these "experts" don't know shit. Even if they are an expert in their own non-crypto field, it doesn't make them an expert here. They blindly assume that crypto related news sites did their research and spread honest and unbiased information, which obviously isn't the case.

Also, most crypto related news sites are lazy ass bitches just copying articles from other sites and post it as if it was something they have written and conducted research on. Just browse through various news sites and you'll see that in most cases articles with the exact same wording are posted everywhere. That's not journalism, that's parasitic behavior over the back of journalists that did all the work.

It's a friendly and less risky long term form of exposure that futures don't really grant you. Also, with futures contracts on platforms as CBOE and CME you're risking a lot, literally. In order to just open a long or short position, you need to put down a significant margin amount (which also varies per broker), otherwise you can't even mess around with them. It makes shorting and manipulating Bitcoin more expensive, which is a good thing.

Bitcoin has one aspect to it that makes it less desirable for professional parties, which is its taint. That's directly the main reason there is an insane level of demand for freshly minted coins with no circulation history. The premiums for these coins have gone through the roof. People at least don't have to worry that miners will dump on the market, which most of them in the last year or two never really did anyway.

Trusting your wife is the worst possible thing you can do. No one should be so stupid to do that.

I won't ever grant anyone access to my coins, not even partly. When I'm no longer part of this world, my coins will be 'burned' for ever. I don't do it because I want to gift other fellow Bitcoiners extra value now there are less coins in circulation, but it's a principle thing. I'm not being selfish. Why is it selfish to just have your coins go down with you? I'm in no way obliged to help anyone who didn't do shit to deserve even one single satoshi of mine.

Who's there to help you? Family members are mostly just as much of a snake ready to bite when you're not looking. No thanks.

Won't change anything. It's not Bitcoin's energy consumption that's the main problem politically, but Bitcoin itself. In other words, even if Bitcoin's entire network runs on clean and environmental friendly energy, politicians and other hate filled idiots will find something else to complain about.

Another thing that people for once need to get straight, is the fact that securing almost $1 trillion in transactions every year isn't waste. I would even like to point out that Bitcoin miners are one of the most consistent industrial energy consumers in existence. We at home on the other hand, are the worst ever actual energy consumers, ahum, wasters the world has ever seen. People need to look at themselves instead of pointing their dirty finger at Bitcoin.

Xapo stated that it had like $10 billion worth of Bitcoin in reserves, which insane. It's just as big of a problem as when institutions get to have a third party storing that many coins on their behalf. Currently Bitcoin isn't yet a threat to the financial system, but what if it becomes? Xapo is an easy target for governments, there is no way to get around that.

It also made me think about Satoshi directly. While his power as contributor to Bitcoin is no longer there, his coins are a powerful weapon to still somewhat be a factor of influence. It might very well explain why he's not touching any of his coins. Think about it, why should he touch them? Bitcoin is only increasing in value, there are less and less larger holders out there, which at some point means that he's the absolute don in here.

We definitely don't need them, but we can't avoid them either. I rather have institutions and whoever trades these instruments play with cash than the underlying asset. In the end, even without these instruments there will be plenty of manipulation (there has always been).

Makes perfect sense. Delay with the SEC means rejection by default. The only reason they don't outright reject ETF's is because it's the easiest way out for them.

Why should something happen? The only one hyping up BAKKT was the mainstream media, and when that happens, you know it won't impact the market. The price went even down afterwards, which once again proves that you should short mainstream media excitement. They're a great counter indicator of what you should be doing.

It's not impossible, just not suited for everyone. I opened a short just under $6700 yesterday in anticipation of another delay or rejection (which was pretty much guaranteed to happen), and it worked out pretty well for me. I liquidated my position at $6300 with a 5x leverage. I'll do it again next month with the VanEck ETF.

That's the main goal, but in a way we should be happy that people aren't yet using Bitcoin as currency on a larger scale. It would only make Bitcoin less usable because it would expose its main weakness, which is that 1MB blocks just aren't enough. Even full Segwit utilization wouldn't change much in that regard.

The lack of actual usage as currency gives Bitcoin the time to have LN mature as time goes by, and when people finally think it's time to use Bitcoin as currency, there is LN to provide them the best possible currency experience. In other words, the speculative aspect of this market is what helps Bitcoin buy enough time to grow out to become a monster currency later on.

I remember when the BAKKT news came out and CNBC was shilling it like crazy. They expected a solid increase when Asia would wake up, but instead of a solid increase people got REKKT.  CNBC is a great counter indicator. Short their bullish sentiment and long their bearish sentiment.

I assume you meant two years? While it's unlikely with how the SEC just can't wrap its head around the Asian demand steering Bitcoin's price, it theoretically is still possible (I personally think none will come through). The only thing is that we can't rely on events that might or might not come through. Without ETF speculation the market would probably hover well below $6000 by now.

On the other hand, people shouldn't forget that the SEC is just one regulator. It might very well be that one of the Asian regulators will allow an ETF to become a publicly traded instrument in their region.

That applied to the Winklevoss ETF as well, and the market still went down afterwards. I'm fairly confident that market movers will tank the price down after the SEC either rejecting it directly or postpones its decision. I opened a small short position slightly below $6700 just to put my money where my mouth is. We'll see tomorrow if it was a good or bad decision.

That would be a perfect measure I would instantly support, and it would help the market bottom out, but they won't do it for the obvious reason that it would make them look like they're anti crypto, which they don't want to be known as. As far as I'm aware of, they have never done anything like that, and they probably just shouldn't.

I find it quite funny how the term short squeeze started to really pick up in the last few weeks, and that while the majority of the people still don't even know what it means.

Currently people are desperately hoping for a short squeeze to lift the market, while they completely discard the fact that when so many people are waiting for it to happen, it becomes less likely to actually happen. It applies to the bull run speculation as well, people don't understand that unjustified bullish sentiment during a bear market works against the market.

Too bad we have so many shitty events to go through still, and this will only increase people's false hopes. Let the SEC just cut the nonsense and reject every open proposal and no longer allow new ones to come in, but that's just wishful thinking. I want to see the market bottom out properly, but it doesn't have any chances to do so with this nonsense.

The only problem with custody solutions holding tons of coins on behalf of institutions, is the fact that it grants them a serious amount of voting power within this ecosystem in the future, which is something I completely disregarded initially due to my excitement. For that specific reason I hope that we'll not be seeing any actual coin backed ETF's pop up in the forthcoming years, regardless of how much it could pump the price in the future.

An increase in price isn't worth anything when you have the same institutions (that people try to avoid dealing with in the legacy economy) control the ecosystem in here as well.

Cash settled futures and ETF's are perfectly fine as long as they don't touch the underlying asset, everything else should be a no go. In other words, we have to thank the SEC for not letting the VanEck ETF go through.

Not really in my opinion. It's always after the event that you can look back and see whether or not you're right and it really fits in your bubble model (or whaver people like to call it).

In the end, everything works and makes sense till it doesn't. All these statistical examples are great to browse through and compare with previous years, but people some times tend to dig so far into it, that they lose track of reality and the plenty of variables that could change the sentiment of this market in an instant.

Reality is that the majority of the people didn't call top, and the majority of the people didn't call bottom. We're surfing up and down on the waves of fear and greed, where people constantly adjust their opinion and outlook.

Even if people managed to accurately call top or bottom, it was pure luck.

I think you're the one who's not understanding things. The point of my post is that we shouldn't care about who does or thinks what.

The price is going down for the simple reason that the mad demand of last year is no longer there, and the market needs to adjust itselfs to that by finding the right (way lower) level to settle at. It happened after the 2013 bull run and it happens again. It doesn't require rocket scientist level of knowledge to understand that.

Probably not many, because that would indicate that something went horribly wrong with crypto in general.