It's an article written without taking into consideration that using USD block value data as metric isn't the right way to move forward in this case.

Just because Bitcoin's network has processed like $900 billion in value doesn't mean everything is related to OTC trades.

Some interesting stats;

Block 500002 (2017-12-18) is the highest ever USD block value measured = $3.55 billion.

Block 506462 (2018-01-28) is this year's highest USD block value measured = $1.91 billion.

Block 394736 (2016-01-24) has the highest ever BTC output value measured = 6.5 million BTC.

Block 500546 (2017-22-12) has the highest ever USD block fee measured = $240,800 (lucky miners).

It's a bit different in this case. It's not just speculators dumping the price down, but mainly projects (ICO's) trying to save what's left of their raised initial value. I noticed how the wallets of ICO projects were declining for a couple of weeks, where every time it happened, Bitcoin's price dumped as well. I'm glad that I used this information as basis to short Ether around 0.055 with a 2x leverage.

I am expecting a further decline of Ether, potentially to around 0.035-0.03, but I'm not greedy and have cashed out just below 0.045 today.

It's really not.

The ICO hype inflated exchange listing prices because every project used its raised coins or tokens to pay for the listing. It's free money in the end so they don't care whether they end up paying 400 or 1000BTC because ICO's raised hundreds of millions without doing any effort. Now the ICO hype is bottoming out, the wealth generated by projects has gone down, and so do exchange listing prices. Low demand = low price.

People shouldn't forget that the only reason most of the ICO's gained value is because of how people are able to trade it. If you can't trade your tokens, you pretty much hold worthless tokens in projects not being more than an idea or promise.

At the end of the day, Binance is a business and needs to generate profit. If I was Binance I would ask at least 1000BTC for every token listing, or else you won't be able to benefit from the liqiudity on my exchange. Binance's main asset is its liquidity, and projects are willing to pay for it as long as they have sufficient funds.

Yes. Poloniex has broken its promise to not further limit legacy accounts. Bittrex did the exact same thing.

They have done their best to get rid of legacy account holders, so this is probably only a statistical bit of nonsense. It's not for nothing that Poloniex is near empty nowadays. Remember, it used to have 50,000-100,000BTC volumes per day at some point. Messing with users is a perfect way to ruin your exchange, and Poloniex has followed that path with destructive (irreversible) consequences.

Literally; Poloniex is the most regulated crap exchange.

Bitcoin isn't a company or a piece of technology.

Bitcoin is software that can be improved throughout the years and have second, third, fourth layers added to allow near instant settling payments, smart contracts, etc.

Bitcoin has its simplicity working for it. The less features you offer, the less there is to break or corrupt. People at the end of the day want only one thing, which is to dump their savings in Bitcoin as most secure chain and have it increase in value throughout the years. Usage as currency is something even the fastest crypto coins aren't enjoying, so why would it matter for Bitcoin? People simply don't care yet, and by the time they do start to care, LN is ready to serve them.

Why should Bitcoin be surging?

People converting altcoins to Bitcoin doesn't mean they keep it in Bitcoin. Currently we can see how related altcoin conversions to Bitcoin are as people dump their Bitcoins for USD in order to exit the market. Bitcoin's USD liquidity is what altcoin dumpers are after, because their own USD liquidity is peanuts and can't handle many more dumps.

The price of Bitcoin was below $6000 around 1.5 months ago, so it's not really that long ago.

Yes. I have pointed out a while ago that a huge load of USDT was taken out of circulation, but no one even paid any attention because they are too blind or ignorant to see what's going on. Money is indeed leaving.

Not sure if that's the case.

It's way easier to make money on the way down than on the way up for me. Bitcoin has always been extremely unpredictable when it comes to its increases, while after a bull run it historically goes down with ~75% form its peak, and it happens time on time again. The 2014 bear market trapped me in like a noob, but this time it's different, and I hope it's the same for the people who got trapped in currently. Bear markets make strong future hodlers. What can be worse than going through a 75% decline?

Tip; if the price ever is going through a bull run again, make sure you short a small percentage of your Bitcoin with a 2x leverage (don't recommend higher) and leave it open till you think the bottom is in. It could be seen as insurance for your investment, because the lower the price falls, the more you'll profit, and the more bearable it is for you.

Don't trade against the market, move with it.

If you have been closely following the market (probably not) you would have seen that the only consistent aspect of this market is the constantly lower highs and lower lows. Purely based on this bearish downtrend pattern (if the downtrend continues), the lower low should be somewhere around $5000 and the next lower high should be somewhere around the $7000 level.

For the people thinking this is fud or I am trying to scare off noobs, seriously, get lost already.

Most of the Ether developers are geeks who haven't had a shower in a week and don't need much other than their fierce and loyal commitment.

The difference with projects is that projects need fiat in order to sustain themselves as a business, where keeping all their reserves in Ether has been the biggest mistake of their life. They have jeopardized the future of their existence by not having at least 50% of their assets directly converted to fiat.

Ethereum is close to a 50% loss in value in one single month now, and from its all time high its even 80%. Do you think serious projects will ever burn themselves another time with more regulations being enforced and Ether's value loss in mind? Ether will never be able to replicate its 2017 explosion again.

Bitcoin is whatever you want it to be. People for once need to stop telling others how to use or name Bitcoin.

If you think it's an investment, fine. If you think it's a currency, fine. If you think it's a store of value, fine. If you think it's a collectible, fine. If you think it's a dildo, fine.

Bitcoin is everything and nothing at the same time, which gives its it strength and long term viability. You can literally shape Bitcoin to how you want it to be. Those who keep talking about Bitcoin is this or that needs to start using it before telling others how to behave in this field. Most of the loud mouths don't even use Bitcoin.

It doesn't involve XRP so it's all good.

Ripple the company has signed a deal to provide a software solution called xCurrent, making it easier and more efficient for banks to transfer value from one place to another.

People quite often think that XRP is being adopted by financial institutions and whatnot, but that's false 9 out of 10 times. It's just Ripple the company setting up infrastructure and that's really it. XRP is nothing more than a redundant aspect only functioning as make Brad Garlinghouse a multi dollar billionaire tool.

Aaaaand Ethereum whales are yet again dominating the crypto market by dumping down Bitcoin. It's starting to become more obvious now.

Ethereum's market cap has gone down to $29.5 billion from yesterday's $33 billion. It feels incredibly well as Bitcoin maximalist seeing this absolute shit hopefully come to an end, or at least become less of a thing. This once again proves that Ethereum has nothing other than its ICO's to gain value, and when these ICO's are running away, Ethereum bleeds.

The majority of the miners aren't even selling their coins at spot prices anymore with how much more they can get for these coins by selling them privately.

I have contacted various miners to sell me virgin coins this year, but they (those that actually did reply) wanted me to pay a premium of 50% per block + fees, which just points out that miners aren't in such a horrible position at all. Buying a whole block with such a premium is too much for me, but if anyone can hook me up with a miner willing to mint 1BTC to one of my addresses for a $2000 premium (premium over spot value at the time of minting) hook me up.

Not every fork. Ethereum Classic is the prime example of why forking off could be a good thing, and in this case it has been a good thing.

Ethereum Classic is the actual Ethereum with complete immutability of its chain intact, which is why I am glad that it has gained an incredible amount of attention lately. With how low its entry point is we can expect a shift of capital away from Etherem to Ethereum Classic, even if it's just for the sole purpose of generating more profits because of its smaller market cap.

VitalikCoin is a disgrace to everyone valuing decentralization. Rolling back chains to recoup investor's funds is a no-go. If investors can force you to roll back your chain, governments can do it just as easily.

People in general aren't doing anything other than following the hype, and they have little to no power to prevent this from happening with how bearish the sentiment is.

It's not the small fishes that we see affect the market, but well coordinated market movers trying to utilize every bit of the mainstream rubbish the noobs think hold importance. If these market makers want, we are back at +$8000 tomorrow and then a couple of days later back at $6000. It's purely manipulation that drives the market without any legitimate form of demand being added to the market. We have to suck it up and accept that it happens.

It wasn't all that long ago where people were hyping up the negative impact of Facebook's ad ban. People here are just empty headed chickens following the price activity in relation to what the mainstream media tells them is the reason for that activity.

Most hodlers have long term price targets in mind, but when the price rockets up from $1000 to $20,000 which people were speculating about to happen somewhere in 2020, people sell because they don't have to wait any longer. Not everyone is here to hodl for ever.

There are enough videos online when Bitcoin was just $100'ish where high level Bitcoiners were stating that Bitcoin could eventually be worth $10,000 or $20,000 and it reached all these levels one by one. Old hands (entry points $100-$1000) out new hands (entry points +$1000-$10,000) in, which significantly helps the market move forward.

In other words, be happy that old hands are dumping. Their coins are worth less for them psychologically because of their insanely low entry points.

The only reason it doesn't jump up and down as much as crypto does is because of how large and liquid that market is.

In the last six months alone Gold has lost over 10% of its value, which means that $800,000,000,000 in value is gone. It's not a big deal for the average person you may think, but unlike crypto that's capable of recovering in a day or so, Gold could potential need a year or two in order to climb back up 10%.

Another major factor is that crypto in its entirety has the potential of going x10-100 in the forthcoming years. In other words, the short term price decline will correct itself later on and still yield significant numbers. Gold however won't be able to see its value even increase with 50% from where it stands at today.

If you force enough people to use a specific option, just like what's happening with fiat, people will obey.

My main concern is that with how fiat currencies will become tokens under full control of the governments issuing them, people more than ever will lose their freedom and won't be able to freely spend their money anymore. People will spend their money in the way they believe their government won't hop in and start making their life a hell, which is exactly what modernized censorship will look like in the forthcoming years.

Instead of wasting time, people need to make sure at least 10-25% of their wealth is converted to Bitcoin. People don't yet realize the importance of lowering their fiat exposure because they feel everything is all safe and sound right now, but it's really not. I did it years ago already and have currently around 75% of my wealth sitting in Bitcoin, and it feels great.

Technically there is an annual $50,000 limit to what people are able to move out of the country, but in reality due to various restrictions and how banks are instructed to work against foreign capital transfers, it's likely well under $10,000. People however don't necessarily need to transfer capital to foreign countries in order to buy into Bitcoin. It's pretty similar to how drugs get smuggled in the country. There are so called Bitcoin mules (mostly from neighbour countries) entering with Bitcoin and shortly after leave with cash.

I don't think they collect tax since it's legally prohibited to use crypto in combination with fiat, but it would be great if someone from China could add some valuable input when it comes to why these exchanges are allowed to operate.

The ETF is a created hurdle. Created by the speculative parasites that this industry counts plenty of, and massively fueled by shitty mainstream media outlets.

Not that long ago no one said one single word about ETF's, and suddenly it's a big deal. The same applies to the shitty Winklevoss ETF that was rejected. Even a day before its rejection it was like it didn't exist, and then out of nothing everyone acts like we are doomed.

2018 doom list.

Facebook ad ban.
Google ad ban.
China cracking down on crypto.
Japan enforcing harsher regulations.
South Korea enforcing harsher regulations.
RBI ban.
Bitcoin being an environmental problem.
ETF rejection.
Futures manipulation.
Tether manipulation.

With all that in mind it's a miracle we're still hovering around the $6000 level.