It is definitely bursting, and in more ways than just one.

The recent development of projects panic dumping their raised Ether tokens is the worst of all. It basically shows that raising capital in Ether is a dead end since you can't rely on its price. If you raised $100 million in capital during the hype, only $25'ish million is left of it right now. That sucks and deems Ethereum worthless for serious projects to develop on.

If that isn't enough, these projects aren't able to completely cash out to USD through Ether's markets and for that reason have to eat through Bitcoin's liquidity as well. In other words, Ether's problems are Bitcoin's problems.

Unfortunately, the only way for these people to avoid being subject to high fees is to have funds in a different coin. I say unfortunately because I don't want to see people be forced to use something other than Bitcoin, but people have no choice other than to do so at this point in time.

Litecoin has taken advantage of Bitcoin's weakness and is now processing more transactions than BCash, and it's truly one of the best on-chain crypto coins to use. 2.5 minute block times and extremely low fees are way better suited for smaller payments than Bitcoin will ever be. Bitcoin's only shot is to have LN become easy to utilize, which should make sure that all past refugees flow back into Bitcoin.

The mass doesn't give a damn about self regulating markets or decentralization, neither do they believe crypto is the future of money. In other words, there is nothing other than speculation giving them the incentive to be here. Seriously, the entire crypto market has been flooded with idiots after Ether's money printing machine kept spitting out rubbish tokens.

Before Ether's ICO rise there were plenty of noobs as well, but in no shape or form do these noobs come close to how stupid the >2017 token noobs are.

As a true Bitcoin believer people need to be realistic. It's perfectly possible to test $5000 in the coming weeks or months (no I don't imply it will actually happen, just that the possibility is there). Following the long term downtrend has been the most consistent and profitable indicator, and people keep ignoring it because they blindly assume that $6000 is the safe haven support level.

If the downtrend continues, we'll see the next lower high settle somewhere around $7000 (give or take a few hundred). The 2014/2015 bear market counted exactly 4 lower lows from where we went up, and currently we're working towards the potentially 3th lower low. It basically means that if the situation repeats itself, which might or might not happen, we're at least half way through which is a good thing.

It's perfectly understandable.

It's generally not a great sign for markets in general to continuously test the same support levels over and over again, which indicates that there is no real buy support above it, and that's exactly what we are dealing with; there is no real buy support above $6000 aside from when whales are trying to leverage their gains on BitMex.

If you follow the downtrend, then the recent $8500 peak was nothing more than the next lower high.

Bitcoin doesn't only have to deal with people selling and manipulating it, but it also needs to swallow the dumps coming from altcoin whales and Ether ICO's cashing out, which makes Bitcoin's price and 'bottoms' even more unreliable.

Bitcoin's and Ether's market caps less then a month ago;

Bitcoin $127 billion
Ether $50.6 billion

Bitcoin's and Ether's market caps right now;

Bitcoin $110 billion = 13% decline.
Ether $33 billion = 35% decline.

The screenshots don't show anything of useful nature. If your ticket is open for just 24 hours then there isn't much that you can do other than to keep waiting, especially if you take into consideration that there is little to no support on Saturday and Sunday. I have seen people celebrate that Poloniex replied to them within 7 business days, so the 24 hours that you are waiting is literally peanuts.

It's probably a good idea to ask Poloniex for an in-depth explanation as to why your account gets frozen this often, because if you don't know what the underlying problem is, you won't be able to solve it and your account will *likely* be frozen again at a later point.

Well, the time for friendly reminders is over. People have been warned over and over again and it's not helping. There is a ton of information easily accessible by a simple search command, and even that isn't helping. If after all the years nothing has changed (and this whole cloud mining ponzi industry started back in 2013), it's safe to say that nothing will ever change.

In other words, it's no longer cloud mining services ripping people off, but people are ripping themselves off.

Interesting is how the Chinese government is granting Huobi and OKEx enough room to remain operational in large parts of China. It seems that getting rid of the CNY trading pairs is enough to no longer be hit with harsh regulations. This could directly explain why these exchanges have managed to regain their dominant position in Asia and basically the entire world.

The only weird thing is how other exchanges are forced out almost entirely, but Huobi and OKEx not. I have been suspecting these exchange of having high ranked government officials in their board, and when they continue to be granted plenty of freedom over any other exchange, which is the case time on time again, it's no longer coincidence anymore. Perhaps this is China's way of 'taming' the market to a certain degree.

People still don't know how the internet works or what the protocol actually consists of, but that doesn't stop them from using it.

If the UI is easy to understand and use, people don't need fundamental knowledge. Bitcoin itself is super simple and just requires people to have a lightweight client allowing them to send and receive value, and we are definitely booking some decent progress in that regard. The only thing I am not satisfied with is how clients absolutely suck when it comes to fee calculation, and this is one of the main reasons high fees exist.

The ultimate challenge for Bitcoin will be how LN will evolve from here, and then mainly how noob friendly the clients will become. If people are able to utilize Bitcoin's currency aspect through LN in the best possible way, it will greatly increase Bitcoin's utility value. Instead of just a store of value and speculative investment asset it will be an actual currency as well. Bitcoin should be and remain everyone's currency for ever.

I don't think $6000-$7000 levels can be considered low. It's a normal reflection of the market that we're in and these levels consistently find themselves under heavy pressure, which signals that these levels might even be too high in the short term. I hope that $5800 will hold, but I wouldn't be surprised if it breaks and we head straight towards $5000's.

I'm sure that if we do fall down significantly, it will probably be the trigger weak hands need to rage quit and dump their stash in one go. It may sound brutal, but this is how a market gets rid of unwanted elements (weak hands) forming a threat to a future increase. Those who manage to hold their coins in that scenario will become firm hodlers in the future.

It all depends on how the market evolves. The largest sales happen through OTC markets already, which is done to avoid being subject to every twisted form of regulations, and to avoid being subject to incompetence of the current exchanges. If nothing changes in that regard, and right now there definitely isn't anything going to change, it will only make sure the OTC market grows even larger.

By volume the OTC market is easily somewhere in the range of 10 times larger than all the on-exchange volume activities, but we unfortunately still depend on crippled exchanges to set the price. If we look at the markets as a whole, you can clearly see how exchange volumes have gone down consistently and OTC volumes have gone up consistently. The shift is massive and can't be discarded.

We don't know how effective the futures are on this market. After the peak in 2013 there was a perfectly similar correction dragging the market down for quite a long period of time, especially for crypto standards, and that without futures. We need at least a year or two to see the real effect of these futures markets, and eventually I do believe that they will heavily weigh on Bitcoin's market with how institutions will gain an upper hand.

I think right now it's safe to say that those dealing with futures are just as afraid as most people here are. In other words, futures traders are afraid of Bitcoin manipulation, and Bitcoiners are afraid of futures traders manipulation.

Exactly.

In general altcoin investments due to their tie to Bitcoin could be seen as a cheap investment in Bitcoin (without actually investing in it) with a 2-3x leverage applied. But of course, it works both ways; big profits and big losses.

Bitcoin -5.30%
Ethereum -14.5%
XRP -13%
BCash -8.46% (will mostly follow Bitcoin closer than any other altcoin for obvious reasons)
EOS -12.3

People however shouldn't get used to Bitcoin's dominance above 50% because it was meaningless at 40% and is still as meaningless at 50%.

The same can be said about Yobit, Hitbtc and Cryptopia. People just don't care until they lose their money, because that's their only wake up call. The main reason these exchanges are that popular amongst noobs is that they are more likely to list absolute trash coins, and they more often than not completely disregard regulations. In other words, a perfect crypto noob environment.

It won't help much. Instead of relying on governments people just need to grow up and understand that this isn't the right way to move forward. If Yobit is raided by whatever government, they will start another exchange repeating the whole cycle, or another shitcoin exchange pops up filling up that gap.

CME's volumes aren't that bad at all. CME's volume for AUG 2018 today is 4900 contracts, which means 24,500BTC = $159 million.

Top exchanges by volume;

Binance; $336 million USDT.
OKEx; $227 million USDT.
Bitfinex; $196 million USD/USDT (never know the ratio since they count everything as one).
CME; $159 million USD.

The first true USD exchange is Bitstamp with $65 million in volume.

If you discard everything else, you'll see that CME is probably the largest exchange measured by its actual USD cash settlement value.

It's extremely smart from the government's perspective. I personally can legally avoid paying taxes over my gains by spending my coins, and this practice is something the Ukrainian government wants to combat by taxing every purchase regardless of its value. It's pretty safe to say that they have been observing how other countries have been dealing with less income due to this legal 'loophole' and for that reason want to avoid missing out on income.

In most cases countries aren't really conservative because they are conservative, but purely to observe how other countries are doing and it seems that Ukraine has been an observing country. Either way, these developments will be just as important for Russia because they have been moving back and forth for years, and this can be their trigger to start regulating crypto in a similar way. The last thing they want is Ukraine to get all the shine and potential econonical power.

The SEC postponing an ETF means it's rejected. The only reason they don't reject it right away is because they don't want to be showered with hate and negativity. It's not even worth focusing on anymore, but the market as shitty as it is will recycle this ETF till the SEC has actually rejected it.

The problem with people here is that they only use Bitcoin for speculative purposes, and in case there is nothing left to speculate about, they'll get upset and bored. I don't have that problem because I actually use it as money, regardless of the price. If you directly buy back every spent coin the price isn't important and you can use it nearly as conveniently as when you use fiat.

Seriously, the only thing that speculating has done to people this year is stress them out big time. Drop it for once and accept that 2018 is not going to be the year.

In Venezuela the electricity might be dirt cheap, but there is no way you can have larger miners settle there as they would literally drain that country in a matter of days. To add; the electricity infrastructure there is horrible. In several parts of the country there are massive outages where it could take hours and hours before you see it come back, and then it's literally hoping that it won't disappear again, which it obviously will.

The thing with mining is that the more blocks you scoop up, the lower your cost per minted Bitcoin is. I wouldn't be surprised if Bitmain's pools can profitably mine even at $2000 because as always, the smaller miners will leave first and Bitmain's share will then only increase. More network share = more blocks for you.

Of course not.

If we discard all the conspiracy theories regarding corporations and focus on facts only, then the main thing the average joes and the governments don't like is how they legally use various loopholes in the system to significantly lower their tax exposure. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I would do the exact same thing in order to protect my revenue and profits. Seriously, no one has the right to claim anything that's yours by force.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that locally more and more (mainly smaller) businesses pop up accepting cash only. It's done for a reason.

This is one example where everyone is staring itself blind on how 'fantastic' blockchains are.

In this specific case you don't need a blockchain at all. All you need is a replicating database and it will do its work just as efficiently. If you take that into consideration, they could have set it up years and years ago already, but them constantly outsourcing everything related to IT makes them lose out on so much valuable knowledge, and thus insane amounts of money.

I'm not making a lot of friends by saying this, but the whole blockchain thing is one big empty hype. If your main goal isn't immutability, you don't need a blockchain, period.