Technically, PayPal isn't using anything to transact with.

The only thing its doing is hold fiat (the asset) in custody and allow you to transact with others through their ecosystem. While you think you are sending fiat back and forth, the only thing that's happening is PayPal digitally changing both your and the receiver's balance. That's how basically every centralized financial service works; you don't ever get the actual asset unless you physically withdraw it.

With Bitcoin you are directly moving the actual asset back and forth, which is why we should never aim to be similar to any financial service.

Exactly.

The year after a bull run has always proven to be a bad one, and it makes sense considering how much coins are being pumped back into circulation.

The first sellers are those securing profits. Then you have to deal with the first load of disappointed get rick quick noobs dumping at a loss. Then you have to deal with another load of bagholders believing in a recovery or a second bull run, and these people usually have a significant amount of patience which will make sure the bear market can take over a year at worst. In other words, more supply than actual on-exchange demand.

Those responsible for initiating these bull runs know how things work and won't iniate another one with the aforementioned in mind.

Forget about ETF's and focus on what's happening in the background with LN.

It's safe to say that the ETF shithow has been taken up too much of people's attention lately. Seriously, two months ago no one gave a shit about ETF's and suddenly people act like Bitcoin badly needs it. Don't get me wrong, an ETF might trigger institutional adoption, but we have grown to where we are right now without ETF's and we'll continue to grow without them for plenty of more years.

Did anyone here even pay attention to how madly powerful Bitcoin's network has become lately? Of course not.

Why not? People expecting a bull run have bought in already, meaning that they won't be adding much or any buy support to the market at all. If you also take into consideration that most of the people expecting a bull run this year are noobs, there isn't much to rely on here. People need to forget about bull runs and move on. If people can't deal with this market they are free to sell and leave.

I don't think you know how bull runs work. They don't happen because people believe it will happen, because that means they have bought in already as stated before. Bull runs happen when no one expects them to happen and people fomo in hard. You know what happens if there is an attempt to initiate a bull run right now? People will dump their bags and quickly undo whatever had to become a bull run.

Huobi and OKEx aren't Chinese exchanges anymore.

In some parts of China you can still access both exchanges, and these exchanges still allow Chinese users to sign up, but it's legally not allowed to trade fiat to crypto. There is definitely something fishy going on. It's crazy to think that the rest of the exchanges have gotten a very harsh treatment, and these two exchanges are loosely floating around without consequences. They probably have government officials on board or they have ties to them granting them this freedom.

They constantly pop up on top of the trading volume list regardless of how badly wounded they initially were. This isn't normal.

Mining itself and the process of manufacturing equipment is (has always been) completely legal in China. But yes, the mainstream media is always trying to sell you rubbish in an attempt to generate clicks. It's up to the people to seperate rubbish from that was is true, and the only way to do that is to dig into everything yourself.

Bitcoin is a software protocol. It can be updated/upgraded throughout the years to make sure it remains relevant and that's exactly what has been happening.

Another important aspect is that in the crypto world having "better" alternatives doesn't mean they will surpass the "older" protocols. Bitcoin is still the top dog. Ethereum is firm second, where in both cases there are "better" alternatives but they fail to convert that into success because it has little meaning here. It has proven to be nearly impossible to gain ground as new project, and another thing is that the majority of the projects that do pop up nowadays are centralized.

Important point is that you aren't supposed to see institutional input.

You'll start seeing institutional input once they want you to see it, which is by the time they are comfortable enough to fully dive into it with their full name exposed.

I'm quite certain that various financial institutions and hedge funds are already somewhat throwing around with pocket change through proxies, but they obviously want to remain low-key and that for good reasons. In some cases they aren't even allowed to do what they do, which is why they use proxies in the first place.

Once these parties have set everything up in a legal manner with custody solutions, the brave institutions will follow afterwards. I would say it's reasonable to happen before the block halving in 2020.

People said the exact same thing back in the 90's. The USD is still here today, and I would even say that it has become more dominant in the world economy. It will eventually implode, but eventually can just as easily mean somewhere in the next 50-100 years. I know people love to see the USD implode today rather than tomorrow, but it's not going to happen any time soon, so forget about it for now.

The choice is up to the people this time. If Bitcoin really lives up to its expectations as currency, which I think it will with tier 2 implementations, you can choose whichever currency that you consider the safest option. In my case that's definitely Bitcoin, which is why I don't sell any of my coins. Why should I sell money?

Never heard that one before, but it does seem to be an interesting theory, even though I don't agree with it.

The thing with Bitcoin as speculative asset, which it still is today, is that the majority of the investors don't invest in Bitcoin with the network in mind or whatever else is going on in the background. If a large investor or an old hand wants to cash out and dump the market to $5000 to fully liquidate their position, they certainly will do so.

The only thing we don't know is how many hidden orders are there that will front run that dump and try to catch it on the lower side of the chart. It happens on Bitfinex quite regularly and likely happens on other exchanges as well, but then in a less obvious form. Exchanges are rigged to the core so we have to assume that it's happening everywhere.

Also, the cost of mining 1BTC is far too speculative. It depends on so many variables that we can't just point out one single price for the whole industry. Smaller miners are probably closer to ~$7000 per minted Bitcoin, while the larger farms frequently scooping up blocks only have $4000'ish actual cost per minted Bitcoin.

Finally, the bears are back. Love it.

I was getting tired of all the $20,000 and $50,000 before the end of the year noobs.

People don't realize how toxic these bull run noobs are for the overall sentiment of the market and the ecosystem in its entirety. They aren't here for Bitcoin's utility, they are here solely to ride the hype and then shit on Bitcoin. I rather see the price go down and we get rid of these noobs than to have the price go up and still deal with them. >2017 noobs are the worst noobs I have ever seen participate in this market, and I'm not exaggerating.

If this is what mainstream adoption looks like, we'll go through worse noob cycles in the forthcoming years.

Who's Gordon?

IDGAF about what a bunch of retards think the price will do, because their opinion means nothing to me and should mean nothing to you.

People need to learn that everyone selling advice is a loser. If all these nut crackers knew even one thing about Bitcoin, they would trade it and not constantly try to make noobs believe this or that will happen. Seriously, being realistic helps you way more than being overly bullish in a market constantly settling lower highs and lower lows. Ignore all these "experts" and "analysts" and do your own research.

Start with comparing 2013's bull run and 2014's decline with 2017 and 2018. You'll realize how similar the cycles are.

No need to be dramatic.

It was the ETF speculation lifting the market up and it's the same ETF speculation taking the market back to where we started.

We can expect a similar upwards movement next month in the runup to the SEC deadline, but probably with a lower high to fit in the longer term downtrend.

The year after a bull run is always the worst, and 2018 seems to perfectly live up to that. Instead of complaining use it as an opportunity to buy the market down. Bitcoin will reach back to its highs as it has always done, and with so much bullish developments ahead of us, we'll likely break $100,000 somewhere before or after the block halving. That's exactly why the lower the price falls, the more bullish I get.

Max Keiser is an idiot.

It's always price up -> hashrate up.

The only difference is that the hashrate can't always directly follow the price because a lot of the hardware needs to be bought first.

Depending on delivery dates and availability of hardware, it could mean that when this hashrate is finally being added to the network, the price has gone down again, and this is exactly happening right now. Plenty of new hardware is bought during the bull run, and now they have to suck it up in case they had big expectations.

You have to take into consideration that each minted block contains like ~$500-$2000 in transaction fees and mint has an OTC market value of around 25% over spot value.

Why is it so shocking that altcoins are losing with Bitcoin? Altcoins are shit and not worth much on their own. 

People shouldn't forget that altcoins have gained 50-75% of their value through Bitcoin increasing in value. In other words, there isn't much actual capital sitting in altcoins if we discard Bitcoin's value donation to them.

The fact that altcoins need Bitcoin to move in order to do something is only pointing out how rubbish they are. Seriously, why would you wait for Bitcoin to move if you have to totally different target industry and roadmap? Oh right, it's because people don't care about the coin on its own. It won't ever change. Bitcoin will remain big daddy for ever.

It's shit. It's the next scam in line.

There are various 'investment' plans you can choose from, and they offer you on average a 10% monthly return up to 20% if you go for their most expensive plan.

It's quite funny to see how they don't even try to make their scam look less obvious, but on the other hand, noobs probably don't care and will invest anyway.

These scams have in common that they will vanish before their first year, and I'm pretty sure Dominant Finance will be one of them.

Russia thus far has been the biggest troll in legal terms. They have been contradicting themselves for years, and till this day they haven't done anything.

China has at least taken the necessary actions, even though it wasn't in favor of crypto. The only positive aspect of their sanctions is that the local crypto economies there have been exploding in size, and the same has happened in India. Governments are delusional thinking that harsh sanctions against crypto are being swallowed without resistance.

I have never seen people actually fight back, which we definitely can relate to how much power crypto allows people to enjoy.

If all fiat currencies start imploding, people will seek to dump money in that what they can use as a medium of exchange. Considering that Bitcoin is a far better medium of exchange than Gold, especially with smaller amounts, it's pretty easy to know where money will flow into.

It's not about stable prices. It's about dumping your wealth into an asset that doesn't lose the majority of its value, and Bitcoin won't lose its value. If even 1% of the total world money supply ends up in Bitcoin, we'll see prices you can't even dream of right now.

In Iran there is currenty a crisis going on where the Rial has lost around 75% of its value in a short period of time. It's time for people to start hedging their fiat currencies by converting a certain part of their wealth to Bitcoin. Better safe than sorry.

It has become a trend and an easy way to accumulate capital just by ICO'ing everything.

I am seriously waiting for the first country to initiate an ICO to start a war with another country. In a way it has already happened with Venezuela's PetroCoin, but with (for the public) less dubious motives. Or what about countries trying to ICO the Moon, or Mars? It might sound ridiculous right now, but it's only a matter of time before it really happens.

Crypto didn't only show the people how much power they can obtain and maintain, but that also applies to governments. The same fraud that people are involved in right now, will be replicated by governments on a larger scale pretty soon.

The focus with day trading isn't to sell the top and buy the bottom. It's just to book profits within each range whenever you can. In other words, if your trade means a 1% gain, you dump. If your trade means a 2% gain, you dump. Wasting time waiting for the price to go up in most cases means that your potential 1-2% gains could easily vanish in a market like this. I rather secure a 1-2% gain than sucking on a loss.

Being positive is meaningless, just as much as practicing is meaningless when it comes to trading. People are emotional roller coasters when money is exposed to a crazy volatile asset class. They shouldn't trade. It's not for nothing that bots have taken over the market in the last few years.

It's mind boggling how strong Bitcoin's network currently is.

Back in september 2013 Bitcoin's network surpassed 1PH/s for the first ever time, and a few days ago an all time high of 55,000PH/s was officially marked in the charts for ever. Realistically, we should be able to surpass 100,000PH/s before the end of next year, especially if the price keeps climbing up, which it likely will with the block halving coming closer and various other important events.

For comparison purposes, BCash's network peaked at 6000PH/s last month, and currently hovers around 4000PH/s. While it's significantly lower than Bitcoin's hashrate, it's still the second most powerful network in existence, however also one of the most centralized.