Pretty poorly written article.

I expected a more in-depth article exactly explaining why they think Bitcoin can replace fiat, but it seems to be a rushed article targeting noobs with flashy figures.

Important is to not focus on Bitcoin to replace fiat currencies, but to give people the option (freedom) to choose what currency they want to use. Fiat won't be going anywhere, banks won't be going anywhere and governments won't be going anywhere. Instead of wasting time on waiting for them to vanish (which won't happen), use Bitcoin right now and stop using fiat and banks where you can. I have been doing that for ages and it works perfectly fine. No excuses.

LN should be there regardless of how congested the network is.

It only requires one bull run to make people aware of the fact that Bitcoin is a horrible mirco currency. That's why I sincerely hope that we won't be seeing any bull run in the coming 12 or so months. I definitely don't want anyone to go through a similar situation as what happened last year. Is it a good thing that new people buy $100 worth of coins and pay $25 in fees? It's a horrible user experience. People won't forget that, believe me.

Another thing is that it will incentivize big blockers even more to choke the network with rubbish transactions, all to promote how cheap BCash is and how it handles all the network traffic effortlessly.

Bull run? No thank you.

Get rich quick noobs will be disappointed but people not wanting to see institutions get more exposure will celebrate a rejection.

It's almost surreal if you think about how fast we have grown. In the next couple of years Bitcoin will likely become so large, that what we were dreaming of back in 2013 has all turned into reality. It's fantastic to see this happen, but it also makes you realize that we won't be able to witness something similar ever again. Crypto in its entirety was the only option for average joes to actually become part of the wealthy elite, but one that the majority discarded.  

Don't sell your coins people, just don't. If the price goes down use that as an opportunity to buy up some more.

He has a point though. It's not a regular business you're dealing with, but a scam that will at some point vanish and who knows what they will do with your personal data. By having your ID and some basic details I can take out loans on your name, etc. In other words, no one needs to rob your house when ill minded individuals can rob you digitally.

Intead of taking everyting lightly, which is what average joes tend to do, try and be more paranoid. Your ID is a key, not just some worthless document.

We can't ignore Wall Street's faul play and lack or respect for regulatory rules, but institutions as in the overall meaning of the term isn't tied to just the Wall Street bad boys and similar entities.

Pension funds are just as much an institution as for example Bank of America and JPMorgan, but far less likely to act without a proper regulatory framework in place. In the same way there are more institutions waiting for something to happen on the regulatory side allowing them to counter potential risks as much as possible. These instutions (latecomers) will buy into the market at way higher levels and make sure they create a new base price, because that's always how it goes.

Every bull run results in a higher low because the one who bought at $100 sells to the one who buys it at $3000 and so forth.

No need to exaggerate. There are enough opportunities as active trader to benefit from a market in decline. It's not that we're still in 2013 where trading mostly was nothing more than simply buying and selling. Every decent trader can benefit more from a declining market than a market that's going up. Most of my profits are made by shorting Bitcoin.

If you're not an active trader then make sure that you keep holding your coins firmly and buy some more coins on the way down. You'll only REKT yourself when you sell at a loss.

People ignore one major contributor as to why the price has been falling.

Tether took 100 million USDT out of circulation around the time the price was +$8000 and they have taken another 90 million out of circulation just before the drop to below $7300.

It's not really a positive sign and this will definitely have some more impact on the price if they keep taking USDT out of circulation. It basically means that money (regardless of whether or not Tether is actually backed) is leaving the market instead of entering, which is never a good thing. We'll see where it ends but it seems that without an ETF approval things will start to get really challenging for the short term market.

Bitcoin isn't complex at all. It's the most simplistic coin in existence, which is why people like it so much. It does all that people need, which is storing value and sending value from point A to B.

People don't need all sorts of gimmick features that no one uses anyway. It's about the quality of the tool, and the liquidity its ecosystem around it provides, and nothing comes even close to Bitcoin in that regard. The only downside of this is that altcoin whales cash out to Bitcoin, then dump Bitcoin for USD which has been a major contributor as to why Bitcoin has tanked hard this year and somewhat struggled to remain up.

China has been signalling their willingness to soften their prior regulations that killed off the legal crypto economy, mainly because of the fact that it drove people 'underground'. If they on top of that have to deal with an imploding economy themselves, they have no choice but to allow crypto and everything around the blockchain technology to develop itself there.

People quite often think that China is no longer a thing when it comes to crypto, but they can't be more wrong. It's safe to say that there may be dozens of millions of crypto users on a daily basis using crypto in every possible way. It's something China can't do anything about other than to soften their regulations and to have all these people operate on legal ground again, which grants China the control over them that they want.

Another factor is that Japan and South Korea might turn out to become super powers in the Asian continent if China doesn't act, and based on all stated points, I expect them to return.

Partly.

The fundamental reason for his frustration is that with an ETF Bitcoin will attract so much capital, that the gap between Ether and Bitcoin will become too large to overcome. Ether will probably never get an ETF approved by the SEC with how its internal ecosystem is mainly being used for fraudulent purposes.

I'm quite sure that most of the Ether sellers are projects dumping what they raised during their ICO stage. It was bound to happen and will get even worse. Don't forget that EOS has billions $$$ worth of Ether and they likely are cashing out slowly. With how ICO's are losing traction, there will be less buyers for Ether and the price as result falls. I wouldn't touch it right now. It will dip below 0.05BTC this month.

I wouldn't really count on that. The higher the price goes up prior to the moment institutions are allowed to buy into it, the less incentive there will be for them to do so.

It's far more profitable for institutions to massively short the market through CBOE in case the price has gone up significantly, let the price fall down as much as they think is necessary, and then buy into the ETF also through CBOE. We have seen what happened last year when the CME futures market went live during a bull run. Whoever they were, they shorted the crap out of Bitcoin and made millions on the way down.

The best scenario is that the ETF market goes live during a neutral market, but how realistic is that with crypto?

In other words, debt.

It also applies to the stock market and other sides of the world economy. Everything is largely based on debt and we have enough historical evidence that these debt bubbles always pop. It may take a while before it pops and it's impossible to point out when it will pop, but it will pop and for that reason people should use Bitcoin as hedge to be on the safe side. If everything implodes you won't be as much affected as those who haven't taken any steps to lower their exposure to this shitty system.

It has never been easier for people and businesses to take out a loan (easier than before the credit crisis years ago), even if you aren't capable of paying it back or have no (partial) collateral. Even people with their own money are no longer saving it due to the extremely low interest rates; this money ends up in the same pool as where the debt money lands in. No wonder everything is badly pumped up right now. It's a great time for sellers, but not for buyers trying to make a buck. The risks are not worth it anymore.

Maybe you need to read my post again;

If the price has already been bought up significantly prior to the halving, there is no reason why it should be bought up afterwards, which is why I stated that we can expect steady growth. The market will have to go up on its own from there and has nothing else to rely on other than the regular supply and demand metric that over the long term plays out in Bitcoin's favor. In other words, there is no after party.

They don't care about holding Bitcoin itself; they just want the long term exposure they pay for in cash and exit their position in cash.

Let's be honest, most people don't give a damn about Bitcoin's decentralization and currency aspect, they just want to ride its market and have an asset in their portfolio that isn't correlated with the legacy economy. Having a 1% portfolio allocation to Bitcoin is already a fantastic way to stabilize your portfolio and even book above moderate returns in case Bitcoin goes nuts, which it does from time to time. I expect hedge funds and other institutions to do the same in the forthcoming years.

Institutions needs proper custody solutions in order to comfortably enter this market, which none of the current exchanges can offer when it comes to large amounts. If you also take into consideration that institutions are on purposely avoiding exchanges and solely stick to private deals, you know that this industry will not get the big money in as long as these exchanges (which are all fundamentally broken) can't be trusted with large sums of funds.

That's why an ETF is a great way for them to gain long term exposure but without having to deal with shitty exchanges. Everything happens through CBOE which is one of the largest exchanges in the world. It's only a matter of time before one of the largest legacy exchanges allows Bitcoin as asset to be traded on their platform, and when that happens people will know what an institutional driven fomo run is.

Exactly. The last time I ever went to a move theatre is like 20 years ago. I would definitely go there right now if my local movie theatre accepted Bitcoin. I have no idea what movies are playing right now since I don't watch any movies, but I'll definitely dig into it just because of Bitcoin. The barbershop I visit once a month *unofficially* accepts Bitcoin as payment, and I always tip the barber 100% of the amount, so instead of $20 he'll get $40. He always tells me that I don't have to do that, which I counter with that I am happy he's open minded enough to accept it.

I'm hung on hodling for ever. I don't see a point in cashing Bitcoin out to fiat and never will do, because Bitcoin itself is money already.

In order to understand why regulations don't matter in this specific case, we have to look at how fundamentally broken and amateur-lead all the current exchanges are.

It's not that institutions are waiting for regulations and clarity to start digging into this market. JPMorgan as largest bank in the world has already bought Bitcoin for some of its clients, but through private deals. Other larger parties such as Goldman Sachs have done it too, again through private deals. It's a lack of trust and professionalism that makes them avoid dealing with exchanges. I can't blame them for that since I don't trust any exchange either.

The only way for institutions to really enter this space and provide much needed liquidity is to have other institutions operate an exchange, or wait for Nasdaq or NYSE to open up and allow Bitcoin to become a tradable asset, which might take years.

The liquidity ratio today is exactly the same as how it was back in early 2013 when I bought my first coins.

Correct.

No one in the world has the right to claim ANY percentage of your money by force, which is exactly what governments are doing. In reality it's exactly the same as when someone kidnaps you and asks for ransom in order to give you your freedom back. If you don't hand over your money to the government, they'll throw you in jail and freeze all your income streams and assets till you give them your money. People need to open their eyes for once and stop selling themselves as brave citizens.

Oh, and for the people moaning about governments losing tax income if we don't pay capital gains over our crypto currencies; what's the difference between people not trading and thus not being subject to tax, and people just not paying any tax over their crypto gains? The government loses nothing but has everything to gain from people who do think it's a great idea to pay tax.

Lol.

There hasn't been one single halving where the price didn't go up significantly in the runup to the event, so by the time the halving kicks in the increased price should be sufficient enough for miners to at least get the same amount in fiat per minted block. Another helping factor is that the fee income will be much higher than it is right now, and they of course can sell their blocks for 25% over spot value without any problems. In other words, you don't have to worry about miners at all.

The only thing people have to worry about is to accumulate as many coins as possible before we're even remotely close to the halving date.

We need more people to have a different mindset when it comes to crypto currencies. If you don't work on the fundamental problem of why people don't spend their coins, then having stores accept crypto will not be effective. Also, there are more and more locations where people can purchase the most popular crypto currencies through multi ATM's. However, crypto being easier accessible doesn't mean people will use it as money.

If you look at all the crypto currencies and the communities behind them, barely anyone within these communities is spending their coins, regardless of how fast and cheap the transactions are. Crypto is an investment vehicle for +90% of the people, the other majority is using it as store of value, and the last few % is actually using it as money.