https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/segwit-usage

Bitcoin is scaling on-chain. Segwit adoption increasing means Bitcoin's throughput increasing, and that in a slow but steady manner. I'm pretty sure that when Binance rolls out full support for Segwit, that we can reach 60-65% without any problems. Services that haven't upgraded yet will turn out to be more expensive to use, which means that the services using Segwit offer cheaper service.

From a business perspective, that's all you need. I do not blame businesses for accepting Bitcoin through a payment gateway because they are just looking for that extra exposure and potentially extra revenue. You can claim to accept Bitcoin without even accepting it directly, that's some powerful free exposure right there. Even Peter Schiff does that. 

I'm pretty sure that we will reach a point in the future where merchants want to hold on to their coins, but it will need to be less volatile, and have more global acceptance so that they can use their coins to restock inventories similar to how they do it with fiat today.

Lightning will play a role there too because of instant transaction settlement, which reduces the exposure to Bitcoin's volatile nature even further because you don't have to wait 10-60 minutes depending on how many confirmations the other party demands. Interesting times we have ahead of us.

I think the dumps we're seeing lately are from those who were long before, but due to the bearish posture of the charts, are now looking for that liquidity to sell into. In other words, every bounce up will likely be utilized as an opportunity to sell into. Bitcoin has had a bearish monthly close which is just another indicator of how people shouldn't expect a recovery back to +$9000 levels.

Best course of action for most non traders is to either ignore the market for a while, or dollar cost average to increase your hodl stack. These are the times where you should be buying, not when it's peaking like what happened around the $14,000 level.

I don't think it's actually that easy to buy crypto through unregulated exchanges, mainly so with how they quite often do not offer fiat deposits/withdrawals.

Most of the current unregulated exchanges are usdt exchanges, and there just isn't an easy way to exchange your fiat for usdt to then have it be sent to an exchange to buy Bitcoin with.

Having an exchange with bank accounts to accept fiat deposits is quite crucial. When that's no longer an option, the flow of fresh money into this ecosystem stagnates and that eventually will lead to less demand. This is also why exchanges such as Coinbase will do everything they can to please the banks they have accounts with, as so, these banks largely dictate Coinbase's policies.

I'm pretty sure that they have some mixers up and running, not only for Bitcoin but for other cryptos as well. If you think about it, it's almost impossible for them to not have mixers up and running because it exposes the activities of people governments so badly want to find out about. Where do people go for privacy (regardless of the reason why people seek more privacy)? Right. Mixers.

This is why I sticked to only Bitmixer before, and now only Chipmixer. Governments are catching up slowly but surely while we think they remain ignorant. That's absolutely not the case.

Actually, how to get scammed for large amounts. I have seen quite some scam sites in the past that actually delivered what they promised on the lower valued products/services that they offered, to then disappear when people make a second much larger purchase because trust was gained when the site delivered as promised initially.

It's a tactic scammers on all levels apply. I'm pretty sure that you have heard of mostly gypsy scammers playing some kind of game with tourists where they allow them to win the first few low value bets and have plenty of confidence, to then cheat and win back the money they lost plus a whole lot more.

Regulations haven't ever protected anyone's funds. In the history of the us stock market there have been multiple multi billion dollar scams that the regulators didn't protect investors against, and that while it's their main reason of existence, so they say. Isn't that ironic? All regulators are doing is actively block innovation.

They sporadically hand out approvals for instruments to no longer care about them afterwards, and that while they should be on top of everything they have given approval to operate or trade. The world would be a better place if these shitty regulators actually did what they have been designed for to do, but what can we expect from a government body? All they care about is control and the rest is not of importance.

It depends on what bank you are looking at because one bank isn't the other.

Bank of America stock is the highest in over a decade.
Wells Fargo has been trending up for its entire history at the nyse.
Citigroup has had a very decent decade.
Goldman Sachs has had a very decent decade.
Morgan Stanley has had a very decent decade.
JPMorgan is making new all time highs.

HSBC has been lagging behind, but that doesn't mean the whole banking industry isn't doing well. 

The us stock market is doing better than ever before.

It has been hitting a new all time high pretty much on a bi-monthly basis. People who shorted stocks thinking they were about to get hammered have been hammered themselves. There is so much debt floating around that it will continue pumping stocks for a long time, well beyond what people consider fair or overvalued for companies.

Exchanges are the new financial institutions, but people don't yet consider them to be that. They aren't very far away from offering the same services as legacy financial institutions, but with a different flavor, one that will appeal to more people potentially.

All the people in crypto saying that banks are bad and should disappear, need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why they still allow exchanges to hold their coins. It's pretty much the same principle; you trust a third party to hold your money for you. In this case it's even worse because I trust my bank more than the most regulated crypto exchange.

I do not fear for the money in my bank account, but I constantly fear for the money at my exchange, no matter how insignificant the amount actually is.

I don't think the institutions trading there are really interested in the underlying, but just want to capture the exposure, which is similar to the institutions trading on CME. In case they do want the Bitcoins they can claim them, which is nice. So yes, most of the volume you see Bakkt report is fiat and has nothing really to do with Bitcoin.

The institutions that are really interested in the asset Bitcoin buy big otc to not impact the market unnecessarily. It's the most private and cost effective way of buying Bitcoin in bulk. They do not want you to know that they already own or are buying Bitcoin as we speak, but want you to believe that they are close to entering this market for as long as possible.

It's just a bounce, one of the many we had before. There is no point in believing that we're due for a recovery as long as we haven't seen the market break above at least the $10,350 wick, because every increase that tops out below that wick is technically just another lower high.

I have taken on another short just above the $7700 level today even though I do believe that there is some 5-10% more upside potential. In case we do end up going up I can sit it out easily at 2x leverage without having to worry about liquidation. Surfing the trend down is better than fighting against it unnecessarily.

Bitcoin is not dependent on what satoshi's plan is. At most, he could crush the market temporarily by dumping his coins, but that would be the best ever thing that happened to Bitcoin. It basically means that the one person owning such a ridiculous number of coins has eliminated himself and made sure the distribution of coins became way healthier than it was before.

Even if you dislike Bitcoin, it makes no sense to dump it all. Bitcoin is such an economical success formula that holding is the best course of action.

It's largely fear. It sucks for most people to look at their portfolio and see the virtual loss expose their poor timing of entering the market.

I see it happen with people on this forum referring to themselves as long term holder too; during price increases everyone can chill and enjoy the price, but when the market moves against them, they suddenly aren't so sure about their investment or Bitcoin anymore. These are usually the weak hands we are talking about when it comes to people getting shaken out of the market.

Every long term bull loves to buy at much lower levels. These are precious opportunities. Instead of utilizing these opportunities people cry themselves to sleep.

It's such a niche part of this space. BitPay 2018 processed just over $1 billion worth of payments. If you put that against the +$1 trillion in on-chain value movements, it's an absolute joke. It's even more of a joke when there are large entities such as Roger Ver and Bitmain using BitPay as an exit point, so the actual amount in payments is much lower than that.

Sure, there are more payment gateways, but they all combined can't even tickle BitPay. Bitcoin is too speculative for one side of the market to spend, and too precious for the other side of the market to spend.

How many exchanges have been 'hacked' thus far? Too many to remember every individual exchange, that's for sure. It taught people absolutely nothing.

Some don't want to take care of their own storage whatever the reason might be, and others purposely keep their coins on an exchange because they want to sell as fast as possible whenever they panic. This is far worse than "trusting" banks with your fiat. Right now people are "trusting" shady and incompetent exchange operators with their precious Bitcoins.

On top of that, it's yet another Asian exchange. It can't be considered coincidence anymore. Asian exchanges are structurally flawed, and so are their operators.

I always wait for one or a series of candles to close before I take on a trade during low volume breakouts. It yields less percentage gains, but at least you reduce the odds of being suckered into a trade you will very likely regret.

The good thing about this market being so active is that you will always have another opportunity to take on a trade at some other levels, as so, you do not have to force yourself to take on trades every single time. I see it happen all too often that people just take on trades for the sake of trading, but that's a quick route to empty your balance. A good trader knows when to skip a trade.

$7800-$8200 is a range I will happily take on an extra short. I do not think that the price has any chance of closing a weekly candle above the $8000 level.

The only positive part about the current move is that there is some volume being generated, but volume being generated is not a reliable indicator on its own. The badass $3000 move we had was accompanied by very impressive volumes globally, but to no avail. Thus far all we have done is confirm a longer term down trend with lower highs.

The 21EMA on the daily that's sloping down will guide the price further lower. In other words, this is a sucker's increase.

It technically doesn't even rely on demand in my example, but demand is always a helping factor to keep coins *temporarily* out of circulation.

I do not believe in conspiracy theories. They're admittedly exciting to read, but don't take them too serious. Demand can drop, and it could perhaps drop significantly at some later point in the far future, but not to a point where Bitcoin's value nullifies entirely and everyone stops mining and running nodes.

Bitcoin started out as a small network where coins weren't even officially tradable on exchanges as we know it today. People were just exchanging them between themselves through forums and whatnot. I'm pretty confident that in the worst case scenario for Bitcoin it will be used in a similar fashion. Perhaps not interesting as investment, but very interesting from a use perspective.

I have seen people suspect whales of teaming up to manipulate the price quite frequently this year, yet no one has actually backed up these claims.

Whales are just like you and me investors/traders/believers, but then with much deeper pockets. Are you and me teaming up to manipulate the price? I don't even know you. The same applies to whales. We are all trading against each other because we all have a different strategy. I'm pretty sure that when we pumped from $7300 to $10,300 some weeks ago it crushed a lot of whales too.

In fact, it's much easier for small fishes to enter and exit than whales because there is not enough liquidity for them to sell into, which means that whales market selling in panic lose big time due to slippage.

It's kinda funny how people have been speculating about a bull run that will commence soon the whole year while we have had one happen already and people still ignore it. The bull run is over and now we are on our way to complete the aftermath of that bull run, which generally is a painful process but one that smart money uses to hoard as many coins as possible.

There is no denying anymore; almost every indicator is bearish. I know it's not what people want to read, but I'm not promising moon while there potentially is more down side to explore in the coming weeks and months. If it's difficult to accept, then it probably means that you shouldn't have invested in Bitcoin to begin with.