They simply don't know.

Mike Novogratz isn't smarter than you are when it comes to the market. What you know he knows and vice versa. In other words, if we all together dig into everything that has any sort of meaning in this industry, we are all on the same level in terms of knowledge. These experts are nothing more than green dildo riders. They are here because it's exciting, unlike the boring stock markets and Gold that doesn't seem to do anything.

All current "experts" were the haters of the past.

I have seen on TV how news readers were mocking people suffering from a crypto trading addiction, where the lady said that she doesn't understand how one can be addicted to something that doesn't exist. Really? If we discard the ignorance of that lady, how can you as normal (well thinking) person make fun of people with an addiction? It doesn't matter what the addiction is related to, the core of every addiction is the same and in all cases it's equally as harmful if people don't get the help they need.

You don't like crypto? Fine, but don't make fun of people needing serious help. I'm glad that there are places where people can get the help they need.

It's pretty much the same with how people initially were making fun of gamers with an addiction. Currently no one makes fun of them anymore because it's an acknowledged form of addiction, and the same will apply to people addicted to crypto trading. The mass needs time to overcome their ignorance. They have to put the few braincells they have to work, which is difficult for them.

BitMex if operated in a fair manner, would be emptied by whales within a year, where the only way to avoid this is to bust them out of their positions, or to prevent people in general from executing trades during certain 'critical' moments. In other words, they have no choice but to cheat. I'm not saying it's good, but that's how they stay alive.

That being said, every exchange likely applies insider trading itself, and or provides it as a service to market makers for staying loyal to them. No way that if a massive wire comes in or someone deposits a shitload of Bitcoins they don't utilize that information to front run these orders themselves or notify their market movers. If it happens on highly regulated stock markets, it surely happens on shitty mostly still unregulated crypto exchanges.

Everything regarding BitMex very likely applies to Deribit as well. If you run these type of businesses, you have to cheat to stay in the game.

All of this is just an idea still.

Brookstone Partners is raising capital in order to start building this wind farm, which will take a considerable amount of time. By the time they finally have managed to build the farm (which is by no means a guarantee that it will happen) the difficulty has gone up a lot already, which will eat away a lot of their profits, and then what? Investors have high expectations and thus expect proper returns, because that's why they invest in this industry in the first place.

An idea is worth a buck, for the effort, nothing more.

Learn how markets work.

The point is that people don't get what they want because they want it. Why? Because they have entered the market already, and thus will only sell in case the price goes up, where on top of that we're in a situation where there are loads and loads of bagholders holding $10,000-$18,000 coins. In other words, selling pressure on top of more selling pressure.

These people need to sell as many of their coins as possible in order to satisfy market movers to put their capital to work. If you think they will let you dump on them you are delusional. As long as the number of floating coins isn't decreasing, there will be no bull run. It could potentially mean that there won't be a bull run for another 2 years.

What I am getting from this and other statements and articles (by looking beyond the obvious) is that they want to avoid dealing with a situation similar to what happened with the futures markets last year. It creates an unhealthy and unfair market, all of which will contribute to manipulation and a massive loss in value for investors afterwards.

It's a tough decision to make because there is no easy way to not boost Bitcoin's spot market by announcing that you as regulator agrees to have an ETF to go live.

For once I don't think the SEC should be blamed for being extremely conservative. I looked through the ETF's and honestly speaking, not in a hundred years would I allow the WV ETF to be approved. People can act disappointed all they want, but Bitcoin's market is far better off without hillbilly ETF's being approved.

Age is a good point. If you're young you have more free space to take higher risks because you have enough years ahead of you to correct your prior mistakes. If you do the same if you are way further in life, it's better to look for more stable ways of growing wealth; messing up at an age of 55 or older means you probably won't ever be in a position to correct your mistakes financially.

In the end it's all a personal choice; if you think splitting investments is the best way to move forward for you, then you have to follow that route.

Diversification is nothing more than you countering risks. In the end the result is either a marginal loss or gain, unless everything increases or decreases all at once. The underlying aspect is that you by diversifying (as people have been taught to do), make sure money keeps flowing in assets it otherwise probably wouldnt flow in.

It's common sense because you have been taught to think like that. What's there in it for a youngster being 25 years of age if you follow all the bookish ways of 'generating wealth'?

I am actually on the side of the SEC chairman in this case.

The only thing we can blame the SEC for is their lack of clarity, but on the other hand, if they don't know how to properly define a security or how to properly understand what crypto in its entirety is about, why should we bug them with constant requests? The only thing people are doing is annoy them and make them reject everything sooner.

What we know is that crypto currencies such as Bitcoin aren't securities, which is great. ICO's are by definition a security regardless of how you look at it, and that doesn't require them to change existing laws. People and businesses responsible for initiating an ICO should for once look in the mirror and accept that their ICO garbage is a security. In other words, they have to follow the legacy route of making sure their security gets approved.

It's not likely to go below $6000 once again, but impossible to rule out either.

It's important to realize that when the SX & VanEck ETF gets rejected, we will fall considerably where altcoins will start to catch up on Bitcoin again. People are not interested in the tech of coins or how secure or decentralized they are; they just jump on the next train in case it offers more profit potential, and altcoins do offer that profit potential, more so than Bitcoin. The less you expect of the market in the short term the less disappointment you have to go through.

Positive news is a tool to fool the mass and it only "works" when we are going up.

Am I the only one getting tired of all this bull run nonsense?

There will be NO bull run as long as the majority of you guys haven't sold your coins.

# Bull runs don't happen when people have stacked up Bitcoin already.
# Bull runs don't happen when there are plenty of bagholders looking for an increase to dump.
# Bull runs don't follow each other up with so little time in-between.

The more people expect a bull run to happen the longer you have to wait to actually see one get initiated. Institutions aren't stupid, they won't allow you to dump on them.

I have been searching for alternatives and thus far the only reputable service that's actually allowed to operate these products is Deribit.

It obviously can't compete with BitMex and their massive volumes, but it's good enough for home traders.

One thing to take into consideration is this;

As always, be cautious regardless of how reputable a service may seem or be. Try it with a smaller amount, withdraw to see if it comes through in a timely fashion, etc.

May I know why you have stopped using BitMex? If you don't want to tell it's fine.

Important to understand;

If Bitcoin was ever used as money on a large scale, governments would have done everything to ban the crap out of it years ago already.

The only reason we don't see governments try to stop it (discarding the few that do) is because people see it as an investment, store of value, digital Gold, etc. It means that governments don't see it as a threat to their fiat currencies, and I think we should keep it like that, at least for now. In other words, be thankful that people don't use it as often as money as you would have liked it to be used. It allows Bitcoin to keep growing and I prefer it to be like this.

Fiat only has value because we use it every day. If we ignore fiat, it's pretty much worthless and in the same way the government basically is nearly as worthless.

Most of the newer trash coins and tokens need marketing, otherwise no one will bother to fall for your hype. Long time assets don't need marketing.

Litecoin's lack of marketing has made it gain proper use instead of speculative use, just like how Bitcoin is mainly a coin being used for its main purpose.

Fact; Litecoin without marketing has more network transaction activity than BCash with its aggressive marketing and merchant adoption.

The thing is that it's way easier for merchants to ditch everything related to crypto entirely, because it only results in problems such as people complaining about fees, transactions that have been confirmed but aren't being accepted, refunds that are difficult to issue more often than not, etc. If they ditch BitPay I'm afraid that they will leave for good, and I honestly can't blame them.

Other payment gateways don't have the banking aspect on their side, which makes BitPay practically the best option. If the best option is a bad option why should merchants go for an alternative?

Needed for what? You can't do anything with Gold as average joe. It just sits somewhere in your drawyer, or a safe deposit box, and then what?

Try spend your Gold to buy stuff, it won't work because stores don't accept Gold and you can't flake off some Gold to buy a loaf of bread.

Try to sell it, everyone will offer you below spot value.

If you can't spend it effortlessly, and no one is willing to pay market value because otherwise they can't sell it themselves later on without losing, why should you invest in Gold?

Also, Gold has been a bad performer in the last years. Waste of time. Waste of capital. Waste of everything. It's nothing more than worst case scenario money.

They are clear, but don't stare yourself blind on obvious facts.

I think the biggest obstacle for the SEC isn't exactly the ETF itself, because everything is as tightly packed as they want it to be, but more so the timing. I am sure that if the SEC could pull back its futures to launch them on a different date they would have done it. In other words, the least favorable scenario is another bull run to be initiated in the runup to the actual event, because we know what happens when the news pops up. It results in a hostile market afterwards where as always retail investors lose.

The other ETF's are just trash. They shouldn't even be filled if they don't have the backing of a legacy platform wall street actually can build on.

Not sure why it took so long for the SEC to come up with a decision (remember, they have granted them a review a long time ago), but that ETF had no chance to be approved, so if the price has gone down because of that, it just shows how stupid the market is. The same goes up for the other ETF's that the SEC delayed; instead of delaying them and wasting everyone's precious time, reject them. They want to make it seem like they are really looking into them but that's not really the case in reality. They know beforehand which ETF will be rejected and which not.

The only reason next month's ETF has better odds of approval, is because of how CBOE is somewhat backing it, and without this backing, your ETF will get rejected.

These funds are doomed to fail one by one because of how they thrive on the short term market. Most people pumping money in these funds are too stupid to invest themselves, and are extremely short term minded. If one thing has become clear during a bear market, these are the first people to actually get wiped out, and these are the exact same people investing in these funds. It's not a viable way of conducting business.

Price down one month you can explain them that it is a normal correction.

Price down another month you can probably still explain them that it is a normal correction.

But what if the third, fourth, fifth month are also losing months? People won't swallow that shit. They'll lose confidence in the "expert" and withdraw what's left of their funds.

I don't agree with Lee.

Bitcoin is everything you want it to be when you refer to precious metals and other natural assets.

Litecoin has no use other than it being a cheaper and faster alternative to conduct transactions, but it will lose this niche once Bitcoin's LN is deployed on a larger scale. If you take away Litecoin's cheaper and faster confirming transactions, it has nothing left to remain relevant. It's useless other than the fact that it is a great Bitcoin testbed.

Litecoin isn't Silver because Silver in the real world experiences actual usage requiring this specific precious metal. What real world usage requires Litecoin?

XRP is straight trash. It should be called server coin. Even if it was completely decentralized, one party holding +50 billion units is pure madness.

Interesting. I always get instant settling transactions with Namecheap, even if I slightly underpay in fees. It's either the merchant in question not being very picky (because they can set up their account to make it either very easy or difficult for your transaction to be accepted without fee), or that BitPay just wants to troll Bitcoin users in case merchants operate with default settings.

Positive note for people disliking BitPay for how they messed up, they are falling down like a rock; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitpay.com

The amount of traffic they generate has gone down to such extent, that their alarm bells have to start trigger very soon. Assholes.