Ugh....I first bought bitcoin back in 2015 when I was just getting into it and had just registered on the forum.  The price (as I remember it) was between $200-400, but I didn't even buy a full bitcoin if you can believe that.  As to why I bought it:  Prior to 2015 I was almost certain that bitcoin was a fad that would die off, because I saw how many scams were being perpetrated right here on bitcointalk.  But the longer I watched it and the more I read about it, the less certain I became that this was going to be the case--so I decided to jump in and buy some.

And boy, I wish I'd kept all the bitcoin I've owned.  Time and time again it's proven to be a mistake to sell or spend it, and I probably could have had a fortune by now...but it wasn't to be, I guess.  I'd also add that I've always seen bitcoin as an investment more so than a currency, so I never acquired any simply to spend it on things.

I agree with the part about Theymos/moderators deleting or changing feedbacks, but I don't necessarily agree with excluding members who aren't active anymore--as long as the feedback they left is valid.  If a neg was rightly given, it shouldn't matter one whit whether the person who left it is gone.

It's only a problem if the member who's disappeared is somehow still on DT (unless you're bothered by any negative feedback regardless of its weight).  Look at my trust profile.  It's loaded with negatives from idiots who've long since abandoned the forum for whatever reason.  You either accept that that's going to happen or bitch about it or leave the forum.  There aren't really any other options, since I doubt Theymos plans to remedy the situation any time soon.

Yeah well, that doesn't surprise me.  The rich are always going to have more capital to invest in things like bitcoin and they're the ones who reap the most benefit from doing so.  I don't think the poor have much use for bitcoin at all, despite what a lot of people have said over the years about it being able to help the unbanked--and that's not exclusive to Korea or any part of the world, either.

It also doesn't surprise me that bitcoin is booming in Korea, and I'm sure a lot of Koreans are over-investing in it just like people all around the world did in 2017.  That's just what happens when you've got an asset that keeps making new all-time highs.  It's a gamble, but I'm sure a lot of Koreans are going to come out ahead, rich or poor.

Hmm, I detect a scam going on here and never would have thought Theymos capable of such chicanery!  Nevertheless I'd like to have whatever piece of Foxpup's bodice I can get.  Or at least some non-fungicidal token will do with what I can afford, so can I give someone my mailing address and have it sent to me?  Dreeee***rrrrpp!!

This April fool's day is less of an acid trip than last year's, and at least it's a lot less morbid (though we're still all wearing face masks and some of us are still in lockdown).  Things are looking up, no?

Oh, is there a derivatives market yet for these fNFTs?  I'd like to propose that someone smarter than me create such a beast, leaving me full credit for the idea of course.  Thanks.

I don't know jack shit about DeFi, but I'm pretty sure you're right--but even with my professed ignorance, I still think it's super-risky to be borrowing any amount of money in order to speculate in any aspect of crypto right now (or at any time for that matter).  Maybe there's some magic to all this that makes it less risky to do so, but I seriously doubt it.  I sure as hell wouldn't be taking out a loan to put into DeFi projects--or buying any crypto on margin or otherwise taking out loans to do that either.  Lots of people tend to not care about the risks involved when an asset like bitcoin is at its all-time high, and those are the people who get burned in the end.

As an aside, this freaked me out until I realized what today's date was (just woke up):

Binance has survived a huge hack before, but there are other reasons why an exchange may not let you have access to your funds--they could get caught up in a sting or some law enforcement agency might freeze everyone's coins or some crap like that--you just never know with any of these exchanges.  Not your keys, not your coins.  Learn that.

The question being asked in the title here is kind of a ridiculous one.  Both options are too risky to be seriously considered when there are much safer alternatives out there.  Don't store your coins on an exchange and don't use online wallets where the website owner is the custodian of them.  It's just not worth the risk when you could use Electrum or a hardware wallet and sleep easy at night knowing your crypto is safe.

OP, if I could draw big red arrows pointing to the above post, I would because it's that important.  Coinbase and Gemini are probably the least likely to not survive a hack, but one of the first things you should have learned when getting into bitcoin is that if you don't have control over the private keys to your coins, you don't control your coins--someone else does, and there have been horror stories of people losing fortunes because of exchange hacks or exit scams perpetrated by exchanges.

So yeah, I'd say get your coins off those exchanges and buy a decent HW wallet (Ledger and Trezor are going to be the ones most members here would recommend).  They're definitely worth the small investment it takes to purchase one.

Should you tag him?  No.  I would report a couple of those posts to the moderators with a note telling them what he's doing, which is spamming.  Let them take care of the problem, which will likely result in the account being banned.  I seriously doubt that member created an account here to do anything other than promote whatever it is he's promoting.  Giving him a tag is just a useless gesture that won't solve the problem.

Nah, it might not be against the rules to do that but it would be far better to report this crap to the mods.

I'm not sure PayPal closed your account because you received "dirty" money--if they had any suspicion about where gameristo got his funds, I'd think they'd close his account before he could send you anything and wouldn't penalize you instead.  That makes no sense.

As I said, I got a warning from PayPal about using the F&F feature instead of Goods & Services, and that was after gameristo had sent funds unsolicited to me, which pissed me off.  I don't know what's up with him, but perhaps he'll see this thread and reply here.  Again, I've had no problems with him other than getting PayPal funds prior to any deal being made, but if my account (that I've had for years) were closed because of it, it'd be a different story--and I understand your frustration.

I started a thread a couple of years ago similar to this one, because gameristo has been known to use multiple PayPal accounts and to send PayPal funds to you before any deal is struck (at least that's happened to me before).  Now, there could be legitimate reasons why he has control over multiple PayPal accounts, but that's something that always bugged me.

And I got a warning from PayPal not too long ago saying that the friends & family payment method was not to be used for purchases/sales, and I took that seriously.  Gameristo is otherwise completely trustworthy as far as him not scamming you, because there were a few times when he surely could have but didn't.  I'm not sure I agree with everything OP is recommending here, but definitely use caution--not just with gameristo, but with everyone you're trading with.

I'm not sure if that's how it works if this is a traditional pension we're talking about.  If it is indeed a pension, then the pensioners will be getting cash payouts and not cryptocurrency.  The fund is just investing in things in order to make a profit, to ensure that there's enough money to pay off all of those who contributed to the fund. 

Doesn't sound like a huge fund ($350m total) but it's still pretty cool that the manager has the view of bitcoin that he has, because I don't think there are a lot of fund managers investing in crypto (yet).  The comparison to gold, though....eh.  There's so much more opportunity to make a profit with bitcoin than gold, silver, or any other commodity, and crypto is quite different than any of those other things.

Cool article and thanks for the clarification, fiulpro.

Did you pull that price out of your ass or is there some rationale behind it?

I wouldn't call this the "second part" of the bull run/bull market.  It's the same market, just springing back from a slight dip--and there's no telling whether bitcoin is going higher or not.  I happen to think the bull market is nowhere near over and that bitcoin will indeed be higher at the end of 2021 than it is now, but who knows. 

Remember the beginning of 2020 and how everyone thought bitcoin was going to explode at the halvening and people were asking "whenz altcoin season start?!"?  Well, then COVID-19 happened and threw everything off its trajectory.  So when you're thinking about how to invest in bitcoin or other cryptos, just remember that those are some of the most unpredictable markets known to man.

Bingo.  And this is a lesson that unfortunately I don't think anybody is going to learn--not as long as people keep coming to bitcointalk in search of an online job and don't realize how scammy some of these idiot project owners and bounty managers are. 

This issue has been going on since at least the beginning of the ICO boom, which was roughly 3.5 years ago or so.  That's when bounties started paying their participants in shitty tokens and sometimes not paying anything at all.  And what happens?  The scammers move on to start another project with another bounty, using a different name, and the cycle continues.  If people weren't so desperate for money (or greedy; it depends on the circumstances), this would never happen.  But let's face it, if you complain about something, they'll boot you from the bounty without a second though and there'll be another member waiting in line to take your place.

So the moral of the story is: don't join a campaign/bounty that doesn't have a reputable manager at the helm, and don't join unless the funds to pay the participants are escrowed in advance.  And even then, there's so much that could go wrong but at least if you have those two things in place it's much less riskier to join one of these bounties.

Bah, there's been some sort of April Fool's joke ever since I've been a member here (or at least that I can remember) and every year someone spoils the surprise by making a thread like this.  It's so much more amusing when you've got newbies pulling their hair out over some new ranking system or whatnot, but when people start discussing the joke ahead of time, well, it loses a lot of its purpose.

Now, this epochtalk thing....that's the perpetual joke if you ask me.  I don't even know what epochtalk is except that the current version of bitcointalk is supposedly going to be replaced with it.  But knowing that everything on the web has a shelf life, I'd have to surmise that by the time Theymos does roll out the new forum software it'll already be quaint and outdated, much as what we've now got is (and has been for years). 

But hey, you know me.  I'm a tech-idiot, so there's about an 85% chance that I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to crap like that.

This thread made me chuckle, because I was thinking much the same thing earlier this morning--not so much that I should have bought bitcoin earlier but that I should have held what I had.  Every time I spent it, sold it, whatever, it turned out to be a mistake over the years.  I coulda been rich!

Oh well.  I'm sure a lot of us are in the same boat.  And this is one of the reasons why bitcoin won't be a viable currency (one that gets used to buy and sell goods & services) until it becomes stable....which it probably will never be.  That said, I've already given up on the idea of bitcoin as money and see it as akin to what gold and silver are today, which are investments. 

Be careful buying bitcoin right now, though.  Any time you do that when something is at or near its ATH is super risky.

That's definitely true, although it's more of an inconvenience than a real problem.  You can still hold tons of coins on the Nano S, but you just can't display them all at once. 

OP, NeuroticFish gave some good answers to your questions and there's nothing I could add to them.  I'm not sure about the Trezor security issue zasad mentioned, and I've never owned a Trezor (I just don't like the aesthetics).  However, both have been on the market for a long time and there haven't been any major issues as far as security goes and personally I'd trust both the Ledger models and the Trezor ones.  And as long as you have the seed phrase backed up, you don't even need the physical device to have control of your coins.

Ugh, how I wish I'd had the balls and the foresight to buy one of those back in 2015-16, but I never was a fan of physical bitcoin collectables.  As far as having such a thing hanging on your wall, that's a tricky thing.  You'd kind of have to assume that anyone burglarizing your home would steal something like that even if they didn't know how much bitcoin was worth.  If I had a loaded coin like that, I'd probably keep it in a hidden safe.  I'd hate to fool around with the coin to get the private key and thereby making it an unloaded one, but that's just me.

With bitcoin above $50k, all I keep thinking about is how people were saying that faucets were a waste of time back in 2015 (and every year since then).  Nowadays you look like a financial wizard if you were claiming bitcoin from them when the price was $200 or even less.  It's crazy to think about things like that and the situation you're talking about, DaveF.  You make good points, though.

Very good point, and I saw your other thread as well.  I had some bitcoin on an Opendime recently and transferred it to another, more secure, wallet after reading others' opinions on it.  I didn't have any concerns that the Opendime had gone bad or anything, as I'd bought it not too long ago, but I started to feel uncomfortable storing any amount of coin on a device like that--even though I still think they're pretty damn cool.

Fortunately, everything worked just fine and I was able to access the private key from the device.  Whew.

I'd agree that their customer service (or at least how they treat their customers in general) is shit, but as long as you stick to their ToS and don't deposit dirty bitcoin or withdraw bitcoin to whatever sites they have blacklisted--like gambling sites--you generally won't run into too many problems with straight buying/selling.

Beyond that, it depends on how much you value your anonymity.  If that's a concern then no exchange is going to be ideal, because all the ones accepting debit/credit cards require KYC.  In that case, I'd listen to some of the suggestions about P2P trading sites and even the Currency Exchange section on this forum (as long as you have a PayPal account or some other payment system you can link your bank account to).  That's still not anonymous, but it's better than an exchange.

You could also get cash from that credit or debit card and hit up a bitcoin ATM, as long as you don't mind paying the markup.  They're very convenient if you have one near you.

This is a great example of how two people interpreting a statement two different ways can lead to hard feelings and grudges.  Sadly I'm seeing way too much of that in threads like this, and it'd be nice if either something was proven conclusively (instead of all these accusations for which I don't see much proof) or people would just bury the hatchet and let other people be as long as nobody's hurting anyone else.  And if someone was a pedophile and was doing illegal shit to that end, that should be reported--but I don't think there's any evidence that either Vod or OgNasty are guilty of that.

Yet another example.  This could be OgNasty hearing what he wants to hear, but I'm not sure.