altcoins like ethereum which have gone up because they were pumped are now dropping because now they are getting dumped. that is why real big players never take altcoin market seriously and they only play the market to make more money out of it and invest that profit into things that really matter.

as a matter of fact, i do believe that part of the current bitcoin price drop is thanks to all the altcoin dumps that we are seeing these days. many panic sellers want to get out to fiat and most altcoins don't have a fiat market so they have to dump alts for bitcoin and then cash out to fiat and that can create additional sell pressure in bitcoin market.

just because price is not rising, or because it is falling, you can not call it a bubble! a bubble was here when price reached $20k and it is long corrected. i would call this more of a panic sell than even calling it correction.

we may yet see lower prices too since the major buy support was broken but still that doesn't make it a bubble either.
unfortunately the big rise of last year has left bitcoin vulnerable and all the FUDs are making things that much worse. and only time can fix this.

it seems like it has been affecting bitcoin price today as it finally could successfully break the big $9000 buy support and drop below it. maybe i missed some additional FUD flying around but in any case we have a drop now.

the real question is when all of these dramas end?

your reasoning is not correct but you come to a much better conclusion instead!
bitcoin price will continue to rise because first of all it has a limited supply with a good cap at 21 million coins. second the demand for it is rising and as long as that is true, the price will continue to rise. so far there is no reason for the demand to drop.
however, temporarily you can see prices drop because of how market is still small and it can be manipulated and all the weak hands increase the volatility.

none of these are important in the final block/blockchain size and it is completely irrelevant to your proposal.
what matters are the Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs). and even if you wanted to create such a block that has all these "balances" you would want to keep these UTXOs instead. and there is how that has been changing: https://blockchain.info/charts/utxo-count

that's easier said than done.
when it comes to reality and when you actually want to do it, you will start thinking twice, then get doubtful and eventually greed kicks in. what FUD does is that it hastens this process.
and if we are talking about a newbie then they just jump into the end stage and hold off buying until it is too late. that is why there isn't that much buying happening right now. all the FUD is messing with people's heads

it has nothing to do with centralization, and i think OP used the wrong word here. it is about being Open Source and while Linux is open source, windows isn't. and that makes a big difference, and when you hear about how new version of windows has lots of backdoors and even privacy invaders installed on it already your trust in Microsoft vanishes.

what you call "clean knowledge" is already out there, and it is already spread. if anyone wants it, they can find it very easily. using any search engine you will find proper answers to any question you want to know about.
but the problem is that people are not seeking knowledge really... they are only interested in the drama and not much else. and unfortunately they waste a lot of time reading reddit, twitter, news sites,... instead of spending some time reading the bitcoin wiki for example.

is it really "every time"? i have no proof but i think it is not every time, for example last year a couple of countries like Japan regulated bitcoin and no FUD was spread.
i believe it is mostly timing + regulation in certain countries. for example if it is China, everyone is going to panic no matter what! it is as if they are programmed to panic.

besides at the end of the day we are talking about bitcoin, a decentralized currency. regulations should not even matter for it. at least not as much as the panic goes.

no not really!
instead what i do is that whenever i spend bitcoin i try even harder to make that amount back. it is usually earned back from trading and sometimes from doing some jobs online and working more. but i have never gotten greedy when it comes to spending bitcoin.

there is still a lot of FUD around and that is preventing the rise from happening but i still wouldn't agree with the title OP chose, there never was a breakout to be fake or real! price is still in the same price range and it is stuck.
although despite all the FUD price is holding up nicely. and i say if it stays in $9k range for the next 24 hours we can expect testing of $12k for the third time, this week.

i strongly believe that in a couple of years we will see two different but both huge types of exchanges.
one of them will be the centralized exchanges but only regulated ones with strict rules and they will be under regulation and control of the government. so they will become big because of the higher security and nearly zero chance of them scamming.
the other one will be decentralized exchanges which will become huge because they are decentralized and nobody can ever control them and also there is near zero chance of anybody scamming you!

that is the weirdest explanation of arbitrage that i have ever seen, to tell the truth.
basically arbitrage trading is a simple method of trading by taking advantage of "price difference" between exchanges. it  does NOT increase the number of coins on one exchange! that part in your comment doesn't make any sense to me.

two things are for sure when performing Arbitrage:
1. you can do it without automation or a bot but it will be so much harder.\
2. you certainly do NOT need a telegram group to tell you what to do, and if you feel the need then you should stay away from arbitrage. 

maybe the same reason why they get involved with a whole lot of other shady stuff, the greed!
it actually seems to be a strong driving force in the cryptocurrency market. people even buy bitcoin out of  greed, they want to get rich overnight, and don't get me started on altcoins and their pump and dumps.
so the same thing is true about  bitconnect and all the similar projects. people get involved with them because they think they can make money, they sometimes even close their eyes on facts because all they see is money!

if you look at some charts of bitcoin and other altcoins you will find your answer.
what happens in those charts is that if bitcoin rises, altcoins may drop. but if bitcoin drops they all definitely drop.
the other thing to look at is the rises that altcoins have. these rises happen only during a short time. for example they rise over the course of a week and then for a couple of months the coin can continually drop.

the conclusion is, altcoins are not good for investment so diversifying into them is not a good idea. but short term trading altcoins can be very profitable.

it is a new technology so unless it is put to test it can not be assessed properly.

you can see that bitcoin has been a very good and functional currency so far but as the adoption of it grows and as the spam attacks occur, it could not handle all the pressure. same goes with all of the altcoins, they fail the same or ever worse in some cases.
so now that we had this test we move ahead to find a solution for it. so far we are working on Lightning Network as one of the solutions for this problem.

good news is that bitcoin being open source and decentralized, it is evolving and being improved to fix the issues it is facing.

one thing about technologies, specially new ones is that they spread very fast. their adoption curve is usually like an S curve and in case of bitcoin this is very true. and the characteristics of an S curve for adoption is that it is pretty slow at first (like the past 9 years) then it slowly speeds up and finally becomes so rapid that it reaches its final stage in a very short time hence creating the vertical part of the S curve.

believe it or not there is a lot between making millions and losing everything

depending on your goals and your skills you can be in any of these options. you can earn a little, lose a little or earn a lot or lose a lot. so decide which one is your goal and which one your skills are most useful for.
yes it is possible to do all of this, and no it is not gambling at all. having risks and sometimes even being unpredictable doesn't mean it is gambling. you, as a trader, are always in full control and like a ship you have to steer your investment to make the best out of every situation, whether that situation is a storm or a clear windy sky!

you just have to learn the "how tos"!

it doesn't need to do that but that is what happens!  bitcoin is still young and the course of its adoption will be like this. in fact this picture that keeps being posted each time there is a drop (which is out of context every time) is very relevant and on the context here.



price will be volatile until the mass adoption. these steps will be repeated and each time the ATH will go higher and higher.

on top of that, the way exchanges work and how small they are causes these swings to be that much bigger.

i wouldn't call this weak, it is more like uncertainty than weakness. all thanks to the KobayashiGox FUD that is creating panic. the X and Y banned bitcoin news got old so a new type of FUD surfaced...


1% of supply is nearly 170k BTC which is worth nearly $1.7 billion! if we were at a point where dumping 1% of supply on the market crashed it then it would have been awesome. if such amounts are dumped on the market price will go to $10 area. it may not last there but it will certainly drop that low!