I'll contend: futures will affect the direction of bitcoin price movements. With 100x leverage, whichever direction of value, up or down constitutes a path of least resistance, will determine a majority of movement. Prior to the introduction of leverage, traders may have targeted future price movements based on analysis of market mechanics, majority-wise. Post leverage era, whatever percentage gains are available from harnessing normal price movements utterly pale in comparison to 100x leverage, which could mean we'll see a siginificant shift in trading strategy.

Looking at crypto price movements post futures, the added volatility and price swings could be attributed to shifts in trading strategy which target small percentage moves towards a path of least resistance rather than the large percentage moves which were targeted in the past based on market mechanics projections.

Studies have shown christmas lights consume more electricity than bitcoin. According to polls only 2% of americans have used bitcoin of crypto. Some mining ops in china utilize hydroelectric power which is both cleaner and cheaper than coal. Russia proposed powering their bitcoin mining via nuclear reactors.

The idea that bitcoin consumes hideous amounts of electricity (in comparison to other things) while being fueled exclusively by environmentally damaging power sources such as coal, is primarily a media contrived view.

Bitcoin is both powered by environmentally clean energy sources and probably doesn't consume more electricity worldwide than personal massagers.

I don't know if we'll ever see 8x growth again. It would probably be easier to find 8x growth in altcoins, the stock market or other investments than in bitcoin. That could be yet another reason behind the recent decline. Right now the main cause holding back the price of btc could be linked to transfer fees. There may be concern that bitcoin's network capacity may be too low to support significant growth. There's a question of how that issue might be factored into the overall value of bitcoin.

Defining the REAL bitcoin could come down to a darwinist, survival-of-the-fittest, crypto coin battle royale. The REAL bitcoin will be determined by which bitcoin survives. I'm throwing my support behind Satoshi's vision and dream. I'll never use a forked version of btc, even if there is money to be made by doing so.

Forked coins require new traders who don't know much to sustain their dump cycle. Hopefully there will be a very limited number of individuals who will buy artificially pumped forks. And hopefully we can rely on the internet for accurate and up to date information on forks, which will help people from buying in when the price of artificially pumped, market manipulated, forks are in their dump cycle.

It is possible that there is decent evidence for the existence of UFO's contained inside declassified military documents. I seem to remember a number of US military documents involving UFO's being declassified around 5 years ago. There's no need for UFO's or anything else to justify economic conditions or future repurcussions. The only thing required is ensuring economic policies remain "unsustainable" if indeed economic crash is their end game.

The sad truth may be that there is zero need for UFO's or any contrived effort being made towards bringing about centralized economic change. Such a precedent has already been decades in the making and it is possible we could soon reach a point of abandon-all-hope, no return, if we haven't already.

That chart and depictions of market cap can be misleading. Bitcoin can sustain much larger sell offs than altcoins due to its higher trading volume and demand. Those pie chart slices of btc forks will decline somewhat quickly if or when a big sell off occurs.

Most agree bitcoin forks will continue as long as it remains profitable to do so.

I would boycott coinbase for supporting bitcoin cash, if I still used coinbase. I think forks dilute the value and brand name of bitcoin. Forks are part of the get-rich-quick, adopt short term benefits to the exclusion of long term planning speculation which fails to create lasting long term value. In short forks diminish the long term HODL capability of bitcoin, for the sake of short term speculative profits. Forks may not a healthy thing as far as bitcoin or crypto are concerned.

I think the panic stems from bitcoin being defined historically as a "store of value". Most HODL'ers expect the price of bitcoin to incrementally increase over time. The sudden and surprising dips in price, which lack a good traditional explanation or cause have to rock some people and cause them to question everything they thought they had learned about bitcoin over the years.

It might be compared to the subprime mortage crisis of 2008. Many believed the value of american real estate could never decline. Properties in the USA had incrementally increased in value for years, similar to bitcoin it was considered a store of value to many, a "safe" investment.

For those who lived through that era and saw american real estate HODL dip severely in value, being related in small terms to the worldwide economic crisis of 2008. They know there could be a few parallels between subprime mortage ceasing to be a HODL and bitcoin price patterns emerging moreso as a speculative market than a HODL near the end of 2017.

Of course, the speculative investors could abandon BTC and crypto once they realize their short term trading strategies aren't the most compatible with bitcoin's nature and it being a long term store of value. There's no guarantee speculation wins, here.

Bitcoin has a tendency to hit its peak near the end of year. It is possible we've already seen the high and won't reach a new high until near the end of 2018. The introduction of bitcoin futures and coinbase support for bitcoin cash has definitey changed trading patterns and price movements, which needs to be taken into consideration. Volatility and the size of price swings is also much higher.

Buying at a relatively low price, say $12k at the moment, could be an "ok" strategy over the short term.

The increasingly speculative nature of bitcoin may have detracted from its historical role of being a store of long term value.

The standard response to this may be that a person has to spend years and lose a lot of money, to gain experience in trading, before they gain the skills and experience to consistently make money.

Trading is like many professions. It takes time to learn. A person starts at the bottom and works their way up the food chain. I've heard some claim that a person should expect to learn $10,000+ before they learn to consistently make money trading on the stock market.

It might be possible to avoid losses by trading in small amounts to gain experience. Taking $20 and trying to turn that $20 into $200 by trading on exchanges or in markets could be a good approach. Starting out as a beginner in attempting to trade large sums of money probably isn't a good idea. There are some people who manage to turn a good profit in their 1st trade. But consistently is probably the most important thing when it comes to trading and that usually takes time to learn.

I honestly haven't 100% kept up with the US tax bill. The impression I got was that it would cut the corporate tax in the USA. The media attempts to apply negative spin to this, claiming its a "tax cut for the rich". The USA has the highest corporate tax in the world, which greatly reduces the amount of money invested into the united states economy, job markets and real estate. There's a side effect where reducing the corporate tax has potential to increase the amount of investment capital poured into the USA, which could have tangible gains in terms of job markets, the economy and other sectors.

The second part of the tax bill is its tax cuts on the poor to middle class. Ronald Reagan did something similar under his campaign. Reagan gave poor to middle class americans tax cuts to shift the tax burden more squarely upon the wealthy. That is what Trump's proposal for tax cuts represented.

Another aspect of the tax cuts are the counter intuitive nature of taxes. Sometimes tax cuts will bring higher tax revenues due to decreased tax evasion and tax loopholes. The rich might view a 30% tax as being too high and unfair and so they might resort to tax evasion. But if taxes were cut to 20% many would view that as a fair price to pay, which could cut the number of wealthy who resort to tax evasion, tax shelters and similar practices.

Global recession is imminent.

In some regions, rent prices look like this:



Wages around the world, look like this(flat line):



(The only ones receiving wage hikes are one percenters, elites and the wealthy.)

It doesn't take a genius to figure out inflation has outpaced wage growth over decades. Inflation outpacing wage growth causes rent and food prices to increase faster than consumers ability to pay for things.

This instability and imbalance leads to unsustainable economies across the world, which in turn leads to recession, stagnant markets, weak job markets, poverty, class warfare and other negative implications.

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Bitcoin and alt prices moving in opposite directions is a new trend. Historically, when the value of bitcoin increases, the value of alts normally follows. This new trend we're seeing where investors pull money out of bitcoin and invest it into an alt like bitcoin cash and we see the prices moving in opposite directions, this is very new.

Coinbase says they receive about 100,000 new sign ups to trade crypto currencies, everyday. I think this new trend is a consequence of that.

What we're seeing is large, opposing direction, price movements which are brought on by the nature of speculation. The introduction of crypto futures stacked on top of that, could also add to the volatility and chaos. The long term outlook of this is key. I don't have any good ideas regarding what the long term view of the market will look like.

The best options could be undervalued altcoins or bitcoin when its priced relatively low.

When alts like ethereum, dash or litecoin haven't been pumped and haven't gained value for a long time, they're a good buy. Ideally the best option would be knowing when the pump and dump of say litecoin is coming. That option is too difficult and impossible to predict however. Targeting alts when they become undervalued is one good play that has been consistent over the years.

If bitcoin drops to say $10k-$13k it might be a good buy. The price has fluctuated a lot recently. That volatility is better for day trading as there are higher potential profits to be made off of higher price percentage movements. Of course higher reward is typically correlated with higher risk and so the price volatility definitely adds a higher risk factor as well.

One of the advertising slogans for bitcoin is "be your own bank". This could also apply to all crypto currencies. Like someone said bitpay is a good option for business transactions which need to be confirmed relatively quickly. Although depending on what type of adult service you run, this might not work well if transfer fees are high and you need fast confirmation.

A better option might be to denominate your adult services in an alt crypto currency which confirms more quickly than bitcoin with lower transfer fees. Bitcoin's network traffic and activity may be too highly saturated.

I can't recommend anything but there are plenty of alts like dash, litecoin and so on which could be undervalued.

I know that in the past chase bank discriminated against porn stars and workers in the adult entertainment industry by closing their accounts for no reason. Its not surprising that paypal would do something similar. I think they disapprove of the adult entertainment industry as its one of the most successful ways to run a small business and some elites may not approve of this as it could upset the status quo if a pornstar or adult entertainer became rich like Jenna Jameson did. They don't want people climbing up the food chain which could upset the balance of things so they put unfair policies which try to prevent adult entertainers from being successful.

There are also strip clubs which issued their own crypto currency which could serve as a decent example if you plan something similar.

Theories which might explain the recent downturn.

Theory #1 With Crypto Futures opening, traders are creating maximum leverage short orders to profit from their sell offs, which pushes the price down Crypto futures could also be increasing the number of coordinated efforts to push the price of bitcoin down to benefit from leveraged short selling. If I remember right, there is up to 100 times leverage in crypto futures. This means that profits can roughly be amplified by up to a factor of 100. At this point it might be easier to push the price of btc down, than upward. Path of least resistance.

Theory #2 Traders are selling BTC and investing in altcoins like litecoin Recently litecoin was in the news for its large gains. Alts have always been easier to pump, especially the ones which haven't been pumped in a long time and are undervalued.

Theory #3 Introduction of bitcoin cash support on coinbase is causing traders to pull money out of bitcoin and pump and dump bitcoin cash instead There could be a lot of establishment and banker money devoted towards lowering bitcoin while raising bitcoin cash upwards. This could represent one route of attack against bitcoin, simply having another fork takeover.

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I haven't seen much evidence of ethereum or other alts having better network capacity than bitcoin. Alts only appear to be better suited to handling transfer fees due to their volume and usage being substantially lower. The idea that bitcoin is "falling behind" in comparison to other crypto could be an ethereum marketing gimmick which was outed by eth cat apps.

Part of the issue with btc transfer fees could involve wallets recommending far higher transfer fees than is necessary. I think I sent a transfer a few weeks ago with a fee of something like 0.0003 and it worked ok. The fees wallets are recommending could be exaggerated in value, although I'm not 100% certain on that.

I don't know if a solution exists but maybe we can organize and use lower fees on transactions to force miners to accept fees that are steadily decreasing, rather ones that are doing the opposite?

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It looks to me like investors are pulling money out of bitcoin, which may have hit a bit of a ceiling, and pumping alts like litecoin and bitcoin cash which are easier to pump and dump with their lower network activity and smaller trading volumes. I think that's the reason for bitcoin's latest price decline but we'll have to wait awhile for confirmation.

Surveillance measures in the article you posted track user data across exchanges. I'm not certain that will make a difference as some exchanges already have KYC (know your customer) checks in place when dealing with sums larger than $1k.

There is also concern that if the EU launches a database containing personal data, hackers could steal that information the way that millions of credit card details are leaked online. It could decrease the security of bitcoin/crypto and increase incidence of identity theft, etc.

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Good eye.

It is also possible the news story about "crypto being outlawed" was intended to push the price of bitcoin down as part of a market manipulation scheme.

News stories have one of the biggest effects on bitcoin price. And so "fake news" is a likely avenue which will be targeted in the future by traders with big influence or insider connections.

There's a long list of traders who have invented news stories in an effort to manipulate the price of stocks and other things over the years. One reason financial advisers and stock pickers often default to a "I don't currently own a stake in this business I'm recommending" stance when giving advice.

I think that there are a few competing concepts presented by fiat and crypto currencies.

Fiat is implemented with unlimited supply. This gives regulators more flexibility. They can print more money when economic conditions are poor and to some degree "optimize" supply. On the flip side, unlimited supply can lead to hyperinflation. Unlimited supply can also empower bad economic policy and poor decisions made by world leaders, under the assumption they can "simply print more money" if deficits or debt become too large or unmanageable. It might be said that deficits and debt are large today, partly because of fiat currency having unlimited supply.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have bitcoin which is algorithmically limited and has a finite supply of 21 million coins. Its limited supply isn't as flexible. BUT if bitcoin were utilized as a national currency, it would demand higher fiscal responsibility. World leaders could not simply print more money if they mess up the budget. A nation printing its way out of debt wouldn't be feasible. The idea and implications of finite supply, and the way it contrasts with fiat's infinite supply could be one of the most relevent things bitcoin and crypto has to offer.

In terms of abstracts, these are interesting points which could bear more discussion and debate.

Wage growth has stagnated over the past few decades. Economists admit inflation has grown at a faster rate than wages in recent times.

This low wage growth might be correlated with the decline of value in real estate. The principle behind it being that real estate becomes more difficult to afford as wages reduce in contrast to the effect inflation has upon prices. Simply put due to inflation, prices are growing at a faster rate than wages. This effect is felt most strongly in items of larger value such as real estate and home markets. This precedent could apply to many aspects of economic slowdown observed recently.

Banks have tried to keep real estate demand constant by reducing loan qualifications to allow even those who can't keep up with mortgage payments to qualify for loans. Governments too have shifted tax revenues towards programs which help people pay for real estate(if I remember right).

I think one of the main reasons real estate markets appear stable involves heightened foreign demand. Wealthy chinese and foreign businessmen buying up real estate in the USA could be one of the main reasons real estate prices aren't declining.

The potential for real estate prices to decline off of inflation growing at a faster rate than wages causing real estate to become more unaffordable over time, could make real estate a poor investment.

There might be good potential for house flipping or real estate development, which can take cheap land and multiply its value. But in terms of just straight real estate investments, I'm not certain if its a good move.