Bitcoin is more money than legacy money has ever been, especially when LN starts taking over.

Second layers are the perfect way to avoid blockchain cluttering and greedy miners only out to feed themselves, and directly close the gap between Bitcoin and legacy payment infrastructure like it never even existed.

I strongly hope that with LN merchants will slowly start to move away from CC payments that are eating up like 3% of each purchase, which is ridiculous. Accepting LN will allow merchants to get rid of the fees, and even reward people using LN with a 2% discount on every purchase due to CC fees being eliminated. Everyone likes a discount, and everyone likes to use something that doesn't require third party input.

If I was Visa or MasterCard I would start worrying already. That's what you get when extortion is your core business.

Rehash Corporation is doing its thing again.

Big investors aren't using exchanges anymore, they are out of the picture; they solely rely on OTC markets to actually get the volumes and liquidity that they need, and more importantly, they aren't subject to crippled and scummy exchanges anymore, which is a major win for them. No one in his right mind other than the existing whales will stack up millions and millions worth of assets on an exchange that even we as hardcore Bitcoiners don't trust. I can't blame them for that.

Why can't a basic level study come to that same conclusion?

Mainstream adoption is a bitch, blegh......

I don't really think that altcoins have gained any sort of significance because of Bitcoin's 'incompetence'. I think the main thing that made altcoins grow larger and larger is the fact that Bitcoin has become too expensive to buy (people are too stupid to realize they can just buy a fraction), and the fact that if they position themselves in altcoins, their investments will grow at a much faster rate than when they would have invested in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is almost guaranteed to increase in the long term, and altcoins, as worthless as most of them are, will increase alongside Bitcoin, but again, at a much faster rate.

Ethereum goes through the exact same drama Bitcoin has been going through; scaling debates, congested network, high fees, front running transactions, etc. People still use it and it hasn't lost any significance yet. Maybe that will change when EOS finally starts lifting its ass up, but for now they are still the best of the rest.

New investors are already entering, but people don't see any of that. They only think that new investors are entering when the price is going up, but that's not how institutions and other large parties work; they don't buy on the way up, but accumulate as efficiently and silently as possible on the way down. They aren't going to buy thousands of coins in one go and bump the market up badly, they likely buy a few coins every now and then and let that pile up during months of accumulation.

The market will get a proper boost, but only when more weak hands are shaken out, which isn't really the case since people with a severe virtual loss are dedicated to hold.

And then I haven't even mentioned what happens through OTC markets.

Important thing these boobie articles don't take in mind is the fact that just because Bitcoins aren't moving on-chain, it doesn't mean they aren't being used or that they are lost.

I have bought plenty of physical Denarium coins this year that I funded with a certain amount of Bitcoin, all to be used in case there is no internet or electricity available, or maybe in case I just need the privacy that much. These physical coins can be spent thousands of times without anyone even noticing because nothing happens on-chain, and I'm pretty sure that I am not the only person with this form of use and way of thinking.

Exchanging private keys happens, we just don't know how often, and that's exactly the purpose of this utility; no one should ever know.

People support Bitcoin because they don't know how to properly price an altcoin. They also don't care about their technological engineering.

Bitcoin is as simple as it can be, but this simplistic piece of technology has the least obstacles to struggle with, and the least to worry about when it comes to its future potential. If altoins weren't tied to Bitcoin, they wouldn't even be worth a tenth of what they are worth right now. People seem to think that altcoins are worth what they are worth, but that's wrong; altcoins are worth what they are worth because Bitcoin donated that value to them.

An altcoin can just keep its ratio at 0.01BTC for ever, but will still increase in value due to Bitcoin increasing in value. Litecoin is the perfect example of that. It was worth like 0.02BTC back in 2013 which was like $2 back in the days. Right now Litecoin is worth like 0.0125BTC which translates into $85 today.

Bitcoin also wasn't meant to heavily speculate with, but it happens. Why? Because people are greedy. Governments are greedy as well; they don't care when you are using it, how you are using it, and for what purpose you are using it, they just want you to pay your due taxes, and to locate your wealth and cash flows.

All governments do that. Do you seriously think that Japan's friendly Bitcoin regulations are implemented to stimulate Bitcoin itself? Their main incentive is to scoop up billions and billions of tax income they otherwise wouldn't have. In other words, whether it concerns people here or governments, the main incentive is to fill up our pockets. It's something we have to accept since there is nothing that you can do about it. Just move on.

I would like to 'safely' point out that the retail influence on the market in 2018 has never been this low.

The decline in the price was mainly caused by old hands cashing out, altcoin whales using BTC/USD pairs to cash out, and the manipulation that we are experiencing.

People quite often forget that altcoin whales cashing out do severely affect Bitcoin's price. Altcoin markets in no shape or form can even remotely handle semi large traders to cash out, so what's the only viable alternative left? It's using Bitcoin's liquidity to cash out, which as we can see has been exhausted already due to old hands dumping a certain part of their coins. In other words, Bitcoin's liquidity is being 'attacked' from plenty of different directions.

You don't see positive news because you only stick to reading shitty news sites that don't want you to read anything other than negative and biased articles. If you don't put effort in digging through what's happening within this ecosystem yourself, you will only get to read what these news sites want you to read. LN growing and enjoying more merchant adoption is pretty bullish, more money enters through OTC markets is pretty bullish, etc. Open your eyes and start doing your own research.

While people keep focusing on the price and continue to be depressed, Bitcoin itself and its ecosystem are doing better than ever before. 

It doesn't matter what Ripple does, they don't have the support of the community and won't ever have. If you see how many deals they managed to settle, which is actually quite impressive, but failed to have it translate into XRP to increase in value, it should be a clear enough signal that this token and the company behind it won't be able to convince the market to jump on it.

Litecoin time on time again beats XRP in volume, and that while this coin doesn't really have much of a purpose or active team behind it pushing for adoption. In other words, people don't give a shit about XRP.

The market will obviously react, but I personally think that there is less room for concern.

We can't stop the fud that will be flowing through the market, but we can think without jumping on every bit of news that we read nowadays. I honestly believe that Satoshi's ancient coins are no threat to Bitcoin in any way. I strongly believe that the coins people are afraid of, are burned due to the ethical fact that Satoshi wouldn't want to abuse his economical advantage over the rest of the market, and the fact that no one will ever be able to identify himself as Satoshi. No private keys = no possible way to prove anything = best outcome for everyone here.

Imagine, it happened years and years ago, all with the knowledge to let Bitcoin grow to what it is today. And it did. Without Satoshi we wouldn't be here and we would still be subject to governments and banks terrorizing our lives. This is also the first ever time that a normal person can generate a tremendous amount of wealth which else wouldn't be possible.

Don't write off newbies that quickly. I'm quite certain that a lot of them haven't sold but hold their bags in the hope that the price will recover. If you are virtually down so much on your investment, you don't even care anymore; you just hold till the chart candles start become green on a weekly basis again. What's there to lose? You can only gain I would say.

I know a few people that are down significantly on altcoins because they thought it was a good moment to buy the dip at the time Bitcoin was hovering around the $15,000 level, and they aren't selling. They just continue with their daily life and don't pay attention to what the market is doing, all in the hope that next year or the year after when they check back the price has gone up again. Maybe that's the best way to move forward for newbies, because it could technically work.

Bitcoin's market is nothing. Don't forget that while Bitcoin's total supply is over 17 million right now, only 2 or so million of these coins are active in the way that they move at least once or twice a month, where a very large chunk of it is being used for altcoin trading purposes as well. In other words, there probably is less than 1 million coins in direct liquid BTC/USD circulation. This pool of coins is only getting smaller, and with institutions triggering the next fomo driven bull run, even $250,000 is peanuts.

Sure, it will trigger another major sell-off, but that's normal considering that you want as many old hands to sell their coins as possible to have new investors take these coins over. The more old hands dump their coins, the stronger the market will be in the long run.

I don't trust anything that requires me to hold coins on their platform, but I choose to do occasionally because I am using it for trading purposes.

I however always cash out all my coins once I'm done with my trading acitivities. The only value that always remains on-exchange is fiat, but I'm not too worried about that. I accept all potential negative outcomes and that's the most important thing. Unlike other people, I know what risks I expose myself to and accept them. Bitstamp has been my main exchange for years and I'm still loving it. The most stable and neutral BTC/USD exchange in today's crypto world.

I strongly hope that I'll be proven wrong in the long run.

Correct, but considering that most wealthy individuals are just interested in the exposure, they can just as easily use cash settled instruments where they will never touch one single satoshi. There needs to be a serious mentality shift where people will start to value Bitcoin like how they value Gold. With Bitcoin you can own the actual asset without the bulk that people usually store in safe deposit boxes. If you also take into consideration Gold's currency aspect that never really took off, but Bitcoin's currency aspect did and will do even more with LN, it's all up to the people to realize that.

Of course it's not coincidence; institutions using CBOE & CME aren't stupid. They shorted the crap out of Bitcoin, which at that point was the only right thing to do.

Bitcoin spot markets don't care about futures. I'm sure that eventually when the market becomes way more professional than it is right now futures will become an important part, but not now. In regular markets spot prices follow secondary markets because they have surpassed spot market volumes by orders of magnitudes. That's not the case with Bitcoin.

If you think it does already, then explain my why a combined $200 million in futures trading volume (where it's purely cash settled) can affect the spot market that at least generates $4 billion in trading volume every day?

Same here. BCash pushed me to the absolute limit with creating new backups and whatnot, and I'm certainly not looking forward to do that again. I kinda regret having done so with my 2013 backups. It was some sort of a trophy for me knowing that these coins haven't been moving for more than 4 years. Currently I still have nearly all BTG (and 100% of all other forks) and looking at the latest price, I probably won't ever have to create new backs for this fork.

Correct. Imagine how many times systems have been acting weird where people and businesses thought it was related to a virus or whatever. They probably kept secure erasing their drives or even buy new equipment, but the problem kept popping up.

The main thing is that we shouldn't fear that what we know about already (because we can relatively easily weapon ourselves against that), but that what we don't know about.

It may actually take a while. The demand is increasing, but we don't get to experience any of it (yet).

Most large buyers are no longer using an exchange to enter the market, but head over to the OTC market, all to avoid scummy exchanges and insane premiums due to the lack of liquidity. Traders have never been able to buy or sell a large number of coins at a fair market price through exchanges, and even today that's still the case, which just points out that there is no trust in these platforms, and there is no way I can see things improve.

Miners use futures contracts (not referring to CBOE & CME futures) to settle deals with buyers to secure the best possible price for their minted coins. That way they are be able to deal with price drops even more efficiently. The same happens in plenty of other non crypto industries. This is the only use of futures contracts that I consider to be a worthwhile addition to crypto.

Yes, people's mood and market view is as volatile as the price itself is.

If we follow the patterns of the chart after the correction kicked in, we may be up for an attempt to $7000 and well above, but if nothing changes the trend is still down. The only certain thing about the market this year is that we constantly experience lower lows and lower highs. The only bullish aspect is that there (for now) is quite a strong level of support above the $5500'ish low we marked back in November of last year.

I find $5500 actually a fair price and would consider everything below that an extremely strong buy, and I'm sure there are more potential buyers thinking alike.

Bitcoin wealth distribution isn't much different from legacy wealth distribution. If one thing became clear throughout the years, then it's the fact that the Bitcoin elite holds more coins after a correction than before, and this year after year. I technically don't even need to buy Bitcoin anymore; I can just keep waiting for bull runs that I can short, and there you have it. If I look at my net result of my short last year, then it's a gain of 125%. In other words, for every 1BTC that I shorted, I gained an additional 1.25BTC.

I'm a small fish, imagine how much whales managed to gain during the recent correction. I'm quite certain that they are closer to 200% with thousands and thousands of coins. Above all the spot profits they likey have shorted Bitcoin through futures as well.

Bitcoin won't ever have a fair distribution of wealth. The higher the price is, the lower the amounts are that people can afford and need. The elite can hold 98% of all Bitcoins and that 2% is still enough for the average joes to use it as currency and store of value.