You can purchase real estate for Bitcoin, using sites such as Bitpremier and there is nothing unusual about it. But all these sites use a third party payment processor to immediately convert your coins to fiat currency. You are paying the amount in Bitcoin, but the prices are pegged in either United States Dollar or Euro and in the end the individual who is selling the property will be receiving the money in fiat. Due to the volatility associated with Bitcoin, it is not practical to accept it directly for such transactions.

The last time that I checked Bitlegal, there were a few dozen countries being given in green, which meant that Bitcoin was completely legalized in those countries. These included Japan, United States, and most of the European Union member nations. So your argument claiming that only 4-5 countries have made it fully legal is not valid. Also, during the past few months there have been encouraging signals in this field and more and more countries are looking forward to make the cryptocurrency completely legal. The death of the ICO market was a boon, as it prevented a lot of scams which would have otherwise tarnished the reputation of the market.

I would not read too much into it. If you check the calculations, you can see that the maximum gains were accrued over the first two-three years, when the exchange rate was as low as $220 per coin. You can't expect the same level of returns now, as Bitcoin market is more mature and is already having a market capitalization of close to $180 billion. Since it is already having a large baseline value, it is not realistic to expect Bitcoin to give the same sort of returns that it gave in 2013-15 period.

You need to consider a few facts while talking about the demand-supply equilibrium. For the last two years, there have been a few market movements which suppressed the exchange rates of Bitcoin. In 2018, the Mt Gox trustee (Nobuaki Kobayashi) dumped a huge amount of BTC in to the market and this had a negative impact on the prices. Also, a few of the hackers and ransomware operators were also dumping huge amount of coins in to the market in 2018 and 2019. This seems to have slowed down now.

At first glance, the impact from these dumping events may not look significant. Bitcoin is having a multi-billion USD daily trading volume and therefore these events should not influence the prices. But the reality is far more complex. A large part of the daily volume comes from day trading and inflated order books.

Cryptocurrency market is changing like crazy.. Bitcoin dominance has fallen by almost 2% during the past two days. Altcoins (especially ETH, XRP and LTC) have gained market share.

Total market cap: $270,565,158,535

Bitcoin: $174,492,458,839 (64.492%)
Bitcoin forks: $13,702,016,703 (5.064%)
Stablecoins: $5,440,261,471 (2.011%)
Altcoins: $76,930,421,522 (28.433%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -1.290%
Bitcoin forks: +0.056%
Stablecoins: -0.269%
Altcoins: +1.503%

No need to get discouraged. There is no guarantee that there will be a major bull run this time, just because that was the case during the previous two events. Even during the second half of 2019, a lot of the whales were accumulating Bitcoin, in anticipation of the block reward halving this year. So there is also a chance of the prices crashing once the event happens (just like what happened to Litecoin, after its block reward halving in 2019). If the prices don't spike immediately after the halving event, then a lot many of the investors will start dumping their coins. MY advice is not to worry about what you have done. Rather than that, concentrate on what you are going to do next, in the next few years.

ROFL... Nobody is blaming the altcoins because they are losing value. The altcoins are being blamed, because many of them have turned out to be scams and the promoters have indulged in unethical practises to make profits from them. On top of that, there have been heavy market manipulations with many of these altcoins. And the worst part is that the promoters usually make their exit, once they are able to profit out of the market manipulation. In the end, everyone loses out, including the investors, bounty hunters and even the exchanges where these coins are being listed. The drop in exchange rate was directly caused by these factors and this is why many of the coins have become dead and many others have lost more than 95% of their value.

I don't regret my decision. I was having an account with BTC-e/Wex.nz and I was planning to purchase Dash from there. When I made the initial plans (mid 2015), the exchange rate was around BTC0.012 per coin. Later, I cancelled my plans and kept the amount in BTC for long-term storage. Now the exchange rate for Dash is around BTC0.0125 per coin. That means that I would have made a profit of hardly around 2%, even if I had gone for Dash back then. I agree that DASH had a major bull run in 2017, when the exchange rates increased by almost 10x (against BTC). But that holds true for most of the altcoins. Even Ethereum went up by almost 20x (from BTC0.008 to BTC0.145). And I am someone who decided not to participate in the Ethereum ICO of 2014.

This was one of the coins that I considered for investment back in 2015/16, before eventually deciding against it. The reason why I decided not to invest in Dash back then was primarily due to price manipulation. If you check the charts from 2015 and 2016, then you may find several pump and dump cycles with this coin. Also, I thought that it was a bit overpriced. Anyway, this coin has failed to fulfill the hopes from the investors. During the past two years or so, it has lost more than 90% of its value.

I am not sure about this. In investment, there is always a saying that you should never try to catch a falling knife. Investing in altcoins right now is exactly like trying to catch a falling knife. To put it honestly, I don't see any sign of a recovery in the altcoin market. The market share continues to decline and a lot of users are stuck with investment in altcoins. These people don't want to book their losses now. But eventually, they will run out of patience and get rid of their holdings. There will be a bloodbath in the market then.

A few months back, there were only around 1,500 coins and tokens listed in coinmarketcap. I think that they have now changed the minimum threshold needed for a listing. Obviously this means that a lot of the shitcoins and dead coins have found their way into Coinmarkecap. Looking for a good altcoin among these thousands is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Out if this 5,000, at the most 1% or 2% may be good for investment. You can expect the remainder to die out in the next few years.

This is the mistake that I did in 2013. At one point, I had close to 70 BTC in my wallets. But I got too greedy, and invested in a few shady schemes. As a result of this, I ended up losing around 50% of my coins. As a result of my losses, I became demotivated and sold a majority of the remaining coins in 2015 and 2016, when the prices were extremely low. If I had held on to my coins, then I would have resigned from my full time job and retired peacefully at some tropical paradise.

Just take my advice. Be satisfied with whatever coins you have in your wallet. If you earn some more from freelancing or airdrops, then good for you. But never fall victim to any ponzi schemes.

I would like to remind everyone what happened during the previous two block reward halving events (2012 and 2016). Very few users had the fortune to be in Bitcointalk during that time, and I was one of those few people.

First Block reward halving (28th November 2012):

For most part of 2012, the exchange rates were hovering around $5 per coin. However a few months before the event, the exchange rates started rising. At the time of the halving event, the price was $12.31 per coin. And within the next 12 months, an ATH of $1,261 per coin was reached.

Second Block reward halving (9th July 2016):

By mid 2015, Bitcoin had lost almost 80% of its value it had attained during the ATH of 2013. However, from this time onwards, the prices began to go up. At the time of the block reward halving, the prices had climbed to $650 per coin from around $220. And within the next 18 months, an ATH of $20,000 per coin was achieved.

I first got my BTC in 2012, when the prices were around $10 per coin. I refrained from selling any of them, during the ATH of 2013. However, I faced a lot of financial crunch during 2015 and had to sell 70% of my coins at around $250. I sold around 10% during 2016-19, and still have the remaining 20%.

I am not sure whether we can compare the two, because Bitcoin is an asset mostly used for investment nowadays and fiat currency is mostly used as a medium of payment. The purpose of fiat currency is different from that of Bitcoin. So it won't be proper to say that anyone investing in fiat currency will be getting negative returns (just because we are not supposed to "invest" in fiat currency). Now please don't misunderstand me. I am not a fan of fiat currency and for the last 8 years, I have remained as a loyal user of Bitcoin. But I need to clarify certain things, so that the new users won't get confused.

And this is the risk factor while investing in the Binance Coin (BNB). If something happens to the Binance exchange, then it can become worthless. Now the chances are very remote, but operating a cryptocurrency exchange is a very risky business. Just because an exchange is very large in terms of daily volume and number of users, it will not give it any immunity from the hackers. And secondly, the annual revenue for Binance can get affected, from competitors and market risk factors. For example, after a lot of hype the IEO market is undergoing a slow down now. And this will definitely have an impact on Binance, since IEO listing was one of the major sources of revenue for the exchange.

There is a major development regarding Bitcoin SV.

During an interview to BlockTV, Mr. Wright admitted that the recent bull run of Bitcoin SV was a manipulated one (the prices rose by 300%). However, he refused to clarify whether he was involved in the manipulation or not. During the same interview, Mr. Wright was asked whether he has the private keys to Satoshi's coins or not. Now this was his answer:


Do we need any more clarification to prove that this scammer is not the real Satoshi?

Well.. you can't say like that, because the virus is having a huge impact in China. Almost 50 million people are in lockdown, in cities such as Wuhan, Xiaogan and Wenzhou. The total economic loss til now is expected at somewhere in the vicinity of $150 billion, which can increase significantly in case the outbreak is not contained. The number of infected people are increasing at a rate of almost 3,000 per day and the disease is spreading to previously uninfected areas with each passing day. Western media also believes that China may be under-reporting the number of cases and deaths.

Under these circumstances, how can you say that the impact is not big? 

This is a very interesting coin. I checked the charts and I could find 3 major pump-and-dump cycles, and several minor ones. During the last pump (which occurred less than two weeks ago, and the prices jumped from $0.001 to $0.036 (+3,600%) in just one day. This coin is highly susceptible to manipulation, due to multiple factors. First of all, the market capitalization is very low ($250,000) and therefore it doesn't take much effort to do manipulation. And secondly, this coin is only traded in a few exchanges, such as EtherFlyer and Mercatox.

I am willing to donate some amount to help the victims of the Coronavirus. But I would like to ask a few questions. Why the billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg and Gina Rinehart refuse to do charity? Why is it always the responsibility of the middle class (who bears the heaviest tax burden) to make charitable contributions? I am not ignoring the contributions made by some of the billionaires such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. But the vast majority of them doesn't even spend 0.1% of their annual earnings on charitable causes. On the other hand, I know a lot of middle-class individuals, who regularly spend up to 10% of their annual income on charity.

I am surprised by the rise of BNB. What makes it different from any of the other copycat shitcoins? If we talk about the technology, then there is nothing unique with BNB. It is just an exchange token, and the code is plagiarized from the other existing projects. And not surprisingly, it has no usage outside the Binance exchange. Now I have to agree that Binance is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. But so was Cryptopia. And it closed down all of a sudden in 2019, after hackers targeted the exchange. What is the guarantee that the same won't happen with Binance? And what will happen to BNB in case the exchange shuts down?