And if you didn't bother to keep emails about logins (which most people delete), you are stuffed?

Maybe not POT or MAID, but definitely Doge or Steem. Bitcoin isn't built to be used as a currency, there is the hoarding aspect thanks to limited supply, and the transaction delay aspect and the high fees aspect. At some point an alt will make it to the big time, only one has to succeed out of the thousands, and then we're in a new chapter for cryptocurrency.

Thanks for the reply. Why don't the exchanges do what the banks do, which is take out insurance against hacking? I think Coinbase has insurance, but they appear to be the only ones.

If lots of exchanges got bespoke insurance from the LLoyds insurance market, for instance, they'd be pooling the risk and be less likely to go down in the event of a hack.

Insured exchanges would attract more users, and the exchange would make more profit as a result. Coinbase's insurance is the reason Circle found it had to compete with them, and withdrew from the bitcoin market.

80,000 users isn't much. My feeling is that a lot of them have left it too late. They should have done this two years ago, when their currency could actually buy stuff. The combination of their currency becoming worthless and bitcoin soaring in value, means they'll need wheelbarrows just to be able to purchase a single BTC.

I guess the moral of the story is Don't Leave It Too Late.

I think they add coins based on trading fees. If they think lots of people are going to buy litecoin from their coinbase wallet, earning them nice fat fees, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

You can sell them on peerhub for Steem, and then sell the Steem fof bitcoin.

https://www.peerhub.com/

A genuinely interesting article, OP.

I had no idea that new coin developers paid to get their coins listed for example.

I agree with what others said about security - it is the weak point in the exchange business model. If if the exchange owners and all their staff were scrupulously honest, it just takes one hack for people to lose confidence and withdraw their coins and stop trading.

Can you give us an idea of what sort of security measures Yobit has taken? For example, are they insured in case of a hack (which would allow them to weather the storm and continue trading).

The hivemind is also known as TA 

Seriously, while trading is dominated by people using TA, we'll continue to see patterns like this. But if there was a genuine influx of new buyers into the system, the pattern might be broken (because the new users would be coming in because of some real world problem, rather than because they were day-trading using TA).

If you were sending old coins with low number of inputs, then you would have had priority. If you send coins that haven't aged and your output is made up of loads of inputs, your 0.00009 fee is too low and no-one will confirm it.

Poloniex is a pretty decent exchange. I've had issues where their wallet wasn't in sync and coins deposited didn't show up in time - but after raising a ticket, it gets resolved within 24 hours.

I have never had any problems withdrawing bitcoin.

After experiencing the demise of several exchanges in the last three years (Cryptsy, Mintpal, plus vircurex being hacked) my tip is this: watch the withdrawal fees. If they suddenly jump, the exchange is in trouble and trying to limit withdrawls, or at least make a profit from withdrawls.

From that point of view, Poloniex is fine, their withdrawal fees are what the miners demand and no more.

Both Poloniex and bittrex regularly delist coins, so be careful you don't want to buy a coin that ends up delisted.

Trading volume for the "big ten" alts is best on Poloniex.

It is because bitcoin is rising in value that people arn't spending it, they are hoarding it. So merchants add bitcoin, nobody uses it, and they disable it.

IMO it will be an alt that will get used as currency, not bitcoin.

The price tanked in 2014 because of the MtGox fiasco, which hurt confidence (plus lots of people lost money).

And in 2016, the price dropped a bit when bitfinex got hacked.

Hopefully the exchanges have learnt lessons and have beefed up security and have taken out insurance. Confidence in the infrastructure is bitcoin's main weakness.

You are assuming that bitcoin will be the primnary cryptocurrency and that there will always be demand. But it's possible that as fees rise, people switch to another cryptocurrency and bitcoin collapses.

Nothing is guaranteed in this space.

There is a consistent price difference between the chinese exchanges and western exchanges (the chinese price is usually higher), and the difference grows when a pump is in place - so yes, it could be because the buyers are selling their coins on the western exchanges for dollars.

Both Doge and steem work great for microtransactions (because 1 doge fee in the case of doge and no fee in the case of steem). But people seem to want a coin that has low fees, handles microtransactions AND is a store of value. It's the last bit (store of value) that is the problem.

If the fee continues to climb, all that will happen is that people start using an alt to store and move money. Ether has rather blotted it's copybook, but at some point an alt will emerge that will solve most of bitcoins problems.

It only takes one alt to make the breakthrough...

The question is, which one?

Bitcoin is getting harder and harder to pump, partly because of the price and partly because there are so many ways to short it, unlike in 2013. I personally think the price will stay in the $850 - $950 range for a bit.

There isn't anything we can do. Bitcoin mining is concentrated in China because the miners have deals to get free electricity from the chinese govt. There is no way that can be duplicated in the rest of the world.

The chinese exchanges are also odd, they don't apply trading fees, and there is a suspicion that their model isn't really about bitcoin (though they want people to deposit both bitcoin and fiat to their exchanges), but using the money that has been deposited to made shadow loans in the shadow banking system. When stuff is free, you are the product.  If you think about a normal bank, it takes in desposits from savers and then makes loans. Their chinese exchange model seems to be, get people to desposit both fiat and bitcoin, and keep their money on the exchange via no-fee trading, and meanwhile that money is being used as a base to lend out to the real economy via shadow banking at high interest rates.

What will happen in the end is that an alt with a different model (one that doesn't need so much electricity and equipment to mine) and one that is better distributed geographically, will come forward and take bitcoin's crown. The western exchanges are already thinking on these lines, that is why GDAX, Kraken, and so on offer alt trading. They have basically given up on bitcoin and are conscious that an alt might take it's place and they are getting ready by having alts on their exchanges, so it works smoothly with what they've already set-up with links to bank accounts, payment processors and so on.

Bitcoin is concentrated behind the Great Firewall of China, most of the bitcoin trading takes place in China, and the price moves based on rumours about the Chinese govt and central bank.

It seems pretty centralised to me. I think it is only a matter of time where an alt with better geographic distribution breaks through. There are hundreds of alts trying and it needs just one to succeed.