I appreciate that Cardano has good tech in theory, and does offer advantages over ETH in its current state.
However Cardano is still more of a 'good on paper' type of coin, it hasn't been real-world tested to the extent that ETH has. And I do really rate the ETH devs, too.
I like both coins, but it's extremely premature to suggest that Cardano will 'destroy' ETH, which as well as being a strong project also has a huge first-mover advantage in smart contracts.

I think they're scared. They are starting to realise that crypto is a threat, and are torn between jumping on board to try to share some of the money, or banning it in an attempt to protect fiat. Most governments are cautious,  slow-moving and resistant to change... so they are (most of the time) attacking crypto.

Thanks for sharing that. It is a very convincing chart.
I am still a bit skeptical in general about TA in crypto, and particularly for altcoins. It does have an effect, but the thing I'm not sure about is how much of this is self-fulfilling - if enough people believe that TA signals are correct, and then they sell/buy accordingly, then the TA itself becomes the reason for the price change.

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Given the ever-increasing effects of climate change, I think it's likely that access to water will be a huge issue as this century progresses. Wars might even start over it. You look at somewhere like Egypt and wonder what would happen if some of the countries upstream started using or diverting more from the Nile, particularly as they grow in population. You look at China and the effort it puts into acquiring and holding Tibet - which is the source of the biggest Chinese rivers - and you wonder what would happen if India, also growing in population, decides it needs more of that Tibetan water...


If commercial fusion power does become possible, then maybe it will be used to resolve the issue of water shortage by providing cheap green power for water desalination plants... These plants already contribute to global warming, and likely will make the problem even worse as they expand in use due to water shortages. So with the way the world is going, if fusion does become possible, I'm not sure governments will be able to hold it back for themselves or even charge excessively for it - as energy demands and resource demands increase, providing access to fusion power may be one of the only ways to avert war.

It seems like there is a regular stream of good news about XRP. It is surprising that the price doesn't seem to move much in response, and often instead just moves with the rest of the market. Long-term I think XRP is a solid bet for success. I used to be skeptical, but have become more of a believer over time. Regardless of the arguments over whether this is decentralised or not, there is a real use case for this coin.

Buying through FOMO and selling through panic are the two worst decisions that can be made in trading. Always try to have your entry and exit points established before you jump in. Remember that entry point is as important as exit, it is not always a good time to buy! If you buy at any random point and then try to see how you can profit, then you are already 50% of the way to losing money.

Well, 2019 so far saw the market lows in February, from which we have bounced back quite strongly, and we are now in a correction phase. This correction does seem to be deeper than I'd anticipated, but we shall see how it goes. I'm confident that prices at the end of 2019 will be higher than they are now. In general we shouldn't be concerned at dips following price rises - they should be welcomed as they help to provide a solid support level for the next rise. Without them, you can get a huge bear market as we saw in 2018.

This thread was started 2 years ago, so we've now had 2 of those 5 years to 2022. The price now is lower than it was 2 years ago, which is not something I would have predicted. However ETH is still a very strong coin, and I expect it to be a big success as we move slowly towards the mainstream. I would guess somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 for ETH in 3 years.

I find these pronouncements by influential figures to be quite irritating. It's difficult to know how much of any subsequent price effect is due purely to this person having made the prediction. There is an element to this stuff that is self-fulfilling if a lot of people take action based on it.

Offering big percentage bonuses for early investors is definitely a problem. Whilst it can increase initial sales, and often creates problems further down the line. If you get half price tokens as an early investor, you then just need to sell everything at final ICO price to double your money. This encourages people who aren't remotely interested in the project to buy in, as they can sell later for easy profit. It is not a good idea for new projects to offer these huge bonuses.

I'm not sure we'll see new ATHs for alts any time soon. Yes we will likely see some substantial rises, and alts make take over the bull market once BTC starts to stabilise - but ATHs for alts is a different matter. The prices as the end of 2017 were really quite excessive and this marker peak-hype, when everything was really overpriced. I doubt we'll see that again soon. It will likely take a longer and slower period of rises before we reach that point again, but by going slower it means that prices should be more sustainable.

If a pyramid runs forever, is it still a pyramid?

A pyramid scheme can't run forever. Equally if something runs forever, it is not a pyramid scheme.

A pyramid, no matter the complexity, always involves getting more people/investment in at the lowest level. Anything that is structured like that will eventually reach the point where it runs out of new input, at which point it collapses and those who got in late will get stung.

I would say there are plenty of cryptocurrencies out there that don't really have a genuine use case. Plenty of more or less established companies are trying to jump into crypto, but many of them don't have a real use case or any real need to use crypto at all.

The reason to create a cryptocurrency is because it is the best solution to an existing problem. I would say don't just use crypto if you're doing it for no other reason than crypto is popular. It's unlikely your coin will be successful if it doesn't serve a need.

I would just go with BTC at the moment as it is still leading the recovery.


I don't agree. I think ETH is still a great project, the best smart contract coin, and the price will rise in future. Development continues on the road to ETH 2.0. All alts have taken a big hit in the bear market, but BTC is increasing dominance, which is why I think BTC is best at the moment. If alts start to take over the recovery, then I would say ETH as the most solid bet.

ETH is a great coin and is under constant development, particularly on the road from PoW to PoS.
I'm extremely confident that it will rise again. It is the best smart contract coin out there, as well as being the best altcoin in general. There is a reason that it is number 2 in cap.

I kind of agree. It is weird how there is often so much good news with XRP, and yet nothing happens to the price - this is completely different to most other coins, that jump up or down in price on the slightest rumour.


Yes, the increases for XRP when they happen do seem to be very sharp and sudden. These aren't generally maintained though, like with the rise at the end of 2017 up to $3 - that very quickly fell back down again.

I do think a part of this may be due to the fact that XRP gets huge price effects from South Korea, and Coinmarketcap has in the past removed South Korean prices from the XRP average - so there may be a degree of smoothing out of extremes going on that you don't see with other coins.

Still though, it is weird.

Alts won't die, no. I'm sure that the good alts (those that have a genuine use case) will prosper. We are just seeing a BTC surge at the moment. Remember how long the bear market was, over a year. Now that confidence is returning to crypto it is entirely natural that it starts with BTC. As the recovery continues, people will become more confident in general and will move into alts. Remember that BTC doesn't suffer as much as alts during bear markets, it is a compartive safe haven. So when people are wanting to start to return to crypto, but are still a little uncretain, it is natural that they will go with the biggest, safest coin first. Alt-domination comes later, once full confidence has returned. If you hold alts (good alts) then now is not a time to panic, instead it is a time for accumulation and dollar-cost averaging.

It's a correction. Quite a minor one, really. The drop may look huge on a 24 hours chart, but zoom out to 3 months and it is very small.

Prices have risen a lot since the bottom in February. This is just a minor pullback. Nothing to be concerned about. There is no problem, and no new bottom has been created. Don't panic; this is entirely normal market behaviour.

I have always thought of the universe as being finite but unbounded (i.e. no edge). I would say that the thing it is expanding into is time.
The analogy is blowing up a balloon. you start with an un-inflated balloon. It has a finite small surface, and you can go anywhere on the surface and eventually get back to your starting point. Mark some dots on your path. They will have a certain spacing between them.
Then you start to blow up the balloon. It expands, and the surface of the balloon expands. The spacing between the dots increases. But still you can travel all the way around the finite surface of the balloon to reach your starting point - it's just that the balloon got bigger over time.
The surface of a balloon obviously being 2 dimensional (forwards and sideways) - just raise the analogy by an extra dimension to see the universe as a 3d surface of a 4d object (with time as the fourth dimension).

Just a theory, but it's one I like.