Sorry to hear that.  I applaud you for prioritizing your schoolwork.  You don't want to give up the important things in life for crypto trading.  In the future, though, I would suggest that you only invest in coins when you have time to follow them closely, at least if you're looking for a short-term profit.  If you're in it for the long haul, then that's fine.  But any time you're trying to make a quick profit, you need to be able to dedicate a lot of time to watching the charts.  I hope everything works out for you.

I wouldn't say that analysis can prevent such things from happening ever.  Certainly doing some in-depth research before investing in a coin will save you from most scams and/or coins that simply aren't going to be worth anything.  But there are always going to be people who put a lot of effort into making their scam coin look good.  After all, the payoff could easily be in the millions.

Yes, there have indeed been many articles, bitcointalk threads, and public proclamations that bitcoin is in a bubble.  It does start to get somewhat old, but, for better or worse, as long as price keeps going up at a fast pace, many will keep screaming bubble since such headlines grab readers' attention, instill fear and doubt (and hence drama), etc.  However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Fears of a bubble/crash probably slow down investment somewhat and keep the market from overheating too much.  If everyone believed that bitcoin was the perfect investment, they would all go out and invest, we'd get the craziest spike ever, and then we'd have the craziest crash ever because there wouldn't be anyone left to buy.  Ignore the media noise, stay the course, and practice smart investing principles.

Oh yes.  From what I've read, it sounds like there's still a lot of uncertainty.  There appears to be a contingent of veteran bitcoiners who seem to be sure that segwit2x doesn't stand a chance.  They make some good points, and I hope they're right.  While I want faster transactions and lower fees, I think the best thing for bitcoin would be for segwit2x to die a very quick death (or at least show that it's not going to replace BTC).  Market price will probably determine everything.  And while B2X futures spiked to around 1/3 of a bitcoin a few days ago, they've steadily declined back to around 1/5 since then.  As long as the price of B2X doesn't support many miners, it won't take hold.

New investors definitely stand a good chance of getting confused, but even veterans may have some issues.  It's taken me some time to get a handle on all the aspects of the fork and the politics behind it.

This, I think, will depend on which fork "wins."  If BTC continues to dominate, it will likely get even stronger as this ordeal will instill confidence in its resiliency.  If B2X wins, it may severely damage the reputation of bitcoin as such an event will be seen by many as a hostile takeover/coup.

While many miners and merchants have indicated support, such support may evaporate quickly if the rest of the community doesn't follow.

So you noticed that, too, huh?  Those bitcoin ideals went out the window about $6000 ago.    I think that a lot of the core believers/first adopters of bitcoin probably still cling to those ideals.  But most people involved in bitcoin now are here to make (fiat) money.


As long as you secure your own bitcoin, it's one of the safest investments you can have.  I worry more about losing my bitcoin (sending it to the wrong address, forgetting my passwords, etc.) than about it being stolen.

With a few exceptions (like probably China and maybe Venezuela and Russia), I don't think that most governments see bitcoin as a threat to their power.  Where they do try to regulate it, I think they're more concerned about the potential for abuse (e.g., fraud, money laundering, etc.), as well as scams (e.g., a lot of ICOs).

You're talking about the futures contract that the CME group is going to introduce, correct?  First, that is a pure derivative.  There will be no actual bitcoin trading through CME.  But that doesn't mean that it won't have a huge impact on bitcoin.  A bitcoin futures contract will allow large financial institutions to easily take a particular side (price will go up or it will go down).  Once they do that, they could make up all kinds of news/FUD to manipulate bitcoin into going the direction they want it to go so they make money on their contracts.  They might also find ways to buy into bitcoin directly in large amounts and hoard/dump coins at the right times to make their futures contracts more profitable.

It's not huge yet, but I think their power over bitcoin is growing.  The more they become interested in it, the more influence they will have over it, for better or for worse.  Right now, it's simply a question of whether or not the big banks will get involved.  The more they talk about doing so, the more bitcoin's price is going to go up because that will further legitimize bitcoin and increase adoption, not to mention bring in millions--maybe even billions--of dollars in investment money.  The more the banks shun it, the more negative the impact will be on price, now that more people are thinking that big banks will get involved at some point in the near future.

My advice is to wait a little bit and see what happens.  We've had a huge run-up in the last several days.  And if you look back for about a week at an intraday chart (like the hourly or 30-minute), you can draw an almost perfect trendline under price starting around $5800 and going all the way up to about $7200.  That trendline was just broken about 7 hours ago, which means we're likely in for at least a short-term correction.

Yeah, I know what you mean.  I've been thinking about this for some time now, and I think this is the first I've run across it in a thread here.  For the longest time, everyone has of course been wanting price to continue to go up, and many are looking forward to the big financial institutions getting involved, as that will like contribute to a further price increase.  However, with all of their money will come all of their power and influence.  Everyone complains about how they manipulate all of the other financial markets of the world.  Cryptos will be their next target.

I'm really annoyed by the way the segwit2x group has gone about this whole thing.  I'm tired of the high transaction fees, and I'm tired of how long it sometimes takes to get the first confirmation, so I think it would be nice to have a bigger block size.  But the way they're going about this, the divisions it's causing within the community, and the fact that they don't seem to care are just not acceptable.  They should be trying to work with the bitcoin core team and the rest of the community, rather than trying to circumvent it.

Especially with how fast price has been increasing in the last day or two, we will probably see at least some kind of significant correction.  But here's something to ponder: could the correction occur before the fork, rather than after, as many seem to believe.  Keep in mind that traders/investors are usually trying to guess the next move.  If everyone believes that the price is going to shoot up before the fork and drop after, what's the logical thing to do?  Invest now to take advantage of the rise and then get out before the crash, possibly even before the fork.  I have no idea if things will happen this way, but it's another perspective (disclaimer: I'm holding most of my bitcoin, at least for now).

I agree.  The market looks like it may be getting overheated in the short term.  We need a correction or some good consolidation in order to continue upward.  If we don't get that soon--if we blow through $7500 and then $8k in the next day or two, we will be risking a much greater correction.

This is good advice.  You might be able to make a lot of money by investing now, but if you know that you're going to be worried about your position, then either you should stay away from bitcoin altogether (if you're nervous, then you almost certainly will end up panic selling at some point), or you should wait for the next crash to happen and then invest incrementally.

Yeah, you have to be really careful.  If you are constantly looking at the price (I'll admit that I'm guilty of that, too), you risk making rash decisions based on emotions rather that logic.  Also be careful about what charts you look at.  If you're in it for the long term, don't look at a 5-minute chart.  Look at the daily or weekly.  Otherwise, the noise will drive you crazy.

Yes, I think it will definitely happen.  Way too much effort has gone into it for it not to happen.  But I'm uncertain that everything is going to be so good, especially with a lot of the bitcoin core developers calling for the failure of the segwit2x chain.  By a few months after, yes, things will probably stabilize, but there could be a lot of chaos and turbulence before we reach that point.

The miners will go where the money is.  Even if many initially switch to the segwit2x chain, if the price of B2X doesn't catch up with BTC, they will go back to BTC, especially if there's a downward adjustment in difficulty from people mining B2X for a while.  Right now, though, I really have no good feeling for which way things are going to go.

I agree that we really need a good period of consolidation or we risk greater market instability.  I'm also a little concerned about the spike that broke $7k.  The pace at which it did that, and the mini-crash that followed, make that move feel like a blow-off event.  That could mean at least a short-term pullback or worse.

I like this way of thinking, and I think you're absolutely right.  Bitcoin's current story is only going to take us so far (I have no idea how far, but certainly it's limited).  In order to climb into the 5-digit price range and keep increasing, something fundamental is going to have to change.  Amazon adoption would be a good start.