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I posted a link to an old article I didn't realize was old, please ignore.

If China does ban the exchanges, the US would likely follow sometime later and ban bitcoin exchanges in the US. And, if the US does that, you can expect Europe to follow suit.

Normally the US would lead in this type of situation but China is leading because there are many VC investors in the US who have billions invested in bitcoin companies and in bitcoin itself. They have slowed the work of the SEC. The SEC has declared virtual currencies are securities (as a result of the DAO fiasco) and so the SEC has the power to ban bitcoin exchanges on its own. If China ban or closes exchanges, it opens other countries up to doing it because they don't want to look like they are allowing criminal activity that other countries are banning. If that does happen, you can expect to see bitcoin drop into the hundreds.

If China does close or ban exchanges, I would expect that is just the start of bitcoin being banned by major governments.

the number of unconfirmed transactions is returning to normal

This has been going on for years now. There were complaints about it years ago but the miners said too bad, that's the protocol. They are right. There's always alts.

It isn't so bad. China is only about 80% of bitcoin trading and China only has 20% of the world's population. If China shuts everything down, you still have 20% of bitcoin trading and almost 80% of the world's population. Unless other countries, like the US. follow suit and start banning things. But the odds of that happening are probably in the next year is only 50% or so.

Why should bitcoin go up in price? There are people with 10s, 100s of millions and billions of dollars in bitcoin they got for essentially free years ago. They can sell some, half or all their bitcoins and buy stock, bonds, cars, homes, businesses with that money. Many already have, I know a few. They never have to work again and their kids never have to work again. They have so much money, it is hard to manage it all.

All they need to make even more is for someone to buy at these prices. The people buying now, what do they get? A number in a database. What can they use that number for? They hope to sell it to someone in the future for a higher price.

Why would someone want to buy it for a higher price in the future? Because they think it will be even higher.

Is there a reason it should be? Because the number of bitcoins is limited? Each time bitcoin forks, the number of bitcoins doubles. The list of other "coins" someone could buy is endless. There is no scarcity here. Is bitcoin actually being used to buy things? Look at the message on this board. Nobody is talking about what they are buying with bitcoins. The stores that do take bitcoins do it by having an exchange convert them to dollars first. The transaction fees make micro-transactions impossible.

Explain why someone should buy a bitcoin for thousands of dollars right now.

I'd also add that you can't really compare the price of bitcoin at the start of the year to the price today because each bitcoin at the start of the year has turned into Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core. You need to add the 2 of those together to get the current price. Even if Bitcoin Core was $600 right now, bitcoin would still be up for the year if Bitcoin Cash stayed the same price.

on bitcoinity. On coinmarketcap it is $3372. It is jumping around pretty quickly.

I call the bottom at $1900 in 5 days before it stabilizes for a least a little bit.

This is still way up for the year. It started out the year under $1000.

It is climbing pretty quickly. Went up 5K since the start of this thread.

If you were China and you controlled mining and you had large Chinese exchanges that were shutting down, wouldn't you make sure the miners processed the Chiense exchange transactions and not other transactions? Wouldn't you put the Chinese exchange transactions at the front of the list?

The miners choose which transactions to process. Mining is basically Chinese because Chinese miners own a majority of the hash rate.

Because of that, they can choose whose transactions to verify and whose not to verify.

Imagine there were some big Chinese holders of bitcoin who wanted out. They could get their transactions approved while other transactions were not approved. If they could keep non-Chinese transactions unapproved, they might keep the price up.

The Chinese sellers would be able to sell, other sellers wouldn't. It's a good idea and because it is a good idea, I would imagine that's the way it would work.

A couple months ago, the United States SEC stated that virtual currencies were financial securities and subject to the laws of the SEC. If the SEC agrees with JP Morgan that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, it would make virtual currencies illegal in the United States. Do you feel bitcoin prices would still go higher if that happened?

i know someone who recently sold $5,000,000 worth of bitcoin they bought for around $500,000 to buy a $15MM house. When you bought bitcoin, you gave money to him. He thanks you.

He now has his money and his house and you have a number you hope to sell to someone else in the future. Someone needs to pay for all these mansions and there's nothing better than buying a mansion using money from greedy people who want to get rich by doing nothing but buying a number.

When you bought your bitcoin, you gave $4600 to someone who probably bought their bitcoin for $40. They are now happy and have your money and probably invested that money in the stock market or put it in a bank account.

You now own a number in a transaction list in a chinese controlled database (chinese miners have a majority of the hashrate and thus control the blockchain).

There is no law that says you ever need to get any value for what you bought. If you get nothing back for your $4600, there is nothing you can do about it and nobody owes you anything. When you deposit money in a bank, you are loaning money to a bank and legally, they are required to give you back your money with interest. When you buy a stock, you own a portion of a company that you hope is profitable and you legally own that portion of the company and it gives you various rights to vote, etc. (depending on the stock).

When you buy a bitcoin, you have no rights. You only have the hope you can sell it to someone else. You might be able to sell to someone for $1000 less than you paid for the bitcoin right now. But maybe if you go to sell on an exchange, the exchange will simply keep your bitcoin itself and shut down as MtGox did. Maybe you'll try to sell your bitcoin on a chinese exchange and the government will block it. Maybe the price will fall again before you sell it. And if there is someone with a billion dollars in bitcoin trying to sell their bitcoin, it will take them years to sell out and the price will continue to drop during that whole time.

I wish you good luck selling the number in a chinese database you bought to someone else for a higher price in the future.

There aren't 21 million bitcoins. The number of bitcoins is unlimited.

Why? Because right now there are 2 bitcoins. bitcoin cash and bitcoin core. Bitcoin forked into 2 bitcoins. There are now 42 million bitcoins. And it can split again and again. There is not "official" bitcoin because bitcoin itself is decentralized. Each time it hard forks, it splits into another 2 bitcoins, both of which can be mined. And this can go on forever.

So, there is no limit to the number of bitcoins and there is no "official" bitcoin. It is just whatever bitcoin fork is popular at the time.

I also have a question. Let's say you bought 100 million dollars worth of bitcoin and it went up to a value of 1 billion dollars.

Would you sell at that point or hold?

When you buy a bitcoin, you are essentially buying a number in a Chinese database. The Chinese miners control a majority of the hash rate and thus control all bitcoin transactions. If they want to block a specific wallet from transactions forever, they can by simply never processing transactions from that address.

To make money, you need someone to buy your number for a higher price. The moment you buy, your money is gone and sent to someone else. Bitcoin itself has no value, your only hope is to sell it to someone else in the future. For someone else to buy your bitcoins, they need money and need to be willing to spend it on bitcoins.

There are people with millions of dollars in bitcoins. When they sell, they need to find someone with millions of dollars to buy those bitcoins and who are willing to buy them at the current price.

All you need is one person with millions of dollars in bitcoins to sell and the price tanks. That is what happened with Ethereum a couple months back. The price dropped to near zero as someone with millions of dollars in Ethereum tried to sell out. They weren't able to sell as as the price dropped to near zero as they couldn't find enough buyers.

The best thing for the people who own lots of bitcoin to do if they want to sell is to sell slowly over time. This means the price doesn't drop all at once, it drops slowly day after day, week after week. If you have multiple people trying to sell large amounts of bitcoin, they tried to sell faster than the other people so the drop can happen faster.

In any case, the price can go down and not recover. If you had a billion dollars in bitcoin and you wanted to sell, it would take you years to sell and during that time, the price would keep dropping. And if someone else was trying to sell a billion dollars of bitcoin at the same time, the price would drop even harder.

And if you had a billion dollars in bitcoin you were selling, you'd want people to believe the price will never go down and they should hold so you can sell before they do.

Can you point to me 1 person who 10 years ago put all their money into "fiat cash" and put it, say, under the bed.

Nobody does that. Why? Because a currency is not an investment. A currency is what you pay for things with and is what things are priced in.

Nobody holds cash as an investment. They hold:

- stocks
- bonds
- real estate
- cars
- boats
- fine art
- airplanes
- LLC stakes
- loans
- etc.

None of those are fiat cash. In fact, many people borrow "fiat cash" and buy assets so they are net negative (short) fiat cash. They have a mortgage on a house they need to pay off over time. They are negative "fiat cash"

So, the whole premise of what you are talking about is completely wrong. Nobody "saves fiat cash". Even a bank deposit isn't "fiat cash" as fiat cash has a zero return. It is always worth the same. A dollar is worth a dollar.

Nobody today is getting a paycheck from 20 years ago. They are getting a paycheck today. Paychecks have not been "devalued".

In 1950, the median American family income was $3,216

In 2016, the median American family income was $56, 516

A dollar is not an investment. A dollar is a dollar. A dollar in 1950 is worth 1 dollar today. No change.

Things in the U.S. are priced in dollars, that's why we say the dollar is the currency of the U.S.

Nobody holds dollars as an investment. People hold stocks, bonds, real estate, art, cars, etc. as investments. Those are PRICED in dollars. They are not dollars. That is the difference between a currency and an asset.

A currency does not "devalue" assets. A currency is what assets are priced in.

A bank deposit is not a dollar. A bank deposit is a loan to a bank. You get paid interest for putting money in a bank unless you don't because you have such a small amount of money that the bank's overhead is too much for them to pay you interest. Fixed income is not "devalued" over time, it pays interest over time. Whether you choose to reinvest that or not is up to you.

Such an incredibly stupid statement I wouldn't even know where to start.

How about this:

- paychecks have not been "devalued" over time
- cash savings has not been "devalued" over time
- fixed incomes have not been "devalued" over time

I guess that's a start.