I can't agree more with that mindset, but we are dealing with a lot noobs and get rich quick minded people who believe that Bitcoin can become worthless overnight. They don't see in Bitcoin what we see in it, and for that reason they won't be able to process that sort of mindset. These people adjust their mood based on how the market moves, and whales are taking advantage of that right now.

People don't realize that whales taking the price down isn't necessarily a bad thing. If they are making sure the market decreases to levels they are comfortable buying at, we can buy at these levels too, and that also applies to them pumping the market to unload coins. They dump the market for you, and lift it back up, that's what I consider to be a perfect service. Whales are actually very generous people.

Thank you Mr. Whale.

I am quite certain that we are near the bottom of this cycle, from where we will only increase further. The price might slightly dip below $7000 for a brief moment, but that will directly be the last time we have seen $6xxx levels. Every bottom after that will be +$7000.

That being said, I don't expect a crazy market this year. People should lower their expectations significantly in order to prevent disappointment. Bottom development indicates $400-$500 jumps, which I don't believe will change any time soon, so from $7000 to $10,000 means there is plenty of ground to cover, and for that reason we will keep dealing with sub $10,000 levels at least till Q4 of this year. It doesn't mean we won't jump over $10,000 again, but we'll reset back below that.

Trade the market or just chillax and do something else with your time.

The market going down because of bad news is just becoming somewhat of a nonsensical statement. It's just that everytime the price goes up or down everyone looks for a reason, but there is none in this case.

Are you selling? I guess not.
Am I selling? No.
Are noobs selling? Maybe some, but the majority aren't.

I asked crypto enthusiasts around me whether or not they are selling, and the answer is no. Mentality largely is HODL. There isn't much activity going on now in the market, which whales gratefully exploit in their advantage. If the price goes back up, then it's purely because of them lifting the market up, and not because people gained back their confidence and whatnot.

It's however good to see that Bitcoin remained fairly stable, where altcoins have been hit quite hard. People complain about Bitcoin being boring, but in these cases they would have hoped that they didn't hold any altcoins.

Bitcoin down 1.4%
Ethereum down 6.5%
Ripple down 5.4%
BRoger down 7%

It's not very likely. The thing with governments lowering tax rates is that they aren't actually being lowered. If they lower the highest tax bracket from 55% to 40% (which is still crazy high), they will make sure that the tax rates elsewhere will be increased to make up for it. In the end it's still the people paying for it, but just through an alternative way. Governments have to keep up their reputation of being a tax biatch.

You just have to ask yourself whether or not it's worth paying such insane rates. What did the government do for you that they 'deserve' a 55% cut of your profits? They haven't done shit. They are only making life difficult for you and they are being rewarded for it to keep doing so for plenty of more years. Tax evasion happens for a reason, governments know that but they don't care. They will make you pay what's due in every possible way.

Bitcoin is doing better than ever before, and you talk about Bitcoin needing to survive its current challenges?

As I said, Bitcoin is doing better than ever before; banks are getting warmed up for Bitcoin in various manners, potential ETF's that we can welcome this year, Coinbase's coin backed fund that we will welcome this year, regulations legally opening the doors for institutions are about to hit the market, etc. All fantastic developments that will help add value to Bitcoin's utility and market, and yet people listen to the mainstream media nonsense.

What challenges are there for Bitcoin to be so serious that it justifies using the term surviving? I think it's people themselves that are facing challenges (mentally) that they need to overcome, not Bitcoin. Once whales are bored at current levels and reset the market back to +$8000 levels, all the noobs will miraculously gain back their confidence.

The initial interest rate might be 10% per year, but if you fail to pay your monthly settlements, your 'interest' rate will increase to +25% and that for the first year only. If it keeps dragging on, you initiate a situation where even if you end up paying your monthly settlements, it's impossible to get rid of this debt. This is how a lot people end up in big financial problems that they won't ever be able to solve. Debt is the root of evil.

People forcing themselves to buy whole coins without having the financial means to do so are plain stupid. Don't be one of them OP.

This. Definitely deserves a Merit.

It depends on how you look at things. In most cases every payment service requires you to pay a fee of some sort. Credit card fees, depending on the service you are using, charge either the sender or the receiver (in some cases both). These fees are usually like 2-3% in total. If we take the average of that (which is 2.5%) and calculate the fee over an amount of $1000, then it means your fee is $25.

Bitcoin's current fee is like $0.05-$0.10 regardless of the amount. Lightning fees can be as low as zero (0).

For you Bitcoin might not be that much of a convenient way to settle these transactions, but for others it might be. SA and other countries in that region are dealing with high numbers of unbanked households. I can definitely see it working there. We probably won't ever find out with how authorities likely aren't going to release any data regarding this.

It will help the government become wealthier, potentially.

Satoshi did the initial work, but he, with all due respect and credits, is no longer part of the process, and I am happy that Bitcoin doesn't have one main character like Ethereum or Bcash.

I personally don't see any value in this, but if they proceed anyway, then they just need a BTC and they are done. Using only the BTC instead of something that's shaped like a human, contributes to its permissionless nature, and that's exactly what it should be praised for. Human input is poison to everything in the world as we have seen.

It may not exactly be a very complicated process, but at least one that's insanely time consuming. You are asking the exchange to dig up a private key (which they have hundreds and thousands of) belonging to your address, which is basically like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Considering that it is your fault entirely, you can't do anything other than granting the exchange as much time as it needs to find it.

I can't say how long it will take them, but you can be sure of the fact that you will get your funds, don't worry.

Easier said than done. Eventually the far majority of the coins, and especially tokens, will become obsolete and redundant. ICO tokens are purely hype driven at the moment, and for that reason it's a horrible long term investment. If you also take into consideration that governments are somewhat trying to crack down on the free market aspect of them, then it's even less of an interesting investment.

Ethereum is what people consider to be a good coin (one of the best available, people say), but this 'good' coin needs to find another use and purpose aside from ICO's. If ICO's remain Ethereum's main value and use generator, I honestly don't see it end that well in the forthcoming years.

My personal favorite coin aside from Bitcoin is Monero due to its privacy features, but I am realistic enough to know that while it fundamentally is a groundbreaking coin, it isn't a good long term investment due to regulators likely going to hit all privacy focused coins real hard.

Bitcoin is the only coin that offers stability. Altcoins can't offer that, regardless of their technical engineering.

Bitcoin is legal in Japan. But even if it wasn't, Bitcoin doesn't need the government's blessing to become a legitimate whatever-you-want-it-to-be tool. Who is the government to decide for me what's legitimate or not? I can figure that out for myself, don't need anyone doing that for me. It's always governments this and governments that; can you guys actually think on your own or do you always need governmental input?

Letting a bunch of criminals (yes, governments are criminals) decide for you what's good or bad isn't the right way to move forward. Bitcoin gives you financial freedom, which is an extremely powerful tool. Governments controlling people's wealth means they control the people, it's that simple. Bitcoin breaks through that. It will take time for people to realize that, but eventually more people will become aware of how rotten the system is, and that they have been supporting it with tax payments for decades.

Bitcoin is breathing and becoming stronger with the day. You only look at the market to see whether or not everything is fine, while that's not the right way to do it. Never has the market actually mirrored the background developments that all add to Bitcoin's utility.

I seriously like how the market has been moving in the last couple of months, because it will make people appreciate increases again. Bitcoin fundamentally is like any other market where supply and demand is the main principle. If there isn't a reason to increase, it shouldn't increase. It's that simple. In the meanwhile, whales use this extremely thin market to side bet this market by having it jump up and down whenever they want (clearly visible).

Overall, there is zero incentive for people to sell, and whales have zero incentive to let it drop below the critical points.

Everything that is breaking local laws is a potential target. If we look at how chaotic this market is in terms of exchanges not doing anything to become compliant, cloud mining services not doing anything to become compliant, authorities have a lot to target here.

Coinbase is the perfect example of how an exchange or service should be working. They only list coins and products of which they know are compliant in every possible way. They choose for legal stability and quality instead of doing what other exchanges are doing and list any crap coin they can find.

I expect some serious regulatory cleaning to happen in the forthcoming years when it comes to the coins that exchanges are listing. The coins I am sure of they won't stand a chance are those focused on privacy; they will be wiped out within a few years. I also expect a significant decrease in ICO's that are running on top of Ethereum due to regulations kicking in.

Not really. The only people believing it is related to Bitcoin are noobs themselves, and they don't ever contribute to this market. In other words, we haven't lost anything in that regard. Those with more brain capacity being able to actually think, will know it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, but just the greedy nature of people. I don't even find these cases interesting anymore. It's always the same; people use these options to become rich. It's like the poor man's way to become rich, but they only become poorer.

Again, people with brain capacity know that free money doesn't exist, and thus these investment options are a scam by default. Low IQ people will take these risks, even if they know it's actually a scam. They don't have any skills or market understanding they can utilize to achieve their goals. These people have got what they deserved.

It's not that people always start dumping after bad news pops up. People start dumping after whales initiating a dump, which then triggers noobs thinking it is indeed bad news and that the price is going down because of that. If whales don't do the dumping first, bad news mostly won't have that much impact at all. It's called the manipulation game where they mess with people mentally. The short term market is completely rigged.

If whales want it to go up over $8000 right now, they can make it happen and have it stay there as long as they want it to stay there. Everyone will be looking for reasons why the price has gone up, and will come up with institutional capital that entered the market, or that it is good news from regulators, while it's just the whale squad doing it. The smartest kiddies will learn from their mistakes and adapt to how brutal this short term market is, and completely ignore it if they are just long term holding.

How would it be more relevant if someone only writes Bitcoin is going to the moon or whatever? We already have plenty of these moon boys here. And more relevant for what or who will it be, for you? Grow a thicker skin and welcome yourself again in the speculation section when you are ready. People are free to share their opinion and ask questions, regardless of how noobish or fudish or not relevant you consider it to be.

That's the only thing of your post I agree with.

Huh? What have developers to do with this? This is about how a sick fuck miner used the blockchain for disgusting purposes, very likely to damage Bitcoin's reputation, but it's not working. Miners have the ability to include data in blocks, not developers or users. Bitcoin's network at that point by far wasn't as large as it is right now, so it required relatively low effort to get it done. I wouldn't even be surprised if it was a government or bank having done so.

All these actions against Bitcoin just show how much of a powerful tool it is. The elite doesn't want people to obtain any freedom. They want to control your wealth, they want to control what you can spend your money on, what you read and what you see. Without Bitcoin we would probably remain stuck in this shitty system for many more decades.

Institutional money is already in, somewhat. It comes in through proxy businesses that aren't subject to strict regulations. It might not even be 1% of the total capital they are ready to dump into crypto, but it is at least a start.

Important for people to understand is that institutions are pretty late with entering this market, so the capital that they already have in here is enough to keep the price relatively 'low' through manipulation, all to grant themselves a better entry point in case they are allowed to pull out their big guns. I am sure that it will happen this year. Coinbase is actively conversing with regulators to get things done.

Institutions will not pay top dollar prices, they know what they do to make people pay top dollar prices, and they eventually will.

It is very likely related to the intentions of the exchanges. Crypty's Paul Vernon is a blatant thief that just couldn't handle dealing with all the crypto asset values under his control. It's natural for a thief to do what he does the best, stealing when the temptation of an easy jackpot is there.

Yobit's intentions at this point are more focused on generating income from noobs, but that doesn't mean they will never end up walking the same path. I hope not of course, but this exchange just isn't very convincing, and with their Russian roots they might even be part of a larger network of exchanges that are functioning as cleaning point, just like what BTC-E might have been.

BTC-E never ran with people's money, but they got raided by the authorities.

It probably has something to do with the changed terms from the email provider towards crypto in general. If you use Gmail, then that will very likely be the main reason your exchange emails are transferred to your spam folder. I use a local Bitcoin exchange from time to time, and when I buy some Bitcoins they usually send the receipt to my email, and they are all ending up in my spam folder as well. I'm using Gmail.

This. I do the exact same thing. I was already paranoid before crypto, but now it has peaked to an impossible to plummet all time high.