A scammer siphoning out money from common people in the name of cryptocurrency - police did exactly what needs to be done! There's no other opinion! But the problem is actually much more deeper than we can think!

I am sure this Ugandan crypto scam is not the first ever crypto scam we have seen! In recent times, Plustoken pulled out a bigger scam worldwide! Majority of the ICOs from 2017 were used to fill their owner's pocket and scam people! Do you see the trend? Most disappointing is the involvement of the term "cryptocurrency" in all these scams which is constantly destroying the reputation of cryptos among the common mass!

That is effectively pushing the crypto community back in time and in bad reputation worldwide! I sincerely hope the situation becomes better in future!

It's not a technical meetup mate! If you see the agenda associated with the list of speakers, it's purely on cryptocurrency and various aspects of crypto trading. No one really talks about blockchain use cases there! India is going through a big political turmoil right now and cryptos have been pushed to the least priority by the court. So I don't think that it will be much of an issue from legal perspective!

17th is Tuesday and I am sure office goers will not be able to attend such meetups during the weekdays. It is always better to plan such thing on weekends for maximum turn out! I could have visited if it was planned on weekend!

The major reason why gold backed token didn't work well is not due to the entry barriers that you have mentioned! they are definitely true but doesn't really affect much! The main reason is the easy availability of gold and the digitization of this industry. Anyone can buy 24k gold using their smartphone, from a government registered seller, at the market price, without having the hassle of handling physical gold. It can be bought in any fraction and with smallest amount of money! After accumulating a certain amount, you can ask for delivery of that gold as well!

Then why would anyone take the hassle to invest in a crypto token with zero brand reputation and belongs from a foreign location? I wouldn't do that! I would rather choose the above method to get exposure in gold investment! That's easy for anyone!

Does it make sense?

Based in your requirement, I can give you few options,

1. MEW aka MyEtherWallet. It is completely web based wallet and you control the account seed.
2. Metamask. It's a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Fast and secure.

These two are the most recommended wallets as per your requirement. However, I would personally suggest you to use Atomic wallet which is a desktop wallet and lightweight. Your control your money and seed keys. That's what I prefer to use!

Hope this helps!

He is surely powerful but not that powerful to influence entire congress house of representatives! There's nothing ti be worried about just because he has been appointed to a crucial role within the government! IRS is already doing more damage that this guy! They have recently introduced a new tax form where tax payers will have to mention their crypto assets to the government!

If US tries to restrict anything on their soil, exchanges will be moved to a more crypto friendly countries like Malta or Singapore! Chill!

I can add one more unofficial signal to the list. This is the trading volume of Bakkt specially designed for physically settled bitcoin derivatives.

https://www.theice.com/products/72035464/Bakkt-Bitcoin-USD-Monthly-Futures/data?marketId=6137543

Institutions are showing interest due to the attractive pricing of bitcoin right at this moment! Even though it is almost impossible to get a holistic picture of consumer interest of an unregulated market like crypto. But the current price level is quite tempting even for individual investors!

I wouldn't term it as a good or bad advice because of a simple reason - destiny! I strongly believe that destiny drives us all and if destiny says that I will die as a billionaire, I will become one! We as a commoner, don't know how and when a coin will reach its ATH and we wouldn't know when to sell it off to book profit!

Similarly, while many people sold off their holdings back in later 2017 and brought home hard cold cash, there were another group of people who entered the market and suffered major financial loss due to their decision!

So it's not a clever thing to look back at past and regret for what I haven't done! It's always better to look forward and decide what I can achieve! Crypto market is one of the prime examples!

It's just a greedy bunch of deep-pocket investors invested millions in Nvidia shares to make some quick buck assuming their gaming division is doing just fine! When their assumptions are not met with the reality, they filed a lawsuit to make up the losses! Like one of my fellow community member already pointed out, GPUs are also needed for data science applications - which is not big but still has a market and its growing rapidly!

Thank God, bitcoin doesn't have a centralized authority controlling the network. Otherwise millions of lawsuits would have been filed after the great 2018 crash!

Probably, we are not seeing the kind of influx of institutional investors in crypto market the way we had envisaged it, but there are other reason to it which is completely overlooked by the article author! And that is the "lack of regulatory framework" around cryptos among other reasons! Here institutional investors doesn't necessarily mean only US based corporation, rather it talks about global enterprises doing business worldwide. 

US has their own crypto guidelines, even Japan has also provided the same. But what about others? Majority of the countries are still confused about their next move towards crypto! The number of global enterprises from such countries are staggering and they are effectively discourage in investing in cryptos due to the lack/absence of regulatory framework. And that's what is hurting the growth of institution focused hedge funds or even closing them down!

We all have to remember that Majority of the African and Asian governments are tax terrorists! They look at the global enterprises as a cash cow and want to milk them as much as possible! Without clear guideline around cryptos and with such mindset of the governments, majority of the business organizations have chosen not to foray into the unknown water like crypto market. The result is now visible in naked eye!

The author should have mentioned this practical challenge! 

Wow! A much needed discussion is finally starting now! So OP is literally saying the community to move to the POS algorithm and scrap the POW algorithm that miners are using now! I am sure, a lot of big companies will be unhappy after seeing this because these companies have invested millions to set up their mining operations.

But the argument is very valid because only a handful of people/companies are handling the entire mining operations of bitcoin where a commoner like us don't stand a chance at all! So if bitcoin moves to POS, a lot of common people will be happy as they will have better chance to earn bitcoin and make their dream come true!

But wait! What about the rarity of bitcoin? It will be killed if the network moves to POS. Also, if there is a minimum holding requirement given, it will be again controlled by few whales where again commoners won't stand a chance! So this kind of change may become disastrous for the community!

I personally wouldn't want bitcoin to move to a different algorithm because things are now slowly shaping up for bitcoin! It's just a 10 years old currency and still have a long way to go! I believe it's better to maintain the current model because this is how Satoshi designed and developed it!

This fellow will end up being another Osho like character! The current position of India in world politics is pretty good and they can easily drag this fellow under the supervision of law!

Ecuador has already denied the asylum to this suspected criminal charged with pedophilia and rape! He is digging his own grave!

Deutsche Bank is either over estimating the cryptos or under-estimating the current economical structure! None of this will happen! Neither the current economic structure will collapse nor the cryptos will take over the world finance under the current scenario! Probably the world will move to a cashless regime because governments will start issuing centralized cryptos and roll back the fiat from the economy!

The entire analysis seems pretty over estimated and somewhat stupid at the same time!

The operating structure of this ICO seems very similar to mutual funds. They are creating a pool of funds from the public and investing the money into real world assets. The profits from their investments is distributed proportionally to the investors at certain intervals. It's a very risky proposition!

There is no team information given either! Might just become a scam after collecting the funds! Personally I feel it is a cleaverly disguised ponzi scam with better packaging!

It's not just France. There are a lot of countries who are planning the same! China, India and other BRICS  countries are also planning for it. But this doesn't change the economy for better because these are just a digital representation of the government controlled fiat currency. Earlier you used to have cash in your wallet and now you are going to carry it on your mobile wallet! That's it! Nothing drastically different!

That means Bitcoin and Gold are structurally very different! But OP has done a mistake by saying that Gold has become money - that is absolutely wrong! You can't just walk in to a store and pay using gold coin while purchasing goods! Gold is better known as a store of value! You can certainly go to a Jeweler and sell off your gold to get hard cash and then spend it to buy anything you want! Same goes for Bitcoin as well! It is still very difficult to find a merchant who accepts bitcoin as a payment method unless you use a crypto debit card!

So neither Bitcoin nor Gold has become money yet! They are store of value which can be easily converted into cash to unlock the value and use it in the market! Unless you are using a crypto debit card, it is unrealistic to pay directly from your crypto wallet to merchants crypto wallet and then wait for confirmation!

I have just joined few days back and it looks nothing unique! We already have similar cryptos in the market which can be mined through mobile phone. Example, Electroneum and Phoneum. Both have gone down to drain and has no/little trade volume and value. I have also gone through their whitepaper which says they are coming up with a marketplace where people can spend pi to buy goods and services. If this is becoming a reality, then it's obviously good because then this coin would have some utility! Otherwise, it will also go down to drain like its peers!

No, it doesn't prove that bitcoin is going mainstream! Why?

The answer is already given by you - unique addresses doesn't necessarily mean unique number of people! And it certainly doesn't push for new ATH in price. With the increasing number of hacking incidents, it is always advisable to keep our bitcoins in different wallets and always create a new address while receiving payment from anyone! That's very basic security method we can follow to safeguard our assets!

However, increasing number of unique bitcoin addresses definitely means growth and adoption to some certain extent! Hopefully 2020 will bring cheers to our life when it reaches a new ATH!

That's a practical challenge with bitcoin indeed! That's the reason why it makes sense to use bitcoin linked debit cards instead of using direct bitcoin wallet transfers. No one would like to loose half an hour for a single transaction to get confirmed. LN may solve that issue but bitcoin debit card is a viable option right at this moment! Otherwise conversion to fiat is the last resort!

But any which ways, we are enjoying it as a store of value. Isn't it?

Firstly my question to you is that, how do you know that whales are accumulating? Let me know how do we also can see and understand this behavior of whales?

Apart from whales, I personally believe that the current price range is very attractive for us! So I am also accumulated at 7100 level in my trading account and waiting for the right time to sell and take profit! But I am really interested to know what whales are thinking!

You can use cryptos as a store of value worldwide, it is not limited to any boundary. In particular, you can directly use bitcoin to buy almost anything in countries like Japan and Germany where the governments have legalized it!

If you can't find any taker of bitcoin in a particular country, you can simply visit p2p marketplaces like localbitcoins or paxful and convert to fiat! So it's worldwide and not limited to this crypto community only!

Hope this sufficiently answers your question!