How exactly does it 'include' cheating?

I don't know what is more frustrating, noobs being an idiot and sell-off markets like mad, or bots all working with similar algorithms being subject to easy manipulation.

I remember in my time (2013/2014) when trading altcoins how poorly programmed bots were. I comfortably used them to place buy orders from where these bots directly placed their buy order on top of mine, which I used to sell into. If you are trading coins with low liquidity back in the days, then this was an effective way to sell your coins at one price. In the same way you could exploit them if you planned to buy coins in very thin coin markets. In some cases this cheapy bot behavior is still present, but by far not as worse as how it was years ago.

Bots could be worthwhile if they are custom made. All these mass product bots are worthless and only put whales knowing the ins and outs of these bots in an advantageous position.

We don't need centralized services for that. If that's your way to 'achieve' your goal, then what's the point of using crypto at all? One could just keep using PayPal's platform to move value back and forth.

LN is going to bring what we want, and it's just a matter of time. If enough merchants are on board in your local area, you could connect to them and start moving value back and forth instantly, and that without needing centralized services. The only thing we need is clients making it easy for everyone to participate, and once that's the case, mass adoption will follow. Our aim should be to distance ourselves from everything that's centralized, not to get further stuck into it as you are suggesting.

It may be a niche object for the average joe, but it's pointless for me personally since I only need a mobile wallet client and my smartphone to do the job. I don't use physical money anymore, so why should I use these? Applications utilizing LN and NFC payments will be the future, and that's the only way I can see it actually gain ground. People quite often talk about where is THE killer application, and I strongly believe that it's LN clients made easy to use even for the most noobie noob.

In general, the use of physical money is reaching an all time low after all time low, which is a strong indicator that physical means of payments will become no longer part of the economy, unless it concerns precious metals being used in high value private transactions. I'm not writing these Bitcoin Bills off directly, but it's definitely going to face some serious challenges to function as intended.

Well, for the operators it's actually quite profitable.

It's however interesting to notice that there is an overall shift going on with these schemes. Instead of being an obvious scheme where they offer people insane returns in a matter of days, they have become a bit more conservative when it comes to the rewards they advertise with, and I expect this to drag on for a while. I wouldn't be surprised to see schemes offer 0.1% daily returns in order to look more legitimate, and they are probably better off like that.

The lower the returns are that you offer, the longer you can remain operational since you are paying out dust, and thus the more money can come in. People here are easy targets. If they see a scheme pay out consistently for months straight, they'll consider it to be legit, because hey, Genesis Mining is legit too right? It's operational for years!

You fail to get the main point here. It's a market based on supply and demand. If people keep being reckless and don't care about anything they invest in, where some times they knowingly invest in scam ICO's, then who's fault is it exactly? This greed is the demand making sure the supply of scam ICO's remains as strong as it has always been. In other words, it's not these scam ICO's that need to stop, but people themselves.

You can't expect these ICO's to stop from popping up with so much user demand justifying their existence and creation. As soon as people stop dumping their money in these ICO's, they eventually will dry out. This directly also applies to all the ponzi schemes where people are being offered 25% weekly returns and whatnot. People allowed this rubbish to emerge and gain ground, and they are the only one capable of making an end to it. All this greed leads to nothing but losses, but people still don't understand anything.

That goes up for blockchains aiming to be decentralized. In this case it's just MasterCard hosting nodes in different states/countries to maintain and solidify its centralized blockchain network.

Your view on blockchains is way too general. It's not that every blockchain by default is the same as the other, even though they from the core have the same foundation. If you want, you can shape a blockchain into any form that suits your needs, and that's exactly what governments and financial institutions are researching and developing. Ethereum as foundation is a great example of what potential centralized incentives could look like for financial institutions, and potentially even governments.

It's strange, and on the other hand not really that strange. From their perspective it's a scam or fraud if no one from the 'genuine' channels is interested in it. In this case they are very interested, and even consult their main bank to serve them in a better way when it comes to Bitcoin. Their clients could either be wealthy individuals, institutions, hedge funds holding their accounts there, etc.

Banks are like sluts, they are where the money is, and Bitcoin offers them that money. At some point every major bank will offer their clients the opportunity to buy and sell crypto. It's just a matter of time. I am quite sure that they will be going to compete with exchanges, and they might even gain somewhat of an advantage, especially when it comes to newbies trying to buy their first coins. No verification needed, no waiting before your wire transfer posts, etc.

People expecting the price to 'recover' to the $20,000 level again shortly are just nutters.

Let people ask themselves why the price went there in the first place, and then look at the difference between bull/hype demand and more conservative demand. You can't expect from conservative demand that it pumps back to whatever the all time high was last year. If there is no bull run or whatever, we'll eventually break through the $20,000 level again, but it will take way more time than most people here think. In other words, have patience.

That. As W.B. once said; if you are not willing to hold a stock (Bitcoin in this case) for 10 years, don't even think about holding it for 10 minutes.

That dust farter isn't always positive about crypto in general, but his quotes are solid.

Governments will never 'officially' accept our current crypto currencies. The only thing we realistically can expect them to do is to properly/fairly regulate this market, and that's it. Whatever the government is doing after that is none of our business.

The main point here is that capital will need to shift towards larger, professional parties in order to somewhat stabilize this market. Currently it's noob versus noob, wannabe trader versus wannabe trader, and wannabe whale versus wannabe whale. As soon as institutions start taking over the majority of the circulating (on-market) supply, then stability will be very close. Bitcoin's currency utility will flourish at that point, where mass adoption and usage is the logical result.

People don't realize it yet, but they (especially the early birds) found a market that hasn't yet been taken over by wall street, enjoy it instead of criticizing the volatility.

These are no longer 2011/2012/2013'ish times. Bitcoin has more than proven to not be anonymous, and thus a horrible tool for illegal transactions.

The 'problem' with Bitcoin is that transactions are recorded in the blockchain for ever once confirmed, and the blockchain as you probably also know is open for everyone to browse through, research, etc. Eventually you could be linked to certain transactions, because the 'proof' is present basically for ever, and you can't do anything about it. Unless you actually know how to properly remain under the radar, I would advice people to look for other alternatives (ie, privacy focused coins) when it comes to illegal transactions.

The more people believe in Bitcoin's anonymity, the more they will eventually land themselves into unnessary situations that could have been avoided.

This.

If OP keeps asking these questions openly, then it's not that difficult for authorities to find out what's going on, or to at least start an investigation.

Common sense would be enough to find out the answer, but not everyone knows how to properly utilize common sense it seems.

Firstly, in most cases Bitcoin isn't actually banned, but just the practice of exchanging crypto to fiat and vice versa.

Secondly, governments missing out on taxes is just nonsense. If there was no crypto, there would be no additional crypto tax income for governments, so what exactly are they missing? To add; them getting rid of crypto actually makes them lose out on additional tax income. If you regulate the market as government, you WILL get tax income from crypto. It might not be that all people suddenly start paying tax, but what's better, 20% of the crypto traders pay tax or 0% of the traders?

People here need to accept and understand that people in developing countries are mostly poor for a reason, and will remain that for a reason. They aren't supposed to progress further. Poverty, just like debt, means you as authority effectively control everyone fitting in these categories, and let that control be what authorities desperately plan to hold firm.

It's quite difficult since past achievements and happenings don't offer any guarantees for what might be going to happen in the future, so it's always somewhat of a gamble in the end. The only thing that does make sense, is that everyone is focusing on the tax season traditionally being that what gets markets to decrease, where its effect largely also depends on what happened prior to that.

If the market remained relatively flat all year, the tax sell-offs won't be all that severe, but in a scenario like what we experienced last year, and especially in the crypto market where exaggeration of pumps and dumps are part of the game, market adjustments are going to be extreme mostly. Even if tax sell-offs aren't actually happening, the market thinking it does is enough to trigger traders to start selling like there is no tomorrow.

Adding more nodes to your network (especially if they are hosted in different states and countries), regardless of how centralized it is, strengthens your network and makes it less exposed to attacks on one part of your network. It's actually very simple, the more well distributed nodes you have online, the less subject you are to failure and potential malicious attacks. In other words, they in their own way are decentralizing their data and operations. I know it may sound weird to people, but that's what's happening, and it's actually a smart move.

That's a pretty solid sign that it is actually coming, one way or another. Goldman Sachs did the exact same thing, and they came through with using Circle to acquire Poloniex. Refuting these claims is what they all do, and they are supposed to do that since these tiny bit of information leaks can be seen as trading with insider information, and that within their own heavily regulated environment is a serious offence.

It's just not sure if they will follow what Goldman Sachs did and use an external party to acquire an exchange, or if they actually are going to set up their own exchange, which at that point will be the first of its kind. We'll see what they come up with this year, or next year, especially if they are going to focus on their own exchange, which requires regulations to work with them as well.

It's not really that new investors are jumping in, but more so that there was a lot money that comes from securing profits at near peak levels waiting to enter again. New investors need confidence in order to start jumping in, and that confidence needs to be in form of an increasing price. Once we smash through the $10,000 level that confidence will get a massive boost, and new capital will actually start flowing in.

Another major contributing factor will be that more and more large parties are focusing on private deals to obtain a large number of Bitcoins, and these coins will likely come directly from miners. It all comes down to a lack of trust in current exchanges, which I perfectly understand. In other words, with less lessing pressure from miners, the market will face even less resistance in the forthcoming years. It's pretty safe to say that the OTC market has already surpassed the regular trading volumes, and the gap will keep growing with how incompetent exchanges are.

That's why this part of the forum is called the speculation section. At the end of the day, every market isn't predictable, so people just guess and hope that they are right, more can they not do. One time they are right, the other time they have to admit being wrong, it's all part of the game for short term traders. Long term speaking, there obviously isn't much to worry about, but that's not what most people care about; they want quick gains, and preferably rather today than tomorrow.

That's speculation too. And by who is it exactly expected? Self claimed experts and analysts? They also believed that we would have to reach $4000 first before bouncing back up, so you might want to take their predictions with a truckload of salt.

This. I really don't understand why people keep basing their prices on third party sites that may or may not provide up-to-date data, while the rates of an exchange are the only thing you should be looking at. It's almost like we have to spoon feed people with how to behave and act properly in this market. Grow up and take some responsibility.

All third party sites are not reliable. They either aren't up-to-date, have broken scripts/api's displaying wrong information, on purposely display wrong information for whatever malicious reason, etc.

The only thing I use CMC for is to look what forks popped up and at what exchanges they are listed, and even then I know that the information they show me isn't totally reliable. Is that the fault of CMC? Nope. It's their platform and they can do with it what they want. If they choose to not list a certain exchange, then they don't. It's up to us to do proper research before diving into whatever we plan to do.

I'm sorry to say, but if you have to ask people what you have to do, then don't bother getting involved in this side of the market. Licenses aren't just something you can obtain by applying for them, but involve an entire legal procedure that can cost you hundreds of thousands, up to even millions in some cases.

And then there is still that you are only allowed to trade within one country or state, so depending where you plan to offer your services, you might end up having to apply for plenty of licenses instead of just one. Getting one license is already a costly legal battle, getting plenty is an impossible target if you don't have the capital for it and a viable business plan. Don't do it, it's not going to be of any help for you.

Instead, try to act as private OTC broker. It's not entirely legal, but as long as you manage to remain 'under the radar', you should be just fine.

Bitcoin is a multifunctional tool, that's what's making it so powerful. If at some point a large part of the regular economy realizes that as well, there is no limit as to where Bitcoin's price will be peaking. It will be the moment where large percentages of capital starts moving from all traditional assets to Bitcoin, and if we look at how even 1 or 2% of that capital accounts for tens of billions of dollars, then just brace yourself for what has to come if we see a 25% capital allocation.

I expect a strong shift eventually from people and large investors holding paper Gold, which is nothing more than an empty promise that you hold a certain amount of Gold. Just think about it, what do you prefer to hold, a piece of paper stating you hold x amount of Gold (or basically any other asset), or a piece of paper containing a private key loaded with x amount of Bitcoin that you can access and redeem at any time of the day.