I would like to call it smart money shaking out the freshly joined cubs to have them reenter at higher levels later on.

The market did what I hoped it would do, which is correct before reaching the $10,000 level, and that alone is already a very healthy sign. If it would have broken through $10,000 it would only respresent emptiness, and not a more stable form of growth. We have had too much of that emptiness last year already, so there is no need for more. The market did go up, but a bit too much and too fast in my opinion, and that in a time where there hasn't been much to cheer for, technically. People just need to keep their expectations as low as possible. The less you expect from the market, the lower any sort of potential disappointment will be in case the market happens to decrease further. It's just a matter of logical thinking.

That's what I like about this market. Even with serious manipulation happening, we can benefit from that as well, which is something most people here don't seem to understand. People keep blaming for deep pockets playing the market, but the only thing these people do is play themselves, which is the funniest part. If you invest in this market, and think everything will play out in your favor, you are obviously not in the right place.

This market, depending on the situation and sentiment, ignores most traditional market laws, which is why all the traditional experts and whatnot failed to put their nasty finger on this market like they know how it works; the market storms through like nothing we have seen before, and that's exactly what people love about it. All these traditional naysayers slowly become a believer in the technology and how it can transform traditional markets into something fitting in current digital time frame.

Gambling is a term that one can bend in various way to make it fit in certain comparisons, and trading is one of them. In general, trading, regardless of how heavily you apply technical analysis, is based on guessing and luck. It's basically; I buy at X price and hope the market does what I think it will be doing, so I can sell at Y price. It's a gamble, but one that won't make you lose your entire trade value, unless you are involved in options or extremely leveraged trades. Trading is only viable if you are aware of the risks and don't see it as something you do for fun, which is something a lot people here tend to see it as. The fun part will be over quickly once you start losing money due to your wrong attitude towards trading.

Actual gambling as in playing blackjack, sports betting, dice and whatnot, isn't even part of the discussion.

It's not just you, it's the reality that most of the longer term members here have noticed. These people are literally a plague by how they act, talk and totally degrade any form of discussion to the absolute bottom; empty headed baboons they are. The forum is the perfect example of what the average crypto community member/participant looks like.

I wondered for a while why the 2011/2012 members here kept complaining about how much this forum has been degraded by gibberish and paid incentives, but after browsing through the discussions dating back to everything below 2013, I can only agree with them that this forum has turned into one massive pile of rubbish. Where paid incentive drives most people to post today, people back in the days were incentivized by sharing thought and knowledge.

It's even around me where I notice how stupid the average person is. If you try to explain someone that Ripple for obvious reasons can't become worth what Bitcoin is worth today in terms of unit price, then you know that it's pointless to even continue talking to that person. Talking to a wall basically yields the same result; nothing.

The problem that people don't seem to understand with last year's all time high, is the fact that it was the result of an insane hype momentum that had everything on its side, where right now, we are going up in a much different way. I personally consider the $20,000 peak to be nonexistent because of how empty that increase was. In other words, we shouldn't want last year's performance to replicate.

Exchanges might have taken some steps to upgrade and improve their capacity and trading engines, but it's by far not enough to go through a similar hype momentum. The only thing another bull run will do is point out that Bitcoin and the entire ecosystem isn't ready for that level of usage, yet. In that regard, I hope we'll be seeing the market increase gradually, where the main push hopefully comes from LN or other actually bullish developments later on.

People shouldn't let the media and all other nonsense trolls make them believe that Bitcoin is doing bad because it's far away from that stupid $20,000 level. Instead, focus on that what actually indicates growth, the bottoms.

As I said before, for me personally the $10,000 level isn't anything special, but do acknowledge the value of noting five figure levels. I am done with trading for a while since I have taken the necessary steps needed to grant myself that bit of freedom. Currently the media and wannabe investors are already allover Bitcoin with positivity and predictions ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 before the end of the year, we don't need the $10,000 level for that.

Reaching the $10,000 level too soon will result in short term euphoria, but due to the lack of support, dumps taking the price back to four figure levels will give people yet again an uncomfortable feeling. If we do happen to correct, I hope for the market that it happens before reaching the $10,000 level. The sentiment in current times may have had a boost, but it's very fragile. It took more than a week to get here, but takes less than a day to undo everything, which is the reality of this market.

Sorry, but if you in current times can't provide a properly working exchange, then you are incompetent and shouldn't be allowed to run or operate anything. As exchange you are dealing with people's digital assets, and that alone involves a tremendous amount of responsibility. If you till today are processing withdrawals manually, it clearly shows that you as operator don't actually trust your platform.

Another factor that may play an important role here, is that the exchange itself is insolvent. If you delay deposits and withdrawals, behind the scenes you as exchange wait for enough deposits to accumulate, to then allow someone else to withdraw that specific coin. It can be seen as a scheme structure where the next investor pays for the previous investor's cashouts. Seriously, what do people actually know about this exchange?

People should just avoid these exchanges. If you do enough research beforhand, you won't have to deal with the exchange's incompetence afterwards.

I wouldn't necessarily consider our money to be safe with banks, especially if you take into consideration how much risk they expose your money to on the financial markets, where if things don't go according to their plan, you will be paying the bill as customer and tax payer. Bitcoin taught us one simple but yet very importang life lesson; if you grant a third party control over your value/money/wealth, you technically don't own any of that anymore. It all belongs to the bank you trusted, and that same bank now decides for you when you can access everything, and how to spend your money. Everything you do or plan to do with what once was totally yours, will now require permission from the bank.

Growth in wealth is a nice bonus. The real beneficial aspect of Bitcoin is that you don't need to ask permission from any entity to do something.

Yes. Even more ironic is the fact that due to these uncertainties, the future Russian Bill Gates and Steven Jobs type of individuals, will all be doing their thing outside of Russia. It's a waste of precious talent having the ability to lift Russia to a higher level in every field, but the government there is stupid enough to let them apply their creativity and knowledge elsewhere. If nothing changes, and I'm not that confident in a fundamental change in the coming year or so, then the outflow of talent will become more of a problem than people gaining freedom or using crypto instead of the Ruble as currency. I think it's safe to say that the paranoid and somewhat ignorant nature of governments towards crypto, is more of a threat to their economy than crypto itself.

I like how people change their view on the market on a daily basis. Not that long ago according to people we were going to see $4000-$5000 levels, then after the increase to +$8000 they were aiming at $15,000 and now suddenly the $10,000 level seems to be more difficult than what they expected. That's what allows market movers to play with people here, and keep doing the exact opposite of what they believe is going to happen. I love it.

I personally don't see anything special in reaching the $10,000 level aside from the fact that we are then noting five figure levels. From current levels to $10,000 is less than 10% and thus too insignificant to be excited about for me. The only valid option from my point of view, especially when it comes to most of the people here, is to keep holding and just let the market do its thing. Trying to trade the market will most likely end up in a big disappointment with how literally everything can happen right now. Holding is the safest possible option.

I'm just sitting back watching all the market action happens without doing anything. I'm not going to sell anything and not going to buy anything. I have done plenty enough already and can afford to not be active in current market. Short term speaking we definitely aren't safe yet, where I am quite sure that the next few bottoms will still be below the $10,000 level. In other words, enjoy the ride, but don't expect anything. Putting too much faith and confidence in a market like this is never a good idea.

I am happy as long as we remain above the $7000 level, which would indicate a healthy bottom development, and that means growth. Current increase is nothing more than speculation boiling up again, and thus an unreliable form of growth. If the price keeps going up, and altcoins as well, I might look into what forks have popped up recently and are worth unloading for more Bitcoins.

The market has taught us one thing in the past, and still does so today; today's challenge will be tomorrow's joke.

As soon as the market does things above my expectations, I instantly stop trading and just enjoy the ride up, because anything can happen which I don't want to miss out on. I was initially planning to secure some short term profits just over the $8000 level, but glad that I didn't do so. If the market makes technical analysis become more or less unreliable, then just distance yourself from the market. Trading at that point will be more like a soft form of gambling, and that's obviously not what people should be doing. It's impossible to beat the market just based on the luck factor, so it's pointless even attempting it.

It all comes down to how much potential this market offers to not only people, but every possible business. I wouldn't even be surprised if banks at some point will offer instant bank to crypto purchases and sales. Banks will try to compete with exchanges by setting up their own internal trading platforms to allow people to easily access and liquidite crypto. It's all just a matter of time, we're still at the very beginning of everything.

Great thing about this potential scenario is that financial institutions want to have their own reserves they can buy and sell from, so the direct result is that the regular market will dry out even further, and thus make further increases easier than ever before. That's the good side of things, where the main negative factor is that the average people due to that convenience will likely have less incentive to ditch centralized services, but that's their own choice in the end.

Volatility is a thing right now, but won't remain that for ever. If this market has matured well enough in all fields, I have no doubt that Bitcoin's volatility will be similar to the level of volatility Gold is going through. If we combine that with off-chain scaling solutions making instant and near free payments possible, I seriously don't know where this will be going.

Governments barely do anything for the better of their country, and especially not for the better of their people. Bitcoin itself doesn't care about what governments think or do. It's all about how WE as people and the regular economy can do everything without the need and approval of governmental bodies trying to act as middleman (ie, an obstacle) everywhere. I seriously wouldn't even be surprised to see a smaller country actually be willing to open itself to become the first country that takes distance from fiat. Currently we are at the beginning of everything, but we are building a foundation that at some point will play out in our favor. LN once fully functional and made completely noob friendly with plenty of applications people can choose from, will be a major game changer.

Don't put everything on the government. I know they do things wrong quite often, but what social media networks did has nothing to do with the government, but more with shitty multinationals threatening to cut off their billions in ad budget. Read this article, it might help clear things up a bit. In other words, it's more the fear of losing billions in ad revenue and potential legal troubles that made social media networks do so. People keep focusing on ICO's and stuff, but that's not even the problem, it's just the general aspect of crypto as a whole thing which they are looking to get rid of. It has also affected content creators on Youtube, so it's not strictly an attack against crypto. Times are changing, but in some cases not for the better unfortunately.

Estonia is very smart in that regard, yes. Another thing Estonia is doing right, is allowing all people in the world to become an Estonian e-resident, which is all based on blockchain technology. It's insane and very promising at the same time how one little country is wiping the floor with larger nations in terms of technology and an open minded vision. Imagine a time where the only thing that's fiat related, are the prices we end up seeing in stores or when you buy real estate and whatnot, where you settle the transaction in Bitcoin. The longer we keep that up, the more normal Bitcoin becomes as payment instrument.

2025

Customer; Hello, Can I have one latte please?

Cafe employee; Sure, that's 0.00003BTC

Customer; But I have only Euros.......

Cafe employee; We have a BTM where you can exchange your Euros for Bitcoins.

Binance is a squatter. It invades countries where in most cases it isn't even allowed to legally operate. In other words, they aren't doing everything right, but wrong. Binance's aggressive and non legal way of operating made them grow out to what it is today, which at some point will work against them. Japan fought back, so what countries are next? People using Binance right now because they don't have to verify themselves might be up for a surprise in the forthcoming months.

Funny thing about Huobi and OKCoin is that these exchanges always manage to settle themselves on top of the market, which is quite suspicious, especially after everything that happened. Even if I was allowed to trade for free and get a certain commision back per trade, I would never ever use it. This entire market has a long way to go in order to provide people and professional traders with safe and proper exchanges. The market itself has grown immensely throughout the years, but the on-exchange liquidity is as poor as always per ratio. No wonder large players rather settle OTC deals.

Decentralized exchanges might help in providing this market the liquidity it needs, because people certainly don't trust their capital to current exchanges, and I can't blame them.

Definitely. I think that Bitcoin actually forced them to improve services significantly, which is a shift that happened just a few years ago, which I don't consider to be coincidence. In terms of usability and convenience, banks are top notch with their services already. If they allow people to transfer money from one place to another instantly as well, at first in-country, then that alone would be a massive game changer. I am however not sure when banks will be offering instant transfers, and I am not even sure if banks legally are allowed to do so if ever.

Unfortunately, what happened previously when banks suffered from their own incompetence and greed, the tax payer was presented with the bill, so I don't think in this scenario things will be any different. It's safe to say that banks, especially those who are considered to be too big to fail, will be kept up with a very large portion of our own money, where if there is a very desperate situation, we might be subject to a fresh haircut as well, which is a damn shame and pure theft. Who helps us when we go bankrupt? No one. It's an unfair system that whatever happens, is against the people. I am glad that a large portion of my wealth sits in Bitcoin. I significantly lowered my exposure to this rotten system.

It will indeed be a difficult job to increase further, short term speaking. We have gone up quite a bit already, and now face serious resistance that basically requires the most out of the current market to break through. If we manage to maintain the $9000 level like we are maintaining the $8000 level right now, no doubt that we will eventually will break through $10,000 as well.

I however don't yet see any reason for much optimism. If we fall back because the market isn't ready yet for another push, which is very realistic, then we will likely fall back down a notch or two. The market already did more than what I expected, and that within a very small time frame, so let's see how much fuel there is left for now. I personally consider fair levels to be somewhere between $7500-$8000 levels. Aside from the sentiment, what has actually changed? Don't see much at all. The only thing that might be noteworthy, is that the frequent 1000BTC dumps haven't been seen for a while now. It's either that whales have completed their accumulation frenzy, or that they are preparing for another round once we don't break through the $9000 level comfortably and stay there.

People shouldn't believe everything others are saying. Let's assume he bought himself into this market one way or another, then firstly we don't know if he bought futures or options, or Bitcoin itself, and secondly, we don't know how much he bought. Just because he is a multi billionaire doesn't mean he will actually invest billions into something. He might as well just play around with a few million, which in current market, is peanuts.

I think the increase itself is the actual reason the price is going up further. I know it sounds weird, but it's not weird if you think about it. The more the price is going up, the more likely people are willing to buy Bitcoin, which happens in every market. It's not only regulars finding that important, but also serious investors, because that grants them the confirmation that we have actually made a significant sentiment shift. People want to see old trends broken before they invest, and this might be it. The further away we move from the bottom, the less damage one single larger dump can inflict.