this is typical of all markets. they're called range contraction and range expansion periods.

the two days of sideways after the selloff is usually called a bearish consolidation or bear flag because the subsequent range expansion usually continues in the direction of the original trend.


why does everyone around here assume manipulation is happening? this kind of action can be completely organic IMO.

i'm sure it wasn't jamie dimon uttering a few words that caused BTC to drop 30%.

it might have coincided with the correction---IIRC, that story dropped right in the middle of it. but the drop had much more to do with general market conditions and profit taking because we had just made a new ATH and price was going parabolic. good traders expected a harsh pullback given the magnitude of the preceding rise.

i'm not so sure about that. back in 2014 and 2015, the price slowly bled until weak hands capitulated in a high volume selloff at the bottom. this time around, we never saw a high volume capitulation (yet).

i think the weak hands are still with us. we'll see how it all plays out.


plan on it. the SEC spelled everything out---nothing is getting approved until the underlying market changes.

what country are you in? in the USA and several other countries, doing business with iranians is prohibited due to the ongoing economic sanctions. and the penalties for violating sanctions are very steep: fines up to $1 million and up to 20 years in prison for each violation. i would avoid getting involved with this if i were you.

it also seems like there is indeed a premium for BTC in iran, but it's much smaller than originally reported.

i think the probability that satoshi is either dead, or that he destroyed the private keys to his early mined BTC, are high. he acknowledged the implications of mass adoption (extremely high prices), but he seemed genuinely uninterested in making money off BTC.


satoshi came off pretty altruistic. given the lack of miners in the early days, why would he have any need to pool mine in 2010? anything is possible, but i sort of doubt that scenario given that he said this:

who are "they?" monero obfuscates the origin of funds at the protocol level. how can anyone "demand" proof that doesn't exist? privacy doesn't equate to illegality. (not yet anyway)

it's good to think through the possibilities, but refusing to trade XMR because you're scared of the government? that's crazy. there's nothing illegal about XMR. (unless you're in one of the few countries where crypto is straight up banned)


are there any reports out there of this actually happening?

rationally, you wouldn't. there is simply too much counterparty risk in bitfinex and tether. you shouldn't hold USDT for the mid/long-term for the same reason you shouldn't store funds on exchanges for the mid/long-term. tether could be shut down by regulators or fined into insolvency, they could exit scam or get hacked. it's much more sensible to sell on the exchange (or OTC) and wire USD into your bank account.

the exception is those that are dodging taxes or KYC. if you need to hedge the USD value of your coins without leaving paper trails to your bank account, USDT markets can be an option. binance comes to mind.


i imagine exchanges hold most of it. binance and a slew of other altcoin exchanges have fairly liquid USDT markets.

why?

people drastically overestimate the importance of mt gox. i was part of multiple trading communities, and pretty much everyone had aready moved to bitfinex, bitstamp, btc-e/mt4, chinese exchanges (okcoin, huobi, btcc). most traders left because gox had already been having fiat withdrawal delays for many months.

they had far less share of world trading volume than people say. the scope of the BTC losses were due more to gox being used as a massive online wallet. and remember, the gox collapse locked up lots of available supply. everyone who lost coins had to buy back whatever they could.


i dunno. gox collapsed in february 2014. the market bottomed in august 2015. i really don't think it fueled the bear market for 1.5 years. that was just post-bubble supply and distribution. the same thing is possible now.

it's certainly interesting to see these models employed, but i'm skeptical as hell. i don't believe we have nearly enough data on circulating supply (lost coins, dormant coins) to speak about supply with any real level of confidence. very little BTC is actually on exchanges, producing the spot price.

i also think demand is impossible to quantify, let alone predict. we'll just have to let time do its thing, and enjoy the ride!

seems too slow, considering how human psychology works. i'm convinced at this point that bitcoin's future is fairly binary---mass adoption or bust. if you consider how much of the supply is already mined and/or lost, i think we'll have a gold rush on our hands. $96k isn't even 5x above the previous ATH. i expect much higher, and probably much sooner than 2023.

the top is always higher than you think. and the bottom is always lower. markets love to stay irrational!

if you read between the lines, it's regulators or law enforcement agencies that are pressuring them. this talk about "legal grey area" and "navigating the regulatory environment" means one thing to me: shapeshift got too damn big, the feds are breathing down their neck, and voorhees is caving to the pressure.

i don't blame him---the risk of not complying is huge. for example, FINCEN fined btc-e $110 million for AML violations, on top of the criminal charges.

"bitcoin core" is the reference implementation of the bitcoin protocol. "bitcoin" is the native currency of that protocol. "bitcoin cash" and its associated currency is just a spinoff fork of the original protocol---there could be hundreds or thousands of such copycats. don't be fooled into thinking they are equivalent. only 21 million BTC will ever exist, and spinoffs/copycat currencies can't be passed off as BTC.


forget the "original vision" stuff. that's a matter of opinion. "BTC" is compatible with the bitcoin protocol from the early days. there have never been any incompatible/hard forks since the early days of satoshi.


not sure if you're trolling or just been reading to much bcash propaganda. "bitcoin core" is compatible with the bitcoin protocol. "bitcoin cash" is not. which is closer to the "original bitcoin" as you call it?

that's where the old trader mantra "sell the news" comes from. if you think about it, it makes sense. you have people buying in anticipation of good news, so in the "rumor" stage, price is bullish. but once the news drops, everyone has already bought and there is nothing left to do but sell. the insiders sell the news, and then the trapped bulls sell afterwards when their expectations are crushed.

i've seen this play out too many times to ever take any news seriously. 9 out of 10 times, you should sell the news whether it's good or bad.

it's been widely said that yesterday's dump was due to the goldman sachs rumors. the fact that they're now calling it "fake news" yet price hasn't recovered at all should tell you---the dump wasn't because of news. it was just the market being a market. price meandered weakly into a major resistance area ($7500) and bears sold into it. enough said.


that's interesting to hear, especially after blackrock's CEO said clients had zero interest in crypto just a couple months ago.

it's great for online gaming and sportsbetting, and any sort of commerce that faces banking problems. i've noticed that my regular online poker rooms have all embraced BTC and actively encourage people to use it. that's no surprise when credit cards (high fees and fraud risks) are one of the primary alternatives. i've also had checks bounce and delayed wires due to bank freezes and seizures, so cashing in and out with BTC is much faster and smoother for both player and cardroom.

i've also noticed that cannabis seed breeders and wholesalers have embraced BTC. seedsman (the biggest global wholesaler) offers deep discounts and free seeds to anyone that pays with BTC.

i'm not sure how. as i understand it, schnorr signatures simply incentivize coinjoin-type transactions (they'll become cheaper).

anyway, wire tapping implies they're already analyzing your internet traffic and probably hitting up your ISP and third party services for your logs. coinjoin adds some obfuscation, but some transactions can be revealing on their face due to input/output amounts. and it has problems that would be magnified by said traffic analysis. for example, they are prone to sybil attacks: if they know where you participate in coinjoins, they can act as the other participants to decipher your transactions. plus, the server-based coinjoin model is problematic because it entrusts whoever runs the server with your data (like electrum servers)---more honeypot fears. and IMO it probably won't save you if they're already linking your wallet outputs to you with a high probability (see here). and if you're tapped, you better be encrypting outgoing traffic---but then you better hope your VPN isn't a government honeypot. yes i'm paranoid!

if you think you're getting tapped, you should be thinking bigger than schnorr signatures......

time-wise, you're in luck. if you hadn't noticed, the "rocket ship" crashed last december. the market's been stuck in a range and today's $1000 dump sort of signifies the bear market isn't quite over yet. so, make that money and invest as you can. it might be a year or two before another bull market is upon us.

also, altcoins usually bleed hard during bitcoin bear markets. i know DOGE saw a nice pump recently, but given the larger market context, i would avoid getting trapped here. during bubbles, the gains are magnified with altcoins, but during bear markets the losses are magnified (vs BTC). keep that in mind during these market phases.

it really depends on what you HODL. i rarely hold altcoins long term. however, there are a handful that i believe have long term viability (or at least long term staying power in the market) and i've invested accordingly.

but i think most altcoins and tokens are cash grabs that will fade over the long term, and in those cases, HODLing may crush your portfolio. i'm definitely a HODLer, but the vast majority of my portfolio is BTC. and even that i hedge with futures when the market goes full bear.

it depends where you live, or where you're a citizen.

in my tax jurisdiction, bitcoin trading has always been taxable. capital gains on BTC are taxable like capital gains on anything else. for me (USA), short term capital gains (trading income) are taxed at the same rate as ordinary income from a job. that means 10-40% depending on which tax bracket you fall into.

there's a few angles to consider here.

first, the answer to that depends on whether electricity generation averages towards green/renewable energy sources rather than conventional polluting forms.

second, there is no direct relationship between energy consumption from mining and adoption. ideally, upper layer applications like the lightning network, drivechains, etc could allow exponential transaction growth---but off the main blockchain. miner investment into hardware will ebb and flow according to market value and long term speculation; exponential transaction growth doesn't equate to exponential growth in energy consumption.