ah, but even gold can be highly volatile. that was a 600-700% increase we saw during the '01-'11 bull run! as a trader, that's a hell of a trend to ride. maybe not quite bitcoin-level volatility, but definitely not boring either. the crash saw a nearly 50% drop from the ATH as well.

it's interesting to ponder---how the price trajectory should or will look. it's incredibly speculative, and more than that, there are no comparable assets to study. we often see comparisons to adoption curves (like the internet or cell phones), but no technology ever incorporated a native currency with a predictable, limited supply. it's a totally novel thing that we have no historical comparison for.

we'll get there eventually, but i think it'll be quite a few years.

bitcoin's entire history is characterized by a demand-heavy market, hence the trend. high volatility will remain with us until the market reaches equilibrium. that's impossible as long as we're in this nascent stage of growth (sometimes exponential growth).

in the sense of tech adoption curves (eg like telephones, internet, etc) we're still very far from the plateau of mainstream adoption where i'd expect to find equilibrium. we're still below 10%.

that's the biggest reason i avoid KYC in this space. i only have documents on file with one exchange, and i sure as hell am not giving documents to bitmain---they were already hacked last year and had customer information compromised! (not that i'm a miner anyway)


how does KYC work for corporate clients? many large miners may not care at all.

it's up to the market. last i checked, miners from GMO and others still can't compete with bitmain. this is some additional incentive to go elsewhere, but i dunno if it's enough to make a real difference. unfortunately, people tend to sacrifice their privacy and just get on with their business as usual.

dang, sorry to hear that.

lesson learned: always research an exchange and be very weary if things don't appear to be running normally. exit scams and dodgy behavior from exchanges over the years has made me very careful where i deposit money (and how much i risk).


i think that account is a fake. i'm also hearing that people are not receiving their PPC withdrawals. not sure about XMR (newly added).

i thought we'd be inundated by delays and denials for months to come, so i'm glad the SEC went ahead and rejected 9 ETF applications in one fell swoop. like a bandaid---right off!

seems like we still have one more deadline looming though, and it's the one most people have a hard-on for: the vaneck/solidX decision on september 30th.... get ready for disappointment one more time!


that's because they don't look at the context. gold had already formed a multi-year base and broken out into a bull market when the ETF was approved. it was bound to explode anyway.


bingo---been saying that for a while. the existence of an ETF doesn't create demand for BTC.

i get the sense that most of those noobs are bagholding hard, massacred by the recent shitcoin apocalypse. they're desperate for any hype to save their investment, so i'm not surprised to see them praising the venezuelan government here.

it's sort of sad---reminds me of the desperation i used to see on penny stock forums back in the day.

for better or worse, gold bugs are seen as a crazy cult too. here's one example: https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-12-gold-bug-commandments?nopaging=1

gold bugs are often painted as fringe dwelling lunatics, probably because they've been preaching about the collapse of fiat money long before bitcoiners came along. as with bitcoiners, fiat money proponents are incentivized to marginalize them.

wow, he actually gets it. it was a real turning point for me when i realized what a breakthrough math-based money is. total transparency and predictability vs. the fallibility and corruption of humans.

we'll see in the coming years how resilient bitcoin is, and whether it's truly "immune" to the manipulation wozniak mentions here. after all, it only takes a hard fork.

yes, USDT withdrawal is possible. that's why it's worth 4x what "wex USD" is worth. ZEC and a couple others seem to be working (most of the time) as well, but you'll pay a hefty premium to buy them and exit.

it's looking bad. i've never had this long of a radio silence from an exchange before, with the exception of cryptsy. and we all know how that ended.....

from the OP:


is this still the case? where does kraken list the states that it services?

can anyone comment on the reliability of domestic (US) bank wires out of kraken? i'm looking for a new exchange to do light trading and occasional cashouts. but i came across this and became concerned: https://np.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6fu1vs/fyi_your_funds_are_at_risk_if_you_are_in_the_us/

awesome, more uber bullish extrapolations. instead of 5 figures, we're going for 8!

if you ask me, there's no point extrapolating. even if we assume similar rates of growth in demand (based on the past), it's impossible to know how much of the bitcoin supply could come to market at any given price level. we're starting to get some rough estimations regarding the number of lost coins (or coins that are unlikely to move, like the bitfinex hack coins), but there are simply too many unknown variables.

markets are already unpredictable when you have lots of market information. here, we have very little.

to be fair, there was no reason or basis to make time-based predictions like that until the market went parabolic in july/august 2017. looking at their estimates, i doubt their model could accurately account for "bubble periods" anyway.


that goes both ways. very few expected a bubble, but very few expected the top either. those sky-high predictions often come long after the top is in. and the losses for the bagholders add up quickly.

but remember, that logic goes both ways. bears are obviously not reluctant to sell down here either.

bulls are not letting price below the $5500-$6000 area. but the bears are also not letting price above any previous high. we're stuck in a pattern of lower highs. as i see it, the $6000s is still a real battle zone. price could really go either way here.


agreed, we can't keep testing it. the support will eventually break if it keeps getting hammered. bulls need to make a move relatively soon.

if nobody is willing to buy (at any price), i suppose the price is zero.


you say that now, but that's because there is an overwhelming faith among so many people that BTC will succeed. what if that faith were shattered? what if the historical long term uptrend breaks down, and hash rate plummets? what if BTC's popularity/usage ends up following a trajectory like early dotcom companies?

it feels like 2014, like a slow bleed. except this time, the price hasn't collapsed. it just stays in a tight range.


same feeling here. like i've been saying, this kind of structure is pretty unpredictable. the last few months could be an accumulation zone, or it could be a drawn out bear flag. i'm flat here, no longs or shorts, and leaning slightly bullish. but i need some confirmation.

lol, bear market for years? that same exact logic applied to bitcoin in late 2015/early 2016. gold literally just ended its biggest bubble in history in 2011 (10 years of hyper bull), what would you expect? immediate explosion into another bubble!?

and how is it propaganda? it's just history. gold is regarded by society as a valuable commodity---that's a simple fact with historical backing. the point was about the difference in risk profile: bitcoin's incentives, consensus methods and robustness are simply not time-tested, certainly not when compared to longstanding everyday commodities with sizeable demand over hundreds or thousands of years.

i'm not a goldbug, btw. i very much prefer bitcoin. just talking about risk...... bitcoin is a brand new kind of asset, untested in many ways. it can't just spring up overnight and immediately be considered a traditional investment/hedging asset. it should be considered very high risk/high reward.

seriously. i've had quite enough of these "$25k or $50k by end of year" calls. we've been so saturated with that sort of hyper bullish sentiment, it's obvious why the market has been so stagnant.

we need the bears to feel confident before the tide can really turn. bears were very confident in 2015 near the bottom (i was one of them )

well said. the point here is about value storage. gold may not rise nearly as much as bitcoin over time (though the 2001-2011 run was pretty magnificent). but there are other considerations. gold has a history of thousands of years; bitcoin, less than 10. that's a huge difference in risk profile.

that's why it makes sense for wealthy people to dump only a small amount into bitcoin. they need to hedge wisely, not strike it rich.

that's why these theories about mining cost are so silly. if difficulty goes up too fast, the more marginal miners will only mine at a loss for so long before shutting down. then difficulty adjusts downwards. it doesn't matter what it costs to mine BTC, because it can always cost less (or more).

if a miner is mining at a loss, why wouldn't they shut down? they can buy BTC instead wasting money on electricity, if they're so bullish.

there's obviously a real battle for the $6000s between bulls and bears. most people around here seem to assume the bottom is in, which makes me weary. i'm still refraining from trading right now. the market is still threatening a lot of weakness, and after so much downside, i'm only looking for buying/longing opportunities. i've got my fingers crossed that we start curving upwards and showing support into dips, but......i'll wait and see.