It's just momentum. It's more important that Ethereum looks too centralized than Bitcoin. And this centralization may at long last lead that SEC may change its stance and may start considering ETH as a security. And it'll be epic game!
the SEC didn't wait years to state ETH is not a security, only to flip on that later. not gonna happen. anyway, this isn't a game/competition. any coin being deemed a security is bad for all parties involved. ETH should take it as a compliment and get to work addressing it.
it's in worse shape than BTC (scale-wise) but we're both in the inefficient "linear scaling" boat. It was Bitcoin's time to shine and altcoins are nothing more than parasites thriving on its prey.
i mostly view altcoins as a way to generate bitcoins. however, i think "parasite" is the wrong way to think of them. actually, the relationship is quite symbiotic. the vast majority of altcoin volume is in alt/BTC markets: all that BTC liquidity could be BTC supply pushing the BTC/fiat markets down. if altcoins didn't exist, there would be a lot more BTC supply pushing the price down. by removing liquidity, altcoin markets remove BTC supply and therefore increase BTC price. |
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Wex is clearly having some back-end issues, and I suspect they are fixing them behind closed doors while communicating maintenance to keep everyone calm, this has always been Wex/BTC-E's way of communications when issues arrised, this time it's accompanied with a price-spike which adds to the fear of us users that things are going really wrong.
I can't give you guys any advice on keeping funds online or withdrawing through the withdrawable cryptos, but I personally keep my funds, which are significant, on the exchange, due to my believe everything will be sorted out in a week or so.
Money is made during times of crysis when there is fear and blood on the street, there are chances for opportunists now who are able to invest some money they can miss and are willing to take a calculated risk.
nothing wrong with some calculated risk---that's what makes markets. just be sure to spread the risk around. i was far too exposed to BTC-E when it went down in 2017 and will never make that mistake again. these days, i'm so paranoid about exchange exit scams, etc that i keep the vast majority of funds in BTC (offline) and keep a stack for high-leverage hedging (mostly futures). good luck out there, i'm really hoping for a positive outcome at WEX here. as much as i lost on BTC-E last year, i still have a place in my heart for the admins and the people who trade there. lots of money made there over years, and lots of good times in the trollbox.  |
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They want 1 week for maintainance which is only the case when they want to change the server or all of their wallet crashed along with server and they have to now download whole blockchain data from scratch. If not than its most likely they got second strike from FBI.
the earlier screw-up where they reenabled non-working withdrawals spells datacenter migration to me. for a shady exchange like this that hides behind shell companies, it's reasonable to take several days to find a new datacenter solution, migrate servers and sync wallets. the troubling thing is, what the hell happened in their datacenter? unlike last time, they still have full control over their domain and trading engine servers. and there is still no press release at justice.gov. so i highly doubt this is the US government! let's just hope for the best for those that have much deposited in, I don't think they are same management as BTC-E.
i think it's the same management. they run WEX just like they ran BTC-E. in both cases, there is big speculation about who really controlled them, but i believe they are the same, especially after the ukrainian militant connection. |
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I dont' think that a lot of people care for or even know much of privacy coins, at the moment. But if there was to be a speculative trend in the future with that, we may see regulators move to try restrict access to it faster. That's why I think that decentralised exchanges that potentially operate without fiat altogether are going to be inevitable.
yup, i think it'll develop into a multi-layered market. i don't think privacy coins worth their salt will be listed on tightly regulated exchanges at all. i seriously doubt coinbase would ever list ZEC, just on the possibility they follow through and phase out transparent addresses entirely. instead, we'll see a secondary market develop on decentralized exchanges. i think in some years, the vast majority of privacy coin volume will be on DEXs. as long as BTC can continue functioning as our reserve currency, that should work just fine. |
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that brings me back. that was a very dark couple days for me, for obvious reasons. BTC-E was my go-to exchange for years, and i was waiting out a dip. (as it turns out, that was the last dip before the bubble took off, so that takedown was much like the silk road seizure in 2013 for me) anyway, maybe, but it smells like something else. site is still up, trading still active, some withdrawals still active. and most importantly, no press release from the feds. by now, i'd expect something on the DOJ website. also, they attempted to re-enable withdrawals on all the affected coins yesterday, which failed. this was followed by the announcement about july 22. that suggests to me, again, emergency datacenter/server issues. (not that this bodes well, just don't think it's the USA government) |
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conspiracy idea: how about this being just a plot to dump some coins at super high prices? Then the exchange goes back to normal and some people wtfpwnt themselves on trades. Because, why would they turn the exchange on and enable some withdrawals if they want to exit scam?
I think they are panicking. An employee has misappropriated funds and as a result they can't meet their obligations. The reason they haven't shut down the site yet is because they are not all dishonest. They are looking to salvage the situation as best they can. that's an interesting take. i think you might be right. BTC-E and WEX has always been honorable (in their particular way anyway)---not like typical exit scammers. i think 99% of people in their position last summer would have disappeared and repaid nothing. i just wish we had some idea about the situation, how bad the damage is. i wonder if it has anything to do with the recent full token repayments (NMC, others?) or some similar misallocation. Seems the site is down at the moment...
up here. but that USDT premium keeps rising. 1.8:1. |
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unsure what is happen to WEX as it was formerly known as BTC-E they turn off withdrawal for unknown reasons.
If you have any information, please post it.
Thanks
latest official news from the exchange: https://twitter.com/WEXnz/status/1018872081994436608Due to wallets maintenance, BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, DSH withdrawals won't be available until 22 July. Sorry for inconvenience caused. something very wrong has obviously happened. best case scenario, this indicates an emergency server migration (which for an exchange like this, involves some sensitivity). this seems somewhat likely to be the case, given that ZEC and USDT withdrawals appear to be active. After 3 days without any news and coming from nowhere to say 5 wallets are in maintenance, I think I am ready to bet they fucked their servers and don't really have ideas to fix the issues. 1 week for a maintenance.... Imagine if your bank says, we are closed for maintenance for 1 week. No ATM avalaible...
the way they recovered from the btc-e seizure in 2017, i wouldn't assume the worst yet. they have encrypted server backups for sure. but i also wouldn't be storing funds here either. |
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If Coinbase ends up discarding zCash's privacy features, then it's a coin worth less than a penny since there is no utility. Zcash's privacy features aren't very useful anyway since they aren't mandatory---hardly anyone uses shielded transactions. some wallets don't even offer them. so its privacy is dodgy at best, since all shielded transactions represent a very small (and highly parse-able) data set. Coinbase may only support 'transparent' zcash addresses if they list it. no surprise there.  i'm honestly surprised they would even entertain the notion of a privacy coin. Will there come a day where no privacy coins are listed as a condition of regulation?
probably. there will always be exchanges in dodgy jurisdictions who will list them. more importantly, atomic swaps + decentralized exchanges might take all the liquidity over time. |
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Luckily i took all my shit out, 2 days before the "planned maintenance", clearly something very wrong is happening at this point.
something is very wrong, yeah. but what kind of exit scam starts with planned maintenance, then 2 days of the site being up with active markets? and some assets can still be withdrawn? ZEC withdrawals still active as of a few hours ago. i assume USDT withdrawals are active because USDT/USD is trading at 1.5 and BTC/USDT is trading at $5000. just saw this article from last night: https://www.coindesk.com/something-strange-is-going-on-at-a-crypto-exchange-called-wex/very strange stuff: In a July 12 post on Facebook, Dmitry Vassiliev – who, according to Singapore records obtained by Russian news agency RBK, is listed as the owner of WEX's operator, World Exchange Services – attributed the price disparities to the actions of Dmitry Sutormin, who he described as a former WEX manager.
Vassiliev explained that Sutormin, a vice president of the Russian Association for Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain and a venture investor in Russia, had been selling a high number of "WEX codes," which could be redeemed on the exchange for cryptocurrency. Indeed, statements from Vassiliev suggest that it's not entirely clear who is in charge of WEX at the moment.
RBK also reported that Vassiliev was planning to sell the exchange to Dmitry Khavchenko, a former volunteer fighter in the war in Ukraine and a participant of the militia forces in Crimea that supported the Russian annexation in 2014.
Khavchenko, in turn, told RBK that he was going to move WEX's office to Crimea and register the managing company in the war-torn region of Ukraine known as Donbass.
According to RBK's sources, Khavchenko and other people engaged in the conflict in Ukraine are already involved in the exchange's management, including people connected to Konstantine Malofeev, who has been cited in the press as one of the shadow sponsors of East Ukrainian militants.
WEX denied that the exchange is going to be sold on Twitter, and the exchange did not respond to questions regarding who is in charge or why, exactly, its prices shot up earlier this week. i remember similar talk when btc-e first went down. the admins made some comments about moving the new exchange to donetsk. i think they always had some connection to pro-russian rebels in east ukraine, so this revelation is not surprising. |
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it depends on the exchange. it's much harder to game exchanges that require selfies, and i believe that's becoming the norm.
It's been a long time since I verified myself anywhere and I don't remember any selfies. It makes sense that that's what they want these days. Still, even more of a juicy challenge for those photoshoppers out there. yeah, poloniex rolled out selfie requirements earlier this year. coinbase has had them for a while. maybe it's more of a USA thing, not sure. you'd need to have some sick photoshop skills to pull that off, lol. and it won't work in some cases. coinbase makes it really hard---they force you to verify through your webcam. no jpg uploads. |
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guys what happenin there? again they are tryin to exit scam ? why they are increased withdrawal fee to 20% ?
the drastic increases to the fiat withdrawal fees are very worrisome. that suggests they are getting desperate to stop funds from leaving the exchange.  it's not clear if it's an exit scam yet; the site is still up. and i believe from what i'm seeing on twitter/trollbox there are still crypto trading pairs active which you can withdraw the crypto (not BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, DSH). at least there's no FBI takedown page at wex.nz. radio silence for 24 hours is scary, though. premium over bitfinex stands just under 15%. seems to have dropped a bit.... |
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How much exchange ID is already fake? It's just a couple of jpegs you can pick up from anywhere if you know where to look.
it depends on the exchange. it's much harder to game exchanges that require selfies, and i believe that's becoming the norm. that's a far bigger hurdle than just buying an ID on the darknet. you also need very in-depth personal information sometimes. gemini requires SSN (GDAX will also in many cases) and other info, and even requires REAL ID-compliant ID, which will be harder to get on the darknet. and they do perform background checks to verify the personal info you provide. does anyone know any place where i can buy fake ids or who offers this service? in the bitcoin.com post there was a telegram example so does anyone know the telegram group name or something?
you're better off asking here: https://www.reddit.com/r/darknet/ |
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Eventually the entire centralized ecosystem will be filtered by authorities and we can't do much other than to watch our steps. Right now we're ahead of that, but we don't have much time left to use dex's and free ourselves.
even with DEXs, we still need fiat gateways. someday, the matrix meme will be reality and people won't need to exchange BTC/USD, but there's just no way around it for the foreseeable future. in the US, the government seems to have completely scared the localbitcoins market into compliance. my old cash trading connects have disappeared and everyone is demanding ID now. and the coinbases and geminis are enforcing bank-level verification at this point. Banks are more secretive, and facilitate money laundering, corruption, etc. Does that mean that fiat currency is fault? No. Nefarious activity is a byproduct of every single currency, not just bitcoin.
he's just using red herrings. any reasonable person can see the issue is one of "control" and not "secrecy." of course there's nothing secret about bitcoin. it's the most transparent financial instrument ever created, lol! but they can't control it.... |
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“You cannot have a means of payment that is based on secrecy when you’re trying to create a transparent banking system. If you open up a hole like bitcoin then all the nefarious activity will go through that hole, and no government can allow that.” the irony here is incredible. the banking system is built for laundering money. the world's biggest banks (hsbc for starters) have been tied to massive laundering efforts in service of drug cartels and terrorist organizations. why would you use a transparent, permanent ledger (and a relatively illiquid market) for large scale illegal activity? you're better off creating a web of shell companies with puppet directors and using the legacy banking system. |
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who knows what share of global volume china ever really had, anyway? so much fake wash volume; it's impossible to know. what i do know is that localbitcoins (and presumably other OTC channels) exploded in volume directly after the exchanges were shuttered: https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/CNYTa ra, China. You brought us nothing but ball ache. Now if only you could wipe out all your miners we could move on into a better future.
doubt they could make much of a dent there. bitmain and other chinese miners have spent the last couple years distributing mines throughout the world, outside the reach of a chinese government crackdown. i don't think subsidized chinese electricity is in abundant supply anymore either. and if "chinese" pools control the hash power, it doesn't follow that all the mining hardware is in china. i think the "chinese mining problem" has been over-hyped for years. bitmain is a threat. i don't think the government is a major threat to the network (unless in collusion with bitmain). |
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draper's $10k prediction from 2014 was correct. i suspect his new prediction of $250k by 2022 will turn out correct as well.
In other words, you have massively bought at current levels? I don't see why anyone with even a remote believe in Bitcoin to reach the $250,000 mark wouldn't invest at least a large chunk of his fiat net worth in Bitcoin. i'm heavily invested. but i invest based on my own analysis, not draper's. i've also been buying since early 2013, so i'm not crazy about buying here. if we do another leg down to $2000-$3000, i'll be buying more. I also trust that Tim Draper guy. He is much more credible than Tom Lee on CNBC.
tom lee reminds me of a child in the backseat of the car, screaming "are we there yet?!" draper knows that patience is a virtue when it comes to markets. |
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Funny how the people making such outlandish predictions are the ones who stand to gain from a high-priced bitcoin. So far, they've all been wrong. But we'll forget their names after they are definitively wrong and a new batch of proclaimed "analysts" with titles like CEO, COO, etc, will jump into their place.
sapper (the Blockbid COO) didn't make any outlandish predictions. he just said cryptocurrency will become more mainstream over the next few years (i.e. it's not just a bubble). anyway, gotta give these guys time before declaring them wrong. draper's $10k prediction from 2014 was correct. i suspect his new prediction of $250k by 2022 will turn out correct as well. we may not be at million dollar bitcoins (yet), but most of the early permabulls were all proven correct, in spirit if not with literal price predictions. |
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I don't see much hype around Bitcoin -- the shitshow is focusing on everything else. i think it moves in cycles---back and forth between alts and BTC. i noticed years ago too during bull markets the way BTC and LTC would switch off pumping, profits flowing from one market to another. the way BTC and altcoins interface today is much like sector rotation in stock markets. there's definitely been plenty of hype for BTC---institutions are beginning to recognize it as an accepted investment class. even jp morgan says it could be the next gold. futures markets, talk of ETFs. lots of 5-6 figure price predictions hanging out there. it's all relative, though. i'm sure the next wave of adoption/hype (maybe 2019 or 2020?) will blow us all away. |
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Have fun with your mutual funds, you may finally be rich by age 100. Thanks, I have had fun and will be rich long before 100. BTW mutual funds are long-term. Which is the approach everyone here recommends - now that getting rich quick didn't work out. the get-rich-quickers are getting washed out of the market as we speak. a market dropping 70% from the highs will do that.  doesn't mean the long term uptrend is threatened or that mutual funds are in the same league of returns...... My advice is simply to learn from your mistake, and don't make it worse based on slogans, dreaming, groupthink, and slanted advice in general. Just look at who's stirring the pot... the coin exchanges. They're the only ones who continually make money out of this.
If you must invest in crypto, sell now and buy back in at $400. That at least isn't obviously dumb. The market may be pumped again someday. Or put your money in a real investment.
i'll acknowledge this is still officially a bear market and we could go far lower. but $400 just isn't realistic. the lowest (% wise) we've ever dropped was after the 2011 bubble. that equivalent would put us at ~ $1000, worst case. every other bubble correction landed higher (2012, april 2013, november 2013). based on history, aiming for $1000 is low probability and $400 is a pipe dream. |
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By the most logical thinking:
• There's strong evidence that the late 2017 spike in Bitcoin value was due to manipulation via Tether.
• IF that is so, then that entire episode actually means nothing, and...
• Bitcoin etc values will decay back to their historical levels prior to pump & dump.
• This will be slow because interim buyers won't want to take the losses. you realize this all equally applies to the mt gox willy bot? the fact of the matter is that real demand existed at bubble prices. real buyers were buying at $10k-$20k (and they are suffering for it now). you can't possibly attribute all demand for BTC to price manipulation. that's crazy. it has applicable use cases now, and many people (myself included) are betting on its success (with our real money) regardless of whether the 2017 bubble even happened. |
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