Yes, I'm absolutely sure

In fact, you don't even need to be as sure as I am to see things from a proper angle since you can just look into how countries fought with hyperiflation in the past. You may start, for example, with the Weimar republic. Stabilizing money is the first thing you should do if you want to get out of the pitfall you got into. Well, in case of Venezuela, you should first get rid of this clown which usurped power there, indeed

As the saying goes, you can't solve a problem relying on those who created it. And in this I agree with you 100%, i.e. Bitcoin is unlikely to help Venezuelans as long as Maduro rules them unless they start using it on their own (which they are likely already doing anyway, even without any Maduro sticking around)

The crypto startups you refer you are likely creating problems out of nothing

That is, at first you create a problem out of thin air (very much like banks create fiat money), then you try to successfully solve it. Well, actually you don't try to solve it as it doesn't exist for real in the first place, but you make it look like its real and urgently needs to be solved. This allows you to ask for grants (if you are a public institution like a university) or turn to fundraising (if you are a startup)

And the blockchain fits this scheme perfectly as it can be advertised as a modern snake oil effective against all current maladies and misfortunes (like poverty, corruption, and whatnot). It doesn't really matter whether it can actually be of help as it is not even planned to help solve anything at all

We still can't completely discard a possibility of a Black Swan event

For example, someone discovering a critical bug in the Bitcoin-Qt wallet like the one found there recently, and then exploiting it to the full. Without such an event actually happening, it is unlikely that Bitcoin will fall so hard, but if it tanks below 2k (which is quite possible), it will still be a Black Swan-ish event for the majority of the Bitcoin crowd (especially, the long-term holders who bought near the 2017 top)

Well, there is certainly a certain amount of truth in your words

However, it can be said that affiliates are also interested in promoting not just good paying sites before poor paying ones (the point which goes without saying and with which I totally agree) but also reliable ones before not so much. Otherwise, their affiliate income stream from clients they send to unreliable and scammy sites would quickly run dry (apart from directly damaging their image as impartial reviewers)

Actually, that depends (whether it is good or not)

If selling running dry is not followed by demand taking over, it is neither here nor there. But in a bear market and in a general downtrend, there will be always be someone willing to sell and that'll be more likely than someone willing to buy, statistically. Further, there is also an undeniable impact on prices produced by short selling (which is rampant in a bear market), and while some consider it irrelevant in the long term (which I'm inclined to agree with), we can't deny the downward pressure that shorts make on price in the short term

Buy low and sell high is a general principle (as you said)

In practice, though, it may mean quite a lot of different things. For example, in a bear market you may be buying high and then selling low in order to buy lower again. That cycle can be repeated a dozen times until you reach a true bottom and then you just let your profits grow. In this way, it doesn't matter how many losing trades you make as it is the end result, i.e. your balance, which counts in the end

I don't quite understand what you mean by this

If I got you right, you mean that people buy or sell coins and end up with less coins than if they didn't trade at all, right? If so, it doesn't in the least mean anything. As Bitcoin is by far more volatile that the American dollar (not even speaking of other cryptocurrencies), in general it's not correct to gauge one's trading performance by considering their balance in bitcoins or altcoins

In this way, you may actually end up with less coins but if your balance grows in US dollars (let's admit this is exactly what most of us are looking for and dreaming of), it is not what losses stand for. And it is still more so in a downtrend market as at any moment you can buy more coins with your dollars than before (if you choose so, of course). As long as your balance is improving in dollars, it's okay

I don't see any captcha

And I don't know why. Maybe, it's because my account is really old and they think I'm kinda trusted user (which I definitely am). Today I have withdrawn over 100k satoshi from the faucet, so right now I have a little over 3k, i.e. just enough to pay my referrals (I remember about you, boys, don't worry), and there is still no captcha for me. But that's a good thing anyway, therefore I don't mind

This is not the politics board

But I still wholeheartedly agree with you. And that's why Bitcoin in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. As this case shows (I mean with London refusing to give back the Venezuelan gold to Maduro), dictators can be effectively dethroned by cutting them off of the financial support (it is just a matter of time), but with Bitcoin it will be a lot more difficult and will likely cause a lot more of collateral damage

I don't think it is even so for the tech

It is just empty words meant for general and clueless public as we have yet to see a viable application of the blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrencies (I mean actual use). I don't really rule out the assumption that the blockchain may have other applications, but these applications (for example, in the election systems) are more defying to governments than the use of blockchain for cryptocurrencies

Things were complicated before and after the previous halving

There was a good deal of hype prior to the actual date which allowed the market to be rising for half a year till a few weeks before the halving. Then there was a massive correction in June 2016 due to people booking profits (I told about such a possibility in May), with the Bifinex hack in August adding even more insult to injury. And the real growth started only in September of that year when the effects of the reward halving finally began to kick in

It depends upon what you compare it with

Most people here compare Bitcoin to the rest of the pack, i.e. altcoins, and the result of this comparison unequivocally allows to claim that Bitcoin is still the reigning king of crypto far ahead of any competitor (an indisputable champion if you please). Apart from that, don't forget that Bitcoin didn't just crash from 30k to 3k but it also rose from 1k to 20k within the same timeframe (i.e. about a year)

Ironically, the top 10 altcoins are good for both buying and selling

That is, they typically show good daily volatility which can be used to profit off it by riding rebounds and corrections. Most shitcoins have already crashed to their bottom (but this bottom is final for them until they are left for dead), so there is not much you can squeeze from them. Apart from that, you can't short sell them as the trading volume in these coins is small and exchanges like Fitfinex don't allow to margin trade them anyway

I can easily show people how they can see the house edge at work

And seeing that it will be easier to understand why you are set to lose in the end no matter what betting strategy you employ. Just run Auto-bet at 1 satoshi without increasing the bet amount and set it to run for 1000 times. You will see that your losses will amount to the tune of 50 satoshi (maybe somewhat less, maybe somewhat more). This is the house edge at work which you can see with your own eyes (in this case it is equal to 5%)

I don't think you can equal trading to circulating for the purposes mentioned

The correct reference frame would be real value versus speculative value. In this manner, trading doesn't add so much to real value (though it still looks better than dumb holding at first glance) as it adds to speculative value. So while I agree that "circulating" is the right term but I can't possibly agree with your inclusion of trading in it. Even from a purely technical point of view, trading doesn't involve much circulation as 99% of it takes place without traded coins leaving an exchange

Can't disagree more with this, and while we are at it, agree more with OP

Provided it was written by him of course. Holders since 2010 are just as stupid as who are the ones since December 2017. The difference between them is that the former were lucky while the latter not so much. And no, that wouldn't change the perspective even a little bit if the price went to 100k tomorrow. How come? Because traders have already multiplied their startup capital x1000, and I mean relative to the lucky holders, not unlucky ones or their initial investment in the market

That's my point exactly

However, people who claim that they stick to their guns, i.e. to Satoshi's true vision, turn out to be even greater elitists and profit-oriented blokes wanting "to make money out of thin air in this market" than what you would expect from an average businessman, huh. In fact, it can be said that "pure bitcoin maximalists and underground anarchists" turned out to be not much better than the rest of the pack or maybe even worse if we consider their impact on Bitcoin's development these days

It wouldn't mean a thing

Even if some coin defeats the market cap of Bitcoin, it won't mean that it has more real presence than the king of cryptocurrencies. Market cap is a very misleading metric as it includes all mined coins while only a minor part of them can really be in circulation. In this manner, there can be a price outlier (like someone buying a dozen doges at a price of 1 dollar per coin) which will temporarily produce a market cap value exceeding that of Bitcoin

Maybe, he didn't mean you but rather the shop owner

Or confused you with him and was quick on the trigger. Anyway, as OP is nowhere to be seen, we will likely see a brand new account soon with a revised site and a new promotion, probably not as betraying as the one presented here. I'm curious if the shop runner was actually able to deceive anyone into depositing coins


I don't really think he is guilty or anything like that. Rather, he should feel frustrated and disappointed with his failure of making anyone believe in his scheme

No, it is not what you think it is

The poster you replied to seems to mean that merchants don't even see any cryptocurrency per se as they are using payment processors like BitPay or CoinGate, which deal with all the required conversions and volatility issues. Basically, you, as an online shop owner, just install a plugin on your site which is provided by the payment processor, and your clients will be able to pay with crypto. Then at the end of the week you receive a fiat transfer into your bank account which totals payments made during that week by the clients of your shop