It is not very surprising to me. Bitcoin is not very suitable for money laundering. It can be used as a store of value, but for laundering the dirty money Bitcoin is not a prefered medium. When someone does money laundering, he purchases movable or immovable assets, such as bullion, real estate, automobiles, arms, equities.etc. Bitcoin is not suitable here because it is not very easy to purchase these assets by making direct payments in Bitcoin. You need to convert BTC to fiat first and then use it to purchase the assets.

Another issue with Bitcoin is its volatility. If you hold a lot of money in the form of Bitcoin, you may need time to convert that wealth to some asset such as real estate. It may be require to wait for a few months. And during this time period, Bitcoin can go up or down by as much as 50%.

Hmm... this is exactly why I stopped using Facebook five years back. Even if you guys are using FB, make sure that your primary email and phone number are not updated in the profile. In countries such as China and India, Facebook has built good relationship with the authorities, by providing data to identify anyone who makes frequent posts against the politicians. In the US, they are shamelessly meddling in politics by openly supporting the ultra-left wing of the Democrat party (Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren.etc).

A lot is being discussed about the 51% attack, but it is easier said than done. As per the latest stats, the Chinese mining pools contribute 74% of the hashpower. But not all of this 74% comes from mega mining farms. A significant part comes from the medium-level miners, who operate under the radar. And in case the Chinese government intends to go ahead with the 51% attack, do you really think that the Bitcoin users will just sit back and watch? They will immediately implement hard forks which would nullify any such attack.

In short, China is unlikely to attack Bitcoin. These are the reasons:

1. It is against international law
2. Low probability of success
3. It will ruin the reputation of the country
4. It will move crypto-related businesses out of China
5. The expenses will be significant.

I was just pointing out the fact that fiat currency is still used for 99.9% of the illegal activities. And this is the case even after 10 years of existence of Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency that is pseudo-anonymous and having more than 100 million users is still not the preferred payment method of the criminals. And that tells a lot about the association of fiat with crime. The media can twist the story as per liking, but the facts remain as such.

And regarding the exchange hacks, how the currency can be blamed for the loss? If someone robs a bank, are you going to blame the bank instead of the robber? Scams exist everywhere and they can be eliminated only if the authorities drop their hostility to cryptocurrency.

The media loves to highlight the negatives of cryptocurrency. But why they are silent on its merits? Fiat currency can be counterfeited (even digital fiat). But Bitcoin can never be  counterfeited. Fiat is not protected from inflation, but Bitcoin is. Why they are silent on these aspects?  

Long term is not preferred in the case of smaller altcoins. 3-4 years back, I had invested heavily in altcoins. I had a large number of different coins, including Bitsend, Byteball, Litecoin, Denarius and Namecoin. Apart from a few such as Litecoin and Ethereum, most of them have lost at least 95% of their value during the last 1.5 years. Some have lost 99% of the value and are no longer traded in the exchanges. The trick is to convert them to more stable assets (such as fiat cash and Bitcoin), when you are having a chance. Once the prices crash and the coin is no longer actively traded, you may not be able to encash them. Another thing that can be planned is partial profit booking at fixed intervals.

During the past 3-4 days, the Bitcoin dominance has gone down by 2%, from 66.7% to 64.7%. But overall, the trends indicate a rising market share for Bitcoin (three months back, the dominance was around 50%). This is despite the fact that CMC had added a few hundred coins recently (one of them, UNUS SED is currently having a market cap of $1.3 billion). ETH has gone below the 0.025 support level and is currently trading at 0.022 BTC per coin. XRP is struggling to stay above 3,000 Sat.

The altcoin market share has shrunk to around 35% (including the stable coins and Bitcoin forks) and we are witnessing an ever growing number of coins competing for the constantly shrinking space. There have been a lot of fund inflow to Bitcoin from the alts. Probably by the end of 2019, we'll be having a dominance of around 75%.

This is exactly why the authorities are pushing hard for the KYC implementation. Right now, a majority of the cryptocurrency users are anonymous. Once they feel that a certain threshold (say 90%) has gone through the KYC process, then it becomes easier for them to implement a blanket ban on crypto. I have seen a lot of posts here supporting KYC. But few people realize that the real aim of KYC is not to protect, but to persecute anyone who holds cryptocurrency in his wallet.

Things are different in India. I have been to that country, and it is one of the most corrupt regions in the world. Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are able to get Indian ID cards and even passports for as little as $1,000. In case a ban is implemented there, then the cops will be very happy. Armed with the KYC data, they will detain any suspected individual who has a history of crypto trading. The laptops and mobiles will be seized and if any coins are found, then they will encash it themselves.

And that is why it is such a bad idea to go against the law in India. The American cops would look like angels in front of the Indian cops. A lot of people disappear after getting arrested by the cops, and no one has the courage to say anything against them. A few years back, I heard about an incident where a teenaged minor girl, who was kidnapped from Nepal for trafficking somehow escaped and ended up at a police station. The cops raped the girl for one week, before returning her to the same people who had kidnapped her.

Indian Bitcoin users should consider immigrating to some country, where human rights are valued. There is no other option.

First of all Satoshi Nakamoto won't be able to sell all of his coins in one go. That much liquidity is not present in the market right now. Nobuaki Kobayashi (Mt Gox bankruptcy trustee) tried to dump a much smaller stash in a prolonged duration lasting many months, and even that resulted in the Bitcoin exchange rates crashing by almost 80% in 2018. Kobayashi was trying to dump less than BTC200,000, while Satoshi's stash is estimated to be around BTC980,000 ($9.5 billion as per current exchange rate).

Unless some miracle happens, it will take many years for Satoshi to get rid of his stash at a fair price. The only exception would be in case some billionaire or a cabal expresses interest to purchase the entire stash in one go, at or above the market prices.

It is always good to see the mainstream media trying hard to paint Bitcoin in a negative light, despite having enough proof at their disposal to rubbish such arguments. Let's look at the annual turnover of some of the illegal businesses.

a. Illegal narcotics trade (Opioids including heroin, cocaine, synthetics including methamphetamine): worth more than $400 billion per year.
b. Counterfeiting: worth $250 billion
c. Illegal arms trade: worth more than $100 billion per year
d. Human trafficking: worth around $32 billion per year
e. Illicit Wildlife Trade: worth more than $10 billion

Now don't tell me that Bitcoin is the culprit behind all this, despite less than $1 billion worth of coins being used for such purposes every year.

India is a corrupt third world country, and to tell the truth I don't expect the government to give legality to cryptocurrency. But from what I have noticed, a lot of FUD have been going on in India regarding the proposed ban. And till now, the government has not confirmed that they are planning to ban the crypto.

A few days back, I made my points here:


Let's first get some confirmation from the Indian government, before we aid the cabals by spreading the FUD.

Those who had registered a few years back may be holding some coins in their wallets, but I am not sure about the ones who joined after 2017. The rules have changed and now you need to accrue a certain amount of merit before you get a promotion as far as the forum rank is concerned. And unless you are a Hero or a Legendary member, the chances of getting a slot in any of the signature campaigns is very low. Bounty contests are there, but the problem is that more than 95% of them never pay. And even when they make the payments, most of the times the tokens are worth next to nothing.

This forum has a total of 2.6 million+ registered members, and I don't think that more than 10% of this number holds a minimum of BTC0.01 in their wallets. I was lucky to purchase some crypto in 2012, when the exchange rates were around $10 per coin.

I think you are talking about ERC-20 tokens, and not ECR-20.

Native support for ERC-20 is not available in Ledger. Can't blame them. A lot of the developers have complained that storing tokens in the Ethereum platform is very risky and the funds are vulnerable to hacks and robberies. Ledger team has stated that the ERC-20 platform is not stable enough for them to allow it in the hardware wallet.

But there is another way of storing ERC-20 tokens in  Ledger. You can store the tokens in a third party application such as Myetherwallet and then store the private keys in Ledger. This is not very user friendly, but I don't think that you have any better option right now.

The governments are going to act much before that. If 30% of the citizens make investments in Bitcoin, that means that a lot of the investment in equities, real estate, bullion.etc may be pulled up. And this can result in a major financial crisis. The situation is ripe for something like that happening. Check the stock market. Many of the stocks are overpriced, with heavily inflated P/E ratios. People continue to invest in stocks, because they don't have any alternative option. And the authorities are happy about this situation.

However, if Bitcoin establishes itself as a reliable form of investment asset, then a lot of funds currently invested in overpriced assets such as equities and real estate may move towards crypto. This will result in stock prices crashing, and a decline in the real estate valuations.

During the past few years, gold has seen a decline in interest from the investors. Gold imports have decreased in the two largest markets (India and China) and the prices haven't moved much despite the drop in South African mine production. IMO, the next bull rally for gold may happen only if a major global financial crisis occurs. And the chances of something like that happening looks very remote as of now. And gold is no longer the preferred "safe heaven investment". That honor has gone to the United States Treasury Bonds.

There is no clarity on this issue. Please wait until the bill is tabled in the parliament. Once the bill is tabled, it is going to take many months before it is signed in to law.

A few days back Dharmapuri Srinivas (a member of parliament form the Telangana Rashtra Samithi) asked Anurag Thakur (Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs), the following questions in the parliament:


(Source: News.bitcoin.com)

The answers given by the hon. minister are as follows:


(Source: News.bitcoin.com)

So going by this, we can assume that owning BTC is not illegal in India right now and the situation is unlikely to change for the next few months.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not supporting what he did. What he did was completely unethical and illegal (as I had stated earlier).

But at the same time, we can't put the entire blame on him. BitFunder was operating 100% legally and ethically until the hack occured. The exchange lost some coins, and ideally Jon Montroll should have gone to the law enforcement immediately after informing the users of the incident. I am not entirely sure why he tried to hide the incident. Perhaps setting up the exchange took too many years of effort and he was not willing to lose his creation.

What he did was not right and he got the punishment for that. I think that 14 months is a just punishment. And I don't support a harsher punishment, considering his contribution to the crypto-exchanges and personal background.

No. You are not intelligent if you are blindly holding on to a cryptocurrency for an infinite period of time. Intelligent people are the ones who encash their assets at the right time. Bitcoin is not a physical asset, and it is a digital asset. IMO, any such asset will be having a limited lifespan. Now I can't predict whether Bitcoin will survive for another 10 years, 100 years or 1000 years. But I firmly believe that at some point in the future, another cryptocurrency or even another product will be able to replace Bitcoin.

Right now, we have more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies in existence. A simple majority of them are no longer actively traded or mined, meaning that they don't have any worth. Do you believe that holding such assets for the long term could have been an intelligent step? Also, are you sure that something like this will never happen to Bitcoin in the distant future?

Please define what do you mean by "long term".

For how long do you intend to hold your coins, before you encash them? You need to convert them to fiat at some point of time, since the acceptability remains pretty low as of now. In my case, I purchased most of my coins in 2012, when the prices were around $10 per coin. I sold most of my stash in 2015, when the exchange rate was around $200, but that was after losing the majority of my initial coins to a scam. Now tell me which one was better? Losing the coins to a scam, or selling them for $200? I still have plenty of coins remaining, despite selling at regular intervals from 2015 to 2019.

Had I kept all of my coins, then I would have become a millionaire by now. But I don't regret what I did. Back then, I had financial constraints and badly needed the cash. And Bitcoin is such a risky asset, that you don't know when it will go down by 90%.

The prison sentence he received was for "obstruction of justice". He lied to the investigators that he had managed to identify the hack in the early phases. He also cheated his clients by refusing to reveal the true extent of the hack. Had he done so, then the clients would have immediately withdrawn whatever funds they had remaining in these platforms. The judges were not happy with the fact that he gave false balance statements (for the exchange) to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Falsifying the balance sheets is unethical as well as criminal, and I am happy that he managed to avoid a lengthier term.

I think I made a statement regarding this a few years back... will just repeat it.

According to the coinmarketcap website, the daily trade volume for Bitcoin is $16.3 billion, which amounts to more than 9% of its market cap. I know that some of the exchanges inflate their trade volumes, so let's take a conservative figure of 5%. One-twentieth of all the coins in circulation are being traded every day. This is extremely high, when compared to that of other assets. In case of gold, this proportion is less than 0.1% (I am talking about actual gold, not derivatives). In case of real estate, the proportion is even lower.

The main reason for volatility is clear. The vast majority of the coins in circulation are in free-float and are actively traded. Unless this proportion drops from 5% per day to somewhere around 0.5% per day, we'll continue to witness a lot of volatility as far as the exchange rates are concerned.