That's not how fee calculations work. No matter how many positions you open or close, the overall fee you pay remains 0.25%---the only thing that changes is the amount the more volume you generate.

Easy example.

0.25% fee over $1 trade = $0.0025
0.25% fee over one hundred $1 trades = $0.25

You see that the fee remains 0.25% no matter what.

Didn't we have a sell the Bakkt launch event? Even if the dump we witnessed wasn't related to Bakkt, the market has turned bearish a month or so before. It automatically translates into less demand.

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market only appeals to retail money when the prices go goes up. If the prices move sideways, or go down, money is more likely to be withdrawn from this market. It's largely fomo driven.

Look at the issuance of new stablecoins.... it has stagnated, which perfectly seems to confirm how retailers treat this market. Imagine what would happen when crypto stagnated for a full 12-24 month period. It will lose its shine.

I think that's solely related to the fact that crypto exchanges want to keep their bank accounts functional, which explains why they are so paranoid. They are basically a slave of their banks and therefore very strict.

It wasn't all that long ago where Bitstamp randomly started asking their traders very weird questions about their finances---questions I remember my bank asked me too when I created a new bank account with them.

Bingo! Finally someone being honest here---crypto in most cases is not convenient to use as payment option and will probably never become that. People keep hyping crypto as the ultimate currencies, but they failed miserably as such.

The actual selling feature of crypto is censorship resistant payments, which few people actually need in the grand scheme of things. In other words, it's a niche market people want to be penetrated with crypto. This can take decades.

Speculation and store or value are pretty much the only features you need, and Bitcoin has both of them. I'm perfectly fine with these two areas to keep doing better while payments only increases by minor upticks.

It was an ICO, but it's current status is no longer that---what it is known as today is a POW network---therefore is put in the same category as Bitcoin. People may not agree with that but things are as they are.

As for Ethereum being Vitalik controlled, maybe, but his influence on what happens is declining as time goes by. Important is that the CFTC doesn't look at Ethereum like that because they continue to call it a decentralized crypto.

Regarding POS, it's not certain yet that it will happen. The CFTC just focuses on how Ethereum runs today, not how it might run in 2020 and after. I don't consider Ethereum a security either. Bitcoin bulls on the other hand do.

Just because some crypto coin utilizes the blockchain doesn't make it secure or popular---a lot of coins have been attacked because of how insecure their networks are. It's a massive single point of failure.

Bitcoin is known for its immensely powerful network---security that helps maintain its data integrity. I haven't seen many people praise Bitcoin because of it being a blockchain. People value Bitcoin's network.

Blockchain is a buzzword to help businesses and scammers attract capital. I have never liked the idea behind a whole blockchain industry. It's 95% hype and 5% utility. One day that hype will lose its momentum....

It's something that people should have seen coming. I mean, they are distributing money, which governments have never liked with how people here can freely claim the bounties without there being a trail linking to your identity.

I'm sure projects will come up with new ways of distributing bounties trying to exploit grey areas, but governments will strike back and update their current set of requirements so that there is no way out anymore.

People all wanted crypto to become more mainstream, well, this is a side effect of that. If you think the current situation is bad already, then wait until you see how the regulatory framework works in the next couple of years.

Not that surprising, is it? Alibaba has government officials in its board and I'm pretty sure that there are perks they enjoy as result of that. It's basically an extension of the Chinese government so they will obviously follow suit.

China will do everything it can to crack down on any possible route allowing people to access the crypto ecosystem. I expect more to come with how people in China still can easily access the crypto ecosystem.

Ethereum was a platform for scammers to launch worthless tokens on they sell to people for millions.... you want to go back to that? It possibly won't even happen because there are dozens of other smart contract platforms now.

I'm perfectly happy with where Ethereum is today. It is building its way as platform for DEFI, which I strongly believe has a lot of potential. Money has always been a killer application and that will not change.

The only problem Ethereum is seriously struggling with is scaling on-chain, which is why I am looking forward to what the actual impact is of the next upgrades. I plan to increase my Ethereum position in the coming months and this is an important factor for me.

If you already know that you rely on luck, why even bother continuing the same path only yielding a loss? In your case it's pure gambling that you do, so common sense should tell you that you will only lose in the long run.

There is a reason why these platforms pop up constantly.... if it was profitable for most people these platforms wouldn't exist. I suggest you to keep spot trading, which is much better for your mental wellbeing.

Everything is very much still connected to what Bitcoin does unless there is an altcoin season, which I don't see happen any time soon. People need to be aware of that and make a rational decision and not just fomo in.

A lot of people have been trapped in buying overly expensive altcoins because they were "breaking out" in a bullish way. Bitcoin did not agree with that and the whole market took a massive dive as result of that.

I think that if Bitcoin goes back to $5-$6k, we might see Ethereum back to $100-$120 which I will use to stack up on Ethereum. I did so last year and I'll happily do it again. It's too good of an opportunity to say no to.

"must" lmao....

In all seriousness, the market just needs to flush out a lot of weak hands and traders with profitable positions. I am currently stacking up fiat preparing for a $5-$6k visit. I don't often get bearish, but now I rightfully am.

Realistically speaking, $5k is a bit of a stretch, but with how irrational the market is a $5k flash wick might be a great (possibly once in a lifetime) opportunity to enter the market at such lower levels.

After all, it's Bitcoin that we're talking about---pumps and dumps have happened for nearly a decade so don't expect the market to suddenly behave differently. People also thought the market changed last year and paid the price for it.

On Sunday's usually there is some price action due to the Asian market waking up, but I don't think the price can sustain current levels much longer---bull traps are quite common in a bear market, and we have seen one today.

What new pattern exactly? The bullish pennants/wedges YouTube crypto "experts" talk about? Technically speaking, we haven't seen the market do anything bullish yet. It's just price action within a range controlled by bears.

It's just a matter of time before the $8k mark breaks and we are headed to much lower levels.

I'm not so sure of that. I believe that the dominance metric is taken way out of context---people first claim it's useless when Bitcoin's dominance is low, then when it's going up they start celebrating and trash altcoins.

I know a lot of people want to see altcoins vanish from the market, but that's not going to happen, regardless of how little utility they bring to the table---utility people never cared about with how they only focus on massive pumps.

If you ask why people trade altcoins, in most cases they will tell you to increase their satoshi count. The way altcoins pump and dump makes it very lucrative for traders profit. All they need is a chart. Utility is meaningless.

Crypto is an illiquid market, so any trader with millions $$$ in coins or fiat will be able to drive the price up or down by 5-10% when executing a market order---this can be a totally legit order without the intention to manipulation prices.

People keep referring to manipulation when they see the price go down, but where are the same people when the price goes up? For real, how hypocritical can you be to only call manipulation when the market turns against you?

Even certain low cap stocks are experiencing 10-20% dumps occasionally, and that within a firmly regulated environment. It happens because of slippage---lack of liquidity not allowing people either to enter or exit in large quantities without losing value.

What makes you think Bitcoin's price is highly manipulated? The only obvious form of manipulation we see take place is volume manipulation by mainly Asian exchanges to get a higher rank on sites such as CMC.

These exchanges in no shape or form contribute to price discovery, so they are just there doing their thing, but the SEC looks at the bigger picture and considers these exchanges faul players. It's a risk they don't consider worth taking.

Overall, the price will go up with or without an ETF. People need to stop thinking that an ETF will be the $100k catalyst that makes them rich. The get rich quick time is over.

That has always been the case here. I can't remember a time where people on this forum or elsewhere with a bunch of coins in their portfolio to recommend people to not touch Bitcoin for a while.

I can understand that there is an incentive for people holding Bitcoin to keep shilling it during a bearish market, but recommending people to buy every single dip is just retarded in my opinion. One shouldn't tell anyone to do so.

I rather explain people that it might be better to wait for the price to bottom out first than to say go ahead and buy as many coins as you can. Shillers tend to do so by pointing at +$100k price points to tempt them to buy.

Was to be expected, especially after Vaneck's withdrawal of their application. Looking at the market, there seems to be no reaction at all, which is a good thing because people need to stop focusing on ETFs.

I don't believe that we're even much closer than before with how the manipulation and wash trading concerns can't be solved from within the states. It gives the SEC enough reason to continue rejecting applications.

Another important factor is that an ETF might not turn out to be attracting a whole lot of demand, especially when the entry point is a few hundred k and institutions aren't interested to gain exposure through an ETF.

You are not wrong. Generally speaking, the use outside the speculation spectrum is very limited. People here keep talking about adoption and how important it is, but I'm fairly sure that most of them don't actually use Bitcoin.

The hype behind adoption and use is just that there will be more people entering the space to drive the price up---mostly everything people here do and say has that fundamental driving their bullish adoption narrative.

Use will only take of when the price is stable, the cost of transaction is low, and people actually know how things work here. It's incredibly important to acknowledge how inconvenient crypto is today. It's not user friendly at all.

Irreversible transactions and banks don't go well together. I can make something up so that the bank is on my side to undo the initial transaction, especially when I say that I got scammed by a crypto company.

Banks generally don't like crypto companies, which means that you have something to exploit here. Miners are quite expensive, especially in larger quantities, so the incentive to pull off a scam is there.

Never underestimate scammers. They will find a way to make it happen as long as the money on the line is worth it. It has been happening outside the crypto world for decades, so why wouldn't it happen here?