Volatility isn't a concern at all, neither are the environmental standards. If that was the case, then 'serious' institutions wouldn't be allowed to get involved in the majority of the activities their current portfolio accounts for. If the legal framework is set up in the way that it allows them to get involved in Bitcoin or any other currency, nothing will be able to stop them. Goldman Sach and JPMorgan (probably other wall street banks too), both in the very top of the most powerful institutions in the world, have all cleared various levels of crypto purchases for their wealthy clients. I think that everyone still remembers how Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgen, went ahead and attacked Bitcoin, where he would even fire any employee if they are found to be involved in Bitcoin. It's hypocrisy.

This combination alone will contribute towards more growth just in its first few months of launching (when it launches), than the future markets will be able to contribute in their entire life time. Futures aren't backed by anything other than the price of a certain coin, where in case of this fund the underlying value will come from the crypto currencies that are being invested in. The more similar funds there will be where coins are taken out of circulation, the more beneficial it will be for the market, especially in the long term. That's how you create coin scarcity. I wonder how Goldman Sachs will eventually respond to this, because I am sure that with them acquiring Poloniex, they will try to attract capital from professional parties by launching similar funds and other instruments.

At least China in most occasions is backing up its words with actions (although it being negative for crypto), which is something we haven't really seen happen in Russia. We have seen nothing from Russia other than small scale power play affecting certain sites here and there. It's clear that they just don't know what to do, and don't even bother taking the necessary steps against crypto like how China in a fairly short period of time cleaned house. I rather see them completely prohibit crypto in every shape and form, than seeing this ping pong show continue for plenty of more years. Realistically, I don't think much will change in Russia in the forthcoming years, especially because of the fact that the incentive just isn't there. I am even of believe that Russia may already be comfortable with how things are right now.

LN removes obstacles such as transaction precessing speed, confirmation times, costly fees, etc. You however fail to see the value in it, because for some reason you keep hammering on that second layer like it's something that can't and won't work, while it does already deliver an outstanding job. I am sure that at a given point if Bitcoin provides on-chain scaling offering all the aforementioned features, you'll still find something to complain about. Let me ask you a question, from all the current altcoins, what is according to you a 'perfect' example of an adoption/usage stimulating altcoin? And explain why you think it is. Just saying this or that coin because it's faster and cheaper isn't enough.

To do what, buy drugs and pay for hookers?

That's not even the main thing here. People for once need to understand how a market works, and that it can't just keep increasing back to the crazy levels it reached last year. It was mainly speculation that drove up the price badly, which is a false indicator. Ignore what happened last year, and just look at how we have seen the price go up steadily by following the previous bottoms. If you purely focus on the bottoms, then even current levels are still on the higher side. I think currently, the realistic price would be somewhere just below the $8000 level. If we manage to increase steadily, with perhaps a bull run being initiated in the forthcoming months, our next ultimate bottom will either be slightly under or above the $10,000 level. While people are desperately waiting for a next bull run, I am very happy with the current levels as they hover over that what I consider to be a realistic price for the moment.

It's funny that regardless of what Bitcoin has achieved throughout the years, the skeptics remain focused on Bitcoin to crash badly at some point. I think as long as they keep thinking like that, we're all good. I remember back in the days that before the price even reached $100, it was said that Bitcoin, if reaching $100, it would never ever be able to replicate that growth again. After that $1000 was supposed to be the level that Bitcoin would never reach, and if it did, it again wouldn't be able to replicate that growth again. I think it's safe to say that this will continue even till the price hovers over the $100,000 level, and it feels great. Let them feel bitter. Let them burn from the inside. Bitcoin speaks for itself. I am strongly of believe that without Japan being what it is today, Bitcoin wouldn't even be near current levels. The whole point is that as long as regulations are fair for all involved parties, crypto will continue to grow, and harder than ever before.

It already dipped below that. If we remain above $10774 (Bitstamp) we'll likely maintain a range a good bit above the $10,000 level, which allows traders to book profits repeatedly as long as the range remains unharmed. If we go down further from here, and thus break out of the aforementioned range, we'll likely be up for another $10,000 test. For a long time now, it has been a constant battle between supply and demand, but I am very confident when I look at the charts indicating fierce demand strong enough to keep pushing the price back up to +$10,000 levels. I would say that the demand is the strongest between $9000-$9500, mildly strong just around $10,000, and wobbly when it comes to any level above $10,000. I don't see it become any different without a major bullish trigger.

People consider genesis mining to be legit as well, so that doesn't mean anything.

It's at least for sure that they aren't a registered business offering their service. Major red flag is the fact that they hide themselves behind a whois privacy wall. It's funny how they claim themselves not to be a cloud mining service, while in reality they offer very similar features, but they just call their products shares instead of contracts. Earnings are called dividends, lol, what a joke. I'm sorry to say, but investing in anything from such a site is just asking for problems.

That.

You're the winner of this auction, PM will be sent.

People trusting Bitcoin? What a joke, people don't even trust themselves. Your "trust" is based on nothing but the hope that the price will keep going up throughout the years, and nothing else. If the price is going up, your "trust" in Bitcoin sky rockets, but when the price is going down, your "trust" in Bitcoin will sink just as hard. You, just like the far majority of the people here, don't care about Bitcoin's technical aspects, or that it allows you to obtain financial freedom. My faith in Bitcoin is based on financial freedom, and the fact that I can outrule any central authority, and not the price that may or may not go up in the very short term. Bitcoin has never failed to deliver in the long term, and will not do so in the forthcoming years due to how much potential demand there still is to obtain. I don't think we have even seen 5% of Bitcoin's potential yet.

If Coinbase can work with dynamic fees, then other exchanges can do so too, but they don't want to for obvious reasons. One of the main things that comes to my mind is that they want to make users pay for their internal fund moving structure. Exchanges are known to split deposits into smaller wallets, move them back and forth a few times as well, which all costs them a certain amount in fees, but that's not something the user should be paying for. Exchanges offer a convenience service to serve their customers, not to have them pay for something that isn't their problem. At this point sending a transaction from one Segwit address to another Segwit address, literally costs me 0.00002BTC at most. Paying 10 or 20 times that amount is just insane and completely unnecessary.

It's all nonsense, all they are doing is seeking to "solve" a problem by further centralizing the way people transact, and that while LN already allows you to transact instantly and basically for free in comparison to current fees. Seriously, what's the point of using Bitcoin through centralized platforms to pay for goods, when you can just continue paying for goods with fiat? Nah man, I am all for an environment that isn't based on more control by corporations, and PayPal's patent doesn't contribute to that in any way. While some people seem to be happy with this non development (patent), I see it as yet another attempt by a corporation to further centralize this ecosystem. LN is going to be the biggest adoption/usage booster Bitcoin has ever experienced.

It's a futile attempt in my opinion, especially because of the fact that LN already addresses the issues they seem to be pointing at, which are the slower confirmation times and transaction fees. PayPal is just trying to solve a problem in a way that is far less convenient than the already available options. People want to avoid centralized entities taking over, not get further stuck into this system. I don't even think that PayPal will eventually utilize this patent, because by that time they likely have already acknowledged LN's superiority.

In most cases they are being asked for their opinion on various matters, which basically forces them to at least say something, and when they don't really care about a certain subject (which is the case when it comes to Bill Gates and crypto), they mostly come up with terms that the crypto community gets nuts over. People need to look at the context of his words, and not directly jump on him like he said something horrible. Could he have used a different tone and wording? Sure, but who care anyway? Bill Gates by far doesn't come close to what sort of baboon Warren Buffett is, because this fastfood addict takes everything to the next level, and actually attacks Bitcoin, which is something Bill Gates didn't do, and likely won't do later on.

You may think that he completely changed his stance, but that's not the case. I think from all the traditional billionaire farts, Bill Gates is probably the mildest one when it comes to Bitcoin. People shouldn't just pay attention to whatever news articles twisting words to make them either look positive, or negative. He acknowledged the usefulness nature of cryptos, but he also has it doubts, which he has been open about lately. People may not like his wording (I don't like it either), but it's his opinion and pretty understandable from his position. Crypto will at some point create a new elite of insanely wealthy individuals, where I strongly believe that eventually, they will take over the traditional billionaires by wealth, and this new elite will have a completely different way of thinking.

Don't think so, and it wouldn't make sense since the market at this point is much further than the market was last year before the bull run started. I think if we manage to steadily go up this year, we have done exceptionally well already, and perhaps there may be a smaller bull run as well. My personal target for this year is to at least hover over the $20,000 level and that's really it. My target last year wasn't even close to the $3000 level, and look at where we stand right now. It also depends on the developments that we might see happen this year. I think that an ETF or more LN progression will be a contributing factor as well. At the end of the day, a trigger is all we need, but the only question remains, what will be that trigger, and when will it kick in.

That applies to longer term holding, and not so much to trading, which is more of a short term practice. In trading the entry points are as important as the exit points, because in a market as volatile as the one from Bitcoin, every few passing minutes may offer you an opportunity to quickly enter and exit with a profit. To add; in a rapidly changing market, you some times also have accept taking a small hit in order to adjust your positions to benefit from the changed market sentiment. If you keep sticking to your exit targets in case you don't take a hit, you'll be wasting precious time, and likely still be taking that hit later on.

The whole point of a newbie entering the market is to buy coins as cheap as possible, all in the hope to strike a jackpot like how Bitcoin and Ethereum have exploded in value. It's not for nothing that utter shitcoin exchanges such as Yobit, Hitbtc, Ccex, Cryptopia, etc, all managed to gain an insane number of users in quite a short period of time. The majority of the newbies chase shitcoins because they are cheap and allow them to buy a lot with a very small initial investment. Regardless of how much time you invest in researching these shitcoins, you'll never even manage to obtain one single bit of useful information. People just need to accept that investing in shitcoins is basically the same as gambling, but that's something get rich quick fools don't seem to understand yet.

People are a bunch of hypocrites. If you want to follow the path that isn't directly subject to the regulations affecting the centralized part of our market, then don't use exchanges, don't use online wallet services, don't use casinos, etc. No one forces you to use them, it's your own choice at the end of the day, so it's not against the idea of Bitcoin at all. In other words, to distance yourself from potential tax claims, your coins should never hit any service or platform where you are not 100% the sole owner of your private keys. If you make use of centralized services anyway, then accept the fact that paying taxes is mandatory. If it isn't out of free will, you'll be forced to pay taxes at a later point.