The main problem with people is their unfunded faith in the "anonymous" nature of crypto, which makes them avoid paying taxes. It's a delusional form of self overesitmation that will cost people badly at some point. It's impossible to avoid paying taxes when you're making use of centralized services falling under the governmental regulations that are in place. It's clear already that if you aren't paying your due taxes, the government will come and get it from you, and perhaps not in a friendly manner. That's why I started recently with paying taxes as well, and where I initially felt bad, it feels kinda good right now. I can keep trading without having anything to worry about, because I felt the pressure building up already in the way that governments are very close to busting the shit out of people on centralized services.

It's a competitor and a potential threat in case you as bank completely ignore it. If you as bank or whatever corporation utilize Bitcoin in various manners, you will benefit as well from the massive future potential Bitcoin and basically crypto entirely has to offer. Instead of looking at Bitcoin as being a threat, one should look at how Bitcoin can lift your entire operation, and the global economy as well in the long run. Banks may not see what we see in crypto, but this will soon be a multi trillion dollar asset class, which if whatever entity in this market utilizes its opportinities to the fullest, will greatly benefit from this development as well. At this point in time it's an unjustified level of fear that holds them back, but I'm fairly sure that this will change in the forthcoming years.

No need to exaggerate things. It goes against everything that Bitcoin stands for, when you are forced to make use of so called 'Bitcoin banks'. As long as you have the option to choose for that what YOU want to use, there is no such a thing as suppression from a centralized party, and thus it's not against what Bitcoin stands for, and never will be. If you personally don't like centralized parties offering their services to the public, then simply avoid them. If people think it contributes to their overall usability experience, then they will use it. Let people be free to like and choose something they want. Just because you don't like something, or don't see any value in it, won't mean others participating in this market think exactly like you.

It's more pointless to talk about an all time high (that's totally not even part of the question), than about resistance points below that. The all time high you are referring to is an absolutely inflated peak that by far didn't represent the progress that crypto in its entirety has booked in the last years. It was nothing more than blind speculation regarding the future markets and fomo that drove the price up to near $20,000 levels. The majority of the people look at current levels as being very low, and dumped down badly, while in reality, we're doing great as long as we remain hovering over the $10,000 level. Speculative peaks don't represent actual all time highs, but yet people consider them to be the main benchmark levels.

I don't really mind the fluctuations and spikes to be honest, especially because I am a trader as well. If I would say I prefer a steady longer term increase over spikes and fluctuations, I would be a hypocrite. I like each and every aspect of this market, and to be honest, we have already been experiencing a steady level of growth. If purely focus on all the bottoms as being the actual price of Bitcoin, and thus ignore the peaks and whatnot, you'll see how much of a steady increase we have been experiencing. Based on that, even though the current levels are hovering over $11,000 right now, the actual price is still in the $6500-$7000 range, where from this point time will tell what the next bottom will be, and that next bottom will turn out to be the next actual all time high. In other words, Bitcoin's all time high wasn't nearly $20,000 last year, but slightly below $6000 last month.

Courage and positive thinking are worthless aspects when it comes to investments. If you don't understand the technical basics of Bitcoin, and at the same time this market, you are basically just gambling. You believing that the market will increase has no real foundation if you don't understand where the demand is coming from. It's too easy to say that the price will go up because of a higher level of demand, which applies to each and every market, but what (in Bitcoin's case) is this demand about? To add; what other than the increasing demand influences the market to increase as well?

People think that holding is an easy practice, which technically makes sense to a certain extent, but in reality things are a bit different. In most cases people are all fine as long as the price is increasing, but when the market is going through a longer period of decreasing prices, people lose confidence, and then regret and doubt starts to kick in. At this stage the first batch of 'holders' will start unloading their coins, and those who decide to keep holding further, will start unloading shortly after that if the price keeps going down, especially if the price starts to tank real hard. People quite often underestimate how brutal this market can be from time to time. The recent correction was a perfect example. People thought that $15,000 would be the bottom, then $14,000, $13,000, $10,000 (for sure this time), $9000, $8000, etc. You can call yourself a real holder if you kept holding through without selling a single satoshi.

Can you stop being so short sighted? It's great that you can take care of your own funds, which is the best way to move forward, but that's not the case when it comes to the majority of the people. In the same way that people trust their fiat and valuable items to a bank, they trust their crypto assets to whatever centralized service as well. In other words, a large group of the people just aren't capable of taking the responsibility of maintaining and securing their own wealth. If they feel it's necessary to make use of a bank or whatever centralized service, then let them do so, why should you care? It offers them convenience and a wide set of available options that may or may not turn out to be handy at some point for them. It goes further than just holding coins.

Quote from the article page;
What!? I thought it was a genuinely written review.

To sum up the article in a nut shell; Instead of 'legally' scamming you off your money entirely, they'll cut you some slack and take a tiny bit less away from you.

If anyone is falling for this nonsense, you just deserve to lose your invested money, seriously. If you re-invest your 'earning' on top of that, you're even more of a sucker. Cloud mining is by far the longest running 'legal' ponzi scheme that we have ever faced in this market, which due to the high influx of brainless chickens manages to remain relevant and to even grow further. But feel free to burn your money anyway if you dont care.

Nothing is certain in this world, but the thing that we can *almost* be sure of, is that crypto is becoming a whole new asset class. Currently we're in the very early bumpy stage, which due to that is not really contributing towards actual usage, but that will change. After the current stage, we'll see become Bitcoin become far more of an instrument stimulating people to actually use Bitcoin as a currency.

Freedom from banks, yes, but what's the point of explicitly mentioning the term positive income? This basically applies to all people stating that crypto allows them to make profit. You making profits through crypto means that on the other side there are people losing, so it's not that everyone experiences the same as you guys do. In that regard it's a very relative (weak) statement. Don't forget that just holding Bitcoin doesn't necessarily mean you are actually benefitting financially. As long as you aren't selling or spending your coins, there is no difference between your coins being worth just $10 combined, or $1,000,000 combined. In other words, losses or profits on paper don't really matter. It's all in the mind.

These machines will either be moved out of the country (if the thieves are interested in quick and easy money only), or used in a very efficient manner that will not catch the attention of authorities and the power supplier. The latter option is what I consider the most likely scenario. Easy way to do so is to fire up the miners on plenty of different locations, and then pool the total hash power of all the machines together, and there you have basically a great deal of income. It's just a matter of logical thinking, really. One would be utterly stupid to fire up all the machine at once from just one location. Criminals are always a step ahead of the authorities - say bye bye to the $2 million worth of hardware. Or, in the very lowest possibility of the scenario, it's insurance fraud.

By far the best post in this thread, although I am not very comfortable using the term bubble. I rather speak about an overbought market. Overall, I can't do anything other can completely agreeing with that. I have said it some days ago as well, and that's the fact that the previous bottoms are somewhat of a guarantee that we will not dip under that as long as the demand keeps increasing. It's a very solid bullish cycle indicating either growth or stagnation in demand. In that regard, it was actually a very easy money making opportunity, because with the aforementioned in mind, one would be foolish to not buy instantly at any level below $7000. Time will tell whether or not the next ultimate bottom will be above or under the $10,000 level.

What has this to do with Bitcoin itself? It's about the major number in terms of their population that makes China a large market, and not about how many billionaires a certain country accounts for. China in every aspect is the largest potential market when it comes to basically everything, but that doesn't mean that it also reflects that in each and every aspect. I was actually quite disappointed in how the volumes on Chinese exchanges dropped to insanely low numbers after the PBOC jumped in, and that for such a massive market. One thing is sure, the market hyped up China to be more of an important factor than it in reality was back in the days. I'm not saying they aren't playing an important role anymore, but their significance is no longer present.

How do you know that? Have you been there? Have you talked to people in Venezuela having made the switch to Bitcoin? You are just basing your 'knowledge' on the few articles you have seen/'read', and that's really it. No doubt that there is a minority in Venezuala actually using Bitcoin to conduct transactions, but the way it's getting hyped up is totally not justified. I remember how people back in 2013 said the same about Cyprus. The all time high at that point according to people was solely dedicated to the spiking demand in Cyprus, due to the severe financial problems of that country. If people back then were really dumping their capital into Bitcoin on a massive scale, the market would have reacted in a completely different way, especially with how insignificant the market at that point was.

Any actual proof to back that up?

That's only one aspect of a spam attack, while a full blown spam attack has several layers all contributing to longer term network cluttering. In most cases utter nonsense transactions that don't stand a single chance to get confirmed form the biggest obstacle. In that regard, our opinions about a 'real' spam attack are widely different.

That's not a fix, but a pure form of usage exclusion, which is not what Bitcoin is about.

You don't have to donate anything, just use it and tell your other crypto friends to use it, that alone is free advertising and worth more than anything.

The past has taught us that even decentralized platforms aren't 100% secure (with coin loss as result), and thus decentralized platforms aren't immune to hacks/exploits.

For coin versus coin trades that could definitely work, especially with enough volume and liquidity, but that's not the case when it comes to fiat. You can trade coin versus fiat on decentralized exchanges, but that process isn't entirely decentralized because you still depend on centralized services to initiate the fiat transfer and to receive fiat.

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Please OP, change the standard font back to normal, because the [ size=14pt ] code disrupts the reading experience.

Could be, but there is no reason for that. If Bitcoin keeps increasing, altcoins will increase as well, even if their BTC ratio doesn't increase at all. If you look at the last year, then that's exactly what happened. Altcoins even though they haven't managed to reach their previous all time high based on their BTC ratio, they easily managed to reach all time highs based on their USD value, and that's the only thing that matters for miners. AMD is a slow performer anyway, even with how crypto has boomed massively in the last year(s).

AMD stock price early January 2016 below $3, and currently $11.73. Increase ~300%
Nvidia stock price early January 2016 $33, and currently $229. Increase ~600%

Correct. That's exactly why I am also not that excited about ETF's that might or might not show up this year. It's time for actual coin backed funds to make their appearance. If we have even a few large hedgefunds or financial institutions willing to set up such funds, which I believe is just a matter of time, the number of available on-market coins will dry out even further. Can you imagine that? Currently the availability of on-market coins is already at an all time low due to the high overall demand, and that number will only go lower and lower. In certain countries as we have seen, the coin availability is so low, that their market is trading at 25-50% premiums over the western market. Granted, economical difficulties making people jump into Bitcoin as safe haven hedge is a significant contributor as well. In that specific case, people will buy at any price in order to free themselves from their system.

People can complain as much as they want, but it's of no use. Coinbase serves as an example of what other exchanges will go through as well, and what Coinbase managed to "achieve" (bargaining the number of reports down to 13,000), will likely not work out for every other exchange. As much as I hate to say it, pay your due taxes concerning the coins you have been trading with on-exchange. I paid tax as well. I have been in denial for a long time, but I have to admit defeat - it's solely my mistake to have used a centralized service that I am fully verified at. If you think you won't be affected in the coming years, then you are just delusional. If you want to avoid paying tax entirely, then make sure that your coins will never hit a single centralized service.

Theoretically, yes. Will this ever be put into practice to stop Bitcoin's network? No. If you manage to shut down the entire internet, you don't only shut down Bitcoin, but also the entire banking/financial infrastructure. In other words, the damage such actions will cause to the banking/financial infrastructure, will be severely worse than the damage those behind this attack will inflict on Bitcoin's network. And then I have only mentioned the banking/financial infrastructure - imagine how much damage such attack will cause to the entire world economy with how much everything nowadays depends on internet. This form of economical damage will never ever justify the tiny bit of damage that they inflict on Bitcoin.