MERS epidemic was small, so it didn't affect the markets much. Same goes for Ebola - the fact that Bitcoin dropped during that time is a coincidence, as Bitcoin was experiencing a bubble that popped at that time. Now the recent crash was different, because it caused a real panic on stock market, since all countries were taking drastic measures that hurt their economies. Bitcoin was always a risky asset, so this time when things actually got serious, investors started selling it, which triggered a big crash.

You can come up with all sorts of theories about the disease - aliens, Russians, Chinese, CIA, Hillary Clinton and so on, but if you have to facts to back them up, these theories are worthless. And if you believe in things just because they sound right to you, you'll be just living in your own world.

What do you mean by "succeed"? Halving wasn't designed to boost the price or cause a bull market, it's there to create limited supply, and of course it will "succeed" in a sense that it will happen and it will be smooth - this same code was already executed during past halvings.

There's no guarantee that it will cause another bull market, just because there were 2 bull markets after past halvings, it doesn't mean it must happen again. For example, there were already 2 rallies - the one that ended at $13.5k and the recent that ended at $10k - these two can be attributed to halving. I see them as a sign that the market is unlikely to repeat the old pattern and will instead bring something new.

It has the status of beta, when it will leave it will can be considered "officially released". I know it's already on the mainnet for quite some time, but developers themselves don't recommend people to actually use it for real money applications, because there's always the risk of bugs. And I know that it works pretty well, but when it comes to money, there's no such things as "good enough" - everything must be as close to perfect as possible.

And this wasn't really obvious to most people in Bitcoin community, we so often saw here posts about economic problems in the world and how it's supposed to be good for Bitcoin, some I think were even hoping for a new crisis to come sooner to boost Bitcoin, I'm sure this crash was eye-opening to many.

But I don't think that Bitcoin will have to perform poorly if the stock market will be only moderately bearish, Bitcoin still can recover and continue going up a bit later this year without any special reason.

Bitcoin's approach is simply the most logical one - developers value decentralization more than scalability because scalability without decentralization is meaningless, since we already have centralized systems that are very scalable - Visa could process all 10 years of Bitcoin's transactions in a day or two. On top of that, if you give up decentralization it's impossible to get it back, because the damage is irreparable - if you would try to increase the blocksize only temporarily, it would bloat the blockchain, so even if you reduce it later, it would be harder for nodes to operate.

So, Bitcoin will eventually solve this problem (Lightning Network is already close to official release, and other solutions may emerge), but centralized altcoins will never become decentralized.

Majority of Bitcoin's value comes from speculation rather than fundamentals (scarcity and utility), we can see it by how much the price moves without any change in fundamentals at all. And it makes Bitcoin really unpredictable, it's almost impossible to make any educated guess for where the price is going, maybe we'll see $100,000 or maybe $100, maybe even both - who knows.


Why? People so often make these "moon" predictions without any proof that the growth will indeed be exponential. Drawing parallels with adoption of other technologies doesn't actually prove that Bitcoin will repeat their history.

Well, he's obviously right that Bitcoin isn't a hedge against pandemics, I doubt anyone will argue with that today. But is Bitcoin a hedge again "fiat regimes"? This idea never been truly tested, I wouldn't count Zimbabwe or Venezuela as a proof, those are tiny local crises. If something like that happened with the west, and it caused similar economic crash as we are experience now, then maybe Bitcoin would react just like it reacts now. People don't want to hold something highly speculative and volatile during hard times.

Jimmy Song is a known permabull, and people - especially those who are new to trading, should be careful when they take advice from permabulls or permabears. You can easily get rekt or miss out on a good trade if you listen to people who tell you exactly the same thing no matter what's happening on the market. Some people bought at $20k because they listened to the promises of $200,000 or $1mil per coin.

Touching paper money is far from being a huge vector for this disease. Plus people already use cashless payment methods like cards or smartphone apps - so people would use them even more. I seriously doubt there is any significant jump in Bitcoin payments in physical stores. And the recent price crash hit Bitcoins usability as a currency too - consumers don't like holding money that can lose such a big portion of its value in a day.

Bitcoin whitepaper never stated that Bitcoin is a safe haven, it says that it's a peer-to-peer digital currency. The idea that Bitcoin is a safe haven or a digital gold started floating around much later, and it was always untested. And even if there were such words in the whitepaper, it doesn't mean that it's automatically becomes true - the market decides what is a safe haven and what isn't.

As for blockchain technology, it has absolutely nothing to do with the coronavirus. Well, I'm sure some scammers will try to create a blockchain for fighting the virus, but at its core blockchain is completely unrelated.

There's a big chance it will happen like you say, but there's also a chance that Bitcoin's reaction won't be as big, because we already fell quite a lot, and some even say that it was quite irrational and that Bitcoin is oversold. Also, maybe stocks won't crash in one big swing but will keep declining for a longer period of time, and in that case they might be less impactful on Bitcoin's price, as investors won't be making hasty decisions.

Cryptocurrency is money, and there's no shortcuts to earning money. There were days when bounties/airdrops/campaigns were abundant and were paying well, but those days are long gone and they are not coming back. There's no easy money in crypto, so you should focus on real life career and use a portion of your earnings to invest in Bitcoin for long term, if you wish to be involved with crypto.

Man, this is just something. How the hell can anyone donate money to a terrorist organization that tortures and executes people and make videos of it for the Internet, and this donation is supposed to prove how libertarian that person is? Dude totally deserves a year or two of jail time, really strange how this story was so public and yet law enforcement didn't pick it.

Yeah, Bitcoin preserved a lot of value for Venezuelans, but still it lost a lot of value even for them if you invested in wrong time. This is why the best safe heaven for countries experiencing hyperinflation is the US dollar. With it you won't lose 30% of your wealth in a day. However, if you can't get your hands on it or other foreign currency, than Bitcoin becomes a good option. Also Bitcoin is easier to conceal, which can be a huge advantage in some situations, like escaping the country.

It's kinda sad that Satoshi created a currency under which an economic crisis caused by a bad monetary policy is impossible, and still this currency is heavily influenced by fiat. Maybe it will always be like that if Bitcoin will keep being viewed as an investment and fail to achieve higher adoption. Even gold tanked during this crash (though not so much), so what chance did Bitcoin have?

Sure it's a manipulation, but it couldn't have happened without the external factors, the magnitude would simply not be as great. Stock market crash triggered this panic, investors across all markets are cashing out, Bitcoin just got hit hard because it's so volatile and lacks liquidity. But I doubt such manipulations can be easily repeated, the market becomes cautious after some time. Everyone want to buy the dip now, after they saw how it bounced from $3,900 to $5,700 in less than an hour.

Trading crypto is not so different than trading other speculative assets, so you can start with learning the basics of trading in general, especially the technical analysis which is very important in crypto. You should also understand the basics of how crypto works, so you would understand the terms like halving, difficulty adjustment, hashrate, fork, chainsplit, etc. because those thing can influence the price sometimes. After that you can start learning from specialized crypto sources.

Snowden is right, in a year people will be looking back at these days and regretting that they didn't buy today. But in the coming weeks or even months there will still be a lot of uncertainty, it's possible that the price will dip even further or most likely there will be a period of stagnation again. So, now is a good time to slowly accumulate coins, no need to go all in right now, the market isn't going to turn bullish just tomorrow.

Since you're saying that Bitcoin is illegal in your country, it could be viewed as odd or even negative to gift it. Imagine gifting someone illegal drugs or guns - most people wouldn't be happy to receive a gift that can get them in a trouble. It also means that your friend will have harder time selling or using these coins, so that's another argument against such gift. In your situation I would only make such gift if you know that your friend is already a crypto enthusiast or at least shown interest in crypto before.