The government did not create bitcoin and we cannot perceive that they have an effect to its development. The government can only intervene in the external influence of cryptocurrencies and its price- which mainly affects every investor or person who has a share of bitcoin.

In addition, if a country prohibits the usage and transactions of bitcoins then expect its price to be significantly reduced as it influences the external market and sources. But it cannot influence the internal factors such as its development and improvements from the system.


If the government supports the implementation of cryptocurrencies, more exchanges and trust would be built upon. This means that more investors would be attracted to invest and its impact on media would also reflect on its price.

Investments are typically categorized as passive income since you accumulate profit at the end of the investment cycle. This primarily depends on your goal if you focus on short/long-term perspective. Generally, what you want to do with highly volatile investment (like bitcoin), is to divide your investments and consider different methods as well to maximize income.


It is risky but if you are willing to embrace such risk, day trading or short-term investments are preferred in this situation. Unlike other investments such as stocks or bank notes, the profit margin is relatively higher in a shorter amount of time.

Based from my experience, I only limit my trading to Bitcoin and ETH as they are both included at the top 5 cryptocurrencies for investing/trading. You should base your decision depending on the volume of each coin. The higher the volume, the higher the liquidity and exchange.

Like what most people mentioned, the higher the risks the better the reward. But never forget the number essential rules in trading:
Set a limit on your maximum allowable money for trading; never be greedy; have self-discipline before engaging; and never go all-out UNLESS you are confident enough (backed with technical analysis and research) that the price will increase.


There are altcoins that have potential to be profitable but they are mostly focused for long-term trading. Day trading is only suitable for highly volatile coins like bitcoin since its price may skyrocket without any given notice, unlike most alternate coins.

In every loss, it is inevitable to experience emotional pain since it is always tied to our current mood and situation. Emotions make human a human and it is considered the most natural response.

Normally, us humans, we base our decisions depending on our current emotion. This can be VERY DESTRUCTIVE in all aspects especially if someone is in a fragile situation (like gambling). It is advisable to anyone that they must keep their chill and decide with their head straight before making any rash decision.

Experiencing a losing-streak can blur the decision-making of an individual and may cascade into a further loss of resources. If you lose in a casino or a bet, learn to walk away and reflect on your actions. Thinking about it can significantly help an individual in managing their losses and can also prevent them from experiencing it again.


That is true. Being greedy, cocky, and overconfident normally result to losses especially when they lack the self-discipline to stop betting.

Just to give you an example, the price of bitcoins last April 2, 2019 was around $4,200 and today it skyrocketed to $4,900. The ~$700 price difference and swing can have a huge impact on your profits, assuming that you cash out your bitcoins and convert them to cash.

Your investments can be divided into two (2) either for long/short-term goal. Being a highly-volatile investment, bitcoin falls can function on both depending on your goal. Saying that bitcoin cannot be for short-term means that you have not yet experienced making a huge profit in a day.


Well if you are part of the minority who got lucky, you may consider yourself as someone who got rich in a relatively short amount of time. Investment, in general, is designed to be for long term. As the name suggests, investment is when you let time do its magic by waiting for its value to mature. But bitcoin falls into the same aspect as being a short/long term investment depending on the price difference.

I have been participating in this forum since 2017 and the weekly payments that I receive from campaign signatures helped me support myself as a student, as there are times where I use this money for my daily expenses.

As someone who is part of a family of 7 with a single father raising us, our expenses quickly pile-up as he needs to fulfill his daily obligation to feed us and pay for our individual education. There are times where I have been the least priority (eldest brother) in terms of money allocation and this quite took a toll on me whenever I attend my class with a hungry stomach and less study materials.

I used to receive $4-$5 every week (last 2017 when the price of each bitcoin was around $3700-$3800) and use the money to save for my next month's savings. As time passed by, my forum rank grew with my weekly payments increasing at the same time.

Now that I graduated college with a mindset and will for post-graduate studies, I use the a portion of my bitcoins to purchase books (these books are expensive as hell!) to at least support and mitigate the expenses so my other brothers do not experience what I had experience before while growing up.

I can say at least that this forum not only helped me individually but indirectly helped my family. This may sound exaggerated but without this forum and the convenience of working online, I guess my dream of pursuing my career as a future lawyer would not materialized and be just a goal that would be impossible to reach for the time being.

Despite the good intention, asking people for donation is not that easy to garner. People have their priorities and you cannot just expect them to donate cash just because they have the means so. Maybe have already donated into a particular charity or they need the cash for their daily-monthly obligations.


This is actually true. I think my suggestion would be posting more pictures, showing the concrete development, or the purchasing of materials/food which are to be given to these people.
I never doubted your donation page but people would like to see on where their money is going. Post more pictures and more visual aids to make the page more convincing enough to catch the attention of big-hearted people on the forum.

I will try to donate when I get the opportunity this week!

I've been waiting for news and updates regarding the launch of Bakkt platform. I mean, they are the first in franchise to deliver a physical contract to buyers/sellers. Furthermore, they also partnered with Starbucks with an equity deal and this implies that the former MAY accept bitcoin for their products or they can have an exchange directly at the counter.¹

Nevertheless, I think everyone is indeed excited for the upcoming Bakkt platform. This can affect the price drastically and this gives everyone the opportunity to have high-returns and profit margins but the only question is WHEN would it be implemented.

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[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/coffee-for-bakkt-starbucks-equity-deal-will-see-crypto-based-payments-source-claims

This depends on the individual if they have time to do trading. Trading requires time, patience, and determination in order to at least render it profitable. With HODL, you can focus on different/prioritize on different things while making time doing its thing.

The problem with HODL, you do not have the capacity to speculate or read about the market situation in order to maximize the profits. You are only letting time do its work and sell your investments if its price is beyond the initial acquired price.
With trading, you can study the external and internal market factors to reach a conclusion to your next financial decision. It involves a series of technical analysis and speculation unlike HODL.


The market is very unpredictable. There exist no direct or inverse proportional relationship among cryptocurrencies as it all depends on the market. If you were to trade, it is advisable to focus into one coin alone and extensively do your research about the said coin.

Excessive confidence can lead to arrogance and excessively complacent, which would contribute to losing your profit quickly. What I learned in trading is that you can never be truly confident about your trades given in this highly volatile market.

Go basic, play by the rules and be conservative. Trading requires one to be extremely patient, vigilant, and disciplined in-order to realize profits at the end of the cycle. But do not mistaken optimism to confidence as they are two different worlds.


In day trading, small individual profits can quickly turn into a large loss without having disciplined or a exit-strategy plan. Being cocky and bold due to a few successful trades can always lead to disaster.

Entering a casino or gambling in general has restrictions. You are required to show your IDs and your age must not be below 18 years old. In addition, the governments have imposed strict regulations and requirements before one can start a gambling business.

Gamblers definitely know the risks that they are getting in to. Gambling in general, revolves around risks and odds. Regardless of the safety that they should be entitled to in any form of abuse, it is only limited to their personal safety and not to the safety of their bets.


In fact, there are already projects and institutions catering for this specific problem. Unfortunately, the government is only limited to their personal safety. If they further control the gambling industry, this violates their right and their limitations. The only way to help gamblers starts from themselves and their willingness to be helped.

I had to do it:

The past is different from today's situation. People already learned their lessons and some considered pulling-out their investments. But with the decrease of investors come a new pool of people who are interested and willing to take the risk of either investing short/long-term.

The past has taught us to avoid implusively purchasing bitcoins without doing any research on its history and reason for its increase. For the time being, HODL may be the suggested strategy.


This may be possible if BAKKT platform would be implemented this year. This will without a doubt, attract investors from all over the place! Unfortunately, they have no specific launch date but this is the opportunity to acquire more bitcoins and take advantage of time being the key for profit.

Comparison is indeed healthy (like what most people stated) as it addresses the grey areas that the other party is superior to. Although Bitcoin is a decentralized system as compared to Visa, Paypal, etc. who is centralized in nature, both appear to be mediums in-exchange for products/services digitally.

No matter what the comparison may be, we should not stray away from the fact that Bitcoin has its own revolutionary platform that no other payment method can match. The only hindrance in achieving its potential are its legal status and acceptance of the government. But these are factors that will soon be addressed in the near future.


I am pretty sure when Visa or paypal was introduced, it received the same attention and comparison from the same existing payment platform. The emergence of bitcoin and its comparison to others is inevitable and should be treated as an advantage in order to know its positive and negative implications.

Let me just add, joining campaign signatures is an excellent alternative into earning additional income monthly. But based from my observation into different spreadsheets of campaigns, every round there are a number of posters who do not seem to complete their weekly quota of posts.

In order to address this problem, change your mindset about campaign signatures and avoid viewing them as chores. Instead, at least aim to garner 1 merit per day. With this kind of mindset, you would be able to produce a relatively quality post without thinking of the chore of posting and this may be able to help you complete the weekly quotas.

Nevertheless, thank you for the extensive guide and may all newbies rank up and contribute more to the forum!

The scope of the merit system revolves only on two (2) things:

Either the post contained substantial information about an inquiry on a topic and it provided support/help to the person; or
the post was relatively amusing and entertaining to read.

Doing background checks before sending merits are beyond the scope on why someone should send merits.
Not to mention, there are users who have been granted with merits despite being banned and having thousands of negative DT trusts.

Based from my experience, here is what I did during a bearish slump market:

First, never lose your head and composure. A bearish market can literally destroy your head especially when you purchased something and its initial price is lower to the market price. Seeing your resources lose value can be devastating but never lose your composure and goal;

Second, panic-selling is the worst move you can do during a bearish market. Not only that you sold your resources in a lesser value but this also may give rise to poor decision making and regret at the future. Although panic-selling may be acceptable in extreme situations; and

Third, decide when to sell your investments. This will be relative to every individual but you have to determine on when you should cash-out your investments to fiat. Losses may incur but this can also mitigate the damage further.

There also some cases wherein people develop addiction to something since it provide entertainment and satisfiy their hunger/need for it. I doubt that despite viewing something as a form of entertainment, there is always the risk of losing control and ultimately succumbing to addiction.

The only way to totally address addiction problem or at least prevent it is to replace the act with something that is recreational. Maybe instead of gambling or any other hobby, you can try engaging in the community or by doing service work.
Lastly, the first step towards change will always start at yourself. Without the strong will, determination, and patience, change would be futile.

So far, I have read two (2) books about bitcoin that actually helped me understand more about the blockchain and the coin itself. It contains a vast history of the creation of cryptocurrencies and it also explains the processes on how bitcoin works in the blockchain:

• Mastering Bitcoin by Andres M. Antonopoulos; and
• Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Topscott

The internet is your friend as it contains millions of information about cryptocurrencies. Your friends can also search in the forum if they have specific queries or questions as everyone here will reply!

In my humblest opinion, I think it is unnecessary to give a comment on why you merited someone. It is already self-explanatory on why you merited someone either his post was substantial enough or because you found it amusing/interesting.



Now this give rise to a plethora of problems involving the merit system as abuse can potentially begin here. Meriting a person directly can give rise to "stealth merits" as it leaves no explanation on why you merited a certain individual. This can be a form of abuse and potentially damage the forum in the long-run.