to be honest, i was in no rush for bigger blocks, so 2MB blocks bring me no joy. i've had issues with core's resource usage in the past, to the point where it was too much hassle trying to optimize to throttle bandwidth use (to avoid throttling/overcharges from my ISP). maybe when i get fiber optic internet in my area, it'll be something i can embrace.


i'm glad to see increasing segwit adoption mainly because it's helping to alleviate network-wide fees (although optimization by big exchanges and payment processors is more important) and because of all the excitement around LN.

but small linear block size increases (like the segwit soft fork) themselves don't greatly alleviate fees nor do they greatly advance scaling. people will be a lot more excited when using LN has good GUI for end users and doesn't come with the caveat of "may lose funds, use at your own risk."

the bull trap was the bounce to $17,000. 2018 so far has just been continuation of the downtrend. my thinking (based on time) is that we are nearing the end of the correction phase.

im hoping that we can undercut the previous lows in the $9000s first, though. people have been extremely bullish off those lows (and shorts have been steadily decreasing ever since the top near $20,000). that tells me that people are generally long and that the direction of maximum pain is definitely downwards.

a nice stop run below the last lows (perhaps to support near $8,400 or $8,800) would be perfect.


i've been waiting for tether to collapse for a long time, and i suspect we'll be waiting a while longer. the beauty of never redeeming tether for real money is that regulators can't find tether's bank accounts. if tether ever starts redeeming USDT for real money again, the music will stop.

still, just like the willy bot, i doubt that tether fraud would cause a collapse of bitcoin. on the contrary, if tether drops to zero due to lack of confidence but bitfinex remains intact, that's cause for crypto prices to rise, since crypto is the only real exit from tether.

this experience does raise questions for me about the perceived safety of things like hardware wallets, though. if a rogue process can read all memory without authorization because of an intel chip vulnerability, what makes you think that such vulnerabilities don't exist in hardware wallets? considering the entire thinking around the security architecture of modern processors and speculative execution was wrong, it stands to reason that this is possible for hardware wallet architecture as well. i certainly don't feel safe having my keys on one and plugging it into an untrusted online computer.

i suppose it's possible. the government would have to pressure the ISPs, and the ISPs would have to comply. but i don't see this being particularly effective unless they simultaneously start throttling all VPN traffic. VPN traffic is easily identifiable, but it would hide the fact that your traffic is BTC-related.

i won't lie, i'm pretty worried about a crackdown on VPNs.


knowing bitcoiners, it seems almost probable. whether that's successful, i'm not sure. they'd probably be putting a target on their back for regulators. i sure wouldn't want to be involved.

what does it matter? i think of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general to be a new asset class entirely. it doesn't conform to conventional definitions easily. can it function as medium of exchange? yes, but it's not the most effective one. volatility makes that quite difficult, and the fact that most commerce is done with payment processors who hedge USD value makes that clear.

there is definitely a niche of people (including myself) who do use it as a standard of value outside of fiat value or purchasing power. but conventional definitions of currency suggest "general usage" by people and that's really not the case with BTC. it's possible in the future as its use becomes more widespread, but i still have trouble seeing how it could scale to billions of people even after LN and sidechains.

it would be interesting to see the legal analysis. what are the precedents with other schemes like this? it wasn't openly a ponzi, but it seemed to operate like a multi-level-marketing/pyramid scheme.


they already did. they valued the $BCC they dumped on loan holders based on the market top, making everyone a huge bagholder. it's just a huge exit scam. if the people behind bitconnect are still in extradition-friendly countries, they should have their heads examined. they should be hiding out on a beach somewhere, counting their millions.

yeah, i get that. which is why i say "usable by the general public." you could say that LN was "launched" once the various developer teams agreed on network specification or once the first mainnet transaction was made based on that, but those aren't useful metrics. lightning developers are still losing money in channels at this point, so far less sophisticated users (and certainly the general public) shouldn't be encouraged to use LN right now. they should wait for production wallets.

i don't entirely disagree with cobra here:

smart move. to me, this is the same as vinny lingham running his ICO using bitcoin last year. he was totally wrong with his bearish calls, sold his BTC in the $1200s, and needed to recover it. so he ran an ICO and gave people worthless ERC-20 tokens in exchange for his bitcoins back. brilliant! similarly, mark cuban knows that we won't ever see cheap coins like we have in the past. this is just another way to average into a big long term position without moving the market.


the fees generally affect those paying with bitcoins, not those who are just holding them. and someone with as much money as him likely wants to build a bitcoin/crypto position over time, averaging into positions. if anything, he'd probably like to see a bear market to re-accumulate. i sure would.

there is no ETA. lightning developers have taken the position that there is "no rush" considering how much value is expected to be stored in payment channels. they are very concerned about ensuring that no funds are lost as a result of using the LN protocol.

having said that, it's pretty widely expected that LN will be usable by the general public sometime this year, likely in a matter of months. the next major step is to complete wallet implementations. we're already seeing lightning transactions on the network; now it's mainly just a matter of releasing the software.

this is the first obvious answer:


anyone who uses BTC all the time has been feeling the pain of rising fees. for many people, that's reason enough to have adopted segwit already even though it's not in the core gui yet. lightning can lower fees much more than segwit, so i would expect adoption to be faster too.

past that, there are literally fee incentives built into the system. people sending LN transactions need to pay for routing hops. the nodes that provide those hops compete for fees. of course, these fees will be astronomically cheaper than on-chain fees. but for the first time, ordinary nodes will be compensated merely for propagating transactions.

oh, how quickly we forget. the first half of 2017 was all about altcoins. we got the ETF application withdrawals, the BTC market dumped from the highs, and ETH took off. ICO season took off after that. it wasn't until after BIP-91 that altcoin season ended and BTC took over for the rest of the year.

people often miss the forest for the trees. the crypto markets are beginning to look like the real world stock markets. in stocks, you see money flow from sector to sector as funds/investors take their profits and put them into new investments. years ago, my trading buddy pointed this out to me: whales on okcoin/huobi would pump LTC, then they would take profits and buy up BTC. after BTC pumped for a while and LTC had corrected, they rolled their profits into LTC. rinse and repeat. just looks real world sector rotation.

unfortunately, it took a long time for the above realities to sink in for me. now it seems so clear. whatever you do, don't plan on 2018 being "year of the altcoins." this market moves too fast for that. altcoin season could be over in a couple months. it's more important to recognize when BTC is trending strongly. when it is, get the hell out of altcoins.

"considering it" in what sense? in the US, several congresspeople have called for the government to ban the use of BTC over the years. there are always people in government who will make incendiary suggestions like that.

i bet that's why the russian government contradicts itself every few months regarding their legal position. in november, the communications ministers said that bitcoin "will never be legalized in russia." yet a few days ago, the story broke that a bill was drafted to legalize cryptocurrency exchanges, and that the finance ministry is developing a list of approved exchanges.

i think "korea bans bitcoin" is the new "china bans bitcoin".....nothing more. i suspect we are entering the era of regulation, licensing, whitelisting of crypto services. my worry is that this will just be a honeymoon period before the real crackdown comes.

that's 30% right there. that's huge for a trader. that's a lot of capital that could have been reinvested. i've got nothing against hodlers, but i commend any traders who managed to take profit at $18k-20k, including those who timed their entry into the altcoin markets correctly.


it looks to me like BTC is coiling for a move up. it loves to make these bear flags which never end up breaking down, leaving everyone behind as the rally takes off. it's been a fun altcoin season, but in the short term, i'm starting to shift back to BTC.

there are two separate issues. one is geographic concentration. an exodus of hash power away from china is a positive development. people have been worried for years about the chinese government's ability to drastically affect the hash rate with government action. this alleviates that concern. the GFW has also been a concern with regard to block propagation delays with bigger blocks (since the majority of hash rate is within the GFW), so there's another potential benefit.

the other issue is majority hash rate concentration among only a few ASIC manufacturers and pool operators. bitmain has already been setting up outside of china for years. they back multiple pools in different localities. they have mining facilities all over the world. they have mining facilities in canada and are apparently buying more. i've seen reports they are looking into swiss facilities as well.

i'm hoping that this problems is mitigated by new ASIC manufacturers entering the marketplace. GMO and dragonmint come to mind, but i'll believe it when i see production units and market share being taken from bitmain!

by definition, over-trading is a bad idea. it means you are hyper-focusing on short time frames and getting shaken out of good positions. it means you are selling your winners too early.

there are not pros. the cons: you lose good positions, you get frustrated and lose money selling into bear traps, you sweat small movements on low time frames when you could be spending that time more productively.


absolutely not. the best way to survive and profit from this market is position trading. both mainstream investors and hedge funds have arrived (yes, including altcoins). that means buying dips from panic traders (perhaps like yourself ) and holding through drawdowns. the trend is your friend.

maybe a year ago, but that line is getting tired now. the network specs have been established, there are multiple interoperable LN implementations, and the testnet has thousands of nodes! not only that, but real LN transactions have occurred on the mainnet. there is even a vendor (TORguard) who is accepting mainnet lightning payments today: https://twitter.com/torguard/status/950383059735646209


i think people are getting a bit too comfortable. the major powers haven't gone the route of legal recognition like japan. and particularly of note in the US: the futures markets were self-certified. i think it's very possible that we see some clampdowns on the industry. i wouldn't be surprised to see an exchange or two shut down by the US government. and everything feels rosy now, but in the long run, i won't be surprised to see an about-face from major governments on mining and crypto payments.

who the hell is capable of melting down their gold, though? that definitely sounds like something i would need to outsource. there are privacy mechanisms available to the bitcoin ecosystem to maintain similar levels of anonymity (mixing/coinjoin, TOR, VPN, etc), but it's possible that these mechanisms may be broken by attackers (like governments).

the biggest problem is that typical users take no care of their privacy. they freely reuse addresses, link wallet addresses, deposit to services without generating new addresses, they don't spoof their IP address, they don't use fake names and email addresses to deal with payment processors and merchants. that makes them low-hanging fruit. don't be low-hanging fruit.


it depends on the level of inconvenience (or perhaps rather the cost). one thing to consider here is that while gold has a very liquid market, KYC is relevant in the gold market as well. anytime i've ever sold gold pieces to a dealer, i've had to provide my ID.

the alternative is to deal P2P. i'll bet you the market for P2P cryptocurrency trading is bigger than for gold, even this early in the game, because cryptocurrency can be traded globally on the interwebz....

maybe, maybe not. i'm worried there is something more insidious going on. we all expect regulations to require AML/KYC from exchanges at this point. what no one is talking about is the possible expansion of the definition of "financial institution" and "money transmitter" to include many cryptocurrency services. under SB1241, anyone who is redeeming and transferring cryptocurrency on behalf of others would be considered a "financial institution" just like an FDIC-insured bank. mere tumblers who are doing nothing but mixing outputs of a supposedly fungible currency would be treated like a bank.

i am praying that SB1241 dies in committee like it did during the last congressional session. regardless, we are already seeing US-based exchanges obtaining money transmitter licenses and complying with AML/KYC. when i see talk like this, my gut reaction is to assume they want to expand this process of data retention and surveillance, not merely state the obvious (that exchanges must enforce AML/KYC).

in general, anyone trying to pile on extra money beyond what you're asking is a scammer. a rational, honest buyer will never go out of his way to drive his own costs up. that's a telltale sign of a scam.


even though paypal says that they "cover physical goods (not digital items or services) that are sold and shipped with proof of delivery," i would be very wary. here's a link to their page on seller protection:


i would read the fine print carefully, and dig around for some horror stories from sellers. i'll bet there are plenty.


that doesn't definitively say they are scammers, but it doesn't look good. i would stick only to irreversible payment methods myself.


this is the right section. clearly, this is about best trading practices....

i know of two ICO schemes where tokens were purportedly backed by real estate and diamonds, respectively. the schemes were shut down by the SEC, who froze the operator's assets. these were particularly egregious cases of fraud, but my point is that you need to be very careful about due diligence with any such schemes.

i feel that any commodity-backed token is a derivative. that comes with significant legal and compliance issues. when it comes to investing in ICOs, i much prefer tokens that are unlikely to be defined as securities. and i would definitely steer clear of derivatives. i suspect that we will see a lot of action from the SEC this year. i don't think they will stay quiet for too much longer.

in general, asset-backed cryptocurrency doesn't interest me because it requires centralized entities (third party trust) to maintain pegs and store the assets in question.