the chinese government is not stupid enough to remove themselves from the equation. one chinese official said that the ICO ban is temporary, to allow the government to implement proper regulations: https://twitter.com/sytaylor/status/905867039935430656

given this, and given the audit of the major chinese bitcoin exchanges that already took place earlier this year, i really don't think the government will shut down the exchanges. they just gave them the green light a few months ago (otherwise i don't think huobi, okcoin and btcc would have re-enabled bitcoin withdrawals all at the same time).

there has been no announcement from the government. the major exchanges have all confirmed that they have received no new regulatory orders since the rumors emerged yesterday.

not the headline i wanted to see this morning from Reuters top news, though. they based the entire story off the Caixin story, which is all conjecture with one anonymous source.

time will tell, but i think this has been misrepresented.

still, as written the tax code is clear. we owe taxes on any gains, according to cost basis. just like the taxation of any other property in a barter scenario. the real question is, who is silly enough to constantly be spending their bitcoins? i make a dozen or three transactions a year. it's not exactly difficult to keep track of.

anyway, i'm really glad to see this, though. $600 is a solid threshold where small fish won't be scared off from using BTC due to the tax man's threats. unfortunately, these reps are nobodies...

i doubt it, since such class actions would fail. forfeiture law is such that the standards for seizure are very low, no criminal conviction or even charges are required, and the burden of proof is on the defendant. since the coins would have been sent by btc-e, the customer has no way to prove their origin.

this is just about coinbase customers; it doesn't matter where btc-e customers are based. coinbase is licensed in the US, and they are subject to US laws, including judicial orders regarding civil asset forfeiture.

if anything is clear from the past 15-20 years watching law enforcement in the USA, it's that there is no way to stop civil asset forfeiture. you can only prevent it by properly hiding your assets. (in other words, i agree----do not send any coins linked to btc-e to places like bitstamp or coinbase)

nope. some might say "same shit, different day" but the planned november fork seems to have much more economic backing. most miners signed the NYA, and so did most big businesses like bitpay and coinbase and dgc (silbert/GBTC), etc.

and there seems to be more support among users as well. so i'm less confident that things will go quite as smoothly this time. the core developers and many users are still opposing the fork, so a major split seems very possible.

based on what? volume? bitflyer has zero trading fees, just like chinese exchanges once did a year ago. back then, we all considered china to be the market leaders based on their volume. it turns out the volume was just fake/churned.

and indeed, russia seems to be behind much of the world in regards to BTC and blockchain technology.

also, there are lots of US traders on sites like bitstamp, bitfinex, poloniex and bittrex. determining which country is dominant in trading activities is very difficult because of international exchanges.

i'm not saying $10k is impossible within a few months. if the run continued from here, it's very possible given how little liquidity there is on the exchanges. however, i think we have a big hurdle to deal with first, and that's the the november hard fork, which is coded for activation.

given that this momentous event sits in the middle of here and the end of the year, i think there is a lot of room for FUD and price manipulation. and there may rightfully be a lot of market uncertainty, which usually means price decline. i'll be buying cheap coins if so.

where i live (USA), i don't think it matters either way. both of the leading parties are elitist and back corporate and banking interests over popular interests, so i think both republicans and democrats would hold similar positions towards BTC.

fortunately, i think the political establishment already understands that it's too late to ban BTC.


meh, "free and fair" elections are overrated. like i said, we supposedly have them in the USA, but the average citizen here is completely disenfranchised from the political decisions that affect their lives.

it's the constant glitches that scare me more than anything. so many features of their site simply do not work like they are supposed to. when you combine that with the notion of missing deposits and withdrawals? very scary! i had the same feelings about bitfinex last year before they got hacked...... the constant glitches in their interface and server outages in the early summer should have convinced me to get my funds off back then. i'm not making the same mistake with poloniex.

unfortunately, i'm hearing reports that even BTC withdrawals are not immune to getting stuck. again, very scary.......

it's probably different based on country of residence. i live in the USA, and i see the same $2,000 / $7,000 / $25,000 levels when i check my profile. i'm guessing you aren't american?

i've actually been moving funds off polo to reduce my exposure. i think they are going to increase verification standards on all accounts. they already did it for new accounts, and we see bittrex doing the same. i don't trust these guys with my ID, let alone my social security number.....

i suspect last night's lows in the $4,000s was a major bottom. it's possible we are entering another corrective phase, but i'm pretty confident that we will at least test the $4,500-4,700 area before then. We could just as easily continue the uptrend and conquer $5,000 as well.


or the market was looking for a reason to dump. when i compare the chinese and western charts, it's not totally clear to me that this was triggered by chinese investors/traders per se. it was also the expectation of a drop by western traders.

regular verification was already harsh, not just passport/utility bill but notarized paper copies sent to some unknown person in Malaysia. but if you ever got locked out of your account (e.g. if you were inactive for one year or more) then they would institute very arbitrary means of verification. search around the forums a bit; there are many cases where people were unable to pass this verification (even after ID documents, email verification, etc.) or where they simply stopped responding. asking for transaction IDs from funding transactions from 4 years earlier, or signed messages from associated addresses, etc.

it's the ambiguity around verification that makes me think i shouldn't wait around to find out what the terms are. they say you can withdraw now "without verification" OR use the new site  which "will operate in the legal field of AML, KYC, the necessary licenses"......


outside their jurisdiction, like where? russia? kazakhstan? china? then you have no concerns here. but US jurisdiction goes quite a lot further than its borders, as evidenced by the domain seizure (aussie company), the vinnik arrest (greece), the frozen funds (british company).

i'm not so worried about something like a criminal investigation. but there is a slight worry about civil asset forfeiture. any funds from them could be considered seizable by the US government (new brand or not). so just be careful about how you deal with the taint when cashing out to fiat in the future.

like i said, maybe i am blowing this out of proportion. maybe i am paranoid. but i never saw the feds indict a fucking BTC exchange before, and say in the press release its customers are all criminals. that's some shit i'd like not to be involved with.


we can trade. they are being deliberately opaque about the terms for withdrawals without verification. i take that as a major risk factor here. i'm not one of those people with 0.05BTC in my account. it makes a huge difference what kind of limits they will place on withdrawals.

the stuff i mentioned above is because i am pretty confident their servers will be seized again by the feds in the future. unless they really are setting up in the donetsk. but i'm actually more worried about my identity getting stolen. we don't know the terms of verification, and if it's as bad or worse than previously, i'd much rather get 55% now and walk away from it. having that hanging over my head.....no thanks.

in my mind, the primary distinction is not between US and non-US. if you're a brit or aussie, do you really want to risk sending your documents (and DNA sample, etc. given their past verification procedures) to the new exchange? they were indicted by the goddamn feds, who consider btc-e's funds to be the proceeds of money laundering. i'm not fucking with the FBI and neither should you, at least if you're from a western/non-CIS country.

if you're russian or from a former soviet republic, you don't have much to worry about. and maybe i'm blowing this out of proportion. but i'm probably gonna give up 5 figures value here to walk away from this without having any of that hanging over my head.

plus, maybe i can get access to funds sooner this way, and can hedge as i see fit. two weeks in this volatility is a lifetime longer to wait.

unfortunately, i'm not familiar with either copay or nano ledger. however, my understanding is that BCH had replay protection implemented. so when you moved your BTC to the nano ledger, your BCH would not have moved with it. assuming i'm correct on that, then you just need to export your private key(s) that held the BTC (and BCH) from the copay wallet, and import them into a BCH wallet.

since those private keys no longer control any BTC, there's less risk involved with just importing them straight into a BCH wallet like electron cash or bitcoin abc. normally i'd be weary of those. btc.com also has a web wallet. maybe you can import the keys there.

for every seller, there is a buyer. every dollar spent buying bitcoin cash = a dollar less to buy bitcoin. if BTC supporters are dumping BCH, that means either BCH supporters are also dumping BTC or some investors are buying BCH instead of BTC. or both.

so, to answer your questions.... it's not good. what we are seeing now is market inefficiency. a lot of people will lose a lot of value (either BCH sellers or BCH buyers). for now, we need to wait and see how supply/demand plays out. you can look at exchange volumes for an idea of how much BCH was dumped, but there is a lot of churn to account for.

if it turns out that these kind of splits are damaging to the network effect and value of BTC, i think that will deter people from continually forking.

when 1broker's BTC market was still active, i occasionally copied BTCUSD trades when one or two of my favorite traders took a position. they have a pretty nice interface there for chatting and copying trades, with commissions for those who share trades.

i've done well, and the key is 1) researching your traders and 2) spreading out the risk really well. i suppose the second part is the same with trading: you have to manage your risk by only allocating a small portion of total capital to each trade. they still offer a lot of markets, just not crypto anymore.

not surprising but a bit unnerving. can any US users confirm what happens when you try to log in? specifically, what happens if you logged in through vpn, vs. logging in from your normal US IP address and then logging in through vpn? are accounts being locked for logging in from the US? 

i'm a bit scared to try logging in right now. i guess i'll try logging in through a vpn when i get home from work. i never white listed any IP address... hopefully logging in from canada or something will be okay.

we have a more substantive update from btc-e. the service will be launched on btc-e.nz, where users can login, check their balances, and change password/2fa token if necessary. this should occur in the next 3 days, if i am reading their update correctly.

this won't be the actual domain for the new service. that hasn't been announced yet. launch of the new domain and withdrawals are expected to occur by september 15 at the latest.

since balance recalculation formulas have not been decided yet, i assume we will see our original balances when btc-e.nz is brought online. either way, since accounts can be logged into (and therefore traded at that point), the btc-e account market should be opening in the next few days.

here is the update (google translate):

"goodgroove.pl?" that looks legitimate to you? btc-e has told us that information will be published through their forum account and twitter. they mentioned nothing about this email or its instructions, and they warned against such phishing scams. it's pretty obviously a scam.


yup, the russian threads are 10x more active. maybe more. btc-e said 70% of its user base is russian-speaking, and they want feedback on their proposed solutions.


nothing is official yet. they are still deciding how to deal with balance recalculation. it sounds like what will likely happen is you will get 55% of your ETH back, and 45% back as an ETH-denominated token (which will supposedly be repaid in ETH). this doesn't seem like the best idea, since it breaks all the token liquidity into different markets. maybe they are hoping that token/BTC markets will develop just like altcoin/BTC markets.

like btc-e, i think EXMO is just registered under a british company. it couldn't be based in russia because i believe it is banned there, but it is definitely focused on the russian market.

here is one for your list:
QuadrigaCX https://www.quadrigacx.com/

they offer a BTC/CAD market. daily volume is pretty low (something like 1000 BTC per day traded on average). but the couple canadian guys i know both use this exchange when they want to move CAD into the bitcoins/altcoin space.