I certainly can't believe it's anything other than money that's been sitting and waiting for a long time which means professional money which these days means bots.

The nature of those huge buys is really weird though. Did someone get bored or were they trying to impress some Russian tart?

There weren't enough during it, after that the profits fell so rapidly that anyone they did get in is likely not to have stayed.

There've been plenty of reports of the bigger exchanges and companies laying people off, but they reframe it as a 'consolidation' and of course quite a few exchanges have disappeared completely.

A couple of days of excitement and then this happens.



To be fair, or just as unimpressed, they've been having problems with this when it was quiet too.

But it does make me wonder about how desperate it's going to become if there's another proper bubble. Last time it nearly finished off even the biggest operations and I've seen little mention of them making plans if it happens again.

There's no time to recruit and train enough people as it occurs and I doubt anyone would be willing to employ vast numbers on the off chance there's a few weeks of madness again.

A future bubble would be way more muscular and the millions of people who boned themselves up the posterior on the last one would be very fast to jump back in, let alone new arrivals.

Do you reckon the exchanges have secret fire power hidden away or are they going to wilt until the whole thing keels over?

With 2x the excitement it would be a massive undertaking to handle, 5-10x and your computer might vomit into your lap when you try to log in to an exchange.

I had a test fiddle with GBP. It's very, very sluggish but it didn't outright reject it. I can't be arsed to go through with an actual exchange.

This is what they're saying -



If this move paralyses them then I'll be well clear when the real fireworks happen, however it looks like most of the services are just as hopeless so the bubble top may well be like those exchanges that trade shitforks with dead or crippled  chains - you won't be able to deposit, withdraw or move them but at least you can look at the lovely price that you'll never be able to realise.

It proves there was a huge order on legit exchanges. Is that manipulation? Looks more like a huge order to me. Where do you draw the line at it not being manipulation? 2000, 200, 20?

It's weird behaviour but it's out in the open. You'd be perfectly within your rights to do it in any other markets. People would remark on it but you're not gaming anything in the way fake walls do.

The wirex app is now crashing every single time after staying open for about ten seconds. I think it's a new update. It's a V unique feature which saves them lots of hassles.

Exchanging to USD, GBP and EUR is 'temporarily disabled'. I can't say that's the best of looks. I dunno if Wirex was fully operational during late 2017 but this is not an encouraging omen if you want to make use of your, y'know, money when things are hot.

I get the feeling that the next bubble will be an even bigger seizure for the services than last time. I've seen little evidence of them getting ready, and of course not many can afford to either.

I've always wanted one of these. Thanks to the power of crypto, and a 500 mile round trip, I can - https://kent.craigslist.org/art/d/box-of-500x-windowed-gummed-manilla/6836759509.html

Craigslist has basically failed in the UK. I did used to enjoy reading the personals ads but they seem to have stopped them. I really, really can't believe any real people ever met through them, or rather real females.

My money is on this being some guy posting on Facebook about how he mentioned to a bus driver a couple of years that BTC is kinda cool and the bus driver rolled his eyes whilst looking away. Then the crypto 'press' got hold of it.

And who the hell would want to pay for their bus fare with BTC anyway? I'll pay for the couple of km into town with the spare change running around in my jockstrap, not my lovely asset.

In the great scheme of things this isn't a truly radical move. Perhaps we could do without FOMO for quite some time. If it goes straight into overheat mode again that's not going to end well. I'd be happy if it settled downwards a bit from here and slowly grew.

You never know, perhaps one of the selfies in that thread actually is Satoshi letting off a little steam.

Interesting point re the April fools. There will be a lot of people reading who had a shot of alarm today. It's easy to forget there are whole swathes of the world that barely acknowledge it, let alone have any nuance of English comprehension. And there are certain bits where it's not even April at all.

After that there's intelligence and the ability, or will, to analyse what you've read. Both of those qualities are in even shorter supply.

KYC for custodial wallets is already here in certain legislation, both planned and existing.

For wallets that leave control of your private keys with you I don't see how it's possible. It's just software that accesses a protocol available to all. That goes for hardware wallets, phone wallets and anything else you can think up.

The main thing I took away from that is that CMC is one of the world's top 500 most visited sites which I didn't know and find pretty incredible. That puts into perspective just how much power they've wound up with.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coinmarketcap.com

Yes, I use cash most of the time. Not for shopping but for eating out and buying the odd drink in shops. There are still plenty of places around me that don't take cards.

Instead of cash being 'banned' there'll come a time where most businesses will reject it because of the unwanted hassle. I'll be intrigued to see what the cash heavy businesses do in that scenario.

I think there could be a place for something that unemotionally analyses all this stuff. There's so goddamn much of it that most would love a reference to start with. However it's just the same as everything else. The people publishing it would be just as fallible and biased as anyone else. We need a hive mind type of deal.

Not technically a selfie, but I did force a passerby to take this with my own phone. I think this shows a side of me that not enough people are aware of. I hope to address it with this.

It doesn't matter how much you cash out, you're being paid in something with value and that's the place you're taxed.

Of course if you don't bother reporting it in most places no one's going to find out, but you might be setting yourself up for future problems if they choose to sniff around. Again, the likelihood is low.

And for some campaigns the payouts can easily take you above your tax allowance. I can't be bothered to add it up but it's quite possible I went over mine last year purely from the campaign I'm in. If the price had stayed high it would've been not too far off the average salary where I am.

I stick my details in encrypted folders on multiple SD cards in various places. I'd much rather someone found a lump of plastic filled with fake info than the instant keys to the kingdom.

My estimation of South Korean competence has gone down an awful lot since I've observed their forays into crypto.

The government literally had no regulation in place at all. You could start an exchange with an online sales licence, the same type that you needed to sell bits of paper or socks. They appeared to do nothing to police it until the explosion had been and gone.

There've been multiple hacks. The South Korean population have thrown up countless stories of them ruining themselves and it's also the pumpiest and dumpiest market of all, observe Bitcoin Gold having much higher volume than Bitcoin itself.

They need to go to the naughty step and remain there for quite some time.

Presumably all of these are encrypted or password protected?

The last thing I'd want to create is a physical object wide open to anyone who stumbles across it. It doesn't matter how well it's hidden, it's possible it'll be unearthed and then off floats your cashola.