Without a strategy or plan you will be gambling

And as the saying goes, if you don't have a plan, plan to lose. However, even if you have a trading plan (trading strategy), it is not a guarantee of success, and the problem may not be with your strategy as such (though it still can be). Actually, there are two different problems with trading strategies, even with good strategies. The first one is that most people are unable to follow the chosen route through, at a certain stage they fail to stick to their approach to some degree. This is effectively equal to having no strategy at all, and that would be gambling as I said in the preamble

he second problem is the opposite of the first, when people are too rigid or even stubborn in following what they set up as their strategy. Any strategy, simple or otherwise, even the perfect one (the Holy Grail of trading) has its finite scope of application, i.e. the environment in which it should be used. But if the environment changes radically in the process, following the chosen strategy may no longer be reasonable as its premises may no longer hold true. But some people are stuck with the idea of pushing it through no matter what. This is as bad, if not badder, as having no strategy at all

This is a shaky point and an ancient argument

Basically, there are two camps which stick to quite polar views. One camp asserts that if a new break-through technology is implemented, for example, Lightning Network, or something even better, that would give Bitcoin a dramatic boost regarding its adoption and real use. But the supporters of this idea fail to give a plausible reason why it should happen if right now Bitcoin network capacity is not fully utilized anyway. Catchy phrases like whether Bitcoin is ready for the world don't fill that slack in this reasoning. The other camp, which I belong to myself, thinks that scaling up Bitcoin won't give anything in terms of adoption on its own. It won't boost demand just because of its very existence. Scalability issues will become such only when there is not enough processing capacity, and we are not there yet. Personally, I think that making Bitcoin transactions faster without adding excessive complexity and sacrificing decentralization (as LN assumes) would be a better solution in the short term if these issues actually start to impede Bitcoin's use. Though we already have Litecoin which does all that out of the box

I can't quite agree that top altcoins are oversold

This is what we (want to) think judging by their continuous fall. We implicitly assume that they have already fallen enough, but the unpleasant truth is we don't know that for certain as we don't know where the true bottom is and when we reach it. Strictly speaking, the bottom is around zero for all these coins, so anything above it is in fact an overbought state, and we can only speculate and squeeze small profits here and there. Some coins like Litecoin and Ethereum have uses outside speculation, and that moves their use value above zero but how much we don't know. As for myself, I don't think that much

It is not advisable, it is in fact the only way to make profits

There can exist many different trading strategies, but however sophisticated and complex they can be, it all comes down to buying low and selling high in the end (or in reverse order if you are shorting). Regarding you question specifically, if I understand it correctly, it all depends on what your prime currency is, i.e. in what you are measuring your own wealth. By default, people assess the value of their portfolio in dollars (or any other fiat), so if you sold for dollars, your profits can't depreciate in your frame of reference (valuation). But obviously, that's not the only option as it is common nowadays for many people to evaluate their financial well-being in bitcoins, not in fiat. In that case, they don't care about how high or low the price of Bitcoin is at any given moment as long as the number of bitcoins in their wallet continues to increase. Hope this helps

How's that really?

Every country prints way more money than it has gold. There are about 7T dollar worth of gold in the whole world as of now, while the size of the US national debt alone is 3 times greater than that amount. Some countries don't even have gold reserves at all or their gold is in someone else's hands (e.g. Germany). And so what? Can you explain how buying up all gold in a country can ever disrupt its economy? Any economy today is based on real production, not on a shiny metal, whereas gold itself is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as its uses are rather limited, and in no case its shortage can threaten a more or less developed economy

I have to disagree with your opinion

Obviously, you are using the term in the derogatory sense, when greed blinds your reason and mind, so you start making mistakes and lose all in the end. But that is uncontrollable greed, the one which you can't put a bridle on, can't keep it restrained, keep it on a short leash. But greed is what motivates you, and not just in crypto and crypto trading. If you were not greedy - synonymous with "stay hungry" here - you wouldn't get anything in life, either, as you would be indifferent, not interested in anything. It is what you do (or not do) with your greed (as well as fear, for that matter) that counts at the end of the day

It is technically impossible because Bitcoin doesn't belong to anyone, i.e. no one has complete control over it. If you have plenty of gold and many thousands of bitcoins, you can do something to that tune and set an arbitrary exchange rate. But if this exchange rate doesn't follow the market prices, people will quickly buy up either gold or bitcoins from you depending on the discrepancy between your and market prices. If you keep your exchange rate floating, then the whole idea of backing up Bitcoin with gold will be pointless


If I remember correctly, there were gold bitcoins as you describe them (QR codes and all) but you had to pay a premium for them which equaled or even exceeded the price of gold in these coins

That's a good news. What are the start and end posting dates?

It is strange that you mentioned Microsoft in this context

And while we are at it, could you remind us what great inventions Microsoft made or how is it itself a great invention?  If anything, Microsoft has been slowing advances in IT for the last twenty years at the very least. Should I in turn remind you of their FUD campaign against Linux, their being behind SCO attack on free software, their nefarious practices of privatizing and monopolizing open standards, and whatever else they are doing to stifle and extinguish free competition in the field? On the other hand, they didn't invent anything themselves, they had just been stealing ideas and whole products (e.g. DOS) all the time and then paying or just telling people to shut the fuck up

Or it can crash further as it happened with Bitcoin on its way down from the 2017 December highs. There was no end to bloodbath around $13000-15000 when the price first rebounded to almost $17000 (though it was no more than a regular dead cat's bounce). Then another stop was at $12000. Actually, there were two stops at that level at different times, the first one ending with a rebound and the second one with further crash, which landed us below $7000. And blood ran in torrents back then. Regarding low circulating supply, it doesn't guarantee anything

42Coin was expected to have only 42 coins (which should have given it value), but it still ended like a typical shitcoin

Conceptually, I agree with you, though I have to clarify a few things, or rather expand your idea

In your post (and likely in your mind as well), you divide people into two groups (categorically speaking, as you call it). One group consists of people who are motivated by money, and another group of those who may be motivated by something else. The first group are obviously after material things, and they are motivated by money as much as it can provide them with these things as is the case with anything material. We say money is the biggest factor in this case as the connection is straightforward, and everyone understands what is meant here (well, at least I hope so). The second group are onto something else which has no direct connection with money. But here's the catch, whatever that might be, almost always you would need money for that. In this way, people who are passion-driven may not be motivated by money as such, but they still need it. And the stronger their passion is, the more it will be demanding in monetary terms

Personally, I don't think that the integration of decentralized exchanges with fiat gateways will be difficult

Besides, I don't think it is an issue at all. If you need fiat for your daily expenses (like groceries, at barber's, etc) you can cash out at regular exchanges and exchangers, or use Tether if you are looking for a fiat backup. But for many people, cryptocurrency conversions are the most required operation, and with Bitcoin stabilizing, who would need fiat anyway? Also, if fiat is going to kick the bucket one day (highly unlikely, but still), then this issue will get resolved on its own as you would no longer need it and consequently fiat gateways and exchanges as well

Why do you think it is not an option?

In corrupted countries even the corrupted will be using means of evading law enforcement (which is also corrupted, by definition), and in this department Bitcoin feels pretty good when compared to keeping naked fiat. Yes, it is volatile (but things may have changed already), but unlike gold (another option), it is not such pain in the ass and doesn't take a lot to hide it almost without trace. In fact, Bitcoin is totally legit (I mean justified) for saving, especially if your goal is actually to save your wealth, not to multiply it, and you are ready to pay a certain fee or percentage for that. Here I mean what you may have to pay for hedging against volatility. On the other hand, you can employ volatility to your advantage if you choose so, and then you won't have to pay anything and can even earn a little

The simplest method is riding the trend

I can't think of anything simpler that wouldn't be pure luck. Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies has been in a downtrend since the beginning of the year, and if you followed the trend (not forgetting to put stop-losses along the way), you would have earned handsome profits. And it doesn't really matter where the trend goes. If it goes south, you sell coins (probably on margin), if it goes north, you buy them. In between you can go for day trading by exploiting daily or weekly volatility (within your stop-losses range)

As far as I understand, Bisq is a peer-to-peer exchange

In my opinion, this is not a true exchange. We need "exchanges" working right on the blockchain where "exchange" is built-in on the protocol level. I understand that it is not possible to make such an exchange real-time with current implementations. We need second-layer solutions like LN that would allow real-time orderbooks with real-time trades, just like regular exchanges work. Obviously, all exchangeable coins should have the same protocol that would allow trading different coins (so-called atomic swaps) since implementing this technology with just one coin makes no sense. Trading always involves two currencies, be it a cryptocurrency-to-fiat or cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency exchange. With fiat, we need payment gateways, that further complicates things but I think it is doable

In short, I agree with you. But I have to add that what people call here Forex is not true Forex. If you have direct access to this market, which you don't as only financial institutions (banks, investment management firms, etc) and big guns of George Soros caliber have it, you can buy and keep foreign currency in the same way as crypto. What people discuss here are dealing centers which are not much different from online casinos and betting sites which have house edge, meaning you are set to lose in the end. Some brokers (for example, big international banks) can offer "forex trading", but most of these trades never leave the broker's internal system. If you want to buy a certain amount of foreign currency, you would be better off by doing that via exchanges which offer spot trades (as opposed to currency futures and options)

And this will be real currency which you can withdraw to your bank account

Could you explain in OP what are the advantages of this system?

And how it can be centralized and decentralized platform at the same time? Other than that, what's the purpose of this system if it still comes down to waiting for a few confirmations till your transaction is considered accepted by the network? Most services require a few confirmations anyway, and thus you can see the transaction in any blockchain explorer without the help of such third party tools. If it is a payment processor (sort of), then I don't understand its purpose as you can still try to double-spend. Thus it makes no sense as such as it doesn't have private keys and can't guarantee that a transaction won't be recast


There's no such guarantee unless the service has the keys. And if it has, it is pretty much the same online wallet like Coinbase or whatever

I don't see a lot of sense in that. That many coins competing on the market doesn't warrant yet more exchanges as this multitude of coins doesn't add any real value to crypto. The total majority of them are going to disappear soon, and they would be only pain in the ass of an exchange that lists them. What we actually need are truly decentralized and distributed exchanges but these are not possible unless most coins implement updates to their protocols allowing atomic swaps between cryptocurrencies in a consistent way, real time. We are ages from that yet

Anyway, you already have Yobit, and that's more than enough if you ask me

I see your point, and it may well be the case

With that said though, I can't agree that they didn't have a choice, at least not in the sense you mean, and yes, I understand what you mean. While Bitcoin is not anonymous "out of the box", you can still heavily obfuscate its usage and massively impede tracing down transactions to their real sources. Although there were no Bitcoin mixers back then (as far as I know), you could still achieve pretty much the same effect manually. The bottom line is that if those Silk Road criminals knew what had been awaiting them, I think they would have avoided the consequences of their negligence in questions of safety and security, if not fully but still enough to get away mostly unscathed

This example doesn't tell us anything specific

People that were lucky to jump off this derailing train might have been greedy and they might not have been since you don't really know for how long they had been waiting for these prices. If some of them bought bitcoins when it cost 100 dollars, they were greedy as hell and also lucky as much. On the other hand, some other people who bought at 18000 dollars and then sold at 19000 can be described as not greedy, while in practice it tells essentially the same, that they were as lucky. So, if anything, your example is not so much about greed as about luck