Bitcoin's price both increases and decreases depending on the time, and to the individual it depends when they bought it. 

If the volatility was steadily going up, no one would ever spend it at all and it would be just about the worst currency ever.

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The gold price was once stable, because a government would agree to exchange gold for a fixed amount of fiat money.  Thus inflation happened as governments accumulated more gold.

Now, the gold price is not stable because its price is mostly based on speculation and not real-world use.

A similar thing applies to Bitcoin.  The problem is that Bitcoin users love to rebel against governments, but to make BTC a steady means of payment, it would need to already have taken over pretty much all payments in the world.

Alright, I'm getting bearish now.

Let's all remind ourselves of the price on January 1st: about $970.  So the price has multiplied by about 3.5 since the start of the year, and $1000 was pretty much the ATH before.

I know there's SegWit and everything but this price is ridiculous.  I've been buying a lot of stuff with it now.  It's not like some casual investors on the sidelines are shoving up the price by hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours.

The wallet providers just have an interface for paying a fee to the miners.  All good wallets let you choose your transaction fees, so you don't do a comparison of what the wallet providers set by default (if they have a default), you do a comparison of how long a transaction is likely to take to confirm with different fees.

As for SegWit, it would increase the transaction capacity.  How much this decreases the fees by depends on two factors:

-How many people are using the network and how close it is to full
-How many people upgrade to newer SegWit clients and use SegWit transactions

Personally I think that SegWit will drastically reduce the fees because the transactions being sent will not be near the network's max capacity and the fee market will subside.  However as more transactions are sent this might change back.

It's cool OP, you've realised your mistake and that you were naive to give away your recovery phrase.

In future, you'd be best off checking:

-Bitcoin.org (they warned against scams related to BCH as well)
-The posts of theymos on this forum, if he's made any
-Mainstream news sites such as Coindesk
-Your wallet's suggestions

Ideally check several sources to make sure that the information has not been altered.

Anyway, if that was all your coins, that's so shit.  I hope you've got a few coins left.  It's also a shame that people will be patronising you with pages and pages of pointlessly added posts saying that they "don't think it's a good idea" to share your private keys, but I guess they keep this thread nice and visible.

Yep.  I agree with that.
For the Bitcoin Core client, I agree.
So by introducing modified Bitcoin software and hoping that people adopt it, are people "taking over" or "attacking" Bitcoin?  Or are they attempting to gain consensus for what they believe is right?
Currently, it's no one.  If anyone wanted to alter a rule, they would need consensus.  Core is not above anyone else in that regard.

Now that is how to shitpost.  Well done, sir.

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Not all supporters of BU/EC have gone off to mine Bitcoin Cash.  BITMAIN's stance on Bitcoin Cash, for example, is unclear, and they are a particularly large supporter of Bitcoin Unlimited.  For now, BITMAIN are not directing their pools' hashrate at Bitcoin Cash.

However, I would argue that consensus is now favouring at least the SegWit part of the New York Agreement (and we'll find out about the hard fork later).

The important thing is that you can signal for SegWit and still signal for Bitcoin Unlimited.  All of the supporters of Bitcoin Unlimited are now signalling for SegWit because of BIP 91 (and before that, most of them had been signalling SegWit).

"UASF coin" does not exist, because UASF did not cause a chain split.  Come to think of it, since BIP 91 will soon achieve UASF's objective (to activate SegWit), you could argue that the main chain is the UASF coin.

As for PoW changes, that would just be a hard fork like BCH, and though we don't know how popular it would be, we know that we could just choose to use the old chain if necessary.

Luke does seem to be a tad mental in that he was OK with UASF potentially causing a chain split (the only reason it didn't is the miners being promised a 2MB hard fork), but he is opposed to basically any other chain splits on the grounds of consensus.  He seems to assume that consensus is following whatever his view is at the time.

For Bitcoin Core.  Bitcoin Core do not control the source code for Bitcoin itself.  You still haven't grasped that.
The point that you made to justify your opinion that SegWitx2 is bad was:
That was your argument.  That SegWitx2 is bad because it is trying to "take control of Bitcoin's source code and development".

DooMAD responded that your argument was based on a "flawed premise".  The flawed premise being that you think developing something which is not Bitcoin Core is an attempt to take over Bitcoin Core.

SegWitx2 would only be taking over Bitcoin Core if they literally went and murdered people from Bitcoin Core and edited the source code.  And even if they did that, they would NOT be "taking over Bitcoin", they would be "taking over Bitcoin Core".

Your argument is so detached from reality that it's painful, and in response to a rebuttal you have to claim that we are saying nothing.  In reality, we are telling you how consensus works, something which you should have learned about years ago but apparently didn't.

Core controls the source code for the reference client, which is conveniently titled "Bitcoin Core" so that you can get your head around what it is.  Anyone could contribute to Bitcoin Core's code as well.

If a second implementation of a full node were to become the reference client, or in fact if there were many different clients which all had a moderately high level of popularity, that would be a natural and acceptable part of consensus.

What you don't seem to understand is that Core's power would be the same if a different client were the reference client.  Core could still develop their own client and suggest that people use it.  However, it is always the users' choice to decide which is the best and most secure client.

The same applies to Core's proposals such as SegWit - Core cannot force a consensus, because there is only consensus if people actually agree.

The same applies to chain splits - Core cannot force people to use the earlier BTC chain.  This is because they do not have control over people's decisions.

The consensus model has never meant "Core says something, because Core are the masters of the world we must obey, all hail Bitcoin Core forever, any other dev teams are evil entities trying to take over Bitcoin".

You can slip in a lot of fancy words and discuss "semantics" all you like, but Bitcoin's consensus model isn't going to change for you.

Well, let me put it this way.

0.2% per day is 73% in a year before compounding.  No traditional investment will promise to give you a specific amount ever unless they are a scam.  In cryptocurrency where the market is volatile, they are certainly a scam.

Now consider compounding.  Your 5 BTC will not be worth 73% more than you put in after a year because it will compound each day.  This means that in a year you will have 10.35 BTC, in two years you will have 21.46 BTC, and so on.  If you were to leave your BTC in there for 20 years (figure out how to calculate compound interest), you would have 10,776,294 BTC, more than half of the amount that could EVER be created.

Does that sound like a safe investment to you?  All the information that they give about it is that all that money comes from a "special fund".

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It might pay you.  It might pay you for quite a while.  But sooner or later, it will steal everyone's money.

You don't see its name either.
It's not quite like that.  I think they're just trying to use Monero like a mixer by sending it around a bit and then exchanging it to fiat later.

Monero is far better for anonymity, but they could have equally hid themselves by severing the ties between them and the original addresses on the blockchain.  They could even have sent to Shapeshift from a new address (both a new Bitcoin address and a new physical address).

The first thing you should do is watch this video, which I saw DannyHamilton share a while ago.  Very good beginner's information on how crypto works and why it's secure.

Bitcoin Wiki, Coindesk and here are my main ones.  There are plenty of other valid sources, but you will find that things you read here or on Reddit are often annoyingly biased and/or unhelpful.  I said here because it's a good gauge of public interest and public opinion and it's good for understanding things as long as you're capable of critical thinking.
If you're a reasonable person, there's no advice to give.

Looks like a bad idea.
 
If the authorities take control of the market (like they did with Hansa, running it for a month), they will track the coins you're trying to mix with them and take logs.  Then there will be no point.

Also, by using the dark net market as a mixer you're automatically committing a crime, whereas using a mixer is legal (for now).

Also, you could receive some of the same coins back.

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You might get better responses in the Service Discussion board.

No one who understands how Bitcoin works would say that.  They would say that after sending a transaction it's possible to double spend, and that as the transaction receives confirmations it becomes exponentially less likely that a user can double spend.  Eventually the chances of a double spend are negligible and you can safely ignore it.
The "assumption" (understanding of how Bitcoin works) that I have just explained is correct.  SegWitx2 makes no changes which would alter that.
Please explain how you think that SegWitx2 increases the possibility of a double spend.

Satoshi was active on this forum.  Here are his posts.

As you can see his last post was on December 12th, 2010.  After that he has given no further information.

Because SegWit was proposed far later than when satoshi left, he had no direct or official opinion on it, nor did he have an opinion on Bitcoin Cash.

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Many supporters of Bitcoin Cash have argued that satoshi supported larger block sizes and opposed SegWit.  It's difficult to suggest that he was against SegWit, and I think that this statement is made just because people see SegWit as being against block size increases.  As for whether he supported larger blocks, it looks like he did.  Whether he knew what the implications of larger blocks would be were the network under more stress I don't know, but personally I don't subscribe to the narrative that the block size can never be increased or that it's necessarily bad.

A likely source of your information would be the subreddit r/btc.  While uncensored (with open moderation logs), r/btc is mainly a protest against r/bitcoin, and therefore most people on that subreddit are in an echo chamber of supporting larger blocks, much like how people in r/bitcoin are in an echo chamber of opposing larger blocks.

Personally I would suggest that you ignore both subreddits and simply learn about how Bitcoin works.  Most people on the Internet discussing it are too biased to give neutral or reasonable opinions on the topic and it's hard to distinguish reason from bullshit a lot of the time.

There might be 100% support in blocks, but that's just because of BIP 91 forcing miners to signal SegWit.  Also, you know perfectly well that miners don't have to represent the economy, hence why BCH has a value.

Consensus is a lot messier than just "it looks like that proposal has over 50% support, let's all follow it regardless of our actual thoughts on the matter".
Common sense would dictate that you are wrong.  The main point of the blockchain is to prevent double spending.

1.  Bitcoin is not "Core".  Bitcoin is permissionless and has more than one dev team.  If Core were to control everything forever and people supported that, Bitcoin would be centralised.

2.  A fork is not "getting it for free".  It's bringing competition into the market.  Whatever the market perceives the strongest coin to be will be the strongest coin.  If the price was high you'd call it a pump - do you really have so much confirmation bias that you would use the price to hate Bitcoin Cash regardless of what actually happens?

I'm sorry but not everything is a conspiracy against you.  Please get over yourself.

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ICOs are a terrible means of distribution and always will be.  Mining is far better to distribute a new coin and a fork is a good way if you're trying to engage Bitcoin users, because it has the same distribution as the longest-running cryptocurrency (Bitcoin).

Bitcoin Cash are very explicit about their opposition to SegWit and they did not implement SegWit into their code.

Absolutely nothing will prevent this.

As a general rule, people who are not idiots will decide to keep their coins in a wallet where they safely control the private keys.

If they are idiots or they're willing to lose their money, they can freely store their coins on barely regulated exchanges for as long as they like.  But don't come crawling back when Bitfinex steals loads of your BCH.

You can see all the trading pairs for Bitcoin here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

However, if an exchange has a "lower price" than another, it's probably artificially created by:
-A problem or a delay with the exchange's fiat deposits or BTC withdrawals.
-High spread between the buy and sell prices.
-High exchange fees.

Anything outside of that gets arbitraged to death very quickly.

Cash is already being used and is far, far more anonymous than Bitcoin.

When you spend cash in a shop, do you think that no one is tracking it on their databases?  Do you think that you're not paying VAT or any other taxes on it?

When people used cash, even though there was some tax evasion, people at least typically declared their main income and the biggest purchases.