Of course, profits should be taken when the price is on the far higher side in comparison to the value of the moment the coins were "obtained".

This is quite a new development. Instead of setting up their own auctions, basically anyone could now try to buy these coins up. However, if you dig a bit deeper, the seized coins won't get sold at all, but distributed to people withdrawing coins from the exchanges the authorities are cooperating with, what a honor.  

Great to see that the government, which is a criminal as well, is looking to protect itself against other criminals/fraudsters, how ironic.

Yeah, let's get the market to tank so you can buy your 0.01BTC, which will make you an incredibilty wealthy person when it bounces back up to $17,000.

If you did your thing in the correct manner, you wouldn't be waiting (better said, hoping) for the market to start tanking to buy back in. This market has offered people enough opportunities to accumulate consistently on the way up, and people still manage to mess things up. Seriously, how many examples do you guys need in order to understand that securing profits with minimal gains will make you only lose out in current market? If you're lucky, and the market happens to tank indeed, make sure you buy back in and don't make the same mistake again.

Indeed. Paper money however doesn't form a threat to the economy since it's something issued by the governments. Bitcoin however is something that breaks through this system, and offers people a way to bypass any central authority. Paper money does to a certain extent allow you to bypass the government as well when it comes to conducting offline transactions, but we have already seen that the government suddenly can choose to take certain paper bills out of circulation. So even with paper money you're not safe from the governmental tyranny.

It's not just related to India. I have seen more countries thinking of ways to take their cut of people's gains. Currently we're miles ahead of any government in terms of regulations, but at some point they will find a way to collect their taxes consistently on a yearly basis. I think that the exchanges will play an important role in this since they contain a gigantic amount of precious user centric information. That information could help governments decide what level of tax you have to pay over your holdings and gains. Coinbase has been a mild example of this, where it's pretty much a guarantee that other exchanges will follow. I am not quite sure how I personally will react to this, but I may end up taking distance from the current centralized exchanges.

It's not that big of a deal. If we look at how things go right now, the buyers protection is something that is bank/creditcard-tied. Even if you do end up paying with Bitcoin, and you decide to charge back for whatever reason, it's the bank/credit account of the seller that gets charged, where Ebay then will give you back either the fiat equivalent straight, or the fiat equivalent in Bitcoin. It's something that we at this point don't know, so everything I say is just speculation.

Lightning Network is coming closer. It gets rid of Bitcoin's current limitations and hindrances, where at that point will see Bitcoin become the ultimate currency tool. Bitcoin's mainstream usage will then get a boost like we have never seen before. So no, we definitely don't need any merchant to accept whatever shitcoins.

What we have experienced this year is unseen, and will likely never ever occur again within the same time frame. If Bitcoin in 2018 increases with "just" 100%, it means that from that point another 100% increase will push Bitcoin to $67,000. In best case scenario we would then have reached these levels before the block halving taking place. By that time there will be more than just the future markets for wall street to benefit from Bitcoin, which I am confident in will thrive the market over the $100,000 level within five years, to remain fairly conservative. But then again, it's nothing more than (at this point) empty speculation. It might also remain stagnant for quite a long time, which is something not many people think about, but is a fair possibility.

Bitcoin thrives on speculation, that's true. Bitcoin attracts criminals, that's true. But hey, that goes up for any asset in the world. Fiat currencies are the root of all evil if we start looking at them in how they serve as tool for criminals. The same basically goes up for Gold and other assets, but these don't get the honor of being mentioned - it's always Bitcoin being the bad boy. Should we also mention that in the last years the number of circulating counterfeit money has reached record highs, and is only growing further? Should we also look at how wars and terrorism get financed with the US Dollar? Or should we for once just quit blaming the assets that are subject to malicious abuse? I go for the latter.

It's not just a way of simply paying employees in Bitcoin. These kind of initiatives are meant to attract tech savvy people that are looking for a cooperative environment to work in and contribute to. That at this point is the main reason businesses are paying employees in Bitcoin. These tech savvy people are thinking completely different, which directly requires businesses to approach them differently, and this definitely is a great way of doing so. It makes people look at that business from a different perspective, and likely sooner fit in their ideal working environment. If it was just about paying people in Bitcoin with no thought behind it, it would basically not have that much value since people can buy Bitcoin directly themselves at any time of the day.

Great thing is that we don't need to reach that level this year. It's only something that people having bought Bitcoin very recently aim for. From current levels it's 'just' a 20% increase, which isn't anything special in times where we gained like 1500% within a year. I am perfectly fine with the market being in consolidation phase, because this is actually what we need right now. It just isn't healthy if the market keeps going up without a proper correction, or a consolidation phase. I am quite sure that people who are deseperately waiting for their paycheck to post, are very happy with the market not moving up much further for now.

How do you know that? Have you been with these people? Those who were mining back in the days have electricity bills to pay, which most likely would come from a large chunk of the coins they sold to sustain their mining activities. And then there is the high probability that they have sold the rest not long after that when the price increased.

That's what people were thinking at the time the market reached $5000 as well. It was over and done and time for a correction, but look where we stand right now. I definitely get it that the current price might be seen as an obstacle to enter the market, but you don't have to buy yourself a whole Bitcoin, which is the advantage of Bitcoin's divisibility. As long as there is money being pumped into this market, we'll keep breaking through new record highs, which in this case is still happening.

General "expert" opinion on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin at $500 - way overpriced and it's based on nothing.
Bitcoin at $1000 - Bubble about to burst.
Bitcoin at $2000 - If you don't exit now, you'll regret it.
Bitcoin at $4000 - Biggest bubble the financial market has ever seen.
Bitcoin at $5000 - Signs of a bursting bubble are starting to show up.
Bitcoin at $8000 - It's a pyramid scheme fraud.
Bitcoin at $10,000 - It's officially over, the bubble has started to burst.
Bitcoin at $15,000 - It will likely go up to $50,000 before it starts to crash for sure.

I have noticed that these "experts" have started to throw with even higher predictions while they were predicting bubbles and crashes for years. What a sudden shift in mindset. I am sure that it will crash at some point, but the bottom we'll be touching will always be higher than the previous ones, and that's a fact that no one here can deny, even not those "experts".

It seems that the situation has gotten worse now with CloudFlare being in full working mode, versus your own (previous) form of DDoS protection.

That was a completely unnecessary step from Steam. If you as service aren't scooping up any sales through Bitcoin, you're not paying any fees at all. Worst case scenario is less people making use of Bitcoin due to the fees, so with the aforementioned in mind, they only lose out by doing this. Another thing they mentioned is the volatility, which is an utter bit of nonsense. BitPay converts their Bitcoin sales into fiat, where Steam itself has no exposure to the volatility at all, so what is exactly their risk in this matter? Bitcoin's market has always been volatile, and now suddenly it has started to become a problem? I think there is more to it than they let us know. I wonder if their stance on this matter will change once LN gets publicly launched.

It's impossible to completely ignore Bitcoin these times with the media reporting non stop about Bitcoin. If you don't trust yourself and have to force yourself to forget about it, which most of the times doesn't work at all, especially in current times as I mentioned before, you are better off not buying anything at all. Investing in Bitcoin should be a joy and exciting at the same time, and not something that makes you suffer and lose a lot of sleep over. It's a great opportunity for everyone, but most of the people make it unnecessarily difficult for themselves. I have seen articles already pop up stating that people put themselves in debt by taking out mortgages to invest these funds into Bitcoin, which is ridiculous.

95% of the altcoins are nothing more than shitcoins with no background other than being shit, so how exactly do you expect people to 'study' the backgrounds of these coins? No purpose to back up their existence, not even a slight problem that they solve, nothing of that all. It's straight gambling since people just blindly buy at x price hoping to sell y price, and repeat. In this case the only research is you asking yourself whether or not you'll be willing to take a hit by pumping money into shitcoins. If you're not up for that, then focus on coins that actually solve a problem.

In this case it definitely is. If we look on social media, TV, or in the gym, or at work, everywhere we witness how the average person has started to get obsessed with Bitcoin due to the insane growth it has gone through this year. It's not really that they just recently know about Bitcoin, but they just didn't take it seriously before. It makes them feel bad when they think back at how they could have bought at levels far below $1000 last year(s), so they start investing in Bitcoin right now to not miss out (once) again. Most people start investing conservatively, where I strongly believe that they at some point will increase the amounts they are willing to invest in Bitcoin, so in the long term we are up for much more growth. I don't believe that we'll again get to experience current growth rates, but a slower but more steady form of growth is welcome too.

Not really surprising. Crypto in its entirity is going through significant growth, which is of course something governments want to exploit due to their hunger for tax income and control. All people being fully verified at whatever exchange or service are exposed to this risk, it's that simple. Coinbase has been subject to a similar governmental attack, but they at least managed to minimize the amount of data they had to hand over to the authorities. Decentralized exchanges are available already, but they lack actual usage and convenience, which makes people always fall back on centralized exchanges. If governments don't charge people absurdly high tax rates, people would be far more open to pay tax out of free will rather than being forced to do so.

It seems that the market is somewhat consolidating right now, which I honestly prefer over a further increase. It might result in a pullback due to greedy people expecting a continuous increase, but that's all part of the game we're playing. That being said, Litecoin has done exceptionally well in the last days. I have always had the impression that Litecoin was severely undervalued compared to the level of growth other alts have gone through, so it's a well justified increase in this case. In the same way, there are other alts as well being somewhat left behind, which Monero is also part of. If we see Bitcoin take a step or two back in the coming days or weeks, it will spark altcoins even further.

It reeks of inside theft, which is something the far majority of the community would definitely agree with. Everything around them make red flag signals pop up, and that while they had quite a decent platform running. It reminds me of how well MtGox was running, but still Mark Karpeles couldn't resist running with people's money, and that while he had an insane stash of coins already. It was stated that he had 100,000BTC of his own, and yet it wasn't enough for him. That's how things go unfortunately - greed is root of evil in these cases. These things will keep happening as long as we largely depend on centralized exchanges, and people keep investing in anything having to do with mining.

It's based on nothing but just your inside feelings. Important aspect is that if you look closely, the dips get bought up each and every time, which points at people looking to utilize every possible coin discount to enter the market, or to lower their average buying price. If we talk about corrections, then in my book, at current stage means that we'll need to see the market tank with $4000 at minimum. But then again, we've been waiting for corrections to take place for quite some time now, and they have yet to show up. As long as there is capital flowing into this ecosystem, we'll keep surging due to the global demand. Everyone talks about it, everyone wants to be part of it, and yet a lot of them haven't even pulled the trigger, which indicates how much more growth we might experience.