I don't think anyone should be claiming to copyright the whitepaper. It's bad that CSW is claiming it, and it would be worse if another individual/group claimed it (with the community's support) on top of that. It would feel like the community is branding one entity good, the other one evil, and that just sets a dangerous precedent against decentralization. Either way, it's not looking good for him:


Does he really need to be shut down? I feel like he's doing plenty of that to himself -- look at how desperate he's being. No sane person takes him seriously anyway.

They use OTC exchanges which are still perfectly legal there, meaning there is negligible risk outside Bitcoin tanking. Given the nature of OTC trading, it's not going to impact prices directly, but could have trickle effects of some sort.


It's literally starting now though, with the US and China raising tariffs on each other's products. This has nothing to do with being cashless.

What's going to happen is that finding blocks is going to slow down for a while, and then go back to normal once difficulty adjusts to the lower hashrate.


With a normal PC, with about 20% of the current ASICs still alive and kicking? I don't think so (well you can, but you'll lose money), but I'm no expert in the field. You might be able to find more knowledgeable people on the subject in the mining subforum.

I personally don't think $100k is achievable (in the near future at least) organically. It's probably going to take a lot of institutional money flowing in, or a massive devaluation of the USD. I'm expecting some degree of uptick though, considering how anticipated it is.

That being said, I wonder if institutional players see the halving as a major factor in entry. Halvings haven't had much immediate effects historically, so it has always been possible that they weren't the biggest catalysts to the bull runs afterwards.

People used to mine with their GPUs before ASICs were a thing, so yeah. People will inevitably pick up the slack though, because in that scenario, mining would be a very profitable opportunity.

I would also like to note that Chinese miners have started to diversify geographically. If you're worried about them losing business thanks to the CCP, I bet you they're far more worried lol.

It's just like any other online debate. Two people with preconceived and immovable notions speak their mind try to change the other person's mind. It doesn't matter what the facts are, it only matters what people want to believe.

That being said, more people are probably in line with Kevin O’Leary's thinking. If nothing else, this shows that we have a long road ahead of us.

Could you elaborate on this point?

I'm a bit disappointed as I didn't expect the run to be so short lived. I mean, I was expecting a correction sooner or later, but I thought it would go higher (I was so ready for the Vegeta memes again) -- can't complain about nearly 50% growth though. Hopefully, this also signals the beginning of the drop of fees.

Then you don't use it. That's the harsh reality of our current situation. Bitcoin isn't ready for primetime.

If you want a workaround, you could set up a hot Lightning wallet when fees are low enough so you'll be able to spend regardless. It's not as widely used yet, but situations like these are precisely why people should be using it. Hopefully, this happens before a significant part of the market is priced out because of rising mining fees.

Ugh I didn't think I would ever speak up for Microsoft, but at the end of the day, they're a for-profit company. Giving away their products would be shooting themselves in the foot. That doesn't mean that they can start non-profit initiatives though, which is what this project looks like. I even think it's a good sign (albeit hyprocritical I know lol) that they're pushing for privacy.

Either way, it's your choice what to do with your data, of course. It's not like they're forcing anyone either.

ION (their node software) will apparently be open source:


Maybe this could be a good thing? I could certainly see the need for something of the sort, with so many leaks of user information through security breaches because of providers' neglect. I think I'll withhold my judgement until there's a usable product, but at the end of the day, it's going to be useless unless large providers opt in. If nothing else though, I think this provides Bitcoin with much needed legitimacy among the mainstream.

Be careful what you wish for. Bitcoin's price would certainly shoot up, but it would likely have more to do with USD going down than Bitcoin actually being more valuable. We don't even know if Bitcoin is trusted enough by enough people as a hedge for a crisis of that scale.

It might be inevitable, but either way, I feel like it would be best for everyone to avoid an economic crisis altogether.

With furious surges come furious corrections. For as long as crypto continues to be volatile, winters are inevitable. If these could be stopped, I'm sure large players would have been more than happy to keep them from happening.
 
As far as this bull run goes, it has been quite tame, so I'm not expecting any whiplash of the sort. There are no cataclysmic events like Mt. Gox either. Growth could stall, but I don't think it would be anywhere near significant enough to be called a winter.

Are you saying that the rise could be attributed to the Chinese buying up Bitcoin to blunt the effect of the trade war? I certainly could see that helping, but I don't believe that it's the primary factor. CMIIW but didn't the price start rising even before all this trade war talk broke?

It might be significant in the coming days though, as tensions seem to be escalating. If nothing else, I could certainly see it extending the rally.

I think this could reduce scams, but the biggest question would be to what extent. Plenty of scammers are legit until they're not, and the ones who start out as outright scams get outed nearly immediately. They also talk about implementation being problem, and I think it's a big problem.

The fact that decision making would have to be somewhat centralized could also encourage gatekeeping and weeding out up-and-coming competitors. It would be their prerogative if they want to push through with this, but it would be dangerous for the community to trust them blindly.

It seems to be mostly ready, but it'll probably take the most popular wallets implementing it for it to have widespread usage. We already know that it can be dumbed down because Eclair has done pretty much that. I still expect the main chain to be busy, but since LN would likely take a lot of the low-amount high-priority transactions (real world transactions basically), the mining fees hopefully won't end up too high.


There are a few below-capacity blocks, but they've been mostly full the past days.

What are you trying to say? By no consent, do you mean the merchants don't know that people are paying with crypto just because they're receiving fiat? If so, I can 100% guarantee you that they know. That's not the type of information that a payment processor can withhold from a client.

As for crypto being immediately converted to fiat, I don't think it's an ideal solution, but it does help with adoption. At the end of the day, end users of crypto will be able to spend their coins better, and businesses have an incentive to accept crypto as payment. It's a fair compromise between the two parties.  Once crypto goes mainstream, they would probably be incentivized to get rid of the third party processor (and accept crypto directly) to streamline costs.

Here's one specific example of an exchange hacker:

https://ambcrypto.com/japans-18-year-old-hacker-faces-criminal-charge-for-involvement-in-15-million-yen-cryptocurrency-hack/

So yeah, they could be caught. They're probably harder to pin down than hackers who target specific user accounts because they likely know what they're doing though. An overwhelming majority of them get away with it, and it's gotten so bad that some people believe that most hacks are inside jobs.

The theory certainly has legs. I mean, this snafu with Tether should be bringing Bitcoin down, not up. Also, with people saying that Tether has been used to pump Bitcoin for ages, it would make sense for Bitfinex to want their stocked Bitcoin to be more valuable given their situation.

That being said though, this is way too easy of a conclusion to make. If this is truly what happened, I'm sure sleuths would be all over it with the paper trail and evidence -- lots of people want to see Tether burn after all. They would also be the first that investigators would go after thanks to their circumstances.

As for the sudden pump, I also lean towards believing that it's orchestrated and unsustainable, but you just never know. There were no major breakthroughs in 2017 either and it reached $5k from $1k.

Probably. It seems to me like a lot of them (the high profile ones who people actually talk about) won't benefit from any additional publicity from bashing Bitcoin, but I'm sure they know how to utilize publicity more than I do.


I'm sure it would have had a much bigger impact if more coins were stolen. For a massive exchange like Binance, the amount stolen likely amounted to peanuts. User funds weren't even affected. The one I'm more confused about is all the bad publicity regarding Tether. I expected Bitcoin to take a dive considering all that talk about Tether propping up Bitcoin's value, but it doesn't look like anything of the sort is happening.

I could be wrong, but the last time Bitcoin's price actually moved substantially following a famous person stating their opinion was in 2017, when Dimon ripped it. That closely coincided with China threatening to close off all exchanges though, so it's entirely possible that Dimon's words didn't have any effect at all.

Either way, far more influential people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have spoken, and the market didn't listen. I feel like it's safe to conclude that FUD of that sort can't affect crypto anymore. It actually has a solid userbase and a clear path ahead now.