OK, then.  I don't think that my quest to buy a bike with bitcoin is ego-driven, but who knows.  However, you're correct that I'd have to spend way more bitcoin right now than I would have a month ago.  I don't think my purchase is going to happen in the immediate future, so maybe we'll see bitcoin rebound and I won't have to shell out as much for a bike--if it ever happens.

I think it's for the better, as they allow people to pay for stuff with bitcoin if that's what they have, and it doesn't really matter to me if a merchant is a bitcoin supporter or not.  Besides, I think processors like Bitpay are necessary to mitigate the volatility risk on the merchant's side.  If businesses had to accept bitcoin outright and then do whatever they're going to do with it, I don't think there would be nearly as many accepting bitcoin--and there really aren't a lot to begin with.

Jesus, I can't believe ISIS has or had a tipping service, especially since you can be sure authorities from all over the world would be monitoring it.

I wasn't aware of this story, so thanks to OP for posting it--but these are the types of stories that give bitcoin and other cryptos a black eye as far as the general masses are concerned, i.e., the masses who don't think about things critically and wouldn't conclude that the funding could have been done with fiat or any other thing that has value. 

I'm kind of surprised her prison sentence was that light (though I'm sure it doesn't feel that way for her), but women usually don't get punished as severely in the legal system as men do. 

No, the US.  But I appreciate the suggestion and you're correct about what I was asking here.  It's not as simple as this:

Lol, which isn't a solution to my problem at all.

That would be true for any merchant that didn't already accept bitcoin, but I don't suspect it would be easy to convince a business to start doing so if they're either unfamiliar with what bitcoin is all about or perhaps have a bias against it.  I might be inclined to sweeten the deal for the bike shop, however. 

I don't think any business is going to want to accept bitcoin outright because of the volatility--that's what makes payment processors so important for merchants. 

Yeah, and he doesn't exactly remind me of anyone else in particular--though there have certainly been newbie accounts that have.  The most recent and obvious examples of that would be TOAA/cryptohunter and the various other alts he's employed.

I get what OP is saying and I think sometimes it's true, sometimes not, but usually it's really hard to tell unless there are glaringly similar styles of writing between accounts.  Since a lot of members here write in mediocre-to-poor English, I have a hard time connecting accounts based on that. 

And it usually doesn't matter anyway.  If I see a good post, I'll merit it.  In fact, if it's from a newbie account there's probably a greater chance that I will, as I like helping newbies rank up. 

Yeah, but thankfully we haven't seen many of those lately.

LOL at the Batman/Robin meme--I always find those funny as hell.  Good job on the other ones as well.

Regarding OP's meme about TMAN, I have a hard time believing he's a she.  Has that actually been confirmed, or is it just speculation?  It's none of my biz, of course, but I can't say I'm not curious.

I think you better resist, because giving someone an illegal gift might not go over well.  Not for you, not for the recipient.  I don't know what the laws are in your country or what the penalty is for owning bitcoin, but you don't want to get yourself or someone else in trouble just because you're passionate about bitcoin.

That's exactly what I thought after reading OP's post, and it's not clear to me whether the friend even knows about bitcoin or whether it's illegal or not.  It sounds like it could be a disaster in the making, so in this particular case I'd say it's a really bad idea.

But in countries where it isn't illegal, I think it would be a great idea.  It's basically a gift of money, but it's also an investment.  It would be like giving someone a combination of cash and stock or something like that.  You'd have to judge whether the recipient would appreciate it or not, because some people think bitcoin is just for criminals (ugh).

I started a thread a while back asking if anyone knew of any bicycle retailers that accepted bitcoin--in particular, I was looking for someone who had a selection of e-bikes and would take bitcoin.  Unfortunately all the suggestions I got didn't help me much.

Right now I actually have enough bitcoin to buy the bike I was originally looking for, but I don't have a clue as to whether there's a retailer who sells the Turbo Vado and who accepts bitcoin.  But there are two local bike shops selling it, and I was thinking about going to one of them and asking if they'd accept bitcoin.

The issue is that I don't know what the bike shop would have to do in order to hook up with a payment processor, because I seriously doubt they'd take bitcoin outright.  Does anyone have any experience with processors like Bitpay?  Are there others?  Is it a pain in the ass for a merchant to use one?  Those are some of the questions I have, and I'm looking for answers from those who might know.  I don't want to make my request at the bike shop and then have no idea what I should suggest they do.

I was also thinking I could entice them by suggesting that I give them a little free advertising on bitcointalk by writing about my experience after the sale.  Heh heh.

Stocks are not "fiat" and I'm not sure if this is a language barrier or a misunderstanding on your part.

I seriously don't understand your reasoning here.  Maybe I'm not up to speed on what the Fed is doing, but where exactly did they inject that amount of money?  Even if the Fed bought $168 billion worth of stocks, which I'm sure they didn't, it still wouldn't be enough to keep the entire stock market from nosediving, which it did and probably will continue to do.  And given that bitcoin receives zero support from any government, I'm not sure why you'd consider it a safer haven than stocks, for instance (I don't consider the stock market to be a safe haven, btw). 

I think OP really needs to think about what a safe haven asset really is.  It's something investors buy when there's too much volatility in other markets--in other words, something that's not going to crash.  It's an asset that probably isn't going to lose money for the investor.  Now I ask you: do you seriously think bitcoin is a safe-haven asset?  My answer would be a resounding NO.

No, I definitely didn't sell any bitcoin since the coronavirus slaughter, but obviously a ton of people did.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't just whales, either.  They're the ones who can probably afford to take such a massive loss, but I bet a lot of smaller margin traders got wiped out and didn't have a choice but to sell.

Anyway, you're never going to make any money if you sell when everyone else is selling--that should be obvious, and I also doubt there are going to be many people coming to this thread and admitting they made such a noob mistake.  These past few days have been an awesome buying opportunity if nothing else.  Hopefully the smart money realized that and snapped up as much cheap crypto as possible.  Like I said in other threads, I'm broke and haven't been able to take advantage of this situation.  I think that's the last time I'm going to write that, as I get depressed every time I think about it.

I might have lightly tapped the drum with a couple of fingers, but I certainly did not bang it.  The tone of my last post was meant to be un-hostile toward you, but sometimes there's no way to get the vibe of what was meant just by the written word alone. 

You're not ~'ed on my trust list, and I'm not considering doing so.  Nor am I against you.  We've done deals together and we've exchanged a few PMs in the past.  I have no beef with you, believe me.

I am a new beneficiary of Foxpup's generosity and thus I'm wearing his avatar--and since I love bicycling I'm actually fond of his design.  But no part of the deal included fellating any part of Foxpup nor adjusting my trust list to reflect his own opinions. 

I agree with hilariousandco that Timelord2067 has made some wild accusations in the past, but he's also made some good connections as well.  I've always had the feeling that he might be a wee bit autistic or have some odd structural thing in his noodle that causes him to be quite left of center--and no offense intended, Timelord2067.  There are many strange birds in the forest and there's room for them all.

Also, the coincidences as far as Timelord2067 being untrusted and members wearing the Chipmixer and/or Foxpup's merit cycling team avatar are just that, coincidences.  There are a bunch of us Meta hounds who tend to share similar views on things, and that's been an ongoing thing for at least a couple of years.  There's no conspiracy that I know of--or if there is, I haven't been invited to participate (yet).

Jesus, I hope it's not as bad as all that for most people.  I totally agree: money is just money, and as much as I respect it and acknowledge its importance, it doesn't rule my life.  Nor does bitcoin; nor am I overinvested in bitcoin.  That last point is important, because I have a feeling that a lot of folks who invest in crypto do so with money they really can't afford to lose--and look at all these exchanges that are offering 100x leverage or similar.  Investors who bought bitcoin or altcoins on margin before about two days ago must have gotten slaughtered.

This situation with bitcoin doesn't depress me in the least.  I am a bit disappointed that I've been caught short of cash to buy it with, but I'm over it. 

By the way, this is one great example of why bitcoin makes for a poor form of money.  If you're a bitcoiner who likes to spend bitcoin on stuff....you just lost a hell of a lot of purchasing power.  Don't flame me for that opinion, please.  I've expressed it before, and I'm sticking to it.

Opportunists?  Cynics?  Poverty-stricken wannabe cryptogazillionaires?  I can only speak for myself and not gentlemand, of course.

Just as an aside, I started watching the news--that's something I haven't done in years, and I don't think I've suffered as a human being for being out of the loop on things.  This thing seems to be getting worse every day, both the spread of the virus and people's reaction to everything.  I'm not sure which is worse.  Gotta tell you, though, the effect on the economy is going to be very pronounced.  I'm actually surprised bitcoin didn't stay below $5k (although it could still get there).  

Edit:  Oh, and I watch the news stories on Youtube since I don't have a TV, and wouldn't you know that all the search results point to mainstream media reports and practically none of them are videos to educate people about the virus.  It would be nice if all the news wasn't about what the politicians are doing.  I'd love to see someone drop some science on the populace, because that might alleviate some of the fears people have.

Just FYI, it's best to keep the deals on the forum and not draw people away from here.  It's good forum etiquette, anyhow.

How much bitcoin are you looking to sell?  I might be able to help you out with about $75 worth if you're interested.  Send me a PM if so.

Halfwits!  Stupid coon shits! Reference: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Me, I'm a chronic hard-on type of guy when markets start going haywire like this.  However this time I must confess that I'm impotent, since my bank account is not treating me well and thus I have no funds to buy bitcoin, stocks, or anything else that's taken a hit.  This is why it's always good to have a cash reserve.

Also: I haven't sold anything during this panic.  I'm not starving to death and I don't think I'm going to have to retreat to the bunker anytime soon, so I didn't need to free up funds for that.  Tomorrow I'm expecting a zombie apocalypse due to a mutation of COVID-19, so it's not going to matter anyway.  Bring it on, baby!

People tend to hate big pharma companies, and part of me doesn't blame them in the least--but it's hard to deny that they've produced some pretty good medicines over the years (and some serious duds as well).  Personally, I'd rather live in a world with multiple pharmaceutical companies competing with one another in a system of capitalism than a world without them. 

I don't think the FDA, CDC, or any other agency involved in fighting the coronavirus outbreak is being a hindrance.  I'm sure things aren't being done as quickly or efficiently as people would like, but that's life.  They've got the scientists who know what they're doing, so I say let them do their jobs.

Not sure where crypto comes into play, but this thread makes me think of Gridcoin.  Not sure if many people even know about it, but it's kind of a cool concept, where you earn gridcoins by loaning out your CPU/GPU to science projects that need computing power.  It made me think about whether a vaccine or some other piece of basic virology research could be aided by something like GRC.  Anyway, I'm not hyping GRC and don't own any--it just came to mind when reading OP's post.

No, that's not bad at all, but I've sent bitcoin recently for much less than that (~15 sats/byte) and haven't had crazy delays like I have in the past.

As far as this thread goes, I'm now pretty sure that this drop has nothing to do with whales trying to manipulate the market or the halving.  I think it's got everything to do with people being freaked out about coronavirus, which has been discussed endlessly in other threads.  People want to be holding cash right now, because they're not sure if they're going to have to lock themselves in their houses for weeks--and if they think they might have to do that, you can bet they'll be stocking up on supplies.  And of course you buy supplies with cold hard cash (though you could probably get everything you need with bitcoin).

So no, I don't think this is necessarily a manipulation whereby a group of people are trying to sink the price of bitcoin.  It's just happening naturally as the result of fear.  And look at other markets; the same thing is happening, so that's even more evidence of this not being a case of whales trying to get bitcoin at lower prices.

It doesn't take balls to sell when prices are plummeting.  It takes balls to not sell.

Seriously.  I don't know what the situation is in Bangladesh other than what OP described, but right now it's definitely a buyer's market.  Maybe if you're talking about a P2P exchange, it could be that no one wants to sell bitcoin at these depressed prices but no one should have any trouble getting ahold of bitcoin on a traditional exchange like Binance or Coinbase.

And hell yes, now is the time to make money with bitcoin.  The key is to buy low, and I'd say it's trading pretty damn low.  Even a monkey could make money in a week like this--assuming the monkey had money to invest, in which case he'd be in a better position than me since I'm broke.  Figures.

I didn't either, and I also don't have that particular superstition.  Also, in my time zone the carnage had already started on the 12th and today on the 13th bitcoin seems to have rebounded from last night when I went to bed.  I was wondering what I'd be waking up to in the morning when I checked preev and was pleased to see bitcoin above $5k.  It still got murdered in the market, but I sort of thought it would be in the $3k range.

But then again, who knows what's going to happen today--bitcoin could sink again for all we know.  As others have mentioned, however, it's not because of Friday the 13th; it's because of the global panic over COVID-19.  I'm curious to see what the stock market is going to do today as well.  It would be nice to see a rebound and maybe some good news for a change.

Ugh, me neither--and believe me, I wish I did.  Times like these don't come around all that often, when everything is screaming "BUY!".

Yeah, I remember that.  I think at that point I had the most negs left for members and Lauda didn't want to be outdone--and that was fine by me. 

When Lauda was removed from DT on one previous occasion, there were DT members reviewing a lot of his/her feedbacks (as mentioned), but that was some time ago.  I'm sure there have been a ton of negs left since then, but seeing as how Lauda is apparently not on DT anymore (which I didn't know), it really doesn't make too much difference for members who might have been unjustly tagged.  Lauda did tag a lot of scammers and scumbags correctly IMO, and that's the real problem if they haven't been tagged by multiple DT members. 


Yep, you were.  I had no patience or desire to be a part of that, but I also knew that Lauda and I had often tagged the same members for the same things, so it would have been a lot of wasted time on my part, which I didn't have to spare.  Props to you and the others who picked through all those feedbacks.