Most people won't choose either of those options.  There are many reputable exchanges (well, who knows, they could Gox everyone someday but as reputable as they could get) which would do the transfer and make it a lot easier.  You don't have to go through a long process with debit cards to withdraw Bitcoin into fiat.

Actually for small trades which I do now my preferred way of doing it is not to withdraw for fiat at all, but to put it into USD Tether on Poloniex and withdraw that to a Tether wallet, so that I have a fairly stable currency without having to go through the complicated process of switching between Bitcoin and fiat.  You also don't have to confirm your ID this way.

You can also exchange P2P instead of using an exchanging service - through LocalBitcoins is a great way, especially if you need to stay anonymous and you want to properly take your money out of Bitcoin instead of just doing a short-term trade.

My theory is that Bitcoin's user base will not grow significantly, but its price will rise because of the amount of money that each new investor puts into it.

Bitcoin will be much more of a stable asset.  A fee market is required in order to preserve at least some level of decentralisation in mining, and that'll result in people flocking to several different altcoins which are more scalable.  However, everyone that wants their money to be more secure will hold a significant amount in Bitcoin and use it for large transactions as well as HODLing, which people are starting to do already.  The fees will only grow due to halvings and that'll increase Bitcoin's use as a stable asset as people buy into cryptocurrencies which are better for everyday transactions.

If Bitcoin were to become used like gold (which is very likely, especially considering that gold is quite hard for an average person to hold on their own), its price could come close to 500,000 just from that.  Gold's marketcap is about 7 trillion, and dividing that by a 21 million total supply will get you 333,333.  Market cap is very misleading though because much less than that would actually be in circulation, so in reality the price would be much closer to 500,000.  It's possible, but it'll take time.

Jihan's motives for blocking Litecoin SegWit are extremely strong.  If Litecoin's SegWit went through, all of his power would start crumbling in front of his eyes from the amount of miners that actually support SegWit - clearly a huge amount of BU's hashrate on Bitcoin is just Jihan Wu. So what's to stop him manipulating Litecoin, with a much lower total hashrate, so that it doesn't put pressure on him to give up with BU on Bitcoin?  Why wouldn't he do that?

All Jihan needs to do is control just enough mining power to stop Litecoin from going over the 75% threshold, and he can make a tidy profit in the process.  Why do you think Litecoin's SegWit has been hovering around 70% for ages?

Bitcoin Wiki claims that "If you mow your neighbour's lawn, it doesn't matter if he pays you $20 in cash or $20 in Bitcoin".

However, I don't think the government is likely to care.  Thousands of people exchange Bitcoin for goods or services - I've paid Steam before with Bitcoin - doesn't mean that the government actually cares or needs you to declare it in tax.  That kind of everyday tax I probably wouldn't even declare in fiat, let alone Bitcoin which governments barely regulate.

I would also say that since Bitcoin is usually regarded as an asset/investment by most governments rather than a currency, you shouldn't really need to tax it.  That's not to guarantee that it's 100% legal, but I don't think it's going to matter at any point.

If you want to minimise your taxes legally, I would definitely declare the transaction if it was a significant amount of Bitcoin.  I wouldn't bother if it was, for example, depositing a little bit of Bitcoin to buy Skyrim, though.

This forum is trusted because it was founded by Satoshi, the creator of Bitcoin, and he posted here regularly for over a year.  This is where the Bitcoin community formed, basically.  All other forums can offer is a nicer design.

There isn't any censorship here, the mods are extremely lenient and you can even start self-moderated topics which you manage yourself.  You can't have a completely open forum, but all discussion is free, it's just doing extremely malicious or stupid things which aren't allowed.

The Antminer does take up a lot of electricity, but compared to the amount of revenue it creates the electricity usage is very low.  GPU miners will be worthless at best and lose money at worst because their hashrate and their efficiency is so much lower than the Antminer that there's no point having them.

You should take this to the altcoin mining section.  Maybe they can help you, since there are a lot of altcoins which you can mine profitably with GPUs (some very profitably).

From HODLers and general users, the HF wouldn't be that high consensus.  Miners supporting it doesn't necessarily represent Bitcoin in general, and you'd end up with a continued debate about scaling and potentially a lot of Core supporters holding on to BTC and selling the BTU.  Unless I'm understanding the fork wrong, everyone would have an equal number of BTC and BTU which could be sold/bought at will, right?

Uncertainty like that is never good for a market.

Not really comparable to a Ponzi scheme at all.  It becomes harder as time goes on, but it doesn't pay old investors with the money of new ones, it just pays new ones money for buying better hardware, period.

Anyway, yeah it's impossible for Bitcoin to be a Ponzi, it's decentralised and is based on a market - plus it does have a specific purpose, which is to be used as a currency and as a store of value.  By some people's logic, gold would be a Ponzi just because its price rose.  Be wary of new cryptocurrencies though, there are a few that were Ponzis but most of them (like E-Dinarcoin) were really pretty obvious from the beginning, so you should be fine mining any mainstream crypto and some smaller ones.

You shouldn't have to trust either.  People should be able to not trust Core and also not want to go through with BU.  A while ago jonald_fyookball claimed that people will take any change to a corrupt status quo even if smart people tell them not to (in his signature), but my view is that people shouldn't have to to trust the status quo to believe that an alternative is dumb.

When neither choice is ideal and you're kind of unclear on the exact technical details of either because any attempt at an explanation is wrought with opinion (the situation I'm facing) I just think that the best solution is to go with the team that's established and doesn't require a hard fork which would be harmful to Bitcoin in the short term, especially with altcoins jumping at its sides for a permanent purpose.

The currency is your choice though.  The government only declares what the legal tender is in the system (the fiat currency) but this is not oppressive.  In Northern Ireland, I'm told that the old pound coin is technically out of circulation, but shops routinely accept it - anyone could use anything as a currency.  In fact, if I said "I'll give you some magic beans for that cow" an you accepted the deal, we could equally view magic beans as a currency.

My point is that what the government declares about currency only restricts the free market if trading with anything except the legal tender was illegal.  Even if they restricted the use of Bitcoin or any other specific currency, even that would not affect the free market any more than restricting the sale of currently illegal products does.

Buy low, sell high is simplified but it's still correct.  Buy low doesn't mean buy at any time and wait for it to go up - the phrase clearly means to buy at the bottom and then wait for it to rise.  All you have to do is find a more predictable coin that goes up and down regularly and doesn't completely collapse when it goes down or get too mental a pump when it goes up.  There are several coins like that.

There's also buying low and selling high when a coin has potential (it's a good idea and could have its price rise a lot from demand, or could just be pumped), but that's unrelated to bot trading because bots are mostly based on buying and selling stable coins based on minor variations during the day.

It's only failed in the sense that it hasn't gathered enough support to occur.  It will never objectively fail, just as Classic is still dragging itself along the floor.

It's only a small drop and doesn't properly show that BU has lowered yet.  It might be that it's just significant block variance, or it might show a slight decrease in small miners' support due to the potential for SegWit in Litecoin, but either way it won't topple Bitmain or any major pools so it needs time.


EDIT: Time has passed.  It's definitely significant, but SegWit still hasn't overtaken BU yet.  I blame F2Pool.

Depends what altcoins you're trading.  Some altcoins stay pretty stable up high even if there has been clear manipulation (like ETH).

Even with altcoin trading a lot of analysis can work, such as the background of the coin, developers, the coin's aims, etc.  That's the sort of analysis that most people who trade altcoins need to take part in to avoid losing money.  The great thing about altcoin trading is that most cash going into it is dumb money and you can completely take advantage of that without having enough money for a pump - most newbies don't do this analysis before buying the coin.

Also, with Bitcoin there is never actually a guarantee that the price will rise.  It's a very risky trade in itself, and the price rising for a long time is only because people keep investing in it, when in fact Bitcoin naturally would be inflating due to an increase in supply.

No agreement like this is unanimous, there will still be large amounts of Canadian Bitcoin users who support Bitcoin Unlimited.  Things wouldn't be smooth after a hard fork in this state, but that's why it's a consensus system - if Bitcoin Unlimited received enough support for the hard fork to happen, it would be a lot smoother.  Their views and code are just there for other people to review and consider.

The Bitcoin exchanges views can't be conflated with that Canadian statement either.  Their statement was not necessarily in opposition to a fork (although Coinbase seems to think so, which is why they oppose it) - it was clarifying the status of BTU on their exchanges.  It's reasonable to classify BTU as an altcoin on these exchanges, not because it's the same as other altcoins per se but because it's a new coin which will be separate to the original/previous Bitcoin, BTC.

Your choice of how much you pay for transaction fees is based on how large the transaction is in data (bytes) and is measured in satoshi per byte (one satoshi being the smallest unit of Bitcoin, a hundred millionth).

Unfortunately, that means that if you're sending a small transaction, it's likely to still be large enough in terms of data to have a high fee and there's not a lot you can do about that.  In most cases you'll be sending upwards of $5 and it won't be too significant, hopefully.

It's unstable, but by design it's stable.  As I believe from John Nash's ideal money, a great form of money should have an inflation rate as close to zero as possible without being deflation, which allows the ideal money to be a reference money for value just as a metre is for length and allows people to trust the currency.  The best way to achieve this is by creating a system in which there is natural inflation (introduction of new currency) which contributes to reducing deflation rates as adoption of this currency increases.

After the adoption has occurred, the rate of new currency's introduction should stabilise to zero to prevent future inflation, as Bitcoin's introduction does through halvings.  This way, Bitcoin becomes stable as:

-Adoption has occured

-New money supply is prevented.

Governments are incapable of keeping this stability because the only way they can stabilise currency is by introducing more - bringing money out of circulation is not at all the same.  Furthermore, when a currency has an amount of adoption which it can't move past without economic advancement, that's when it can stabilise.  Fiat currencies achieve this through their use in nations, whereas Bitcoin does this through its potential global use.

I answered the Big Question a while ago, and just made it clearer.  Please read the new edit, since you haven't read any of my other posts, or maybe I'll consider putting you on ignore.

I refuted it in the post before the one above, by analysing his language - his language was arguing that Core had failed to create consensus, which is true.  There isn't consensus.  You grudgingly admitted that that was the intended meaning by arguing against it in your edit.

Or maybe you just didn't read it, as I clearly said "Please give me an example of an ad hominem used", about Danny Hamilton.  You didn't respond to this, showing that you either didn't read it or didn't care.

Unless you think liar isn't a negative trait, it's definitely attacking his character.  Your word that he's a liar, repeated over and over again now about 15 times, does not make it so and you constantly claim to have proved it with still no proof that I cannot at least argue against (if evidence is clearly arguable, it isn't evidence, it's an argument).
 


In case you didn't read the rest of my post, the Big Question:
I answered that question in my above post:
If you had bothered to read it, you would have seen that.  However it is impossible to answer the question without diversion as the question itself is biased, assuming an implied meaning of Danny Hamilton's post which you had not explained beforehand despite your supposed "proof".

Just a couple of posts ago, Carlton, you said:
Danny clearly addressed it directly by suggesting that you were distorting his wording - suggesting that he was talking about Core when it was addressed at divisive users.

However, you cannot respond to that directly, instead you insult the argument ("semantic sleight of hand") which responds to your attempts to twist the grammar used in his sentence.  You also refer to the colouring, which is used as a sign of frustration at the lack of thought in your post (note, do not call this an ad hominem, I'm insulting your post not you) and also to make it as clear as possible for the reader to comprehend.

A consensus system is based on individuals.  It requires a large majority of users to support a specific version of the network - a large majority of individuals, that is.  You are an individual.  Arguments are being presented to you and other individuals which are believed to frequently harm the debate for other individuals.

Please give an example of an ad hominem used.  I only see attacks on posting and content, not on individuals - the closest to an ad hominem is your "sense of superiority" which in my view you are displaying from your belief that your opinion is "the truth", whereas as Danny Hamilton showed in his previous post, you called him a "liar" and "manipulative" (attacking an individual, regardless of whether or not it's true or you believe it's true) over 10 times.
As with everything that requires a new consensus, the previous one was viewed as insufficient by a significant enough amount of people to result in open argument favouring a new one (which Danny Hamilton did not take part in).  Therefore regardless of whether or not they were right, which I actually generally believe that they were, the beginning of the argument was their inaction.  Danny Hamilton, notably, does not say the argument you suggest he did at any point even though I do.





Edit: You said the following earlier.

censorship
ˈsɛnsəʃɪp/
noun
1.
the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

To put it differently, censorship is preventing public information from being viewed by others.  On the contrary, no one has done that.  Danny Hamilton suggested putting you on ignore - which I might do if you direct any ad hominems in your reply (which I have carefully avoided doing to you) but this could not prevent it reaching a wider audience.  This hyperbole does not help for reaching a consensus - it helps for spreading fear, and is divisive in debates.

I know very little about technical aspects of either side, but I know that when a post is centered around hyperbole I can display my understanding of context and interpretation in the English language instead.

Nearly no merchants actually accept Bitcoin, and those that do only get a select few customers who pay in Bitcoin.  You go to big cities, a couple of shops that you searched for happen to accept Bitcoin and then you've decided it has serious adoption when it doesn't.  Altcoins are backed by their potential use, which is the same reason that Bitcoin is backed (plus the "digital gold" thing).