There is no point into expecting anything from PayPal other than just offering people a pleasant payment experience. PayPal is nothing more than a platform allowing people to transact with their fiat currencies with certain additional features, and that's really it. PayPal is just one of the plenty financial services allowing people to fully utilize fiat on a global scale, which is something Bitcoin by far can't achieve right now. In order to make Bitcoin be fully usable as currency tool, we'll definitely need Lightning Network. It allows people to bypass current high fees, and also confirmation times - these two aspects are something currently preventing Bitcoin from being fully utilized in that aspect.

1] Not everyone is interested in signing up at exchanges and walking themselves through ID verification which can take quite a long time.
2] Not everyone has access to a service dedicated to buying and selling Bitcoin, which nowadays more and more requires verification too.
3] It allows someone not into Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin without verification at any time of the day if that person so wish.

Bitcoin related ATM's, if they are being operated through regular bank ATM's are everywhere, so how exactly will this be a hassle when it comes to locating these type of ATM's? Even BTM's (dedicated Bitcoin ATM's) are easily to track by a quick search on internet, or through an app. Everything better than making use of an exchange where you have to verify yourself.

Always good to see people compare Bitcoin's market with the .com bubble back in the days, where businesses not making a single dime in profits were worth hundreds of millions, and even billions. However, if we look at the altcoin market, this does show very convincing similarities - shitcoins not serving any purpose aside from functioning as pump and dump tool are also worth billions. If he was mainly referring to altcoins in general instead of pointing at Bitcoin's 'fair value', I would even agree with him. Main point is that as long as Bitcoin is increasing in value, which will happen for plenty of more years, altcoins benefit as well, and thus the altcoin bubble will continue to swell.

CME needs approval from CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) if they want to actually offer Bitcoin centered future trading. It's basically the same as how things were with the previous ETF's - these financial products need regulatory approval. Good thing is that we will likely see them approve or reject their plans before the end of this year. In a perfect situation, institutions will be able to jump into this market this year, or ultimately, somewhere in the first month of 2018. If the market is indeed increasing due to CME, we will likely face a dump after rejection, so it will be interesting to see how things will play out.

I personally don't consider this to be a bubble either, but looking at how the market has gone up more than 700% this year, I can somewhat understand why people consider it to be a bubble. Especially when it comes to those people who aren't exactly sure on how to look at the market, why it increased so much this year, what the impact is of more average people finding their way to this market, institutional capital (albeit on a very small scale), etc. Other than that, it's almost impossible to say where we'll find a short term top. People have been calling top even at the $3000 level this year, and the market kept rushing further. For that reason I am not going to call top anymore, because in a market like this, it holds no real value.

This basically goes up for anyone having too much fait in the old fashion on debt based system. They have likely thought that they would be able to continue this nonsense for plenty of more decades, but Bitcoin officially has made an end to that, or at least, it made them realize that their broken system isn't untouchable. Not exactly sure what he did to get himself arrested, but apparantly, higher hand considers him to be too much of a problem, or one that will become a problem at some point. In other words, eliminate the problem before it causes problems, that's mostly how things go in that part of the world. Money laundering is just an excuse, there is something else that's playing there.

It's already reality in Slovenia. It's perhaps still a very simple form of integrating Bitcoin in a traditional ATM, but at least it's quite effective from the looks. In easy to explain terms, it's like a voucher/paper wallet that gets printed out through the traditional ATM slip part, where you can redeem your coins afterwards when you're at home, or through a mobile wallet client. It's just one way traffic at this point, but who knows, they at some point in the future might allow people to not only buy, but also sell their coins through that bank ATM. It's definitely a massive step forward when it comes to making Bitcoin more accessible to the entire world, and especially for the average joes.

Considering the frequent volatility, and then also taking the intensity of the volatility in mind, one doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that they will halt their market on a very frequent basis. It will not have an impact on this market since all their Bitcoin related financial instruments they use are tied to the rates of the higher tier Bitcoin exchanges. In other words, our exchanges will still be the main cause of CME temporarily halting their markets. But before everyone starts worrying about what might or might now happen, let them first get their approval, because if that isn't the case, there will be no CME involvement in Bitcoin.

That's basically what's happening now that the Jihan cartel is toying around with Bitcoin for their own gain. It has gone even so far that the average block generation time has gone up significantly to 15 minutes per block, while it should be closer to the 10 minute mark on average. Currently the difficulty indicates a decline of around 25%, but once the difficulty adjustment comes near, it will be 'just' a decline of 5-10%, while after the difficulty adjustment, they'll let it fall to once agian show a +20% decline. It's a disgusting practice.

It has not much to do with just whales, a lot people here sit on a potentially very valuable amount of coins. Everyone with a properly functioning brain and common sense knows that everything depending on a third party is something you should avoid if you care about your coins. In some cases there is no way to avoid using centralized services, like an exchange you do your trading on, but that's just a temporary practice. Most people nowadays have seen the importance of having a proper form of cold (offline) storage, which is why hardware wallets are in extreme demand right now. Funds at all times should remain disconnected from the internet, so even a desktop client isn't enough.

It's not about Coinbase itself running away with people's fund, but more about malicious employees, data loss, seizure, etc. No matter how unlikely certain scenarios may seem at first, it will always remain a potential threat to your coins. With various solid dedicated mobile wallet clients being available, where you at all times are the sole owner of your private keys, it actually doesn't make much sense to use online wallet services anymore. People mostly went for these wallet services because of their free external transactions, but now that's something of the past, the main purpose of using them has basically vanished. People as always, find it too much of an effort to switch to something offering them a better overall form of security.

People are utter idiots. Just look at how many clowns are sharing with the whole world that they have bought thousands of Bitcoins for just a few cent a piece back in the days, and are now multi millionaires. People nowadays can be easily found through all sorts of social media platforms, and from there it's a piece of cake to trace that person down accurately, especially if it's a well known individual in the community. I definitely understand that you're proud of your achievement in becoming a millionaire out of nothing, but what's the point of being loud about it? It has only negative consequences. If I extort you to send me 100BTC, and you do so as I said, how are you going to prove me wrong in case I claim that I bought them from you in a P2P way? I don't know what you did with your money, and strictly speaking, that's not even my problem. Good luck with that!

It definitely had a bad impact on the market if we look at how things were going with Chinese exchanges and their zero fee structure. Volumes jumped to millions of traded Bitcoins per day, and that per exchange. Orders of +10,000BTC were pumped through in a matter of seconds like it was nothing, etc. It was a brutal market, especially for the regular traders and people. I'm really glad that it no longer exists. I am not often in favor of certain governmental actions, but them stopping this barbary has definitely given the market a boost. I am more thinking about something a bit more severe, like a Gox scenario (mildly hinting at Bitfinex). Bitfinex is a ticking time bomb.

If there would be a moment where the market had a chance to tank below the $5000 level, it would definitely be at the time the 2X hard fork didn't go through - looking back, it didn't manage to do so. People have to adapt to this situation and plan their next actions thoroughly, because this market doesn't wait for people to hop on board. It's either you do it now, or do it at much higher levels later. If people were smart enough to buy at sub $1000 level and keep holding till now, they would just enjoy the ride up, and didn't had to make the decision to enter the market right now. However, we're basically in the same situation right now - sub $10,000 levels will next year be something of the past, so don't let this opportunity slip.

We can't exactly blame them for that. We just have to accept that Bitcoin's massive upwards potential attracts all sorts of speculators, and insitutions out to ride the "hype" are definitely not an exception. One way or another, this entire market thrives on the price going up continously, and for that reason Bitcoin will remain a speculative investment asset for quite a long time. It outperforms each and every traditional asset by a great distance, and that's something people and institutions can't ignore anymore. Why pump money into something that yields you just a few percent annually, while something like Bitcoin allows you to potentially generate returns that are tens of times higher than what you would get usually?

Surveys are worthless. I know enough people who's initial plan was to hold till the price reaches $25,000 (amount could be anything), but they all sold their coins to secure a measly 25-50% profit, and that a good while ago. Average Bitcoin investors are more gamblers aiming at short term gains, and are very insecure when it comes to market swings of +20% in whatever direction. Their only concern is whether or not they should grab the profits before the price goes down again, or if its better to sell at certain levels and just take a hit to prevent further losses.

Market movers don't buy themselves into possibly fake news articles, and especially not when they aren't holding any value (i.e no facts to back it up). Merchant adoption is no longer something that influences the market like it did back in the days. But just out of curiosity, when and how much did the price go up due to Amazon, according to you?

I don't see this as something interesting, honestly. It's mostly the noobs that get excited about this because they think it's cool to use Bitcoin to pay for things over at Amazon. It doesn't change anything when it comes to people's actual "problem", which is a lacking will to spend something that is destined to increase in value even further.

Correct. People seem to feel like they're invincible or something when the market has gone up significantly, from where they just assume it will continue to increase further without any drops. If there happens to be a drop, people are butthurt and think it's the end of the bullish sentiment, that we'll fall back to $3000's, etc. There is indeed no such a thing as we're back in the game, which would imply that we left it, and that isn't the case. Nothing happens if you just keep holding through corrections and wait till the market climbs back up, which this year has been the case everytime. Demand is far stronger than the urge of those who're looking to cash out. I have never seen this market be so solid.

I too feel that we currently are past levels that are justifyable for the time period we're in, but this market keeps rushing forward ignoring everything that makes sense, and that no matter how much we analyze the market and its past performance. I think a lot of current speculation hints towards the assumption of the CME group being allowed to offer future trading, which on its own is a pretty bullish thing to focus on, but we're definitely not there yet. That being said, it's important to understand that one should never look at BCC and think that it has any sort of long term importance. This coin is a pump and dump scheme, which to most people is an obvious fact. It will sink and settle below the 0.1BTC level again, that's pretty much guaranteed. I was too lazy with preparing my older Bitcoin wallet in order to claim BCC in previous times, but the +0.2BTC levels finally convinced me to do so. That's the only right thing to do with these coins, DUMP them.

Every service should start to work with Segwit, because what else have we then kept waiting for? It took us so much time and effort to get this far, which is why I expected things to roll out a bit sooner, but of course, better late than never. As it is right now, the far majority of the people are still transacting in the 'old fashion way', and that needs to change. I however have to see how much lower the fees will actually be, because malicious entities can still spam the network with rubbish transactions - the only difference is that it will be a whole lot more costly for them to maintain these spam attacks, and especially for longer periods of time. We'll see what its real effect is when at least 90% of the entire market actually uses Segwit.