Amen. people dont get that the only advantage of a blockchain is that it is an immutable record. if you dont need an immutable record, essentially, a special type of the very common database, there is no need for a block chain. if you dont need consensus, just a record, then its actually a waste of time. for certain industries, a blockchain might improve operation (delivery, insurance, and obviously, payments) as these benefit from having community consensus.

for everything else, a block chain is just painting the lily, so to speak.


to get back on topic, fiat has solved the money issue elegantly for quite some time. i dont think the problem is with fiat, its with how we handle and distribute fiat, socially. we dont, and it doesnt seem to trickle down very well

there already are a few courses at certain institutions that have actual block chain curriculum, but you would be hard pressed to find a bitcoin specific course.


as we shift more towards tech rather than refining/production, block chain technologies, or at least block chain focused software development will become more prominent.

it is still too new, however. no one has really spent a full career in bitcoin yet, there are few true 'experts' in this field at this time. when the discipline becomes more fleshed out; more concrete, them maybe someone will be able to offer an accredited curriculum that addresses us

i see it more likely that finance students would be educated by bitcoin; the alt markets are really good practice on how markets work (even if it is a bit exaggerated  ) 

decentralization is cool and all, but decentralization does not money make. fiat is centralized as fuck, but has been working just fine as a medium of exchange for quite some time now. privately owned gold is decentralized, but that doesnt really add to the value/appeal in this circumstance. while bitcoin might seem trustworthy to us, users that are frustrated with the traditional banking system, its not so cool from their perspective. as a government, you need to be able to artificially contract and expand the supply, in order to accomodate certain legislative aims. you simply cant do this with bitcoin; it thus makes a poor choice as a "money" (national currency).

be careful of being premature. we havent recovered yet, and the prices are hovering in a way that makes me suspicious. why hasnt it recovered, if the full weight of the Chinese announcements have already been priced in. and if the have, why the hesitation by a market that is usually breaking its back to run the price up. it half supports that China was the whole of the reason that the price got here this fast in the first place (speculation by that market), otherwise people are a bit afraid of bitcoin at the moment, and the enthusiasm has been curved. we will see its a bit of both I think, but moreso the former, they were really 'making' the market, so to speak.

to be fair, in this case they had the virtual chair legs snatched clean the fuck from under them. but, hilariously, government intervention of this nature, and the subsequent regulation that emerges, is what prevents an actual 'too big to fail aww shit it did fail' moment. i hate the timing, I really do. but it was actually the perfect time, if only they had made a clean, one time announcement, and not let everyone go crazy with the rumors. if this were announced in an orderly way, if anything this should have made the value go up for participants outside the market. but like always, the majority panicked, and the day was shit (unless you sold earlier )

here to 'we did this so we wont do this in the future', cheers

this is a glass half empty/glass half full type of question, it pretty much boils down to perspective. If we consider the security of investment, gold is certainly better than bitcoin. deflationary just the same (limited supply that is getting destroyed), accepted, trusted, and generally it has a stable value. as far as security goes, you really cant beat this (provided you have physical gold, and not paper gold)



but if you consider the profitability of the investment, in this time of course bitcoin is the better investment. people are buying this shit hand over fist, and the value has skyrocketed for seemingly no reason. its hyper liquidable, at least for the position size of the average user. and its damned quick (it takes a while to sell gold, trust me on this).

so, just depends on what you are looking for

if the key is evident, it is not safe. you can only steal something that is there.

that being said, storing keys in the cloud, or any sensitive information for that matter, is an inherently bad idea. the storage is centralized; if the database is compromised, your data is compromised along with it.

there is one caveat, however, and that is encryption. if you encrypt the data yourself, you can make it unusable to anyone that doesnt have the key to it as well. note, you wont be able to stop them from getting the file, but you can stop them from accessing the file. with bitcoin, the access is more vital (there are locked wallets right now with untold fortunes). you should be practicing encryption as part of any robust cyber security scheme already

i agree, but we can both agree it would be damned near impossible for something like this to actually happen. some govs would be incentivized to allow it, if just to soak up a huge financial market that the others are ignoring. but from a financial theory standpoint, liquidity would completely dry up, at least as we know it. a few things would happen, practically;

price would drop, but then rise as people that actually conduct business in btc remain

peer to peer exchange would become the norm, but there would still be dexs that folks would use, as well as "black market" exchanges.

people would actually spend bitcoin on goods and services, and not just purchase it to speculate. price would stabilize, and the volatility would go away after the initial shitshow, and

people would stop mining immediately; the network difficulty would plummet, and it would be profitable for a time for the little guy to mine (the big guys wouldnt stop mining unless the price becomes unfathomably low). this would cycle, like it always does, before we found the new 'level'.

First, learn how to handle cryptos. get used to making transactions between addresses; exporting and importing private keys, some of the things that make dealing with a crypto unique. beef up the security on your rig, and the general way you handle sensitive information. You are buying secrets, remember this.

Secondly, learn how to trade. there are a million books and websites about the subject, and just as many trading platforms that will let you practice with fake balances to see how you fare. take the time to learn technical analysis, despite how much of a pain in the ass it it. yes, it is a huge pain.

try with a small bit of crypto. find a reputable exchange, register fully, and make some of your preferred type of trade. see how you fare. if you do poorly, you arent a failure; you just learned how to trade traditional markets, and crypto is far from that. adjust to the pace of these markets, and try again. you may never get it. but if you try, like this, most likely you will, in time.

never invest more than you can afford to lose. cardinal rule, which i cant follow myself 

if you dont, i promise you will never be dissapointed 

this was seemingly more about disrupting the market short term.  the price was getting high, and it seems like they made the decision to 'pop the bubble'. yes, its obvious they would want to regulate it, any sane government would, but on the same hand the timing and nature of the announcements seems more to drive the price down, rather than protect investors/overall value (the should be aim of financial regulation )

they arent that concerned about losing market share, in my opinion. they still own the most hardware; and the regulation didnt really address mining, just trading. this is key; chinese miners will lose sources of liquidity across the board, very soon. be wary of a correction in the gap between regulation; we will see the pent up supply dumped vs the enthusiasm of crypto crazy heads; i dont know which one will win 

unless you were a wall street trader, or extremely wealthy, this would be a full retard idea. holding bitcoin for the rise is cool and all, but the amount of value needed to maintain an adult life, let alone two with kids, outstripes the growth potential bitcoin has demonstrated so far. you would need to start off with millions of dollars, and not take significant loses to your basis, in order to let bitcoin speculation be your sole source of income. if you mean working with/getting paid in cryptos, thats one thing. but you need real trading skills that just arent present in most professions, if you want to actually survive off of trading crypto. there is a lot of profit potential. but there is just as much potential, if not more, for ruin

Wall Street is starting to eye crypto as a safe haven asset; its not quite as real and safe as physical gold, but it is as liquid as paper gold mos def, and a blockchain makes sure that its actually gold and not just paper given this, what we saw was a bit of fud to bring the price down, or at least to prime the market for a decent crash with all the rumors floating about. as I said earlier, this should be illegal, but high level financial officers never get prosecuted for their crimes anyway

i digress.

im suprised they are focusing on btc more than eth/ripple, however. i guess eth is a bit new, but being more centralized, its more mutable. same with ripple. it was completely centralized from day one, this will be a boon for corporate adoption, for the sake of regulation at least.

there are a lot of enemies of bitcoin, the majority of them self made. besides the security issues, the lack of consensus, and the general user unfriendliness, there are two core issues that we rarely address here:

lack of user identification (psuedo anon nature) and lack of user dispute mechanisms (its ireversible). the reason the gov will most likely not accept bitcoin in its present state are these two characteristics, above all. for all practical purposes, you dont want a digital payment mechanism without identified users. even if it is made with the best intentions, every asshole in the world will use said system for evil shit, because it is anon, and it works. also, because merchants lie sometimes, just like customers, you want to be able to reverse some transactions, aka the chargeback. these features are required in sound money because people use money, and people are shits. until we address these (which go against the core tenants a bit):

bitcoin is not sound money

+1. this was a while back, but they went after all digital scrips, the most notable being Liberty Reserve. E gold died a quick death pretty much the same way (they started getting investigated for money laundering, everyone got arrested, the platform dissolved, and more regulations filled the void). Interestingly, both of these had there heydays/fizzled out around 2006.

govs will go after any threat to fiat, a govs fiat is its proverbial lifeline.  the avenues of capital flight that cryptos/alternative currencies present is real, and a danger, but they should go about regulation with an even and light hand, as to not disrupt markets that have been in place for years. they would bail out banks, but not protect citizen value with cautious guidance?

if you did this on say, the recent dip, then you are a good seed. but, if you generally suggested that your grandmother, who is probably beyond the age of returning to the workforce, that she should invest her lifes savings into the most volatile asset class in the world, then you are an asshole, good sir

this is why bitcoin isnt ready for the mainstream. lets say your gma bought in at 4.5k. at the moment, she would be dead, because she had a stroke when she saw how much money she lost on Thursday. if the money is of vital importance, that is, an investment rather than just pure speculation, bitcoin is a bad choice. you cannot plan a future budget off of something so volatile. when we get past all this and the price stabilizes (and we get more user friendly), this might actually be sound advice one day.

well, it depends on how you define "spend". if spend means make an outgoing transaction, then not spending has a huge opportunity cost. the entire world isnt bitcoin quite yet, its actually a very small pool of "users".

what if you converted your bitcoin into eth, and purchased into a promising ico that goes 2x? same with direct btc conversion to an altcoin that goes up in value. or even pulling all that newfound value of of cryptos and investing in a growth asset (im not referring to traditional financial assets, they dont experience that much percent growth typically). there are things other than bitcoin that make money, with a lot less risk. the reason why the profits are so grand here, is that this is about as risky as gambling. if you have been burned before, you will recognize this fact

YES! the immutable nature of the blockchain makes it so that any malfeasance in the space, not just poor trading, affects your value. you cant trade if coins are in your wallet (even decentralized exchanges have this caveat ) so, if you wish to take advantage of the volatility, you must visit an exchange. But you know as well as I know that coins that you dont have the keys to, arent your coins for all practical purposes its a feature of the older heads on the board. fuck the price, we are more worried about a security failure due to centralization

i wouldnt either, and this should be illegal, as it would be if they did this to a registered security. with that being said, his opinions really matter for naught; and to listen to his actual full comments on the matter, it sounded like he had butthurt because his daughter invested and he didnt. . i was looking to confirm this story, it popped up on my linkedin feed when I first woke up. this still doesnt confirm it, per se, but it does lend credence.

but seriously, they really have to do something legally about the FUD, it literally drives the price. Fud, and uncurbed enthusiasm are the basis of our price

yes, bitcoin will indeed persist, but to be honest, we should want things like this. this regulatory push, while ill timed, is exactly the type of shit that needs to happen in order for bitcoin to be widely adopted by the masses, on a global scale. The thoughts of a Jamie Dimon (wtf is a Jamie Dimon?   LOL) dont really amount to a hill of beans in this space, we have officially "died" a number of times untold. Because of the complete and utter lack of regulation in this space, FUD is fuly permitted, it seems. The latest China debacle should be ample evidence of this

bitcoin may not be "destroyable", but it certainly can be devalued as fuck, for a time

for once, I agree with the general bullish enthusiasm of the board.

this is obviously cheap btc. i dont know if we are out of the woods completely, that is, it may get a little cheaper in the very near future, but we will surpass these price levels eventually. that is beyond a doubt. and if we use the trend of blowing past previous all time highs as an indicator, it should take less than 2 months. but, this is a known thing. what we really dont know is if this downtrend is truly over yet. people are reacting to the news still, and China hasnt woken up again. if we see a reversal when that market wakes up, its probably ok to buy back in completely.