Do you have any sound evidence or theory of why you think a financial crisis is going to occur? With the 2008 crisis, it was because of the housing market and faulty loaning programs performed by the banks, which some people predicted would happen (Just watched the movie "The Big Short"; great movie by the way )

So why do you think something is going to happen, or what theory are you proposing?  I have a feeling too that another huge financial melt down is on the way, but just saying that "IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN!" over and over again until it finally happens, doesn't mean that you had any knowledge of why it did in the first place.

So if it does this year or next year don't come back and say "HA! TOLD YOU SO!".

Hahaha, believe me... the worst possible thing that you can do is to Google: "How to access the dark net market to buy drugs", or something of the sort.  That's completely idiotic.  Google is single handily the biggest collection of internet data that is used by the Feds and government for cracking down on criminals and individuals who want to buy drugs or god forbid, CP.

This is a major debate that is going on in politics right now, is how much privacy should a citizen get on the internet, or in life in general.  As of what it's known, sites like Google, Facebook, and I'm assuming other main social media/search engines sites data are handed over to the government to track individuals search history and stuff like that to "protect the country".  It's a very touchy subject.

But no... If you don't know how to access it, I would just suggest you just keep it that way.

Yeah honestly I see that being the real problem with games people are wanting, like pinball and other "skill" based games that are in demand on here.  It seems way too complicated for people to check the verification of the script to see if everything is working in a legit manner, or if the person who coded it rig it in a way that, in the example of pinball, the ball will bounce where it wasn't supposed to bounce if the person has a chance at "winning" the game, or something of the sort...

While I want to see more variety in the world of online gambling, people who are going to code some of these games must be willing to write code that someone else who is capable of verifying the whole thing is legit.  I guess in a sense this is way too complicated and unnecessarily needed, plus people will have trouble trusting the game in the first place.

All in all, when you are gambling online, you will always have to either trust the third party, or be willing to check the code the game is written... regardless you have to trust that the third party site is going to be truthful and hold your coins on the site no matter what; money pot is making people feel a little bit easier with all of this though, which is a good thing.

I don't understand...

Was Mike Tyson a early adopter? Is he funding this new online "wallet" of sorts, so people can buy directly through him?  Or is he using another exchange site that goes through his wallet?

Regardless, it's interesting... but I won't be using it, because it looks like it's exactly like coinbase, circle, etc.  ... and I don't even trust them completely; let alone me trusting fucking MIKE TYSON with my funds and linking my bank account and everything there. Haha, times are getting weird in crypto land I suppose...

I think you're completely wrong... It's extremely easy to get "the dollar on the Internet" with PayPal, money transfers, and that sort of thing. The main argument is the fact of fees that take place during transactions, plus the fact that the dollar and all other fiats are complete shit.

Once people start to care about the fact that central banks don't have any place with every day life now and days and have the convenience of Bitcoin acceptance everywhere in stores, you won't find much mainstream adoption.

You definitely have to relate to the person who you're trying to explain Bitcoin too... If they are someone who likes anonymity, you should be honest and say it's primarily pseudononymous and explain why... If the person is a libertarian and doesn't like central banks, explain how it is different from the central banks, etc. ... You have to understand what would interest the person in the first place. The major issue is trying to talk to someone who doesn't have any interest in this, and just want to use something primarily for convenience, or the reason that everyone is doing it.

Yeah, honestly the whole using bitcoins to buy drugs things is dying because of governments being able to easily trace these transactions and the people who are doing the transactions (or atleast the buying). Bitcoin is maturing in the sense that it's gaining popularity by a legit "store of value" or "internationally acceptable currency" rather than have its popularity by dark net markets that Silk Road... Whether that's a good thing or not.

There are other coins out there that can possibly fill this void with even better anonymity features, but I personally think the dark net markets for buying drugs and that kind of thing are dying in a sense. People don't feel quite safe anymore and are being hesitant on TOR, unless they know a lot about other security measures to take when browsing the dark net.

That would be pretty neat, but the thing is is that I would think that you would have to run through consoles like Xbox and play station to be able to use their games for gambling... Which would be an obvious headache for legal reasons, not to mention gambling legality.

Idk.. The USD and other fiat money has been off the gold standard for some time now (I think like 30-40 years now?) and I just feel that something has got to give at some point IMO.

I just watched that new movie "The Big Short", and it's crazy how much, to me at least, it resembles what fiat is doing. It's promising store of value where there is no sound reasoning why there is a store of value, just that you should trust the government that the note you receive is worth X amount in goods and services.

Governments and nations have collapsed due to a bad economy and payment system in the past, and don't think the system we have going on is anything different.

The biggest thing a nation has to decide whether to just use mobile paying apps vs things like Bitcoin, will be that they have to decide to fully go off fiat in general. You have to think that if you are just going to use mobile paying apps, then you are just transferring value of fiat rather than bitcoins... It's a matter of how much longer the central banks can keep on playing the charade that their system is the only system that works (which is the complete opposite).
It's amazing how economists aren't praising Bitcoin because what it has the potential to do. To finally have a digital gold that can be transferred anywhere in the world without much worry about inflation rates or the need for a third party to keep inflating whichever fiat system they are working with.

Wow, nice! This is nice starting out my new year reading about the release! When I get home Ill be sure to start setting up the new rig set up. This is definitely going to be an exciting year for monero I believe, but not anything astronomical. I mean technically were still in the 2010/2011 phase in terms of Bitcoin, and believe we will see a similar pattern on adoption now that we have made everything official with helix.

I think people need Bitcoin more than ever right now... Look, the fiat system is bound to collapse eventually IMO. All fiat is, is notes based on trust in government, and you can clearly see that trust in government has been rapidly declining as time goes on.

Let's think of fiat in ways of digital currency. There's no legitimate reason why Central Banks create more notes, they just create more so it looks like inflation isn't taking place, when looking through the years it most certainly is. Bitcoin is a limited currency with a progression curve that one can predict what the inflation will be at a given time. Fiat isn't backed by anything or created in a manner that makes since, it's just nothing more than a couple old rich white guys who have control over everything essentially when it comes to the global macroeconomic spectrum of things.

Bitcoin is revolutionary, because it allows humanity to use a currency that is not based on trust in government or central banks... It's based on math.

I think I will be paying more attention to the block size debate than anything. Sure, it would be nice for a mass adoption of merchants to start accepting Bitcoin as payment, but we can't even begin to think about that until the kinks "under the hood" have been fixed IMO. If a lot of people started using Bitcoin and began to really stress test/maxing out blocks, then I believe a lot of problems will be imminent... We'll see though, it's going to be exciting regardless due to halving speculations.

Personally, I think this kind of thread will be better suited to go to the speculation section... but to answer your question, it's really hard to say. 

Obviously, it should theoretically double in price... but the thing is, is that it still comes down to what users are willing to pay for Bitcoins.  I feel that this volatility and price surges that have been happening for the past couple of months have all been due to speculation of what the halving will do, and the feeling of needing to acquire more coins before the halving comes.  So, it's possible that by the time the halving comes, the prices will have already "doubled" in some sense and not rise at all, because people have already acquired what they wanted to acquire.

It all comes down to how much demand is out for the coin before and after the halving happens.

Quick question... are you using blocktrail in an app on your phone primarily or just the website? If you're needing a good phone app that seems pretty secure for me that I hold a decent amount of bitcoins on, Breadwallet is a good one.  It connects directly to the blockchain and you are in full control of your private keys, while also you can require a biometric thumb print password, which personally I like.  It's simple, very functional, and looks really good.

But if you are going to use it for a web wallet primarily then yeah I would say go ahead with using blocktrail, if you don't want to use any other type of wallet.

While I agree with you that the transaction time (and block size for that matter) is a huge issue for bitcoin, business IRL and most big online business don't want to deal with bitcoin because, while they can profit from a bull market in bitcoin, they can also loose their ass in a bear market.

I mean imagine if every business you could imagine started accepting bitcoin back when bitcoin was $1K+ ... I would imagine that a lot of businesses would have gone out of business when the price eventually crashed.  If you want to see mainstream adoption of bitcoin in general, you are going to have to see a more stable price of bitcoin for around 6 months at a time.  Bitcoin is mainly a economic tool of speculation and is primarily a very volatile asset, rather than a legit currency that is a store of value.

Idk about that though... There are a lot of barriers to cross when it comes to major adoption in India and China. 

For one with India, there is only a couple of cities there that have people with nice phones, computers, and are technologically capable of doing business with bitcoin.  Does this mean that they will do business with bitcoin right away? Of course not.  There has to be an incentive for wanting to do business with bitcoin, and bitcoin is way too volatile for people who are living off of a couple dollars in rupees a day.  If bitcoin falls out of the sky, then that would probably mean that they would lose their business and they are shit out of luck.  As of right now it's all a gamble for doing business in Bitcoins only.  Also, if I'm not mistaken, there aren't too many exchange sites for people in India to exchange for rupees.  Not to mention that we are just talking about a couple of cities... a lot of India are very poor areas who are doing great just to have electricity.

As for China, it comes down to regulation of the government. If they continue to allow bitcoin to be bought and used by the Chinese, then yeah it will be great for bitcoin... but from what I've been reading, China is becoming a lot stricter and are going to be enforcing rules in a really different way. Look up "Seasame Credit in China" for more info... They are allowing it now for any one who wants to participate and are going to enforce that every citizen partakes in 2020.  Basically, it makes everyone become a slave to the government, and if you as much as speak out against the government, then all of your rights are taken away essentially and those that do speak good about the government will be "rewarded" with benefits like being allowed to travel out of the country more frequently and other stuff.

There is a lot to consider which will be the next major nation that really accepts Bitcoin in general, but I'm surprised no one here is talking about the Isle of Man?

Even if one where to make around $2000 after taxes and put it all in bitcoin, I can't even fathom gambling it all away though (or just putting my funds in a risky win/loss situation).  You have to be conservative when gambling, and set a little aside you want to play with to have the possibility of getting more.

So, for example, if you have just bought 4 bitcoins, and know that you want to set aside 10% of your coins for entertainment purposes in gambling each week, then 0.4 btc is a good amount to be playing with... then when/if you lose that, I wouldn't put more in to "dig a deeper hole" per se.  Same is if you bought only 0.4 btc, I believe it's reasonable to only bet 0.04 btc, and so forth.

This would be nice, but the thing is.. is that I'm pretty sure that Chipotle does not do delivery. Even if they did, how would you go about doing this? This would take too long, and surely I'm not about to use an escrow to buy burritos, which anyone can easily afford to pay in cash for a meal... but that's just my opinion.

Well, a while ago the answer was sometime in the spring/summer of 2016 if I remember correctly; but then again I could be wrong.  While it would help somewhat with the adoption rate of some merchants, I don't necessarily think that it will boost the coin into the $1+ stratosphere right away... I think we're doing just fine having the ability to compile our own wallets and mymonero.com for those that don't know how to compile for them selves. 

So if you're waiting for the official release to come out to ride some type of monero pump train, then don't bother.