I wouldn't exactly say those are the norm, but I know what you mean.  They're sort of to be expected and aren't something to panic about, and if you've been watching bitcoin for long enough--or have owned it long enough--those kind of price swings shouldn't shock you.

Bitcoin definitely could crash by 20% or more, but I'd expect that after a big rise, sort of like we saw in the summer of last year.  Anyway, this prediction is about as good as the rest of them--useless IMO and not something I'm going to act on.  I don't think I've bought or sold bitcoin or anything else based on someone's prediction.  They're almost entertainment more so than anything else.

And that's probably why they make these predictions the way they do.  Honestly, I've heard much the same thing from members of bitcointalk and I don't think any of these guys can tell the future any better than the rest of us.

That's at least reasonable, and you're probably going to end up being right on that one.  I'm hoping bitcoin goes that high this year, and if it doesn't surpass $15k I'd be completely fine with that.  As I've been saying, I'd prefer not to see another 2017 bubble with people selling their house, clothes, kids' toys and everything else.  That kind of insanity can only lead to a crash.

This thread is a few months old, but I'm actually glad it got bumped because I missed it before.

I had been hearing the words signal and signal group for quite a while on bitcointalk, and I never knew what the hell people were talking about--so after reading the link from the OP here, now I get it.

These are basically pump & dump schemes and they're nothing new in the world of trading, because people were doing the same thing in the stock market waaay back in the 1920s.  It's not that someone knows some inside info about whatever coin is being pumped, it's the fact that someone with money is planning on manipulating a coin and wants some support.  At least that's what it sounds like to me.

I'm pretty sure these groups aren't dead, either.  There are always going to be people trying to do this sort of thing, at least until crypto gets regulated like the stock market.

Lol, nice one--and that would actually be a fantastic gimmick for a pet store.  Not kidding about that.

OP, if you really own a pet store I would stick with that if it's profitable for you.  There's nothing quite like owning your own business, and I'm assuming you'd have much less of a pain in your butt as far as regulators go than you would if you tried to start a crypto exchange.  I also don't think another exchange is necessary, because as it stands only the bigger, more trusted ones are used by people who are serious about crypto.  Plus I don't think it's very easy to break into that game anyway.

You'd be better off running a crypto pet store, and I think all you need for that is a payment processor unless you want to receive actual cryptocurrency (which is not what most businesses do).  Best of luck.

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking.

Eh, I haven't read the most recent replies in that thread (that weren't off-topic), but from what I saw there wasn't conclusive evidence that Primenumber7 is QS's alt--and I'm sure if QS is offended by that so-called mobbing, he can stick up for himself.  I doubt it bothers him very much anyway.  And if he didn't have that reputation of being an escrow scammer I'm sure none of this would be a big deal at all.

TECSHARE, you did go off-topic but I see your point as you weren't the only one.  Who knows why your post was deleted, but just...let...it...go.  I realize you think you were defending your point there, but ultimately it isn't a huge deal and you made the point you wanted to get across to marlboroza I'm sure.

I think that's exactly the reason why Jet Cash's thread hasn't sparked the level of discussion he'd hoped for.  Bitcoin Discussion is basically just a spam trap, and it's almost as bad as Altcoin Discussion (but not quite).  If the thread title isn't an easy "question" to respond to with a cookie-cutter response, it'll get ignored.

I've had the same issue with some of my threads from last year, but I pretty much knew why I wasn't getting a lot of intelligent responses.  I might have made my threads self-moderated, too, but I can't remember.

Yeah, if anyone had bought bitcoin back around December 2017 or a few months before, they're still in the red.  If they'd sold this past summer when it was around $13k they might have lessened their losses, but they're still losses nevertheless.

I don't think I was doing much buying back then, but I can't remember specifically.  I do remember thinking that the market was overheating and that it would be a horrible time to buy bitcoin when it was making all-time highs every day or so.  But obviously a lot of people were buying, else they wouldn't have driven up the price so much.  My guess is that most of them sold at a loss, which is what usually happens in bull markets, bubbles, and the subsequent crashes.

And yeah, if you'd held altcoins that you bought back then you'd still have one hell of a wait before you were above water again, and with some of them you'll probably never break even.

Ha ha--I'm not exactly sure why you had a headache, but I can't stand public speaking myself and I admire your drive to give one on bitcoin.  That's certainly something I wouldn't feel confident doing, so props to you.

I'm not sure I completely agree with that.  Bitcoin is bitcoin, whereas blockchain technology can be used independently of bitcoin.  Anyway, I won't argue strenuously against what you said, because they're both very important.

Yeah, I had to LOL at this thread and I'm also wondering why in the world he put "corona" in bold text, but I'm not going to fret over it.

I haven't been watching the news for quite some time, so I haven't heard about any of this except for some people mentioning it in passing.  But no, this won't affect bitcoin's price and I'm pretty sure it won't have any effect whatsoever on the world's economy unless it becomes a major epidemic with lots of deaths--and it would have to be one hell of a virus to do that.

I agree, and I also agree that it's akin to throwing darts--and not even a 40-year prediction, either.  If you're even trying to proclaim what bitcoin is going to be worth in a year or longer, it's pure guesswork.  It would be nice if you could sock some bitcoin away for your retirement, confident that in forty years it'll be worth $100k but that's not realistic.  And no amount of knowledge of economics, engineering, or anything else is going to help you forecast what its value is going to be. 

Forty years is a long time, and in that time anything could happen.  It's quite possible bitcoin could be supplanted by something else, or the world could come to an end--you never know.

As much as I respect Jet Cash, I have to also disagree.  I don't think it should matter one whit where a member earns his merits, and if that information were taken into account in the ranking up process, it would make it much more difficult than it needs to be--and it's already incredibly hard for members to get to Full Member if they registered after the merit system was implemented.

Not everyone got into bitcoin for the same reason, so I think what you said might be an unreasonable expectation.  The more people who are enthusiastic about bitcoin, the better, and it doesn't much matter to me where their enthusiasm comes from.

That's what I'm thinking exactly.  I'm not sure who's making these crazy bullish predictions, but I'm pretty sure they don't know any more than the rest of us do about where bitcoin is headed.  Even if those big traders had enough money to potentially influence bitcoin's price all on their own, there's no guarantee things would go their way at all--bitcoin's market is very unpredictable.

But if we're talking about a two-year time frame for getting to $100k, that might be reasonable.  What I worry about is if bitcoin can hold on to whatever gains it makes.  In 2017, the price went up so much, so fast that it couldn't stay at $20k.  I'd like for that not to happen again.  And yeah, looking at where bitcoin is at the moment, it's way too optimistic to be calling a $100k price even if it is for two years from now.

We both know that's not going to happen.

What I find interesting is that OP registered here before the merit system was started, so it's very odd that he doesn't know about it and that he's still a newbie.  This is probably just one of many accounts, but still.

Lol, I'm a staunch supporter of the merit system and I'm all for keeping shitposters from ranking up, but even I don't think it ought to be made harder to rank up than it currently is.  In fact, I've been all for Theymos tapping more members to be merit sources because I think it's already way too hard for good posters to rank up.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what's motivating OP to write what he did.  I find it hard to believe that he actually wants to make it harder to rank up when it still taking him a long time to do so.  It's way too early in the year for an April fools joke.

Actually I was wondering kind of the same thing--I thought I'd read most, if not all, of the recent threads dealing with Yobit and I don't recall anyone giving that kind of evidence.  Could be that I missed it, so if someone can point to the thread where the calculations were done I'd greatly appreciate it.  

Glad to see the campaign ending, by the way.  Hopefully the drama surrounding it will die down fairly quickly.

Edit:  Oh wow, I did miss all of those posts, thank you JollyGood.

Hell yeah, happy 2nd anniversary to the merit system!

I remember Meta blowing up like a thousand sticks of dynamite in the days following its introduction and I remember how many members thought it was an unfair system and railed against it--those were mostly lower-ranked members who now saw their chances at earning big money via a high-ranked bitcointalk account scuttled by the new system.  I laughed with much glee.

I also remember having the flu at the time and waking up in what felt like a fever dream, and I saw this weird merit system that was the focus of discussion all over the forum, and I thought I was hallucinating for a while.  But it was not, and it turned out to be excellent for bitcointalk IMO. 

And boy am I glad that Meta isn't still filled with tons of "how I earn meritz?" threads.  That was another phenomenon that went on for quite a long time.

Yep, I'm aware of that.  I made a comment about these shitcoins not being withdraw-able a while back--I think it was in reference to the ones that Yobit gives away for free.  However, you bring up a good point, namely that not everyone might realize that these are coins that Yobit will never let you move off their exchange.  I don't think everyone knows that.  The only reason I'm aware of it is because I have a whole bunch of those free coins from years back and you still can't withdraw them. 

I'm not defending Yobit, believe me.  I guess what I'm saying is that if you bought URANIX, YONE, or any of those other shitcoins that don't exist outside of Yobit, and you put them in the investbox, you'd be able to withdraw whatever you put in at any time--and that's unlike a true Ponzi scheme. 

And yes, I'm also aware that any of these pieces of crypto garbage are headed toward 1 sat.  Most of them already trade at that level anyway.  But again, now I keep thinking that there are probably newbies who don't realize this.  I'm keeping my mind open, although I'm getting more and more input that's telling me that Yobit's moving toward full scam mode.

Good point.  And bitcoin has already been above $20k, so anything below that most likely won't kick off a crazy bull market like we saw in 2017.

I agree with your second statement fully.  Right now bitcoin has been pooped out for months, and even if it reached $14k that would still be some pretty good progress and would no doubt spark people's interest in it again.  Nothing brings people into the market like rising prices, though that can be dangerous.

Anyway, $14k before May might be good.  That's less than a doubling over the course of four months, and I don't think that's too steep a rise as to be unsustainable as long as it doesn't keep skyrocketing.  But honestly I'd be more than happy if bitcoin just got back to $10k by May.

Having read some Bukowski, I find that statement hilarious.

I'm going to refrain from doing anything for the moment until the dust settles with this whole Yobit situation (and the Chipmixer/Turkish section one) and the drama surrounding it subsides.  I think Yobit is moving into straight-up scam territory with that X10 thing and I'm well aware of all the complaints about their exchange over the years, but so far I haven't heard anyone talking about how they lost money with the investbox function. 

And believe me, I see those guaranteed gains as a looking very much like a Ponzi scheme but I don't think you can lose the coins you put into the investbox.  Your coins might lose value, but that's true of any coin.  With true Ponzis, people end up losing everything they put in and like I said, so far I haven't seen that happening over at Yobit. 

So I'm not going to start tagging their signature campaign participants nor the Turkish members or anyone else who are defending Yobit--including Vispilio--even if they're getting more emotional than is probably healthy.  That might tend to escalate hostilities without having any real benefit in terms of preventing people from getting scammed.  I'm just going to watch and wait for now.

Ah, I must have missed that one--but I'm sure I've missed most of his comments, since I long ago tuned him out after realizing he was a precious metals permabull.  

I'm not sure why Schiff even bought any bitcoin to begin with, but whatever.  What I'm more surprised about is that he obviously didn't take the time to learn the basics about it before doing so--if he didn't write down his seed phrase, that betrays a level of ignorance about bitcoin that I find puzzling, as I don't think Schiff is a stupid man by any means.  A huckster, yes.  Stupid, no.

I'll also give him credit for owning up to his mistake instead of doubling down and blaming bitcoin even more.  The latter is something he could have easily done and, I suspect, is what a lot of other people might have continued to do.  

Yeah, this is another reason why I'm not a fan of his--but I still don't think any of his wrong predictions make him stupid.  Nobody can predict the future and I'm not sure why people with followings continue to try (though I have a pretty good idea).