The correction that we have experienced was a very normal market reaction after having increased this much in value. China's ICO announcement has no influence on Bitcoin at all, but instead, it should be something that is centered towards the altcoin market, and then mainly Ethereum. I find it quite funny that if people see the price go up with like 400% till this day, and just be like 'it's cool, but let's hope for more', while if the price is going down 15-20%, people start panicking and talk about bear markets. It shows that even till this day, people don't understand this market at all. In order to move forward, we have to experience these level of corrections - it allows sub $2000 guys to cash out, where these coins get bought up by people entering the market at +$4000 levels. The sooner these sub $2000 guys cash out, the sooner we'll be able to move forward.

If you wait, you will get 55% in crypto funds, and the other 45% will be tokens - basically the same as what people have received by cashing out now, but you as "bonus" will get the 45% in tokens. Once BTC-E is back online, you'll be able to cash out your 55% at start, and just keep waiting for the other 45% in tokens to increase in value, or to dump them directly and cash out these funds as well. I personally will cash out my 55% directly at the time they relaunch, where I then just keep waiting for how the token market will be performing price wise. Regarding the date, let's say that the chances are high that everything will be up and running before the end of this month.

This is quite effective when you are slow trading (i.e buy at x price today, and sell at y price next week/month), but not so much if you are day trading - blindly buying yourself into whatever level will then result in severe losses. Slow trading and day trading can't really be but in the same category, as the latter mentioned requires a well balanced combination of proper market understanding and analyzing skills, and we shouldn't forget that luck is involved as well. That being said, even this slow trading method is something that a lot people don't seem to get right. Emotions are people's worst enemy when it comes to trading, and this will always play an important role for a lot people here - it makes even the most simple things a massive obstacle for them.

People have been receiving everything as they were promised, except for the BCC's that they were due initially - hours ago BTC-E has started to send out BCC, so that after all is a very positive sign. It shows that this exchange isn't interested in running away with people's funds, which makes me even more confident about my decision to not cash out.

55% is always better than when you realize that everyone could have been walking out empty handed, but for a lot people it's thousands and thousands in funds they have 'locked' in BTC-E, which makes it an easy option for them to stay. If I decided to accept the 55% and thus discard the other 45%, it would mean that I basically say goodbye to ~$15,000, and that's obviously not something I am going to do. Imagine how things must be for people with hundreds of thousands of funds in there.

Obviously, you will not get the tokens if you cash out now. The point is that you will never know whether or not you'll be able to gain back 100% - the important factor will be the market value of these tokens. It will be a tradable asset alongside other crypto currencies. It may get pumped hard, it may get dumped hard, it may remain stagnant for a while - only time will tell.

Earning Bitcoin at current stage will leave you with Bitcoin pennies, and that's not exactly something that will satisfy people. You personally may find it adequate enough, but that doesn't go up for the majority of the people here. If you want to properly invest in Bitcoin, then you have to put thousands of dollars on the table, because anything less than that is far too insignificant and thus not really worthwhile. On another note, if you don't have enough funds to buy one whole Bitcoin, and for you even an investment of a few hundred bucks is on the higher side, then buy yourself like 0.05-0.1BTC as start. No one forces you to buy a whole Bitcoin - Bitcoin by nature is extremely divisible. If you do that once every month, you eventually will end up with a decent number of coins.

It's a first step, but the real effect will start to kick in if the entire Asian continent is teaming up to wipe out this entire ICO craze. If certain ICO's start raising plenty of millions in funds in just a matter of hours, and we're talking about empty ICO projects here, then something is horribly wrong with the people in this market. I personally haven't had a single moment where I thought I would be investing in one of the plenty ICO's that this market counts, because I know how rotten this market is, and I don't want to fill the pockets of a few greedy entities looking to get rich instantly. ICO's if done properly, and by legit minded projects only, with a problem solving idea behind them, are a great way to generate the necessary funds to move forward, but the scammers of this world have totally ruined this market.

If people start utilizing Segwit, then theoretically the fees should be going down, but we still don't know its actual effect yet. If we look at Litecoin, which has Segwit activated for three months now, it's obviously clear that people for a major part are still transacting in a non Segwit manner. People themselves need to make the shift, and as long as that isn't happening, Segwit won't have much of an impact. That being said, even with Segwit activated and being fully utilized by people, if a spammer thinks it can justify throwing loads of money on the table to choke the network with rubbish transactions, we'll still be dealing with full blocks - the only difference is that with Segwit fully utilized it will cost whatever entity more to reach the same effect. If we look at the malicious entities behind Bitcoin Cash, and then mainly their wealth, they could easily do so.

Nah. If we look at the market from an unbiased perspective, it was simply said, heavily overbought. It was a correction that a lot people were waiting for, and it finally happened. China banning ICO's is just affecting China, and that's really it. Don't get me wrong, China is definitely a large market in crypto terms, but it's not the central point anymore. The Asian continent is expanding its reach, where countries as Japan and South Korea have already surpassed China. China is just implementing the necessary regulations, and rightfully so - the ICO market is literally infested with scammers reaching millionaire status in a matter of days, or in some cases even hours. I am glad that at least something is being done to stop the ICO craze from growing larger.

Never say never, but the chances for this to happen are extremely small. If it turns out to become reality, I will not waste a single second when it comes to buying myself a whole lot of coins. I have cashed out a decent portion above the $4000 level, so I have enough fiat ready to be put in action. Realistically speaking, $3000 is the lowest I can see the market go down. Bitfinex is the only major USD exchange that took a dive under the $4000 level, and it was very likely an attempt by a whale to trigger stop loss orders.

Bitcoin at worst will get heavily regulated by most of the major governments, and that's really it. If I look at how things were back in 2013/2014/2015, everything was still more or less a joke. I could just buy and sell Bitcoin at any exchange or service without a single form of verification. I could cash out my profits without any problems in terms of paying tax - my local government didn't even know what Bitcoin was. Currently this all has changed as everything has become a whole lot more serious. I believe that in the forthcoming years things will get even more serious as crypto in general is a growing industry. Governments just need time to catch up, but more regulations are to be expected.

If you look on Twitter, there are a whole lot of people complaining that they have received all stated funds, except their BCC's. Not exactly sure what their reason is for nothing *yet* sending out people's BCC's, but the main thing is that people who chose to withdraw funds, will have their accounts deleted without any possibility of regaining access. If they haven't made screenshots or captured their screen on video with whatever capturing app, they have zero proof that BCC was part of their 55%. The only legitimate reason I can think of for BTC-E to not send out BCC, is that they are looking to empty their BTC addresses first - no one in his right mind would deal with BCC without actually emptying the address of BTC first. If that turns out to be reality, then it may take some time for people to receive what belongs to them.

It's nice and all that people are looking to buy themselves into Bitcoin, but we shouldn't forget that the form of usage you described is purely speculative. People are only interested in the volatility of the market, and may just be playing this market as a short term thingy. I have been searching for statistical information over a longer period of time in terms of BATM usage, but there is nothing the companies behind them are willing to share, or at least, nothing of useful nature. Only time will tell how much usage these machines will continue to experience - real test will be when the market remains calm for a while. If these machines then still experience a decent level of usage, then there is some legit growth that has been going on lately, but I have my doubts.

I am actually glad that China is cleaning their crypto roads properly as the ICO market has evolved into a mega scam fest. It's just China that is doing this, but if we look a bit further, then I can definitely see more countries follow these actions. It will definitely cause the market to shake up a bit, but there is no need to exaggerate the situation. If we look at how the general crypto market has been breaking through record highs, it was just a matter of time before we would start to experience a decent correction. Bitcoin experienced a growth of 400% in a matter of 9 months! It's a great thing for everyone holding Bitcoin of course, but this isn't a healthy nor sustainable form of growth. I am pretty sure that if we would be breaking through the $3000 level for the first ever time today, we would be equally as happy. The difference however is that $3000 is a fair price, and current levels not that much - we'll soon find out if the market thinks the same about it or not.

Stop this ridiculous nonsense. If you seriously believe that BCC has such a good future perspective, then convert all your Bitcoins and benefit from BCC's current "ultra cheap" price. After a few months, you'll see how your wonderful shitcoins will sink down to values below the 0.01BTC level. You seem to support something that even in the altcoin market is being seen as severely obsolete. No one with a proper functioning set of brains will ever put a serious amount of his coins into BCC at current levels, it just doesn't make sense. If you wait more, you'll be able to buy your beloved BCC's at sub 0.01BTC levels. That being said, why aren't you active in the BCC thread if you're that much in favor of it?

It seems that it wasn't the $4000 level where the much waited for correction would start to kick in, but the $5000 level. Current decrease is a very healthy market movement as the market was well overbought - nothing increases only in value. It will be interesting to see whether or not the $4000 will hold strong at USD exchanges. If it dips below $4000, which still isn't that bad considering the high level of growth that we experienced lately, we might even be up for $3500 in the coming days/weeks. People that were desperately waiting for a better moment to enter the market, here is your shot. This perfectly demonstrates that it is a wise thing to cash out profits from time to time.

It's likely just trading that will not require any sort of verification - which is exactly what they stated in very simple terms in their FAQ. I am quite sure that there will be a certain form of verification required in order to have the ability to request a withdrawal of your funds. Everything that BTC-E is saying at this point has really no value. Initially people would be given the opportunity to withdraw 55% of their funds, but nothing was mentioned about losing the latter 45% part in case you do end up withdrawing the offered 55% - this is something they at last came up with, which is ridiculous. Another ridiculous thing is that they convert fiat to the current Bitcoin market rate of $4500, and not the $2546 rate at the time they went down. This just shows that they are doing whatever they can to squeeze out as many funds out of their customers as possible. Every exchange that experienced whatever sort of loss of user funds so far, has at least offered people compensations based on the exchange rate at the day they went down. BTC-E clearly isn't following that 'tradition'.

China has lost its central position as being the main Asian Bitcoin and crypto hotspot, and I am glad that this has happened. It shows that the overall demand in the Asian continent has more to offer than just China. Seriously, if we look at how 'newcomer' South Korea has been developing itself in crypto terms, it shows that even seemingly small nations can bring a huge load of growth to the table. SK exchange Bithumb is standing firmly on top of all other exchanges in the world, where they make the volumes of traditional USD exchanges look like a joke. I really hope that this sort of growth will keep extending in the Asian continent, but at the same time, the African market in the coming years might be something interesting to focus on as well.

It's funny how people are being excited about the dropping fees. It hasn't been the first time we experienced a situation like this, and it definitely won't be the last. For whatever reason, the entity behind the latest spam attack in current situation can't justify spending tons of money on choking the Bitcoin network with rubbish transactions - result is that the mempools are shrinking in size. It's just a matter of time before we see the next major spam attack gets initiated, and once again see the fees go up significantly again it's a recurring cycle.

As time goes by, Bitcoin will literally keep demolishing the following levels -> $10,000 -> $15,000 -> $20,000, etc. People should just understand that this market isn't waiting for them to enter. It has been the same since we were hovering around the $300 level back in 2015 - each time the price increases, people create threads asking whether or not it's still a good time to buy now the price has gone up. I seriously don't understand what these people are waiting for. How much needs the price to go up before they realize that they are missing great buying opportunities, time on time again? If you have free capital, then invest and don't wait for the market to decrease - this only results in a big disappointment, especially in the current bullish time frame.

No need to wonder about that, because that's simply not going to happen. At some point the entities behind BCC will realize that too, and thus will stop pumping their money into something that has no real purpose. Seriously, it's just an obsolete altcoin with no real benefits, barely any usage (aside from a few speculators and those looking to convert their BCC's into BTC), etc. I have converted all the BCC's in my hot wallets to BTC, but still have a good number of coins sitting in my <2015 cold wallets, but I don't want to move these coins to different addresses just for the purpose of cashing out the BCC's.

Correct.

Speculation is what's driving a market up or down at the end of the day, and thus this is a crucial part of basically any market in the world. It's not for nothing that Bitcoin has been attracting a huge load of money from all sorts of entities in the last years - the massive ups and downs are what they look for, and what's the cause of these ups and downs? Right, it's speculation. We shouldn't forget that a large part of the investors/traders aren't actually interested in Bitcoin itself, or to use it as currency - for them it's purely a speculative investment tool.