Just because Segwit has been activated, it won't automatically translate into transaction fees to go down a lot directly. At this point people are still transacting with non Segwit transactions like they have always been doing, and that means they are still subject to the pre-activation fees and everything. Other than that, I am glad that we have finally seen Segwit activate. I kept waiting for the the last block to come through and see Segwit activation become reality. This is what I consider to be a real milestone. At this point the only thing to focus on is what will be happening with the planned hard fork in November.

This news has been released very recently, but I am quite sure that behind the scenes, the IRS has been following trails of Bitcoiners for years now. It's not for nothing that I have always been using a mixer to maintain a certain form of privacy. Every coin that I withdraw from an exchange to have it sent to one of my cold wallets, goes through a mixer first. There is no way that our personal information that the exchange obtained due to their verification process is being kept solely to themselves - they might have been sharing this information quietly with the governments already, or they will at some point get forced to hand over information. Mixing is essential - better safe than sorry.

Milestone in November? The only thing of significance to happen in November is that the 2MB hard fork of Segwit2x is going (or better said, supposed) to kick in. I don't really see this as a milestone, but more as something that potentially might put us through another chain split again. Just because not much in the negative meaning has happened with the most recent chain split, will not automatically mean that we will walk out of such situation without any damage once again. In that regard, purely due to the uncertainties and the increased level of fud, I expect a decline in the runup to November. People thought that when Segwit activation is completed, that we are all done with everything related to scaling, but that's obviously not the case until we walk out undamaged in November.

It surely will be a completely new currency tool - one that's completely centralized and where the government has the ability to freeze and seize any actual balance with just a few mouse clicks. Another factor is that every coin/token you spend trough their network, will have all your personal information attached to it, and from there the government can follow/track all your movements, purchases, etc. It can even prevent you from donating or paying to whatever entity. It will give people an ultimate form of convenience, but they will have to pay a very heavy price for that. I would never make use of something like that, and neither should others - financial freedom is the goal to aim for, and not going backwards.

Most of the average joe type of people are far too conservative to put their nose into something they don't know anything about - Bitcoin nicely fits in that category. If you look at the average interest rates they generate annually (nowadays well under 1%), then a 3% top return isn't all that bad in their eyes. Important to take into consideration is the fact that they aren't used, and not willing to take any risks with the savings they worked their entire life for to build up. I think it's fair to say that if these people end up generating enough per annual term to avoid seeing their savings lose buying power, that they are perfectly fine with it.

Not sure how close you have been monitoring the market lately, but this increase back to above the $4200 level isn't anything special. It's just the regular dose of volatility that this market from time to time experiences - a correction is due because the market is, simply said, overbought. Segwit activation is/was the only reason for the price to go up this high, and as the Segwit activation will kick in tomorrow (when the difficulty will adjust itself), we'll likely going to see the market take a dive back to the $3000-$3300 range, before we go back up again.

# Registrar : NameCheap
# Expiry : July 03, 2018
# Start bid : 0.01BTC
# Minimum bid increments : 0.001BTC
# Buy it now : 0.05BTC
# Auction duration : 48 hours after last bid.
# WhoisGuard included.
# Escrow possible.
# Private bidding is not accepted, unless you use the BIN option.

Only Bitcoin as payment is accepted.

I will always ask you to send the funds to : 12oWtmuwHipw9rC9BYUuMGWMWB3RxMsxUN

Only post in this thread if you are bidding.

By placing a bid you agree with :

# Winner of the auction pays first if you don't want to use escrow.
# Transaction must be completed in less than 24 hours.

People have been threatening to leave Bitcoin a few months back due to the high fees and slow confirmation times, but yet they are still making use of Bitcoin. It's all empty talk from these people. Bitcoin is by far the best and safest network to conduct payments, and there is no altcoin that changes anything in that regard. People, and then mainly the blind chickens, don't realize that if whatever altcoin gets to experience the same level of growth as Bitcoin, it will go through the same difficulties. Take Ethereum as an example - this coin was stated to be a cheap and fast alternative, but turns out, the fees went up significantly due to the increased usage, and the network experienced difficulties.

Are you trying to make yourself look like a second kwukduck? It definitely looks like that, but it only isn't working. Not even noobs will pay attention to what you are saying, while kwukduck has been here long enough (assuming he is still the one who created that account), may have some sort of an 'authorative' glance due to his forum status and the date he signed up here. The dump that we have experienced, and will further experience this week, has been imminent for quite some time - current levels just aren't sustainable. Only idiots believe the price will just shoot up without correcting at some point. It's insane how some people here lose track of reality just because the growth that we experienced this year.

I always thought that ProtonMail was accepting Bitcoin, but turns out, it wasn't. I never bothered to check for payment options because I only used their free mail plan, as that option is sufficient enought for me. I too find it quite a weird situation that they haven't been into Bitcoin from the very beginning. These are the services that should all use Bitcoin as payment option by default. People use ProtonMail for a reason, and that's why they should have implemented Bitcoin for more privacy centric convenience. But hey, as you also pointed out, better late than never...

It was a well expected drop that granted me a very easy profit. I am seeing it go lower in the coming days, where a dip below the $3500 level isn't all that far away. Especially not when you consider that the overall buy support is very thin. It requires a relatively low number of coins to make the price tank 10-20%. If we look at the market from a realistic point of view, then we have to admit that the price is greatly overbought - Segwit activation can't change anything in this regard. If I had to throw a number on the table that would be a fair and reasonable price with Segwit activated, then it would be somewhere around the $3000 level. People have to understand that things can't increase in value in one straight line.

I from time to time need to hand out payments to a wide variety of people, but at this point there is no way I can send an exact amount of coins to a certain address if I choose the option to have ChipMixer send various chip values to whatever address. The fees that ChipMixer deducts for the transaction will always result in an odd amount to be sent to the provided address.

I was thinking about something like this;

Chip 0.015BTC -> withdraw exactly 0.0125BTC (where the rest of the chip value serves as fee and donation).
Chip 0.02BTC -> withdraw exactly 0.018BTC (where the rest of the chip value serves as fee and donation).

In other words, I would like to manually input a value to be withdrawn (obviously always lower than the main chip value due to fees and such). See it as extra convenience for the end user.

I am definitely expecting a correction to happen this week, where my personal target sits well under the $3500 level before the end of this week. The activation is already calculated in the current price, and above of that, the price is overbought as well. The price has gone up too much in such a short period of time, which obviously can't be maintained for much longer as traders/investors are on the edge of triggering a selloff. It will be a very decent buy back opportunity for those that cashed out profits at +$4000 levels.

Short term speaking, there is nothing that can get the price to go up. The best possible thing that could happen is the activation of Segwit, and this happening is already calculated in the current price. Correction at this point is imminent, and I am fairly sure that it won't take long before it will kick in. It doesn't take much to see that the market in current state is heavily overbought, and for that reason we shouldn't be surprised to see it tank with +-20% from current levels. If you're a holder and not interested in doing anything, then just keep holding. If you're a trader looking to buy back at lower levels, it wouldn't hurt to cash out some of your profits (assuming you haven't done so already).

Miners can fork off at any time if they so wish, it doesn't really matter in the long run. What matters is that you can choose what side/coin you are going to support after a chain split. In case of Bitcoin Cash, this coin has basically zero support aside from the trolls that get paid, or a few delusional individuals really thinking something so centralized has a future. Another important factor is that the developers working for Bitcoin Cash, by far aren't as capable as the Core developers. The only tiny bit of excitement regarding Bitcoin Cash comes from the fact that people have the opportunity to cash out their worthless tokens for BTC, and thus to increase their coin count.

If we purely look at how things are right now, the $6000 level is 'just' 50% away from current levels of $4000. If we directly also look at a lot other predictions made recently, where they aim at insanely higher levels (e.g $25,000, $50,000, $100,000), current prediction of $6000 to happen next year isn't all that bad. If we more or less manage to not swallow any sort of damage at the time the hard fork in November is supposed to kick in, we'll be at +$6000 levels in 2018 without much effort. Before that, the market needs to correct itself as we have gone up considerably in such a short period of time - current market is overbought.

What you mean by that? If we didn't had Segwit activation upcoming, that we wouldn't be this high? If so, then perhaps that could be the case, but you can also look at things from this perspective > if miners didn't 'block' the original Segwit proposal, we would have seen the price rocket up to current levels way sooner. We perhaps would already made an attempt to break through the $6000/$7000 level by now. But then again, it's all empty speculation at this point. If that wasn't what you meant, please explain what you were aiming to say.

Segwit2x requires a hard fork to take place roughly three months after activation. In other words, aside from whatever will really happen at that point, the 2MB hard fork is supposed to kick in somewhere in mid November (give or take a few days). It's something the majority of the miners have agreed on, but the Core side doesn't see much value in it. It will wake up another round of uncertainties and drama, like we have been experiencing in the runup to the 1st of August. In that regard, we should be having a bit more patience to see this annoying scaling 'war' come to an end. Nowadays the main focus isn't Bitcoin anymore, but the greed of the individual characters in this industry.

The SEC is just a joke. They try to act like a hero figure to "protect" investors against Bitcoin's unregulated nature, but yet they have failed to protect investors in cases of failed ETF's, where investors lost millions and millions. Where is the SEC when you really need them? The SolidX ETF had even an insurance policy running that would insure fund holdings up to $125M, and yet this isn't enough. I seriously don't know what is needed to make the SEC approve at least one ETF. Regarding the Winklevoss ETF review - I am waiting for any sort of announcement as well. I can't think of any reason why they would be stretching things out this far.

It's not exactly something ground breaking, but I like how Bitcoin's decentralized nature allows whatever entity to bypass the governmental suppression. The more governments are pushing people and businesses away from them, the more they will be looking for ways to avoid dealing with governments or banks. This suppression has been going on for decades, and now with Bitcoin, or basically any crypto, the government and the banks aren't the central point of everything anymore - it's called freedom. Best thing of all is that the non Bitcoin entities start to realize that as well, and for that reason slowly shift to Bitcoin.

I am fairly sure that your patience will be rewarded next week. There are roughly three days left before Segwit activation becomes reality, and when that happens, the market will see a major price driver instantly vanish (i.e Segwit activation is already priced in). People also shouldn't forget that with the activation of Segwit next week, the problems aren't over yet. At this point the only short term obstacle that we have to deal with, is the planned Segwit2x hard fork in November. Only if we happen to walk out without any sort of 'damage', the market will then have no obstacles left that will/may hold Bitcoin's growth back any longer. In that regard, we need to remain a bit more conservative in the coming months. Nothing wrong with being bullish of course, but there is also no need to exaggerate the bullish sentiment with a planned hard fork ahead of us.