It's a welcome "development" in the first place for the large holders behind this rubbish coin, and after that, for the people that will use this one time opportunity to trade their free candy for BTC or fiat.

If you look at the terror squad behind this coins, it should not come as a surprise that this coin will remain operational for quite a long time. The only question is, how long will it take for this coin to lose its hype status, where after that it will be a low volume shitcoin that might get pumped from time to time. This coin won't keep holding its position in the spotlights for long, that's guaranteed.

Exchanges and services will support ANYTHING that helps them potentially gain more users and profit. This market is not the same as how it used to be years ago, where Bitcoin in most cases was the first priority, and not the financial gains. Times changed, and thus we shouldn't be surprised to see them follow the most profitable road, even if it isn't morally the best thing to do.

If one understands how this market works, knows and accepts the risks of the volatility, and doesn't invest with money that isn't meant to be invested, or in extreme cases doesn't trade/invest with borrowed money, that person will remain calm and wait out for things to settle. If you look back at how the market has been performing throughout the years, you'll understand that it has recovered from basically any sort of negavity/drama. On the other hand, reality shows that people don't know how this market works, don't know what the risks are, they in most cases greatly over-invest, etc. It's almost impossible for these people to calm down in periods with heavy volatility. Their first priority at the time the price falls, is to panic sell (mostly all their coins at once) in order to prevent them from suffering even more losses.

You did the right thing by taking out your coins immediately after you somewhat lost confidence in BTC-E. I wish I did the same, but I unfortunately kept my coins at that exchange no matter what - turns out to be a horrible decision. My loss could have been worse as I was planning to deposit even more Bitcoins, but something (not sure what, but I am extremely happy looking back now) held me back. In that regard my losses aren't as severe as they potentially could have been.

That indeed is very frustrating. I think they look at BTC-E in the exact same way as they look at the deep web markets that have been taken down recently. In other words, according to them BTC-E is a service infested with thieves, scammers, drug dealers, terrorists, etc. More than $1 billion in user funds are now officially in the hands of the US government. These funds will get auctioned off in batches, similar to how previous coin auctions have been. This isn't justice, but pure theft committed by the US government - the ruler of the world.

In a market as unpredictable as the one from Bitcoin, or basically any crypto currency market, you doing some "practice" trading has zero effect. In current circumstances the market sentiment can change in an instant from positive to negative, and vice versa. By the time you are adjusted to a certain market sentiment, it has changed already, and you once again need to get used to whatever the new sentiment will be. I find it a pure waste of time and potential opportunities. You doing "practice" trading before you start actually trading, says that you aren't at all comfortable with risking your money. In that regard, just stay away from trading in general.

Bitcoin as it is right now will just keep growing further once we're past certain obstacles that till this day are still holding it back. BCC is an altcoin that deserves a very high spot on the shitcoin list. The only reason for people to be excited about BCC, is because of the fact that 'free money' rolls into their pockets without doing anything. It's certain that at the first stage there will be thousands of people looking to get rid of their BCC's (rightfully so), where obviously the extremely poor orderbooks have no liquidity to eat through all the dumps. I personally will prefer to keep waiting till the initial dumping fest has stopped, because I want to get the most out of this (at this point still potential) opportunity. If the time is right, I'll convert all BCC's to BTC, and have everything directly sent to my cold wallets.

Chances for it to activate are quite on the higher side, especially when you realize that the sole purpose of this rubbish is to make larger holders an instant bag of massive profits. I don't mind seeing the price go down as result as it (1) offers some decent trading opportunities, and (2) people will be able to once more enter the market at discount levels. I must however point out that I don't really expect the price to tank real hard - I am quite certain that the $2000 level will maintain its position without much problems in the coming days.

It has indeed been a while since they announced the review, but I think they are stretching it as far as possible on purpose. I don't expect any sort of statement regarding the ETF any time soon, as the US government at some point will be going to auction off their BTC-E treasury. A negative announcement would likely translates into a lower market price, and thus they would be getting less for the coins their are going to put up for auction. It's somewhat of a conspiracy theory, but this all might be well planned. Everything happens for a reason, where one service/platform has been going down after the other. I don't believe it's coincidence. In that regard, I expect more shut downs to follow in the coming months.

This was something I definitely wouldn't want to see become reality, but it unfortunately did. Result is that thieves (US government) steal from other thieves (BTC-E), and thus the fair and square traders are trying to get rid of the bad taste in their mouth due to the losses they suffered. People are getting sick and tired of the US government acting as a world wide law enforcer. Obviously, the wrong is still with the main figure(s) running BTC-E since they are ruthless thieves (if they really end up being responsible for the MtGox hack).

The main BTC-E forum account and their official twitter account were also acting like everything was just fine, perhaps due to the fact that they are nothing more than muppets, and not entities with any role of significance.

It seems that this is indeed the case, unfortunately. If the chances were like 10% of getting anything back before this, it's now practically sub 1%.

I kept warning people for Bitfinex, but I myself kept also using something that turns out to be a shady thief hole. So yes, that's quite an expensive lesson for just using an exchange due to its 'privacy'. I have been a BTC-E trader since very early 2013, and never have I been asked to verify myself. That's why I liked it so much, but turns out, it came at a very high price. I am not sure what to do at this point - I could contact a lawyer on Monday to gain information on how to approach this, and to know if it's even worth to proceed with any sort of legal actions. What else is there to do?

It's all about lowering your overall risks, and opening/closing various positions in advance of a certain happening. In this case, with the higher price, it wouldn't hurt to cash out like 10-15% of your profits. It will make sure you have some extra fiat on hand that you can later use to buy with at lower levels. If the price after that doesn't happen to go down, it won't be a problem at all since you just cashed out like 10-15%. If you follow this way, you'll benefit basically from any direction the market is heading to.

That's not a downside at all, but just something you personally see as such. Instead of waiting and staring at the exchange tickers, you could just set yourself some strategically placed buy orders on various lower levels. If the price happens to fall down, which in most cases always happens to a certain extent, you'll (1) never miss out on buying at lower levels, and (2) you can do whatever you want without worrying about what and when the market is going down. In the last months there have been various great dip buying opportunities - if people still didn't manage to buy those dips, they are just too dumb to take advantage of them. Or they are dreamers waiting for the price to drop even further, where from there they completely miss out due to the price going back up again.

Overtaking Bitcoin in terms of its market cap has already happened by various alts where Ripple has been the largest, and isn't a problem at all. The main point is that noobs think that just because a certain coin reaches a higher market cap, they automatically think Bitcoin is overtaken, and exactly that is where they go wrong. Market caps in 99% of the cases don't correspond to their actual market share and level of usage. I have seen an altcoin reach a market cap of $1000 billion some months ago. That easy it is to cheat the market cap list.

At this point it doesn't really matter what way they follow to activate Segwit, essentially it's just Segwit and nothing else. If we look at the situation right now, then the split side that people here are massively speculating about (BCC), is just an altcoin, and a cheap and dirty trick of massive holders to gain an insane amount of profit basically instantly. They have absolutely zero moral problems making Bitcoin suffer for their own personal gains. It serves people well to remain conservative with their predictions, as a short term bear market isn't very far away. Having a decent amount of fiat aside that you can put into action is always a wise plan.

I am amongst those having a decent bit of value stuck in BTC-E as we speak. It's +$10,000 in fiat and +5BTC that we're talking about. So yes, it was/is indeed an unpleasent situation.

I seriously don't hope so, because that would mean the chances of getting anything back are lower than ever (not that I have much hope right now). I am even willing to discard the $10,000 I have sitting there, just to get my BTC out. At this point there is nothing more to lose, so it's always better to get something out than nothing. Funny thing is that I was on the brink of depositting another 5BTC for trading purposes, but for whatever reason, I didn't do so. At the end, the 'losses' aren't as big as they in potential could have been - at least a positive tint to a negative situation.

Just like it didn't had any value at the time Bitcoin's market cap dominance took a dive below the 50% mark, it also doesn't have any value right now. Altcoins are well known for having their market caps be extremely inflated through various cheap tricks. It was funny reading through all the noob posts stating that Bitcoin was going to be overtaken, because Ripple and Ethereum were about to surpass Bitcoin in terms of its market cap. People still don't seem to understand the difference between actual market share, and market caps.

Exchanges suspending their trading activities temporarily are doing the right thing, which basically gives people no incentive to keep any sort of Bitcoin value on whatever exchange. Exchanges that at first glance aren't planning to halt trading, might be reversing trades at some later point. In that regard, people should carefully think through everything before they put their coins at risk due to their greed. Aside from the greed people are dealing with, they also suffer from laziness. They rather leave their coins in an online wallet service, for the sake of easiness, than downloading a desktop client where they as sole owner have access to their private keys. But as always, people only learn at the time things cost them big time.

Promoting something to make it more interesting for people to use it as currency, doesn't work when people (1) don't want to use it as such, since it doesn't add any sort of advantage over fiat in terms of shopping (especially on local level), and (2) it is mainly being used as investment, store of value, etc. Important factor is that if people spend their coins, where after that the price jumps up like mad, people feel bad. If the price goes down before people are looking to purchase something, they have to add funds in order to purchase the same object, or they just halt it completely, with the result of them again feeling bad. Clue is that whatever they do, there is no feeling of satisfaction.

It's Bitcoin that we are talking about - if the price starts heading down, people will forget about their positive thoughts and views on the market, and will likely start dumping their coins. We've seen this happen very recently, where the sentiment changed from being very positive, to a more negative form. Exactly at that time people started to speculate about the market going down to below $1500 again, and even close to the $1000 level. After a while, the price jumps back up, and people instantly let their negativity make place for positivity, and they think we're heading towards $3000-$4000 again. People here are as volatile as the market is, that's a definite fact.

It's pointless to speculate based on if this or that will happen so close before a **potential** chain split, that might cause the market to move through a bear market for a certain period of time. Important to realize is that the only entities that have a major share of influence on what might or might not happen, are miners themselves. Until that time, it's better to remain conservative with your speculations. By now it should be clear that miners aren't fighting for Bitcoin to become stronger, but to fill their pockets in any way, shape, or form.

Ok, so just because you are looking to earn a few pennies through signature campaigns, you hope the price won't come down? Sorry to say, but signature campaigns are not a way to earn a lot money - especially not if you are not even a jr member. People are invested with tens of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin, even millions. They in most cases aren't complaining at the time the value is going down, but you start already sweating because your potential penny earnings might lose value... Get a proper job.