Even though it's just Bitfinex that touched the $2000 level, I am very happy with how we have come to this point. I made a nice screenshot from Bitcoinity's ticker at $2000 with the yellow all time high signals. If you at the end of 2016 would have asked me whether or not I thought the price would touch $2000 this year, my answer would be a clear no. But I can happily say that I was wrong. How often does it happen that you're wrong, but it plays out in your advantage big time?

In terms of cold hard returns in percentages, altcoins do offer better *potential* returns, correct. However, it's important to look at what risks you expose yourself to before actually looking to start trading altcoins. In the same way that they can get pumped sky high, they can also sink down very deep. In most cases altcoins are just meant for pump and dump purposes, which is exactly why a lot people get attracted to them. Important for you to realize is that when you dive into such a coin, it will be nothing more than a gamble. If you want to take the risk, then it's all fine. If not, then just avoid altcoins.

Gamblers are not telling you everything. Sure, they might make great occasional profits from time to time, but what they don't tell you is how much they lost before that. Look at it from this point, how much value has gambling when you have won $10K in the last 30 days, while if you look at your results in the last 12 months, you are down like $100K? It's capital desctruction, and nothing more. Gambling is a poor mans way of trying to get rich.

Obviously, manipulation is the main aspect of altcoins. In most cases it's a group effort of a few entities that control the far majority of the circulating coins. Look at Ethereum and Ripple, they are the perfect example of how entities are just buying up their own coins, with the result of the price going up to current insane levels. What happens in the meanwhile is that they are slowly unloading their insanely expensive coins. In other words, those that are buying at current levels will get eaten alive. I was feeling sorry for those that were buying at current levels, but it's now turning into something funny, because seriously, what sheep buys 1ETH at $110?

I am a trader, so I will cash out some coins just under the $2000 level. Not that I believe the price will crash very deep, but more that as soon as Bitfinex touches the $2000 level, that a decent dump will show up either directly, or max an hour or two after that. Mark my words. From $2000 to very low $1900's, or even below the $1900 level, but I don't expect it to go below $1850.

In most cases that's indeed the main cause of an exchange with poor capacity to go down temporarily. I have been (still am) experiencing this with BTC-E from the first day of me using that exchange in early 2013. Till this day they haven't been able (whatever the reason might be) to offer people a properly working platform at peak traffic moments. In case exchanges really suffer from a ddos attack, they mostly throw out a public notification stating exactly that.

Bitcoin has the overall advantage, but that's mainly due to its digital nature. It's basically an unfair question to task here on a Bitcoin forum as obviously 95% of the people have a bias towards Bitcoin. Put this same question in the spotlight there where the average joes are the far majority in number - outcome will be completely different (in the same way, it will be an unfair question to ask). Especially in the way that these people like the physical aspect of Gold - it adds an extra bit of value to Gold.

Who are you to tell people to not hold Gold? People can hold both Gold and Bitcoin alongside each other without any problems.

People for once should stop with putting a label on Bitcoin saying it is this or that, it's pointless. Bitcoin is whatever you want it to be - it all depends on how you use it. I personally use Bitcoin mostly as an asset tool, but there are enough people that use Bitcoin as currency tool. How can anyone then say that Bitcoin isn't a currency? Mind your own business...

Bitcoin jumped to the $2000 level? Not sure what exchange you have been looking at, but it's surely one of the plenty rubbish exchanges that there are available. These exchanges have no liquidity, no availability in tradable coins, etc. With just a few thousand bucks you can bump the price on a rubbish exchange to like $3000-$4000 without any problems. You should only look at the exchange rate of the major exchanges - namely, Bitstamp.

How stupid of me, I wasn't even paying attention to the exact number of the circulating coins of Ripple. I kept focusing too much on the +$12 billion market cap, completely overlooking the fact that by value per coin/total supply, Bitcoin in market cap is already surpassed (which obviously is completely meaningless). Gahh...

Ripple is going nuts with a market cap of nearly $12 billion right now. I feel really sorry for those that enter the market at such ridiculous levels. But this isn't anything surprising, neither is interesting. The far majority of the coins are in the hands of a few entities that nearly fully control the supply of circulating coins. It basically means that a very low number of coins is available on-exchange, and thus it's easy to pump the price to insanely high levels (as is happening right now). It's purely an artificially created shortage of tradable coins. It has absolutely nothing to do with legit demand that causes the price to go up.

It's Bitcoin's speculative nature. Everything is being used to make the market move into a certain direction. Why? Because it always works. After the SEC review something else will be put up front to move the market. Now the price has increased nicely over the last weeks, it's likely time for some negativity. Easy thing to fall back to are the hard fork speculations. It's now sitting in the background, but it doesn't take much to fire up another round of panic by sponsoring certain negativity minded articles to shake up the market.

I agree that current price is on the higher side, as in overbought, but it all depends on your target at the end, and whether or not you have coins already. If you haven't got any coins at the moment, and believe that the price will reach x amount after a certain period of time, you have a target to aim for, and thus you can justify (according to your targets) buying at current levels. Thing to keep in mind is to not go all in - have enough fiat aside that you can use in case the price happens to go down. It will allow you to lower your average buying price. Other than that, the $2000 level isn't anything special. Eventually the price will move past that level easily.

If you don't see any risks in investing in Bitcoin, then you're not a trader/investor yourself, or you see this as something you do just for the fun. Bitcoin does have a bright future, that's correct, but it's very dangerous to look at Bitcoin from your point of view. Don't forget that even Bitcoin is mainly being used as speculative toy by market movers. How sure are you of yourself that you won't dump your coins if the market suddenly looks like a complete mess? It's a common thing for those that don't have proper market understanding to be completely bullish today with current levels, but turn into bear mode the next day as soon as the price goes down with 10-20%... In that regard, the danger is more the self control aspect - to prevent yourself from selling in panic. Holding might seem easy, but it requires pure dedication.

A bank showing people's Bitcoin/crypto balance alongside their normal banking balances - haven't quite some people in this forum been begging for having something similar like this become reality? It's a good first step. Second step will be that people from within their banking platform have the ability to directly purchase Bitcoin and other crypto through Coinbase. Although it not being a huge thing yet, it's good to see that certain banks like to innovate by pushing crypto in general out of its 'shady' jacket. Governments legalizing Bitcoin, banks being crypto friendly - this will greatly contribute towards adoption by the average joe that was holding back because the media quite often stated that Bitcoin was used as currency in the underwold. I am very happy with this.

Paying is not a solution as mentioned before. I understand that it might feel like you have no other option, but look at it from this point -> If you have been willing to pay once, why wouldn't you pay for a second time? Perhaps for a third time? Those that are desperate enough and end up paying, have important files to safe, and exactly that puts them in a very easy to extort position.

Of course, it's a perfect opportunity for the Chinese government to steer the mainstream media into stating that Bitcoin is a virus. Seriously, if you have to explain people that Bitcoin isn't a virus at all, it tells a lot about how low the general IQ of people is. The severity of this attack shows that businesses, banks, universities, hospitals, etc, don't take system security serious at all. In most cases it comes from running older windows versions that don't receive any updates to fix security holes anymore. Penny pinchers.


What's up with the 8btc site? It always takes ages to load.

Yup, but the far majority of the people are only here to earn money. Bitcoin's decentralized aspect and the technology that powers everything are not of any importance to them. Browse through various banks accepting Bitcoin type of threads, and you'll see how many people like the idea of banks incorporating Bitcoin. Certain people prefer to remain a slave of the old corrupted system it seems...

People are happy because institutional capital will make sure the price eventually will reach levels beyond what people consider realistic at this point. If you ask people if they want to see the price reach $15,000 or $20,000 at some point, they obviously won't say no. But indeed, in worst case scenario Bitcoin will become a toy for institutions and whatever other big money entities. I personally don't have any problems with that, but I understand why others may not really like this. Either way, with or without ETF's - current holders will win big time.

Don't write the governments off like they don't know what Bitcoin is. They are very well aware of what Bitcoin is and how it works, and that they and their corrupted mafia banks are completely outruled. It's not for nothing that certain countries hold a defensive/aggresive stance against Bitcoin. In case of China, they absolutely hate everything that allows people to move wealth from their country to another. Bitcoin is perfectly suitable for that job, and that's exactly why I don't believe China will ever approach Bitcoin in a friendly manner.