Not at all! Fiat money is not a bubble because they are mostly backed up by a physical asset like gold. Any country can't print unlimited amount of money to circulate in their economy. They can only print according to the value of their gold deposits. So the value of money is directly co-related with the price of gold and that's why Gold has been used as a safe investment vehicle since decades. One investor may not make much profit from holding gold, but it can certainly protect the capital investment.

On the other hand, bitcoin is not backed up by any physical asset. It is just backed up by the public trust which doesn't have any monetary value. It's just an emotional quotient. Bitcoin is riding high on positivity and that's why it's price is also increasing. So bitcoin can be called as a bubble, but not fiat.

Bitcoin was initially started from the viewpoint of a free economy worldwide. Where any particular government will not have power to control and manipulate a particular currency. Bitcoin also talked about the shift of power from the governments to the common people. Bitcoin believed in "One world one currency" kind of imagination. However, a lot has now changed and bitcoin has mainly become a heaven for investors and traders. Even though we are seeing a lot of business are built around bitcoin, but the motto is one, Profit.

However, the present trend also has a lot of positive side as well. Like employment. I personally know some people are earning a decent amount of income from various crypto related activities right from the comfort of their home and not looking for a job outside. As bitcoin provides an alternate profession for them, they are not getting in to job seeker crowd which certainly reduces some pressure from the already worsened job scenario. So that's a positive side to it. 

It's too early to say whether it is a good or a bad move. If Australian government just want to fight money laundering and Terrorism financing, then it has nothing to do anything with the general users like us who earn money from trading and other related activities. So the framework provided by the government needs to be assessed. However, I am sure that no one would mind paying a little extra tax on their crypto earning if they get legal status in return of that. So I believe it will be good for us in general and can have a positive impact on bitcoin as well.

Even though I am a veteran in trading, I am an absolute newbie in mining related matters. I have never tried to mine because my laptop is very old with Intel i3 processor. However, I have recently purchased a new gaming laptop with i7 processor, 12 GB ram and 4 GB DDR5 graphics card. It is still on the way and probably will receive it within another 4 days. I am planning to mine Bitcoin Gold which are going to be created after the upcoming hard fork.

Can anyone please help me with a step-by-step guide of bitcoin gold mining. I need to know from the beginning as I have no idea about mining.

Thanks in advance!

Coinbase and blockchain. info are online wallets. Even though both are time tested and trusted but it is always better to go with a hardware wallet instead od an online one. If you are planning keep just a small amount of bitcoin, then you can try online wallets, it will give you convenience of use from any internet environment.

However, if you are looking to invest a good amount of money in to bitcoin, try Electrum wallet. It is a lightweight wallet and you don't require to download the entire blockchain in to your computer. It saves both time and space for you. Just download and install. That works!

Probably yes! We are going to see some level of dumping like the last hard fork. However, I expect that only from the short term profit seekers and not from the long term investors. Also bitcoin gold will see a lot of dumping because everyone has taken a lesson from the last fork. When BCH was created, the price was standing around 600+ USD and people expected it will increase, hence a lot of people kept on holding that. But the BCH price decreased so 300 USD level. So I believe that bitcoin Gold will be dumped in most cases and not bitcoin. People will try to make some quick profits from bitcoin gold trade but will not risk holding like BCH as they have learnt the lesson from last fork.

Probably yes or probably not! But there is one thing for sure that government can't control the bitcoin. They can probably put taxes on it and put heavy regulations for the businesses built in bitcoin platform. But they can't control it. Governments can ban it or legalize the bitcoin in their country. They can also choose to remain silent as well. However, if government start taxing on bitcoin, it will be a good move towards its legalization. Bitcoin users worldwide are still unsure about the legal status of bitcoin and I am sure they won't mind paying a little tax on the bitcoin earning. So if a government start taxing on bitcoin earning, it will be a win-win situation for both of us. Government will earn money and bitcoin users will have peace of mind. But controlling bitcoin by a government is not an option. 

Building a central bitcoin bank means bitcoin being centralized so it is against the basic goal of bitcoin. Bitcoin has received immense popularity around the world because it is decentralized and paved the way for cross-border transactions with a minimum fees and without the consent from the regulatory agencies. So if it happens and if a central bitcoin bank starts regulating the bitcoin, the value will start decreasing slowly. Instead of creating a bitcoin bank, it will be good for bitcoin if the governments around the world start taxing on it and legalize the businesses build on bitcoin platform. That will be a very good move towards the main stream inclusion of bitcoin which will push its price to another level.

I will call it an organized attack on bitcoin community and we will have to be prepared for more such attacks. They will try to bring us down but we need to keep out head high during tough times. But one thing I am surprised about that Hedgeye is not a bank or any financial institution. It is just one financial blog like many others in the market. So I believe it is a publicity stunt because they will receive a lots of new visitors from bitcoin community to the blog. Or else, the CEO might have received a good amount of bribe from the financial sector to publish such articles. But when JPM CEO could not do any damage, this article will remain as another laughable example of an attempt to attack bitcoin community. We better start ignoring such news going forward!

I have read quite a few articles about Satoshi owning around 980,000 bitcoins which he mined during the early days of bitcoin. However, none of them are sure about his bitcoin address. And till date I haven't seen an account with that many bitcoin holdings. So it may not be true entirely. But truly I feel that Mr. Nakamoto deserves to be a billionaire for his path braking innovation and should have given Noble prize for creating an alternate economy which can't be controlled by anyone. So whenever we will talk about free economy in future. Mr. Nakamoto will definitely be highly regarded for creating bitcoin, a decentralized currency for everyone.

I believe you are talking about bitcointalk profile ranking here and your question is, how you can rank up. There are only two ways to rank up. Start making quality posts and spend more time surfing this forum. Also please see the below link. The ranking system of bitcointalk is well explained here,

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

Also please remember, that this forum hate spammers. So if you reply in some thread, make sure your reply contributes to that thread. A spammy single line reply is usually not welcomed. Good Luck!

The most attractive part of bitcoin is its price and nothing else. Bitcoin doesn't have any other good factor other than the price. I am a long term investor in bitcoin and generated a huge profit from trading activities using bitcoin. Also I mostly hold my earned bitcoins looking at the future potential. Bitcoin has a huge potential for the future and I want to reap that benefit. Otherwise, bitcoin is not a good choice for transactions. Because an average time for a bitcoin transaction is 30 minutes. Which is the main roadblock for bitcoin to be accepted as a mainstream currency. So for me, bitcoin is a great investment asset only and I prefer ETH and IOTA as transaction facilitator.

The presence of so many alts and tokes are actually ruining the crypto currency market. The amount of investment bitcoin should have received, is getting divided due to the presence of so many alts. So bitcoin is not growing as desired. However, the point you raised is completely valid. With increase bitcoin value, the alts are getting devalued compared to bitcoin but not compared to USD. So it is better to use alt/usd pair for trading instead of bitcoin. But I truly think that so many alts are not worth having in anyone's portfolio. There are only few alts which are actually good and technologically superior than bitcoin. But other alts are mostly worthless.

Yes, there are altcoins available in the market which are better than bitcoin in technological aspects. Like ETH offers near instant transactions with low fees. IOTA offers instant transactions with no fees. However, bitcoin is not just regarded as the first crypto currency to facilitate only transactions. Bitcoin is a great investment asset where people invest their hard earned money to get a better return than any other conventional investment.

However, currently we have ETH as the closest contender of bitcoin. The market cap of ETH is second best after bitcoin even though price is very different than bitcoin. But it is not entirely impossible that some coin will replace bitcoin in future. The example you have used is right. We are still waiting for google. But ETH looks like a sleeping giant to me which could possibly become the next big thing.

If you have a long term outlook and investment plan then go ahead and buy bitcoin without hesitating. The price may look higher today, but if you are thinking of 2018, you may not have a chance again to buy bitcoin at this price. So go ahead and buy. However, take the route of dollar cost averaging. That means, try to buy bitcoins at various price points at a certain interval. It will lower the risk of your portfolio. This "dollar cost averaging" method is used for real-world stock investment. Do a little google search and you will come to know about it.

It is very hard or almost impossible to tell what should the buying price for bitcoin in future because bitcoin is on a ride now and the market is showing both upward and downward trends. So if you wait for the perfect time to buy bitcoin at a cheaper cost, that may not come again ever. Instead take a calculated approach. Fix a certain amount to invest in bitcoin on weekly basis. Lets assume, you want to buy $100 of bitcoin every week on Monday. So execute that plan regardless of the price of bitcoin. This way you can average out your buying price because at different weeks, bitcoin's price will be different as well. Sometimes higher and sometimes lower. So you will have both price points for you to invest. This averaging method is used for buying stocks since a long time. Just execute it for bitcoin as well. It will lower the risk of your portfolio.

Yes, I somehow think the same. Because to reach that 10 million USD mark for one bitcoin, the market cap needs to be even bigger than the size of world economy which ain't gonna happen in any way. I can even think of trillion dollar market cap for bitcoin but that won't bring the price up to even 1 million price point. So honestly 10 million is a distant dream for me as well. I will be happy if bitcoin can cross 20k USD mark because that is my goal price and then I will be able to leave my job and travel the world for the rest of my life.

Job and trading, both in hand is a good combination and very much needed. Job will offer you a limited amount of income every money, but the income is assured, you don't have to worry about your daily expenses. Where as trading will give you some extra cherries on the top of the cake. There is no particular method or strategy to get a good income from trading. No matter how technically strong you strategy is, your speculative power plays a big role in trading which no one can teach you.

A lot of resources available in google to learn about candle chart and other technical details but nothing comes handy in times of trouble other than your speculative power. Try to track the market very closely for initial few days. Find a time of the day when most of the traders worldwide are online and active. You will see some significant changes in market dynamics at that time. track it for 10 days and try to find an average movement of coin price on the basis of time. Then try your luck accordingly. That's a small strategy I followed for sometimes before I moved in to arbitraging. 

Bitcoin is not backed up by any physical asset like any fiat currency. Most of the fiat currencies are backed up by Gold and Silver. But we can say that bitcoin's value is backed up by public trust worldwide. The more people trust and invests in bitcoin, the more the value will go up. If the investors start feeling negative about bitcoin, they will start selling and the value of bitcoin will come down. Recently when China announces ban on ICO, a lot of Chinese investors started selling their bitcoin holdings which increased the bitcoin inflow in the market tahn the demand, resulting in price dip. So we can say that bitcoin is backed up by public trust in a way.

The bitcoin was initially started with the idea of being a virtual currency and not as an investment. However, being a pioneer in crypto market, bitcoin started getting a lot of investment from worldwide and based on the normal demand-supply rule along with few other factors, price started getting increased. Due to which bitcoin slowly moved to become an investor's paradise.

However, at the current scenario, bitcoin is not fit for becoming a currency because of its huge transaction confirmation time. The average time of confirmation is now 30+ minutes which makes it not fit for daily use. Also the factor you stated, is very true. The price is so dynamic that the cost of a  pizza can become double within few days. So fiat is best for daily use and purchases and bitcoin as an investment, at least for me.