LN isn't a solution to that. It's just one (currently very dominant) second layer, which we in the future will see compete with other second layers. I don't rule out to see a second layer gain more popularity at one point.

People often look at LN as being Bitcoin's path to scale, but you don't really scale anything aside from the second layer itself. Bitcoin's main-chain is still slow and expensive relatively speaking, that won't change any time soon.

SegWit on the other hand is an actual scaling implementation. It brought a 20-25% transaction throughput increase and some bug fixes. Better something than nothing at all I would say.

I tend to agree, but the focus should also extend to Calvin Ayre, a billionaire with the funds to initiate these massive pumps and dumps and at the same time attack other networks.

A lot of the financial backing comes from Calvin, which people tend to ignore because they think Craig himself is a billionaire, which he clearly isn't. Craig is Calvin's muppet and he knows exactly how to make him say and do things.

And then we can also look at the rest of the nChain squad that are providing him the necessary means to scam people. Roger Ver for a while provided support to Craig as well. Scammers paradise.

Fundamentals don't really play a role of importance. Bitcoin pumped to $20k on very poor fundamentals, then tanked to $3000 on improved fundamentals with SegWit activation and LN gaining some traction.

Fundamental analysis is helpful when you try to look two or three years ahead, but is near worthless in the short term unless we have an event coming up such as the block halving which usually causes the price to become more active.

Each pool people think controls a large chunk of Bitcoin's network, consists of thousands of smaller miners pointing their hashrate to them. It's not as centralized as it may seem by looking at the pie charts of the hashrate distribution.

Positive development is that there have been various proposals to further decentralize the network further by for example allowing the individual miners to choose which transactions they mine instead of the pool operator.

Even you as smaller miner with just a few thousand dollar worth of equipment will be able to contribute. Isn't that something to look forward to? We're here for the same reason, which is to see Bitcoin succeed.

It's funny how when there is something negative going on in the precious metals world, JPMorgan's name always pops up. It wouldn't surprise me if they have something to do with this.

Every central bank has a database of the serial numbers of each gold bar that they own, yet duplicates managed to sneak their way into their reserves. This to me looks like this shady activity is purposely condoned.

I find the reaction of people trying to poke fun of gold not really justified. They act like the bars are not real gold but that's not the case. All bars are 99.99% pure gold-- just the brand stamps are manipulated.

I'm not sure if the majority of people took advantage of $3000 levels. The sentiment amongst people was that the price would drop below the $3000 mark to hit a bottom of either at $1800 or $800.

As mostly is the case, the majority turned out to lose again because the market did the opposite and started to make higher highs until we hit the $14k. Smart money accumulated back then, dumb money dumped hard.

Remember, dumb money buys when prices go up because they expect further price appreciation, and dump when the price is going down because they expect it to tumble even further.

It's a 'joke' people don't seem to be keen on accepting as such with all the clowns we have predicting the price to go up and down. They only show up and claim being right once they are lucky enough to actually be right.

Honestly speaking, you seem to be leaning towards one of these type as well. Also, you being right holds no significance if you don't put your money where your mouth is. So convinced yet nothing you did to benefit from this 'obvious' drop.

Thanks for bringing this up. As we speak we have have closed a weekly candle above the 200MA and as long as we don't see a sudden change in Bitcoin dominance, we'll get two consecutive closes above the 200MA.

I am however not sure how much impact it will actually have since it hasn't been an average we have contacted before, either to provide support or resistance. Time will tell but the altcoin dominance chart looks quite ugly.

Altcoins lost the longer term ascending trendline that supported their dominance and it will take a miracle altcoin pump that lasts months in order to get 2 or 3 consecutive weekly closes above it.

Or perhaps there is less demand for shady activity currencies than people think. Most people aren't drug dealers or scammers so using Bitcoin in combination with a mixer is more than enough privacy for them.

Most of the demand comes from people wanting to get rid of their exchange taint, which is what mixers allow you to do perfectly fine. People always assume there is so much dark web demand while that isn't true at all.

XMR and some other privacy coins have seen some uptick in use, but the prices have been quite volatile lately so it might have been the speculative side of crypto that drove the use up slightly.

The 300 million users Telegram has is nothing but a metric used to make click-bait headlines. Most of the people who use Telegram are semi tech savvy and know about Bitcoin and crypto in general already.

The people actually interested in Bitcoin aren't going to wait for Telegram to finally start offering Bitcoin trading-- they already do that on existing crypto exchanges and probably will keep doing that even with Telegram in the picture.

Being a little more positive about Telegram and Bitcoin trading, it's of course always a good development to see more players enter the trading field. More trading platforms means better service at lower cost.

This is the first time this year news coverage of CSW is actually worth reading through. We have been bombarded with so many crap articles that only helped him gain even more sympathy from his delusional supporters.

Nothing will ever be enough for CSW's supporters to distance themselves from him. All this bad publicity is helping him to play the victim card which then yields even more loyal supporters.

This case while CSW technically lost it, hasn't yielded the other parties anything since there isn't anything of significance to pay out. CSW got his much needed dose of publicity, the rest got nothing but hot air. Nice.

Of course I do not want to support that system, but I have seen it myself how people have been subjected to so much horror just for not paying taxes (which governments call tax evasion to make it sound worse) that I don't want to ever go through that myself.

I can understand why you may not like my view on this, but we're all different and not everyone is as daring as you are to not pay a penny in tax even when they force you to do so. In other words, you choose prison time over paying tax.

I'm however not sure how long you will be able to stay firm in prison. You're going against an entity that doesn't care for a single moment that you are suffering in prison for decades until you finally realize this torture isn't worth it.

I feel some sort of an aggression in your posts. I honestly am a bit more down to earth and try look at things without being overly biased to either support or reject a certain stance.

It sucks that wealth inequality exists, but if you zoom out, and then I mean go back hundreds or even thousands of years, the wealth inequality we have today isn't all that different from what people were subject to back then.

Wealth inequality is even something that plays a role of importance in the animal kingdom. How can we combat something humans and even animals are 'programmed' to do? It will never change.

I don't see why the blockchain is being overhyped to this extent, especially with how databases offer more efficiency and scalability, and for governments very important, more control and less transparency.

I personally never liked the idea of one world currency that's supported by governments around the world. I like the fact that I can own a basket of different fiat currencies depending on how each country performs economically.

Technically speaking, Bitcoin is already that, but then without governments controlling it. The people are in control, that's what makes it so powerful. It's an escape from a system that doesn't intend to change.

As far as we know it's just the intention that they have of launching at that day. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up delaying the launch for whatever reason to work on some things in the background.

For such a well respected entity in the financial world as I.C.E they have been quite amateurish with their Bakkt subsidiary. Throwing with launch dates without a CFTC approval was one of their ugliest mistakes.

As for the rally you're expecting to see, we probably have seen the price already have these events priced in. In most cases investors and traders front run events well before they actually take place.

Baseless prediction. If I am convinced of a dump to happen within 48 hours, I'll try to trade it and go short. If you're just hodling (thus don't plan to sell anything) I don't see why you're so hyped up about a potential drop?

The thing with predictions is that you can always use the unpredictability of trading as excuse. In other words, you're pretty much backed up even when you're wrong because you can always point to that aspect of trading.

I think people are getting frustrated by the sideways price action and become more bearish as result of that. Sideways accumulation doesn't really have to have a bias towards a certain direction. It can just as easily spike up.

Investigation that will expose the scummy business that's going on inside Bitfinex and Tether. I rather consider that money to be lost and be surprised one day when it returns when investigation doesn't expose Bitfinex.

Bitfinex has been a shady business for years now, well before Tether was a thing with its wild printing of unbacked tokens. They admitted to have bought Bitcoin and not have the 100% backing they promised you to have.

Don't get me wrong, I hope people will get their money back and that they withdraw every single penny to never use that exchange again, but I don't consider that a likely outcome.

Apparently, the shiller that the scam company hired did his work well and convinced him of the profitability. People when in the midst of a sales pitch some times feel bad to pull out and reject the offer.

$1200 in 7 in days might seem unrealistic to people here, but average joes usually associate crypto with crazy high gains, so it doesn't really surprise me that they continuously fall for these high return scams.

As stated above, the price development this year has been quite an important factor as to why liquidity is being taken out. It has also lead to a shift of focus of the general public from development to blind speculation.

If we however look at the available liquidity in dollar terms, it has held quite well throughout the last couple of months. Higher price means you need less satoshis to reach a certain dollar amount. Definitely not the end of the world.

It's easy talking right now, until you come to a point where you realize that no amount of money is worth the torture and imprisonment the government gangsters subject you to when you don't pay your taxes.

I am against certain forms of taxation as well, but that still isn't worth it to me to not pay anything and risk very long prison time. You only live once, so why make things unnecessarily more complicated for yourself?

I do wonder though, what made you become so aggressive against taxation? Have you been treated unfairly because of a dispute between you and your tax authority?