I wasn't aware of Nigeria having actually banned Bitcoin usage? As far as I have been hearing and reading, they published notes that are solely meant as warning to make people aware of the high risk that crypto currencies and connected projects carry with them. The warning came after MMM has stated that it would accept payments in form of Bitcoin. It's just an informative measure that is solely meant as making people aware of ponzis operating in Nigeria, where OneCoin is also one of. I can't find anything pointing towards the Nigerian government having banned the use of Bitcoin.

Basically that. It really surprises me that there are still people not being able to understand that whatever you do with your coins, that everything can be traced quite easily. Another point of simple ignorace is the fact that they think these coins can be mixed, or be sent to an exchange where after that you convert these stolen coins into whatever altcoins. I can't think of any serious service or exchange that hasn't been notified about the addresses the stolen coins have been sitting in. It doesn't cost services and exchanges any effort to have a small bit of software constantly keeping an eye on these addresses, and pull the trigger as soon as they get a deposit from coins sitting in these wallets, or at some point have been sitting there.

It's funny how people like you keep complaining since the problem is obviously you not having included an appropriate fee according to the situation and byte weight of your transaction. Even with the recent spam attack I never had to wait very long to get my transactions confirmed. In 75% of the cases it got included in the next block, and if that didn't happen, then it got included in the block after that. Just adapt to the situation and don't be stingy when it comes to including proper fees. It will only work against you as it will make you wait and wait.

At this point the stock market has no proven connection to the Bitcoin market. Institutional traders will rather pull out of stocks and just sit back and look how the market is doing, than to dive into Bitcoin with the result that the Bitcoin price goes up. If they plan to temporarily stall their money elsewhere, then there are other options with a whole lot less risk these traders can go to. So far the current price has been subject solely to Chinese traders that were enjoying their no fee platform. Interesting is how the price will behave in the coming months now it will turn out to be a costly practice to pump and dump the price.

Bump.

It's a combination of the sanctions put in place by the PBOC and the Chinese new year. Don't forget that western exchanges mostly follow what Chinese exchanges are doing. So if the markets in China aren't moving, western exchanges won't move either. I think it's safe to say that the current stability is quite a nice happening after all the volatility that we have been experiencing lately. I am sure that the volatility addicts are bored to death right now.


Still trying to convince rookies into believing your theory? From your last 6 posts, 4 posts are about how you think it's looking like 2014 again.

What exactly do you mean by that? Bitcoin as it is, aside from governments putting whatever ridiculous sanctions in place, can be used everywhere at any time. In some cases financial institutions and other related businesses aren't allowed to work with Bitcoin in whatever form, but that doesn't affect you as regular Bitcoin user. It's only that you need to be more creative when it comes to acquiring Bitcoins if you live in a country where businesses aren't allowed to deal with Bitcoin and crypto in general. You can either offer services here on this forum, participate in signature campaigns, look for people selling Bitcoin face to face, etc. No matter what sanctions businesses in certain countries are subject to, there are enough ways to collect yourself some coins.

At this point the markets are fairly calm, so I am more interested in finding out how their volumes will be when the market gets active again. If these Chinese exchanges are still lagging behind, then it's obvious that we have been fooled even harder than we could imagine with their fake volumes. Poloniex is having a fairly calm day, and that exchange generated +15,000BTC in volumes last 24 hours. But let's not get too hard on them as the Chinese new year might play an important role as well. But one thing is sure, I like current stability a lot. I wouldn't mind seeing this stability last for a few more weeks.

Downward bend? I am sure you are doing exactly what a lot other people are doing, and that's looking at small time frame charts. Open up up a 6 month chart, where you start looking at the price in August 2016, and draw a line to the levels where we are are sitting at right now. You'll see that we are going up in a nice and steady manner. Just don't put any value in looking at the short term peaks and dumps that you see. They will give you a wrong view of how the market has been performing.

At this point the question should be - What will it take to finally settle above the $1000 level, where after that the focus can be pointed at reaching $2000 somewhere in the coming years. Perhaps that the actions put to work by the PBOC could make the price go up in a much more sustainable manner, now creating massive pumps and dumps will turn out to be a costly move. Instead of blindly pumping and dumping done by whales, every move needs to be calculated precisely at this pint. If they make a wrong move, it may cost them significant amounts of money/coins. That's why I don't understand that some people see the actions put to work by the PBOC as a bad thing. It's the best thing that happened to Bitcoin in years.

Damage is already done, so in that regard, there is nothing that they can do to brush up their public image. I am quite skeptic in this situation, but I am 100% supporting any initiative that may lead to people being compensated with coins, and not some worthless token-equity that people can't really do anything with. If these coins end up being "returned" to Bitfinex, then they must be used to compensate users that were subject to a 30% haircut on their balances, as that's the only justifiable action...

I assume you're making use of an online wallet service that is asking these bits of information from you? If you just stick to PC clients such as Bitcoin Core, then there is nothing required from you information wise. If you're a business selling stuff for PayPal, then the fees are indeed steep. But the main benefit is the great level of acceptance that PayPal is enjoying. Especially when you consider that if you buy stuff with PayPal, that it's only the selling party that ends up paying the fee, and not the buyer. Plus the buyer enjoys their much loved buyer protection. If you look at it from that perspective, then there is no real point for these people to ditch PayPal any time soon.

Altcoin trading is more like gambling since there is no way for the average person to know what will happen, since the majority of the altcoins are only created to feed the operators (e.g. empty projects). If you look closely at people that are trading altcoins, or investing in altcoins, then it's clear they just hope for a pump to happen. In some cases repetitive patterns can book you easy profits, but that happens only once in awhile. You can't solely depend on these repetitive patterns unless you only trade when they show up. But that will make you an occasional trader. It's easy to speak for people, while in reality making profits whilst trading isn't so easy at all.

I am from Europe myself, and I can't recall hving seen any article or bank publishing that sort of news. Can you link me to an article, or name up these banks in question? Because I find it highly unlikely at this point.


Banks have no interest in centralizing Bitcoin since they aren't interested in Bitcoin at all. Only point of importance that they see in Bitcoin is the blockchain as technology. That's why they have been putting millions in developing their own version of the blockchain. If they at some point manage to develop a blockchain where they remain the central authority, and include all kinds of other features they see value in, then it will not be a problem at all to have some sort of digital token connected to fiat running at the same time. It gives people all the benefits that people have with Bitcoin right now, but then with the bank being the central authority.

You forget one simple and very important thing. For the average joe the volatility is probably one of the most important reasons to avoid Bitcoin. If you look at it from their mindset, then I can't really blame them. If you deposit $1000 into your PayPal account, then the next weeks/months you are guaranteed that you can buy things for the same amount of money. But with Bitcoin it's either it has gone up in value, or down. In case of the latter option, these people will obviously get less from their money since the value of their coins has dropped below the $1000 value they bought at. In order to buy the same, they have to add money. It's an inconvenience for these people. That's why in most cases people take PayPal's fees for granted as it offers them maximum security.

Without speculation, basically every market on the planet would become so boring, that investors will simply refrain from investing money there, refrain from investing money into infrastructure around whatever market, etc. Volatility attracts money, and indeed creates nervous people making bad decisions that lead to others making profit. Money always moves to stronger hands. Look at Bitcoin, without speculation, do you really think the price would have gone up this high? No chance. It's not for nothing that Bitcoin is being seen as a speculative investment tool for the most part. Infrastructure as in huge mining farms, exchanges, services, etc. It all drives on the price that may or may not boom at some point.

Compensating people in form of worthless tokens that people can exchange to a certain amount of equity in the main company is not really a worthy compensation if you ask me. People simply want their cold hard coins back. This "comensation" is just set up to keep people their mouths shut for a good while.


It's indeed funny, but at the same time quite a desperate call as well. Especially if you consider that there might not have been a hack at all. But in case these coins are really stolen due to a hack, then a bounty could be a last resort option. If you don't try, you won't gain anything. But there is more to it than simply a reward. I am sure that they try to contact the "hacker(s)" in the hope that they make a mistake where they potentially can be traced one way or another. Nothing will be done without a reason. Thieves won't be rewarded just like that.

Guaranteed profits don't exist, so yes, you can't expect to make a certain amount of profits every year. You'll make what you make, where at the end of the year you'll see how much profit you actually gained. Point is that if you know what you do, that you can create a profit buffer with the right trades that you make. This buffer will be sufficient enough to catch up occasional losses by trades gone wrong since you can't predict the market. I am of course referring to trading Bitcoin and not altcoins. Altcoins fit in a totally different category, which I personally believe is in fact very close to gambling.

Flash trading was the number 1 reason people were using these Chinese exchanges, and now all of the major exchanges have enabled fees for their trading platforms, where these flash traders are now put off-side. I quite often have seen how in a matter of seconds several +10,000BTC orders were dumped into a more than equal amount of CNY to catch up the dump and scoop up a slight profit percentage. If you look at profits of 0.1% per time, then it doesn't seem like much, but if you do that plenty of times every day, then do the math; 0.1% of 1BTC = 0.001BTC in profits and do that x a few thousand BTC (for the purpose of this example let's take 3000BTC) 3000 x 0.001BTC = 3BTC just from buying and selling into their own orders. It's a simple but more than effective/profitable manner of flash traders where they exploit the weakness of other traders their bots that aren't programmed well enough.

Wrong. PayPal as we speak has nearly 200,000,000 active registered users.


Bitcoin can be sent without a fee, but that's not recommended since you'll either have to wait days before it gets confirmed, or it doesn't get confirmed at all. And when it comes to low value transactions without any fees, they have 0.01% chance of getting confirmed. In order to get your transaction confirmed within 2-3 blocks, at least 0.0002BTC in fees is required.

Other thing is that PayPal doesn't charge you with fees when it comes to sending money from your account balance or connected bank account. Fees apply when you're making use of credit/debit card. And of course fees must be paid by the receiving part when selling stuff.


Yup.


Yup, but as said before, confirmations are important here too.


If you work hard for it, how is then earning for free? You deliver something and get paid for it. Not what I consider to be free.