It's not a lot of volume if you just process the numbers of HK, but if you bundle all the countries going through economical/political turmoil, the volumes suddenly aren't that bad at all. In fact, this is only the start. I expect that the situation will be much worse in the forthcoming years, which will only drive Bitcoin adoption to the next level in these countries.

Another important fact is that a lot volume isn't being recorded on sites such as LBC, but settled truly peer to peer where only the sender and receiver know that the transaction took place. There is no viable way to measure the volume this way, which directly shows that Bitcoin is doing its job exceptionally well.

No one agreed because it was pure fud. You can't expect to say something that is factually incorrect without being pointed at that. Please read both opinions of yours above and tell me how fundamentally different both opinions are. It's not an attack on you at all, so please don't see it as such, but there are newbies reading through this forum too, and they might take your initial words for granted.

If these appraisal services would be something people pain any attention to, domain hoarders would register thousands of domains because there are literally thousands of unregistered domains as we speak, that are said to be worth hundreds and some even thousands of dollars by these shitty sites.

Some domain sellers even purposely use these valuations to trick clueless people into thinking that they are offered an insane discount if they buy it. Don't fall for that shit.

What more options are you looking for? The best options have been presented to you above.

If you don't know how to set up BTCPay server then ask someone trusted on this forum to do it for you, or explain to you how to do it.

In the end, whatever you end up doing, it will cost you something. Centralized payment processors charge a fee, and BTCPay server requires you to pay for a hosting plan.

What they suspended OP's account for is called spoofing. It means that they suspected that OP was opening orders without the intention of having them filled, all to "manipulate" the market.

I personally believe that OP was unintentionally opening and closing orders in quick succession, probably because he wasn't sure about what to do.

https://www.trlm.com/knowledgebase/what-is-spoofing/

Emotions and panic are mostly the result of people using borrowed money to trade or invest, or they use their savings and go all in. In that regard, it's not really a surprise that they aren't comfortable seeing the market turn against them.

If you only allocate like 5-10% of your net worth to trading or investing, and don't go all in immediately but use smaller fractions for each position, then this market's fluctuations will turn out to be more endurable, because your losses are very small.

Preferably, people shouldn't even consider trading or investing without understanding how this market works on a TA level. A lot of the more recent movements were just a matter of time to happen and could have been prepared for weeks before. Combine that with strategically placed stops to prevent severe losses and you won't suffer much if the market turns against you.

Nigeria is unstable so it wouldn't really surprise me if they ended up doing that, but I hope they have a few brain cells with some sense in them and combat the offenders instead of the tools they use.

If they ban crypto entirely that still isn't a 'solution' at all because people with bad intentions can still easily set up similar schemes and scam people. It's already illegal and severely punishable, so what will effectively change when they ban crypto? I'm inclined to say that it will make things even worse because these scams will be the only options available to people chasing profits.

I expected Roger to be super loud about it everywhere on social media, but it seems that it has gone past him, or he has paid sockpuppets to do the work for him now he has to maintain a more serious image as head of an exchange.

Either way, it seems that everything we see news outlets report about nowadays has some fundamental agenda behind it, either to discredit Bitcoin, or to get the price to tank. The crap that's been written about hashrate drops and burned mining farm is an example of that. There is no shortage of ignorant people in crypto so these news outlets will keep spewing fud.

I wouldn't be surprised if the block halving is already calculated in today's price. Similarly, the Bakkt launch was/is calculated in today's price.

Think about it, most people are already aware of the block halving and that the price tends to go up prior to the actual halving. People with a high degree of certainty have bought in already and from here on they just wait for the price to go up, just like you are hinting at.

People bought in last year waiting for a bull run; they failed
People sold at the beginning of this year expecting $2000 or even $1000; they failed
People bought in this year hoping for the block halving to initiate a massive bull run; how high are the odds that they fail again?

The point I'm making is that people are actually preparing themselves for certain type of events or outcomes, which only increases the odds of a counter move.

Crypto Reddit and Bitcointalk is where most of the speculative clowns hang out. Price up = moon and price down = the end is near. They surf on the flow of the market.

Twitter is a platform people tend to put thought and effort in their posts, and they generally seem educated and therefore have a more rational thinking. This however doesn't mean there aren't trolls and whatnot on Twitter, but definitely less from what I have seen than on Reddit and Bitcointalk.

Not sure how much value there is to extract from these sentiments though. Perhaps that measuring sentiment amongst news outlets will provide some useful data points.

Last year's end wasn't bullish at all. A lot of longs were crushed when we fell from $6000 to $3000 while people expected a bull run. I get where you are coming from where usually, seasonality kicks in in the fourth quarter, but it seems that the market had other plans last year. I was expecting the price to go up too and paid the price for it. 

I would only consider going long on altcoins when they have consistently been indicating that the trend has actually changed. Right now that is not the case so I rather don't touch any. People have been trapped two or three times now with the altcoin pumps thinking altcoin season started.

It technically is already happening. I'm not sure if you follow the collectibles section on this forum, but there have been various initiatives in form of people issuing their own physical coin or paper'ish wallet, either directly loaded or they can be loaded by the buyer. They're used as currency too without anything even moving on-chain, which means that this form of money is fungible too.

In the end, it does depend on trust because the issuer of these physical means *could* have a copy of the keypairs or used an unsecure system to generate them, but it works. We have that evidence. Currently it's still a niche market, but it wouldn't surprise me if we get to see an attempt to get these to go mainstream eventually. The best thing of all, nothing the government can do about it.

No one puts his savings in Bitcoin for just a few weeks to hedge fiat's annual inflation.

As you know, Bitcoin might not be the best hedge against inflation short term wise, but if your time horizon is at least a couple of years, the volatile nature of the market in the short term shouldn't be much of a bother with how Bitcoin only needs a couple of months to undo years worth of inflation. Charts don't lie. It's there for everyone to see.

In the end, there is a risk to anything you do. It doesn't matter what asset you choose as hedge against inflation, nothing guarantees that it will work as intended if you only park your capital in that asset for a short period of time.

My apologies for my combative reaction. I should have phrased it differently.

I still don't see how that's funny, because all you are doing is follow the general permabull narrative where there simply isn't anything of use in other platforms.

I'm not particularly a fan of Vitalik (far from it actually), but there are some amazing developments happening on top of Ethereum when it comes to DEFI. My personal favorite is DAI, a decentralized stablecoin that self regulates its peg to the US Dollar. Amidst the shitload of centralized stablecoins we have in this space, it's refreshing that a problem is actually solved here, or at least, attempted to.

There is another interesting view;

Libra being paired to Bitcoin on exchanges similar to how USDT and USDC are paired to Bitcoin. It will help to funnel in a whole new flood of capital we didn't have before. In essence, all people have to do is to connect their Libra wallet to Coinbase for example, and the whole KYC/AML procedure is completed in a super quick fashion.

If we ever see Libra become something like USDT and USDC, I'm pretty sure it will have a significant impact on the whole crypto market. It will also help reduce the impact of an implosion of USDT. I see many benefits here.

Coinbase is the most regulated exchange in the space. It has been that for quite a while now. We also have Bakkt. This however doesn't mean that there won't be any wash trading. It happens everywhere, but the difference is that if done wisely, it's hard to spot, and even harder to actually prove.

The Asian exchanges that generate like $500 million in volume every day don't put any effort into obfuscation of their wash trading maneuvers. If you think about it, why would they? The noobs who they attract through index sites such as CMC don't get to read any of these reports. They're a deer in the headlights.

Also, why don't you want to drop that exchange's name?

You'll notice before the delisting announcement that something is about to happen, because most exchanges dump their stash first, then after that announce the delisting, and then there is another wave of selling going on because of people panic knowing that their coin will be delisted. In other words, there is time to anticipate on that second wave if a coin gets dumped down a lot out of nothing.

Insider trading has become so common that most traders already adapted and now use that to their advantage, because it's almost a guarantee that a second wave of selling will happen.

The funny part is that they will probably keep growing now more and more exchanges start to enforce KYC measures. I'm pretty certain that even those who say that Yobit is the worst exchange ever will eventually end up using it to get rid of airdrops/forks or to trade a few shitcoins.

Yobit's Alexa rank seems to point in that direction too with how they keep gaining a higher rank consistently; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yobit.net

I'm surprised they haven't yet gone full wash trading mode, which would significantly boost the traffic to their exchange. You got to give them credit for that at least.

Firstly, I like your physical store. It definitely draws the attention of anyone walking by.

What I am interested in is finding out whether or not the actual blockchain.com has been in touch with you regarding your domain? It's so similar that it's difficult to avoid confusion, especially when the link to whatever page you refer people to is long and people only read the part that says https://blockchain.com. Pure curiosity.

Did you see Bitcoin's trend this year? It's still up like 130% after a 43% correction. If we go back in time exactly one year; Gold is up ~26%. Bitcoin is up ~22%.

What usually happens is that when investors think certain events may affect the price of Gold, or even Bitcoin, they'll buy into it hoping that those who seek a safe haven asset do so too and further inflate the price. In other words, investors are front running future demand. It happens in every market pretty much.

Looking at the Gold price right now, it seems that it has topped out for now and is consolidating sideways. I'm kinda leaning towards a retest of the lower $1400 area or even $1350, which would provide a nice entry point. Just like Bitcoin, Gold won't keep going up endlessly without a solid correction every now and then.