We can't blame anyone, nor does it make sense at all - everyone has the right to think whatever they want, so if 75% of the people who voted think that we are in a bull market, I have nothing against that. It would be strange if we all thought the same, and it's always good to have different opinions, which means that in the end we won't all be wrong.

As for the six-digit numbers, the question is whether the approval of the ETF can result in more than a 100% price increase, because the approval is one thing and it will certainly "sell" well as news, but the question is whether investors will show interest in trading in that way with BTC. The US is of course a very specific market and everyone is counting on the fact that a huge amount of Bitcoin will be withdrawn from the market to ensure that the funds can trade, but you should also keep in mind that spot BTC ETFs have existed for some time in many countries (Canada), but they have not attracted a lot of interest.

Of course there is an alternative, but how many people even know what Lightning Network is and how to use it, even on this forum? In addition, in order to use LN you have to open a channel, and to do that you have to pay an on-chain fee, which is again a problem when the fees increase significantly. What will happen if someone comes up with a way to make LN transactions disadvantageous in any way - the new LN?


Interesting thinking, I don't know what on-chain transactions should be for and why we use them all the time? If by some chance you invented Bitcoin, you would probably have invented LN first, and only then Bitcoin, so today we wouldn't have problems with fees because everyone would use LN - really genius

You just decided to write everything that obviously came to your mind first without even asking yourself if there was any truth in it. It is true that you can pay for many hotels with Bitcoin, but you can also buy a plane ticket, a car or food in a restaurant. Thanks to payment processors, you can pay with Bitcoin almost anything you can think of - but the idea of Bulgaria as the country with the most Bitcoins has long been dispelled.

I personally am not convinced that we are in a bull market because, as some have already mentioned, it is more than obvious that the majority are betting that the ETF will be approved and that is why the price is rising. If the decision is positive, we can expect that on the wave of this news, the price of BTC will rise even more, but it is difficult to speculate about percentages.

If the decision is negative, a correction is possible (and probable), then all expectations will be focused on the halving, the effects of which will probably be visible only in the second half of 2024.

Maybe some would survive, because the third world war would certainly not be fought only on Earth, but also in space - given that some countries also have what is called Space Forces, and even today there are weapons capable of disabling/destroying satellites. Given that satellites are the greatest spies and see absolutely everything, any country that would like to gain an advantage in war would certainly try to disable enemy satellites.

---

However, I wonder what is in the mind of a man who wonders what would happen to cryptocurrencies in the event of a world war - then it all boils down to saving your life, and not worrying about the price of Bitcoin. In addition, in such a war, the internet as we have today would go down in history, because the key infrastructure would mostly be destroyed, and without the internet, cryptocurrencies, as well as any trading that takes place online today, would no longer actually exist.

Sooner or later everyone who uses Ledger will have to do a firmware upgrade because otherwise the device will not function properly, or some functions will be disabled. Now the only question is whether someone thinks that Ledger is telling the truth when they say that the seed cannot be shared without the user's consent, or it have some kind of backdoor that has actually existed forever and the new firmware is just a trick to make everyone feel safer at least for a while.

Ledger unfortunately fell into the "don't store more on it than you can afford to lose" category.

Maybe this is another in a series of topics about how the fees are too high these days, but considering that a lot of members are literally disappointed that they can't use Bitcoin the way it should be used, maybe we should clarify some things so that everyone would not continue to pretend that we live in a world where we should continue to expect that Bitcoin will become a global means of payment that will be used by just about everyone.

Bitcoin has long since become a money-making machine, and in order for the machine to work well and be profitable, it needs to be given a little extra energy from time to time, even if this means that it will have a negative impact on its main task. While the average user who just wants to send an on-chain transaction has problems and is looking for a solution to the problem in a single free transaction accelerator, let's try to summarize who all benefits from the fact that fees have exploded.

Miners certainly benefit from what I personally call "ordinal madness", and suffice it to say that in recent days the rewards per block amounted to over 10 BTC, and considering that the reward without fees is 6.25 BTC, it is clear how much their profit has increased. Without going into any conspiracy theories, isn't it logical to think that some of them (miners) have their fingers in all of this? Who knows, maybe we'll find out one day.

CEXs (centralized exchanges) also benefit from high fees, not only because they can increase their service fees more than necessary, but because high fees discourage most of their clients from withdrawing Bitcoin to their non-custodial wallets. Let no one be fooled that the people behind such companies have any good intentions towards Bitcoin, they only care about profit and they don't care what they will generate it from, that's why they support hundreds of shitcoins without any problems regardless of what they know that bunch of people will lose their money trading with that garbage.

Creators of altcoins who will use every opportunity to say that their project is better than Bitcoin and that their transactions cost only $0.01 and that you should invest in their project. What they will not tell you is that the security of their transactions is so great that you have to wait for several days to be sure that your transaction will not be messed up in some way.

Economic and financial experts are perhaps the last, but no less important in this story. For them, moments like this are a time in which they rejoice because they think that the idea of Bitcoin as a currency is collapsing before our eyes, and of course they say this all the time. On the other hand, they have nothing against Bitcoin being "used" to generate profit, which again leads us to the fact that the idea of Bitcoin as a currency should be "killed" in every possible way, and on the other hand, trading should be encouraged.

In the end, it's no secret that the whole world has its foundations in centralization, and above all, finances are important because they control people most effectively. Bitcoin as an idea is dangerous in that sense and I have no doubt that "they" will do everything to reduce that idea to mere trading and nothing more than that.

However, you should not be pessimistic because I believe that there are millions of those who own Bitcoin and they will not give up so easily, and if we have ever been at an advantage, it is today, because we understood what Bitcoin is much before them and we have much more of it than them. If they want it, I tell them "the price is $10 million per BTC" and only if you ask me nicely

A few years ago, some data showed that as many as 265 000 households in the US used dial-up internet, and although that number is certainly lower today, some still have super slow internet. I think many live in the illusion that the entire US looks like downtown New York or some big city, when in fact there are parts of the country where everything looks like time stopped 50 or more years ago.

I don't believe that Satoshi was waiting for some internet revolution to happen to let the genie out of the bottle - it just happened at the moment when everything was ready. In addition, even today around 35-40% of people in the world do not have access to the Internet, and 15 years ago this percentage was significantly higher.

Well, at least that question is easy to answer - you just need to invent some super drug, a strategy to sell it and a way not to end up in prison after all that. Considering your profession, you are probably familiar with the case of Purdue Pharma and their OxyContin, and all you need to do is learn from their mistakes and you will be a billionaire in the blink of an eye

When you succeed you can send me a tip of only 1% because I gave you a good idea - I only accept BTC

Same thing with me, I selected one random transaction and it was successfully accelerated. It seems that many had a rough start to the new year and are still sleeping, so the number of 100 available accelerations is available almost throughout the hour.

I don't know why @LoyceV gets a message that his TXID doesn't exist, maybe because mempool currently purging transactions < 23.1 sat/vB and free services don't accept them for that reason. If he increased the fee to 25 sat/vB, maybe then he would succeed.

There are about 8 billion people in the world, and if about 2% own Bitcoin, I would conclude that it is not exactly a success after 15 years? Of those 190 million, how many actually use Bitcoin on a daily/weekly basis? I would say less than 20% if we go back to the time before the ordinal nonsense, and considering that most people have never (and probably will not) use Bitcoin as a currency, then we don't have to fear that what you are talking about will become a problem.

What is important in the whole story is that the miners are happy because they earn extra profit, and on the other hand, various crypto messiahs also enjoy the fact that their clients are forced to keep their Bitcoin on CEXs. Who cares what people think on this forum or anywhere else, we are the small players at the bottom of the big pyramid.

Wasn't FTX just a continuation of what preceded the collapse of the entire market? The collapse of the project launched by Do Kwon had an even greater effect on the cryptocurrency market, because we are talking about tens of billions of dollars (and some say over $100 billion) of damage. It will never be clear to me how anyone can trust people who at first glance seem incompetent, not to mention the fact that one of them already has a history of bad business moves.


How can you talk about destabilization and at the same time say that Bitcoin and altcoins are "increasing"?

Given that this forum is located on a server in the US, do you believe that one day when China becomes a "dominant superpower" (whatever that means) that same China will conquer the US and ban this forum?

China has already had internet censorship for a long time, as has Russia, where this forum is banned - but that in itself speaks volumes about them as countries that are actually regressing in terms of human rights, regardless of the theory about some kind of superpowers. At the moment, decentralization would only be possible if the forum were moved to a server located in a country like North Korea, but let's ask what would happen only then, not only in the sense that the forum would come under general surveillance, but that the privacy and security of all forum members would be threatened, unless you think you can be completely anonymous online?

Maybe then you should write about your business illusions somewhere else, not on the Bitcointalk forum? Have you noticed that your topics are disappearing or being locked? The forum is sending you a message, and if you continue in the same direction, you will surely have much more time for your odd jobs

How about you think a little and put some things in order in your head and stop thread spamming? First you claim that Bitcoin will help you to be financially free in 2 years, and now you admit that you don't own Bitcoin at all? The problem is that you don't have a strategy at all, because otherwise you would already have a solid stock of BTC that you could keep for the long term.

It is quite logical that you sell BTC or use it as a currency, but is it such a big problem that you take 10% of every job you get paid for and invest in Bitcoin? Therefore, I would not say that your problem is that you are too broke, but that you simply do not know how to deal effectively with what you have.

If you've been watching the forum for a long time, then you should have already come to the conclusion what it can be considered a quality post, but you also have to know that the concept of quality is something that not everyone experiences in the same way. Some post that according to your criteria is of high quality and helps you, may not be in that category for others. The reason may be that the content of that post is something they have already read many times, or even that it is plagiarism or an AI generated post.

What you completely overlooked is that many members appreciate posts that are in some way funny, cynical or ironic and in themselves do not have the quality you are talking about. At the end of the day, the point is that you are unique and that you are really interested in what you are writing about on the forum, because otherwise you are just one more spammer in a sea of spammers who become irrelevant.

I wouldn't agree if everyone knew that fact, because if they did, such a massive FOMO wouldn't have been created. I think that the majority still lived in the delusion that the price would eventually reach much more than $20k, although realistically, even that price was a big surprise for those who understood a little better what was actually happening.

From everything I read on the forum, many members still do not understand the difference between futures BTC ETFs that already exist and the possible approval of spot ETFs in the US.

However, I think retail customers are definitely not in the same financial position as they were in 2017 given the inflation rates that have occurred since then. What I want to say is that the amount of money at their disposal is far less than before, and the price of Bitcoin itself plays a big role in all of this.

However, it is a big unknown how the market will accept spot BTC ETFs, because regardless of the fact that the market seems to really want it at the moment, theory and practice can often be completely different.

Of course he didn't sell it, he used it to focus the attention of forum members on that account, and now the only question is what was his goal with all this. However, all this is not important now, because Ratimov, or whatever his name is now, has been banned according to the moderator's statement.

It's not his argument, but he got the idea from people who posted that thesis years ago, and we even have an identical topic title on the forum. This idea, or rather the question, is attributed to a certain Rick Falkvinge, whose article you can search for, although there is nothing particularly clever to read.

Will Bitcoin do to Bank what email did to the post office?

You think that El Loco will do something for Bitcoin in Argentina, and at the same time he only talks about the dollarization of the country and his first visit was precisely to the US where he bowed to the American powers and probably said to himself "In dollar we trust".

What will Colombia or Suriname do with Bitcoin, receiving payments for shipments of bananas or for cocaine? Not to mention that none of the other countries mentioned in this context have the political power to do what El Salvador did. Besides, why the obsession with Bitcoin as legal tender when something like that is not necessary at all for Bitcoin to be a functional part of society?