This will come in handy for the following reason too, because I have family that knows I am invested in Bitcoin and they are constantly nagging me to sell more coins to fund silly things like holidays and cheap consumer goods. 

If you lock those funds <like a fixed deposit at a Bank>, nobody can force you to use those coins and you will have the perfect excuse when they come knocking for money. 

Non-Bitcoiners does not understand the concept of Hodling! 

Let's take the credit card companies as an example for this explanation. When a credit card is reported stolen, the service provider <Bank> are notified and the credit card is blocked. They are able to do that, because they have 100% control over that technology.

Now, let's apply this scenario to a Bitcoin address, where major merchants can be notified to block any transaction, that are coming from that address. <Think of Supermarket chains and Fast food franchises and also fuel companies.> Let's say you donated money to Wikipedia and your government does not like that, well they can link that address to you, if you re-use that Bitcoin address at any of these companies and they can push that information to a wide selection of other merchants and services that accepts Bitcoin payments and order them to block payment received from that address. <or any address linked to that Bitcoin address>

Ok, that might sound extreme in the 1st world countries, but a lot of dictators in 3rd world countries will not hesitate one second to do that to their citizens, if they had the technology enabled to do that.

Also, if people knew your Bitcoin address and they linked that to your personal information, then they will be able to gather a lot information from that one address. They will know how much money you have invested in Bitcoin and also what your spending habits are and even where you live. <You buy from a ecommerce site and they courier the goods to your physical address.>

This information in the wrong hands, can be very dangerous, so YOU have the right to hide that information by any means possible.  This is where the Mixer services comes in handy. :->

Is this legal? Probably not in most countries, but it just gives you the same level of anonymity, similar to when you withdraw cash from a ATM and spending it randomly at merchants.

Does this help criminals to hide their identity too? Yes, but as we have seen with the Internet, technology comes with it's advantages and disadvantages. The internet are used to distribute child pornography and enables terrorists to communicate and it is also used by money launderers to launder their dirty money, BUT it is used a lot more for legal things like emails / browsing useful information / ecommerce / social media etc.

Mixer services should not be branded as a tool for criminals, but rather be applauded for it's contribution to our financial privacy and protection from all the criminals and Con artists out there.   

These are just some of the reasons why we should use Mixer services to protect our financial privacy, there are lots more. {Financial Stalking /Bribery/Selective Marketing based on individual spending habits/Kidnapping  to name a few}

The open Wifi should not necessarily be an issue, because the device was designed in such a way for you to execute and validate <confirm> transactions on the physical device. So even if a third party gained access to the data that was send between yourself and the device, then they would not be able to transfer coins from the device without having physical access to it. 

This is why it is safe to use these hardware wallets in any scenario where you have access to the internet. I know some people did manage to extract private keys from a Trezor hardware wallet a few years ago, but they had the physical device and they had specialized tools to do that.

This is why it is one of the safest methods to store your coins. 

I think you highlighted the most important part in that article, where it says that Japan is planning to create their own Blockchain based payment network, so they will not be using the Bitcoin token. This is actually bad news for Bitcoin if that is true and it is also very sad that they opted to take that route. I was under the impression that Japan was one of the countries that was running in front with Bitcoin adoption and legislation but it turns out that they have ulterior motives to do that. <They cannot ban Bitcoin and then develop their own flavor of Bitcoin and force people to use that, so they allow Bitcoin as a stepping stone for their own private coin in the future.> 

I guess I am not very motivated to attend the Tokyo Olympics now. 

There are so much fake news <FUD> being spread around that it has become difficult to believe "rumours" like this. I have seen the leaked images and it looks like a piece of white paper were stuck onto a phone screen to give the impression that it is the real deal. 

Yes, if this is true, then we will see a massive increase in adoption but wallets like that would become a major target for hackers and SamSung has a poor record to do quick updates when vulnerabilities were found in their software. 

Transaction fees has not been a issue for more than a year now, so I do not see why this is such a burning issue now. You can transfer any amount of money on-chain for a few cents these days and if you want to pay even less for micro transactions, then you can use the Lightning Network. <Cheaper & faster than on-chain transactions> 

I think a lot of people are still stuck in the past, when they heard about expensive transaction fees prior to 2017 and they have never re-visited the scene to determine if it was still the same or if something was introduced to solve those problems. 

A lot have changed since then, with the introduction of SegWit and the Lightning Network. 

Ok, first of all, nobody can give you a 100% correct answer on this question. Whatever they say would be pure speculation.  

We know that a SEC decision on a Bitcoin ETF is pending and that it would definitely have a huge impact on the price, but that will not happen within February anymore, because of the US government shutdown.

We also do not know if there will be any other positive or negative news that would be announced soon that would impact the price, so we just have to wait it out. We know that people are still investing in mining farms and also manufacturing and distributing of Bitcoin ATMs, so this is not going to end Bitcoin if the price drop a little more.  

The world has to know that Pandora was released from the proverbial box and nothing will be the same again. Nobody can stop Bitcoin now, the protocol are running on a global decentralized network and people are working hard to expand the supporting services, like Bitcoin merchants and Bitcoin ATMs. We have even seen several projects that are geared towards creating a scenario where Bitcoin will be made independent of the Internet infrastructure. <Running directly from Satellites>   

The network of Bitcoin users are growing and investors in services that supports that is growing. <Decentralized exchanges and new features like the Lightning Network>  We also have mining farms popping up like mushrooms, which shows us that everything is still happening in the background. 

Ok, be honest.. How many books did you read and how many courses did you complete, before you invested into Gold or Silver or shares in Amazon? Most investors just follow the financial advice that are given in the media and they look at investment trends in general. I would say with a high degree of certainty that most Bitcoin investors just followed the trend too, when they decided to invest.

Monkey see, Monkey do behavior is very common and this is fueled by the "Keeping Up with the Joneses" mindset. If I have to explain this, then I would say that most people heard about Bitcoin from some family member that made some good profits in 2017 and prior to that and they wanted the same kind of returns on their investment and they decided to buy some bitcoins too.    

I was one of the lucky people who ranked up to Legendary before the merit were introduced. I have to tell you that it was not "easy going" to reach this level, because a lot of other things were going on at the time. A lot of people were against signature campaigns at the time and some still are, so our posts were put under a magnifying glass and frequently reported for spamming.

It takes a lot of effort/research/grammar checking and reading to constantly provide constructive <quality> posts and sMerit is still important, even after you reached the highest ranks. <sMerit requirements for some Sig campaigns>     

I have to say one thing, you guys have some balls! Investing in a time when the Bitcoin price went down constantly and the difficulty going up, must have been a very scary scenario. I also have to say, I have seen people investing in new businesses in 3rd world countries, when other people were running away and when things stabilized in those countries, those companies made huge profits.

Those companies had a huge head start on their competition and they also became a recognized brand in the local community. I hope mining farms like yours will be rewarded in the same way, when things turn around for Bitcoin.  

Governments does not determine Bitcoin's success or failure. Most governments are elected by democratic votes and when this government fails to produce the service delivery that are expected of them, people should vote for a new government that can execute that mandate.

Trump was voted in based on his celebrity status and social media manipulation and now they are suffering the consequences of a bad decision. Walls have never stopped people. <Example Berlin wall / Great wall of China / Israel >, so why will the wall between Mexico and the US, be anything different?  

How can anything be 20x faster than Bitcoin with the Lightning Network? They are comparing Bitcoin <without the Lightning Network> to their distributed ledger technology and that creates a false representation of the actual speed of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin with the Lightning Network offer users almost instantaneous transactions and to be 20x faster than that would be impossible. They are also not saying if this technology is centralized or decentralized or permissioned. 

Absolutely spot on.  

I have dealt with a lot of merchants before and the general sentiment from these merchants are that the coins being spend are not sufficient to heighten their interest to support it. They have to make changes to their payment system to accommodate for Bitcoin payments and they have to train their staff and this is costing them time and money.

A week ago I visited a local tyre fitment centre and I noticed that they removed the "Bitcoin accepted" sign from their display window. I queried this decision and the manager told me that they simply did not get enough Bitcoin business to justify the effort to support it.    

We should still support Bitcoin merchants, even if the Bitcoin price is low or more of this will happen.  

Ok, there are a lot of people that simply responded to this thread, based on the title and not on the content. You should take the time to read the content, before you post your garbage. <Just makes you look stupid, if your comments are off the mark> 

The point of this thread is to highlight that Bitcoin is more of a currency now that most of the speculators have left, than what it was during 2017 and 2018, when it was at it's peak.

Let's at least read the content of the thread, before we comment on it. 

The dot-com bubble was a historic economic bubble and period of excessive speculation mainly in the United States that occurred roughly from 1995 to 2000. Most large IT companies took massive hits during this period, but they managed to bounce back in less than 5 to 7 years and they are giants now.

Bitcoin is the largest Crypto currency out there and it can be compared to the large IT companies back then. Bitcoin will bounce back again and when it does, it will be larger than these IT companies combined. 

Who cares what JP Morgan predicts for Bitcoin, when they are widely regarded as Bitcoin's competition.    In any way, I have seldom seen any investment firm that predicted the Bitcoin price, correctly in the past. Their motivation for these predictions is mostly based on speculative greed and jealousy. <Because Bitcoin is targeted at their market>

We determine our own fate with the actions we take and not on what our competition wants us to believe.   

I doubt if any merchant will want to do business that way, because most governments want businesses to reveal their client tx's at a drop of a hat to fight money laundering. A lot of these companies have local laws to adhere to and the middle man will have to adhere to those laws as well.

We have also seen how vulnerable centralized services like this is to hackers, with the latest user data that was stolen from some prominent exchanges and sold on the DarkNet. 

Yes, Lucius.. we have not seen the last of the wild volatility that we were used to, but for now most of the volatility has died down and much of this is due to less speculators pumping and dumping the coins.

They will return in their hoards if the SEC approve a Bitcoin ETF and then we will see even more volatility than before. The current price stability has a lot to do with less speculators in the markets and people hoarding their coins in anticipation for the next Bull market. 

This should not stop people from using the currency. If you buy back most of the coins that you spend, then this will not influence you. I convert all the fiat that I would have spend on expenses and entertainment into bitcoins and then I use it. This way it helps to oil the merchant network and it stimulate the demand for coins.

The Lazlo excuse is getting old now and most people know how to use this to their advantage. <Buy at a low price and spend it when it is worth more or just replace it quickly>

The thread was created to highlight the fact that reduced volatility, strengthen the currency use case for this technology.