Looking back at 2017 and 2018, one thing became clear and that is the never die attitude of the true Bitcoin investor/user. We are as stubborn and tough as a Honey Badger and we fight to the bitter end.

Ask yourself if any other disruptive technology like Bitcoin would have survived this long, bearing in mind that we are being attacked and challenged from all sides. <Governments and Banks and competitor coins>  

We took these challenges like scaling and we ran with it and our developers came up with a novel solution <Lightning Network> and now we are getting back up and running with that.

Let's wake the Honey Badger within us and continue the fight to Bitcoin to Mars!  

The sMerit in my opinion was not meant to be a push mechanism to get people to rank up quicker, but rather a reward system to give acknowledgement to high quality individual posts. If you want to "push" someone, then I would suggest scrutinizing their post history and just giving sMerit for the posts that deserve the sMerit and not all the sMerit for one single post.

I have also seen some posters with a high quality post and I re-visited their post history to see if the post was a once off or if he/she posted several high quality posts like that before.

A single post with say 50 sMerits will draw negative attention from other members and will be frowned upon.  

I see a lot of people are using Alt coin investments as their Plan B and I would not advise people to do that. We only have to look closely at 2018 to see why that strategy would fail. The reason for this is simple, because in 2018 the Bitcoin price went down and most Alt coins took a hammering at the same time. <Bitcoin and Alt coin investments fall under the same umbrella of Crypto currency investments in our portfolio.> 

Your portfolio <Plan B> should rather diversify into other asset classes and investments that are not linked to Crypto currencies. 

The Satoshi vision for Bitcoin was for it to function as a alternative P2P payment network, as stated in the Bitcoin White paper. Satoshi realized that centralized payment networks and even government reserve currencies was highly ineffective in a changing global financial system and that most of these centralized payment options was corrupted and exploiting people.

Satoshi then developed this software to function as a alternative option, if people wanted to break away from these systems. Now, most people are not using it as a payment option, but rather as a speculative commodity. 

The SEC is just a regulatory tool that are used to push a political agenda. The SEC will do the groundwork and research for them, but they will not make the final decision. They are looking at things like how much control and surveillance can be used on technologies like this and if regulation cannot address issues like this, then they will deny applications like this.

The US Stock markets are fully regulated and controlled and surveillance software are monitoring every trade that are done. Can this be done with Bitcoin and can external markets influence these investment tools? If the answer is YES, then they will not approve the Bitcoin ETF's. 

We should always remember that Bitcoin is still in a experimental phase and that most of the scaling problems and solutions are still in early implementation phases, so a lot can still go wrong. Bitcoin is also seen by most speculators as a high risk investment and these markets are reportedly manipulated by a few whales. 

Do you really want to give up your day job for something that are highly experimental? 

The Bankers will say anything to mask the real problem that the global economy is failing, not just the US. All the political involvement with things like the Trade wars are protecting the US, but the other countries are suffering because of that and they will bring down the US economy if their economy fails.

We saw what happened with EU when smaller countries <PIGS> started to fall during the previous economic crisis in 2008/2009. 

I have read most of the replies in this thread and this seems to be the best bet, because you earn rent from the property and most property prices in a good area, goes upward, so you can still sell for a profit in the future.

Property investment is only a wise choice if you bought the property without debt <not having to pay all those interest> and if you buy property in a good location. 

Keep them coming, I can see a lot of people with good ideas. 

I am not so sure about that, even after I experienced a VERY good year in 2017. Most people who invested in Bitcoin in 2018 will disagree with you on that.  

Remember we do not have any guarantees that we would ever have a repeat of anything that happened in previous years. Yes, Bitcoin has loads of potential and it might happen, but it is not written in stone.

A lot of assets has a much longer history than 10 years to prove my point.  

It is purely Supply and Demand for most exchanges. On one side you have the Sell orders of people wanting to sell at a predetermined price and on the other end you have Buy orders of people who want to buy at a predetermined price.

Some people are saying that some exchanges are faking trading volumes and that some are even faking actual Supply of coins. <Fractional reserve type tactics>

No matter how this is done, most legitimate exchanges purely work on Supply and demand mechanisms. 

Let's just get something straight, I am not trying to tell people to sell their coins now, to invest in a Plan B, because that would be stupid with the Bitcoin price being this low. I just want people to consider investing in a Plan B, once they show some decent profits on their Bitcoin investment.

I am still buying bitcoins <because the price is low now>, but I will always have my plan B. I do not invest in Fiat currencies, because I believe they will all fail eventually and Stockmarkets are due for a correction, so I pulled some investments from that too.  

Very rare coins and stamps hold their value for a lot longer, and I like to collect it.  

Cancer researched data is very sensitive, so you should try to avoid putting this data on a public Blockchain if it contains people's medical particulars. The advantage of putting cancer research data on a Blockchain is that it is immutable and it cannot be changed by people with hidden agendas.

Donations for Cancer research amounts to Billions of Dollars and people who donate to efforts like this, would appreciate more transparancy on a public Blockchain to follow the progress of these experiments. 

A year or two ago, I was one of the lucky people who broke even with my investment capital and since then I made almost 800% profit on the capital that I invested in Bitcoin. I decided very early on that I would not have all my eggs in one basket and I started to sell some bitcoins to buy assets and also collectables <Old coins> to serve as a plan B.

How many people sold some bitcoins for some profit and used that profit to invest in something else, just in case something went wrong with this experiment?

If you follow the same strategy, please share your thoughts on what you are buying or planning on buying to distribute your investment portfolio?  

Why would people think it is a scam, if you try to explain to them that it is a good time to buy, when the price is low? Professional financial advisors will give you the same advice about Stocks and Bonds and/or commodities, if their price was low and showed potential to increase in the near future.

You just need to make it clear to them that Bitcoin is a high risk investment and that they would be taking some risk for a potential high profit yield in the future. <It is always their choice, so never force the issue> 

It looks like a scam, because you do not need to go to the Dark web to buy or sell bitcoins. The reason why most people use the Dark web is to obscure their real identity and their location via Tor. <It makes things more anonymous>

I would much rather just signup with a reputable exchange and buy and sell via the legitimate channels. People use the strangest tactics to avoid paying taxes and this just comes back to bite them in the ass, when the IRS do their audits.  

There are a direct correlation between traditional markets and Crypto currency investments in my opinion. When the Stock markets takes a plunge, professional traders starts looking for safe investments and Bitcoin and Crypto currency investments are not one of them.

A few years ago Bitcoin was seen as a good store of value, but in 2018 the 70%+ drop in the Bitcoin price smashed that perception with the average investor. Bitcoin is now a high risk investment and when prices on stock market shares fall, Bitcoin takes a beating too, because investors pull investments from high risk investments. 

I am a hoarder by nature and I know how valuable sMerit can be for others, if they post quality content and manage to rank up higher. Do we want to dish out sMerit left right and center to people who does not deserve it or do we want to manage sMerit in such a way to increase quality posters on the forum?

I would much rather hoard my sMerit and give it to someone deserving and share the forum with higher ranking quality posters. 

Giving sMerit just because you have to, will defeat the purpose of the sMerit system. 

Bitcoin's Fairy-Tale story are just beginning, but central Banks around the world will see their Fairy-Tale story ending very soon. The year 2019 will see a massive correction in the Stock markets and also Forex currency trading. People have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and they are pushing for change now.

Why do you need Central Banks to control the value of your wealth, if you can do it yourself? <Supply & Demand> 

Banks had their opportunity to dominate the financial sector and they misused their power, time and time again. 

Faith is tied to religion and Bitcoin is not a religion.  

My hope and dreams for this technology is something different and I think it is time for it to go ballistic.   <Launch to the Moon>
I hope 2019 will be the year when the Lightning Network goes mainstream and some institutional capital investors gets access to Bitcoin investment opportunities.

We are ready for the Moon!

Yes, Satoshi did not just release a piece of code onto the internet, he dropped a bomb in the financial world, by injecting the idea that Fiat currencies are not the only reserve currencies and that Crypto currencies can replace reserve currencies, if the people wanted that.

The idea sparked a whole new way of thinking about governments and reserve currencies and what decentralized payment networks can be, if you cannot take it down.

Bitcoin is a disruptive force!