People should not place too much emphasis on the decision that the SEC must make on the Bitcoin Bakkt ETF. Take our destiny into our own hands and out of the hands of some government bureaucrats. We should focus more on increasing adoption and strengthening the merchant network and creating killer applications for Bitcoin to increase demand for the coins.

One killer Bitcoin application will be more beneficial to Bitcoin than the approval of a Bitcoin ETF. <Institutional capital is more volatile and dangerous for Bitcoin>  

I think the worst part of owning physical Gold are the paper trial it leaves behind. History in the USA has shown that Gold ownership can be restricted or banned, if the government wants to do that. It will be easy for these governments to track down Gold owners based on the paper evidence and then confiscate that Gold, if they wanted to.

Bitcoin owners protect their wealth with pseudo anonymity and no government can touch it, no matter how corrupt they are. Once they start banning it, Bitcoin owners can transfer it to someone in another country and they can simply relocate to their wealth. 

Try doing that with physical Gold. 

I think the escrow service fee ate up most of the bitcoins you bought. Can you check what percentage are they taking for the Escrow service? Normally all the buying and selling transactions are free on localbitcoin.com. Also check if you used the correct URL for localbitcoin, because people have reported that there are phishing sites that redirect you to the wrong site.

Where does Amazon come into this equation? <Did someone on Amazon refer you to localbitcoin for this trade?>

Max is wrong. The countries that are using SWIFT at the moment, would never shift to a payment network that are not controlled by a centralized authority. When something goes wrong, countries want to hold a centralized authority, accountable for their loss and they want full control over that payment network.

They will simply "upgrade" the old outdated SWIFT system, to be more effective and Banking groups like R3 with the help of Mike Hearn are already targeting that application with the payment network that they are developing.

It was definitely a Life changing experience, because I started to look at "centralized" money in a different way. I was one of those sheep who just followed the status quo and I never questioned anything that was seen as standard practice. Money to me was just a tool to accomplish a goal and I never even thought about it.

When I saw Bitcoin for the first time, a lightbulb went on and I saw financial freedom and financial privacy in a new light and that was the life changing moment for me. 

I think the intrinsic value are derived from the total value of the network of users and merchants supporting it. They feed the demand side of Bitcoin that are one of the factors that are used to determine it's price. People are saying that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but I disagree strongly with them.

If Bitcoin had zero intrinsic or fundamental value, then nobody would invest any fiat into it. Stocks and paper money also have intrinsic value, because it too has a network of people using and investing in it.   

There are a bunch of people commenting on John McAfee and he has nothing to do with this. The stats used in this article has come from a recent McAfee <Software company> report. It would be nice if people would take the time to actually read the article, before they comment on something. 

The malware incidents linked to Bitcoin will increase, because the pseudo anonymity of Bitcoin protect these criminal activities and the unprotected devices are on the increase. 

A lot of people are willing to pay lots of money for digital items like skins for their weapons or a piece of virtual property, but when they are confronted with Crypto currencies, they suddenly do a 360 and tell you that Bitcoin is worthless.

The moment when you convert fiat to digital tokens, it has a value. <Why would people pay for these tokens, if it had no value to them?> The difference between in-game currencies/tokens and Bitcoin are the fact that the value of these tokens are determined by the software developer and not on supply and demand like with Bitcoin.  

Stats like this is misleading, because it shows data that are cherry picked to fit the agenda of the poster. Yes, a long-term trader can be happy with those stats, but the short-term trader <1 year> will not be happy with these stats.

A drop from $18 000 to $3500+ is definitely not encouraging for any trader looking for a good investment.  People tend to look at the long-term performance of any stock, before they consider investing and that is the only positive thing that can be taken from this stats. 

I only transferred the coins that I had on some exchanges to my hardware wallet a few days ago. I reckoned that exchanges will be flooded with withdrawal requests on the day, so I did it well in advance. <I know some exchanges blocked people's withdrawals and even their accounts to stop this from exposing them>

If you were a victim of this, I would advise you to withdraw your BTC at a later stage and start managing your own private keys. <Just transfer coins to exchanges, when you want to sell> 

This only means 66% of people in China are afraid of their own government or they do not know what financial freedom means. Yes, I know the Chinese people are very disciplined and most of them do not challenge their own government, but it is not a true reflection of their opinion, if people are making decisions that are based on fear.

Ask the same question to people in the western world and you will get a different response. <A lot of people do not care, because their financial freedom has not been challenged yet.> 

The chances of these firms paying any ransom demands for this information is very slim, because they have no guarantee that these hackers will not release the information after they paid. It will also shine the light on their involvement into something sinister and secretive, which will make them a target for more hackers and the media.

OP, to answer your question - No this will not increase the price, if Bitcoin ransom like this is paid. It might even push down the price, if it get too much media attention. 

Paying your taxes with bitcoins should not be the ultimate achievement for Bitcoin, but it is a step in the right direction if governments allow people to do that. I was just thinking that it might not be such a good idea, if you look at what happened with Lazlo <Pizza Guy> 

Imagine paying 2 bitcoins now at $3700/BTC and then having the price go up to $20 000. <I would be pissed, if I paid that to the government and the value went up like that> 

I would not continue using a compromised Operating system and possibly backdoors that might be installed on that system. A lot of the legitimate software used to remote to systems are undetectable by AV software and this hacker might have configured this on your system already. <I suggest a re-installation of the OS>

The hacker could have even signed up with your account on other Dark websites that might get you into trouble in the future. The verification emails might be deleted, so you will not even know about it.  

I suggest that you create another email account and slowly migrate your services linked to the old account to the new account that are not compromised.    

I registered with a throwaway email account just to check it out, but I was disappointed. They obviously use Ads as a revenue option and that is why adblocker is recommended. They also use URL shorteners which raised a immediate red flag for me. 

The site is in Beta phase, so you have clipping in most browsers and things looks weird in Firefox and Chrome. I swapped to Microsoft Edge, but the clipping was still there. 

Will wait until they sorted these bugs and re-visit it at a later stage. 

If this event is effective in exposing only ONE of these exchanges that are doing this, then it reached it's goal. People should be aware of the "bad" services out there and the ones that operate legitimately. The event also highlights the important fact that services like this are the custodial of your private keys and that it is not your coins, if you are not the sole owner of those private keys.

Fractional reserve actions in the Banking industry nearly destroyed the global economy and we do not want to repeat those mistakes in Bitcoin. 

Buying at eBay and Amazon through an intermediary system is not the ultimate solution, but a good step in the right direction. Once services like this becomes more popular, platforms like eBay and Amazon will see that there are a need for payment options like this and they will consider offering direct Bitcoin payments on their sites. <Killing the 3rd party services like this>

I am currently shopping at similar sites like this with Bitcoin via reputable Payment processors and these sites are already considering cutting out the Payment processors and excepting Bitcoin directly. 

The final verdict on the best use for Bitcoin is still being discussed and has not been decided yet. Some people seem to think that it is an excellent store of value and that it should rather follow that path. Others share your view and wants it to be an alternative currency to the current fiat system.

I do not have a problem with any of the two options and would prefer that people use Bitcoin in the way that suites their personal needs.   

Unfortunately 2018 will always be remembered for the year with the biggest monetary drop in the price of Bitcoin's history. <Not the highest percentage drop>

It will also be remembered for the BCash fork and the fights between CW and Roger Ver to be the Alpha male in the BCash community. 

Let's hope 2019 will be remembered for the biggest price recovery in Bitcoin's history and the year when Bitcoin went mainstream. 

I have seen several people commenting on Satoshi's original code and most of them says it was sloppy. Yes, it might not have been the work of one of the best coders or developers out there, but the concept and the forward thinking to mash all of the different components together, was the brilliance behind this.

I also think his sloppy code was a rushed attempt to get the project out there and to fine tune it later, because his main goal was not to create the perfect code, but to put a working alternative payment option out there for people who wanted to break away from a centralized Banking system that was exploiting/destroying the global economy with their greed. 

Thank you Satoshi for giving us an alternative option.