Today just reminded me why we should avoid all these centralized services like the plague.  

One online retailer <I will not mention names> started their Black Friday earlier this year and it is a absolute mess. They do not process transactions directly, but opted to use a payment processor. Let's call this payment processor, PayX for this example.

Ok, the retailer started very early to beat it's competition, so naturally it's online website was hammered with visitors and it was very slow.

I placed my order for some goods and I was redirected to PayX to do the payment, but PayX cannot handle all the traffic, so they cannot process the payment. The payment processor also redirect you to your Bank to verify the transaction, but the re-direction does not work. <overloaded with requests>

The problem is as follows :

1. Goods on special have limited quantities.
2. If your payment is not processed within a specific time, then your claim on that product is nullified and you lose the deal.

So, due to payment problems, my deals did not go through and I lost almost $1000 in saving from the goods that were on special. !!!!

If they used Bitcoin as a direct payment option, then we would not have had these problems. I made several Bitcoin transactions over the last couple of months and most was confirmed within the first 10 minutes. <SegWit>

Let's avoid payment processors and third party payment methods at all cost and just pay directly from one Bitcoin address to the next on the Blockchain or better yet, via the Lightning Network if you need more speed.  

No, no... We believe in freedom of speech here and everyone has a right to their own opinion. When the mods start banning people for negative statements like this, things gets ugly. It just attract more Sockpuppet accounts like this and the rest of the shills crawls out of their holes to support people like this.

Let the guy or girl vent the anger and hopefully he or she will leave with a fluffy feeling in their gut. <Thinking that they did the right thing> 

Most of us always tell people not to invest more than what they can afford to lose and we warn them that Crypto currency investments are a high risk investment. If they do not follow that advice, it is on them to suffer the consequences.

Any "newbie" will be able to make the decision to buy on the dip and sell when it is high. <You do not need to be a expert to know that> Some people are just too lazy to check the price history, so we highlight the opportunities when they present themselves. 

It would be nice if you could have a separate "space" to store the coins that we use for gambling and a "space" where you keep the coins for the "income" option. You could offer the users a drop down menu to select the "space" for the different options. <pre configure a percentage for gambling & Lotto>

I know Freebitco.in can benefit from mistakes like this, so there is no reason why they would invest time into something like this, but it will be a nice feature for the users. <failsafe option>  

I stopped using auto-bet, because of this and I think some people might have stopped gambling all together because of previous mistakes like this.  

Yea, we believe you.  

So you made loads of money, because you have impeccable timing and luck and now you laugh at other people's misfortune.   That tells us a lot about your character and your personality.  

We celebrate the fact that people like you, leave the scene <with or without profits> because we do not need people like you to take this to the Moon.

A lot of us can see the benefits of using a revolutionary technology like this and we have the vision to look past the short term profits. So take your arrogant antics and shove it up your a$$ and leave us, so we can get back to the things that are more important. <Helping people who are being exploited by people with your attitude>

When last have you checked the buy orders on the exchanges? There are a lot of people buying at the moment, but the price is determined by two factors, which is supply and demand. The problem is that more people are selling than people who are buying and that is pushing the price down.

When people like CW and Roger Ver starts to flush money <BTC> down the drain to fuel their ego, then you see a situation like this. They provide the spark to light the panic fire. Remember these people never sold their initial BTC when there was a fork, they just held on to it. <They got an equal amount of FREE BCash coins, so they did not even have to buy their hoard of BCash> 

The SEC decision has nothing to do with this. I agree with some previous posters that the Bitcoin Cash forkers are behind this. The war between the two sides needs massive funding to keep the facade going that their fork is winning and they are burning through their BTC hoard to fund this. We all know that they are sitting on large amounts of BTC, even if they are saying the opposite, so they will sacrifice those coins to win the war. <hoping that the victory would render large rewards if their fork succeeds>

You only need a few thousand coins to spark enough momentum to get people to panic sell and that is what is happening now. Markets are being flooded with coins and the price drops. 

Some people will cry again in a few months when the price goes up again <we have seen this before>, so the hodlers might cry now, but they will have the last laugh.

I laughed at $19 000, because I took 50% profit when it was on the ATH and I will laugh again when we blast past that. Making more than 800% profit in 2017, was just the cherry on the cake and a huge reward for hoarding coins when other people panicked.  

Some butthurt people also panicked and lost out on the reward, so now they turn to the forum to encourage other people to do the same. <Take a guess who that might be>  

Even better, someone who came in at $19 000 < Date Registered:  December 25, 2017 > and bought a bunch of coins at the ATH price and now are angry because the price dropped to $4000+ and he/she made zero profits.

A price below $2000 will definitely push some Bitcoin <BTC> miners out of the mining scene, because in some places the electricity cost is much higher and they need a higher Bitcoin price to be profitable. So you might see a slight drop in the hash rate of BTC, if this happens.

It is sad to see that the $5000 price point was breached, because I thought the speculative price point was above $5000. We will just need to hodl and hope for the best now.  

I agree to some degree that a hard fork and FREE coins are not the way to go. A hard fork dilutes the overall value of Crypto currencies by adding "wealth" from zero effort. The latest trend seems to be to force a fork, when new money needs to be injected into the coin.

Take the latest Bitcoin Cash fork as an example, because people sold BTC prior to the Bitcoin Cash hard fork to put them in a better position to get more free coins after the fork. They could have sold the FREE coins to buy BTC again or they could just keep the FREE coins as an new investment. <I still have all the FREE coins from the previous forks, stored on Paper wallets>  

I thought about this thread when I watched a 5 year old playing with her mothers smart phone, whilst I was in a waiting room at a doctors office. The mother passed the mobile phone to the child to keep her busy and she unlocked the phone and started playing several complex games.

If I compare this with the problems I have to explain the most basic concepts to my older relatives, then it is easy to see how the younger generation will lead the Crypto currency adoption. They are quick learners and they are fast paced and this is what is needed in Crypto currencies for it to flourish. 

I tried the website, http://plaguewars.net/ but it was very slow. You will struggle to retain players if your site is this slow. I also noticed that some of the sections on the site, like the FAQ is inaccessible if you are not a registered user. I think the FAQ should be open to guests to see if anything in the FAQ might prevent them from signing on for this game. <Example - Age restrictions etc.>

I will check out the Android app later to see if it is any better. <I use a throwaway phone for testing unknown Apps for security reasons.> 

Bitcoin is no different than any other investment instrument, because you can lose a lot of money, by trading the wrong commodity at the wrong time. The secret to the success of most Crypto traders has been a long-term strategy, where they bought coins when it was cheap and they sold some coins when the price skyrocketed. 

In between those two points, traders are still making profits on the high volatility in the Crypto currency markets. You want high volatility at regular frequency, when you trade any commodity, because a flat markets yield less profits. 

I think financial freedom is the most important, because Bitcoin knows no borders and you can shift money between countries with zero restrictions. You can also do business with whoever you want to and no Bank or PayPal can tell you what to do with your own money.

A lot of people only realize these advantages when they are blocked by Banks or PayPal or when they want to transfer money to their friends and family and they are stopped by their government. <Governments do not like it when money flows out of the country, because it weakens their economy.> 

Satoshi Nakamoto owns over a million coins and he had those coins before the Bitcoin Cash forks, so he can cash out the Bcash coins and then dump that on the market to destroy the Bcash price. The question is, why would he want to do that? Will people still respect him when he does that? Will he break the silence to come out of hiding to do that?

I think not, because Satoshi already succeeded in his goals with this technology and it is now up to us to decide it's future. Satoshi stepped aside and gave us the freedom to steer this experiment into the right direction. 

Show them the advantages that Bitcoin has over other payment options. A merchant always have to worry about "Chargebacks" but with Bitcoin this is not possible, so this is a huge advantage for ecommerce.

The merchant also save on fees, because the Banks are not involved in pure Bitcoin payments. The added fees, when they use payment processors are less than what they pay in Banking fees.

Bitcoin also gives them financial freedom, because they can do business with whomever they want. <Not like when they use PayPal and you are told who and what kind of business is accepted by them.> 

The thing is money is also moving from Banks to fund political parties and this is why governments are looking the other way or giving small fines to Banks, when they step over the line. The ruling party would not have been in control of the government, if it was not for the contributions that these Banks were doing to these political parties. <They also help to hide this from the public.>

Banks have a lot of leverage to use against governments and the governments cannot stay in power without them. Most political parties are also funded by criminal organizations and the Banks also help to obscure the transactions that are done by them to fund these politicians. <Most prevalent in 3rd world countries with corrupt governments, but it is also happening in 1st world countries.>

I think they might be operating under a license that grants them the opportunity to offer clients access to financial services <Banks> under the cover of other legit reasons and not for Crypto currency specifically. I have seen similar investment schemes where they buy and sell the coins under their account and then payout to linked accounts.

I think the Banks are not aware that they are offering this service specifically for Crypto currency use and once they know this, then they will close these accounts. 

Even if your stats are a bit faulty to start with, you still do not use a once off situation like this to determine the volatility of a specific coin. The volatility differ depending on the circumstances and if a specific coin is being pumped at the time when something bad happens, then it will take longer to show signs of volatility against other coins.

Despite that, I will not invest in coins that are being supported and controlled by large Banks.    <Just out of principle>    Your attempt to shill for these Alt coins failed. 

CW and his partners do not have enough bitcoins to influence the market in such a way. The miners that are backing him are burning a lot of electricity that they have to pay, so they are not hoarding massive amounts of coins.

He just said that to try and scare BTC miners away from utilizing their hash power to support the Bitcoin Cash ABC fork. <desperate actions from a desperate man> 

All of this is just empty threats. 

Bitcoin whales will never go around to advertise to everyone that they are whales, because they will be targeted by hackers and beggars. Some people with a lot of bitcoins have been physically assaulted or friends and family were taken for ransom, so it will not be wise to reveal your identity when you are one of these whales.

Another reason for them to stay anonymous is the fact that they are manipulating the market and this might have legal issues and/or they can be targeted by traders who got burnt on the market.