As long as the governments and the banks conspire to create more money out of thin air, debt will rise and rise ever so rapidly while the rest of the herd will be led to believe that everything will be alright and that they do not carry the burden of the state. The $20-T debt of the US government alone will never be repaid. If the Chinese come knocking asking for the repayment of the said debt, see how the government try to become hostile and engage in a war (hopefully not) with China.

People will believe the government as long as the latter can provide something for the former, but once the economy becomes so trashed, see how these sheep turn their backs against their shepherds and run away from the massive crisis the shepherds have created.

That's just news but not confirmed fact. The notion that most miners come from China is because most of the hardware is coming from them, and a lot of people think that the Chinese buy their own hardware to mine on their own soil, however that's not the case. There are large farms in China and there are also large farms in the US, Iceland, Mongolia, some parts of Japan, Russia and other remote places where electricity is cheap and mining conditions/costs is relatively suited for mining as well. There are no reliable statistics as to where these miners are located and what percentage do they hold on the current network, but yeah, not everything is in China.

Bound to happen IMO as crypto-exchanges are intertwined with fiat deposits which are prone to fraud and the likes. Even LBC back then have received a lot of such requests due to their poor handling of KYC resulting to a lot of trades that are unchecked or unrecorded and unrelated to a certain identity which led to a poor tracking of who bought which at what cost. Heck, even local exchanges nowadays are asking for two more KYC processes to comply with the AML-KYC regulations that have been imposed on most multi-national exchanges, so I guess Kraken isn't safe from that list of exchanges being issued such requests from the feds.

Tbh I haven't used or have plans to use LN in the future, as the fees on the network per se is at a pretty good condition with rough fluctuations every so often which is fine IMO as long as it does not stay too high every time. LN isn't even out of beta yet, so adoption from users is out of the question and only a handful have the chance to test the waters and its wonders.



I could be wrong but I don't see a side-chain service/implementaion has the potential to help the price get a stable footing or get to a higher level than where it is right now. Low fees = high price, and wouldn't be a case even if LN proved to be a success.

That's bitcoin for you. We're experiencing these kind of fluctuations every so often, and we've reached $4200 on Christmas time even, so by now it should be normal for everyone else to see these kind of rises. There really is no reason for every price rises as everyone would like to point out on every individual post pertaining to prices. Also a lot of things are still happening around, including the fed shutdown, bakkt cancellation, and the likes, so it's hard to pinpoint what's causing the current rise.

We may never know as not all OTC trades and transactions are recorded unless one party conveys how much they bought/sold in a single instance. Most whales are probably doing OTC trades when they are buying so as not to affect the tempo of the market, because if they bought directly on exchanges, there'd be a significant price increase if they decided to buy thousands of coins at once. Same in selling if they don't want to intentionally crash the market, they'd go OTC to keep things stable on the markets.

A permabull's observation shouldn't be taken as the truth or something that's gonna happen, though the talks about bitcoin being a hybrid reserve currency has been around since 2015 yet no country has ever dared touched it yet. Keiser may have been right a couple of times, but this one is too far fetched for the current times as there are only a handful of countries with a definite legal framework for bitcoin. Also, we are still in the phase wherein bitcoin exhibits spikes of volatility every now and then, so it might take a loooong while before we migrate into a new system in the future.

There's a difference between those who 'need' it and those who 'deserve' it because they earned it. It's not creating a monopolistic politics just like what you're pointing because at the end of the day, each individual who has their own sMerits to give aren't being controlled by anyone to withhold their sMerits because they are ordered to; it's just personal preference or if someone really appreciate a post (note: merits aren't 'like' buttons that you have on social media sites.) There had been a lot of topics about merits and whatnot but I simply don't care as long as the post quality of this forum increases again. Giving sMerits shouldn't be mandatory but rather be given as a token of appreciation if something is actually worth the read or has given you new knowledge you previously knew nothing about.

I have several buy orders placed on $2500 and $2300 respectively should this market turns bearish once more, though the range of this current cycle that we are on seems to be hovering between $3500 and $4000 which seems pretty stable so far. I still expect a lot of surprises this year, especially a possible drop from our current footing that's why I already placed a buy order that seems pretty absurd by today's prices. The ones who bought at higher prices are probably scared to buy in right now, and the ones who are looking to stay on a long position are taking advantage of the current price range IMO.

This will just cause another round of pumping for stocks that are using the said platform IMO, and might lead to a harder crash should the market feels that it's just a way for these companies to pump their assets hard. Traditional stock markets are branching out, and saw a potential in blockchain platforms and are now using the said hype to further their realm and reach which IMO is bad for cryptocurrencies in general. These guys are NOT supporting the existing cryptocurrencies but will create their own for their private purposes.

Nah, instead of going to war directly, Americans will just fund a war somewhere else and exploit all the natural resources they can get to cover up for the costs, and dig an even deeper debt with China and not pay-up. If, however, the Chinese wants to get their money (which they wouldn't as they are certainly doing well on their own economy in the mean time), there'd be no war but rather a global economic crisis as the USA would struggle to cover up the debts and fuck ups they made due to a ludicrous amount of debt they have. Idk, all outcomes lead to USA in a very bad shape after all, and even if that agreement proves positive on all sides of the deal, that debt would still remain.

A good start, but certainly not the direction or goal we ultimately want since we know that these taxes that are paid in BTC will just be converted to fiat at some point in time. We want merchants to accept our bitcoins, not the government who certainly wouldn't want the cryptocurrency to flourish. If we want to start a new revolution, try to ask merchants near you, or someone you know to take in BTC as a form of payment, because adoption is necessary to start a revolution. We won't get anything further if we just stop at paying taxes with BTC, we have our fiat for that anyway.

This is just another version of derivatives for the US stocks, using the term 'digitization' to make it look appealing and fresh to the public. While I've nothing against the development of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and the financial system in general, it seems to me that the capitalists are piggybacking the fame of the said tech to garner more interest and support on their already-dying assets. This will be a hit, but once the hysteria fades, expect yet another gruesome correction and crash thereafter.

I don't see any FUD in giving out an opinion. Years ago, some of you here may have also shared similar thoughts about bitcoin until you realized that it has indeed some place in the current financial landscape of the world. The 66% isn't really a static number of anti-bitcoiners, and that's only confined in China, too, so i don't think there shouldn't be any worries whatsoever as we're only talking about a single country in here.

Oh and remember, China is the land of uncertainty for bitcoin and crypto, yet they are still in the game for years.

You are suggesting to have something valuable to back the value of each crypto, and peg the crypto to that object in order for the value to get stable. So we are looking for something like the gold standard in which gold backs a country's printed money and you want to integrate it to cryptocurrencies. It can work but it isn't necessary, given that each crypto's value is already determined by speculation plus the cost of obtaining the said crypto. Commodity backing and pegged to a crypto shouldn't be a necessity for stability of value IMO, as it will come over time as soon as the hysteria of speculation dies.

This is 2019, and even last year there are a lot of exchanges in which you can do ETH/USD trading already, so your statement about people unable to buy ETH with fiat is false. Also, as for bitconnect, they are just a ponzi scheme after all, which accrued almost $3B in investments for a few months until they got busted, so compare that to $400B market cap of bitcoin when it reached $19K? Laughably small, but still is a part of it. Blabber all you want about bitcoin being the worst due to its 'failure' to hold whatever price range you want it to, but then almost everyone here know that it's not Bitconnect and ETH who drove bitcoin to insane heights.

It depends on who takes the bite. If the dump files are indeed true (which I guess is not), the government would be the ones taking a piss from a lot of people and organizations across the globe. The bitcoins they got from the ransomware would just be dumped on exchanges so the pump would just be for a short while, so it's not really going to make a significant change IMO. Price would be higher if true and organic demand is present, not just from a short-lived event.

It can since blockchain is just a way how to store data after all, though the banks must invent a way to get a system going to produce blocks of data and have them chained together. Some banks are already trying to integrate blockchain into their systems, and it's just a matter of time before a bank gets a fully-working system that uses blockchains for its own financial services. It's not really impossible, we just haven't seen a working one as of late.

It is good for some point until the government pulls the trigger and do some random, weird stuff that will remind us that not everything legal translates to positive things. For now, Bakkt's launch is delayed by the CFTC, and there isn't a time-frame to which they'd be able to do a full launch. I don't mind having a mix of government, capitalists
 and crypto as long as crypto doesn't lose its identity and its supposed task. But from the looks of it, it seems that crypto is slowly losing sight of its roots ever since capitalists and governments set foot on the crypto ecosystem.

Though there is a slim chance for either XRP or ETH to surpass bitcoin in terms of market capitalization, i don't think it will happen that fast, considering how invested people are in bitcoin and the developments that are still currently taking place for the said cryptocurrency. XRP, IMO, won't take a good chance of taking the number one spot considering how constricted the environment is and how limited the usage for the said crypto can be. ETH, on the other hand, has good footing should it take the prime spot since it can be used on a lot of things, and is a basis on some notable cryptocurrencies of today due to its multifunctionality aside from functioning as a cryptocurrency.