It has been said thousands of times over the last 9 years, but if you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins.  You only own an IOU for the coins.

The lesson (which won't be heeded no doubt) is:  don't keep your coins on an exchange unless you are going to immediately sell them.  And don't use fly-by-night exchanges.

Or better:  use bitcoin for purchases and stay in the ecosystem.  Forget cashing out to fiat.  Anyone who has avoided cashing out since the July 2010 slashdot article has done extremely well if they mined or purchased any coins.

Perhaps they should consider NOT selling?   Perhaps they should hold the coins, or just use the coins to purchase something.   

Nonsense, fake news headline.

Now we just need an ETF and micropayments using lightning universally available on the web.  The ETF will be key eventually, but I'd be surprised to see if prior to the next halving.  This news is another step towards the ETF though.

If you can conduct some of your business in bitcoin and never need to cash them out, then this won't do much good. We aren't there yet though.

I'd add Hong Kong to his list. Ditto Cyprus. Ditto China.

Also the U.S.A. if any of the collectivist authoritarians win in 2020.

There are others such as Cyprus and China.

Smart people in Hong Kong should own some too so that when the extradition proposal returns and includes capital controls they'll be able to get out.

Anyone who thinks this is more than temporary hasn't been paying attention to the authoritarians and collectivists (socialist, fascist, communist etc).  They don't like freedom and don't like people having control of their financial lives.

At some point it will come back, and eventually there will be currency controls.  Now is the time for people in HK to either get money offshore, or into something like bitcoin where they can do it later. 

Ditto for every country (e.g. France, US etc) where the collectivist authoritarians like Bernie etc have a chance of taking power. A little diversification into bitcoin, will pay off in spades if they take over.

Back to HK, the communists in China pull the strings, eventually they'll get what they want by wearing the protestors out.  So, prepare an escape plan now.  Even one bitcoin per Hong Kong resident would go a long way to protecting themselves.

The article:  “Why on earth would anyone sell something in exchange for Bitcoin, when the value of that cryptocurrency literally changes moment to moment?”

Because anyone who has done so during the last 10 years with the exception of about 2 months at the end of 2017/early 2018, has done extremely well by holding bitcoin.

In short, anyone willing to sell something in exchange for bitcoin and hold it for any reasonably long period of time has done phenomenally.  And if you are willing to hold bitcoin for longer period after the 2017 run-up, you'll likely do well again. 

I "sold" my time (and electricity) mining bitcoin starting in July 2010 after the slashdot article and don't regret it.

Each halving so far has had a large fiat price increase within about 6-9 months afterward.  We'll see what happens less than a year from now.

"Embraces" is a huge overstatement.  They just added an icon.

As far as the Apple Card goes, if they give 3% cash back on Apple purchases, that is a good deal.  Enough to get one just for the extra 0.5%.

The correct answer is:  no one knows, it is guessing.

Long term trends, sure those can be followed with more likelihood, but short term it is anyone's guess.

My bet is the same as since 2010 - 18-24 months from now we'll be substantially higher than now. And long term it will be worth a lot or very little.

The more difficult it is to exit, the more people will just stay in bitcoin. I'm all for free exchange between BTC and fiat, but the statists aren't fans of money they can't control so it will continue to be controlled and probably more so.

No doubt many of the same people complaining about the exchange rules are voting for the socialists, fascists, communists and other authoritarians.  And then complaining that when they get what they voted for.

The larger the population that doesn't need to exit bitcoin, the more valuable it will become.

I think the chances that he actually complies accurately with the court order are essentially zero.  Sure he'll produce some addresses no doubt, but the odds of him coming clean with the court are extremely low.  He seems to think that he is above the law or invincible or something. 

I think it is one of those "sell the news" events where people hear the news and panic. 

We see the same thing each time bitcoin's fiat price goes up.  More and more people jumping on the bandwagon not realizing that this is a long term proposition.  Every time it is the same thing: bitcoin is doomed, sell now, it will go to zero, panic, panic, panic.  And so far every time, people who just bought (or mined) and held for the long term have done well.

I don't believe it, but:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/23/john-mcafees-message-to-the-irs-and-why-he-plans-to-reveal-satoshi-nakamoto/

In many respects it is quite possible.  Prices are set at the margin, and all it takes is an ongoing slight decrease in supply and an ongoing slight increase in demand to change the prices significantly.  With the next halving in just a bit over 13 months, that will be a HUGE decrease in supply.  After the last two halvings it took about 3-6 months (iirc) for prices to start to go up significantly.  (Perhaps because many people bought before the halving and then sold into the initial growth right afterwards).

Will it happen?  No one knows for sure of course.

An increase in price of a factor of 10 from here would be amazing, let along a factor of 100.  Will the past repeat?  Who knows.  I always think back though to every milestone e.g. dollar parity and hearing everyone say "it won't hold, we'll be back under $1 soon".  Or $30, or $100, or $500 etc.  As long as supply is constrained and there are use cases (which, IMO, continue to grow each year) the sky is the limit.

Bitcoin has been way undervalued for a long time - or it is and has been way over valued since dollar parity.  IMO.

I think the point is that for ATMs, it is nice to have a nearly immediate confirmation vs potentially having to wait for the transaction to be included in a block.  :-)

Certainly lightning isn't for every transaction, but having the option to have a less expensive, presumably faster transaction is a good thing.  A diversity of options using lightning or on-chain is a win-win.  The more options the better and the more implementations for various use cases the better as it can spur additional adoption and provide source code that can be used elsewhere.

As long as there is need to convert fiat to crypto and back, the banks will be inseparable.  Once there are a sufficient number of people who will use crypt without converting back to fiat, then the need for banks will decrease.

IMF and economist don't belong together.  In fact most of the economists are just guessing anyway or serving their globalist masters who are scared to death that money outside their control (and portable) will thrive.