I know something even better, stay away from ICOs and IEOs completely. The less people buy their useless tokens that are created out of thin air, the fewer people will end up losing their money.

As far as not trusting a third party review site with a bias towards anybody who pays them goes, it's just common sense to take everything with a grain of salt. It's purely money that dictates what you get to read on these sites.

Unfortunately, people constantly need to be reminded of how important it is to do your own research-- greed blinds them to such degree that they already see themselves driving in a lambo before they have even invested.

I highly doubt they are planning to follow the legal route considering how much of a process it is, and they fall under the umbrella of the CFTC even when there are problems not related to their derivatives.

I think this whole leverage game is blown out of proportion by gamblers looking to take extreme risks. Most well thinking people don't go further than 2 or 3x leverage because crypto itself is already extremely volatile.

MCX is not a Chinese exchange. They are located in Singapore. China has done enough to make sure new crypto exchanges can no longer be set up there and the existing ones were forced to shut down.

As for the pumps you refer to, that's a solid reason for me to actually avoid an exchange. Competent exchanges will never pump random coins because it's not professional at all, and more importantly, it's highly illegal.

Also, these pumps might be initiated by money that doesn't exist, so if you try to cash out your profits, the exchange might not have enough funds to allow you to do so. It's not worth the risk.

It's not a big crash for those who invest or trade with caution, but those who go all in or use high leverage consider every drop a big crash because it ate a significant chunk of their paper value.

With the rise of too easy to access platforms such as BitMEX even noobs have started to jump on the leverage bandwagon with how trading spot has become too boring for them.

People severely underestimate the nature of these platforms where some of them even think of them as a cool place to make some profits for fun. People end up paying a hefty price for their ignorance....

You probably should have included in the OP that you meant futures contracts.

CME is currently the largest and most dominant player in the cash settled futures contracts. CBOE has stopped offering Bitcoin futures very likely due to the low volumes they were generating.

Historical CME futures contracts price and volume data is downloadable here: https://www.investing.com/crypto/bitcoin/bitcoin-futures-historical-data

Another useful link: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin.html

Companies care about their users only at the very beginning when they need to on-board as many of them as possible, where later on when they got them in their pocket they no longer seem to care.

I don't think that Facebook will have to worry about losing users with the level of growth they experience. It's the US government that's worrying about their size and even considers splitting Facebook up, which would be insane.

I don't know how I feel about a split up, but at least it would offer an opportunity to the smaller players in the social media field to gain more ground while they right now don't stand a chance.

Remember that those who do seem to stand a chance to grow, have been and will be taken over by Facebook. It's a powerhouse that doesn't seem to slow down unless regulators start to dig into Facebook.

I honestly don't see much point in yet another index, unless it adds a completely new flavor of how we can rank coins based on different metrics instead of what index sites such as Coinmarketcap already provide.

Every metric you listed already exists, where some index sites even allow you to compile your own top list of crypto currencies based on metrics you think are important. It's a crowded part of the industry which is very difficult to penetrate.

I might sound a bit negative, but unfortunately I can't make it look more pretty.

If the current trend is continuing and every attempt to reach higher fails, which so far seems to be the case, the best short term scenario will be a near $11k wick, but I'm pretty sure it will be sold down within a day or two.

I have seen some theories where people see a major bull flag play out as we speak, but similarly, I can draw a descending triangle that's playing out as we speak to counter that.


I like Pomp's enthusiasm, but he is a non-stop perma bull who even during a bear market repeats his bullish statements. I prefer to take his statements with a grain of salt in order to not be biased and sucked into a bear market like a sheep.

I was very conservative before we broke the $6000 mark last year and it helped me a lot in terms of not being upset about how the market has taken such a massive dump. Instead, I used it as an opportunity to buy cheap coins.

You'll leave as in cashing out all your coins and then go your own path? That's what it sounds like to me. If that's so, it really sounds like you think $70-$100k is Bitcoin's end game price.

Even if Bitcoin reaches $1 million I will never sell all my coins because it will then be just as much of a store of value as it is today, but then more stable due to the much larger market cap and the maturation of the market.

I might not even actually sell any coins because by that time I'll very likely will be able to purchase a house or whatever else that's expensive by paying for it with Bitcoin. I'm here until the end.

Also, $70k is quite a random price target, which makes be believe that if you really plan to unload all your coins at some point, you'll most likely have done it before the $50k mark because the temptation of selling will make you do so much sooner.

I can agree that people in crypto are easily triggered and by default declare governments and banks to be an enemy, and that while they have no clue about why they dislike them other than following the herd that has no clue either.

Governments for a long time ignored Bitcoin because they thought it would implode and lose all its value, but a decade later it's still here. I got the feeling that because of Libra they have started to take Bitcoin more serious.

As far as stopping the fud goes, it's impossible to do with how there are entire armies of bots automatically sharing news. News outlets wont stop with fud articles either because they attract a lot of clicks and therefore an important income stream.

Interesting perspective. I do however wonder how long this will be a valid metric with how LN will eventually take over a lot use cases of the main-chain where it's still speculation that is the driving force behind this market.

Another thing is that you can't exactly know what people are doing on LN because it's not as transparent as the main-chain is, which I'm sure a lot of people (including myself) here would consider an extremely bullish development.

Overall, the volatile nature and the insane up side of Bitcoin are more of an obstacle in my opinion. Not many dare to accept even a portion of their wage in Bitcoin if you discard the few geeks working for crypto companies.

It will definitely impact those who still think crypto equals anonymity. I know enough people who think that crypto is one big criminal put where everyone is buying weapons and drugs because they can do it anonymously.

Even if crypto is really as anonymous as they think it is, nothing changes the fact that you are buying and selling coins through a centralized exchange. They will snitch on you to comply whenever they are asked to do so.

Crypto as a whole has grown past the stage where governments are not trying to collect taxes because they didn't deem it large enough. The profits people currently make are insane and so are the owed taxes.

IRS is like a bear smelling honey from many miles away.

I doubt the Chinese government is willing to share such an important slice of the pie with corporate entities. I don't see why China can't set up a national payment network competing with both WeChat and AliPay.

Major benefit for China is that they only need to update a few of their regulations putting these corporate payment platforms at a huge disadvantage. I'm pretty sure they can come up with something to slam down the competition.

Crypto and blockchain don't only benefit the people, but also the government as we have seen. It's only a matter of time before other governments will pull the trigger to create their own payment network.

Back in the days we had one stablecoin, currently we're on our way to having dozens of stablecoins, and in 5-10 years maybe hundreds.

People have been begging for decentralized exchanges ever since MtGox has been hacked, and so far we have only booked a marginal bit of progress. That, if you think about it, is a pathetic milestone if you can call it that.

It just shows how little actual demand there is for these exchanges, because the liquidity problem and the amount of hassle you have to go through in order to get it working just isn't worth it.

I personally don't even need a decentralized exchange. If centralized exchanges start to bother me I'm going to buy and sell locally. I have done some smaller local trades already and it's actually quite an interesting experience the first time.

Not every Bitcoin ATM provides a public key with how they want to motivate people to sweep the funds asap. Simply importing the private key into a lightweight client such as Electrum will instantly show the balance.

Electrum has a mobile wallet too so you can do it wherever you are in a matter of seconds.

Electrum is the more likely option because it's much faster than Bitcoin Core when you import a private key. People without a clue about how Core works and what it is will think something is wrong because it takes so long.

Criminals or not, we all seek to use the most convenient and accepted form of money or payment option to conduct business. People however always blame Bitcoin more than anything else because they don't understand it.

If you also add that most of the average joes pay attention to what the mainstream media is indicating, then it's not all that surprising that people consider Bitcoin a fraud or currency of the underworld.

Most of the news sources that represent the mainstream media have owners that want to push their own narrative for or against something, which in Bitcoin's case means more crap against it because it doesn't fit in their perfect world.

I don't think the Chinese government has complete control over the finances of people using WeChat. It's a service operated and controlled by a corporate entity. China can only ask them to hand them over data or perform certain actions.

I'm sure they no longer want to depend on corporations with their own agenda and therefore create their own version of Libra where that they do actually control every aspect of.

There are enough conspiracy theories where the Chinese government has control over every tech giant there, but I'm not buying these theories. Doesn't mean some might not be, but people like to trash talk everything related to China. I prefer to remain a bit more neutral.

You provide a service that appeals to those who aren't capable of doing their own research, so based on that it would make sense for you to at least provide them a certain range within it's smart to take profits.

I have seen similar signal sellers who do actually recommend where to take profits. People who don't know anything about trading see the price go up and think it will go up further and therefore not sell. We all know what happens next....

On a more positive note, it's good to see that you recommend people to avoid BitMEX. I am actually quite shocked to see how many people have problems with them after a bit more research.

If we put their overload error aside, another reason to avoid BitMEX is because of how the CFTC digging into their platform. I wouldn't want anybody to lose funds just because they assume they are safe because they aren't from the US.

That means more centralization. I am actually quite happy with how well distributed the crypto exchanges are. If there was just one single exchange it would be quite easy for regulators to shut it down.

Another benefit is that more competition means better quality of service and lower fees. The stock market is everything people shouldn't want the crypto market to transform into.

Sure, it allows the crappy exchanges to emerge too, but that's something you just have to accept, and you can always decide not to use these crappy exchanges because there is always a better alternative available.

Bitcoin will always have its own appeal with how it is a digital version of gold, while Libra is backed by a basket of different fiat currencies with one major thing in common, which is that they all lose a lot purchasing power.

If it works the same as the dollar, which I'm sure it will, and by that time Bitcoin has gained even more ground as digital gold, people will lean towards Bitcoin more because of how it provides them a hedge against Libra.

The only downside is that based on its governance model, it's very similar to how EOS works where block producers can censor transactions and even freeze your balance. Time will tell how people will deal with this.