There's only a handful of stores and outlets that really accept bitcoin payments on the regular, and most of them aren't the ones people are really using/buying often, such as the museum, movie houses etc. We will slowly get there if this adoption continues to go on, but at this rate, it's hard to gauge whether there's enough interest for cryptopayments or not. For the mean time, bitcoin will serve as an 'excellent' store of value until such time that merchants decide that it's also good to use bitcoin for payments, just like credit cards and stuff.

While I want to believe what Voorhes stated on this article, real-world scenarios in the midst of a financial crisis always tend to deviate from models and predictions made by experts so still, I don't want to bank on it hard. There are still other places where assets could go, particularly but not exclusively gold and other precious metals, with cryptocurrencies trailing due to lack of trust from institutional investors. We watched the US employ all these crazy economic instruments and policies in the past few years that lead to its growth being stunted by inflation, and if this keeps up, financial crisis worse than 2008 could occur. We don't want that to happen, but then again, the US is forcing itself to the brink of such a catastrophe, and to escape the downfall, keeping our assets in another relatively safe asset is a must, and this could be cryptocurrencies or precious metals.

Bitcoin's volatile nature will never be removed due to it being a free-for-all market. It experiences a short stint of low market activity, but yes, that doesn't mean it's being stable or it will be any sooner. I like to picture bitcoin as a bomb with an external triggering device that could go off any second. Sure there are times when the bad guys don't want anything to happen but it doesn't mean that the bomb lost its potential to explode. Right now, there aren't any reason to get the price going up that's why everything seems stable.

Bitcoin is a free market, so why should one worry if the big corpo comes in and be a part of the ecosystem? AFAIK, these big corporations are part of the hype and excitement the masses have in joining bitcoin, so I'd take it that they are also contributing to the cause in their own way. While them owning a huge portion of the coins isn't ideal, every so often these coins are then returned to the market cyclically, so why worry at all? They make things happen as well with their promoted services, causing more interest in bitcoin in the long run.

Most people are still confused by the 'decentralized' nature of bitcoin, so in order for them to be more curious, I'll just say that there isn't a central authority issuing bitcoins, unlike the money that they are using today. So, this would be what I'll tell them: Bitcoin is digital money, but unlike your 'real' money, no central authority issues it, just a group of people with the hardware capabilities to 'mint' new bitcoins by solving complex puzzles. They'd be more interested on the "no central authority" phrase rather than "decentralized" trust me.

I most probably would ignore it. I've been receiving a lot of emails and messages here in the forum regarding those kind of investment. Most of them go unnoticed and unread, since I don't really have time for them. Why would someone unproven ask around for investment if he/she can make money alone? Heck, even trusted and reputable members here in the forum have been eaten by greed and turned out as scammers in the end, so how would a newbie be any different? It's a no-brainer, if someone's unproven, they can easily go out of notice if they defaulted on the funds, so no, I won't.

I can say bitcoin exhibits true democracy only to the point of consensus, but in other aspects of the coin, it's pretty much anarchy if you ask me due to its decentralized nature and absence of a central authority. The choice/democratic part only happens when a fork is imminent, and most of the time, everyone is minding their own thing while taking the same goal: solving blocks and processing transaction in exchange of incentives/rewards or validation of transactions relayed in the network. Being free from the constraints of bank and governments on your own money is more of an anarchic nature rather than democratic.

The market got larger, more players went in, and these type of news ended up not affecting the whole bitcoin market anymore given that there are a lot of trades happening around here and there. Looking back at 2012-2013, bitcoin was not so big and almost every media outlets rarely know about the cryptocurrency, until such time that each bitcoin was worth $1100 in November 2013 that caused the craze and hysteria around the market. Afterwards, any news surfacing online affects the price, come 2016 when China stopped influencing the price and everything started from that.

These are regular bankers who want nothing but their assets leveraged and get the maximum amount of attention for profit, why would I believe in them? They had been telling the same old, recycled scare-mongering shit about bitcoin ever since the ATH of 2013 blew-off. They were right for a short amount of time, only for bitcoin to go accelerating in 2016 and 2017. As usual, the first year after the ATH blew off, we will experience such cases of stagnant prices and lack of bullish movement since everyone has had their pockets full and are getting that money somewhere else. It's an obvious scenario, and I don't think that Goldman Sachs is a prophet by saying that there wouldn't be any recovery in the short-term future.

That's a large tinfoil hat over there, buddy. It's just a strange coincidence but doesn't mean much really. You can infer at that point that no one wanted to buy anymore and the fuel has since run dry, causing the price to stop at a rather unusual place.  Or perhaps some whales have put a sell wall like you mentioned just for the lulz and make people think hard that this is something that came out of a devil's imagination. Nevertheless, it's a good find and I don't think we should start spilling holy water over our machines any time sooner lol.

A huge possibility in the future but as of now, this is really not possible. Market dominance is just a statistic of total market share in the whole cryptospace, and does not necessarily state the interest of people long-term in a particular coin. If something better proved to be worthy that can replace bitcoin, people will go there and use it for their own sake, but so far, altcoins are only good for short-term investments and most companies/institutions still choose bitcoin over any other altcoin existing in the market. It will take a lot of development and years before bitcoin can finally be dethroned--well it might not come anyway so who's waiting?

In the short-term future? No, they will not, alongside any other future ETF proposals, too. The reason they will always blurt out is that it can be used as a vehicle for fraud and it cannot be easily regulated, as platforms don't always comply with what the SEC needs should ETFs be approved. Oddly so, they are somewhat in favor of some past ETFs but it ended up in a straight-up rejection, so as it stands, even the slickest proposal and application would still be rejected too.

it could be, it could be not. If the newly-elect governor wouldn't create some policies that pushes development regarding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and possibly invite more startups to establish themselves on the Californian soil, this will not happen. I like that the governor is a pro-bitcoin advocate, but since he already got the position, he has now the means to make something happen for crypto developments to boom. I just hope though that this man really honors his word and do something for bitcoin and the cryptospace in California.

Isn't that what they really do? Ensure that everything is under control and nobody gets 'frauded' in any way? Anyway going back, the SEC doesn't seem to care about the potential real-world applications of proposal being endorsed to them; all they care about is potential benefits that a proposal can do to further their ambitions. They might continue slamming down etherdelta, ETFs and the likes but surely they won't be able to shut bitcoin and other decentralized tokens/coins since they simply have no power over it. Etherdelta, also, was shut down because they are operating an unregistered exchange and not simply because the SEC wanted them gone.

Vigilance and due diligence should be observed when transacting with anyone. This should not even be that hard since even before the concept of middlemen was invented, people are doing fine with their transactions on a day-to-day basis. I agree that at some point, a central authority is necessary but simple transactions can proceed without them. IMO, for a decentralized system to be fully functional, all ends of transactions should always observe extra precautions before proceeding to a deal so as not to lead to being cheated or scammed.

I have a local credit card from a local bank, and so far, I have made 13 bitcoin purchases using that card and I haven't got any warnings whatsoever regarding the purchase. Usually, they'll send an email regarding a purchase that doesn't seem to fit their terms and issue a warning should a purchase similar to that is done again. I guess it depends mainly on the credit card issuer alongside their terms and laws of the country from where the bank originates. Most credit card companies don't really care as long as you're able to pay your debt anyway.

Right now, I'm eager of learning the bottom of this cycle than seeing whether we can easily recover or not. Recovering is always easy since the coin is still relevant and there are still a lot of people wanting to take a piece of the pie but knowing the bottom is always hard since the market can turn stale and drop whenever it wants to. We will surely recover from this reds but for now, I'll trigger my buys and just see where this market is headed to. It's about time to add some in the stash and lower the average buying price for me.

It does, at some times help us predict what sort of movement is waiting for us in the short-term future but it does not necessarily predict what exactly is going to happen by then. I consider reading charts more of a noise rather than a signal since it only makes you think more of patterns and rely too much on them without considering more of the other important factors such as volume and price. Also in highly volatile markets such as bitcoin, it's definitely not applicable at all times to use charts as we've seen with experts predicting the short-term future and ultimately failing.

I haven't seen that but I have seen CSI mentioned bitcoin in 2015, way before things went crazy because of the bullish run. That was the last time I saw bitcoin on television since I haven't checked up on most news outlets and local TV ever since. Also, when I read or watch about bitcoin in mainstream TV or in the news, it appears to be positive at start then goes south right before the airing finishes. It only went positive when the prices were nearing $20k and almost every media outlets are creating news reports regarding that.

And now I feel proud that I still have a Haswell processor (i7-4790k) running on my machine wherein I still connect my external hard drive for storage purposes of some sensitive information (not porn lol). If cryptographic exploits exist on hardware level, most especially on processor-level, this should be a cause for concern since this is probably the most technical and vital part of every single computer running nowadays. Luckily patches are easily rolling out from processor manufacturers but then again, if hackers can plant such exploits on your machine at that level, most probably they can target any other part of your hardware and do it all over again.