We at the dawn of a new phase in Bitcoin's history, where institutional investment from pretty big financial investors, might be entering the market soon. It would make sense for them to enter at a much lower price point, once the red tape has been finalized. A lot of these investors have been secretly buying and trading bitcoins for years with their own money <Even people working for JPMorgan> 

At this stage most of this is basically conspiracy theories, but the talks in the passageways are that serious investors are preparing for something big and they want to enter at a much lower price to benefit the most, when this happens. I would not be selling any significant amount of coins, if I was a big hoarder now. ^smile^

The institutional capital will definitely enter the Bitcoin market, but I predict that it would be in a more regulated environment. You just had to look at the manner in which Bitcoin Futures were introduced, to see where Bitcoin ETFs would be going with this. Governments will not allow institutional investors to invest large amounts of money into a speculative market, without proper regulation to protect the consumers.

This is probably why they are looking at exchanges like Gemini that are more compliant with the current financial sector.

I think it is going to be even bigger, because everything is going online and a lot of kids are not into contact sports anymore. They see the prize money and sponsorship of these eSport gamers and they also think it is cool to earn your living by being a professional gamer. If they just knew how much time and discipline goes into being one of these top players, then they might not be so keen to be one of them.

Still, I think it will become the betting platform of the future. 

I predict that the same people will win this over and over again, because they already have the most referrals and if these referrals are active, then this user will WIN every time this contest is hosted. The referral side of this should actually be made more fair, by only rewarding wagers that were made by new referrals that were added from the start date of the competition.

This will cancel out the historic advantage that these users have and it will serve as a incentive for people to get new referrals for this competition.  

I think the reason for this is simple : Many people in developing countries are using their limited disposable income to buy these tokens in the hope that they would make significant profits in the short-term. <Get-Rich-Quick crowd>

The people of the developed countries have more disposable income to invest in the ICO's and to risk on these types of investments, and they can wait for longer for any kind of profit. <Their currencies are also much stronger than the currencies in the developing countries> So if these ICOs are hosted in a developing country, then their currency will be able to buy more tokens for less money.

" A digital Bahamian currency is more useful for very many Family Islands since they have observed a lot of commercial banks downsize and leave their communities without banking services. " <--- This is where Bitcoin is filling the gap, between the Banked and the unBanked. 

" The government is planning to come up with different ways in which certificates like passports, business licences, national insurance can integrate blockchain technology into use to help people in storing their important data and share it in a manner that is more secure and verifiable.

After coming into power in 2017, the minister wanted the Bahamas to use blockchain technology in order to be more efficient and fight corruption disease in the country. " <--- This is live changing and exactly what our lofty goals for Bitcoin is.

This government is hitting all the right spots with these moves and I truly hope that they will use Bitcoin for this. The tourism potential will also increase, because a lot of Bitcoin tourist can also travel to their Islands, if they use Bitcoin. 

Why would Satoshi go through all the trouble to hide his identity for years and now release a book that can be traced back to him. A book will have a publisher and the publisher have to pay Satoshi and that will leave a paper trail back to Satoshi. It is not as if Satoshi need the money and even if Satoshi just do this to donate the money to charity, then this will still be traced back to him/her. 

A much better approach would just be to write a email or add a entry on a Blog, with proof of a signed messaged to his/her coins. 

A +/- 10% increase and decrease in the daily price is not anything new to us, because this is actually normal for Bitcoin. A lot of people are invested in Bitcoin because it is so volatile and you can make some pretty good profits, if you know how to make good use of the volatility. We get exited when there is a fast rise in the price over 30% in 24 hours.  

Go look at the 2017 charts of last year and you will see what I am talking about.    

That would be the ultimate goal, not to deal with third parties and not to deal with fiat conversion. The only problem is that we should have mass adoption on both consumer and merchant sides. The government will definitely be involved and the attacks will not stop, but it will become unstoppable, once we get to a level where multiple countries have mass adoption.

You can then pick and choose, where you want to spend and earn your bitcoins, even if it is banned in your country. 

I would like to see some sites that would be thinking outside of the box. You said that you are interested in Dice sites, but I thing the gambling scene is flooded with those sites. What about a site where you throw a dice that moves units on a battlefield. You join forces with other players to fight the "house" in a modern day battlefield scenario.

The player can buy units based on speed and power and the more speed and power that the unit have, the higher the bets. The goal of the game is to move through the enemies <house> battlefield and to destroy units. The enemies units is small jackpots and if you manage to kill a opponents unit, then you hit a little jackpot. 

When this is done in public like this and people pick up that the account was sold, then they report it and you will get negative trust. So it is not really worth it. In a way, account sales are one way to cheat the system and previously before the Merit system was introduced, account farming was quite common. <People only creating accounts and posting to sell the account later for profit> 

A lot of these accounts end up in the hands of criminals that use these accounts to scam people. <higher ranking accounts, have a lot more credibility and people trust them more than a newbie account.> 

Times have surely changed. Back in the day, a $300 to $400 increase in the price would not even have made the news and now it is suddenly a Newsflash! 

Someone is playing with some big money to toy with Bitcoin hoarders. They dump a few coins to push the price down with, say $600 and then they bottom out for a while, before they start buying again to push the price up with $800 and then they rinse and repeat.

We are just seeing the whales or some big financial institutions, playing us like puppets. 

The moment when those bitcoins come in contact with the Fiat system, then you are stuck with the same problems and the high fees. If the owner can keep that within the Bitcoin ecosystem, then the fees will be applicable. Take for instance what would happen if those coins went through the regulated exchanges. A lot of exchanges ask roughly 1% in trading fees, so that person will have to pay $3000 in trading fees to move it around in an regulated exchange. 

So he or she is not out of the woods yet. 

I also saw something that a bunch of investors were planning to send $300k worth of bitcoins to Venezuela to be sold there, in an attempt to help them counter hyperinflation in that country. Strange how this amount is almost exactly what is needed to fund that goal.  Some Whale might have seen that and decided that it was a good opportunity to help people with his coins. 

You never know.  Let's hope these coins just moved owners and that it will not have an affect on the price. 

Guys, you have to remember that this user is a shill for Gold and Silver industry. <browse through his post history> He will always drop something in his posts to promote Gold and Silver investments over Bitcoin. His argument is totally ridiculous, because he ignores the opposite outcome in that scenario. <If the Bitcoin price goes beyond the purchase price of that investment, then this person will make a ton of  profit>

I wiped out my initial capital investment in 2017, with a 800% profit.     <How many Goldbugs can say that?> 

When the hash rate drop, with miners exiting the scene.. Bitcoin simply auto adjust the difficulty to balance out things. As the hash rate drop, more and more of the miners that has left, would come back again. You would even find that other miners would increase their hashing power to fill the gap of the miners that has left. <because they have more streamlined mining operations>

A $6000 or $5000 price is definitely not the death blow for Bitcoin.

Ask yourself this question, Do you want us to make the same mistakes with Bitcoin as we made with the current financial system? Do we want debt to continue and even increase in the coming years? We are already sucked into a financial death spiral with the current funding mechanisms to feed our insatiable need for "things" that we do not need to survive.

I hope Bitcoin can help to break those debt chains, not strengthen it. 

Yes, it is a very good Infographic.   

I would like to see a bit more time spend on the basics with less complex explanations. You guys jumped from 1 page with everything Bitcoin to a short history and then into Alt coins. I doubt if people would understand the Blockchain and Mining and Crypto currencies if everything is crammed into one page, like that.

The quality is good, but some further explanation and links to "Bitcoin made simple" videos would help. They see a short description of mining, but they might want to know more. So provide them with good sources of information to expand that knowledge. 

I will also give you a sMerit for that, because I am saying that for years now. Nobody gets anything in life, by sitting on their ass and doing nothing. <The people doing this, will just survive and amount to nothing>

It is actually so easy to do this. Every month you have a budget for things that you have to pay. You currently pay for those things in fiat. Just go out there and look for services that give you the same thing, but they will have to accept Bitcoin. Then convert that part of your budget to bitcoins and spend that at these merchants.

If a few thousand people do this with their budget every month, then this thing will grow much bigger. I am doing this with my food budget and in that way, I support my local Bitcoin merchants and I oil the Bitcoin ecosystem. <The more merchants I can convince to do this, the more demand will be for the coins>  

This can go two ways:

The Bitcoin Cash network can survive the attack and the Roger Ver minions will argue that it is their proof that it is a robust network. < In my opinion this attack will just prove that it is very expensive to attack networks with big block sizes >

On the other hand, if it is successful, then Core supporters will have more ammunition that BCrash is trash. <Most of the Roger Ver minions will have the same excuse that we had, when we <core> was attacked.

So attacks like this will not prove anything, it will just give everyone a opportunity to complain about the other side, using dirty tactics.