Only the rich can relate to the expression 'Money can't buy everything' but to us, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the slaves of the corporate world or whatever it is, money is a huge help to our needs and growing pains. Rich people's problems are limited to the non-material things while the poor and the middle-class is mainly centered around money. The fine line between rich and poor is ever so growing, and the rich still has the audacity to 'motivate' people by these 'powerful words' that are keys to success.

People in this time need money more than ever, as more and more capitalists are banding together to make more money while the rest of the world are left behind. Money might not save you from death, buy you unconditional love or save you from depression, but at least money will help you live a decent life while you're at it.

it gets the awareness up but general adoption? I think not. It needs more than mentions on famous pop culture media to be perfectly honest; it needs more real-world applications, more use-cases and more places to spend. While it increases the exposure cryptocurrencies get, it still lacks something to push things forward. Most people are inclined to think that mainstream media mentions make a huge dent on things that are quite obscure, but in reality, it doesn't, it only gets people interested for a short while and completely forgets about bitcoin and crypto after some time since they have no motivation and incentive to use it and dig deeper.

Is this another round of fear-mongering for potential bitcoin investors? Star Xu was not arrested but rather taken into custody for questioning and consultation by the Shanghai Police. Also, isn't any news from China not relevant on bitcoin nowadays? No matter how 'severe' the news looks, if it came from China, probably people would just shake it off and continue doing what they're doing with bitcoin. It all started with their crazy regulation bans and lifts that the world doesn't seem to care at all after the series of on-off drama.

This will not affect the price of bitcoin negatively, and would just be ignored while people take profits and take losses in the market.

Can't see bitcoin panning out with brick-and-mortar stores sooner or later, given the amount of work it needs to keep bitcoin let alone the volatility of the everyday pricing scares the merchant (though there are third-party services which exist just to take care of that 'problem'). Perhaps in software subscription it will excel, but given the nature on how they try to market their products and knowing the limits of their control on bitcoin, these subscription-based services will never deviate from credit cards knowing that they're getting something from it. It's just wishful thinking at this point in time.

While the news seem to be overall a positive one, this wasn't new in the world of cryptocurrencies. Luxury items were sold in bitcoin even way beyond 2015, with a house even sold for bitcoins back then. Perhaps it's time to focus bitcoin spending on a whole sensible aspect: things that people need yet don't cost a fortune at all e.g. clothes, basic necessities etc.  It will be more groundbreaking given the large demographic it will hit with merchants accepting bitcoin as a payment method for their stores.

I don't think that's the main driver as to why there aren't any new people hopping in on the crypto train: the feud has been going on since forever though I know for a fact that newcomers are not exposed to that certain drama. They are all aware of the volatility of the coin and that's what's keeping them from investing and committing wholeheartedly to either of the crypto. If anything, this drama between BCH and BTC supporters are raising sensible questions aside from all the junk and mud that has been thrown, so there's still some good out of it if you look on the brighter side.

I don't think that the positive news springing all over the web brings price stability for bitcoin since we have had a series of good PR over the past few years, particularly 2015 but the price either drops hard or expresses a huge volatility. Positive news are okay since it promotes bitcoin, though I don't think it really offers something for the market and the traders to rely on. The way I see it, hype generates more reaction from the market than positive news itself, so it's really hard to just trust whatever positive is appearing on the media and the web for trading decisions.

Perhaps this could be moved over to Service Discussion?

As for the OP itself, this is a clear manifestation of blockchain's revolution. It could be a great contender against credit cards which, to this day and age, is still very susceptible to spoofing and other tricks for fraud. Employing the blockchain significantly lessens that risk, though the specifics of the said tech from IBM hasn't been conveyed, the idea is unique and can combat fraud from spoofed cards. The question is whether people will support the new tech or just stick sith their cards still.

That would not happen since services are trying to connect to the general masses lately, even suggesting that sending and receiving bitcoins through SMS would be a good addition to the ecosystem. One of the main proponents of the bitcoin whitepaper is to make it as decentralized as possible, and true to this--though some aspects of it have lost its decentralized nature--bitcoin is still somewhat decentralized. No central authority could ever own the whole of bitcoin, and services built around bitcoin can create things and content to satisfy the masses' needs and whatnot. The inaccessibility will come to the services, not from bitcoin itself.

People will never value bitcoin as a currency but rather as an investment, no matter how hard we try to curb that thought bitcoiners have developed for years. Seeing the great appreciation of value bitcoin saw in its years, people became quick to develop the HODL ideology which, at some point, bitcoin's price will boom and they will be granted with profits. No matter how many policies and academic articles we publish regarding bitcoin's excellence as a currency, if we can't change the mindset of people who use it, there will really be no effect in turning bitcoin from an investment to a fully-functional currency.

But admit it or not, most institutional investors are wanting the ETFs to get on board with bitcoin before they go full-on bitcoin bulls. They are just waiting for that extra layer of security coming from the ETFs before they invest. Though bitcoin reached enormous heights without these fancy things the investing world drools about, still we can't deny the fact that bitcoin can still reached higher highs once these ETFs are approved. Idk what's the fuss about the ETFs but then again, if it brings in more money to the economy, that would be great.

Being the world's largest so-called 'shadow bank,' they might have the expertise and necessary tools to aid Coinbase in creating the right mix for an ETF, but knowing how the SEC turned down and delayed some of the most promising ETFs presented at one time, I think it will be no different in here, though this still looks more probable than any others who have their fate decided already. Asking a giant to aid you in what seems to be a hard quest seems to be assuring, but then again, it's the SEC who they're against.

While the idea of services/governments using the blockchain tech for logistics and record-keeping seems mesmerizing, in the end, these does not affect bitcoin in any way given that their blockchains are a separate entity from bitcoin's, and they willingly omit bitcoin from any recognition whatsoever when asked for such idea. The blockchain tech can do amazing things; it was first evidenced by bitcoin then the rest is history. It will pretty much excel in record-keeping and logistics as I've always said, but with great engineers tinkering through this opus, blockchain can perhaps be applied in many ways than one.

Meh, perhaps they'd be straight up denying these ETFs just like what they did with other promising ETFs that generated a lot of hype as well e.g. Winklevoss ETF and the likes. We are giving too much attention into things that don't seem to add any relevance to the ecosystem except hype and conditional positive events. There's a lot happening around the ecosystem that we simply ignore just because we want a massive price boost from the approval of these ETFs. Perhaps its time to focus on the fundamentals or a new algorithm for better power consumption of the whole network since the whole world (ehem, media) is bitchin' about it lately.

Perhaps you might be one of the victims of a fake news spreading from a website that didn't took the time to validate and check sources. Doing a quick search, the rate of 1 bitcoin on Iran is 110,000,000 rial at its peak, or if converted to USD, about $2400 more or less which is very far from the reported value. Also do keep in mind that the Iranian rial is falling hard against the dollar as we speak, so any recorded value on Exir's website might have been affected by the rapid change of valuation of the Iranian rial against the dollar.

It will not be sooner, considering that most people are still in the hype of using bitcoins as nothing but investment vehicles and not as a currency or a medium of exchange. The general public always has access to bitcoins, the question is how hard is it for them to start? Sure, there are exchanges that lets people buy only a miniscule amount until they registered and submitted documents for KYC and for verification purposes, but there isn't really any incentive for them to try it out--except for profit, of course. As of now, fiat and credit cards are working just fine on their books and the need for cryptocurrencies isn't there yet.

I don't think it even hit close to $20k, but rather $2k, since it was only 101,800,000 rial recorded on their exchange. My take, someone must have been awful at their math class on their junior high or is trying to sensationalize the said news for some personal gains. It doesn't seem to be making sense as to why would Iranians buy bitcoin at that rate when the rest of the world is selling @ $7000 and lower. I'm pretty sure if that really is the case, they would try and arbitrage as hard as they could to gain more from the opportunity, but in reality, nothing special happened in Iran.

Knowing how the Japs operate, I don't think they have the guts to manipulate election results, or if ever the doubt arises regarding manipulation, I'm sure they already have a plan for anti-fraud in their elections. Sure that there always is the possibility for a 51% attack on a decentralized blockchain, but if the network itself is hidden and requires some credentials before being accessed, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be any problems.

It seems that day by day, institutional investors are trying to branch out from your regular investments into something crypto-related. Perhaps they are understanding the mechanics and the benefits of owning an exchange, and given that Japan is very much an open country to bitcoin and other crypto, there's a little risk for them regarding this acquisition. Nonetheless, seeing giants branching out into the crypto ecosystem is a great leap towards adoption and wider exposure.

I don't see any correlations in that. Personally, whenever there is a huge volume of short positions in the market, everyone is expecting some form of downtrend in the price in the nearest time possible. No form of bullish indicator can be seen whenever the market is flooded with short positions, though there had been some cases wherein shorts have been overwhelmed by an instant buying mania in the market, best example is bitcoin during Feb and May wherein we topped over $8000 while shorts are being rolled out by traders. Anyhow, shorts are still an indicator of a short-term bearish sentiment in the market, at least for me.