I think that at some point, governments will demand to create an encryption backdoor on cryptocurrencies, but knowing that crypto's strong suit lies within its encryption, it will be a dire effort for the governments to convince the devs that that is for the greater good. Idk why they come to such thoughts; this to me seems like they just want to 'own' the data of us citizens by spying in every way possible, even if they tell us that they'd only use the backdoors if needed. I know for one that backdoors already exist in everything we use, tech companies just don't want people to learn about it, and the governments are trying to sensationalize it just so we can 'agree' that it is something not to worry about.

Perhaps we reached the age of pseudo-security and pseudo-privacy, people.

The best future bitcoin can have IMO is to have its value stabilized because with it, merchants and consumer would flock in the ecosystem and build a strong economy for bitcoin. You can always have insightful gains while retaining value for bitcoin without all those crazy volatile runs--perhaps a brief stint of appreciation would suffice--which will still be a win-win for merchants and consumers either way. A brief and steep rise would mean a great fall afterwards, which we are experiencing cyclically for years now. If we want to really have a strong economy before us, we should be wanting for mass adoption, not for profits alone.

As I've said before on previous posts, India seems to be testing the waters for its own cryptocurrency before allowing any other crypto to flourish in its lands. Knowing that the attention of Indians would surely go on something they can profit at, banning is the only way the government sees in order to divert the attention towards their own baby. But anyhow, digitization of money is still acceptable, be it in the form of crypto or anything else. As the world shifts towards a highly-digitized environment, money should also follow suit to allow seamless flow of transactions day by day.

Seeing that Coinbase conducted the survey, I'd say that in a way, there's some form of bias on how the research/survey was done. Anyhow, no matter how small the sample is, the data extracted somewhat hints at the positive end of the spectrum for cryptocurrency. IMO, any form of awareness of students toward global trends and tech that could potentially impact the future is good, be it a disruptive tech that challenges the financial sector or any form of tech/methodology unbeknownst to the old-timers of the society. These students will be the ones handling our future, so as early as now they should be educated and aware of crypto, knowing that more and more countries are gearing towards a blockchain-powered society and digitization of money.

It would be better if the survey was conducted by a third-party org. that doesn't have any interests on cryptocurrency so as to 'keep' the integrity of the said survey.

Most people are already banked on the notion that ETFs will bring much better gains that's why they have already forgotten about the bigger potential of merchant adoption as a game changer. Everyone thinks that institutional investors' money is the sole thing that can carry us to higher highs while ignoring the fact that this market would be teeming with life once merchants bother to chime in to the party. Perhaps we will not see sudden surge in price like what most of us are expecting, but it will take us into a pretty solid baseline which, I think is more important than an unstable and shaky high price.

For one, how do you determine if the coins are lost or not? You can't just go on and devise an algorithm that will record addresses that have not been used in the past x months/yrs since I know a lot of people who keep their bitcoins as is, including me (I have a few coins left in an unused address since 2015). That alone is hard, how about the othrr things/points? Perhaps Satoshi has already saw this before he even left the project, and made an important note that if coins were lost, consider it something that adds value to the whole of bitcoin and nothing more.

Knowing that the Dow and Wall Street is performing pretty nicely as of late, so far Trump's administration had been delivering good results for the US economy. However, on the darker side of things, with the recent trade tariffs imposed on several countries, the US is silently making enemies in the process, albeit that rivalry is somewhat restricted on trading and nothing else. However, if we put things under a microscope, we can see that the changes Trump made for America isn't panning out well, with unemployment rates getting higher, tax cuts not doing anything substantial for the Americans and most especially, the quality of is still, more or less the same. Though Trump is a businessman by trade before he sat as the POTUS, I can say that he isn't an amazing nor a bad leader, just your average guy with temper issues.

As long as there's an obvious profit for something, why would people stay clear from it, right? The derivative market is worth trillions of dollars, and there's a reason behind that: genius, nasty investors found a way to dupe the people into thinking that brand Xy is different from brand X itself, albeit applying little to almost no change to it. The gullible people tend to buy it, and once these nasty rich assholes saw that it's easy to deceive people and the governments, they made it into a regular, legal thing. I don't see why 'synthetic' bitcoin is lethal, though I can say it might hurt bitcoin's economy knowing that it takes away a portion of what should/could be for bitcoin. Anyway, no matter how we put it, the derivatives market is one of the biggest 'legitimate' scams of the 21st century, and only those involved says otherwise.

More of an asset rather than a stock, because definitions of each restricts bitcoin to act as both. Financial experts can alter what X could be used for even though X is good at something else, same with bitcoin, they can convince people that it is a great thing for something else when it's intended use actually differs from what it really is. However, I know for a fact that people, by now know what bitcoin is, and where it really excels at, so people cannot easily be fooled by the 'experts' and do their own thing for their own coins. Also, the governments have their own definitions of what bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are, and most people tend to listen closely to the government more than experts, so still, the use of bitcoin greatly varies due to opinions.

I applaud Nicehash for actually doing their part in reimbursing their customers, but in reality, they can't do shit about the situation and just run otherwise, the users would just sue them to hell just like what happened in the Mt. Gox fiasco. Nicehash, albeit being the not-so-friendly type of service to their customers, still they are wanting to make it even to their peers and call it quits, or perhaps start a new venture with an even tighter and safer security features. This is a good news, a service that actually cares for their customers.

I don't think so. And the 'corrective rally' you are pertaining to, IMO, is nothing but a short stint for gains, or perhaps just some random episodes of crazy volatility coming in to play. Just because the scenario happened in 2017 doesn't mean it will be repeated again in 2018; that's not how "history repeats itself" works. Perhaps you can say that some gains will be made by the end of 2018, but a 'bull run' IMO is quite improbable as of this moment and we need some more positive things happening to bitcoin before a similar run is replicated.

I don't think the SEC not approving ETFs would be a problem, considering that we managed to get this far without the said investment opportunity around back then. The problem I see is bitcoin not receiving enough attention on adoption but rather more on investments and profits, which I think hurts in the long run after some other coin takes the lead price-wise. It might not be in the short-term but eventually, some coin will replace bitcoin at the top if the struggle for control over the market becomes too tight.

I see bitcoin held a lot of times price-wise, but what's really going to get bitcoin far on this journey is its ability to remain a viable asset class/currency for the people who remains to trust it despite all the negativity it received in the past years. Also, development on the coin should not stagnate; not that I'm wanting more and more features but just to keep the gears going and the system robust against malicious attacks which could greatly harm bitcoin and the trust of the users who hold it.

Price shouldn't be the only factor we should be worried about; the inner workings of the system should also be taken into play.

Well for one, I see India blocking the growth of other cryptos because they want theirs to be used mainly by their citizens before allowing the growth of other cryptos. Knowing that India is a place wherein technology isn't really an unknown thing, citizens would have the means to acquire other crypto if they like, so in order to preven this and divert the focus towards their own crypto, they banned bitcoin alongside any other cryptocurrencies. In time, once the state-issued crypto are in circulation and is successful, India will surely lift the ban.

Once governments started recognizing bitcoin as somewhat legal on their definition, it will give yet another massive price boost for the said crypto. Japan started it last year, and other countries are also reviewing the possibilities for bitcoin to become a recognized asset, a currency or a legal tender. Personally, I'd say decentralized or centralized coin depends on its usage. Both has its pros and cons depending on usability. Centralized coins can be an excellent token for private services, whereas decentralized coins can be used for purchases across borders.

Posts like these are randomly spawning whenever the price is plumetting and there's not much profit to be made on the mining side of things. Most mining companies align the prices of their machines with the current prices of coins, as for GPUs, the prices of viable cards for mining are declining due to the newer-gen cards being constantly introduced every 6-8 months. If anything, I can see mining operators expanding their farms by buying more hardware due to it being cheap.

Check the recent hashrates for the coins you are pertaining to, and see for yourself that it haan't changed drastically for the worse.

edit: spellings and a word

Bitcoin miners would surely opt for greener sources of energy if it were cheaper and easily accessible, but given that traditional coal power plants are giving their arm and leg to get such deals on these power-hungry miners, I'd say that most of the time, mining operators are still getting their energy from such traditional sources. Also, the setup for greener, low-carbon energy production is still not viable for large-scale operations that only a small percentage of users are enjoying it, though miners, if they have the money, can create one themselves and just use their harnessed energy for their operations.

It will be a long qay before greener energy is available for households and industries alike, knowing that the demand for coal-powered energy is still over the roof.

To know that not all the sources of energy we're using is carbon-free, it's worth noting that the burning of fossil fuels even up to this day is still what's running most of our industries and not only bitcoin. Once we shifted into something greener, efficient and cheaper (like hydro or nuclear), I don't see the need to discuss the same power consumption all over again. There are other industries that use more power and emits more carbon than bitcoin, but have we turn a spiteful eye into them? But one way or another, we might have to look into other algorithms which could drastically reduce the power consumption needed to run the network, perhaps PoS or any other better alternatives.

At least for now, that is the lowest recorded price for 2018, with a lot of ETFs rejected and a lot of negatives happening, I'm still amazed on how stubborn the price is. Many times have the bears tried to break $5700-$5800 but to no avail, ultimately resulting in a slight turnaround in price and posing some gains before going back to the $6k levels again. I'm not bothered that we are staying at the same price levels for long, as long as it proves that the levels we are standing at right now has a solid foundation.

If anything, right now the unpredictability of bitcoin is what's actually getting more people on-board since most are just in for the money nowadays and are hoping to make a quick buck out of bitcoin. Those people are the general users, the ones who care much about profit first, fundamentals second. However, I believe that merchants would be the ones driving adoption up ones they get in on the economy, given that there is still a huge number of people wanting to spend their bitcoins and not just use as an asset. We need more merchants to fill in the blanks of an unbalanced economy that we have, though I know for certain that that wouldn't happen as long as volatility is still present.