If it gives considerable changes on how one uses the platform then it will be a hit. However knowing the scandals of Facebook regarding data handling, no matter what form or how innovative they can be with the blockchain technology, it still isn't really appealing for those who want more privacy over their personal information. It is possible for them to use or integrate blockchain into whichever application they deem fit because of their great engineers but what bothers me is if there will still be a data security breach from the inside knowing the recent scandals about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

So you're trying to imply that these sudden rises are the works of Tether printing out money? It could be an eventful happenstance though I find it unlikely that traders are buying bitcoin whenever new money is printed in Tether. Or perhaps insider trading is aligned with Tether's printing of new money; there's just too many possibilities that it's quite impossible to correlate one thing to bitcoin's price rise anymore. We all know that bitcoin is a highly volatile asset but we are still somewhat in-denial of it being highly susceptible to large-scale manipulation even after years. Perhaps Tether could answer your question, but if the pattern isn't broken for the next sudden rises, we can all attribute it to traders buying bitcoin whenever Tether prints out new money.

I found it quite appalling that people only see the bad on the initiative towards a cashless society rather than the good. Also, blame the 19th century industrial revolution for all this mess and waste that the earth has accumulated for over 200 years. Compared to the burning of fossil fuels, cryptocurrencies are only around for ~10 years, with the first few years of its existence generating little to no carbon emissions.

I'm pretty sure that there will come a time when PoW will become obsolete once a new algorithm is found to be fair and secures the integrity of the network after all the 'switch,' but until that isn't solved, we'll be sticking with PoW for now. With all the recent yapping about energy consumption from the community and the peers, I'm sure this will ring the minds of brilliant devs who can come up with a solution.

If they would, there'd be many people on the streets talking about fraud and whatnot, all the while ignoring fiat donations and shady dealings during an election campaign. It will be an issue for sure, but at the end of the day, if the local government of California recognizes bitcoin as money, why would others don't? Also, inevitably these bitcoins will be converted into fiat knowing that not every campaign materials and/or services can be paid with bitcoin, so what's the fuss about?

Mining is pretty much alive these days, though just not that appealing for regular consumers looking to get something extra out of a small capital. If anything, it's only the big pockets who are benefiting from the mining scene and they're the ones really pushing for their expansion. You can still mine though not particularly bitcoin, perhaps any other coin with a bunch of graphics cards and it can still give you quite a decent amount of profit in the end.

I wouldn't call these prices as predictions but rather mere guesses from these firms. There really isn't any reason for the price to go that high, let alone that the latest blow-off from the top happened only a few months ago, and a year of correction and accumulation isn't sufficient to build that much momentum towards insanely high prices. Aside from that, we witnessed that at $18k, the price started losing steam and only a few people can buy at that price, what more if the price is highly elevated? Where would the money come from?

Taking a quick glance on the article, the information you're looking for is already laid out in front of you. To add little bits of my own insight, I see blockchain greatly complementing the services banks can offer, or in other words, they're compatible albeit the differences between bitcoin and banks. It offers cost-effective, secure and fast solutions to an already laid out process, further honing it to cater the fast-paced environment of banking and finance.

I don't actually see that as an issue though it just means that there isn't enough incentive for traders to push the price up. Also, no clear reason why bitcoin's price will shoot up. It remains as it is though despite the fact that ETFs have been deliberately rejected by the SEC. Right now, the price seems to be moving up, sitting @ $6600 which is a pretty good change throughout the day. As of late, there seems to be no real reason for the price to increase and it's normal seeing that no important events are queued up for bitcoin.

There are rules in submitting your block or any information in a blockchain. If even one of these rules is circumvented and/or not followed, the nodes will automatically reject anything submitted to them so as to maintain the integrity of all the data stored in the chain. It works cleverly and fairly simple, like certain cells of the body which can only accept certain proteins/materials while rejecting anything that doesn't pass up to their standards/structure. It creates uniformity as well, so that the whole chain wouldn't be messed up and the new data stored is always following the data it precedes.

Seeing how the price moved, people don't seem to bother anymore about how ETFs are doing. Most people just gave up on the thought of the SEC approving any ETFs, and just went on to continue trading as if it's like a normal day. Perhaps we are just very eager to get some high gains for bitcoin again but in reality, we don't need ETFs that much, it's just another application that could potentially boost us into higher gains. The market seems to be dormant as of late and the up-down movement of the market seems normal despite the ETF talks.

The blockchain does not generate big data, it only acts as a storage or a ledger for the said data, but the algorithm of bitcoin, its transactions, addresses and whatnot is what produces all the data stored in the blockchain. The most important thing a blockchain can do is how it acts as a public ledger and also maintaining the credibility and integrity of the data stored within the chain. If the latter isn't followed or fulfilled by the former, there's no differentiating blockchain into any other public ledger systems.

I'm more interested in the bottom of bitcoin for this current time frame rather than anticipating for yet another ATH, which I think wouldn't happen in the next coming months even in 2019. Seeing bitcoin's bottom could ultimately give us a great insight as to how strong and resilient the price will be and how far can the bulls go if they decided that accumulating time is over and it's time to do yet another run. Getting a solid baseline matters, and the higher the bottom is, the greater the ATH could possibly be, so if $5k is the absolute bottom of this run, one can only imagine how much would be the new ATH by then.

Adding another entity wherein there is potential profit would corrupt the government even more, so IMO it's best to just leave the banking and finance to the private sector and let the government do its own thing. At first, sure the banks would run smoothly, but given the nature of the politicians running for office these days, how sure are we about the integrity of the public banks once it's held by these crooks in their offices? Taxes are being used for personal gains, how about the profits made by public banks? Economically speaking, this is a good strategy since you can use the government's influence to expand, however on the core 'values' of the ones holding the said bank is where the problem would start.

Perhaps they wouldn't, because all of the postponements for sure, regardless of all the considerations, would be inevitably rejected due to bitcoin's 'susceptibility to price manipulation' which I think makes sense on the side of SEC's standards. No matter how good ETF proposals are, price manipulation for bitcoin is always present, no matter how hard the regulations are trying to minimize or eliminate it. Perhaps these people could just divert their energy and attention towards other aspects and areas, just not ETFs which we know will never, ever be approved no matter how hard they try.

They've been doing the same thing for years, and IMO, China in the trading scene seems to be irrelevant now, though their miners remain to be a vital part of the whole bitcoin ecosystem. Blocking exchanges from their interwebs won't stop serious traders from China, if anything they might just send people out to do the trading for them. Serious investors want to make serious money out of bitcoin,  and why would they let anything block them from their source of wealth? They will find a way.

IMO, there are only certain aspects to which crypto could disrupt the markets. Well in fact it already did, by making the companies pursue the wonders of the blockchain tech, together with the governments wanting automation and security on their processes and services. For the first time in many years, companies have actually felt the 'need' to do something about their obsolete systems, and that IMO is already a disruption of the markets, perhaps not directly related to stocks and whatnot but disruption notwithstanding.

We have managed to get to a new ATH without any ETFs on our side, and I think we're faring great albeit the recent crashes and setbacks that we encountered price-wise. At this point, ETFs are somewhat irrelevant to bitcoin since the traders learned that the SEC wouldn't be accepting any of them in the time being, and it's just better to direct the efforts and attention into somewhere else. With 9 of the most recent ETTFs getting denied, the market haven't react violently and stayed flat for almost a whole day. Needless to say, the hype surrounding ETFs have died and we are now looking into other things as of this moment.

One less source of convulution has been ignored, and perhaps it's about time that people stop anticipating any ETF approval in the near future..

Lol everyone knows that the SEC has no plans of accepting any ETFs now or even in the future; it's just another form of hype building and perhaps a collaboration between the rich investors involved in bitcoin and the ones in the SEC. They make it look like the ETFs are being approved this time but lo and behold, they haven't really talked about it and considered it one bit. People will just anticipate for ETFs and those who know what's going to happen will be the ones making a buck out of these hypes.

It would be great if the community starts to shift their attention towards the fundamentals of bitcoin with which we are lagging behind. Perhaps it's about time to make bitcoin really accessible for most people who needs it and who can really benefit from it.

1. By nature, it wouldn't happen since the outdated node wouldn't have any copy of the previous transactions that builds the chain. Once the transaction is broadcasted to the network, it will be picked up by an up-to-date node and miners will then pick it up if it suffices their terms on which transactions to pick.

2. The coins are technically lost forever, no doubt about that. There are no ifs or anything, just bitcoins helping bitcoin achieve a state of scarcity.

3. What do you mean by 'no one claims?' By default, there are 2^160 possible bitcoin addresses that can be produced, and it's quite impossible to be exhausted even within the generations to come. The scenario in which you are picturing is quite improbable to happen, and bitcoin address creation follows a certain algorithm that it's quite tricky for a person to mix and match numbers and letters to obtain an address that is yet to be generated.

EDIT: For those who are more into the technical side of bitcoin, kindly correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks!

While the majority of the mining power is concentrated in China and most of these miners utilize hydroelectric power, the rest of the world remains on using coal as their primary source of electricity and that's still a significant amount of carbon emission to think of. While I do believe that adds up to the problems of this world, many so-called 'experts' are singling out bitcoin in this issue of carbon emission, completely turning a blind eye on petrol products, cars and other industries which pretty much uses more power than what half of the bitcoin network is using. If all miners can have their hands on clean and green electricity, they'd do it since they'd be hitting multiple birds in one stone: cost-effective, cheap and the general temperature is apt for the machines' running condition, 24/7.