That reminds me of myself like 20 years ago. I made sure that I always had enough money to pay bills and whatnot, where I spent every single penny of the rest on things I didn't need such as expensive clothes, high end mobile phones, ordering food every other day, etc. Result was that I didn't have ANYTHING in my savings account.

If I compare how I am today with how I was 20 years ago in terms of money management, I see two completely different persons. It feels really good knowing that I made most of my mistakes when it didn't really matter. Now I can live quite comfortably without even having a lot. My expenses are pretty low, just so that I have more to invest.

In the more recent years there has been a trend amongst twentiers where taking out a quick loan has become so common, that people actually consider it to be normal. This is quite shocking considering how high the interest rates are. It shows me how much worse the economy has become that these loans are needed to make ends meet until the next paycheck clears.

I wouldn't put too much faith in your government to help you through a recession with how they usually start recessions themselves.

For most people it's important to have enough fiat in order to confidently pay your bills and whatnot, the rest isn't really important. Nothing prevents even the safest financial tools such as Gold to help you successfully hedge a recession, especially when you take into consideration that most people hold Gold derivatives, which can be sold in less than a minute if you so wish.

I'm from Europe myself, but half of my fiat savings are nominated in dollars because I have zero confidence in the Euro. I started doing that years ago already and don't regret it a single moment. I saw the ratio go down from >$1.4 to now slightly under $1.10. It's shit. It always pays off to hedge your own weaker (non dollar) fiat currency to further reduce risk of being hit too hard by a recession.

We're seeing that happen with Gold as we speak. Gold has hit new all time highs in various fiat currencies, yet the increase is somewhat meaningless because it's just the fact that the loss in purchasing power has gone down a lot. Put the Gold charts in USD against the Gold charts in AUD and you'll see it right away.

The same has happened to Bitcoin's price and volume in VES. They keep increasing because that currency keeps losing purchasing power, but when you put the price and the volumes against the USD, you'll see that there hasn't been any growth at all. People here keep rehashing how well Venezuela is doing without taking into consideration how much that currency lost in purchasing power.

Richy-rich whales are smart. The small fishes that are willing to sell to these whales are not. In that regard, the concentration of wealth in Bitcoin will be extremely high amongst whales, and probably much worse than the already existing inequality in the legacy world. They will not get any of my satoshis.

But then again, this has been happening for years now. Whales continuously see their Bitcoin stack increase, while the rest continuously see their Bitcoin stack decrease because they cash out some of their holdings each time the price appreciates in value.

1000% is quite greedy when you take into consideration that most risk-on assets are being sold down significantly in order to accumulate fiat. Bitcoin is a risk-on asset too, and probably the worst one from the perspective of a neutral investor. In that regard, Bitcoin's price remaining flat during a recession is a pretty solid achievement too.

It's going to be an interesting stress test for Bitcoin would a recession unfolds, but I honestly prefer to not see a recession at all. Even if Bitcoin doesn't tank hard or goes up value, we're probably not going to be happy about those gains with how everything else is being sold down. Pension funds for example will suffer a lot. We will definitely feel that in our pockets. 

Do they really? I mean, most people here don't need a whole lot of liquidity. From what I have seen, the most popular dexes seem to have sufficient enough liquidity to serve quite a bunch of people. Dexes are meant to be used by people who can't or don't want to use a centralized exchange. They do it to buy in and then keep the coins or spend them, and not necessarily to trade them.

Also, a lot of people who complain about dexes lacking liquidity don't do anything to change it. If you really want to see dexes have more liquidity, then start yourself and help whatever dex you're using become more liquid.

That's true, but even the more reputable exchanges have orderbooks consisting of a lot of spoof orders (orders that are in the books but aren't meant to be filled). In the stock market spoofing is illegal, but in crypto that rule doesn't seem to apply yet, which is why you shouldn't pay too much attention to orderbook depth to either consider the market bearish or bullish.

Last year Ethereum went through a flash crash from ~$100 to ~$13 on CoinbasePro, which is the most reputable and most liquid actual fiat exchange. It's something you can't avoid unfortunately (or fortunately for those who get their low orders filled). Some exchanges do reverse the trades, so even if you managed to buy in super low, you will probably not benefit from it.

From the perspective of a Bitcoiner it's definitely BTCPay. In this case you have control over every aspect of each transaction that comes in. You also don't have to worry about centralized payment gateways to suddenly change their terms and lock your funds until you provide them every detail they are asking for.

From the perspective of a merchant that is not aware of what Bitcoin is about and just want to add an extra payment option to their checkout page without hassle, a centralized payment gateway is the most logical option. Merchants also have no clue about the politics game that BitPay plays. They pop up at the very top everywhere these bastards.

There is also a centralized payment gateway called CoinGate, which supports LN too. To not be harassed by US regulators they do not provide any services to the US. CoinGate on its own made sure +4000 merchants now accept LN payments, which is pretty cool.

You can't expect Gold and real estate to be rising at a similar rate as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a 'brand new' asset that doesn't yield anything, can't be used for anything other than value transfers, etc, yet it has been increasing because there is something about it as decentralized sound money that people like.

Gold and real estate have already inflated to a point that perfectly reflects how little trust there is in fiat, and how much of it is in circulation. Now it's Bitcoin's turn to usurp fiat as one of the hottest assets in the last 10 years. Eventually Bitcoin will follow a similar trajetory as Gold in terms of price action. Bull runs will no longer be 500-1000% increases, but more like 25%-50% on average, and that over a much longer period of time.

Gold bugs need to wake up and look at how large Gold's market already is, and the insane volumes Gold derivatives are generating, which are suppressing its price. Central banks have been buying physical Gold like crazy but it didn't do anything for the price. What got the price to pump is speculators buying Gold derivatives, and the same speculators will dump it back down eventually.

Bitcoin is actually usable as money today, where Gold isn't really unless you exchange Gold bars for real estate for example. High value transactions.

I like your open mindedness. It made me look at this event from another side instead of just focusing on their privacy issues (which are very serious and shouldn't be ignored).

It could indeed be that people either haven't been exposed to trading in general, or know about trading, but simply prefer to not leave the ecosystem they are comfortable with, mainly with how crypto exchanges have been quite a subject of discussion when it comes to hacks and whatnot. If this ends up bringing in some more liquidity, that would be cool.

If they without a problem scam and kill innocent people, it for a criminal certainly wouldn't be more difficult to apply the same tactics to another criminal.

It reminds me of some news coverage I saw a couple of years ago, where someone (who was a notorious criminal himself) was charged for murder, but then tried to justify his act by saying that he did the society a favor by killing a criminal. In other words, by that logic killing criminals is less severe of an act than killing any other human who isn't a criminal.

Speculation wise, people are over Bakkt already. They want to see it go live and turn over some impressive amounts.

Bakkt has done all the buying of Bitcoin already, so people shouldn't expect them to influence the price in any shape or form. Only if there turns out to be so much demand, and for that reason have to start buying Bitcoin again, it might have some impact on the OTC market, but then again, with how liquid that market is I doubt it will reflect on the spot market at all.

It's funny how Bakkt on the same day of the correction from over $10,000 to $9300 they Tweeted that they will start offering secure storage of customer's Bitcoin to prepare for the launch on September 23. They for some reason always make announcements just before/after a significant price movement.  

Realistically speaking, I would prefer a 'slower' road to that price in order for it to be more sustainable. The quicker we touch it, the weaker the support is and more likely that we'll be brutally rejected as usual. Bitcoin's issue hasn't ever been reaching certain high figures, maintaining them has always been its weakest point.

If I had to state a time frame, then >2030. That will allow me to accumulate as many satoshis as possible, then if we hit that price, diversification is what I will be focusing on.

As long as you keep buying your coins from a centralized exchange, governments very likely will find out how many coins you bought and roughly still have, and based on that make a calculation as to how much tax you owe them. Every centralized service that you have used throughout the years keeps a record of your purchases, trades, withdrawals, deposits, etc.

Governments are like hyenas, they smell a prey from a far distance and will do everything they can to use all your past crypto activities against you. They know much more about you than you think.

Not shocking at all. BitPay does so too, though it (for now) is being enforced only when it comes to relatively higher amounts. If in the future KYC will be required even for the tiniest payments, then this is an excellent setup for merchants to adopt BTCPay Server. It offers way more actual control over your funds, and you don't have to pay a fee to the BitPays of this world.

I'm pro any form of Lightning adoption. I would however like to see more non techy merchants hop on board. It will help bring in some much needed variety in the type of merchants accepting Bitcoin.

Exactly. It's nicely following the same trajectory as the USD>purchasing power chart is indicating, but then in a time span of just a decade. From hundreds of coins for a single dollar, to now just 10,000 satoshis, and in the next decade probably to 1000 satoshis, to perhaps one day people kindly declining an offer to accept dollars in exchange for your satoshis.

Bitcoin increasing is simply put the regular fiat system slowly imploding. The only downside to that is that we still get out paychecks in fiat, which over the years buys you fewer satoshis. 

This is why people should be appreciative of price dips of any nature. Don't think that prices are too expensive to buy. I thought that too back when we were hovering below $1000 and didn't average in for a long time. Stupid decision looking back now.

Why do you consider this thread to be a negative story?

I find it quite fascinating and cool that people don't let themselves be stopped from transacting with the services/people they want. Coinbase for example terminates your account when you use the coins you bought on their platform for gambling purposes. By using a mixer people can add an additional layer of privacy and still do whatever it is that they want, and that without having to worry about their accounts being teminated.

This is a perfectly legitimate use case for mixers. This is technically what they are for. Without them people would have less freedom.

It's just trash in my opinion. If you combine banking with Bitcoin, the bank (that abides by the laws all financial institutions are subject to) decides for you what you can and can't do with your coins. If you transfer funds to a service/person the bank doesn't like because it might put them in a bad position, they will boot you off their platform and probably flag you as a user to avoid.

If you like less freedom and a financial institution that for you to decide who you can and can't transact with, then this is the way to go.

Not sure what chart you look at, but they aren't 'very' similar at all. It shouldn't even be considered similar because the S&P is composed of 500 of the largest companies in the US, all with revenue and profit streams. Bitcoin's chart reflects speculation at its finest since there isn't anything that's backing it aside from the electricity required to mint a coin.

Mind explaining how you come up with that? There is not enough data to make such a statement. With how people are hyping up institutions entering crypto, they make it seem that crypto needs institutions to get to the next level. In that regard, who needs who?

I like the fact that liquidity is going to play a role of importance, but it is just a matter of time before exchanges start to spoof their orderbooks with fake orders to rank up on CMC. I doubt that they will do something to remove these exchanges, because if they really cared they would have removed the exchanges with fake volumes already.

I think the whole point is that people take this site way too serious. There are other sites that already use different metrics to rank coins and exchanges. It's a third party site that shows you what they allow you to see.