Eth, Xrp, Ltc Less volatile than Bitcoin? Not sure what you have been smoking, but every single altcoin (ignoring stablecoins for obvious reasons) is more volatile than Bitcoin because there simply is less liquidity.

By far, digital payments are the dominant force when it comes to payments, and there is no end in sight. Also, PayPal, Visa, debit cards, etc-- these won't work either without an internet connection.

People are too overly negative about Bitcoin not working as payment option because you at all times need an internet connection. The actual problems are volatility, lack of scalability, and lack of will to spend something so scarce.

No one has to take Bitcoin over in order for governments to get what they want and already have, which is an insight into your finances on centralized exchanges, and they can seize your funds if they find it necessary.

People keep saying that they like Bitcoin's decentralized nature and that banks suck, yet continue to use exchanges as online wallet, which is the complete opposite of what you seem to support.

A centralized crypto exchange is even worse than a bank because they are more easily triggered to block your account until you provide them more personal information, or they will remove you from their platform entirely.

It's already limited. If we look at how much demand there has been for Bitcoin throughout the years, there is no reason to think of why the coming years should or could be different with more fundamental developments.

Sure, speculation is still the main driver of the price, but with Bitcoin growing larger and maturing more, different use cases will slowly catch up and push back the dominant force within the speculative nature of it.

There is little over 3 million BTC left to be mined. We know when the last satoshi will be mined, and when much sooner the mining rewards will no longer add anything of significance to the total number of coins in circulation.

With gold we don't know anything about its actual circulating supply, and how much there is left to mine. This transparency is extremely bullish for Bitcoin and allows every person to front run the reward cuts.

It depends on what side of crypto you are referring to. I'm quite sure that the criminal activities involving Bitcoin are trending down with how people start to understand that it doesn't offer them any anonymity at all.

With that said, Monero and other coins focusing on privacy have seen a major increase in criminal activity. Does this mean it will affect people's investments? Maybe. Exchanges could decide to delist them to please regulators.

IIRC, Japan has made a move to prohibit exchanges from listing these coins, and in case they are listed already, they will have to be delisted. This means less demand and less liquidity, so think it through before buying privacy coins.

A stop loss is an important part of trading, but what I have noticed is that a lot people use very tight stops, and this is what market makers are happily exploiting by initiating large up/down wicks that trigger your position.

My stops allow the price to wick up/down by 15% and not take me out, while those who place their stops at 1-2% are so easy to take out. On an exchange as BitMEX you're pretty much a deer in the headlights.

I learned this the hard way because I thought I couldn't lose by playing it 'safe', but the market taught me that I was wrong and I paid the price for it. Make sure you don't make the same mistake because stops CAN work against you.

It's not just a clone, but the volume this platform generates is highly suspicious, especially when it first started-- the volume bars looked identical to the exchanges that are known for wash trading.

Usually you see the volume bars mirror that what's happening on spot exchanges, but each volume bar at Bybit was as high as the previous bar, and that even during stable periods of time.

Another thing is that many youtubers are shilling this exchange like crazy. It doesn't have to mean anything negative by default, but most platforms that they shilled in the past turned out to be blatant scams.

To add, BitMEX has quite a bad reputation when it comes to liquidating their own traders. I'm not sure to what degree they actually do this, but after them admitting to trade against their users in a "fair" manner, anything is possible.

This shows that you don't only have to take into consideration the risks of the sharks you are referring to, but also the exchange if the odds are stacked against them and see no choice but to mass liquidate shorts or longs.

The severity of everything shady that plays out on BitMEX isn't seen on any other derivative platform. The very fact they don't do anything about the overload error just shows that they are happily leveraging an easy to solve error as an excuse.

Here is the link: https://www.tokenanalyst.io/exchange/btc/bitmex

The outflow a day ago peaked at $73 million, which is indicating that people are worried. This for me as non US user is reason enough to at least for now not trade on BitMEX. Deribit (for now) seems to be a decent alternative.

The thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable is that the CFTC might use BitMEX as some sort of a signal that you shouldn't even think about following the same path, and this by punishing them in the most severe way.

Bitcoin could offer a helping hand in making elections more fair because of its immutable and transparent nature. I am however afraid that these characteristics of Bitcoin are too much of a worry for them.

I'm of believe that you can't possibly stop corruption entirely, but what you can do is reduce corruption where possible. If we work towards that we can actually book some progress.

It would be great to see people pool their efforts on a large scale and demand changes as described above, but I'm afraid that in shaky countries the fear of repercussions from the side of the government makes people refrain from doing it.

We know that, but they certainly don't. I don't mind them putting it to a test because that will demonstrate how little meaning their statements or even actions have. Bitcoin withstood more shit than these people think.

I do however like that more politicians actually understand what Bitcoin is, and to some degree even use it to trash talk Libra-- not even that long ago the narrative was blockchain not Bitcoin, now it seems to be Bitcoin not Libra.

That seems to be happening as we speak-- large amounts are being withdrawn from BitMEX and I can't see this come to an end any time soon. People are rightfully worried about what the outcome of this investigation is.

I would withdraw funds as non US trader too because you never know what the actual consequences will be in the worst case scenario. BitMEX may have the most liquidity, but what's that worth when you may lose your coins?

To add, I'm sure that exchanges similar to BitMEX will not exist indefinitely. At one point regulators around the world will force them to obtain the right licenses and subject traders to KYC/AML requirements.

It depends on your definition of making a profit or loss. If you don't care about paper profits or losses and 1BTC is always 1BTC, then there is no way for you to lose. In that case you keep hodling.

Most people however think differently because they only care about what goes back to their bank account in fiat. I can perfectly understand that too, because crypto can be a very lucrative investment tool from time to time.

I personally don't care too much yet, mainly because I believe Bitcoin has much more room to grow in the coming years, but I would lie if I said that I don't pay attention to the price in the short term.

It's difficult not to pay attention to it because we're living it almost 24 hours a day, because this market never sleeps. I'm happy that I found somewhat of a balance between 1BTC is 1BTC and the short term price activity.

They already have control over the biggest financial market in the world. They might lose out on innovation to a smaller degree, but that's about it. The consequences of not embracing Bitcoin for them are negligible.

People here act like countries have to embrace it in order to grow exponentially and potentially become a super power in the world, but that's just because they are biased to think so because they are heavily invested in it.

The US has grown exponentially before Bitcoin existed and will continue to do so, with or without embracing it. Crypto as a whole is one big hype. It's useless for the most part. What in the last 10 years came out of it?

News outlets? CNBC has been shilling various coins where for a short period of time even put Bcash above Bitcoin as the investment to go for, then invite Roger Ver to have a chat with. Very suspicious.

I doubt banksters are behind it. I'm pretty sure that most of them want to think less about it than more. Other than news outlets it could very well be wealthy investors or exchanges such as BitMEX that thrive on volatility.

BitMEX couldn't care less about the short term direction of the price, which the CEO Arthur Hayes even said himself. All they care about is that the price bounces up and down and people trade against each other, and BitMEX against them.

I doubt he has many clients left (if he had any to begin with) after being wrong so many times. 2018 was the year all his predictions have been slaughtered. It was truly embarrassing seeing him rehash his own nonsense.

One would assume that Tom Lee with his background and knowledge would adjust his opinion on the market because it was clearly following a bearish path in 2018, but no, he kept acting like an empty headed perma bull.

What I have also noticed is that his legacy predictions lately are wrong more often than right. News outlets should stop inviting him but apparently they don't care enough. Tom's bad reputation draws views....

I don't recall anything of China having imposed a total ban on crypto-- they cracked down on the exchanges and the practice of trading crypto to fiat. You can still legally own it and even use it as long as fiat isn't part of the transaction.

If you for example buy a car with Bitcoin, or sell a car for Bitcoin, this is not against their law. You can put this allowed form of use in the category of barter, where you trade one good for the other.

Crypto to crypto trades are allowed too in a peer to peer manner. It's sad to see that people due to news outlets spreading false information think China has imposed a total ban on everything related to crypto.

That's a good point. I have seen various local cases of elderly people lost thousands of euros because they were directed to a malicious site with the exact same interface as their online banking portal.

In these cases, even though it's their own fault for losing money, the bank refunded them in full. This form of centralized banking is what offers not only elderly people, but you and me too, a peace of mind because we know we will not lose a penny.

This is where crypto in general lacks hard. In order to transact with Bitcoin, especially when it concerns large amounts, you have to be sure everything is safe and sound before actually initiating a transaction.

I'm not necessarily against regulations and to some degree tighter policies, but the downside here is that these regulations are being used as weapon against people to exercise control over whatever it is that they are doing.

The narrative they are pushing that they are trying to combat illicit activities, is only used as smoke screen, because let's be honest, the more regulations there are, the more professional the illicit activities become.

I have never seen reports indicate that there has been a decline in the amounts concerned with these illicit activities, which just shows that it doesn't work. It may stop some small fishes, but the sharks are still not impressed.

Bulls are bears and bears are bulls. It's the chart that decides what side people are on, especially when it comes to rational thinkers and not those who just expect Bitcoin to moon because the fundamentals are strong.

Fundamentals are something the prices catches up on over a period of years. Bitcoin fundamentally wasn't worth $20k back in 2017, but it still reached these highs. It goes the opposite direction too.

I like people being neutral more than overly bearish or bullish. The charts turned a little bearish but on the other hand it might also be a healthy correction followed by consolidation within a somewhat wider than usual range.

If this ends up breaking down in a more bearish scenario then so be it. People didn't give Bitcoin a single chance to break $6000 in 2019 while it's hovering over the $10k mark right now. Be happy with it for once.

I fail to understand why people get so upset about CMC and its flaws. It's not that anyone here is paying a cent to access the data they provide. It's a free service you can use or ignore in case you don't like how they function.

I use them to track volumes quite regularly and my only point is that there is some sort of a delay, but I can look through that. If I doubt their statistics, I look up the actual exchanges to see how accurate the volumes actually are.

I can say that CMC is pretty accurate overall. Great value for "money" I would say. The large list of shitcoins don't bother me because I know it's a business and they have to please the millions of noobs looking for them.