That is probably the dumbest idea I have ever heard of. Plus the second poster saying that it will be good because it will end Chinese "centralization" deserves to be banned just by suggesting it. Have you not learned anything by reading and hanging around in the forum?

But of course this is a troll thread right?

Get over it. Even if there was good publicity for Bitcoin, ordinary people will have no use for it. What will they use it for? To buy coffee in Star Bucks? Their credit card or cash works fine. There is no need to use Bitcoin for that. If you want to buy drugs on the internet, that is a different story. You will need Bitcoin for that. Do you get my point?

Do you not get it? Criminal activities and illegal, underground markets are the perfect playground of Bitcoin as a form of payment. Where you stand and what you think on what should be does not matter and will not matter. The marketcap will increase because of the growing use of Bitcoin in illegal acts. If you believe it is "bad" that Bitcoin's marketcap is increasing because of criminal activities then sell all your coins and leave. But one thing you should not be is a hypocrite.

What do you mean by that? Self control on what? To my understanding when you are saying "dynamic" you mean dynamic block sizes? If it is only up to 2mb then I believe there is nothing much to manage.

I do not get what you mean by core to spoon feed code every few months by having a fixed 2mb block size. Please explain and please give a suggestion on what better way to do it so that there will be no more need to spoon feed code.

That is the point exactly. What is sustainable? Sooner or later it will end because that is the natural cycle of the market. Maybe it could last up to 10 years but do you really believe it is all really "sustainable"? Nothing is sustainable. History has already showed us countless times that what goes up must come down. I do not know how you can deny that.

When I mentioned "a long time" it means 2 or 3 years. That is not sustainable that is a bubble forming and getting ready to pop when the right time comes. I also mentioned that this is the highest ever amount of margin trading in Bitcoin. How can that can be ever sustainable in your book? In reading your retort, In my book we are close in getting to a stage of mania in the trading cycle.

I read an article that the core developers are beginning to open up to the idea of 2mb block sizes. If Segwit does not get implemented we may see 2mb blocks happen. But I am not sure if it is a "0.13.1b segwit 2mb base 4mb weight" like you said or just a straight 2mb block size hard fork.

That is all talk and useless analysis as we have seen in the past. When Bitcoin's price rises we all see the "geniuses" writing anything to join the hype and the bandwagon. When the price drops, those "geniuses" will also be the first ones to write all the negative articles and blogs. Like gold, all of Bitcoin's value leans towards speculative value.

I agree that there is a rally but it is never sustainable. You should be aware that the margin trades made in Bitcoin is at the highest in the history of Bitcoin trading. That is not sustainable but it could last a long time.

I just read that there is a new kind of ransomware called "Popcorn Time", not related to the torrent client, that demands payment in Bitcoin. If you do not want to pay, you have the option to send a link to other people and if at least 2 of them install the ransomware and make the payment, the keys will be given to you to decrypt your files.

The interesting part is the victims become attackers themselves turning it into a self sustaining "collaboration" of different people all in the interest of obtaining the keys to unlock their files.

I believe this will have a positive effect on the price of Bitcoin if it infects enough computers with Bitcoin demands reaching over $1m worth of ransoms.

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/popcorn-time-ransomware/

It helps because we could see and observe what the effects are in a real world setting and with a risk of potentially losing value. There is a difference in testing inside the testnet and outside of it because the problems go beyond the technical. If Charlie Lee intends to implement their own Lightning Network then the problems could be economical too since it will affect the miner's fees.


How much Bitcoin is he still holding? I will not be too happy if he rage quits and dumps all his coins in the market, which I heard was a lot.

What I can see happening is the government in the US will not make it illegal but make the threat of it to be illegal. They will do this in any industry if the politicians think it maximizes profit for themselves. It also works 2 ways because they can use the threat of pro-Bitcoin legislation against the banks as leverage and another profit maximizing scheme for themselves.

Here we thought that the big mega corporations are the ones bribing the politicians. It is also the other way around where politicians shake down and extort the corporations.

It is just Alpha Goy's firm stance that Bitcoin's end is already near. Or maybe that is what he wants us to think. It is very ironic because I think he is still holding some Bitcoins and he just wants to come here and make threads such as this because he thinks the people in the community will listen to him.

I have read this article on Bitcoin Magazine today. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/which-altcoins-are-implementing-segwit-1481577969

It is about two altcoins that are planning on implementing Segwit and how it is a much practical option. Those two altcoins are Litecoin and Viacoin.

The thing I took from that article is how it would be nice to see Segwit get implemented in a running mainnet but at the same time it could be seen as a running testnet for Bitcoin. It was nice of Charlie Lee, founder of Litecoin, to risk his own project just to help bring things forward for Bitcoin.

These are quotes of what he said written in the article.

"One of the goals of Litecoin is to help experiment with things that are too hard to experiment with on Bitcoin.”

“Unfortunately, Bitcoin is deadlocked with SegWit versus Bitcoin Unlimited. I want to see Litecoin help break that deadlock in one way or another. That means we have to take a risk: if SegWit activates on Litecoin but doesn't on Bitcoin after a year, our codebase could be very different. I'm willing to take this risk to help move things forward: for Litecoin, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general.”

Signalling may start next week both for LTC and VIA. The soft fork is also expected to be faster for both altcoins. Time to start observing these coins and see what the anti Segwit crowd is really afraid of.

If it does make a person running and maintaining a node a target then they should shut them down, easy. Would that really "end" Bitcoin? No it will not. We have seen people risk their lives and more just in the name of freedom. Running a Bitcoin node will only be a slap on the wrist or less compared to that. Plus the people in the deep dark web will be a welcome source of information on how to better hide your nodes.

I can see a scenario like that what happened in Mr. Robot happen in the future. It might not be of the same scale but ransomware creators are getting better and better at infiltrating systems. So in the near future we will see banks become victims of ransomware demanding Bitcoin payment. Most of the banks in the world are using Microsoft software, it will be easy pickings for the hackers.

What does "deserve" have to do with it? Bitcoin's growth has more to do with its growth of being used. Bitcoin's niche markets are those that are not served by the banks. That means the dark markets, the criminal underground, the hackers and all the others that want to circumvent regulation. This is ignored and despised by most in the community but do not underestimate the value it brings to Bitcoin.

That is a very naive way of thinking. It will surely take more than an app to make Bitcoin "super sonic" like you said. The rapid growth of the dark markets and the fast growing use of Bitcoin by the people from the criminal underground will have a better chance of causing Bitcoin to rise high. I also can see it grab some of the spculative value of gold in the future.

You cannot be serious with your perma-bear outlook. Bitcoin has not reached the markets where it can make them more efficient. I believe it will get some of gold's speculative value in the near future. Have you seen the rate the dark markets are growing? That will be Bitcoin's main money maker. Please suggest another currency for the dark markets, if you cannot think of one then Bitcoin will never crash to 0.

Why do some people still do not see that this is just one of the many use cases of Bitcoin? Moving value easily across borders without the use banks is the main contribution of the technology. Why not embrace it and accept that bad things do happen with or without Bitcoin.

Pick the market with the lowest volatility. For me that would be trading blue chip stocks. Learning the basics there would really be helpful once you transition to cryptocurrencies. It is not advisable to start trading in crypto without prior knowledge because Bitcoin and altcoins have high volatility.