All I can say is HAPPY 2019 and hope that Bitcoin prices increase in the new year.

Cheers!!!

When BTC forked and split to BCH it was great for investors because they doubled their holdings. When BCH forked and split to BSV, once again investors were happy. But......... Three types of bitcoin will lead to ruin for all three coins.

Many people don't realize that having three coins dilutes bitcoin and makes adoption even less likely. It becomes more of a short term investment asset (because it won't last in the long term) rather than currency that people can use to conduct everyday business.

Think of it this way. If you're in the USA and instead of using good old dollar bills, you have three choices. USD (US Dollars), USG (US Gold), and USP (US Platinum). When you go out to grab a pizza, you can pay for it with USD, USG, or USP. But wait, a pizza costs $9.95 USD, or $5.57 USG, or $13.72 USP. Bah! Too complicate to figure this out when all you want is to eat. Hold on a sec! The Pizza Hut down the street doesn't take USP. Domino's take USP but not USD. Papa John's only takes USD. Uh oh! What to do now? Maybe just drop all these coins and go back to gold old fashioned greenbacks. Diluted coins are not good for the consumer, not good for the industry, not good for the merchant, but probably good only for those fat cats who invest in currency.

Like a video game system, its success is how many publishers make games/software for it. A game system could have the fastest CPU, the best graphics, the most memory, the best everything, but if there are no games for it, it's a failure. The more games there are for a game system, the more successful it is.

In terms of smartphones, why is Android a success? Why is IOS a success? Why is Blackberry not a success? Why is Windows Phone not a success?

Bitcoin is a success when people use it. Its monetary value doesn't mean much if no one uses it.

Well, I think the "promise" was to replace fiat in a low cost and fast p2p payment system. That has failed to materialize in any meaningful way. Don't get me wrong, it still can happen. Just that it has not happened yet and the general public has not embraced bitcoin as a fiat replacement.
Decentralized just means that no one entity has control or large influence on the network. An entity could be a government, a company, a group, or a single person.

So true! When one thing gets more difficult for scammers to get away with, they usually come up with another. It seems that black market gift cards are quite popular these days. I hear it on the news a lot where someone poses to be a rep from the electric company and threatens to turn off a homeowner's power unless you pay their "delinquent" bill right away. They instruct the homeowner to go to a Walmart to buy Apple iTunes cards. Or a similar one where the scammer poses as a sheriff deputy (or IRS agent) who claims the victim has unpaid traffic tickets (or overdue tax payments) and if they don't pay right this instant they're coming to arrest them and put them in jail. They instruct the victim to go buy prepaid Visa cards or iTunes cards. I don't even know why this still makes the news. Are people that dumb to pay an "overdue" electric bill or traffic ticket with Apple iTunes cards? No one falls for the Nigerian prince scam any more. Why should people be falling for this type of scam?

I think a coin will be dead when there are no more miners. Transactions need miners to verify transactions as new blocks are found. Even as most miners quit, it'll be okay since difficulty adjusts to the total hash rate. There could be one day when nobody wants to mine any more if the price of a coin is so low that even with free electricity, the cost of a mining rig is much more than the value of a coin.

In my opinion for Bitcoin to go mainstream, it has to be regulated in some way. The average consumer barely understands the risks of using electronic money transfer services like Venmo, Zelle, Square, and the likes. With those services if you mistype a phone number or email address, it's very difficult to get your money back. And these services are part of banks that's under FDIC jurisdiction. Imagine if Bitcoin went mainstream without any regulations to protect the average consumer. People would be losing their Bitcoins everywhere! Obviously if you are reading this forum, you're not the average consumer. Think the average consumer as your grandma who still uses a flip phone.

Riiiiiiiight! And look how well the Venezuelans are doing with their regular banks right now. LOL

Maybe they are just looking for a way to get their out of control inflation down from the stratosphere. After all, they can't use paper money any more. It'll take a suitcase filled with fiats to buy milk and bread. It's either electronic payment or go full swing into crypto. Good luck to them.

The Golden Rule also applies to Bitcoin.

And that is, "Whoever has the Bitcoins makes the rules."

LOL I think just about anyone who invests in crypto currency is a greedy bastard. Think about it. It's virtual currency. Nothing physical. It's not like a bar of gold or silver that you can actually hold. Now there are some people who invest in crypto because they think the idea of a non-centralized blockchain and virtual currency is a good one. And that might actually be true. But the rest are just greedy bastards. This can be proven by the wild swings in Bitcoin prices.

GAMBTCLING

There is no objective except to emphasize the address of 1mtgoxNrDZgrs6zP1MdEToSNTAeeeU2VH and probably to celebrate the arrest of Mark Karpeles?

Btw, is this Mark Karpeles when he was younger?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU

In the US, a criminal court is decided by the jury. The jury is usually 9 ordinary folks from the general population. Try and explain crypto-currency to regular people like your neighbor, the mailman, the pizza delivery guy, etc. Very few people will understand it. Hell, I've been involved with bitcoins for almost 3 years and I still don't get it 100%.  In the US, to be found guilty of a crime, the entire jury (all 9 people) must agree that the suspect is guilty. If one person decides the suspect is not guilty, then the court will find the suspect not guilty.

I don't know how the criminal justice system is in other countries. I'm fairly certain that in most Asian countries, it's not as difficult to find someone guilty of a crime.

I wonder how fast the Chinese government will shut down bitnet once they discover who is behind it.

Isn't Tor already banned in China?

My mistake is getting into bitcoins in the first place.
Over the past couple of years I've invested and built a small mining farm. Overall I made some profit, just a few hundred dollars.
But to think about all the time and effort I spent doing all of that just for a few hundred dollars... It's almost a waste of time!

Looks like more than 1 person tried to claim that 50 BTC.

Oh, and anyone who knows anything about Bitcoins and how to access deepweb is a hacker.
I bet this kid just read a few FAQs and how-to's and that's the extent of his hacking knowledge.

Cash it out and buy some Amazon stocks. At the current price, you can get about 2 or 3 shares. And within a year, you'll probably double it.