Because I'm still struggling to find much out about Bitcoin's single biggest ever attempted upgrade/hijack/disaster/salvation.

We're less than two weeks or so away now and as far as I can tell we still know very little other than bland PR speak. I've seen no reviews of code. The lead developer has just launched some alt. Plenty of businesses have come out against it. Even the ones that advocated it are not going to call it Bitcoin when it launches. Barely a single miner has said anything about their actual intentions. It has no nodes other than Amazon discount specials.

Big blockers have their BCH and that's humming along steadily. I still don't believe it's going to happen myself. Convince me otherwise.

What have they been?

This is a great read - https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-dollar30000-in-bitcoin/

TLDR - the guy lost his seed and pin and had to wait for a Trezor vulnerability to be exposed and a tame coding genius to exploit it to save his BTC.

Have you found yourself in a similar situation where your carefully thought through plan to secure your funds bit you on the arse?

If so, how did it happen?

There must be millions of phone wallets downloaded but you rarely if ever hear of security problems, other than direct physical access of course, so what are the known cases?

This is an interesting read - http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/10/18/an-evening-in-wonderland/ from a former sceptic attending a New York crypto summit.

One of the more interesting things to take away from it is that money is moving from the companies towards favouring investing in the coins themselves. The traditional VC route really has not paid off so far. It would've done far, far better going into the coins themselves.

Unless I'm much mistaken it's started rolling - http://data.ledgerx.com

What's your forecast on its effects in the coming months? Lots of fun, another damp squib, absolute dystopia?

And what gets lost between them?

If you read a translated book or subtitles you're not reading what the author wrote, it's the translator's effort. I know enough of a couple of languages to know that quite often what's being fed to you is radically different to the original work.

Similarly if you're some guy from Lesotho who only speaks your local dialect, how much of the world's knowledge is being denied to you by the lack of translation? What about your government as they're likely to be the one and only news source in that language? Surely objectivity and neutrality is almost non existent if someone's information sources are that limited. How much of his knowledge is being denied to anyone who doesn't speak what he does?

There must be mountains of information, art and learning that disappears between cultures because of this.

Is this an unpublicised cultural disaster or does the right info always find a way?

What ones can you think of? I don't mean price stuff, all of them will arrive at some point, I mean use cases and predictions about Bitcoin in general.

One of the most interesting ones is when the first rumblings of forks turned up with Bitcoin XT or whatever it was. It was declared that it would be an altcoin here and elsewhere to much uproar. When it finally did come to life as BCH it was indeed an alt. And now S2X is slowly being declared an alt too by the exchanges themselves.

Bitfinex have stated that for practical reasons S2X won't be Bitcoin - https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/223

Coinbase have acknowledged there'll be two chains if it happens and it may take several days to access them - https://blog.coinbase.com/update-on-the-bitcoin-segwit2x-hard-fork-69426f14bc85

These are two of the biggest players and their actions have confirmed that the NYA thing will do exactly what it aimed to avoid.

I can see the Chinese miners being mindless enough to crack on until they realise it's worthless, but I don't see why anyone else is going to bother any more.

Is S2X in the bag or will it be yet another toothless boogeyman?

It may of course be utter rubbish, but let's say the Chinese government does block internet access to the blockchain itself.

As TOR seems very hit and miss there and VPNs are slowly being hunted to extinction what would be the options for a Chinese person who wanted to interact with it? Does the Blockstream satellite thing work?

20 million Tethers yesterday. 25 million today. It's nearing 400 million 'dollars' now. With a 70-80 billion dollar market cap, which is bilge of course, that might mean USDT has amounted to 10-20% of the money driving Bitcoin, let alone alts.

BFX/Tether still haven't provided any evidence that USDT is anything other than made up funbux.

A Bitfinex employee themselves suggested that the way to redeem Tethers for real dollars is to go to Kraken which is the one and only USD/USDT market.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6uarbw/so_whats_the_subs_opinion_on_this_finex_and/dlxngwb/

This also means that Bitfinex has effectively offloaded the dollar peg to whatever chump on Kraken buys the idea and coughs up.

Where is this going to end?

Inspired by this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_B0uiOSKbM

which I'm still struggling to believe isn't satire, I would like you to share the commercials your local politicians run. I've seen a few American ones and again I couldn't believe it wasn't comedy it was that syrupy and shite.

Let's see who you're voting for wherever you are.

Is it real? Is everyone well meaning? Are there bad actors compromised by states? Have we all been hypnotised by Core's soothing words? Is Bitmain controlled by a joystick installed in Xi Jinpgin's desk? Does everyone want it to succeed but can't see eye to eye?

This is self moderated so I might even socially engineer you. HA.

But I would like to hear some theories or examples. Any of the usual boring shit from the usual suspects will be deleted. It's been heard a trillion times here. I'd like the thoughts of people who rarely pipe up about their observations.

Item number 1 - Bitpay failing to mention that the upgrade offered to their users comes with forking fun - https://twitter.com/BitPay/status/898182956912705537

As a British person  it's fairly clear that GBP will continue spiralling down the limescaley toilet of doom for many years to come.

For reasons unknown my dear old dad keeps most of his money in GBP despite becoming a citizen of EU country. I no longer give a shit because most of my value is in crypto and is staying that way. I was unmoved by the exchange rate collapse after the Brexit vote and will continue to be fully insulated as we all slowly starve to death.

How many people here have paid attention and gotten into Bitcoin primarily because of the weakness of their local currency? Or the cumbersome restrictions placed on moving it?

I assume we have more than few South Americans here. Who else and what is your story?

I think it's safe to say that the premiums will continue to go down as the price rises. Similarly the risks of selling become ever more alarming.

I have a few ungraded coins. There's no way I'm posting them off to ANACS now and the people flogging them on Ebay must have some type of death wish.

The addition of Bitcoin Cash also rather messes with things too.

At some point in the future what will your plans be if you need to liquidate your Casascius coins?

Now that every single person here is quite stunningly rich, at least for tonight, has your level of engagement with crypto land plateaued a little or are you as turned on as ever?

Are you increasing your portfolios with wonderful shitcoins, staying put completely, selling like mad or too busy with ladyboys wiping their posteriors on your faces?

Speaking for myself the prices are now so far beyond where I began and there are now so many projects that I'm just sitting there and observing more than anything. The social science side of it is more interesting than ever, but the market bit feels a tad surreal now.

I am not outing myself here. I think it's a silly business, but I've been reading about Ross Ulbricht again and of course Mr Alphabay.

Both of them operated in a very silly manner. Two people knew Ross's involvement in SR from minute one, there's leaving of his gmail address buried in the Bitcointalk server, and his operating SR in public places allowing the feds to grab his laptop before it could be encrypted.

With Mr Alphabay there was of course leaving his email address, but also flaunting Lambos and mountains of property.

So if you were to embark on such a life, how would you do it differently?

I for one would begin by only doing my nefarious business in a locked chamber. If you can wipe your laptop with one button press, you can physically isolate yourself for long enough if someone comes for you.

What else would you do?

So what's going to be the deal with this?

Now it's all sweetness and light as Segwit smiles upon us, what do you reckon will become of the 2MB hard fork?

Will everyone who agreed to it fall away and wait to see what Segwit does or will they follow through?

Hard forking seems rather more fundamental to me.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-criminal-dark-web-activities-after-globally-coordinated-operation

So Alphabay is a well known goner. As above the Dutch police took control of Hansa for a while before nabbing as many details as possible and closing it down.

Is this going to majorly disrupt dark markets or will it be an endless game of cat and mouse? Is there a decentralised one yet?

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/887024683379544065

A bold claim. I'm not sure which is bolder.

Ludicrous but fun all the same. I do believe 2020 is going to be pretty spectacular if Bitcoin remains above ground.

As an aside can anyone tell me when John Mcafee became a Bitcoin mogul? He seems to have appeared out of nowhere relatively recently. When did he first start talking about it?

https://twitter.com/ViaBTC/status/886798784348532737

So Bitmain and friends will be forking a new chain on August 1st whatever happens by the looks of things, as well as Segwitting on the main one.

I assume we'll all get some of this to play with so what will you be doing with it? Would you dump instantly or hold fire and see what happens?

Some rather deep pockets will be desperately keen to make a success of it so I may hang on to it for a bit for a lark.